A Devotee Part 6

'But Lady Pierpoint? I am afraid, Sibyl, her husband left her very badly off.'

'I will write now,' said Sibyl, springing to her feet.

Crack rose too, and jumped on Mr. Loftus's knees, quietly pushing his hands off them with his strong nose, and accommodating his long, thin body by a few jerks into the groove which a masculine lap presents. Mr.

Loftus did not want him, and it tired him to keep his knees together; but he knew there was a draught on the floor, and he allowed him to remain.

'How much shall I say? A thousand a year or fifteen hundred for her life?' asked Sibyl, dipping her pen in the ink. It was all one to her.

She always gave freely of what cost her nothing--namely, money.

'It must not be too much, or she won't feel able to take it,' said Mr.

Loftus, considering. 'And if it is an annuity, it does not help the children.' And he wondered how far he dared go.

And when, a few days later, Lady Pierpoint received a note from Sibyl, very delicately and affectionately expressed, and offering, in such a manner as to make refusal almost impossible, a sum of money more than sufficient to provide for both her daughters, she guessed immediately whose tact had dictated the letter.

'Sibyl would never have thought of it,' she said to herself, as she wrote a note of acceptance. 'It never crossed her mind when she left us, or even to offer to pay for Peggy's and Molly's bridesmaids' gowns, although she chose such expensive ones. And if it had occurred to her since, she would not have put it like that.'

CHAPTER VIII.

'Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages.'--LA FONTAINE.

With the winter came many invitations, but they were nearly all refused, for Mr. Loftus had long since dispensed himself from attending county festivities, and Sibyl, though she had recovered her health, was always delicate. Lady Pierpoint had had doubts as to whether she ought to winter in England, but not only was Sibyl herself determined so to do, but when Lady Pierpoint saw her in London before Christmas with a vivid colour and an elasticity of bearing which made a marked contrast to the drooping, listless demeanour of the previous winter, her doubts were at once set at rest.

Presently, however, an invitation came for a masked ball in the immediate neighbourhood, which Mr. Loftus decided could not be refused.

'But why should we go?' said Sibyl, 'if we don't care about it. And I hate b.a.l.l.s, and I hate society. I was saying so to the Gresleys only yesterday. I love my own fireside and a book.'

Sibyl had no idea how much these occasional mild flourishes, which found great favour at the Vicarage, annoyed Mr. Loftus. She put them forth, poor thing! with a view to showing him how much she had in common with him.

'It is a mistake to say you hate society,' said Mr. Loftus, 'because you are not in a position to hate what you have never seen. Personally, I can see nothing peculiarly obnoxious in my fellow-creatures when they have their diamonds and white ties on. I do not even discover that they are more worldly in ball-gowns than on other occasions.'

'But it is all so empty and vain,' said Sibyl; 'and though I dare say I have not seen much, still, the small-talk is so wearying, and I suppose that is the same everywhere. I should not mind society if there was any real conversation, anything _deep_.'

Sibyl loved the word 'deep.' She used it on the occasions when others use the word 'trite,' she meaning the same as they did, but looking at the trite from a different angle. From her point of vantage, eccentricity was originality, and a wholesale contradiction of established facts a new view.

Mr. Loftus was so close on the verge of annoyance that he was obliged to be amused instead.

'I have heard many people say they hated society,' he said, smiling, and Sibyl smiled back at him, delighted at having won his approbation by the n.o.bility and originality of her sentiments.

'I have generally found that they are persons to whom, probably for some excellent reason, society has shown the cold shoulder, or those, like the Gresleys, who have never seen anything of it, and who call garden-parties, and flower-shows, and bazaars, and all those dismal local functions, society.'

'She is not going to this masked ball,' said Sibyl. 'I asked her, and she said, "Of course not. Her husband being a clergyman made it quite impossible." I wonder why she always says things are quite impossible for the clergy that most of the other clergy do. She said the same about the Hunt Ball.'

'That was because of the pink coats of the men and the new gowns of the women, and also partly because they were not asked. It happened to be a good ball, consequently it was dangerous. Dowdiness has from a very early date of this world's history been regarded as a sacrifice acceptable to the Deity, so naturally pretty gowns and electric light are considered to be the perquisites of the Evil One.'

'But are we really going to this ball?'

'We are. It would be unneighbourly not to do so. I met Lady Pontesbury yesterday in D----, and she begged us to support her, and to bring even numbers. People cannot give b.a.l.l.s in the country, Sibyl, if none of the neighbours will take the trouble to fill their houses. I have seen very cruel things of that kind done. Ours is the largest house in the neighbourhood, and, as it now has a mistress, we must fill it.'

The idea of society having any claim on her was a new light to Sibyl.

She had always considered herself superior to its blandishments. But now that she discovered that Mr. Loftus actually regarded certain social acts as a duty, and this masked ball as one in particular, she immediately changed her opinion, and forthwith looked upon it as a duty also. It was a duty which, as its fulfilment drew near, became less and less unpleasant to antic.i.p.ate.

She had until now lent a sympathetic ear to the Gresleys when they talked of society as a snare, and had echoed Mr. Gresley's remarks on the same.

'b.a.l.l.s are not wrong in themselves,' Mr. Gresley would say in his chest voice, keeping his hand in before Sibyl and his admiring wife. 'It is only the abuse of them that is blameworthy. Use the world as not abusing it. A carpet dance among young people I should be the last to blame. We cannot keep the bow always at full stretch. But when it comes to ball after ball, party after party, and pleasure is made a business, instead of a recreation, by which I mean that which restores elasticity to the exhausted faculties, recreates us in fact, and renews our energy for our work, then indeed----' And Mr. Gresley would express himself at that length which is apparently the one great compensation of the teacher who has no pupils.

Sibyl enjoyed his conversation very much. She thought Mr. Gresley a very sensible person, and his opinions were in harmony with her own.

Mrs. Gresley had also declared, after a brief visit to Kensington in July during the 'sales,' that she had neither the means nor the inclination to throw herself into the social whirlpool which she and Mr.

Gresley had dispa.s.sionately viewed from two green chairs in the Row, and which Mr. Gresley had estimated 'at its true worth.' If she had possessed both the means and the inclination, she would perhaps have discovered that she was no nearer to that vortex than the many thousands who annually make a pilgrimage to London only to be tossed on the outermost ripple of the whirlpool, and who revolve for ever on the rim of society like Saturn's rings, without approaching the central luminary. But that it is difficult to be loved of Society and ensnared by her the Gresleys and Sibyl did not know, any more than that certain crimes require great qualities in order to commit them.

Mr. Loftus might have been able to relieve their ignorance, but, as Sibyl told the Gresleys, he did not care much for conversation.

A habit of silence was certainly growing upon him since his marriage.

CHAPTER IX.

'Et chacun croit fort ais.e.m.e.nt, Ce qu'il craint.'

LA FONTAINE.

The night of the masked ball had arrived. A large party had a.s.sembled at Wilderleigh, including Lady Pierpoint and her daughters, and Doll. It was Doll's first visit to Wilderleigh since Mr. Loftus's marriage, and as he looked down the dinner-table at Sibyl he wondered at his own folly in coming. He thought he had 'got over it,' but to-night he found that he had made a sufficiently grave mistake in supposing so. Unimaginative persons never know when they have got over anything, because they have no fore-knowledge in absence of the stab which a certain presence can inflict. So Doll walked stolidly in--where Mr. Loftus in a remote but not forgotten pa.s.sage of his own life had feared to tread--and then writhed and bit his lip at the hurt he had inflicted upon himself.

In the days when he had hoped to marry Sibyl, he had often pictured her to himself--his imagination could reach as far as tangible objects, such as furniture and food and raiment--sitting at the head of his table, talking to his guests, wearing the Wilderleigh diamonds, and looking as she looked now; for to-night Sibyl was beautiful. And it had all come about, except one thing--that she was married to Mr. Loftus instead of to him. He turned to look fixedly at Mr. Loftus talking to Lady Pierpoint, and saw as in some new and arid light his thin stooping figure in the carved high-backed chair, the refined profile with the high thin nose and scant brushed-back gray hair, and the bloodless Vand.y.k.e hand holding his wine-gla.s.s. Mr. Loftus had a very beautiful hand. Doll had not seen Mr. Loftus and Sibyl together except at the altar-rails. And as he looked rage took him. It was a monstrous marriage. The blood rushed to his face, and beat in his temples. And a sudden bitter hatred surged up within him against Mr. Loftus as man against man. He looked at him again in his gray hair and his feebleness, and loathed him.

And Mr. Loftus's indifferent kindly glance met his, and he smiled quietly at him. And the cold fit came after the hot one, and poor Doll cursed himself, and told himself for the first time of many times--of how many times!--that the greatest evil that could befall him in life would be to become estranged from 'Uncle George.'

'What are you thinking of?' said Peggy's voice at his elbow. Peggy was often at Doll's elbow at other times besides dinner, a fact which did not escape Lady Pierpoint's maternal eye, but for which she did not reprimand Peggy, any more than for her slightly upturned nose and little upper lip, which turned up in sympathy too. But Peggy vaguely felt that on this occasion her dear 'mummy' was rather in the way, especially when the whole party a.s.sembled in the hall in their masks and dominoes, and Peggy could not sufficiently admire Doll's flame-coloured garment with a black devil outlined on the back and a hood with pointed ears. She had no eyes for Captain Charrington, the tallest man in the Guards, magnificent in crimson silk from head to foot, with crimson mask as well, or for another of Doll's companions in arms in a chessboard domino of black and white with an appalling white mask.

'Look, Peggy,' said Lady Pierpoint, 'at Mrs. Devereux. I think I have never seen any domino as pretty as her white one with little silver bees all over it.'

Mrs. Devereux protested, in a m.u.f.fled manner, through the lace edge of her mask that Miss Pierpoint's and Mrs. Loftus's duplicate primrose ones edged with gold quite put her bees into the shade.

'Into a hive you mean,' said her husband, a dull young man in dove colour. 'But how are we to know Mrs. Loftus and Miss Pierpoint apart?'

'You won't know us,' said Sibyl; 'that is just the point.'

'There is one thing I ought to have asked you before,' said Sibyl solemnly in her married-woman voice, as the brougham in which she and Mr. Loftus had driven together drew up in the _queue_. 'Would you like me to dance or not?'

'Are you fond of dancing?'