"You're not fond of excellent order, I suppose?" she asked.
"In others," said he, smiling. "May I come and see it in your house sometimes? I promise not to disturb it."
"I don't think you could."
"She taunts me with my advancing years," he complained to Mrs. Selford.
Anna's disapproval of him was marked; it increased his amusement at the life which lay before Walter Blake. Blake would want to disturb excellent order sometimes; he would be indulged in that proclivity to a strictly limited extent. If Grantley Imason were a revengeful man, this marriage ought to cause him a great deal of pleasure. Caylesham, while compelled to approve by his reason, could not help deploring in his heart. He saw arising an ultra-British household, clad in the very buckram of propriety. Who could say that morality did not reign in the world when such a nemesis as this awaited Walter Blake, or that morality had not a humour of its own when Walter Blake accepted the nemesis with enthusiasm? Yet the state of things was not unusual—a fair sample of a bulk of considerable size. Caylesham went away smiling at it, wondering at it, in the depths of his soul a trifle appalled at it. It seemed to him rather inhuman; but perhaps his idea of humanity had gone a trifle far in the opposite direction.
And, after all, could not Walter Blake supply the other element? There was plenty of softness about him, and the waves of feeling were by no means wanting in frequency or volume. Considering this question, Caylesham professed himself rather at a loss. He would have to wait and look on. But would he hear or see much? Anna had evidently put him under a ban, and he believed that her edicts would obtain obedience in the future. So far as he could see now, he had a vision of the waves stilled to rest, of the gleam of frost forming upon them, of an ice-bound sea. Now he felt it in his heart to be sorry for young Blake. Not because there was any injustice. The nemesis was eminently, and even ludicrously, just. He felt sorry precisely because it was so just. He was always sorry for sinners who had to pay the penalty of their deeds; then a fellow-feeling went out to them. Of course they were fools to grumble. The one wisdom he claimed for himself was not grumbling at the bill.
He paid another visit that day, under an impulse of friendliness, and perhaps of curiosity too. He went to Tom Courtland's, and found himself repaid for his trouble by Tom's cordiality of greeting. The Courtland family was in the turmoil of moving; they had to go to a much smaller house, and to reduce the establishment greatly. But the worries of a move and the prospect of comparative poverty—there was very little left besides Harriet's moderate dowry—were accepted by Tom very cheerfully, and by the children with glee; they were delighted to be told that there would be no more menservants and fewer maids, and that they would have to learn to shift for themselves as much and as soon as possible. They were glad to be rid of "this great gloomy house," over which the shadow of calamity still brooded.
"The children don't like to pass Lady Harriet's door at night," Suzette whispered in an aside to Caylesham.
Tom himself seemed younger and more sprightly; and he was the slave of his little girls. His grey hair, the lines on his face, and the enduring scar on Sophy's brow spoke of the sorrow which had been; but the sorrow had given place to peace—and it might be that some day peace would turn to joy. For there was much youth there, and, where youth is, joy must come, if only it be given a fair chance.
"We're rather in narrow circumstances, of course," Tom explained when Suzette and the children were out of earshot. "That's because I made such an ass of myself."