poor Courtlands seem to exist to make other people appreciate their own good luck," said Sibylla, laughing a little.
"I'm sure they ought to make you appreciate yours. Grantley and Walter Blake are two of the most sought-after of men, and you've married one of them, and made quite a conquest of the other to-night. Oh, here come the men!"
Young Blake came straight across to them, and engaged in a verbal fencing-match with Christine. She took him to task for alleged dissipation and over-much gaiety; he defended his character and habits with playful warmth. Sibylla sat by silent; she was still very ignorant of all the life they talked about. She knew that Christine's charges carried innuendoes from the way Blake met them, but she did not know what the innuendoes were. But she was not neglected. If his words were for gay Christine, his eyes were very constantly for the graver face and the more silent lips. He let her see his respectful admiration in the frank way he had; nobody could take offence at it.
"I suppose you must always have somebody to be in love with—to give, oh, your whole heart and soul to, mustn't you?" Christine asked scornfully.
"Yes, it's a necessity of my nature."
"That's what keeps you a bachelor, I suppose?"
He laughed, but, as Sibylla thought, a trifle ruefully, or at least as though he were a little puzzled by Christine's swift thrust.
"Keeps him? He's not old enough to marry yet," she pleaded, and Blake gaily accepted the defence.
Their talk was interrupted by Lady Harriet's rising; her brougham had been announced. Grantley telegraphed his readiness to be off too, and he and Sibylla, after saying good-night, followed the Courtlands downstairs, Raymore accompanying them and giving the men cigars while their wives put their cloaks on. Grantley asked for a cab, which was some little while in coming; Tom Courtland said he wanted a hansom too, and stuck his cigar in his mouth, puffing out a full cloud of smoke. At the moment Lady Harriet came back into the hall, Sibylla following her.
"Do you intend to smoke that cigar in the brougham as we go to my mother's party?" asked Lady Harriet.
"I'm not aware that your mother minds smoke; but as a matter of fact I'm not going to the party at all."
"You're expected—I said you'd come."
"I'm sorry, Harriet, but you misunderstood me."
Tom Courtland stood his ground firmly and answered civilly, though with a surly rough tone in his voice. His wife was still very quiet, yet Raymore and Grantley exchanged apprehensive looks; the lull before the storm is a well-worked figure of speech, but they knew it applied very well to Lady Harriet.
"You're going home, then?"
"Not just now."
"Where are you going?"
"To the club."
"What club?"
"Is my cab there?" Grantley called to the butler.
"Not yet, sir; there'll be one directly."
"What club?" demanded Lady Harriet again.
"What does it matter? I haven't made up my mind. I'm only going to have a rubber."
Then it came—what Sibylla had been told about, what the others had seen before now. They were all forgotten—host and fellow-guests, even the servants, even the cabman, who heard the outburst and leant down from his high seat, trying to see. It was like some physical affliction, an utter loss of self-control; it was a bare step distant from violence. It was the failure of civilisation, the casting-off of decency, a being abandoned to a raw fierce fury.
"Club!" she cried, a deep flush covering her face and all her neck. "Pretty clubs you go to hard on midnight! I know you, I know you too well, you—you liar!"
Sibylla crept behind Grantley, passing her hand through his arm. Tom Courtland stood motionless, very white, a stiff smile on his lips.
"You liar!" she said once again, and without a look at any of them swept down the steps. She moved grandly. She came to the door of her brougham, which the footman held for her. The window was drawn up.
"Have you been driving with the windows shut?"
"Yes, my lady."
"I told you to keep them down when it was fine. Do you want to stifle me, you fool?" She raised the fan she carried; it had stout ivory sticks and a large knob of ivory at the end. She dashed the knob against the window with all her strength; the glass was broken and fell clattering on the pavement as Lady Harriet got in.
The footman shut the door, touched his hat, and joined the coachman on the box.
With his pale face and set smile, with his miserable eyes and bowed shoulders, Tom Courtland went down the steps to his cab. Neither did he speak to any of them.
At last Raymore turned to Sibylla.
"I'm so sorry it happened to-night—when you were here," he said.
"What does it mean?" she gasped.
She looked from Grantley to Raymore and back again, and read the answer in their faces. They knew where Tom Courtland had gone. Grantley patted her hand gently, and said to Raymore:
"Well, who could stand a savage like that?"
It was the recognition of a ruin inevitable and past cure.
CHAPTER V
THE BIRTH OF STRIFE
There are processes undergone which people hardly realise themselves, which another can explain by no record, however minute or laborious. They are in detail as imperceptible, as secret, as elusive as the physical changes which pass upon the face of the body. From day to day there is no difference; but days make years, and years change youth to maturity, maturity to decay. So in matters of the soul the daily trifling sum adds up and up. A thousand tiny hopes nipped, a thousand little expectations frustrated, a thousand foolish fears proved not so foolish. Divide them by the days, and there is nothing to cry about at bedtime, nothing even to pray about, if to pray you are inclined. Yet as a month passes, or two, or three, the atoms seem to join and form a cloud. The sunbeams get through here and there still, but the clear fine radiance is obscured. Presently the cloud thickens, deepens, hardens. It seems now a wall, stout and high; the gates are heavy and forbidding, and they stand where once there was ready and eagerly welcomed entrance and access. Think of what it is to look for a letter sometimes. It comes not on Monday—it's nothing; nor on Tuesday—it's nothing; nor on Wednesday—odd! nor on Thursday—strange! nor on Friday—you can't think! It comes not for a week—you are hurt; for a fortnight—you are indignant. A month passes—and maybe what you prized most in all your life is gone. You have been told the truth in thirty broken sentences.
Sibylla Imason took a reckoning—in no formal manner, not sitting down to it, still less in any flash of inspiration or on the impulse of any startling incident. As she went to and fro on her work and her pleasure, the figures gradually and insensibly set themselves in rows, added and subtracted themselves, and presented her with the quotient. It was against her will that all this happened. She would have had none of it; there was nothing to recommend it; it was not even unusual. But it would come—and what did it come to? Nothing alarming or vulgar or sensational. Grantley's gallantry forbade that, his good manners, his affectionate ways, his real love for her. It was forbidden too by the moments of rapture which she excited and which she shared; they were still untouched—the fairy rides on fairy horses. But is not the virtue of such things to mean more than they are—to be not incidents, but rather culminations—not exceptions, but the very type, the highest expression, of what is always there? Even the raptures she was coming to doubt while she welcomed, to mistrust while she shared. Would she come at once to hate and to strive after them?
In the end it was