Chapter XII
Although I had from motives of policy given up the idea of making Sibella my wife, I was none the less somewhat overcome at receiving an invitation to her wedding. Grahame Hallward and I had lunch together in the City the day I received it.
“What do you think, Israel? Lionel has asked me to be his best man,” he said.
“Are you going to?”
“Well, I told him that I thought it was rather silly for the bride’s brother to be best man, and I asked him whether there was not someone else. He got quite annoyed, and so did Sibella. He was angry, I believe, chiefly because he could not think of a friend as a substitute. As a matter of fact, I don’t think he has many friends.”
“I don’t understand him,” I said. “He goes about a great deal, and knows some very decent people, and yet the men don’t like him.”
“Women do, though, don’t they?”
“I suppose so.”
“I’m sorry for Sibella, Israel—I am really. Of course, she won’t suffer so much as other women might when she finds him out, because she has no heart.”
“Do you really think that, Grahame?”
“Sorry to say I do. Of course, I would not say such a thing to anybody else, but you’re almost like one of us.”
I gave him an affectionate glance. I was certainly very fond of Grahame.
“You should ask him if he would not like me to be his best man,” I said.
We both laughed.
“I should think he rather objects to my coming to the wedding at all. I’m coming, all the same.”
Grahame said nothing, and I guessed that there had been some discussion on the subject. I knew that Lionel Holland was not by any means above the vulgarity of showing temper should I be asked against his wish.
“Come and see us on Sunday. Lionel won’t be there, and Sibella particularly told me to ask you.”
“I’ll come,” I said. I wondered why Sibella was anxious to see me. “You’ll be awfully dull at home without her,” I added.
“Yes; she may not have much heart, but at the same time she’s jolly good company.”
“Yes, that’s exactly the expression. Even when we were children she always kept things going.”
We both grew a little quiet and thoughtful. I had had delightful times in the Hallward schoolroom with Grahame and Sibella, but I had travelled far since then. I was fighting also against a great and torturing jealousy. I was by practice enabled to keep this feeling well under control, but it had a habit of having a hasty nibble at my heart-strings when I was not on the alert.
Sibella received me with more subdued sweetness than I had ever known her display.
“You are getting on, Israel, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t know; I’m just making a living, that is all.”
“Why, you know that you are quite an important person now.”
I was surprised to find that no one else came in, and more surprised when she proposed that we three should spend the evening round the schoolroom fire, as we used to do. I began to gather from Sibella’s manner that she was not looking forward to her marriage without misgivings. That she was in love with Lionel in a sort of way I had no doubt, but the price that was to be paid for a few months of ecstasy had begun to dawn upon her. Woman-like, she could not forbear to count the cost. She had never been ignorant of my feelings towards her, and from the day Lionel first entered the house there had been a constraint whenever we were left alone. Such a constraint fell upon us when Grahame, having remembered that he had a message for a friend who lived a little way off, left us for half an hour.
I believe it was at that moment that Sibella began to develop a vague feeling that from every point of view she had made a mistake. In fact, the unexpected happened, as it always does. The absolutely—from the worldly point of view—immoral and incongruous came about as if swiftly driven forward by some occult forces, and she was in my arms sobbing hysterically and erotically, without either of us quite knowing how it had happened.
I had thirsted for her lithe, sweet figure and the caressing of her golden hair so long that I was swept away and found myself murmuring:
“I have not given you up, Sibella.”
She hardly gathered what I meant, and I put her arms round my neck. Her mouth had always been to my mind her chief charm, and when I found my lips pressed against its large, sweet lines—which should have ciphered a broad, generous nature—I lost my head—that is, if I had had any desire to keep it.
Old Mr. and Mrs. Hallward dozed away in their armchairs by the drawing-room fire. Miss Hallward was writing her interminable Sunday letters in the library. I have no doubt the house outside looked just as respectable and unemotional to Grahame when he returned to it as when he went out of it, but, all the same, I was wondering when he rejoined us if Sibella would think it necessary to break off her marriage at the last moment rather than marry a man she had betrayed. She might do so, although in my wildest delirium I had kept some vague powers of caution and calculation, and had concluded that morality with Sibella meant self-interest.
I drove home to my rooms in St. James’s laughing with triumph. Poor Lionel Holland would have all the appearance of victory with none of its reality.
Had Sibella been a woman of ordinary susceptibilities, I might have received a letter from her the next morning imploring me to bury the incident, accusing herself wildly, and vowing to make a model wife; but the elusive one—as I had named her to myself—was too clever to commit herself to paper, and if her marriage took place she would have it conducted without risks.
The marriage did take place, and I went as a guest. If it was bad taste on my part, it was entirely a question between Sibella and myself. She certainly betrayed no resentment. She had the grace to be very pale and subdued, which gave indications that there might be a certain leaven of conscience somewhere. Holland took my congratulations civilly enough. I think he was feeling really happy, so much are human beings capable of being imposed on, and so little can we make sure of appearances.
They evidently both looked forward to emerging from suburban society, for they were to return from their honeymoon to a flat in Mount Street, although Mr. and Mrs. Holland had wished them to settle down close to their house at Clapham.
“I was not going to agree to that,” Sibella had said. “I want to say good-bye to Clapham for good and for all. If it had been Hampstead, I should not have minded so much, but Clapham—ugh! it gets more and more sordid every year.”
I did not suppose I should have the entrée to their establishment if Lionel could help it, but I meant to make an attempt, all the same. Sibella was necessary to me.
I suffered a good deal from jealousy the first few days of her married life, but there is a merciful dispensation of Providence which blunts the keenest pangs of wounded love very rapidly when the inevitable has taken place, however sharp they may remain when sustained by hope.