Double Harness Part 10

He was very much pleased, and laughed at himself, as he had laughed at others, for being a little proud too. He had wanted the dynasty carried on. There was every prospect of a start being made in that direction very prosperously. He would have hated to have it otherwise; there would have been a sense of incompleteness then.

"I needn't tell a wise woman like you that there's some trouble about such things," he went on.

"No doubt there is," smiled Christine. "But you can leave most of that to Sibylla and the favourite old woman," she added a moment later, with her eyes on Grantley's contented face, and that touch of acidity in her clear-toned voice.

Between being pleased--even very much pleased indeed--and a little proud over a thing (notwithstanding the trouble there is about it), and looking on it as one of the greatest things that Heaven itself ever did, there is a wide gulf, if not exactly of opinion, yet of feeling and att.i.tude. From the first moment Sibylla had known of it, the coming of the child was the great thing, the overshadowing thing, in life. Nature was in this, and nature at her highest power; more was not needed. Yet there was more, to make the full cup brim over. Her great talent, her strongest innate impulse, was to give--to give herself and all she had; and this talent and impulse her husband had not satisfied. He was immured in his fastness; he seemed to want only what she counted small tributes and minor sacrifices--they had appeared large once, no doubt, but now looked small because they fell short of the largest that were possible. The great satisfaction, the great outlet, lay in the coming of the child. In pouring out her love on the head of the child she would at the same time pour it out at the feet of him whose the child was. Before such splendid lavishness he must at last stand disarmed, he must throw open all his secret treasure-house. His riches of love--of more than lover's love--must come forth too, and mingle in the same golden stream with hers, all separation being swept away. Here was the true realisation, foreshadowed by the fairy ride in the early days of their love; here was the true riding into the gold and letting the gold swallow them up. In this all disappointments should vanish, all nipped hopes come to bloom again. For it her heart cried impatiently, but chid itself for its impatience. Had not Mrs. Mumple waited years in solitude and silence outside the prison gates? Could not she wait a little too?

It need hardly be said that in such a position of affairs as had been reached Mrs. Mumple was much to the fore. Her presence was indispensable, and valued as such, but it had some disadvantages. She shared Sibylla's views and Sibylla's temperament; but naturally she did not possess the charm of youth, of beauty, and of circ.u.mstance which served so well to soften or to recommend them. The sort of atmosphere which Mrs. Mumple carried with her was one which should be diffused sparingly and with great caution about a man at once so self-centred and so fastidious as Grantley Imason. Mrs. Mumple was lavishly affectionate; she was also pervasive, and, finally, a trifle inclined to be tearful on entirely inadequate provocation--or, as it appeared to any masculine mind, on none at all, since the tendency a.s.sailed her most when everything seemed to be going on remarkably well. Her physical bulk too was a matter which she should have considered; and yet perhaps she could hardly be expected to think of that.

Of course Jeremy Chiddingfold, neither lover nor father, and with his youthful anti-femininism still held and prized, put the case a thousand times too high, exaggerating all one side, utterly ignoring all the other, of what Grantley might be feeling. None the less, there was some basis of truth in his exclamation:

"If they go on like this, Grantley'll be sick to death of the whole thing before it's half over!"

And Jeremy had come to read his brother-in-law pretty well--to know his self-centredness, to know his fastidiousness, to know how easily he might be "put off" (as Jeremy phrased it) by an intrusion too frequent and importunate, or a sentiment extravagant in any degree or the least overstrained. Too high a pressure might well result in a reaction; it would breed the thought that the matter in hand was, after all, decidedly normal.

But altogether normal it was not destined to remain. Minded, as it might seem, to point the situation and to force latent antagonisms of feeling to an open conflict, Mistress Chance took a hand in the game. On arriving at the Fairhaven station from one of his expeditions to town, Grantley found Jeremy awaiting him. Jeremy was pale, but his manner kept its incisiveness, his speech its lucidity. Sibylla had met with an accident. She had still been taking quiet rides on a trusty old horse.

To-day, contrary to his advice and in face of Grantley's, she had insisted on riding another--the young horse, as they called it.

"She was in one of her moods," Jeremy explained. "She said she wanted more of a fight than the old horse gave her. She would go. Well, you know that great beast of a dog of Jarman's? It was running loose--I saw it myself; indeed I saw the whole thing. She was trotting along, thinking of nothing at all, I suppose. The dog started a rabbit, and came by her with a bound. The horse started, jumped half his own height--or it looked like it--and she--came off, you know, pitched clean out of her saddle."

"Clear of the----?"

"Yes, thank G.o.d--but she came down with an awful--an awful thud. I ran up as quick as I could. She was unconscious. A couple of labourers helped me to take her home, and I got Mumples; and on my way here I stopped at Gardiner's and sent him there, and came on to tell you."

By now they were getting into the dog-cart.

"Do you know at all how bad it is?" asked Grantley.

"Not the least. How should I?"

"Well, we must get home as quick as we can."

Grantley did not speak again the whole way. His mind had been full of plans that morning. His position as a man of land at Milldean was opening new prospects to him. He had agreed to come forward for election as a county alderman; he had been sounded as to contesting the seat for the Division. He had been very full of these notions, and had meant to spend two or three quiet days in reviewing and considering them. This sudden shock was hard to face and realise. It was difficult, too, to conceive of anything being wrong with Sibylla--always so fine an embodiment of physical health and vigour. He felt very helpless and in terrible distress; it turned him sick to think of the "awful thud" that Jeremy described. What would that mean? What was the least it might, the most it could, mean?

"You don't blame me?" Jeremy asked as they came near home.

"You advised her not to ride the beast: what more could you do? You couldn't stop her by force."

He spoke rather bitterly, as though sorrow and fear had not banished anger when he thought of his wife and her wilfulness.

Jeremy turned aside into the garden, begging to have news as soon as there was any. Grantley went into his study, and Mrs. Mumple came to him there. She was pitiably undone and dishevelled. It was impossible not to respect her grief, but no less impossible to get any clear information from her. Lamentations alternated with attempted excuses for Sibylla's obstinacy; she tried to make out that she herself was in some way to blame for having brought on the mood which had in its turn produced the obstinacy. Grantley, striving after outward calm, raged in his heart against the fond foolish old woman.

"I want to know what's happened, not whose fault it'll be held to be at the Day of Judgment, Mrs. Mumple. Since you're incapable of telling me anything, have the goodness to send Dr. Gardiner to me as soon as he can leave Sibylla."

Very soon, yet only just in time to stop Grantley from going upstairs himself, Gardiner came. He was an elderly quiet-going country pract.i.tioner; he lived in one of the red villas at the junction with the main road, and plied a not very lucrative practice among the farmhouses and cottages. His knowledge was neither profound nor recent; he had not kept up his reading, and his practical opportunities had been very few.

He seemed, when he came, a good deal upset and decidedly nervous, as though he were faced with a sudden responsibility by no means to his liking. He kept wiping his brow with a threadbare red silk handkerchief and pulling his straggling grey whiskers while he talked. In a second Grantley had decided that no confidence could be placed in him. Still he must be able to tell what was the matter.

"Quickly and plainly, please, Dr. Gardiner," he requested, noting with impatience that Mrs. Mumple had come back and stood there listening; but she would cry and think him a monster if he sent her away.

"She's conscious now," the doctor reported, "but she's very prostrate--suffering from severe shock. I think you shouldn't see her for a little while."

"What's the injury, Dr. Gardiner?"

"The shock is severe."

"Will it kill her?"

"No, no! The shock kill her? Oh, no, no! She has a splendid const.i.tution. Kill her? Oh, no, no!"

"And is that all?"

"No, not quite all, Mr. Imason. There is--er--in fact, a lesion, a local injury, a fracture, due to the force of the impact on the ground."

"Is that serious? Pray be quiet, Mrs. Mumple. You really must restrain your feelings."

"Serious? Oh, undoubtedly, undoubtedly! I--I can't say it isn't serious.

I should be doing wrong----"

"In one word, is it fatal or likely to be fatal?"

Grantley was nearly at the end of his forced patience. He had looked for a man--he had, it seemed, found another old woman; so he angrily thought within himself as old Gardiner stumbled over his words and worried his whiskers.

"If I were to explain the case in detail----"

"Presently, doctor, presently. Just now I want the result--the position of affairs, you know."

"For the moment, Mr. Imason, there is no danger to Mrs. Imason--I think I may say that. But the injury creates a condition of things which might, and in my judgment would, prove dangerous to her as time went on.

I speak in view of her present condition."

"I see. Could that be obviated?"

Gardiner's nervousness increased.

"By an operation directed to remove the cause which would produce danger. It would be a serious, perhaps a dangerous, operation----"

"Is that the only way?"

"In my judgment the only way consistent with----"

A loud sob from Mrs. Mumple interrupted him. Grantley swore under his breath.

"Go on," he said harshly.

"Consistent with the birth of the child, Mr. Imason."

"Ah!" At last he had got to the light, and the nervous old man had managed to deliver himself of his message. "I understand you now.

Setting the birth of the child on one side, the matter would be simpler?"