Chapter XVIII
But I had to tell Sibella.
I looked forward to this task with little relish. I had never seen her in a really bad temper, but I was certain that she could be violent. That was not all. She might break off our little affair, and my heart almost stopped beating as I thought of the possibility. It was essential, however, that I should tell her before she learned it from anyone else. A woman can always bear unpleasant news from the man she loves.
I found her alone and in a bad temper, complaining loudly of her woes. She was being dunned for some bills Lionel knew nothing about. They were living too extravagantly, she declared. They knew far too many rich people. Why were old Mr. and Mrs. Holland such a long time dying? She did not suppose for one moment they enjoyed their life. How could they?
She then wanted to know almost fiercely why I was not rich. I ought to pay some of her debts. It was only fair. Other people made money, why could not I?
I explained that I was doing my best—that on the whole I did not think I had done badly, and that I thought I should do better as time went on.
That was just it, she retorted, with some attempt at wit, time did go on.
I explained with almost brutal frankness—for the sooner she knew the longer time I should have in which to conciliate her—that I proposed to marry money in the person of Miss Gascoyne.
I was quite right; Sibella could be violent. At first she did not believe me; then with white, quivering lips she implored me to tell her it was not true. She was sorry she had been angry. She would retract everything she had said if I would only tell her that it was not true. It was intensely flattering to me to see how acutely she suffered. Most certainly the days of misery I had endured for her sake were amply avenged. I explained as gently as I could that it was necessary for my welfare that I should marry. It was such a chance as might not come again, and after all it need not make the least difference to us—although on this point I was in my own mind by no means sure. I saw looming up on the far distant horizon a very unpleasant and nerve-testing state of things.
Poor Sibella realised with feminine quickness that the woman who has the man in her house, and who, figuratively speaking, washes, cooks, and cleans up for him, stands the best chance of securing his heart—that part of a man’s body being inextricably bound up with other and less romantic organs. Indeed, there is a community of dependence on the same flow of blood, and an identity of relation to the same scheme of physical machinery, which renders the fact inevitable.
She realised the possibilities involved in my having children, and in the mutual interests which were sure to draw us together more and more as time went on. As a consequence of these deductions, she wept dismally.
She was not philosophic enough to reckon with my plurality of disposition. As a woman, she might be forgiven for not being able to do so. Neither was she philosophical enough to reckon with the time when she would look back with amazement on that period when my presence meant a certain ecstasy, a solution which nearly always comes about if two people do not bind their lives together by a material interest, or that more iron bond, usage. It is profitable to the man who wishes to live by reason and not by mere feeling to reflect how many millions of the couples who think themselves indispensable the one to the other would have got on perfectly well with somebody else. If Mrs. Brown had married Mr. Jones, would she not say in later years, if she met Mr. Brown in the street:—“Fancy that old frump having made love to me!” The sentimentalist fancies she would still look at Mr. Brown with romantic eyes; not a bit of it. She would entirely have forgotten how very slim his waist had been, how very bright his eye. Believe me, we are not the individuals we think ourselves to be, but are fish swimming in a sea of condition and circumstance of which we all partake necessarily as we do of the air, the food, the ground beneath our feet, the whole world around us. Brown, Jones, and Robinson are much the same people, and the differentiation is largely illusory.
Poor Sibella passed from pleading to violence. If I did not at once break off my engagement she would know how to act. Lionel should know all, and if he turned her out she would insist on coming to me. The idea of Sibella’s worldly soul playing ducks and drakes with her prosperity in that way out of mere revenge made me smile. Very well, I could smile, but we should see. Miss Gascoyne should know how I had betrayed my friend’s wife. I looked at her in surprise, and she corrected herself; if Lionel was not my friend, Grahame was, and to betray your friend’s sister was just as bad as betraying your friend’s wife. As Sibella had no morals whatever on the subject, this was all very amusing. My amusement, which I could not wholly conceal, enraged her. People should know me for what I was, she declared. There had always been something about me that she did not like, had never liked, even when I was a boy. She had always suspected me of being a fraud in some way or other.
This made me curious, and I encouraged her to go on. It was as well to know what lay at the back of Sibella’s mind, especially if it were not very flattering to what I had believed to be my powers of concealment, but after all a woman with whom one has an illicit love affair sees the worst side of one. I had no fear of Sibella telling Miss Gascoyne. She might in a round-about way try and injure me in the latter’s eyes, but I did not think she was likely to go further.
It was a trying scene, however. No man likes to see a woman whom he loves suffer, and Sibella displayed a quite extraordinary amount of resentment, considering that physical jealousy cannot in the nature of things be as strong a passion with woman as with man.
“You will kiss her, and make love to her,” she moaned.
“My sweetheart,” I murmured, taking her in my arms, “you know perfectly well that I do not love anyone in the wide world as well as I do you—but just think what this marriage will do for me.”
“I have sacrificed so much for you, Israel; you might at least sacrifice something for me.”
“My darling, I will make any sacrifice that you can show me is necessary.”
“This is the end of everything between us, you will see. I shall never be happy again.”
She was softening; the danger was over. I pointed out that she had made the marriage she wanted to; she might at least allow me the same privilege.
“I did not know that I was in love with you,” she whimpered.
I reasoned with her in the most winning way. I would send her a little French novel, one of the most philosophical works I had ever read, although presented as the lightest of fiction, a pill coated like a sugar-plum. In it there were two people who had loved each other all their lives, and kept their romance evergreen because they did not marry. Marriage spoilt so many things. It was the microscope turned on to the apparently limpid waters of romance. It showed a mass of horrid, swirling, swimming, ugly things that there was no need to see. Why use a microscope? She must have learned the evil of the matrimonial microscope from Lionel. Delusions were as good as realities if one were consistent. If we had been rich we might have married each other. Therefore, poverty knew what was best for us, and had been our most sincere friend.
I think I left her pacified; at least, to the extent of not being dangerous. Lionel came in, and I was obliged to go.
I was compelled of course to spend a great deal of time at South Kensington. Edith was radiantly happy, and her romance had brought something into her face which it had hitherto lacked. I was very proud of her. Poor Sibella, who had seen her at some public function, had evidently not expected anything so beautiful, for she declared that I must surely love so exquisite a creature better than herself. As a matter of fact, Miss Gascoyne’s beauty, although of a higher type, was not so dazzling as Sibella’s, and I could honestly say, “One admires Miss Gascoyne, but one does not love her,” which had a very good effect on Sibella. It was put authoritatively, and it convinced her.
I was now the son of the house at the Gascoynes’, and there was Satanic humour in the situation. I moved among all these good people as in some measure a substitute for the dead young man. Where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise, is true sometimes, and what did it matter to them if I were responsible for the son’s death? How could it affect my filial attitude, providing they remained in ignorance?
Mr. Gascoyne doubled my salary, and introduced me to the employés of the firm as his successor. He began by degrees to leave the management of affairs to me, and he did well, for he had grown just a little old-fashioned, and the business certainly improved under my care; in fact, it regained ground which it had lost.
About this time I had another piece of good fortune. It was not much, but such as it was it was encouraging. Old Henry Gascoyne died, leaving only the parson between me and the main branch—of course, with the exception of my benefactor, Mr. Gascoyne.
Lord and Lady Gascoyne called in person to congratulate us on our engagement. They welcomed me as cousin, and asked us all to Hammerton for Christmas. Lady Gascoyne wanted to revive the good old-fashioned Yule-tide. As she justly observed, “What is the use of having an old-fashioned hall if you don’t use it as such?”