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 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 SZ3 
 
 CSl4s 
 
 V.I
 
 SIBYLLA
 
 SIBYLLA 
 
 BY 
 
 Sir H. S. CUNNINGHAM, K.C.I.E. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'wheat AND TARES,' ' DUSTYPORE,' 
 ' THE HERIOTS,' ETC. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 Hontion 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1894 
 
 All rights resewed
 
 Love's undoing 
 Taught me the worth of love in man's estate, 
 And what proportion love should hold with power.
 
 C9lfs 
 
 >! V, 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 s 
 
 PAGE 
 BETROTHED ....... I 
 
 1^ 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 AN ELECTION CAMPAIGN . . . . . I 5 
 
 CHAPTER m 
 
 TWO BROTHERS . . . . . -23 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 love's ANXIETIES ...... A Q 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HONEYMOON . . . . . . '53 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 AN ELECTION EPISODE . . . . . J I 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE LITTLE RIFT . . . . . . Q2
 
 vi Sibylla 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PAGE 
 THE CAMPAIGN OPENS . . . . . IO5 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 COUNSELS OF THE NIGHT . . . . • 13^ 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 DAY DREAMS . . . . . • . I4O 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 five-o'clock tea ...... 147 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 A CASE OF CONSCIENCE . . . , . 163 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SOULS .... lj<^ 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 l'homme serieux . . . . . .190 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 A QUARREL ....... 20J 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 A BAD story's END . . . . . 2l6
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BETROTHED 
 
 The world, when men and women meet, 
 Is full of sage remark, nor stints to strew 
 With roses and with myrtle fields of death. 
 
 ' And you are sure ? ' said Lord Belmont. 
 
 ' I am sure,' said Sibylla. ' There is no 
 room for doubt. My only doubt has been 
 whether I could give up my life with the 
 dearest of fathers.' 
 
 ' But you know that it was my earnest 
 wish,' her father answered. ' It is my 
 earnest wish whatever it cost me. Your 
 marriage with Montcalm will cost me as 
 small a sacrifice as any marriage could. 
 He is such a busy man that you will still 
 have some spare hours to give me.' 
 
 ' Always ! ' said Sibylla, taking his hand 
 
 VOL. I B
 
 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 fondly. ' I would enter on no life that was 
 to rob me of that ! but I mean to be a busy 
 woman, too, to share my husband's business 
 — to aid him in politics, in society : a 
 woman who works hard can do so much.' 
 
 * Some women can,' said Lord Belmont. 
 * You, Sibylla, more than most ; I have 
 often told you, efficiency is your strong 
 point. I have always imagined you a 
 leading figure in a political circle. That is 
 your role. It is your natural domain : you 
 will rule your world, and your world, with 
 Montcalm to share your throne, will be 
 worth ruling. But the great thing is that 
 you are happy — thoroughly happy. He is 
 all you wish .^ ' 
 
 ' He is all I wish ; I am thoroughly 
 happy,' said Sibylla, with a rapt look, and 
 a tone of determination ; for her father's 
 enquiry seemed to throw a shade of doubt 
 on a point which she wished to be, for the 
 future, outside the possibility of doubt. 
 ' He loves me in a way that must make any 
 woman happy — in a way worthy of him- 
 self, worthy of a noble nature. I have told 
 him what 1 feel.'
 
 I Betrothed 3 
 
 ' Then he must be happy too/ said her 
 father. ' Well, Sibylla, I wish you joy — 
 much joy and peace — the happiness, greatest 
 that life can give, of happy and congenial 
 married life. To me, too, it means happi- 
 ness. Charles Montcalm is everything that 
 I could wish, though I cannot share his 
 political enthusiasm ; but then I have been 
 too long outside politics to be an enthusiast. 
 But he fills a great place ; he will rise 
 higher still. He is ambitious ; his ambition 
 will be gratified — one great part of it is 
 already gratified. He has succeeded ; he 
 will succeed. A charming wife is the 
 great success of life ; she makes other suc- 
 cesses inevitable.' 
 
 Charles Montcalm was not a man whom 
 it would be easy to despise as a son-in-law. 
 His character, his position, his achievements 
 made him remarkable. He belonged to a 
 distinguished set, and enhanced its distinc- 
 tion. By years of steady devotion, by 
 regular attendance in Parliament, by ex- 
 ceptional mastery of several important sub- 
 jects, by an occasional speech of special 
 merit, he had achieved a first-rate parlia-
 
 4 Sibylla chap. 
 
 mentary reputation. Everybody who knew 
 anything, knew that when his friends came 
 into power Montcalm would have the offer 
 of office, and that he was not in office only 
 because no good enough place was available 
 for him. He was entitled to a seat in the 
 Cabinet, and it was certain that, when the 
 time came, he would have one. Meantime 
 he was influential in debate. His attacks, 
 weighty, well conducted, well reasoned, 
 carried consternation into the enemy's 
 ranks. His passionless, deliberate de- 
 meanour did not mar the effect of his 
 speeches ; for a secret vein of passion some- 
 times broke to light in phrases which 
 glowed with volcanic fire, and burnt them- 
 selves deep in the popular recollection. 
 His youth had been passed, as a younger 
 son, in laborious preparation for a diplo- 
 matic career ; but his elder brother had 
 disappeared in painful circumstances, and 
 his death, a year or two before his father's, 
 had made Charles Montcalm the heir to a 
 considerable fortune. He was ambitious, 
 and his wealth and position commanded all 
 that society could contribute to the grati-
 
 I Betrothed 5 
 
 fication of ambition. They justified him 
 in aspiring to a brilhant match. And his 
 engagement to Sibylla Belmont was brilliant. 
 Her father was a great man, in the best 
 sense of the word — greater than the 
 common multitude supposed, who never 
 read his name among the active leaders of 
 the day. In his youth he had been for 
 some years in the House of Commons, and 
 had once been in a Cabinet. But an in- 
 superable modesty, perhaps some constitu- 
 tional indolence, had tended to keep him in 
 the background. He shrank from active 
 participation in public life. He was pro- 
 foundly interested in it, but it was the 
 interest of the philosopher, who looks on 
 and watches the game. He had no wish to 
 play it. Since his wife's death, ten years 
 before, he had lived in retirement, 
 in the society of a few choice friends, 
 who appreciated his rare gifts, and with 
 the companionship of his daughter. His 
 judgment was greatly prized. The leaders 
 of his party, politicians, hot from the bustle 
 of the fray, came frequently to consult an 
 adviser whose insight was profound, and
 
 Sihyllc 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 who, removed from actual combat, took a 
 cooler, more discriminating view than was 
 possible for themselves. 
 
 His appearances in society had been 
 fitful and rare. Some winters he had passed 
 in Rome, some on the Riviera. In London 
 he had slowly and with difficulty forced 
 himself from the quietude in which the 
 earlier years of his sorrow had been passed. 
 They lived much in the country. Sibylla 
 had been well content with the occasional 
 gaieties which accident threw in her way, 
 and with a circle of chosen friends, who 
 frequented her father's house and table, 
 whenever opportunity offered. Lord Bel- 
 mont was not a man whom his friends 
 found it easy to forget. 
 
 Her father, meanwhile, devoted himself 
 to Sibylla's education — that higher education 
 which is not concerned with information or 
 accomplishments, and which transcends the 
 domain of masters and professors. Under 
 his guidance Sibylla had become a most 
 cultivated woman ; she had read, she had 
 learnt to think. Nature, without any 
 external assistance, had taught her how to
 
 I Betrothed 7 
 
 feel. She was now, as her father made no 
 secret of thinking, a delightful companion. 
 
 ' I hope to help him,' she said, as father 
 and daughter discussed the husband's 
 prospects ; ' that way ambition lies. It is a 
 joy to me that we feel alike about my 
 engagement. We do, do we not, father ^ ' 
 
 ' I am not in love with him,' said Lord 
 Belmont ; ' but I am well content that you 
 should be. Since you are happy, Sibylla, I 
 am happy too, though he robs me of one 
 great source of happiness. But I will not 
 be selfish ; I believe that I can forgive him 
 more easily than I could any of his compeers. 
 I esteem him sincerely ; I admire his ability, 
 his character, his tone. I shall welcome 
 him as a son-in-law. Ah, there he is ! ' 
 
 ' Then I will escape,' said Sibylla. 
 ' When you have finished your talk you 
 will send for me.' 
 
 She embraced her father tenderly and 
 quitted the library by one door as Montcalm 
 entered by another, — a man of high breeding 
 and noble presence, a classic brow, fine blue 
 eye, a self-possessed manner, as of one who 
 was accustomed to feel himself master of
 
 8 Sibylla chap. 
 
 the situation, who has learnt to confront 
 opposition with coolness and to deal 
 composedly with great consequences. He 
 was now feeling extremely shy, but even 
 Lord Belmont's eye could detect no 
 symptom of shyness. Nor did he himself 
 betray it. They were both too accomplished 
 in social diplomacy to let a hint escape ; 
 only they greeted each other with a marked 
 cordiality that bespoke a special occa- 
 sion. 
 
 ' Sibylla has just been telling me,' said 
 Lord Belmont, ' that all is well between 
 you. I cordially wish you both joy. It is 
 a pleasure to me, my dear Montcalm, to 
 welcome as a son-in-law the son of so old 
 and dear a friend as your father was to me ; 
 you, too, are an old friend.' 
 
 ' Your son for the future, Lord Belmont,' 
 Montcalm said with fervour ; ' I began my 
 apprenticeship in public life under your 
 guidance. You have helped and advised 
 me a thousand times. I am delighted to 
 owe a fresh allegiance to the man I honour 
 most in the world. You know how 
 sincerely I speak.'
 
 I Betrothed 9 
 
 * I know it,' said Lord Belmont ; ' I will 
 return the compliment by saying that I 
 cordially rejoice in Sibylla's happiness. 1 
 resign her to you cheerfully. I can say 
 no more. There are things one cannot 
 talk about. She has been my constant 
 companion of late years, a delightful, a 
 most delightful one, the great solace of 
 existence. May she be as much to you.' 
 
 * I am confident/ said Montcalm, in 
 measured tones, ' that she will be all that I 
 could wish. I know of what I am robbing 
 you, — how much, how dear. You must 
 forgive me ; I will try to deserve it.' 
 
 There was something in Montcalm's 
 reply that jarred on Lord Belmont's nerves, 
 and did not encourage him to proceed with 
 his panegyric. Montcalm had touched a 
 wrong note. He was unable to respond in 
 Lord Belmont's key. He was sincerely in 
 love ; but companionship as the one solace of 
 existence was not the form of bliss to which 
 he looked forward in marriage. 
 
 'Public business,' he continued, 'involves 
 so much solitude — many matters that one 
 must deal with alone. It is one of its many
 
 lo Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 misfortunes. One charm of your position 
 must be that agreeable companionship is 
 more achievable. By the way, you have 
 heard about the Dissolution.' 
 
 ' No/ said Lord Belmont, ' I am out of 
 the way of hearing anything except such 
 crumbs of gossip as good friends, like you, 
 are charitable enough to bring me. Is it 
 settled ? ' 
 
 Montcalm assumed a serious, almost an 
 impassioned air. ' I speak/ he said, sinking 
 his voice a little, ' in the most absolute 
 confidence, and for your ear alone, but it is 
 settled. I have leave to tell you. It is not, 
 unless anything unexpected occurs, to be 
 this autumn. It may possibly be next 
 spring. It was decided at the Cabinet 
 yesterday — a momentous decision, in my 
 opinion, for I believe, when the next election 
 comes, we shall be beaten ; and if we are 
 beaten, we shall have chaos.' 
 
 ' Let us hope not,' said the other. ' I 
 have seen many dissolutions, and some bad 
 defeats. Chaos has frequently been pre- 
 dicted. It has never come off. Perhaps 
 we may be as useful out of office as in, —
 
 I Betrothed 1 1 
 
 sometimes, I have thought, even more 
 useful.' 
 
 'Surely not,' cried Montcalm ; 'I confess 
 I look with absolute horror at the men, 
 whose influence would be paramount, who 
 would govern the country and ruin it — for 
 it would be ruin, the ruin of all one cares 
 about. No effort must be spared. I go 
 to Scotland the day after to-morrow for a 
 fortnight's canvassing. It is an old engage- 
 ment, which does not, however, in existing 
 circumstances make it any the pleasanter. 
 I have a big meeting on Wednesday.' 
 
 ' Then,' said Lord Belmont, you have 
 no time to waste, meanwhile, in discussing 
 politics, and I have no right to monopolise 
 you. We will let Sibylla know that you 
 are here.' 
 
 Having despatched Montcalm to his 
 tete-a-tete. Lord Belmont sat alone and 
 reviewed the situation. The prospect was 
 not altogether exhilarating. His daughter's 
 engagement, — always contemplated as a 
 disagreeable probability, had come at last as 
 a shock. It meant the end of many pleasant 
 things — of things which had grown dearer
 
 12 Sibylla chap. 
 
 to Lord Belmont as years went on. It 
 meant the loss of congenial companionship ; 
 it meant something that he dreaded — a life 
 of domestic solitude. Nor was Lord 
 Belmont wholly without solicitude as to his 
 daughter's happiness. It was impossible to 
 object ; the match was one to which no 
 reasonable exception could be taken. Mont- 
 calm's position was all that could be wished ; 
 his private character above reproach ; his 
 social standing excellent ; his parliamentary 
 reputation of the highest ; yet Lord 
 Belmont was surprised that his daughter 
 should have come to care for him, could 
 now feel certain that she loved him. For 
 one thing Montcalm was, Lord Belmont 
 felt, too complete for human love. The 
 ninety-nine just men who need no repent- 
 ance, stir no such joy, we know, in angelic 
 breasts as the single repenting sinner. The 
 same thing is true, no doubt, with mortals. 
 Montcalm had nothing to repent. He 
 produced on Lord Belmont's nerves a sense 
 of uninteresting perfection. He had no 
 weak points, no pleasant shortcomings, no 
 amiable infirmities such as incline one to
 
 I Betrothed 1 3 
 
 unbend, to show one's weak side, to claim 
 the fellowship of human frailty. Such men 
 may be esteemed ; but loved ? are they 
 compounded of the stuff which produces 
 delightful, effortless companionship ? are 
 they fit for the humble, familiar incidents 
 of everyday life ? its hours of depression, its 
 disappointments, its failures ? Can one 
 really make friends of them ? Can they be 
 really lovers? 
 
 So Lord Belmont, — a man of quick 
 sensibilities and a lively sense of humour, — 
 had to confess to himself, that, — say what 
 he might to his daughter, — he regarded her 
 engagement, if not with uneasiness, certainly 
 without enthusiasm. Her newborn devo- 
 tion to Montcalm was to him unintelligible. 
 Lord Belmont, however, was reckoning 
 without due allowance for the forces by 
 which the female heart is swayed. Woman's 
 faculty for falling in love is incomprehen- 
 sible to the perceptions of the duller sex. 
 
 Montcalm had made a deep impression 
 on his future wife, an impression of power, 
 of strength — strength of character, of will, 
 of feeling. He had, on one or two
 
 14 Sibylla chap, i 
 
 occasions, thrown off his habitual veil of 
 composure and reticence, and shown the 
 secrets of a profound nature, stirred to its 
 inmost depths by strong emotion. He had 
 spoken with passion, which seemed strug- 
 gling for mastery, which all but overpowered 
 him. He had convinced Sibylla of his 
 sincerity. An instant's wavering of fidelity, 
 — a disloyal sentiment was inconceivable. 
 He could be tender, too, on occasion — the 
 tenderness of a powerful nature in its gentle 
 mood. He could be wounded, and the 
 wound would cut deep and be mortal. 
 Disappointment would be a death-blow. 
 Sibylla had not felt the wish, nor, if the 
 wish had existed, the power to strike it. 
 She had given him her heart.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AN ELECTION CAMPAIGN 
 
 Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, 
 
 That from the nunnery 
 Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind 
 
 To war and arms I fly. 
 
 Sibylla was not able to repress a movement 
 of surprise, when, in the course of their 
 conversation, her lover announced that he 
 was to start two days later on an election 
 campaign in Scotland. It was the wise and 
 right thing, no doubt, since Charles Mont- 
 calm had decided to do it ; but a deflection 
 from wisdom and rightness would, it oc- 
 curred to her, have been excusable in a man 
 whose plighted troth was only a few hours 
 old. 
 
 ' Must you really go so soon.^* * she asked ; 
 * surely the election is a long way off.'
 
 1 6 Sibylla chap. 
 
 * Do you think so ? ' said Montcalm ; 
 * who knows ? Anyhow, my agent tells 
 me that there is not a moment to be lost. It 
 is everything to be first in the field, and to 
 have one's constituency well in hand. 
 Mine is a very exacting one. I have been 
 neglecting it of late. I received a pressing 
 letter this morning. I am to make fourteen 
 speeches in the next six days, sometimes 
 three a day. You pity me, do you not } ' 
 
 ' Pity you .^ ' cried Sibylla, to whose 
 imagination an election depicted itself in 
 glowing colours : ' no. How I wish I 
 could come with you ! I should like 
 nothing better. I am a splendid canvasser. 
 If we were married I would come with 
 you ! ' 
 
 * Indeed,' said Montcalm, * I am thankful 
 that you cannot. You little know, Sibylla 
 — happily you can know nothing of the — 
 well — the brutalities, there is no other word 
 — of an election. A canvass is the very 
 nadir of civilised existence — the blackest, 
 most degraded quarter of an hour known 
 to modern man — everything that is most 
 horrid in life brought into prominence.
 
 II An Election Campaign 17 
 
 horrible things to be done and said, horrible 
 people to be consorted with, conciliated, 
 courted, caressed ! horrible shakings of 
 dirty hands ! horrible meetings ! I never 
 see a great mob yelling and cheering — often 
 at something one has had, oneself, the mis- 
 fortune to say — without feeling tempted to 
 turn away in scorn and disgust from such 
 an exhibition of human folly ! It makes 
 one wish to have been born a peer ! ' 
 
 ' Indeed ! ' said Sibylla ; ' that is a new 
 view of it to me ! I have often been to 
 meetings with my father, and we have both 
 of us enjoyed them extremely. I have 
 sometimes regretted that he became a peer 
 so early and had no more inspiriting 
 audience than the House of Lords to 
 address. It has made him a dilettante ; it 
 is a loss to a man not to be confronted with 
 his fellow-creatures. To be able to move 
 them — to guide, to influence, to teach them 
 the way they ought to go — to instruct, to 
 inspire. Surely that is no mean power, no 
 ignoble task ! ' 
 
 ' A noble, generous theory ! ' said her 
 companion, * and like yourself, Sibylla ; but 
 
 VOL. I c
 
 1 8 Sibyllc 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Still theory. The practice is dismally 
 different. To play upon human nature, 
 you must know the stops and know the 
 sort of tune it will respond to. Un- 
 fortunately it is not often a nice one. And 
 then when numbers of people get together 
 and are excited they become hysterical. 
 The public speaker's business is to stimulate 
 their hysterics.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Sibylla, with a sigh, ' it 
 is fortunate, perhaps, that my going is out 
 of the question. But are politics a for- 
 bidden field .^ That would be a disappoint- 
 ment to me. I am a great politician. My 
 dream has been to have a political salon ! 
 I feel as if I could do it ! ' 
 
 ' No one could do it better, more charm- 
 ingly,' said her companion, ' but the less 
 political the better. There is no one in 
 society more qualified to shine in it — to be 
 a force, to charm, to impress, to influence. 
 It would be degrading such powers to 
 employ them in anything so commonplace 
 as politics. We can have some political 
 At Homes, of course ; that is a duty to 
 one's party.'
 
 II An Election Campaign 19 
 
 ' But that is not at all the sort of thing 
 I mean,' said Sibylla ; ^ I do not think 
 much of At Homes. They are character- 
 less, uninteresting, and unprofitable. May 
 not a woman do something more than 
 fill her drawing-room two or three times a 
 season with a crowd ' 
 
 ' and be herself the most fascinat- 
 ing person in it,' said Montcalm ; ' for that 
 will be your role, Sibylla. Is it not role 
 enough — to reign queen of a coterie which 
 finds in you its greatest charm, with your 
 husband as your warmest, most fervent 
 admirer, and with all the world of your 
 husband's opinion.^ It is a tremendous 
 power ; is it not enough P ' 
 
 ' I am a happy woman, at any rate,' said 
 Sibylla, laying her hand on Montcalm's, as 
 if deprecating his praise, ' a fortunate 
 woman. I have the best of lovers. 
 Politics or no politics, I shall be well 
 content.' 
 
 Two days later Montcalm went away 
 for his fortnight of speech-making, and 
 Sibylla entered upon that serious epoch of 
 an engagement, a correspondence. She was
 
 20 Sibylla chap. 
 
 herself a profuse letter-writer. Montcalm 
 was anything rather than profuse. His 
 letters were something of a disappointment. 
 They were necessarily, in the circumstances, 
 brief — written often in intervals of pressing 
 business ; but they need not, an inward 
 voice whispered to Sibylla, have been so 
 matter-of-fact and so business-like. They 
 were too political. They told her little of 
 her lover's self, his actual feeling, except 
 that the meetings were good, the tone 
 favourable and state of constituency sound. 
 ' After all,' he wrote, ' the good sense 
 of these Scotch artizans is, despite the 
 agitators who would lead them to folly, 
 remarkable. They have a wise partiality 
 for existing traditions over dreams of 
 imaginary perfection. They show real 
 insight in the resolution with which they 
 stick to a man, whom they believe honest 
 and rational, however little he courts them. 
 I feel confidence in my countrymen.' 
 
 Sibylla felt as if Montcalm were making 
 a political speech to her — one of the four- 
 teen which he had to deliver. She used to 
 read parts of her letters aloud to her father.
 
 II An Election Campaign 21 
 
 She was mortified to discover how rare were 
 the occasions when there was anything to 
 skip, how little there was which did not admit 
 of becoming public property, how seldom 
 the writer allowed himself to unbend — how 
 few were the lover's secrets which it would 
 be sacrilege to reveal even to a father's eye. 
 Charles Montcalm did not, it must be 
 confessed, shine as a correspondent. 
 
 What was the cause of such unnatural, 
 inopportune reserve ? Was it the shyness 
 of a man unaccustomed to give his feelings 
 outward expression, and who more than 
 ever shrank from such expression when it 
 assumed the form of a letter } Was it merely 
 the Englishman's affected stolidity } It was 
 not, Sibylla assured herself, that the passion 
 was not there. It flashed out every now 
 and then in chance phrases which betrayed 
 the speaker's feeling, almost, as it were, in 
 spite of himself. There were some of his 
 letters which Sibylla read with a beating 
 heart, treasured as priceless possessions, and 
 studied, again and again, with tears of 
 thankfulness and joy. 
 
 ' There is great excitement in speaking,'
 
 22 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. II 
 
 he had written in one of these, — ' a 
 pleasurable excitement of nerve and brain. 
 One is never so conscious of power over 
 others, never so unreserved. I wish it could 
 have come at another time. Canvassing, 
 always a horrid process, is doubly hateful 
 now, that it takes me from the one com- 
 panion with whom I want to be. What a 
 joy those last days were to me ! Every 
 hour that I pass away from you is a mis- 
 fortune. I did right to come, I suppose ; 
 I long for the hour of release — to be 
 with you once again. Meanwhile my 
 Committee is in excellent spirits. All, the 
 agents tell us, is going well.'
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 TWO BROTHERS 
 
 Our acts our angels are, or good or ill — 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. 
 
 Charles Montcalm and his brother 
 Frank had started life with all the advan- 
 tages which an Englishman of wealth and 
 position can secure for his sons. Old Mr. 
 Montcalm had a good estate and a country- 
 house, which, under his administration, 
 had grown out of solid comfort into some 
 magnificence. He had been for many- 
 years in Parliament, took a leading part in 
 county business and had a wide and 
 influential circle of friends. He had 
 become a widower early in life. The two 
 boys had never known their mother. They 
 were sent to Eton at the same time ; for
 
 24 Si by lie 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Charles, the younger by a year, had already 
 more than overtaken his elder brother, 
 and, their father fondly hoped, might now 
 help to keep him straight. Charles readily 
 responded to the good traditions of his 
 family. While still a boy, he was fired 
 with ambition of public life. At Eton he 
 lived in a set of companions who, however 
 gay and extravagant, never forgot that their 
 real business was to equip themselves as 
 brilliant politicians and accomplished 
 members of society. They read the 
 debates; they chose their sides; they 
 harangued each other in debating clubs on 
 the interests of the Empire and the policy 
 of the Government. Amidst the seduc- 
 tions of pleasure Charles Montcalm kept 
 his head. His abilities made him the 
 centre of a brilliant clique, catholic enough 
 in its tastes to take a wide sweep of enjoy- 
 ment, but whose main inspiration was a 
 sense of what the path of future statesmen 
 ought to be. They worked hard ; their 
 boyish follies were tempered with the self- 
 restraint which arises from a settled purpose 
 and definite aim. They preferred wasting
 
 Ill Two Brothers 25 
 
 money to wasting time. If they were 
 sometimes profuse, it was because profusion 
 was a failing of which no gentleman need 
 be ashamed. If they gave champagne 
 luncheons and sometimes played whist 
 when they ought to have been in bed, they 
 remembered that Mr. Pitt was devoted to 
 port, and that Charles Fox redeemed a 
 night at faroe by a morning of Greek odes 
 and Platonic philosophy. 
 
 Frank's course was different. He was 
 one of the natures to whom the want of 
 a mother's care means ruin. As a child 
 he was more attractive than his younger 
 brother — gay, facile, insinuating, unre- 
 served, disposed to be friends with every 
 one, and to induce every one to spoil him. 
 His father had succumbed to the temptation. 
 Frank was his pet ; it was difficult not to 
 pet him. Governesses, however, when 
 they tried to do anything but pet, found 
 him beyond control. When the epoch of 
 private tutors arrived, there were complaints 
 of invincible inattention, thoughts which 
 no contrivance could arrest, diligence which 
 was always flagging, and which, at the first
 
 2 6 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 appearance of difficulty, capitulated. The 
 impossibility of teaching Frank anything 
 became a standing family joke ; but the 
 fun died out when, in course of time, he 
 had to be sent to school, and at once sank, 
 lead-like, to the bottom of every aggregate 
 of which he formed a part. Then came 
 news of a scrape, the first of a long series 
 with which Mr. Montcalm, in after years, 
 became horribly familiar, each one graver 
 than its predecessor. Frank's Eton career 
 came to a premature and ignominious close. 
 Oxford fared no better. By the time he 
 was twenty-one, Frank had made it clear 
 to his father's reluctant eyes that he was on 
 the high-road to a catastrophe, with every 
 qualification for speedily arriving at his 
 journey's end. The truth could no longer 
 be ignored. The darling of his father had 
 now become his scourge. 
 
 It was natural that, with such widely 
 different tastes and aspirations, the two 
 brothers should see but little of each other. 
 They had nothing in common. They 
 lived in different sets, and on the rare 
 occasions when they met at their father's
 
 Ill Two Brothers 27 
 
 house the estrangement became painfully 
 apparent. There was the restraint of 
 mutual uncongeniality and mutual dis- 
 approval. There was an under-current of 
 insolence in Frank's manner to his brother. 
 As a boy he had always regarded him as a 
 paragon of dull correctness, a prig. He 
 now despised his devotion to politics, his 
 indiiference to all the common enjoyments 
 of life. 
 
 Charles, on the other hand, though 
 resenting his brother's line of reckless 
 pleasure as ignoble in itself and disgraceful 
 to his family, followed his father in cherish- 
 ing a lurking fondness for the prodigal, a 
 lurking hope for his reclamation. Frank, 
 however, showed no symptoms of wishing 
 to be reclaimed. With unvarying bent he 
 passed through the stages of spoilt child, 
 idle and refractory school-boy, the fast 
 Oxonian. He was now a wild pleasure- 
 hunter, with pronounced weakness for bad 
 company, gambling and drink. His father 
 had repeatedly paid his debts and rescued 
 him from the hands of the sharpers who 
 gather, vulture-like, around the moneyed
 
 28 Si by lie 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 profligate. But the rescue was invariably 
 bootless. There would be a few months' 
 respite, during which nothing was heard of 
 him ; then would come news of some new 
 entanglement. At last it became obvious 
 that a scandal was inevitable. Before long 
 the scandal came — a desperate card scandal 
 at a gambling club, in which mutual 
 charges of dishonourable behaviour were 
 bandied about by all concerned. Men of 
 high standing were involved ; they 
 demanded a formal investigation. A 
 committee was appointed. The result 
 was deplorable for Frank Montcalm. He 
 was found to have been systematically 
 cheating ; he was shown to be hopelessly 
 involved. He had been gambling in a 
 desperate mood, on an enormous scale, in 
 utter recklessness. His so-called debts of 
 honour were enormous. Other debts on 
 a huge scale were brought to light. To 
 put the finishing touch to the edifice of 
 shame, he forged his brother's name to a 
 heavy acceptance, and suddenly disappeared. 
 Mr. Montcalm, who hitherto had said 
 no word, now wrote to the chairman of the
 
 Ill Two Brothers 29 
 
 committee to ask for a list of Frank's debts 
 of every kind. Next day he sent a cheque 
 for the amount with a request that all might 
 be forthwith discharged. The forged ac- 
 ceptance was duly honoured. A few weeks 
 later it was known that Mr. Montcalm's 
 town house — a fine old London mansion, 
 where he had been accustomed to live in 
 considerable splendour — was for sale. Mr. 
 Montcalm never again appeared in London 
 society, but lived, in complete seclusion, 
 at his country place, Frampton. Nobody, 
 except one or two intimate friends, had 
 ever seen him. Those who did see him 
 found a broken-hearted man — shattered 
 alike in body and mind. Charles was his 
 only confidant. When the news of the 
 disaster first arrived he had consulted with 
 him as to the course to be pursued. 
 
 ' The debts must be paid,' he had said. 
 * We must take up the forged note. But 
 the sacrifice will be more yours than mine, 
 Charles. For me life is over ; money — 
 everything indeed — is a matter of absolute 
 indifference. I shall not be here for long. 
 But for you the cost is serious. It will
 
 30 Sibylla chap. 
 
 greatly cripple your future fortune. I will 
 do nothing without your full concurrence. 
 Some men might consider it quixotic to pay 
 a brother's debts — and such a brother's. I 
 will tell you plainly how matters stand. I 
 intend to make you my heir. The estate 
 is practically yours ; so is this house, on 
 which we have spent so much thought and 
 money, as a family centre. I can meet 
 these claims only by selling my town-house 
 and the most valuable of the pictures, and 
 raising the rest by mortgage on Frampton. 
 That seems to me the proper course ; but 
 it is for you to decide. Take your time to 
 consider it.' 
 
 ' No, father,' said Charles ; ' it needs no 
 consideration. Your view is mine. What- 
 ever dirt is thrown about, let our own hands 
 be clean. We must save our family honour. 
 No one need know about all this horrid 
 business — not about the forgery at any rate 
 — but ourselves.' 
 
 * It would have killed me if you had 
 decided otherwise,' said his father with a 
 great sigh of relief. ' You have my warmest 
 thanks, Charles. You will still have a
 
 Ill 
 
 Two Brothers 31 
 
 competence. You will be able to live here, 
 and need not give up Parliament. And 
 you will never tell the story to any one, 
 
 will you ? ' 
 
 So the cheque had been sent, and the 
 Montcalm scandal, after being a three days' 
 topic of fashionable gossip, sank under the 
 whirling eddies of London life, and was 
 forgotten — everywhere but in one or two 
 hearts, where it remained a rooted sorrow, 
 blotting out all the pleasure of existence 
 and clouding the serene heaven of an hon- 
 ourable life. 
 
 Nothing was known of Frank's move- 
 ments ; but two years later a police report, 
 copied from a far -west American news- 
 paper, mentioned that an Englishman of 
 the name of Montcalm had been shot in 
 a drunken brawl at the Eldorado Mines, 
 the most recent of the great gold-fields of 
 Columbia. 
 
 Charles, at his father's request, had in- 
 stituted enquiries about the murdered man. 
 Mr. Strutt, the family solicitor, had been 
 set to work, and had despatched a special 
 agent to the spot. His investigation left
 
 32 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 no doubt that the murdered man was no 
 other than Frank. There had been, the 
 agent wrote, a formal police enquiry into 
 the circumstances of the murder, a copy of 
 the proceedings at which he forwarded 
 with his letter. Montcalm had been 
 familiarly known among a gang of adven- 
 turers, who had come together to the mine, 
 and whose unruly behaviour had given 
 much trouble to the authorities. He was 
 known to be an Englishman and a gentle- 
 man by birth. There had been much 
 drinking and gambling, and constant 
 quarrels in which life and limb were en- 
 dangered. The corpse had been discovered, 
 several days after death, in an almost in- 
 accessible locality, where the fight had, 
 apparently, taken place. It had not been 
 thought necessary to bring it into head- 
 quarters, as the finder had identified 
 it, and other circumstances sufficiently 
 established the identity. The murdered 
 man's coat was recognised by several of his 
 acquaintance, and in it was found his ticket 
 of location, corresponding with the register 
 in which Frank Montcalm had been duly
 
 Ill 
 
 Two Brothers 33 
 
 entered. There was found upon his person 
 a clasp knife, and a pipe, on both of which his 
 name was engraved. These were now for- 
 warded to his father. Charles knew the 
 knife only too well. It was one which his 
 brother had possessed since boyhood — his 
 father's gift. Frank had a boyish fondness 
 for it. Absolutely careless in everything 
 else, he had stuck to this, and piqued him- 
 self on his successful care of it. It was one 
 of the small signs of grace with which Mr. 
 Montcalm had endeavoured to console 
 himself Putting all the evidence together, 
 there seemed no reasonable ground for 
 doubt, Mr. Strutt wrote, that Frank 
 was the murdered man. If any of 
 Mr. Montcalm's arrangements depended 
 on the occurrence of Frank's death, 
 that event might and ought now to be 
 assumed. 
 
 ' No arrangement depends on his death, 
 poor fellow,' Mr. Montcalm said to Charles. 
 ' The only thing is this : At the time of 
 his trouble, when you joined with me in 
 paying off the debts, I exercised a power of 
 appointment, which I had under my 
 
 VOL. I D
 
 34 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 marriage settlement, of giving Frampton 
 and the bulk of the estate to whichever of 
 my children I chose. The settlement pro- 
 vided that, in default of such an appoint- 
 ment, the place was to go to the eldest son 
 of the marriage, living at my death, or to 
 his son, with remainder over to my other 
 sons. Provision was made for the other 
 children — and handsome provision ; for I 
 was a rich man then. Still you would have 
 had only a younger son's portion. Frank's 
 trouble made it necessary to make a change. 
 Practically I disinherited him and left 
 everything to you. It was only just ; but 
 I never felt happy about it. That appoint- 
 ment weighed on my spirits. It was a 
 record of our family disgrace. Strutt in- 
 sisted that I must set out all the circum- 
 stances — the payments I had made, and 
 which you had made, on Frank's behalf. 
 Strutt made me do it so, in justice to 
 you. But I hated doing it. Now that 
 poor Frank is gone, it is unnecessary. I 
 shall be happier when I know that it is 
 destroyed. I mean to destroy it. News- 
 paper men nowadays go to Doctor's
 
 Ill Two Brothers 35 
 
 Commons and pry into people's wills, and 
 so they get into the newspapers. I cannot 
 bear the idea of that. The settlement now 
 does all that I wish. It will give every- 
 thing to you.' 
 
 ' Poor Frank,' Mr. Montcalm continued. 
 ' I was weak about him, Charles, was I 
 not.? He was my weak point. I doted 
 on him. He was the great sorrow of my 
 life. He died unforgiven, because he would 
 never come home to give me a chance of 
 forgiving him. He was ashamed, I suppose, 
 to tax my powers of forgiveness again, to 
 take any more of my money and yours. 
 Well, that was a good trait, was it not.? 
 He had good in him, poor boy — much good. 
 I suppose I had spoilt him. I could have 
 borne anything if only I had been allowed 
 to see him once more before he died, and to 
 speak my forgiveness and to part in peace. 
 Now, at any rate, I need not record his 
 disgrace, and disinherit him. His death 
 has spared me that.' 
 
 Mr. Strutt, when consulted on the sub- 
 ject, urged strongly that the appointment 
 should be left in force until, at any rate,
 
 2^ Sibylla chap. 
 
 the subject had received careful considera- 
 tion. There was not, *primd facie^ he 
 admitted, any necessity for preserving it, 
 except as a safeguard against possible mis- 
 hap and litigation hereafter ; but why destroy 
 a safeguard ? He proposed to come down 
 and stay at Frampton and talk the matter 
 over with his two clients. 
 
 The question of destroying the appoint- 
 ment greatly excited Mr. Montcalm. He 
 could talk of nothing else. Charles observed 
 with anxiety its effect on his father's nerves. 
 He was unnaturally over-wrought. The 
 document was his bete noire. Its destruc- 
 tion seemed to him like the sweeping away 
 of the evidence of a family disaster, the 
 clearing of the family record of a shameful 
 story. He read Mr. Strutt's letter as im- 
 pliedly admitting that there was now no 
 practical necessity for its preservation. His 
 visit, and the further consideration which he 
 represented as essential, were merely the 
 superabundant precautions which a solicitor 
 is professionally bound to recommend. 
 Charles, on coming into the library, one 
 morning, found his father standing, poker
 
 Ill Tzvo Brothers 37 
 
 in hand, before the fireplace, holding down 
 a blazing piece of paper. 
 
 ' I have destroyed it,' Mr. Montcalm said 
 excitedly ; ' I feel a comfort in having done 
 so ; my heart is lighter. I feel better. If 
 anything further is necessary, Strutt can 
 draw it up when he comes. That wretched 
 appointment has plagued me. I have had 
 my revenge upon it.' 
 
 Mr. Strutt's services, however, were 
 presently needed for another phase of the 
 Montcalm family affairs. Mr. Montcalm's 
 health had been for some time failing. He 
 had been nervous, excitable ; greatly de- 
 pressed at one time, elated at another ; 
 always increasingly feeble. His doctor had 
 often spoke to Charles of his father's en- 
 feebled vitality and weak heart — of the 
 absolute necessity of avoiding any shock. 
 Mr. Montcalm had now manufactured a 
 cause of excitement out of nothing. He had 
 worked himself into an agitation which was 
 too much for his shattered frame. It soon 
 became apparent that he was extremely ill. 
 He began to wander. His thoughts were 
 busy with the far past. He spoke of his
 
 38 Sibylla chap. 
 
 wife ; he confused Charles with Frank. He 
 kept talking of one of Frank's boyish 
 scrapes. Charles, greatly alarmed, des- 
 patched a message to summon the doctor, 
 and to hurry Mr. Strutt. But before 
 doctor or solicitor could come, Mr. Mont- 
 calm's troubles were at an end. Mr. Strutt, 
 on his arrival, found the household in the 
 first bewilderment of a domestic tragedy. 
 His client had died the previous night. 
 
 Mr. Strutt looked very grave indeed 
 when Charles Montcalm told him of the 
 destruction of the appointment, — unneces- 
 sarily grave, Charles thought. ' I cannot 
 see what harm can come of it,' he said, as 
 he concluded the narrative. 
 
 ' Can you not } ' cried Mr. Strutt ; ' I 
 wish that I could not. I trust that nothing 
 may come of it. We must hope for the 
 best ; but, with people like your brother 
 Frank and his associates, you can never tell 
 what mischief may turn up. You are, I 
 suppose, certain that your father was quite 
 master of himself, and was fully conscious 
 of what he was doing, when he destroyed 
 the appointment } '
 
 Ill Two Brothers 39 
 
 ' It never occurred to me that he was 
 not,' said the other ; ' he was growing feebler 
 day by day ; but he was quite himself.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Mr. Strutt, with a shrug of 
 his shoulders, which often served him for 
 the close of an inconvenient conversation, 
 ' we can only hope for the best.' 
 
 Charles Montcalm, as eldest, indeed as 
 only, son of the deceased, and his executor, 
 wound up his father's affairs, and took 
 possession of the estate. There was little 
 to be done ; everything was in perfect order. 
 There was practically no change of master, 
 for Charles had of late undertaken the chief 
 part of the management. Frampton was, 
 except for occasional visits, shut up. Charles 
 had a lodging in St. James's Street, and was 
 busy with his Parliame-ntary work. The 
 first important break in the even current of 
 his life was his engagement to Sibylla.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 LOVE S ANXIETIES 
 
 Ah ! the man 
 Is worthy, but so given to entertain 
 Impossible dreams of superhuman life, 
 He sets his virtues on so high a shelf. 
 To keep them at the grand millennial height, 
 He has to mount a stool to get at them ; 
 And, meantime, lives on quite the common way 
 With everybody's morals. 
 
 The writers of romance are accustomed to 
 take leave of lovers at the moment of their 
 engagement, as if everything were over, and 
 the vessel were safely brought to a haven 
 of safety. On the contrary, the voyage is 
 just beginning. Into what perilous seas 
 the youthful pair are steering, with their 
 precious freight of human happiness ! 
 What difficulties and perils beset it ! 
 What grave anxieties, what risks of tragic,
 
 CHAP. IV Love s Anxieties 41 
 
 disastrous shipwreck ! For the people 
 most immediately concerned the hour is 
 critical. It calls for all the tact, the deli- 
 cacy, the refinement of soul, the skilful 
 handling, that their resources, mental and 
 moral, can furnish for the accomplishment 
 of a difficult task. The man is, necessarily, 
 almost always a disappointment. He 
 cannot live up to the romantic ideal of 
 the woman, who believed him perfect. 
 Fortunate if he can temper the disappoint- 
 ment, can lighten the shock — show some 
 solid merits to compensate for vanishing 
 illusions, and lay a firm hold on affection 
 and esteem, as the rose-tinted clouds of 
 imagination dissolve and disappear. 
 
 It is, accordingly, in the nature of things 
 that the course, even of true love, should 
 not run smooth, and that the happiness of 
 lovers — of thoughtful lovers, at any rate — 
 should be largely tempered by anxiety. 
 It can hardly be otherwise. To both 
 parties the period of courtship is a voyage 
 of discovery — a delightful voyage, no doubt 
 — interesting, entrancing, but not without 
 the excitements and vicissitudes incidental
 
 42 Sibylla chap. 
 
 to sailing in unmapped seas. The woman, 
 in most cases, has everything to learn. 
 She is making real acquaintance, for the 
 first time, with the race of man — that 
 strange combination of conflicting impulses 
 and desires, of waywardness, of inconsist- 
 encies, of unintelligible idiosyncrasies. 
 What innumerable strains are mixed in 
 each man's blood ; what a host of inherited 
 tendencies of taste and habit and impulse, 
 driving him this way and that, and making 
 him often a mystery to himself, still more 
 mysterious to the woman whose business 
 it is to understand him. Till now he has 
 shown her nothing but his most charming 
 phase — the phase of the adoring lover. 
 The slight intercourse which precedes an 
 engagement makes it difficult for him to 
 show her any other. His future wife has 
 to take many things on trust — things which 
 are vital to her happiness. Happily she 
 is generally in the mood to do so. She is 
 happy ; she is hopeful, and hope makes 
 her deafen her ear to the jarring note which 
 might breathe of disillusion. 
 
 Thus, though Sibylla was happy in her
 
 IV Loves Anxieties 43 
 
 engagement, she was occasionally beset 
 with shadowy misgivings. Charles Mont- 
 calm was a noble creature, she was sure 
 of that ; but he sometimes surprised, 
 sometimes perplexed her. A rational 
 woman, thoroughly in love, is ready to 
 make generous allowance for her lover's 
 idiosyncrasies. They interest, they amuse 
 her. They are the shadows necessary for 
 an effective portrait. They are the out- 
 come of originality — the accompaniment, 
 sometimes the symptom, of genius. Sibylla 
 fortified herself with the reflection that her 
 future husband would not, at any rate, be 
 commonplace. In her weaker moments 
 she caught herself wishing that he could 
 be more expansive, less self- disciplined 
 and self- suppressed, more prompt in the 
 confidential utterances which Nature sets 
 flowing from a lover's lips. Reserve is of 
 all habits the most unintelligible, the most 
 depressing to the unreserved. Sibylla's 
 spirits, too, were sometimes damped by the 
 consciousness of something in her father's 
 feeling about Charles Montcalm, which 
 fell short of what she would have liked.
 
 44 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Lord Belmont was elaborately cordial in 
 his behaviour to his future son-in-law, and 
 always spoke of him with warm esteem ; 
 but it was due to the circumstances of the 
 position that he should do so. Sibylla 
 seemed to herself to detect an absence of 
 heartiness, of spontaneity in her father's 
 eulogium. There was something in 
 Montcalm's character, she felt, which 
 jarred, — something with which her father 
 could not sympathise. She puzzled her- 
 self with conjectures as to what it was. 
 She more than once essayed to get him to 
 talk about her lover ; never, however, with 
 great success. 
 
 ' Charles is tremendously political, is he 
 not ^ ' Lord Belmont said on one of these 
 occasions : ' some men are born like that. 
 His father was just the same. It is bred 
 in the bone. Their families, 1 suppose, 
 have been at the business for generations. 
 It is part of their existence ; they feel it 
 to be of supreme importance. They are 
 the loyalest of partizans. Charles would 
 sacrifice himself for his party, just as he 
 would die for his country.'
 
 IV 
 
 hove s Anxieties 45 
 
 ' Of course,' cried Sibylla. * Noblesse 
 oblige. We should all do that, I suppose.' 
 
 * Should we '^. ' said her father, ' let us 
 hope so ; but not, I fear, with Charles's 
 enthusiasm. He is a political enthusiast. 
 I am not sure that such enthusiasm is as 
 common as you think, Sibylla. Anyhow, 
 in the guise in which Charles shows it, it 
 is an admirable quality. He will do 
 something heroic in politics before he has 
 done with them.' 
 
 ' I am glad that you feel that,' said 
 Sibylla, taking her father's hand, as she 
 was apt to do when he especially pleased 
 her ; ' you always feel the right thing — 
 the dear thing. I feel that strongly myself; 
 I know it. There is something heroic in 
 Charles. Some day, when the occasion 
 offers, he will show it. But there is some- 
 thing more in him than heroism ; when 
 you come to know him better you will 
 feel it as I do.' 
 
 * I feel all that I could wish about my 
 dear daughter's lover,' said Lord Belmont. 
 ' No one could ever, in my thoughts, have 
 been good enough for her. But I like
 
 46 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Montcalm extremely. The difference 
 between him and me — if there is one — lies 
 in our attitude towards public affairs. I 
 have not for a long while been enough in 
 the thick of politics to feel as vivid an 
 interest in them as he does. Much about 
 them does not interest me at all. The 
 party-fight part of the business is intolerable, 
 if you look at it in cold blood and without 
 having, yourself, a share in the fight.' 
 
 ' But that is part of the game,' said 
 Sibylla, ' a necessary part. And the game 
 is the best sort of thing for a man to take 
 up, is it not ? — the only thing for a rich 
 man with no profession. By the way, 
 father, tell me what you know about 
 Charles's boyhood. You remember him as 
 a boy, do you not ? ' 
 
 ' Perfectly,' said Lord Belmont. * His 
 father was one of the friends of my youth. 
 He was so charming ; I quite loved him ; 
 a delightful companion ! His eldest son 
 gave him trouble ; Charles was his comfort ; 
 he behaved admirably about his brother.' 
 
 ' And what became of the brother ? ' 
 asked Sibylla.
 
 IV Love's Anxieties 47 
 
 ' He disappeared from London in dis- 
 grace — some desperate money scandal — 
 and died, I believe, in America. But 
 nothing was ever known for certain. It 
 was not a subject that I could mention to 
 Montcalm. The Montcalms, father and 
 son, joined in paying the prodigal's debts. 
 They had to dip pretty deep into the family 
 revenues to do it. They said that it cost 
 them half the estate. Charles never 
 mentions it ; it is like him not to do so, 
 since it redounds to his credit.' 
 
 ' But it sounds interesting,' said Sibylla ; 
 ' one ought to know one's husband's 
 virtues, his virtuous acts, — ought not one ? 
 I feel inquisitive.' 
 
 ' Then,' said her father, laughing, ' you 
 must ask him. I have told you all I 
 know.' 
 
 Charles Montcalm showed no inclination 
 to relieve Sibylla's inquisitiveness. He 
 could not be brought within a hundred 
 miles of the subject. 
 
 Any allusion to it — any approach to it 
 — seemed to plunge him in impenetrable 
 reserve. His lips were sealed. Sibylla
 
 48 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 had to recognise the unwelcome fact that, 
 when her lover chose, he could be reticence 
 itself, and that there were some topics 
 which were forbidden in their intercourse. 
 Such a discovery is unfortunate at a moment 
 when mutual confidence is the great 
 desideratum. A future husband must, 
 above everything, be frank. 
 
 This view of the matter had not occurred 
 to Charles Montcalm. He considered it 
 due to his father, his brother, his family, 
 himself, that absolute silence should be 
 observed on a subject in which their 
 common honour was involved. His father 
 had bound him to silence. It had been his 
 passionate desire to bury the subject in 
 oblivion, to shroud it from publicity. 
 There seemed a sort of piety in concealing 
 it even from her who had most right to 
 read his secret thoughts. The subject 
 disgusted him ; it seemed all the more 
 disgusting when he thought of it in con- 
 nection with the new life opening upon him, 
 and the unsullied purity and nobility which 
 had charmed him in his future wife. She 
 was the last person to whom it would be
 
 IV 
 
 Love s Anxieties 49 
 
 endurable to make a revelation of family 
 dishonour. 
 
 Meantime there were circles in which 
 Charles Montcalm's qualifications as 
 Sibylla's accepted suitor were canvassed 
 with more freedom than indulgence. Her 
 relations generally disapproved. Mrs. 
 Ormesby, Lord Belmont's sister, was a 
 shrewd old lady, with a keen faculty of 
 perception, a turn for satire and a vigorous 
 tongue. In a family conclave, in her 
 drawing-room, Sibylla's engagement was 
 discussed with considerable animation. 
 Mrs. Ormesby herself was not partial to 
 Montcalm, and was not too well pleased at 
 her niece's decision. It struck her as 
 uninteresting. Her views on the subject 
 were warmly seconded by her daughter, 
 Lady Holte, wife of a sporting baronet — 
 an extremely smart and not specially 
 sensible young woman, who piqued herself 
 on being clever, modern, frivolous, and 
 in awe of nobody except, perhaps, her 
 uncle Belmont, whose penetrating eye and 
 occasional sarcasm struck terror into a soul 
 which few things could abash. Olivia 
 
 VOL. I E
 
 50 Sibylla chap. 
 
 Holte particularly disliked Charles Mont- 
 calm, to whose grave soul her frivolity was 
 anti-pathetic. He was one of the men 
 whom she condemned as * impossible.' 
 It was impossible, at any rate, to betray 
 him into the merest semblance of a 
 flirtation. She had received the news of 
 her cousin's engagement with outbursts of 
 irreverent laughter. * I was always certain 
 that Sibylla would marry a stick. She is so 
 sublime, and she likes a prig. But Mr. 
 Montcalm ! Well, it is Sibylla's foible to 
 be original. She has achieved it now with 
 a vengeance ! ' 
 
 * I see nothing original about it,' said 
 Montague, Mrs. Ormesby's favourite 
 nephew, and an assiduous frequenter of her 
 drawing-room at tea time ; ' such matches 
 are common and commonplace. Society 
 is overrun with dull mediocrities bent on 
 improving themselves into a reputation.' 
 
 ' No, Fred ! ' said his aunt, * that is not 
 fair. Charles Montcalm is no mediocrity. 
 He is too good for worldlings like you and 
 Olivia to appreciate. But he lacks the fairy 
 kiss in his cradle that would have given
 
 IV Loves Anxieties 51 
 
 him gaiety and charm. He is essentially 
 stiff — not on comfortable terms with any- 
 body or anything — not even an abstract 
 idea. How he got through his proposal 
 I can't imagine. He must have done it 
 with a protocol.' 
 
 * He is an abstract idea himself,' cried 
 Lady Holte, * a political abstraction. For 
 my part, when it comes to men, I prefer the 
 concrete.' 
 
 ' He is swamped in politics and in him- 
 self,' said Montague : ' a man so self- 
 absorbed is a standing hardship on his un- 
 abstracted fellows — especially his wife. 
 His body is present, but his spirit is hover- 
 ing about the Speaker's chair, toying with 
 a blue book, or wrapt in the contemplation 
 of a parliamentary manoeuvre. When 
 men's souls go a star-gazing, they ought to 
 take their bodies with them.' 
 
 * The complaint is an old one,' said Mrs. 
 Ormesby. ^ I was reading the other day 
 about some old philosopher or other — 
 Hermotimus or some one ; he possessed 
 this objectionable faculty of severing body 
 and soul, and wandering in spirit about the 
 
 LIBRARY
 
 52 Sibylla chap, iv 
 
 earth, leaving the corporeal part of him in 
 charge of his wife, with many injunctions 
 to preserve it from molestation. His wife 
 grew tired of this sort of conjugal infidelity, 
 burnt his body, and so put an end to the 
 arrangement. She was a sensible woman.' 
 
 ' Bravo ! Mrs. Hermotimus ! ' cried 
 Lady Holte ; ' but Sibylla will never burn 
 her lord, will she .^ She is too consci- 
 entious.' 
 
 * I wish you had half her conscientious- 
 ness, Olivia,' said her mother, ' or half her 
 common-sense. She is worth a dozen of 
 you.' 
 
 ' But there are not a dozen women like 
 Olivia in all London,' said her cousin ; ' she 
 is the epitome of smartness — and what a 
 lovely dress she wears this afternoon. It is 
 a pleasure to look at her.' 
 
 ' And you are the epitome of chaff,' said 
 Lady Holte, getting up and embracing her 
 mother. ' I will not stay to be chaffed. I 
 must go and spread the news.'
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HONEYMOON 
 
 Linger, I cried, O radiant Time ! thy power 
 Has nothing more to give ; life is complete : 
 Let but the perfect present, hour by hour, 
 Itself remember and itself repeat. 
 
 The Stage, the wisest of mankind has 
 observed, is more beholden to love than 
 is the life of man. It serves the stage, 
 ' for love is ever matter of comedies, and, 
 now and then, of tragedies ; but in life it 
 does much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, 
 sometimes like a Fury.' It was the siren 
 that now guided the newly-wedded hus- 
 band and wife by enchanted shores, fairy- 
 haunted bays, and islands of the blest. The 
 air was resonant with siren songs — the songs 
 of joy, of hope, of affectionate exhilaration.
 
 54 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 They travelled slowly and luxuriously 
 across Italy ; and at each hahing-place 
 Montcalm's research, artistic culture and 
 refined appreciativeness gave his wife a new 
 and higher sense of the enjoyment of travel 
 than she had ever experienced on previous 
 occasions. The grand old cities of Lom- 
 bardy, with their long historic pedigree and 
 far-reaching associations, fired him with an 
 enthusiasm which Sibylla was not slow to 
 catch. Charles Montcalm's father had been 
 a picture-lover. His taste as a connoisseur 
 was attested by the choice collection of 
 paintings which adorned Sibylla's future 
 home. It had been sadly despoiled at the 
 time of Frank's disgrace. Still, in its 
 diminished glory, Charles took pride in the 
 collection, and enriched it occasionally by 
 some costly addition. It was his one 
 extravagance. He was delighted now to 
 have his judgment reinforced by Sibylla's. 
 His fancy now was, he told his bride, that 
 they should jointly choose some picture, 
 whose loveliness should be associated in the 
 minds of them both with the pleasures of 
 their wedding tour. ' It shall be my
 
 V Honeymoon ^^ 
 
 honeymoon present,' he said, 'to the dear 
 mistress of Frampton. It must hang in 
 your boudoir.' 
 
 But it was not in matters of art alone 
 that the two happy lovers found a delight- 
 ful conformity of taste. These weeks in 
 Italy were to both of them a time of ideal 
 perfection — the perfection of happiness. 
 Sibylla recognised the realisation of her girl- 
 ish dreams of a companionship of absolute 
 sympathy and understanding of her every 
 feeling. Charles forgot politics in the 
 entrancement of a more thrilling interest. 
 For once he could unbend. 
 
 *This is a revelation,' he broke out, as 
 they sat, one blazing day, pretending to 
 read, in a refuge of shade on the mountain 
 side — a cool stream, turgid from its glacier, 
 rushing by, and Monte Rosa, faintly 
 pencilled on the horizon, peeping through 
 the chestnuts — ^ a revelation of happiness. 
 I have never lived till now. I have 
 grovelled, like a slave in a mine, in darkness 
 and toil. But I have never known the joy 
 of life — its exquisite pleasure — till now. 
 I can scarcely believe my good fortune.
 
 5 6 Sibylla chap. 
 
 What right has a hard-working English- 
 man among these scenes of romance ? 
 This is a good description, is it not, 
 that I have just come upon ? — 
 
 In cities should we English lie. 
 
 Where cries are rising ever new, 
 And men's incessant stream goes by — 
 We who pursue 
 
 Our business with unslackening stride. 
 
 Traverse in troops, with care-filled breast. 
 The soft Mediterranean side. 
 The Nile, the East, 
 
 And see all sights from pole to pole. 
 
 And glance, and nod, and bustle by. 
 And never once possess our soul 
 Before we die.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Sibylla, ' we will possess 
 our souls to-day, at any rate. Besides, I 
 deny the imputation. We are not so 
 prosy as Matthew Arnold loved to paint us. 
 There is a great deal of poetry in cities.' 
 
 * Don't mention them,' said her husband, 
 by this time in the full swing of excitement 
 at his new-found mood ; ' at any rate, 
 not the famous city of Westminster, with 
 its poetry of a long debate. I am delighted
 
 V Honeymoon 57 
 
 with Matthew Arnold. Why have I never 
 read him before, Sibylla ? You must take 
 my education in hand.' 
 
 * But you must choose the nice ones,' 
 said Sibylla, taking the volume out of her 
 husband's hand. ' Is this your vein ? — 
 
 Some girl, who here from castle-bower, 
 
 With furtive step and cheek of flame, 
 'Twixt myrtle-hedges all in flower 
 By moonlight came 
 
 To meet her pirate-lover's ship ; 
 
 And from the wave-kissed marble stair 
 Beckoned him on, with quivering lip 
 And floating hair ; 
 
 And lived some moons in happy trance ' 
 
 * That is the life to lead,' cried Mont- 
 calm, ' a happy trance ! Mine is a happy 
 trance just now. I dread the awakening to 
 the dull business of existence.' 
 
 ' Enjoy it,' said Sibylla, putting her 
 hand on his ; ' why trouble about the 
 awakening '^. ' 
 
 I have before me a volume of Sibylla's 
 journal, faded now almost into indistinct- 
 ness, but written in her beautiful, firm
 
 58 Sibylla chap. 
 
 hand-writing, unmarred by blot or erasure 
 — a type of her clear-cut mind and steady 
 resolution. 
 
 ' Let me record these hours as best I 
 can,' she writes in one place ; ' something 
 tells me that they are the happiest of my 
 life. I have an adoring husband ; I am, I 
 know, an adoring wife. Is mutual adora- 
 tion a folly, a delusion ? Possibly — but a 
 delightful and enchanting one. *' Egoisme 
 a deux," as I was reading just now — but 
 how sweet a selfishness ! Every day 
 reveals to us new fields of sympathy, new 
 plains in which our minds move at the 
 same level and are tuned to the same key 
 — new topics that are common property. 
 I am under a spell, I know, — incapable 
 of anything but enjoyment. I am in no 
 hurry to be disenchanted. The air is full 
 of delicious sounds. I am happy, happy ! 
 Dear life, that brings one such happiness ! ' 
 
 Their days were busily employed. At 
 Rome they found kind friends at the 
 Embassy, and an agreeable cardinal, who 
 was a scholar and antiquarian, told them of 
 the last new excavations, and arranged for
 
 V Honeymoon 59 
 
 them a private interview with the Holy 
 Father. 
 
 At Venice a friend's yacht had been 
 placed at their disposal, and when they had 
 drunk their fill of palaces, picture-galleries, 
 churches and studios, they embarked for a 
 cruise among lovely Greek islands, bathed 
 in the exquisite atmosphere, which makes 
 chff and headland, wave-kissed islet and 
 mountain towering in the background, seem 
 like a dream of fairyland. The Medi- 
 terranean was in its sweetest mood, and 
 seemed but to caress the shores on which 
 its ripples broke — the very type of loving 
 gentleness. 
 
 ' We live in an enchanted world,' Sibylla 
 writes of one of these days ; ' I was reading 
 this morning : " We mortals have our 
 divine moments, when love is satisfied in 
 the completeness of the beloved object." 
 These divine moments are mine just now. 
 I am more than satisfied. Charles realises 
 the best of all I ever dreamed about him.' 
 
 Into this summer tranquillity a mandate 
 from England fell like a bolt from the blue. 
 Things had been going badly with the
 
 6o Sibylla chap. 
 
 Government, one of the whips wrote to 
 Montcalm. It looked as if the dissolution 
 could not be much longer delayed. It 
 might even be an affair of weeks. There 
 was a letter, too, from Charles Montcalm's 
 election agent, giving a still gloomier view 
 of the position, and announcing that his 
 opponent's party were busily at work, and 
 were gaining ground with dangerous 
 rapidity. The local leaders were strongly of 
 his opinion that Montcalm's presence was 
 essential. His success at the impending 
 election depended on an immediate personal 
 canvass. 
 
 ' That is the worst of Fellows,' said 
 Montcalm in a tone of annoyance, as he 
 tossed the letter across the table to Sibylla ; 
 ' he is invaluable as an agent, — energetic, 
 assiduous, and loyal to the core ; but he is 
 always in a fuss. I do not believe matters 
 are as serious as he makes out ; but I 
 cannot be sure that they are not. I must 
 go at once. There is the curse of Parlia- 
 mentary life ! It is a form of slavery — a bad 
 form ; some philanthropist should preach a 
 crusade against it ! '
 
 V Honeymoon 6 1 
 
 ' We have had a delightful month,' said 
 Sibylla; ' we are fortunate to have been left 
 so long.' 
 
 * We are unfortunate to be cut so short,' 
 her husband grumbled ; ' I never felt less 
 inclined to obey an unwelcome call. Un- 
 fortunately in life the unpleasanter of two 
 courses is generally the right one. 1 
 suppose I ought to go.' 
 
 * Then let us go at once,' said Sibylla. 
 ' Nothing is a misfortune that we do 
 together.' 
 
 The spell was broken. Montcalm pre- 
 sently became another man — busy, reserved, 
 preoccupied. He was no longer the 
 delightful lover. His head now was full of 
 political speculations, political anxieties — 
 political plots. Sibylla was impressed by 
 the suddenness and the completeness of the 
 change in her husband's mood. It had 
 been settled that they should go to her 
 father's London house on their return for 
 the season. 
 
 ' I must stipulate,' Lord Belmont had 
 said, ' that you come to me in Portman 
 Square for your first season in London.
 
 62 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 That will give you time to look about you 
 and make up your minds at leisure about 
 your future abode. Then you must ask 
 me to come and stay with you at Frampton 
 in the autumn, when I come back from 
 Homburg. I shall make no other engage- 
 ment. I shall enjoy having you to myself 
 while Charles is away at his election, should 
 you not be with him. When he comes 
 back he shall have the library, where no one 
 ever goes, and which will be as quiet as the 
 grave. He can see his constituents there, 
 and be as independent as he pleases, and as 
 undisturbed.' 
 
 The prospect was highly attractive to 
 Sibylla. She was suffering a reaction from 
 her recent exalted mood. Home thoughts 
 had begun to assert their sway. She was 
 conscious of finding the prospect of her 
 father's society delightful. His note of 
 cordial, unconscious fondness touched her. 
 She was longing to see him again. The 
 thought of being with him once more 
 lifted a load from her spirits, and restored 
 her natural gaiety. It needed restoration, 
 for, since her husband's plunge back into
 
 V Honeymoon 63 
 
 politics, she had felt half-deserted. The 
 isolation depressed her. 
 
 ' You will like to pay your father a visit, 
 Sibylla, while I am in the north,' Montcalm 
 had said, * will you not ^ He will be so 
 delighted to have you.' 
 
 * But,' objected Sibylla, ' he would be 
 delighted to think of me being at your 
 election. He would think it my natural 
 place. If it is possible, Charles, I should 
 like to go with you. It is my strong wish. 
 I know that you do not understand it ; but 
 you must indulge me. Our tour is broken 
 off. I am well content that it should be, 
 for such a cause ; but let me share in the 
 fight. Perhaps I could help you ; at any 
 rate, no one could wish so ardently for your 
 success.' Montcalm was touched by the 
 sort of imploring tone and ardent affection 
 of his wife's appeal, — touched but not 
 convinced. He was immovable. 
 
 * My dear Sibylla,' he answered, ' you 
 must believe my experience, unfortunately a 
 prolonged one. You do not know what you 
 ask when you wish to plunge into the mire 
 of an election. It is all that is detestable ;
 
 64 Sibylla chap. 
 
 its detestableness would be enhanced if I 
 felt, all the time, that you were exposed to 
 it — were in the thick of it. An election is 
 the last place where a refined woman ought 
 to peril her refinement. Be guided by me. 
 Do me the great favour of not renewing a 
 request which I should feel it dishonourable 
 to comply with. Ask me anything but 
 that.' 
 
 ' There is an end of it, of course,' said 
 Sibylla, in a tone of deep disappointment ; 
 ' but do you not hate elections overmuch ? 
 Peril one's refinement ! How many of my 
 friends are doing it ^ ' 
 
 Her husband had pronounced his ulti- 
 matum, and was not inclined to prolong 
 the conversation. He had carried his 
 way, but as despots carry it, by sheer 
 assertion of personal will. Sibylla was un- 
 convinced. He had not seriously at- 
 tempted to convince her. Her submission 
 was simply powerlessness to resist. She 
 felt wounded and aggrieved, almost in- 
 clined to a rebellious mood. 
 
 Lord Belmont was delighted to welcome 
 his daughter and her husband. He was
 
 V Honeymoon 6^ 
 
 evidently surprised at their sudden return, 
 and did not perceive its necessity. 
 
 ' I did not expect you/ he said ; 'political 
 zeal is all very well ; but on a wedding 
 tour! was it really necessary?' 
 
 ' Unluckily,' said Montcalm, with some 
 irritation in his tone, and turning pale, as 
 he did whenever he spoke under excitement 
 or the influence of strong feeling, ' politics 
 will not wait for wedding tours or anything 
 else. You may be sure, Lord Belmont, 
 that I should not have cut short our tour 
 without sufficient cause. It was an intense 
 disappointment to both of us.' 
 
 ' I am admiring your virtue, my dear 
 Montcalm,' said Lord Belmont ; 'it is 
 admirable ; may fortune crown it — as it 
 deserves to be crowned — with success.' 
 
 ' But there really was no doubt about 
 its being necessary,' said Sibylla with eager- 
 ness ; ' the enemy is already in force, and 
 almost in possession of the field.' 
 
 It turned out that the agent was right. 
 A few days later the Government encoun- 
 tered an unexpected defeat, more pronounced 
 than any of its predecessors ; the cry for a 
 
 VOL. I F
 
 66 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 dissolution gathered sudden strength. The 
 Times^ in a solemn leader, whose gravity 
 wore the air of inspiration, pronounced that 
 the moment had arrived when an appeal 
 to the country could no longer be honour- 
 ably delayed. The evening Opposition 
 papers howled a responsive chorus. Even 
 the Government organs hinted that the 
 position was becoming untenable. Every 
 hour fresh rumours filled the air. The 
 clubs were crowded with men seeking 
 gossip or retailing it. Before the week 
 was out Ministers were again in a minority. 
 A dissolution was announced. Montcalm 
 brought his Address for his father-in-law's 
 criticism and advice. He was proceeding 
 to read it. 
 
 ' Stop ! ' said Lord Belmont, getting 
 up and ringing the bell ; ' let us send for 
 Sibylla. She has a fine ear for style. I 
 always get her opinion on anything that 1 
 write of importance.' 
 
 ' It is no question of style,' said Mont- 
 calm ; ' the good people of Belhaven do 
 not know what it means, happily for 
 me. I only wanted your opinion as to
 
 V Honeymoon 67 
 
 how to deal with one or two awkward 
 points.' 
 
 * Well,' said Lord Belmont, ' you shall 
 have my opinion, reinforced by Sibylla's — 
 which is more than twice as good : but 
 perhaps you have consulted her already.' 
 
 ' It had not occurred to me,' Montcalm 
 answered, ' that she would care to be 
 consulted, or would have an opinion on the 
 subject. It is more a question of an 
 election agent's judgment than a woman's 
 taste.' 
 
 ' My dear Charles,' said his father-in-law, 
 * a wise woman's judgment is the wise man's 
 best touchstone : and here comes the wise 
 woman ! ' 
 
 * I was not prepared for an audience,' 
 said Charles, as his wife came and sat down 
 by him. ' Now, Sibylla, please imagine 
 yourself an enlightened and independent 
 Belhavenite, and say how this strikes you.' 
 
 ' Business-like, at any rate,' said Lord 
 Belmont, as Montcalm's dry, well-balanced 
 phrases closed ; ^ and safe, I suppose ; but 
 inspiring .? Does it do justice to the 
 occasion — the gravity of the occasion ^ It
 
 68 Sibylla chap. 
 
 is a crisis, remember. Is it not a little 
 tame ? ' 
 
 * Oh ! ' said Montcalm, a little taken 
 aback by his father-in-law*s criticism, ' you 
 cannot make that sort of thing too tame. 
 It is what the British voter likes. I have 
 reduced my addresses to the perfection of 
 tameness. The thing to do with a crisis is 
 to say as little as possible about it. Then 
 you are committed to nothing.' 
 
 ' But you will have a fight .^ ' asked 
 Sibylla. 
 
 * A fight } ' cried Lord Belmont ; ' I 
 should rather think he will — a good stand- 
 up, hard -fought battle. The Belhaven 
 elections are notorious. I wish I could be 
 there. My blood warms to it already.' 
 
 * And mine,' cried Sibylla, catching her 
 father's mood, which was several degrees 
 more mercurial than that of her husband ; 
 ' but there is no doubt about victory } ' 
 
 * Then it would not be a battle,' said 
 Montcalm, laughing ; * the point of a 
 fight — a political fight most of all — is its 
 uncertainty. The only certain thing is 
 that the improbable generally comes off.
 
 V Honeymoon 69 
 
 This time, however, I mean to succeed. I 
 shall wear your badge. I will carry it to 
 victory ! ' 
 
 * To victory ! ' cried Lord Belmont, the 
 ashes of old election fights springing 
 suddenly into a blaze. 
 
 * To victory ! ' echoed Sibylla ; * my 
 dear and gallant knight ! my song last night 
 was prophetic ! — 
 
 Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu' sprush ! 
 We'll over the Border and give them a brush ! 
 There's somebody coming '11 teach better behaviour ; 
 Heh ! Charlie, lad, cock up your beaver ! ' 
 
 There was inspiration in Sibylla's tones, 
 a charming brightness in her eye, anima- 
 tion in her gesture, as she declaimed 
 the verse — animation, pathos, infectious 
 enthusiasm. She had never seemed so 
 beautiful. Charles Montcalm's cool tem- 
 perament warmed with an unaccustomed 
 glow. The scene touched him — the fine, 
 old, courtly statesman, the lovely woman, 
 stirred by zeal for his success — for him. A 
 sudden pang of delight throbbed through 
 recesses of a nature where such genial 
 influences had hitherto been but seldom felt.
 
 70 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP, V 
 
 Life had given him nothing so good as 
 this. It was a supreme moment — a 
 revelation ! He seized Sibylla's hand, he 
 carried it to his lips. He kissed it with 
 fervour. There was a profound tenderness 
 — rapture — in his look. 
 
 ' You are adorable,' he breathed, too low 
 for any ear but hers : ' I am a dull dog — 
 you must inspire me ! ' 
 
 Sibylla knew that with her husband such 
 a demonstration meant much. He was 
 profoundly moved. She rewarded him 
 with a look of love. Two days later he 
 was in the thick of his election. He had 
 made no further allusion to Sibylla's wish 
 to share its fortunes with him, nor had she 
 chosen to allude to it. Once more she 
 found herself alone with her father, her 
 only special share in the election — which had 
 now become the one absorbing topic of 
 attention — the daily bulletin from her 
 husband, telling her, in hurried but cheerful 
 language, of the progress of his canvass. 
 ' Everything,' he wrote, ' is going well.'
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 AN ELECTION EPISODE 
 
 A vulgar comment will be made of it, 
 
 And that supposed by the common rout, 
 
 Against your yet ungalled estimation. 
 
 That may with foul intrusion enter in 
 
 And dwell upon your grave when you are dead. 
 
 An incident which occurred at one of Mont- 
 calm's meetings, and to which his letters had 
 made no allusion, was hardly consistent with 
 his cheerful account of his expedition. There 
 was a crowded, noisy gathering in a suburb 
 of Belhaven, where Radicalism was rampant, 
 and Montcalm's opponents were entrenched 
 in strength. His organising committee 
 had, all along, regarded the place with 
 anxiety. The question of the management 
 of the occasion had been discussed. Nervous 
 advisers had suggested the ignominious
 
 72 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 precaution of a * ticket ' meeting. If it 
 were ' open ' there was the likelihood, they 
 said, of serious disturbance. 
 
 * By all means,' exclaimed Montcalm, 
 on whom the possibility of danger always 
 had an exhilarating effect, * let us have an 
 open meeting ! I don't care for a packed 
 audience ; I hate preaching to the converted. 
 I would rather risk a row.' 
 
 The appearance of the Hall on the even- 
 ing of the meeting justified the anticipations 
 of the prudent party. A densely packed 
 audience filled it — floor, gallery, and passage 
 — and rendered impossible all extraneous 
 attempts to maintain orderly behaviour. 
 There were numerous knots of roughs, 
 who were acting, apparently, on a pre- 
 concerted plan, and abetted each other's 
 efforts to disturb the harmony of the even- 
 ing. The Police Superintendent came 
 into the Committee-room with a grave face 
 to say that all things pointed to a stormy 
 meeting. It was obvious to any one, who 
 could read the signs, that a large portion 
 of the multitude was ready for a row, and 
 that there were not a few present who
 
 VI An Election Episode 73 
 
 intended to produce one. Montcalm^s 
 appearance on the platform was greeted 
 with shouts in which the yells of the oppos- 
 ing faction were not completely drowned. 
 But the appearance of the candidate was 
 impressive : it bespoke calmness, deter- 
 mination, undaunted courage. Montcalm's 
 first few sentences — nervous^ resolute, and 
 unflinching — caught the ear of the multi- 
 tude. His speech, though continually in- 
 terrupted, was listened to with attention. 
 At its close the candidate invited interroga- 
 tion. Numerous questions had been asked 
 and answered, as satisfactorily as such an 
 occasion allows. These interrogations were 
 always intensely distasteful to Montcalm. 
 They brought into painful distinctness the 
 unreality, the superficiality, the vulgarity 
 of the whole concern. They emphasised 
 the essential misfortune of an extended 
 suffrage — that it places upon the political 
 stage thousands of ignorant individuals 
 who have no qualification for serious politi- 
 cal thought, and no real aspiration to it. 
 How to reason seriously with such an 
 audience } It was a sort of dishonesty to
 
 ^4 Sibylla chap. 
 
 pretend to reason. The old-fashioned 
 bribery and corruption were less immoral. 
 Their questions were so irrelevant, irra- 
 tional, so irritatingly narrow in scope, so 
 wide of the real issues. Montcalm's com- 
 posure of mind and demeanour stood him 
 in good stead under the ordeal. Experience 
 gave him confidence. Odious as it all was, 
 he had borne it before : he could bear it 
 again. If nothing else could be done, he 
 was conscious of the faculty of looking 
 absolutely unmoved, and saying something, 
 the coolness of which disconcerted his 
 assailant. 
 
 The evening was drawing onward to its 
 close. The crowd had become interested 
 and excited. The shyness which checked 
 some would-be interpellators at the outset, 
 had worn off, and had given place to a 
 half- impudent familiarity. Presently it 
 became obvious that something unusual 
 was going on at the further end of the Hall. 
 There was an angry altercation, something 
 of a scuffle, the eager cries of onlookers, 
 hostile or sympathetic. At last an excited, 
 miserable-looking man — his haggard face
 
 VI An Election Episode y^ 
 
 alight with the fire of fanaticism — got him- 
 self hoisted on to his companions' shoulders. 
 He said something which produced a 
 sudden silence around him, the silence of 
 suspense, interest, inquisitiveness. The 
 silence spread in an instant through the 
 whole assembly. His voice rang out now 
 clear and piercing, with the distinctness of 
 a practised speaker. It reached the listeners 
 on the platform. 
 
 * I want to know,' he said, ' a piece 
 of family history — our member's family 
 and mine. What has become of Lizzie 
 Marsh ? ' 
 
 A chorus of cries of ' Shame ! ' ' Order ! ' 
 attested the general sense of disapproval of 
 a question that was, on the face of it, out- 
 rageous. Montcalm rose to the occasion. 
 His marble features, always pale, now deadly 
 white, bespoke a lofty indignation. His 
 mien was intrepid. He drew himself up, 
 and stood erect and undaunted. His eye 
 flashed. A fine scorn curved his lip. He 
 looked the type of courage. There was 
 complete silence as he began to speak. 
 Thousands were holding their breath in
 
 76 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 expectation, anxious to lose no syllable of 
 his reply. 
 
 ' We are here,' he said, * for politics. I 
 am here to explain my political views ; you 
 are here to learn them, and to ask such 
 questions as will help you to do so. Such 
 questions I am answering to the best of my 
 power. You are in your rights. But I 
 refuse to be insulted. I refuse to answer 
 questions whose one object is to insult — 
 questions which have no sort of bearing on 
 public affairs — which it is base to ask, and 
 which it would be infamy to answer.' 
 
 A shout of applause drowned the con- 
 cluding phrases of Montcalm's answer. It 
 was taken up through the assembly. It 
 pealed and crashed — a solid mass of sound 
 — through the great Hall. It died away : 
 it broke out afresh and rolled on in a suc- 
 cession of diminuendos, crescendos, fortis- 
 simos, till fatigue necessitated a respite. 
 Montcalm's bold, defiant reply had pro- 
 duced a great effect. Britons hate a foul 
 blow. This was felt to be one. Montcalm 
 had received it with fortitude : he had re- 
 pelled it effectively. His sentences had sent
 
 VI An Election Episode 77 
 
 a thrill through the huge assembly to its 
 utmost confines. For once he had aroused 
 personal enthusiasm — an achievement 
 which, as a rule, his proud temperament 
 and reserved dignity of manner rendered 
 impossible. He had been the object of a 
 gross insult, an outrage on the accepted 
 rules of the game in political warfare. He 
 had comported himself in a manner that 
 even his enemies admired, and which his 
 friends regarded as heroic. He was no 
 longer a mere political abstraction — the 
 representative of a party, the exponent of 
 a creed. He had shown himself a man. 
 It is easier to feel warmly about a man than 
 about an abstraction. So far Montcalm 
 had profited by the occurrence. He had 
 achieved popularity. 
 
 But there was another, less agreeable 
 aspect. When the first momentary effect 
 of Montcalm's answer had died away^ there 
 remained in the minds of all but the most 
 thoughtless a reflection that there was 
 something within the member's knowledge 
 which, for some reason or other, he did not 
 care to disclose, and that he resented the
 
 78 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 demand for disclosure. It was a disagree- 
 able reflection. 
 
 The question had been improper, of 
 course, unjustifiable. None the less, the 
 fact remained that it had been unanswered. 
 A sense of mystery was engendered in 
 some, a suspicion in others. The unruly 
 portion of the audience had discovered a 
 congenial instrument of unruliness — if 
 needs be, of persecution — the apt material 
 for mischief. They were loath to abandon 
 a phrase which had a delicious flavour of 
 ribaldry. Again and again some mis- 
 chievous spirit yelled out the query, * What 
 has become of Lizzie Marsh ? ' and the fact 
 that he was speedily suppressed in no 
 degree diminished the force of the inquiry. 
 More than once the name rang in Mont- 
 calm's ears as he drove homeward through 
 the crowded streets to his committee-room. 
 The committee had already assembled. 
 There was a sudden pause in the conversa- 
 tion as Montcalm entered. He took his 
 place with perfect composure. But for the 
 slight additional pallor of his face, there 
 was no symptom of disturbance or distress.
 
 VI An Election Episode 79 
 
 He spoke of the meeting as encouraging. 
 The tone was less hostile than it had been, 
 a week before, at similar gatherings. The 
 audience was a rough one, but it had 
 listened with interest, and had been, on the 
 whole, friendly. Montcalm completely 
 ignored the episode which was uppermost 
 in the thoughts of all — the unexpected 
 interruption. It might, for any notice that 
 he vouchsafed to it, have been a mere 
 piece of boisterous nonsense, bawled out by 
 some half- tipsy onlooker, and no sooner 
 uttered than forgotten. More than one 
 member of the committee would have 
 given much to know the truth, if only he 
 had dared to ask. But there was no man 
 present who was courageous enough for 
 that. There was something in Montcalm's 
 air and look, which discouraged familiarity 
 — which made familiarity, which he might 
 regard as impertinent, impossible. Each 
 one felt that, if Montcalm intended to say 
 anything on the subject, he would do it 
 without invitation, and that an unwelcome 
 inquiry might provoke a disagreeable retort. 
 All things, accordingly, went on in their
 
 8o Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 accustomed course. The reports of the 
 day were read ; the arrangements for the 
 morrow were discussed and settled. The 
 committee broke up. Montcalm walked 
 back to his hotel with one of his committee- 
 men. They parted at the entrance. Mont- 
 calm mounted to his room, set his servant 
 at liberty, and locked the door. At last 
 he was alone. Alone : but no peaceful 
 solitude ! Now that the necessity for 
 outward calm had ceased, Montcalm felt 
 incapable any longer of self-repression. The 
 event of the evening had stirred his nature 
 to its profoundest depths. A rude hand had 
 been laid on nerves where a feather's touch 
 meant agony. He had endured that torture 
 with a stoical show of indifference ; but his 
 whole system was quivering with its effect. 
 His heart was thumping loud and quick. 
 He was brought face to face with the one 
 thing in life he really feared, the feeling of 
 disgrace. His hand shook, his powers of 
 self-control were exhausted. For once he 
 had ceased to be master of himself. 
 * What has become of Lizzie Marsh ^ ' 
 The horrid query was ringing in his ear.
 
 VI An Election Episode 8 r 
 
 ' What a question to be asked of me, and 
 how many more such are hereafter to be 
 asked? Do evil things never die — not 
 even when those who did them are dead 
 and gone ? Am I to be persecuted to the 
 end about poor Frank's misdeeds, by every 
 scoundrel who chooses to fling a piece of 
 dirt at me — at me ? at us ? ' The thought 
 flashed through his brain that he was now 
 a hundred times more assailable than 
 heretofore ; that disgrace meant something 
 new and more terrible ; that a new and 
 infinitely more delicate sense of shame had 
 been developed in his mind. In old days 
 a scandal could have been confronted, like 
 any other disagreeable thing, with a sturdy 
 stoicism, not quite remote from indifl'erence. 
 But Sibylla's husband could not be stoical. 
 He could not be indifferent to a family 
 dishonour, which should, in however remote 
 a degree, involve her in its contamination. 
 Montcalm's daily letter to Sibylla had still 
 to be written to catch the midnight mail. 
 He sat down to write it : but it was in 
 vain. Brain and hand declined their 
 accustomed offices. The very idea of 
 
 VOL. I G
 
 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 bringing Sibylla into contact with the 
 hateful scene was intolerable. It seemed 
 a sort of profanation to think of her in 
 such a connection. Charles at last forced 
 himself to write : but how jejune and barren 
 a performance ! How impossible that there 
 should be nature, spontaneity, real outpour- 
 ing of sentiment with this detested secret 
 lurking in the background, stifling the 
 genial outflow of love. 
 
 Sibylla gave a sigh, next day, as she per- 
 used, only too quickly, the few poor lines 
 which contained all that her husband had 
 to tell her about himself. A secret is be- 
 numbing, and Montcalm's better self was 
 half benumbed. He could not bring him- 
 self to say anything on this hateful topic to 
 his wife. She need never know of it. She 
 must not. 
 
 The letter written and directed, Mont- 
 calm sat on — the victim of a tumultuous 
 rush of thought. It was in vain to think 
 of sleep, in vain to read or write. His 
 reverie was presently broken by a knock at 
 the door, and an enquiry by one of the inn 
 servants, whether he would receive a con-
 
 VI An Election Episode 83 
 
 stituent. Montcalm had always encouraged 
 his constituents to consult him in private 
 on any point on which they desired enlight- 
 enment as to his views : he had announced 
 that, when not publicly engaged, he would 
 always be glad to receive any of them who 
 wished for an interview. Some had come 
 and been received in the evenings, and there 
 were strict orders that no one should be 
 denied. The servant who announced this 
 visitor evidently thought him something 
 exceptional. The man, he said, seemed 
 very much excited — was, he should say, 
 under the effects of liquor. He looked as 
 if he might easily become violent. On the 
 whole he doubted whether Montcalm would 
 do well to admit him. It might be well 
 to send for the police. 
 
 ' Nonsense,' said Montcalm, with a slight 
 tone of contempt, 'show him up at once.' 
 
 In another moment a forlorn, weird 
 being, in the dress of the better sort of 
 artisan, stood before him. Montcalm 
 recognised his visitor at once. It was the 
 disturber of the evening meeting. His 
 features were haggard, careworn, sorrow-
 
 84 Sibylla chap. 
 
 stricken. His dilated, eager eye bespoke the 
 fanatic. His mobile lips were quivering ; 
 his gesture was restless, impassioned. He 
 looked like a melancholy madman. Every- 
 thing about him told of intense excitement. 
 
 Montcalm's face wore the aspect of pro- 
 found calm, which was his instinctive 
 method of confronting danger. The in- 
 truder seemed cowed by his immovable 
 demeanour ; he found it impossible, 
 apparently, to speak. The two men looked 
 at each other in silence, as though measuring 
 their strength for the encounter. 
 
 ' You want to see me,' Montcalm said 
 at last. ' There is a chair — sit down, and 
 tell me what it is you want.' 
 
 The man took no notice of the invitation 
 to sit down. He still could hardly trust 
 himself to speak : his voice trembled. 
 
 ' My name is Jennings,' he said. ' I will 
 tell you what I want, Mr. Montcalm. I 
 want to know what I asked you to-night at 
 the meeting — what I will ask you where- 
 ever I get the chance, till you are forced to 
 tell me. Where is your brother and the 
 girl he ruined — my Lizzie.^ She was
 
 VI 
 
 An Election Episode 85 
 
 betrothed to me — mine in God's sight. 
 He seduced her ; he stole her from parents 
 and home. He befooled her into loving him. 
 He was a gentleman by birth : that helped 
 him to do it. He spared nothing — he spared 
 no one. It killed her father. Her mother, 
 broken down by shame, sorrow, and misery, 
 still lives with me — if life it can be called. 
 That home — and mine — was broken up : we 
 are dishonoured, ruined ; and all to please 
 a rich man's whim, his wicked, cruel whim. 
 And then you wonder we working men are 
 socialists and hate the rich ! I hate him — 
 I have sworn revenge. Why could he not 
 leave us alone .^ We did no harm to any 
 one. We were quiet folk and God-fearing 
 — we are Methodists. I used to preach ; 
 I was a good preacher, but I shall never 
 preach again ! How could I preach, or 
 pray, or tell men to trust a merciful God, 
 with this foul wrong burning at my soul. 
 I can think but of one thing. I have sworn 
 to find her, if she is to be found on earth. 
 I have sworn to find him too ! Where are 
 they now } ' Jennings' face by this time 
 was livid with fury. The fire of the
 
 86 Sibylla chap. 
 
 fanatic was consuming him. His un- 
 conscious rhetoric was telHng on himself, 
 was overpowering him. He advanced now 
 close to the table in front of Montcalm 
 and repeated his question with a solemn 
 vehemence : * Where are they r ' 
 
 Montcalm met him with an air of 
 supreme coolness. His nerve served him 
 well in such scenes. His attitude was un- 
 changed. He betrayed nothing but the 
 busy man's impatience at a bootless 
 interruption. 
 
 ' I gave you my answer this evening/ he 
 said, ' the only answer that I will give to a 
 question so asked — not for the purpose of 
 information, but, as you confess, for revenge, 
 malice, and hatred. If any of the accusa- 
 tions you bring against my brother be true, 
 I would do anything in my power to 
 alleviate the sorrow, to atone, if possible, 
 for the wrong. But I will aid no scheme 
 of revenge — and I will yield to no menace. 
 No one shall force me to speak, supposing 
 I were able to tell you what you want. 
 You may do your worst. If this is all you 
 have to say, you had better go.'
 
 VI An Election Episode 87 
 
 Montcalm moved his hand to ring the 
 bell which stood on the table before him. 
 
 * Stop,' cried the other, suddenly chang- 
 ing tone ; ' do not send me away like that ! 
 Have mercy. I threaten you with nothing. 
 I am half mad with sorrow and shame. I 
 was a happy man, none happier — a 
 prosperous man. Lizzie was a good girl, 
 good as the best. I loved her — I know 
 that she loved me. We were happy lovers 
 — most happy ; we had no thought but 
 thoughts of honest love. There was no 
 shade of difference between us. Then came 
 your brother — and then our troubles began. 
 She knew that they were beginning ; she 
 felt it, as did I. She could not resist him — 
 he was too strong ; his flattery too sweet. 
 He lavished presents on her. Then I grew 
 angry, like a fool, and was rough to her. 
 He dazzled her. At last she yielded. She 
 went off : she wrote her father a letter. I 
 have it here. We have heard nothing of 
 her since, nothing but a rumour — a rumour 
 that she was married to your brother, and 
 that she died in America. You know, surely, 
 if it is true. It would cure her mother's
 
 88 Sibylla chap. 
 
 sorrow to know she died an honest woman, 
 or, if she lives, to help her back to honest life. 
 I am trying to find out : for God's sake, 
 help me.' 
 
 ' You go a curious way to get my help,' 
 said Montcalm ; ' a curious way — the 
 wrong way. You begin by doing all you 
 can — such as it is — to hurt me. You 
 thought you could injure me at the meeting 
 — perhaps you think so still. If so, you 
 can do your worst. I shall meet you 
 always as I did to-night. Then you talk 
 about revenge. Is it likely that I should 
 help you to that, against my own brother, 
 if he were still alive .^ As to his alleged 
 marriage, now that you talk like a reason- 
 able being I will answer you. No word 
 concerning it has ever reached me till you 
 spoke. I know no more about it than you 
 do, and have as little means of finding 
 anything out. I know nothing but that 
 my brother was killed in America. I can 
 give you no help.' 
 
 The man gave a groan, the groan of a 
 baffled, helpless animal, raging in impotent 
 fury and suffering.
 
 VI An Election Episode 89 
 
 ' You could help me if you wished,' he 
 said as he turned to go ; * I knew that you 
 would not. It is like your cursed, cursed 
 race. Our time is coming — to us, as to the 
 Frenchmen a hundred years ago. They 
 had their turn ; we shall have ours. It is 
 near, near ! Without you, despite you, I 
 shall learn the truth. My Lizzie, I am 
 certain, died an honest woman. I shall 
 find it out. I'll prove it. You do not 
 want it proved, because you would scorn 
 her for a kinswoman. Your pride would re- 
 volt. To suit you she must remain a ' 
 
 By this time Montcalm's hand was on 
 the bell. The servant speedily appeared. 
 
 ' Show this man the door/ he said, as he 
 bent again over his writing. ' Remember 
 that I have some letters to go by the mid- 
 night post.' 
 
 Montcalm's unwelcome visitant showed 
 no symptom of the violence which his first 
 appearance had suggested. He had, appar- 
 ently, no wish to stay. Sobbing and de- 
 claiming, he followed the servant down- 
 stairs, and went out into the street. 
 
 Montcalm was once more alone. He
 
 90 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 sat on far into the night. Silence reigned : 
 the noisy, excited world around him was 
 sunk in sleep. He sat and reviewed the 
 events of the evening. They had been a 
 tremendous shock. Jennings' revelation 
 had brought home to him with dreadful 
 distinctness the conviction that there were 
 unfathomed depths into which his brother 
 might have plunged. The man's story had 
 every appearance of truth. There was a 
 clue. Was he not, Charles Montcalm 
 asked himself, bound to follow it — to help 
 on the discovery- : to rescue the woman if 
 she were capable of restoration — to atone 
 if atonement were still possible } He would 
 write at once to Mr. Strutt — bid him 
 communicate with Jennings, and get hold 
 of any scrap of information which might 
 help to the desired discovery. But was it 
 desired .^ It was a revolting task : it would 
 drag some horror to life — some dreadful, 
 degraded, aggrieved woman, who would 
 trade on her wrong and Frank's guilt, — 
 some wretched child of sin and shame 
 whose birth would make him head of the 
 Montcalms. Horrible, horrible idea !
 
 VI An Election Episode 91 
 
 It must be faced, however painful. It 
 could be borne. But one thing Montcalm 
 could not face, the necessity of telling his 
 wife. He resented the thought of any obli- 
 gation to let another person into the secret 
 of his father's and his own misfortune. 
 He would never have married, if he had 
 had to reckon with this horrible necessity. 
 He would never have exposed his pride to 
 the risk of such a humiliation. Life would 
 not be worth having if he were obliged to 
 humble himself before Sibylla by such a 
 revelation. No one — not even one's wife — 
 has a right to secrets which concern oneself 
 alone. Why, too, need Sibylla share the 
 misery which he was now enduring ^ Why 
 need this deplorable episode cast its shade 
 over the brightness of her life ^ 
 
 Charles Montcalm resolved on conceal- 
 ment.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE LITTLE RIFT 
 
 RosENCRANTZ. You do surcly bar the door upon 
 your own liberty, when you deny your griefs to a 
 friend. 
 
 The reporters who despatched a telegraphic 
 summary of the meeting for the next morn- 
 ing's London papers, made no reference to 
 the concluding episode except by a paren- 
 thetical remark that there had been con- 
 siderable disturbance on the part of a gang 
 of roughs ; that the speakers had some 
 difficulty in making themselves heard ; and 
 that, for a time, it seemed likely that the 
 meeting would break up in confusion. 
 Such systematic rowdyism was, the Govern- 
 ment organs observed, a disgrace to a 
 respectable community, and, however con- 
 venient as a reply to Mr. Montcalm's un-
 
 CHAP. VII The Little Rift 93 
 
 answerable arguments, could not, in the 
 long-run, fail to react unfavourably against 
 the party in whose interest it was resorted 
 to. A little local print, however, of the 
 extremest Socialist order, was less reticent 
 on the subject. The Anarchist was largely 
 read by the working men of Belhaven, and 
 identified itself with their interests. It 
 took up Jennings' supposed wrongs as a 
 congenial topic — an admirable illustration 
 of the vices and cruelties of the upper 
 classes. An accusation had impliedly been 
 made : it had not been denied. It was 
 safe — it was reasonable to assume the worst. 
 The flavour of scandal was appetising. 
 Local gossip added zest to the report. It 
 was notorious, the Anarchist observed, that 
 the girl, who was betrothed to Jennings, 
 had disappeared from her home in a manner 
 which her family recognised as disgraceful. 
 The name of Montcalm had been popularly 
 connected with her flight and her disgrace. 
 There were, everybody knew, substantial 
 grounds for such a popular belief. Mr. 
 Montcalm had refused publicly to throw 
 any light on a painful mystery. What was
 
 94 Sibylla chap. 
 
 the obvious inference from such a refusal ? 
 And was it likely that a community, out- 
 raged by such a breach of morality, would 
 confide its political interests to the keeping 
 of a candidate who came before them under 
 such conditions ? The days were, happily, 
 past when the excesses of each petty local 
 despot were condoned by society and sub- 
 mitted to by classes too wretched, too 
 degraded to know the barest rights of 
 humanity. Such excesses could now be 
 regarded only as survivals from the cruel, 
 feudal times when nothing was sacred from 
 aristocratic greed. Mr. Charles Montcalm 
 might be assured that the English demo- 
 cracy would tolerate no such barbarous 
 survivals. The people would, assuredly, 
 reject the parliamentary candidate who 
 sought their suffrages, tainted by so dis- 
 honourable an association. 
 
 A copy of the Anarchist^ as ill luck 
 would have it, found its way into Lord 
 Belmont's letter-bag, and was duly opened, 
 cut, aired, and laid out for perusal, with a 
 host of others, on his library table. Sibylla 
 usually devoted the hour after breakfast to
 
 VII The Little Rift 95 
 
 reading the morning's news to her father. 
 Her eye was caught by an unusual name. 
 She began the article and came suddenly 
 upon the passage which dealt with the topic 
 of the interruption before she was aware of 
 its import. She stopped short in confusion, 
 and made a bold skip to another paragraph 
 which she could see was dealing with 
 another subject. Lord Belmont merely 
 thought that she had lost her place. He 
 was giving no special heed to the article, 
 and the abrupt break in Sibylla's reading 
 did not rouse his attention. Afterwards, 
 Sibylla took the paper to her room and 
 read it with a beating heart. She was 
 impressed by her husband's speech, by the 
 coolness, the dignity, the courage of his 
 reply. She loved and admired him for it. 
 The tears sprang to her eyes as she pictured 
 him to herself, standing calm, impressive, 
 and unfaltering in the midst of the huge 
 concourse — many of them his bitter foes, 
 — boldly meeting his assailants in open 
 fight. He was a husband of whom any 
 woman might be proud. But there was 
 evidently a mystery. Why was it that
 
 g6 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Frank Montcalm's name was never men- 
 tioned either by her husband or her father? 
 Why had all her attempts to induce either 
 of them to enlighten her on the subject 
 been met with decisive refusal ? Why 
 had Charles's letter, written immediately 
 after the disturbance at the meeting, 
 made no reference to it? W^hat was his 
 connection with the story on which his 
 interrogator had touched ? Why this sec- 
 retiveness ? 
 
 Agitating questions for an affectionate 
 wife ! Try as she would, Sibylla could not 
 put them from her thoughts. The first 
 discovery of concealment is an epoch in 
 married life : it is a shock to confidence. 
 Sibylla now experienced it. 
 
 She consoled herself with the reflection 
 that her husband's return would not be 
 much longer delayed. The election would 
 presently be over, and he would, doubtless, 
 take the first opportunity of talking to her 
 openly on a subject which must have been 
 occupying so large a space in his thoughts. 
 It was not difficult to imagine reasons why 
 he should refrain from doing so by letter,
 
 VII The Little Rift 97 
 
 and prefer to postpone a painful communi- 
 cation till he could make it in personal 
 intercourse. 
 
 A week later came the news of Mont- 
 calm's election, and, two days afterwards, 
 the successful candidate himself arrived in 
 Portman Square. Sibylla was conscious of 
 watching for the hour of her husband's 
 arrival with strange impatience, a new-born 
 excitement. Her heart beat painfully as 
 she watched the carriage drive up which was 
 bringing him from the station. She ran 
 downstairs to greet him in the hall. He 
 was entering as she descended. 
 
 His appearance and demeanour im- 
 pressed her — resolute, self-confident, self- 
 contained — the personification of strength, 
 fortitude, and success. No trace of a humi- 
 liating contretemps had written itself on 
 that fine, clear brow. Sibylla watched him 
 coming toward her. His approach chilled 
 her, even in the midst of her excitement. 
 She instinctively shrank from any demon- 
 stration of feeling. She dared not be 
 effusive. Charles Montcalm, she was cer- 
 tain, would of all things dislike a scene. 
 
 VOL. I H
 
 98 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 A display of sentiment — with footmen 
 looking on, and an impassive butler silently 
 observant in the background — would fill 
 him with horror. Sibylla, however, found 
 it difficult to restrain her feelings. She was 
 more moved than she had expected to be — 
 than the occasion justified. The tears stood 
 in her eyes. It had been their first separa- 
 tion — a short one, but it had cost her some 
 pangs. It was a relief to have her husband 
 again. She took his arm and led him to 
 the library, which of late she had made 
 her principal abode. 
 
 They were alone. Montcalm took her 
 with tenderness in his arms : he embraced 
 her with a real devotion. He watched her 
 face with the solicitude of love. 
 
 ' Tears, Sibylla P ' he said, with the tone 
 of petting a child, and giving her another 
 kiss. 
 
 ' Foolish tears, I know,' said Sibylla ; 
 ' tears of joy. I am thankful that our 
 separation is over. I rejoice to have you 
 again, Charles. I have a weak horror of 
 separations. Let us have as few as 
 possible.'
 
 VII 
 
 The Little Rift 99 
 
 ' I say Amen to that,' said her husband. 
 ' These electioneering expeditions have now 
 a new ingredient of horror. They rob me 
 of my wife — the worst sort of robbery.' 
 
 ' And all things went well ? ' said Sibylla. 
 
 ' All things went well,' said her husband, 
 resolutely ; ' the majority was a splendid 
 one, was it not ? It is perfectly satisfactory; 
 but the most satisfactory thing about the 
 election is that it is over.' 
 
 ' How you dislike it,' said his wife. ' It 
 is unfortunate.' 
 
 ' It is all detestable,' said Montcalm, 
 ' detestable and degrading — but inevitable, 
 I suppose. One sees mankind at its worst 
 and vulgarest — not an ennobling sight.' 
 
 ' And contact with it, in this phase, is 
 naturally disagreeable .^ ' said Sibylla. 
 
 ' Most disagreeable,' said her husband, 
 emphatically ; ' so disagreeable that it 
 seems a profanation to mar the delight of 
 our meeting by recalling it. Let us choose 
 a pleasanter topic. Tell me, how is your 
 father ? ' 
 
 ' Thank you,' said his wife, ' father is 
 as well as possible, and in the best spirits
 
 1 00 Sibylla chap. 
 
 about the election. We do not think it 
 profanation to talk and think about it 
 when we are toofether. We followed the 
 news anxiously from day to day, and I read 
 father all the speeches. He admires yours 
 so much. They read well. I wish I could 
 hear one. Ah ! here he comes ! ' 
 
 * A thousand congratulations, my dear 
 Charles,' Lord Belmont said, as he came 
 forward with an air of cordiality which 
 pronounced him to be in the highest 
 spirits. ' Your victory was really magni- 
 ficent. In these days one can never tell 
 how matters will go. We were getting 
 thoroughly nervous. It was so good of 
 you to order us so ample a supply of 
 telegrams. They were a great comfort. 
 You had some rough meetings, too, I 
 saw.' 
 
 Sibylla saw her husband turn pale as 
 Lord Belmont approached the unwelcome 
 topic. 
 
 ' The Belhaven suburbs are rough,' 
 Montcalm said with composure, ' and mass 
 meetings are meant to be noisy. They are 
 a bore, but not the worst form of boredom
 
 VII 
 
 The Little Rift loi 
 
 in which an election involves one. Thank 
 heaven, we shall now have a respite ! ' 
 
 Later in the afternoon, Mrs. Ormesby 
 came in to have tea with Sibylla, and to 
 offer her congratulations. She was a keen 
 politician, and entered heartily into the en- 
 joyment of the triumph. 
 
 ' Charles has done well,' she said, ' and 
 the party has done well. What a comfort ! 
 The Government will be as strong as they 
 need to be — strong enough for all practical 
 purposes. It is a mistake to have too large 
 a majority. The rank and file get careless 
 and the waverers think they are at liberty 
 to indulge their own fancies. Talking of 
 waverers, I see that brilliant young gentle- 
 man, Mr. Amersham, has got in again. 
 I am half sorry for it, though he is a 
 protege of mine. I discovered him and 
 made him the fashion. But politically he 
 is dangerous — too independent and fond 
 of airing his independence. Our people 
 ought to catch him. He should be turned 
 to good account, or else be given something 
 or other, and so be silenced for ever. He 
 is too good to leave alone.'
 
 I02 Sibylla chap. 
 
 * We hardly ever see him,' said Lord 
 Belmont ; ' he is a difficult person to catch. 
 When he is not at the House he is always 
 too much engaged for such quiet people as 
 we are to have a chance.' 
 
 * Oh,' said Mrs. Ormesby, ' he is in im- 
 mense request, especially among the women. 
 He is a flirt, like every man who is worth 
 anything, except your Charles, Sibylla ; and 
 he is the saintly exception that proves the 
 rule. Not but what he, probably, has a 
 flirtation on hand somewhere or other, if 
 we only knew it. But Mr. Amersham is 
 an insatiable, indefatigable flirt. He adores 
 every charming creature he comes across. 
 The only trouble is that there are so many 
 of them. He can never make up his mind, 
 any more than they can, which of them it 
 is that he adores the most.' 
 
 * The worst of it is,' said Lord Belmont, 
 * that his butterfly propensities are not 
 confined to women. That might be for- 
 given him. But he is a political flirt — he 
 likes a new opinion almost as well as a new 
 love. It is time that he settled down 
 respectably. As it is, I have a conviction
 
 VII The Little Rift 103 
 
 that he is slipping from us ; we shall lose 
 him. It will be a blow to the party, and 
 we do not want any more blows. The 
 Opposition know his value. They are 
 working hard to catch him. All sorts of 
 influences, male and female, are being rained 
 upon him — all in the wrong direction. 
 Lady Egeria is having him to her little 
 dinners ; and Lady Egeria's little dinners, 
 to a young politician, mean destruction. 
 Something must be done. Sibylla, you 
 must try your hand upon him.' 
 
 ' I ! ' cried Sibylla ; * what an idea ! I 
 am a bad hand at that sort of work. I 
 scarcely know Mr. Amersham ; and if I did, 
 it would be no easy task to convince or to 
 influence him. Besides, Charles disap- 
 proves, I believe, of female propaganda.' 
 
 ' And who, pray,' said Mrs. Ormesby, 
 ' are to be the propagandists if women 
 decline the task .^ What are women for, I 
 should like to know, in this world of silly 
 men, each craving guidance from a sensible 
 woman .? My dear Sibylla, propagandism 
 is our specialite. To disapprove it is just 
 one of Charles's silly fads. He has so
 
 I04 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. VII 
 
 many. The kindest thing to do is to 
 ignore them.' 
 
 * Ignore one's husband's fads ^. ' cried 
 Sibylla with a laugh that was not without 
 a tinge of bitterness ; ' Aunt Constance, 
 what a prescription for matrimonial bliss ! ' 
 
 * That, my dear,' said Mrs. Ormesby, * is 
 a sort of bliss that has quite gone out. 
 Anyhow, it cannot be any one's duty to 
 encourage a husband in what is absurd on 
 the face of it. As for Mr. Amersham, ask 
 him to dinner, at any rate. Let your 
 father give him a lecture, and you give him 
 another. See how you get on. It would 
 be a real achievement to secure him. And 
 ask us the same night. He is delightful, 
 and, what is most delightful — devoted to 
 me,' 
 
 ' There can be no harm in being civil, at 
 any rate,' said Lord Belmont ; * Sibylla is 
 an accomplished controversialist. She must 
 do her best.'
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CAMPAIGN OPENS 
 
 Sir Nathaniel. I praise God for you, Sir. 
 Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and senten- 
 tious, witty without affection, audacious without 
 impudency, learned without opinion, and strange 
 without heresy. — Love's Labour* s Lost. 
 
 Lord Belmont's dinner-parties were of the 
 amusing, interesting, and informal order. 
 His tastes were catholic, and his habit of 
 giving oral invitations, which were apt to 
 slip from his own memory or his intended 
 guests', produced occasional mishaps. 
 These, however, signified the less as host 
 and guests alike were bent on enjoyment, 
 and versed in the arts and habits which 
 tend to produce it. Lord Belmont's 
 hospitable instincts shrank from the contact 
 of a bore.
 
 io6 Sibylla chap. 
 
 A goodly party had already assem- 
 bled in the drawing-room when Amer- 
 sham made his appearance. As he glanced 
 round the room he recognised many 
 familiar faces. Several members, from 
 whom he had just parted at the House, 
 were grouped round Lord Belmont. 
 Montague, amongst them, was standing 
 next to his uncle. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' he said, as Amersham, after a 
 word or two with his host, passed on into 
 the crowd, ' there goes the rising man, 
 his honours thick upon him. How 
 good he was last night ! He has been 
 speaking better and better all the session. 
 Last night he was at his best — quite 
 brilliant.' 
 
 ' More brilliant than useful,' said Lord 
 Belmont ; ' his cleverness is alarming. It 
 sounds a dubious note. It breathes of 
 treachery, desertion. He is making up his 
 mind as to which side he means to join. 
 Who will it be?' 
 
 ' That's telling,' said Edenbridge, a 
 young author, whose last volume of essays 
 had established his reputation for cleverness
 
 VIII The Campaign opens 107 
 
 and won him admission, by the royal 
 road, to membership of the Athenaeum — 
 
 ' ^vheLh7)v ovK av <yvoL7)<; iroTepoLdi /jbereLi] — 
 
 Tydides does not quite know himself,' 
 said Montague. * Well, whoever gets him 
 will gain a valuable recruit. He knows it, 
 and appreciates the position. He knows 
 his worth, and he means the Government 
 to know it. That was what his speech 
 meant.' 
 
 ' I am not so sure of his worth, after all,' 
 said Lord Belmont. 'Is he merely a 
 brilliant opportunist, or has he the making 
 of a statesman ? Time will show.' 
 
 ' We all believe in him ! ' cried Montague 
 — ' all his college friends. That is in his 
 favour, is it not ? We are confident that he 
 will succeed.' 
 
 ' Confidence,' said his uncle, ' is a plant 
 of slow growth in aged breasts — mine 
 among others. It is so easy to dazzle 
 one's contemporaries. But theirs is not 
 the final verdict. We shall see.' 
 
 On the opposite side of the drawing- 
 room, Mrs. Ormesby, the splendour of
 
 io8 Sibylla chap. 
 
 whose attire bespoke her intention of ending 
 the evening in a gayer scene, was listening 
 with a somewhat resigned air to the Bishop 
 of Blackfriars, a courtly prelate, an old 
 college friend of Lord Belmont, and now 
 his frequent guest. The bishop was witty, 
 learned, and agreeable, but Mrs. Ormesby 
 had a prejudice against bishops, and would 
 have been glad if Amersham had come to 
 her relief Amersham, however, stayed but 
 just long enough for the purposes of polite- 
 ness, and passed on to greet another friend, 
 who was encouraging his approach with a 
 kindly smile. Lady Holte had the good 
 sense to be proud of her uncle, and was 
 always delighted to come to his parties. 
 They gave her an agreeable sense of respect- 
 ability ; they flattered her vanity at a 
 sensitive point ; they consoled her for the 
 humiliations which her mother's caustic 
 tongue sometimes inflicted. Mrs. Ormesby 
 thought slightingly of her daughter, and 
 made no secret of ridiculing her pretensions 
 to being taken seriously. But Lady Holte 
 had aspirations — aspirations to cultivated 
 society, rational conversation, and clever
 
 VIII The Campaign opens 109 
 
 men. She had a disagreeable consciousness 
 of falling short in all these directions. 
 Her surroundings were sometimes wanting 
 in good taste, and the mirth of her drawing- 
 room was apt to lapse into a romp. One 
 of the people most conducive to the 
 romping sat beside her. Miss Everard was 
 one of the great successes of the day. 
 Her beauty and her cleverness had carried 
 herself, her parents, her brothers and sisters 
 to the dizzy pinnacles of fame. Everybody 
 acknowledged her to be an extraordinary 
 girl, — extraordinary even among the extra- 
 vagances of modern London and an expiring 
 century. She was certainly extraordinarily 
 talkative, and, if not extraordinarily clever, 
 at any rate clever enough to make her talk 
 pleasant to distinguished men, and good- 
 looking enough to make commonplace 
 remarks acquire an aroma of wit. Kitty 
 Everard was, moreover, extraordinarily 
 audacious. She stuck at nothing, and 
 frequently acted without hesitation, when 
 discretion would have bid her pause. 
 Never giving herself time to see how 
 things would look from other points of
 
 no Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 view than her own, she occasionally 
 shocked decorum, and often outraged 
 taste. But she was very fond of Lady 
 Holte, and Lady Holte was very fond of 
 her, and was not easily shocked. 
 
 Both ladies greeted Amersham with 
 effusion. 
 
 ' How late you are ! ' cried Lady Holte, 
 ' unfortunately it is the dull people who are 
 always punctual ; we arrived to the minute.' 
 
 * A brilliant exception to the rule,' said 
 Amersham. 
 
 ' No ! ' cried Miss Everard, ' we arrived 
 dull, and have been growing duller ever 
 since. I believe the half hour before dinner 
 is the most exhausting known to mortals. 
 Why don't we expunge it } ' 
 
 ' But we shall be all right now that you 
 are come,' said Lady Holte, gaily. ' Sit 
 down here and tell us something amusing.' 
 
 ' Amusing ! ' cried Amersham. * What 
 a request to a poor overworked drudge ! 
 We come to you to be amused, — you happy 
 beings whose only business, like the lilies, 
 is to look delightful. Miss Everard, I am 
 positive, never does a stroke of work.'
 
 VIII 
 
 The Campaign opens 1 1 1 
 
 * Never,' said the young lady in question, 
 with the slightest possible frown, as she saw 
 Amersham preparing to escape. ' By the 
 way, I sometimes knit my brows — like 
 this.' 
 
 ' And wreathe smiles ^ ' said Amersham ; 
 ' I believe that is the proper phrase, though 
 I have not a notion how it's done or what 
 it means. Something pleasant, at any rate, 
 if Miss Everard does it. I should like to 
 have a wreath of them to take home with 
 me.' 
 
 Lady Holte was as little able as her 
 mother had been to bring Amersham' s 
 onward progress to a halt. He had caught 
 sight of a face which drew him across the 
 room. 
 
 ' Lady Cynthia ! ' he exclaimed, as he 
 joined her; ' what a delightful surprise ! I 
 had no notion that you were in town.' 
 
 ' I am paying Mrs. Montcalm a visit,' 
 the other answered. ' My mother comes 
 next week.' 
 
 ' That means that she is better, I trust ^ ' 
 asked her companion, with an air of the 
 warmest interest.
 
 1 1 2 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 ' Much better, thank you/ Lady Cynthia 
 answered. ' Mentone was a great success. 
 But we are glad to be at home again.^ 
 
 ' And we are glad ! ' cried Amersham 
 with fervour. ' The world is so much 
 pleasanter when you are here. What ages 
 you have been away ! That horrid Riviera ! 
 we owe it a grudge. It empties so many 
 drawing-rooms, where a poor shivering 
 mortal might go to get a cup of tea and 
 a little timely consolation. It blackens a 
 November fog to think of the sunshine and 
 the mimosas and the daffodils ! But now 
 you are back ; and I have a thousand things 
 to tell you and to ask. Let me sit down 
 by you here. Ah ! how provoking ! Here, 
 I am certain, is Lord Belmont coming to 
 take you into dinner ! But we must have a 
 chat afterwards.' 
 
 Amersham's devotion was amply justi- 
 fied. Lady Cynthia was one of the choice 
 women, whom even triflers worship seri- 
 ously. Nature had fashioned her, mind and 
 body, with a loving solicitude, into a rare 
 perfection. Three years before, when she 
 first made her appearance in society, it had
 
 VIII The Campaign opens 113 
 
 been the fashion to say that she was a 
 living Romney. There were some Romney 
 touches, certainly, in the pose of the head, 
 the long delicate neck, the faint glow which 
 warmed the cheek. Romney would, no 
 doubt, have liked to paint her. Other 
 admirers in search of a concise description 
 were wont to describe her as reproducing, 
 or at any rate recalling. Sir Joshua's * Saint 
 Cecilia.' 
 
 There was something of the artist, 
 something of the saint in her appearance, 
 in the absolute unstudiedness of attitude, 
 in her abstracted look, which gave her the 
 air of scarcely belonging to the world in 
 which she moved. When she raised her 
 beautiful violet eyes, which were apt to 
 droop, and bent their full radiance on her 
 companion, there was a pathos in them 
 which seemed to claim reverential devotion. 
 There was pathos, too, in her voice and 
 manner, — a woman who might easily be 
 hurt, and whom to hurt would be a mis- 
 fortune or a crime. 
 
 Amersham had admired her extremely 
 from the first day of their acquaintance, 
 
 VOL. I I
 
 114 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 and had spared no pains to let her feel his 
 admiration. He had devoted himself to 
 her mother, an invalid old lady, for whose 
 broken health and failing spirits the inter- 
 ests and pleasures of life were becoming 
 too heavy a burthen. Amersham behaved 
 to her exactly as he should, with deference, 
 considerateness, assiduous care to save her 
 trouble or promote her comfort. There 
 was no trouble that he was not overjoyed 
 to take in her behalf. Lady Cynthia felt 
 grateful, and had shown her gratitude with 
 unsuspicious frankness. The two had 
 speedily become fast friends. His presence 
 cheered ; his conversation — fresh from all 
 the turmoil of the great world outside — 
 was a relief, an amusement. He became 
 a welcome, a privileged guest. Lady 
 Cynthia, ministering by the invalid's sofa, 
 seemed to him a half-sacred being. A few 
 words from her, a smile, a gracious look of 
 thanks were enough to make an afternoon 
 delightful. Amersham, whatever his short- 
 comings, had taste enough to appreciate his 
 good fortune, and to know that the society 
 of two such women was among the rare
 
 VIII The Campaign opens 115 
 
 privileges of life, of which the lucky 
 possessor can never make enough. 
 
 On the present occasion he was destined 
 to a less ethereal companion. 
 
 ' What luck for me,' Miss Everard said, 
 as presently Amersham led her downstairs ; 
 ' why is it that kind fortune sends us so 
 seldom into dinner together .? I hope you 
 are in a charming mood.' 
 
 ' Most charming,' said Amersham ; ' a 
 man's charm is merely the reflection of his 
 neighbour's ; Miss Everard's neighbour is 
 bound to be delightful. But I have robbed 
 you of a destined honour ; you were to 
 have had the bishop. Luckily for me 
 some one failed at the last moment, and I 
 was promoted.' 
 
 ' Imagine ! ' said Miss Everard, * a 
 bishop ! and I such a wretched theologian ! 
 My weakest point ! but I should have 
 made him tell me all about it. It is 
 immensely curious and interesting, I be- 
 lieve, when you put it in the right way.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Amersham, ' the way that 
 bishops put it. That is what bishops are 
 for.'
 
 ii6 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 ' But,' said Miss Everard, turning a 
 pair of eyes, bright with fun, full upon her 
 neighbour, ' I would rather have it in your 
 way — your nicest way. Imagine me a 
 South Sea Islander, and yourself a mission- 
 ary bent on my conversion. I need it, I 
 am a Pagan. You can begin in the Garden 
 of Eden ' 
 
 * In Paradise,' cried Amersham, ' where 
 I always am when you are kind to me and 
 smile like that. Well, you know, in the 
 South Sea Islands you would insist on my 
 being tattooed, and then you would give 
 me a kiss. What a profane idea ! ' 
 
 ' So many pleasant ideas are,' cried Miss 
 Everard, ' but we have become a little 
 tropical. The South Sea Islands are 
 relaxing ; let us steer for cooler latitudes. 
 Mrs. Montcalm is dying, I am certain, to 
 know what news you bring us from the 
 House.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Sibylla, who was Amersham's 
 other neighbour, and who now turned at 
 the sound of her name from Lord Bourne, 
 a rising Conservative light, who had taken 
 her into dinner ; ' Lord Bourne has just
 
 VIII The Campaign opens 117 
 
 been asking me. What has been happening 
 this afternoon ? ' 
 
 ' The usual story,' said Amersham. 
 * Ministers have been having a bad quarter 
 of an hour. They have so many. They 
 always do when it comes to a hand-to-hand 
 fight. They are deficient in reply — very 
 deficient. The art of really effective reply 
 is almost a lost one.' 
 
 ' The first condition is,' said Lord 
 Bourne, ' that an effective reply should be 
 possible. Nowadays, so often it is not. 
 In that case the nearest approach to effect- 
 iveness is that which throws most dust in 
 your opponent's eyes and most completely 
 leads the public off the scent.' 
 
 ' Machiavellian,' cried Amersham, ' but 
 true ! As some great conjuror, who 
 happened not to be a politician, used to 
 say, the secret of success is to misdirect the 
 attention of the spectators. Well, this 
 afternoon's trick would have puzzled any 
 conjuror. The Government had not a leg 
 to stand on. They had no case. Egremont 
 put it as admirably as adroitness could 
 achieve ; but the fact remains that the
 
 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP, 
 
 appointment was a job of the purest water ; 
 and a job it will always remain, despite 
 Egremont's adroitness.' 
 
 * They never have a case/ said Sibylla. 
 * Their best friends feel it most. My 
 husband was saying only this morning that 
 the Session has been a series of disasters. 
 They are fighting in the last ditch.' 
 
 ' That is such a nice place to fight in,' 
 cried Amersham ; ' that is why, just now, I 
 am a Ministerialist. It is so dull to be on 
 the winning side when victory is easy and 
 one's aid superfluous. I like to march in 
 the ranks of the beaten army, fighting a 
 desperate battle or making a desperate 
 retreat. Every man is sure of doing some- 
 thing, being of some use, and there is, at 
 any rate, excitement.' 
 
 ' But you figure as a free lance, Mr. 
 Amersham .? ' said Sibylla. ' I read your 
 speech this morning to my father. He 
 called you Mr. Facing -Bothways. The 
 first condition of serious politics is to choose 
 your party and stick to it.' 
 
 ' Yes, but you see,' said Amersham, ' I am 
 so excessively conscientious, and so candid.
 
 VIII The Campaign opens 119 
 
 I often cannot make up my mind. I 
 get puzzled : sometimes I perfectly under- 
 stand a subject till Harfleur ' begins to 
 explain it/ 
 
 ' Naturally,' said Edenbridge across the 
 table. ' Explanations are a tribute to 
 propriety. You must have them, or the 
 thing would look absurd. But they are 
 meant to puzzle. The function of a 
 Minister is to give lucid explanations of 
 what he does not understand himself.' 
 
 ' I thoug;ht that was the prerogative of 
 the theologians,' said Amersham. 
 
 ' No,' said Edenbridge. ' Theology 
 formulates the inexplicable, and emphasises 
 it. The very point of it is that most 
 things can not be explained.' 
 
 ' Yes,' cried Miss Everard, ' and that you 
 give creeds, like prisoners, the benefit of the 
 doubt.' 
 
 * Well,' said Sibylla, ' you must admit 
 that conscientiousness is sometimes the 
 pretext of indifference, the refuge of the 
 coward.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Amersham, ' I accept the 
 impeachment ! Laziness and cowardice,
 
 1 20 Sihylh 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 two great motive powers of the world — my 
 world, at any rate.' 
 
 ' Who would have thought it ! ' cried 
 Sibylla. * I had fancied that your foible was 
 a restless audacity. What do you say, 
 Lord Bourne } ' 
 
 ' Oh,' said Lord Bourne, ' I am before 
 everything a party man. I am not a 
 philosopher like Amersham, and do not 
 aspire to see more sides than one of a 
 question — my own and my party's.' 
 
 ' And,' asked Sibylla, ' has Mr. Amer- 
 sham no opinions of his own } ' 
 
 ' None,' said Amersham with cheerful 
 vehemence. ' For one thing, Mrs. Mont- 
 calm, I am too young. Young people, like 
 poor people, cannot afford to keep opinions, 
 any more than they can carriages. I had 
 one or two, but it was more than I could 
 manage ; I had to retrench. I put them 
 down. Nowadays one must be economical.' 
 
 ' But poor people are excessively opinion- 
 ative,' said Sibylla. 
 
 * Only the reckless ones,' said Amersham, 
 ' who will presently be bankrupt, and who 
 are poor enough to laugh at insolvency.
 
 VIII The Campaign opens 121 
 
 There are many things that a poor man 
 cannot afford, any more than he can have a 
 place in the country or a diamond necklace 
 for his wife. He cannot afford to make 
 an enemy. Hatred and hatred's outcome, — 
 insolence, sarcasm, the crushing rejoinder, 
 the stinging repartee, — are luxuries which he 
 must leave to millionaires. These harmless 
 pleasures never reach the poor. Quarrelling 
 is a most costly investment. Revenge ' 
 
 ' But revenge,' said Miss Everard, ' is 
 immoral — forbidden by religion.' 
 
 ' Which makes it all the more expensive,' 
 said Amersham ; ' you run up a bill in both 
 worlds. But the grand economy is to have 
 no opinions but the commonplace ones that 
 everybody has — which are so much public 
 property that no one can be said to have 
 them — like the grass on a common that 
 geese and donkeys graze on.' 
 
 ' What a comparison,' said Miss Everard ; 
 'it makes one more resolved than ever 
 not to be common-fed or commonplace. 
 Community of ideas is the worst form of 
 socialism. Who steals my purse, steals 
 dross — that is when there happens to be
 
 122 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 any in it : but my ideas shall be sacredly 
 my own/ 
 
 ' Your own and your country's ! ' cried 
 Amersham. ' Miss Everard's ideas, like 
 Kepler's, belong to the universe — the 
 penalty of genius! ' 
 
 Afterwards, over coffee and cigarettes, 
 the event of the afternoon was eagerly 
 discussed by a group of politicians. 
 
 ' It is unfortunate,' said Addison, a 
 permanent Under-Secretary of State, who 
 looked upon jobbery as the natural attribute 
 of all Administrations — ^ so conspicuous and 
 so dreadfully indefensible ! That is the 
 worst of the Duke's jobs. They are as bad 
 as they look, which is saying a great deal 
 for their badness. Egremont does not care 
 for the disgrace of having to defend this one. 
 The Duke is furious, naturally ; but 
 Egremont could not be expected to risk a 
 defeat for the sake of providing one of 
 the Duke's proteges with a comfortable 
 berth.' 
 
 * The Duke's protege ! ' cried Amersham. 
 ' He would not matter. It is the Duchess. 
 This job is one of hers. They have a
 
 VIII 
 
 The Campaign opens 123 
 
 family likeness. I know her touch, her 
 consummate touch. It is genius.' 
 
 ' Hereditary genius ! ' said Edenbridge ; 
 ' her ancestors have been at it ever since 
 the first family job in the days of the 
 Tudors.' 
 
 ' The secret of greatness ! ' Amersham 
 cried, ' the necessities of a Minister or the 
 foibles of a king. That is how to make 
 blue blood.' 
 
 ^ Anyhow,' said Edenbridge, ' the Duch- 
 ess is ineffable. She realises one's ideal 
 of human greatness. She dominates 
 society, she dazzles the fashionable mob, 
 she wire-pulls the Cabinet, she rules from 
 pole to pole, from Mayfair to Lombard 
 Street. Her parties are the finest in Lon- 
 don, and her jobs — the jobs she gets other 
 people to perpetrate for her — the worst. 
 When I see her rolling by, gorgeous, 
 triumphant, the centre of a hundred 
 successful intrigues, the cynosure of a 
 hundred grateful recipients of favours, 
 promised or received, I can think only of 
 the mother of the gods. She is the 
 modern Cybele —
 
 124 Si by lie 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Laeta Deum partu, centum complexa nepotes, 
 Omncs ceelicolas, omnes supera alta tenentes ! ' 
 
 ' How nice for the nephews ! ' cried 
 Amersham. ' I wish I was one of them. 
 But they play the deuce with a department. 
 We have too many of them at the Pumps 
 and Fountains already.' 
 
 Of all social strategy none calls for 
 nicer generalship than the invasion of the 
 drawing-room after dinner. A dexterous 
 movement and timely daring secure victory 
 in the shape of a delightful companion for 
 the most agreeable half-hour of existence. 
 The man who hesitates is lost ; so is the 
 man who blunders. Amersham never 
 hesitated or blundered. Fortune always 
 placed him where he wished to be. He 
 had now caught Sibylla in a disengaged 
 moment. He seemed anxious to renew 
 their talk. 
 
 ' I am afraid,' he said, * that I sank in 
 your good opinion by what I said at 
 dinner.' 
 
 ' You must remember,' said Sibylla, 
 ' that I am a professional propagandist. I 
 have a special mission to convert you. I
 
 VIII The Campaign opens 125 
 
 would do anything to win a vote for our 
 side — my husband's side — a vote or an 
 ally. I am bound to denounce indiffer- 
 entism ' 
 
 ' And to call it by all the ugliest names 
 you can think of — idleness and cowardice, 
 for instance ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Sibylla. ' It does not do to 
 be indifferent. This is no world for 
 indifferentism. It is only cowards and 
 idlers who are indifferent ' 
 
 ' And philosophers,' said Amersham. 
 ' There was some philosopher or other — 
 Hegel, I believe — who calmly finished his 
 treatise on logic the day that the battle of 
 Jena was being fought a mile or two away. 
 That always struck me as highly philo- 
 sophical.' 
 
 ' The philosophy of a pedant ! ' cried 
 Sibylla, with scorn ; ' you might as well 
 quote the Paris entomologist who collected 
 butterflies all through the Reign of Terror.' 
 
 ' How wise ! how truly great ! ' cried 
 Amersham, ' and saved his neck, and was 
 safe and sound, butterflies and all, when 
 the storm was over ! No doubt he made a
 
 126 Sibylla chap. 
 
 splendid collection. I hope that he christ- 
 ened some lovely creature or other after 
 the guillotine ! It is a good hint for our 
 behaviour, when our Reign of Terror comes. 
 It is coming, the prophets tell us.' 
 
 ' When it comes,' Sibylla said, with 
 seriousness, * Englishmen will meet it as 
 becomes them, with gravity and courage 
 and good sense. I confess I feel but a 
 cool admiration for the fine French ladies 
 and gentlemen who set so much prize on 
 maintaining their exquisite behaviour to 
 the last. It was too theatrical.' 
 
 ' Theatrical, but heroic,' said Amersham. 
 * There was philosophy in it too, was there 
 not } ' 
 
 ' But what a philosophy,' said Sibylla, 
 ' too fine for real life, a Dresden china 
 style of hoops and periwigs ! It wanted 
 seriousness.' 
 
 ' But one cannot take politics seriously,' 
 said her companion ; ' one has seen too 
 much of them. They are the best inven- 
 tion for wasting time that the world has 
 ever seen.' 
 
 * Because you are all so weak in letting
 
 VIII The Campaign opens 127 
 
 it be wasted,' said Sibylla ; ' it is deplorable. 
 If you were in earnest you would contrive 
 some plan or other to prevent the wanton 
 waste of time.' 
 
 ' Heaven and earth fight in vain against 
 a bore,' said Amersham. ' The remark is 
 Schiller's, I believe. Whosesoever it is, at 
 any rate, it is true. If a man does not 
 mind being a bore he is like the assassin who 
 does not intend to escape. Nothing can 
 stop him, not even the Speaker with his 
 mace and his direful threats. Never mind 
 what the question is, the bores have it.' 
 
 ' I see,' said Sibylla, ' that you are a long 
 way from conversion. You are not even 
 penitent. Do you never talk seriously } ' 
 
 ' I am serious now,' said Amersham. 
 ' In my creed, then, there are serious things 
 in life, but politics are not among them.' 
 
 ' I consider them extremely serious,' said 
 Sibylla. ' Do you think that it signifies 
 nothing how the country is governed — 
 whether that Reign of Terror you men- 
 tioned just now is to come or not ^ ' 
 
 ' Now,' said Mrs. Ormesby, rustling 
 across the room — portly, comfortable.
 
 128 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 radiant in satin and diamonds — and taking 
 the place which Amersham vacated for her 
 on the sofa, ' I am not going to have Mr. 
 Amersham monopolised. You had him 
 at dinner, Sibylla. It is my turn now. I 
 need amusement. I have had a frightflilly 
 dull evening. The Bishop and I are 
 mutually depressing. Has she converted 
 you, Mr. Amersham ? It was a plot, you 
 know, a political conspiracy. They want 
 to catch you. You cannot say I did not 
 put you on your guard.' 
 
 * Mrs. Montcalm has done that already,' 
 said Amersham, settling himself comfort- 
 ably in an arm-chair in front of the two 
 ladies ; ' I was forewarned ; but I am con- 
 verted, all the same ; or rather I do not 
 need conversion. Mrs. Montcalm and I 
 agree.' 
 
 ' No, indeed,' said Sibylla ; ' we have 
 not even found the point of possible agree- 
 ment.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said the other, ' we both believe 
 in seriousness ; only my standard is higher 
 than yours, and I will not admit politics to 
 the category of serious things. How can
 
 VIII The Campaign opens 129 
 
 one ? that is the worst of it. Everything 
 pohtical is so common, vulgar, ignoble — 
 especially motives. Each man wears them 
 on his sleeve, the ugliest form of sleeve- 
 ornament ever devised, but still fashion- 
 able.' 
 
 ' I like his pessimism,' said Mrs. 
 Ormesby, gleefully ; ' do not you, Sibylla ^ 
 It is a sign of youth and health and con- 
 scious success. It is like Lord Bourne, 
 who, as he has a hundred thousand a year, 
 a charming wife, several delightful places, 
 and the pleasantest house in London, is 
 naturally in low spirits. I commiserated 
 him sincerely, as you may imagine. But 
 as for politics now, I agree with Mr. 
 Amersham. They are too degrading. 
 The only thing is to take them as a joke — 
 a dull joke — that sorry pleasantry, repre- 
 sentative government, as Dizzy said in his 
 nice way. What is good statesmanship, 
 pray, but a shrewd guess which way the 
 cat, the democratic cat, intends to jump.^ 
 And what a jumper she is ! ' 
 
 * The democratic cat ! ' cried Amersham ; 
 * she is mistress of the situation ! That was 
 
 VOL. I K
 
 130 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. VIII 
 
 the sort the Egyptians worshipped, no 
 doubt. How different from the purring, 
 fireside tabbies of our maiden aunts ! 
 Nowadays you must have an instinct 
 which way the breeze intends to blow : we 
 all become weather-prophets. Do you re- 
 member Lord Shaftesbury in Hudibras.^ — 
 
 As old sinners have all points 
 
 O' the compass in their bones and joints — 
 
 Can by their pangs and aches find 
 
 All turns and changes of the wind ; 
 
 So guilty sinners in a State 
 
 Can by their crimes prognosticate, 
 
 And in their consciences feel pain 
 
 Some days before a shower of rain.' 
 
 * Some days before the deluge ! ' cried 
 Mrs. Ormesby, ' I feel some nasty twinges 
 of my own. The storm is near.'
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 COUNSELS OF THE NIGHT 
 
 Proteus. Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud 
 The eating canker dwells, so eating love 
 Inhabits in the finest wits of all. 
 
 ' Well,' said Lord Belmont, when the 
 last guest had departed, and Sibylla and 
 Lady Cynthia had sunk into easy chairs in 
 attitudes of well-earned repose after the 
 fatigues of the evening, ' and what are 
 you doing to-night. Lady Cynthia.^ Is 
 Sibylla to take you to a ball : ' 
 
 ' No,' said Lady Cynthia, ' we have con- 
 secrated this evening to rest, friendship, and 
 talk. You must stay and help us. Lord 
 Belmont.' 
 
 'Charles will be late to-night,' said 
 Sibylla : ' he may have to speak. In
 
 132 Sibylla chap. 
 
 any case he cannot get away in time to 
 join us. So we determined to stay at 
 home ; Cynthia and I have a world of 
 things to say to each other.' 
 
 ' And what did you make of your 
 neophyte, Sibylla } ' her father asked : ' he 
 wants a great deal of converting, does he 
 not } But you got on well } ' 
 
 * Splendidly,' said Sibylla ; ' I found him 
 delightfully light in hand — original, a nice 
 sort of originality, which is what one does 
 not always get. As for his conversion, I 
 am not sure that he needs it.' 
 
 * But that looks as if he were converting 
 you,' said Lord Belmont ; * that would be 
 a fiasco. Take care, Sibylla ! Conversion 
 is a game that two can play at. You may 
 catch a Tartar and be made a prisoner 
 yourself while you are endeavouring to 
 make one.' 
 
 ' No,' said Sibylla, ' he will not convert 
 me, and for the best of reasons. He is 
 wandering in chaos. He has not yet dis- 
 covered a creed. He wants to find one.' 
 
 * But those are the most dangerous of 
 proselytisers,' said her father ; * the preachers
 
 IX Counsels of the Night 133 
 
 who are not certain what doctrine they wish 
 to preach.' 
 
 ' Ah, but Mr. Amersham has a creed ! ' 
 said Lady Cynthia, ' the creed of the 
 poHtical agnostic — the Agnostic with a 
 large A. Nothing can be known.' 
 
 * Something can be known about 
 politics,' said Lord Belmont, — ' known or 
 shrewdly guessed. I have no patience 
 with hoverers. A man should make up 
 his mind and choose his side.' 
 
 ' But that is so commonplace,' said 
 Sibylla, ' and Mr. Amersham's foible is 
 originality. The thing that everybody 
 does is, on the face of it, to be abhorred.' 
 
 * Ah,' said her father ; ' well, I suppose 
 Amersham has a real touch of originality. 
 That is what makes him so impressive.' 
 
 * Impressive ^ ' said Sibylla, ' I cannot 
 say that I am impressed ; or rather, perhaps, 
 I was impressed, but not altogether agree- 
 ably. He is clever, brilliant, but a sort 
 of brilliancy which fatigues one and de- 
 presses — the brilliancy of the marble which 
 takes a good polish because it is so hard. 
 I dislike cynicism — the good-natured cyni-
 
 134 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 cism of agreeable members of society most 
 of all. It is such an old story and such a 
 dull one. But he is extremely good- 
 looking.' 
 
 A little later when the two ladies had 
 passed to that stage of deshabille which is 
 supposed to be essential to the most con- 
 fidential utterances of female souls, Sibylla, 
 flitting ghost-like through dimly-lighted 
 passages to her friend's room, came to say 
 good-night, and to take a final sip of 
 affectionate gossip. She now spoke more 
 openly of the effect which Amersham had 
 produced upon her. 
 
 * So you thought him a cynic ^ ' said 
 Lady Cynthia ; * no wonder he shocked you. 
 I know him too well to be shocked.' 
 
 ' Have you known him for long } ' 
 asked Sibylla. 
 
 ' For ages,' said her companion ; ' we 
 are very old friends. He was a bright, 
 particular star of my first Season. It was 
 the fashion to rave about him. We all 
 did it.' 
 
 ' And you were all right,' said Sibylla. 
 * Bright particular stars do not shine for
 
 IX Counsels of the Night 135 
 
 nothing. It was something better than 
 fashion. The fact is that he is charming. 
 I could do a little raving myself 
 
 ' Do,' said her companion. ' I shall 
 like to hear it ; my raving days are 
 over.' 
 
 ' He interested me,' Sibylla continued ; 
 ' he is so uncommon. What a relief that 
 sort of man is ! It makes one realise what 
 a fatigue the other sort — the wrong, the 
 usual sort, can be ! ' 
 
 ' They can be very fatiguing when they 
 try,' said her companion, * especially when 
 they try to be agreeable. I had a weary 
 time with Lord Hunstanton. I am afraid 
 I was rude to him.' 
 
 ' Let us forget him,' said Sibylla, ' him 
 and all the other bores. I want to talk 
 about the other, the nice one, who is 
 not a bore. You see I was impressed 
 after all.' 
 
 ' So I perceive,' said Lady Cynthia. 
 ' It is natural that you should be. He im- 
 presses everybody at first.' 
 
 ' And then } ' asked Sibylla ; ^ is he not 
 nice at heart ? '
 
 136 Sibylla chap. 
 
 * That begs the question/ said the other ; 
 ' is it certain that he has one ? No one is 
 perfect. Mr. Amersham would be too 
 perfect for a fallen world if his heart were 
 all right, and there were enough of it.' 
 
 ' I should not have guessed him to be 
 heartless/ answered Sibylla. 
 
 ' I daresay that you are right/ Lady 
 Cynthia said with a fatigued air ; ' my idea 
 is not worth discussion. But, as you said 
 to Lord Belmont, his brilliancy rather 
 chills one.' 
 
 ^ But when he is serious } ' asked Sibylla. 
 
 ' When ! ' said Lady Cynthia ; ' but it is 
 so seldom. He is a butterfly and flitters 
 from flower to flower in the sunshine of 
 society ; or rather, perhaps, the busy bee, 
 improving each shining hour and tasting 
 all the sweets of life. A pleasant exist- 
 ence, no doubt ; but these bees and butter- 
 flies have their limitations. People call 
 him unscrupulous. I do not do that ; 
 but his scruples are not those of ordinary 
 folk. Anyhow he is agreeable ; and agree- 
 ableness is nine, if not ten, points of the 
 law.'
 
 IX Counsels of the Night 137 
 
 The conversation passed to other topics, 
 and presently Sibylla rose to go. 
 
 Lady Cynthia sat pondering when her 
 friend had left her. Her reverie was long, 
 and not exhilarating. She rose with a sigh. 
 Her heart was aching. She had been talk- 
 ing coldly, bitterly, with a superficial sar- 
 casm, which was merely Nature's trick of 
 concealment. She had done it so often, 
 that it was easy. After all, and despite of 
 all, she loved him. Perhaps it was her 
 doom. Anyhow, as matters stood, it was 
 her misfortune. 
 
 Amersham, this evening, had behaved 
 as on so many previous occasions, — had 
 greeted her with great cordiality, had ex- 
 changed a few sentences, which implied an 
 intimate — almost a confidential relation- 
 ship ; had promised to renew their talk. 
 A careless promise ! lightly made, as lightly 
 put aside ! In the shifting of the cards, he 
 had found himself on Sibylla's sofa and 
 there had been content to stay for the rest 
 of the evening. In the sudden interest of 
 a new acquaintance, he had forgotten to 
 rejoin Lady Cynthia — though they had not
 
 138 Sibylla chap. 
 
 met for months ; had wished her good-night 
 with a sentence or two, which took in- 
 timacy for granted, — evidently, with no 
 consciousness that there had been any 
 shortcoming in his behaviour, or suspicion 
 that she could feel neglected or aggrieved. 
 He was right, of course. He gave her 
 what he gave all his friends — all that 
 friendship could claim, — kindness, courtesy, 
 amusement. But how vain are such 
 offerings, how tasteless, how dispiriting to 
 her who gives something more and craves 
 for something more in return ! It was an 
 old story. For long she had been harden- 
 ing her heart to bear the pang, to conceal 
 it, to smile while she suffered. It would 
 become less acute by use — in time. But, 
 meanwhile, how dull, disappointing, un- 
 satisfying an affair existence seemed ! 
 Human intercourse — what but a tedious 
 game of cross-purposes ! the pleasures of 
 life how tasteless ! Life itself — how little 
 worth the toils, the sufferings, the heart-aches 
 it costs us ! It was sad, sad ! Lady Cynthia 
 tried in vain to sleep. It was easier, now 
 that detection was impossible, to let the
 
 IX Counsels of the Night 139 
 
 tears, long held back by resolute will, flow 
 as Nature bade them. One need have no 
 secrets with one's pillow ; there was no 
 longer any need for self-restraint. Lady 
 Cynthia's tears flowed, silently and long, 
 through the still hours of the night.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 DAY DREAMS 
 
 Toute passion profonde a sa pudeur, et porte 
 un voile qu'elle ne leve jamais devant les profanes. 
 
 Sibylla, as next day she recalled the events 
 of the previous evening, was fain to ac- 
 knowledge that Amersham had interested 
 her more seriously than she had had at first 
 supposed. His looks, his gestures, his 
 expressions kept recurring to her thoughts. 
 He had aroused her curiosity. He was 
 unusual. But what was he .? Not certainly 
 the mere audacious trifler that he was 
 pleased to depict himself. 
 
 The careless cynicism which he affected 
 was obviously a mask ; but what was there 
 behind it ? What were his real feelings ? 
 What was his real character ^ And why was 
 it that Sibylla felt a sudden wish to know ?
 
 CHAP. X T)ay 'Dreams 141 
 
 Greatly as she disapproved of many of his 
 views, Sibylla was conscious of a charm, 
 and asked herself its secret. There was 
 something, perhaps, in a strong personality, 
 impressing his will on those whom he cared 
 to dominate. Something, too, of a mag- 
 netic power in his physique, — a well- 
 chiselled, nervous mouth, grave, pathetic 
 eyes, a fine, open brow, mobile features, 
 across which each fresh shade of feeling 
 wrote itself in striking character — a manner 
 inscrutable, but, to her who could read the 
 mystery, bespeaking sincere homage, the 
 true courtesy of soul. That homage 
 Sibylla had recognised as proffered to herself, 
 the homage that is engendered of sympathy, 
 and claims to be sympathetic, — that craves 
 for the fuller interchange of thought, that 
 only awaits permission to be outspoken. 
 Amersham had encountered a nature capable 
 of influencing him, and wished to be influ- 
 enced. He was accustomed to dominate 
 his surroundings, but he had no thought of 
 dominating Sibylla. He felt a sudden, in- 
 stinctive hope that she would dominate 
 him, would care enough about him to be a
 
 142 Sibylla chap. 
 
 force in moulding his opinions, in guiding 
 his acts. When Sibylla had laughingly 
 proclaimed that it was her business to con- 
 vert him, she unconsciously touched the 
 very string that was vibrating in his nature. 
 He was already a disciple on the road to 
 conversion. Sibylla had experienced some- 
 thing which in his most adoring moods her 
 husband had never given her — the delightful 
 consciousness of influence. No woman 
 could have influenced Montcalm's politics. 
 He would have resented the attempt to do 
 so. It was a highly pleasurable sensation 
 to Sibylla to find a politician, who wel- 
 comed her into his sphere, and seemed to 
 appeal to her to assist in the process of 
 arriving at a conclusion. She felt a 
 dawning consciousness that her acquaint- 
 ance with Amersham would ripen into 
 friendship. 
 
 There was another thing which made 
 Amersham interesting. An idea had 
 dawned upon Sibylla — vague, baseless, im- 
 probable — but which, none the less, refused 
 to be ignored. Lady Cynthia's way of 
 talking about Amersham, when they dis-
 
 X T>ay 'Dreams 143 
 
 cussed him in midnight session, had sur- 
 prised her. It was harsh, cynical, altogether 
 unlike herself. Was there an explanation } 
 They had been intimate, evidently. What 
 had their intimacy meant } To what 
 hopes, wishes, disappointments, might it 
 not have given rise.^ Amersham, it was 
 certain, had admired her, and he was not a 
 man whom, when he was bent on pleasing, 
 it would be easy to resist. His advance 
 would be bold, rapid, not to be denied. 
 
 What had he been — what, Sibylla asked 
 herself, was he — what might he be to Lady 
 Cynthia .^ She had often in past times in- 
 dulged in those vague questionings of the 
 future which, it may be surmised, fill some 
 space in most women's thoughts about each 
 other. One of the things that we wish for 
 delightfial friends is to see them happily 
 married. Sibylla had frequently revolved 
 in her mind the question of Lady Cynthia's 
 marriage. She would marry, surely. She 
 had every charm which dominates the heart 
 of man. She was born for love. Who 
 was the fortunate mortal to whom this 
 choice prize was destined to fall } Interest-
 
 144 Sibylla chap. 
 
 ing, exciting speculation ! It was im- 
 possible, even for a woman, to think about 
 Lady Cynthia without interest and anxiety. 
 She was so rare, so choice, so unlike and so 
 much above the common crowd. She 
 fascinated her friends. Many men, it was 
 certain, would worship ; but it would 
 require the courage of conscious merit to 
 claim this delightful being for one's own 
 particular adoration. Few would dare, and 
 those few might have reason to regret their 
 temerity. Sibylla had, in mental survey, 
 satisfied herself that there was no one in the 
 circle of her own acquaintance to whom 
 that achievement was attainable. Lady 
 Cynthia was exquisite, critical, fastidious. 
 She was an ardent friend ; on the other 
 hand, not too easy to please. Her aversions 
 were prompt, hearty, and sincere. Her 
 judgment was nice, and did not always err 
 on the side of indulgence. Her standard 
 of taste was high. She felt a genuine 
 contempt for many of the foibles of man- 
 kind ; she possessed the dangerous faculty 
 of expressing her contempt in speeches, 
 whose irony was the more cutting for being
 
 X T^ay Dreams 145 
 
 unconscious. She kept the world at a 
 distance. She had some pronounced 
 enemies. She was not an easy person 
 for whom, even in imagination, to find a 
 fitting husband. 
 
 The idea now dawned on Sibylla that 
 Amersham was, of all the men whom 
 London Society had hitherto revealed to 
 her, the one whose disqualifications for the 
 post of aspirant to Lady Cynthia's hand 
 were least conspicuous. He was clever 
 enough to cope with her wit. He was 
 romantic enough for her most soaring mood. 
 His cynicism would touch a kindred point 
 in her melancholy. He had a vein of feel- 
 ing which would appeal to hers. Could it 
 be that he was the destined man } 
 
 The more Sibylla played in thought 
 with this pleasing project, the more she 
 liked it — liked it for both parties concerned. 
 She had for years past been feeling an 
 affectionate anxiety for Lady Cynthia's 
 happiness. She was conscious now of liking 
 Amersham sufficiently well to be interested 
 in his future, to indulge in projects for him 
 — projects of success. Lady Cynthia, 
 
 VOL. I L
 
 146 Sibylla chap, x 
 
 Sibylla had now convinced herself, was the 
 very woman to make such success achiev- 
 able. She would, of course, be a delightful 
 companion — a choice ornament of existence. 
 But she would be more than that. She 
 would not only adorn her husband's life, 
 but ennoble it. She would be an antidote 
 against a thousand baleful influences which 
 beset the youthful politician, the brilliant 
 member of society. Such influences, 
 Sibylla knew^ were actively at work around 
 Amersham. They threatened his soul's 
 health. They exposed him to dreadful 
 risks, — risks of failure, of deterioration. She 
 felt a longing to save him. Such a man was 
 worth saving. It would be a real achieve- 
 ment so to fortify him against the seductions 
 of a world where dangers abound and the 
 strongest and best are liable to fall. 
 
 So ran Sibylla's dreams for her two 
 friends. Would this piece of good fortune 
 befall them } What had destiny decreed } 
 Was this a case in which the light touch 
 of a dexterous, friendly hand might, in ever 
 so slight a degree, aid destiny in accom- 
 plishing its decrees }
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 five-o'clock tea 
 
 From women's eyes this doctrine I derive ; 
 They sparkle still the right Promethean fire : 
 They are the books, the arts, the academes. 
 That show, contain, and nourish all the world : 
 Else none at all in aught proves excellent. 
 
 Many women failed to understand Amer- 
 sham ; but all considered him delightful. 
 A portion of his delightfulness was, it 
 may be conjectured, due to an impress- 
 ible nature, quickly -varying mood, and 
 eloquently tell-tale looks. His features 
 in repose suggested power, seriousness, 
 a pathetic, almost a tragic melancholy. 
 Then, as he spoke, the melancholy was 
 dissipated by the gayest, sweetest smile. 
 The dark, unfathomable eyes sparkled with 
 mirth, or melted with tenderness. The
 
 148 Sibylla chap. 
 
 woman who witnessed this agreeable meta- 
 morphosis took credit for having produced 
 it, and was charmed with him and with 
 herself. No one could be more agreeably- 
 confidential. Each favoured woman had 
 her especial confidence, and believed, in 
 spite of appearances to the contrary, that 
 she was the one with whom Amersham 
 found entire communion of sentiment, the 
 one person who thoroughly understood her, 
 and by whom he was fully understood. 
 His natural versatility rendered this compre- 
 hensive sympathy an easy task, involving 
 neither effort nor hypocrisy. His courtesy 
 was deep ingrained. A chivalrous homage 
 for women was his natural mood ; the 
 particular woman whom, for the moment, 
 he admired, found an ample supply of that 
 homage at her command. He would say 
 anything, he would do anything for the 
 delightful being whose ascendency he 
 avowed. Be the cause what it might, 
 Amersham was the centre of much social 
 interest, the moving spirit of a clever 
 clique, who found in him their true 
 raison d'etre and their most redoubtable
 
 XI Five-o'clock Tea 149 
 
 champion. He had begun public Yi^q, 
 fresh from college honours, as a great 
 Minister's private secretary. His academic 
 companions had prophesied a brilliant 
 career. Amersham had lost no time in 
 making their prophecies come truer than 
 such prophecies generally prove. He took 
 to politics as to a natural element. His 
 first public speech — trenchant, audacious, 
 amusing — showed the true oratorical touch. 
 Such gems are not allowed to blush unseen 
 in the ocean solitudes of modern politics. 
 Discriminating wire-pullers discerned the 
 coming man. He was soon provided with 
 a seat. Taking the tide of fortune at the 
 turn, he had carried society and Parliament 
 by storm, and established his position as 
 the rising politician of the day — risen, 
 indeed, and, though still not far from the 
 horizon, bound for the zenith. Good 
 judges admitted him — after one or two 
 successes — to the select list of impressive 
 speakers — fluent, ready, resourceful — 
 capable, at the right moment, of real elo- 
 quence. Where do some favoured mortals 
 learn — as by instinct — this precious art,
 
 150 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 which others — well qualified, one might 
 have thought — court sedulously and vainly 
 for a life-time ? Amersham, at any rate, 
 possessed it. His method was audacious, 
 but he justified his audacity. Old parlia- 
 mentary onlookers held their breath when 
 this modern David came cheerfully out, 
 with sling and smooth stones from the 
 brook, and essayed battle with Goliaths, 
 tall in stature and formidable with the 
 prestige of a hundred victories. But 
 David's smooth stones were aimed with 
 no faltering hand, and the Goliaths grew 
 uneasy when he invited them to single 
 combat. Naturally he defied convention. 
 Why should such men be conventional } 
 They lead the way in thought and be- 
 haviour. Amersham's line in the House 
 showed an independence which baffled the 
 calculations of the managers of rival parties. 
 While he was posing as a Tory, he could 
 calmly propound doctrines at which 
 staunch Radicals winced, as revolutionary. 
 His was, he explained gravely, the modern, 
 the progressive, the democratic Conserva- 
 tism, the most truly Conservative of all.
 
 XI Five-o'clock Tea 151 
 
 Then, when Radicals had begun to deem 
 him their own, the reaction came and the 
 budding Revolutionist talked about change, 
 as Lord Eldon would have wished to talk. 
 Amersham was never heard to greater 
 advantage than when he was dashing the 
 hopes of silly enthusiasts, or exposing the 
 fallacies of a too sanguine reformer. The 
 improvement of humanity, he pointed out, 
 was not a topic about which wise men 
 could be either hopeful, confident or 
 enthusiastic. Its natural tendency was to 
 deteriorate. The attempt to check a 
 natural tendency might easily inten- 
 sify it. 
 
 Such a speaker naturally excited the 
 hopes and fears of either side. He need 
 not be despaired of : on the other hand, he 
 could not be relied on, except to essay ever 
 newer and bolder flights into the realm of 
 the unexpected. 
 
 * I hope,' Amersham had said, as he 
 wished Mrs. Montcalm good - bye, the 
 night of Lord Belmont's dinner, ' that I 
 may come some day and complete my 
 conversion. You must give me some
 
 152 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 more good advice. You know how much 
 I need it.' 
 
 * I will give you some tea, at anyrate,' 
 said Sibylla, * any evening after six.' 
 
 ' Tempting offer ! ' cried Amersham. 
 * It is the hour for conversions. I shall 
 certainly come.' 
 
 Sibylla was conscious of hoping that he 
 would do so. She felt that he would be 
 more discoverable, more manageable when 
 she had him tete-a-tete. In society he was 
 practically unapproachable, safeguarded by 
 a rampart of bantering wordliness. His 
 talk at her father's dinner and afterwards 
 had been obviously, almost ostentatiously, 
 superficial. Was his manner a blind to his 
 real feelings and character.? As he chose 
 to show himself, no one could seem less 
 amenable to management or conviction. 
 How to convince a man who protests that 
 he has no convictions, whose nearest ap- 
 proach to principle is political expediency, 
 whose deepest feeling lurks beneath a sneer .? 
 The undertaking seemed unpromising. 
 Sibylla's spirit of enterprise was piqued 
 by the difficulty of her task — by the
 
 XI Five-o'clock Tea 153 
 
 opposition with which she felt that her 
 approaches would be met. When she had 
 him to herself, she would have a better 
 chance of seeing the real man, and so be 
 one step on the road towards influencing 
 him. She felt an increasing desire to 
 exercise this influence. 
 
 She was pleased, therefore, when, a few 
 evenings later, Amersham was announced, 
 especially pleased that she happened, at the 
 moment, to have no other visitor. The 
 sort of talk she wanted would not admit of 
 an uncongenial third — of any third. It 
 was to be interesting, serious, perhaps 
 confidential. Sibylla was not accustomed 
 to fail in her social enterprises. She now 
 meant business. 
 
 But if Sibylla meant business, Amersham 
 meant pleasure, and speedily made his 
 hostess aware of his intention. He had 
 come to tea with her as the pleasantest 
 thing at the moment within his reach. He 
 was in an idle mood — in the best possible 
 spirits. He had been all the morning 
 at a dull Committee. An afternoon 
 sitting was dragging its dreary length along
 
 i^^ Sibylla chap. 
 
 — the very personification of profitless 
 bewilderment. He was exulting in the 
 sense of escape. The whips would be 
 angry ; in fact he had just escaped from 
 one who was extremely angry. Amersham 
 had received notice that he might be wanted 
 to speak. ' On the Serbonian Bog Reclama- 
 tion Scheme ! ' he cried, as he described the 
 scene to Mrs. Montcalm, ' if the member in 
 charge happened not to be at hand, and none 
 of the other leaders were inclined to speak ! 
 And when I had a chance of having tea 
 with you ! A man who could bear that 
 would be a slave, and deserve his fate. 
 The great thing in political life,' he went 
 on, ' is not to be submerged, or rather, 
 though you are submerged — for we are all 
 that — to get your head now and then above 
 water. One must come up sometimes out 
 of the mud to breathe and look about one. 
 The effect of party government is to keep 
 every one but the leaders deep in the mud, 
 and repress every effort to escape suffocation 
 as disloyalty.' 
 
 ' But you do not look in the least 
 suffocated,' said Sibylla, * or likely to
 
 XI 
 
 Five-o'clock Tea 155 
 
 become so. And the Serbonian Bog Project 
 is a tremendous affair. The Government 
 are to stand or fall by it, are they not ? 
 Mr. Egremont will be displeased. How 
 did you dare to come away .^ My husband 
 would not.' 
 
 * Ah ! ' said Amersham ; ' but then he 
 has convictions and a character to lose, 
 which I have not — and do not wish to have, 
 if it would prevent my coming to tea with 
 you whenever you will let me.' 
 
 ' But my business is to help you to earn 
 a character,' said Sibylla, ' a character for 
 political consistency on the right side — on 
 our side — not to abet you in playing truant, 
 as you are to-day. I believe I ought to 
 send you off to the House forthwith.' 
 
 ' Be merciful,' said Amersham. * The 
 first principle of education is indulgence at 
 the outset. Indulge me to-day. I will do 
 better next time. But you have no concep- 
 tion, Mrs. Montcalm, what a bore it all is. 
 But for a little occasional rebellion one 
 would perish of ennui — a bad way of dying, 
 is it not ? ' 
 
 ' A bad way ! ' cried Sibylla, with some
 
 156 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 impatience in her tone — ' a dull way ! 
 What have men like you to do with ennui ? 
 You, who have ambition, opportunity, 
 success achieved, the prospect of success to 
 come — everything that makes life interest- 
 ing?' 
 
 ' Yes, but,' answered Amersham, ' is one 
 sure that it is interesting — even with all 
 these good things thrown in ? That is the 
 horrid doubt/ 
 
 ' Who can seriously doubt it ? ' cried 
 Sibylla. ' It is only too interesting.' 
 
 * There have been several great author- 
 ities for the contrary opinion,' rejoined her 
 companion ; ' from Job downwards. Even 
 the great Achilles had to confess to Priam 
 that existence was a misfortune, and con- 
 queror and conquered alike the victims of 
 their doom — the doom of unhappiness. 
 The futility of existence was one of man's 
 earliest discoveries. Each generation has 
 made the discovery afresh.' 
 
 ' No,' cried Sibylla, * each generation 
 has found profounder interests, a higher 
 purpose, a sublimer hope. As for Achilles 
 and his melancholy, he was — what no
 
 XI Frje-o' clock Tea 157 
 
 reasonable being should be — in the sulks. 
 But you talk like a heathen, or that bad 
 order of heathen, a Frenchman of the 
 decadence. What do you believe in : ' 
 
 ' In the best of all possible worlds,' said 
 her companion, ' so long as Mrs. Montcalm 
 is its champion. By the bye, I was at 
 Oxford the other day, and saw in the 
 Sheldonian Theatre the oldest writing 
 known to man — some indefinitely pre- 
 historical old Egyptian king or other, 
 several dynasties before the flood — our 
 flood, you know. It is a lament over his 
 dead son, and its burthen is the complaint 
 that the world has grown dreadfully old, 
 that mankind is in its dotage, and the 
 sorrows and pleasures of existence alike a 
 passing phantasm. So it is an old storv — 
 old and bad.' 
 
 ' The worse it is, the more need for 
 good people to mend it,' said Sibylla. 
 
 ' That is what we coming politicians try 
 to do,' said her companion gailv. 
 
 ' And what is your programme — vours 
 and your set's .- ' 
 
 * Our programme ? Wilkes' programme
 
 158 Sibylla chap. 
 
 for the young M.P. — "Be as merry 
 as you can, as independent as you can, 
 and say the first thing that comes upper- 
 most." It is an excellent recipe. I have 
 tried it. No one can guess what line we 
 shall take. That is what makes us so 
 interesting.' 
 
 * And your theory of life } ' asked Sibylla, 
 * of the world } ' 
 
 ' A hotel — a bad hotel, crowded, bust- 
 ling, expensive. If you pay handsomely, 
 and make sufficient fuss, and insist perempt- 
 orily on good attendance, you will fare 
 moderately well. You get your dinner and 
 make the best of it. In a few hours you 
 pay your bill, inscribe your name in the 
 guest book, and are gone. Your rooms 
 are already filled with the next traveller's 
 luggage ! ' 
 
 ' What a simile ! ' cried Sibylla. * A 
 tourist's simile, a Cook's Tourist's. Sup- 
 pose, by way of a change, you were to 
 begin to talk rationally } I will bring you 
 to book. People say that you are a butter- 
 fly, and take friendship as lightly as 
 everything else.'
 
 XI Five-o'clock Tea 159 
 
 * The friendships of society/ said the 
 other, ' cannot be taken too lightly. They 
 are delightful : they solace the tedium of 
 life : they give it zest, excitement, some- 
 times a touch of romance. But they are 
 essentially fugitive. They bind us to 
 nothing — to constancy least of all.' 
 
 ' What a horrible way to talk,' cried 
 Sibylla, ' even in joke. For my part, 
 inconstancy in friendship is the unforgiv- 
 able sin.' 
 
 ' Why call it inconstancy ^ ' asked 
 Amersham. ' Circumstances decree that 
 certain people are to meet in certain 
 drawing-rooms, at certain balls, in a series 
 of country houses, every day for a few 
 weeks or months. Two of them find each 
 other out — blissful discovery — as congenial 
 companions. They are never bored with 
 each other — never at a loss for talk ; they 
 set each other's tongues loose, and each 
 other's ideas — they sharpen each other's 
 wits. A half-hour, otherwise the acme of 
 tedium, flies briskly away. They naturally 
 haunt each other. Human nature struggles 
 against boredom. They are pledged to
 
 1 60 Sibylla chap. 
 
 nothing ; they mean nothing except to be 
 amused. Nothing is more amusing than 
 variety. Then idiotic Society denounces 
 the woman as a flirt, and the man as a 
 trifler. How monstrously unjust ! ' 
 
 ' Unjust if you please/ said Sibylla ; 
 ' but is there not a risk sometimes of treat- 
 ing real friendships in this cavalier fashion, 
 and so being guilty of a sort of sacrilege .^ 
 We have to ask our hearts.' 
 
 ' I should not like to ask my heart any 
 such home-questions,' said the other, gaily : 
 ' they might be embarrassing ! But no ; I 
 have a clear conscience. I am the most 
 faithful of friends. Let me become your 
 friend and prove it.' 
 
 ' You talk,' said Sibylla, ' as if friend- 
 ship were an affair of will — a boon to be 
 conferred. It has to grow, surely, apart 
 from, sometimes in spite of, anything we 
 will. But it is nice that you should wish 
 ours to grow. I hope that it will.' 
 
 The Serbonian Bog Reclamation Project 
 was, as Sibylla said, a tremendous affair — 
 the biggest, fiercest, most inveterate of 
 modern controversies. By this time it lay
 
 XI Five-o'clock Tea i6i 
 
 buried under a superincumbent mass of 
 blue-books, debates, commissions, and en- 
 quiries, before which the average diligence 
 of humanity shrank abashed. The only- 
 thing known for certain about it was that 
 it was practically inexhaustible. Many 
 reputations had been lost in it ; several 
 Governments had come to grief in abortive 
 schemes of improvement. More than one 
 great Minister had had reason to regret the 
 day when he admitted it to a place in his 
 programme. Great Ministers, however, 
 cannot afford to pick and choose. The 
 Serbonians, a quick-witted race, appreciated 
 the advantages of their position and turned 
 them to the best account. Amersham*s 
 speech in the last Serbonian Bog Debate 
 had not been as serious as the occasion 
 demanded. He supported the Bill indeed, 
 but his support was of the flimsiest order. 
 Several passages in his speech conveyed to 
 Ministerial breasts the horrid suspicion that 
 they were being chaffed. Its indifference 
 was ostentatious, almost insolent. The 
 speech, none the less, was a success. A 
 crowd of charming women heard it with 
 
 VOL. I M
 
 1 62 Sibylla chap, xi 
 
 admiration behind the grille. It was 
 gossiped about that evening in a hundred 
 drawing-rooms as the one amusing incident 
 of a portentously dull debate. Amersham 
 was congratulated on his adroitness in com- 
 mitting himself to nothing beyond the 
 general principle of the desirability of 
 draining bogs. Naturally enough, he pre- 
 ferred drinking tea with Mrs. Montcalm 
 to the wearisome processes of a committee, 
 whose final goal had not come within the 
 scope of political vision.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 A CASE OF CONSCIENCE 
 
 This something-settled matter in his heart, 
 Whereon his brains still beating, puts him thus 
 From fashion of himself. 
 
 While Sibylla was experiencing the interest 
 and excitement of a new intimacy, her 
 husband's thoughts were less agreeably 
 occupied. 
 
 Ignore it as he might in his communica- 
 tions with his wife, belittle it as he tried to 
 do in his own private reflections, Charles 
 Montcalm found that Jennings' story was 
 likely to become a dominant factor in his 
 life. The topic which it suggested, once 
 admitted, presently became disagreeably 
 self-assertive. It obtruded itself with 
 obstinate, persistent recurrence. It mono- 
 polised attention. Till now the one thing
 
 1 64 Sibylla chap. 
 
 that Charles Montcalm had known about 
 his brother, since his flight from England, 
 had been the fact of his violent death at the 
 Eldorado Mine. There had seemed an end 
 of him. No clue to his previous life in 
 America presented itself. There was 
 nothing more to do or say, nothing but 
 silence, and, if possible, oblivion. Now 
 for the first time there had come a hint of 
 something more. There was a starting- 
 point for enquiry. Jennings' story that 
 Frank Montcalm had landed in New 
 York in company with a woman, whom he 
 had subsequently married, if it could be 
 substantiated, gave a hint, a vague hint 
 indeed, but still enough to serve as nucleus 
 for more solid information. It rested on 
 rumour. What obligation, Charles asked 
 himself, does such a rumour impose.^ It 
 was, after all, nothing but bare conjecture. 
 Is an honourable man bound to act on 
 conjectures.^ Is he, as a rational being, 
 with duties and responsibilities in other 
 directions, justified in so acting .? Mr. 
 Strutt, with whom Montcalm discussed the 
 subject at length, was vehement against
 
 XII 
 
 A Case of Conscience 165 
 
 any action being taken. Great expenditure 
 had, he said, been already incurred in 
 remedying — in obliterating the conse- 
 quences of Frank's misbehaviour. That 
 expenditure had been, in one sense, wasted. 
 Nothing had come of it. Why throw 
 good money after bad.^ Why waste any 
 more .^ It was mere romance, the solicitor 
 urged, and Mr. Montcalm was not rich 
 enough to be romantic. There was a 
 limit to everything. He had more than 
 reached that limit when he honoured his 
 brother's forged bill. Old Mr. Montcalm 
 had shown his deliberate intention by his 
 will. He had destroyed it, as they both 
 knew, only because he believed it to be un- 
 necessary. He had died before his ill-con- 
 sidered act could be repaired. Why should 
 Charles start an enquiry, which his father 
 had not considered necessary — which was 
 certain to be costly — which would probably 
 be abortive, and which, if not abortive, could 
 produce nothing but disaster. This, if 
 ever there was one, was a case in which it 
 was well to leave well alone, and to let sleep- 
 ing dogs lie. Why stir a dirty business ^
 
 1 66 Sibylla chap. 
 
 ' Because,' said Charles, ' my brother 
 may be at the bottom of it — my brother, 
 or those whose interests, for his sake, my 
 father's, and my own, I am bound to 
 protect.' 
 
 ' The matter is dead,' persisted Mr. 
 Strutt. ' It will not come to life unless 
 you revive it. Surely no rule of conscience 
 obliges you to do so ? ' 
 
 ' Well,' said Montcalm, ' my conscience 
 does oblige me, and that settles the 
 question. It is a matter of duty. No 
 misconduct on my brother's part could 
 relieve me of it. If Frank married, as 
 this man asserts, there may be those who 
 have rights under my father's will. If 
 there was a son, that son is entitled to the 
 estate. It would be robbery on my part to 
 keep him out of it ; it is robbery, just as 
 much, not to help him to his rights. I 
 will never be guilty of it. Who can say 
 how my father would have acted, had he 
 known of such a son's existence, or sus- 
 pected it } The last thing that he ever said 
 to me was, that if Frank had come back 
 and asked for forgiveness, he would have
 
 XII A Case of Coitscience 167 
 
 forgiven him. In fact he did forgive him. 
 Surely it is clear that, as my father's 
 executor, I am bound to my own con- 
 science to take sedulous care that my 
 brother's child, if there be one, gets what- 
 ever my father's settlement has given him.' 
 * Your brother's child ! ' cried Mr. Strutt, 
 in consternation ; * you will have plenty 
 of them about you if once it is known that 
 you are on the search. Pray, Mr. 
 Montcalm, hold your hand while you can. 
 There is another thing, too,' added the 
 solicitor, with the embarrassed air of a man 
 whose conscience obliges him to say some- 
 thing which he would rather leave unsaid ; 
 * you must forgive me for saying it. I am 
 bound to speak out to you. The decision 
 which you are now forming does not 
 concern yourself alone. It may revolu- 
 tionise your life. It may involve you in 
 troubles of which no one can guess the end. 
 It may ruin a career of honour and public 
 usefulness. It is a tremendous, as I regard 
 it, unnecessary, if not unjustifiable, step, 
 even as regards yourself. But you do not 
 stand alone. Ought you not, at any rate,
 
 1 68 Sibylla chap. 
 
 before you take it, to consult those whose 
 interests are involved just as much as your 
 own ? ' 
 
 ' I regard it as a mere matter of honesty/ 
 said Montcalm, with a decisive air that put 
 an end to further talk ; ' there is no room 
 for doubt, and none, therefore, for con- 
 sultation. We will discuss it no longer, if 
 you please, Mr. Strutt ; you are right to 
 say whatever you think that I ought to 
 hear. But it does not alter my opinion. 
 I must act on my own responsibility, and 
 by my own lights. I have decided to 
 follow up every obtainable clue to the 
 utmost possible length. I do not care 
 what it costs. I should like you to see 
 Jennings and find out all he knows, and 
 get what help he can give you : and 
 I wish some one to be sent to America, 
 to the Eldorado Mine, to see if, by 
 chance, any sort of hint may be gathered 
 there.* 
 
 Mr. Strutt took his instructions and 
 went, himself, to Scotland. In the course 
 of the following week he wrote Charles an 
 account of his proceedings. He had had a
 
 XII A Case of Conscience 169 
 
 long interview with Jennings, and found 
 that all he knew was the merest rumour, 
 the gossip of some returned Irish emigrant, 
 who, in passing through Liverpool, had 
 happened to see a member of Lizzie 
 Marsh's family, by whom the news had 
 been brought to Belhaven. It was all third- 
 hand hearsay. No one had the faintest 
 idea of what had become of the Irish 
 emigrant, or how to get upon his track. 
 Jennings, Mr. Strutt reported, seemed a 
 mere fanatic, without a single qualification 
 for sifting truth from falsehood. Having 
 been deserted by his sweetheart, he had 
 constructed a conjectural grievance against 
 some supposed wrongdoer. There was 
 no grain of solid fact in Jennings' 
 rhapsodies, except that Frank Montcalm 
 was said to have known the girl. Nor 
 could anything be discovered in other 
 directions. Mr. Strutt had made diligent 
 enquiries at the offices of mail companies 
 and emigration agencies, but without 
 result. Frank Montcalm, it was certain, 
 would have travelled under an assumed 
 name. There was nothing which sug-
 
 lyo Sibylla chap. 
 
 gested a trace of the fugitives. There 
 was no clue to follow. The enquiry, Mr. 
 Strutt presumed, must now be allowed to 
 close. 
 
 Charles Montcalm was not to be so 
 easily discouraged. There was the chance 
 of something being discovered at the 
 Eldorado Mine, and Mr. Strutt's emissary 
 was accordingly despatched with orders 
 to search diligently for anything which 
 might throw light on Frank's previous life, 
 and help to clear up the question of his 
 marriage. It was in vain that Mr. Strutt 
 protested against the futility of the enquiry. 
 * If there had been a wife, we should have 
 heard of her before this,' he said ; *the wives 
 and widows of men like your brother are not 
 so slow to make themselves felt. I shudder 
 to think what the wife, in this instance, 
 would be likely to be, if we were unlucky 
 enough to discover her.' 
 
 ' My great wish is that she should be 
 discovered if she is in existence,' said 
 Charles, with more show of temper than 
 was usual with him ; ' and I look to you 
 to further it. It will be time enough to
 
 XII A Case of Conscience 171 
 
 shudder when you have found her. Mean- 
 while, pray instruct your agent to spare no 
 effort in the search. I will not do the 
 thing by halves.' 
 
 The enquiry at the Eldorado Mine, 
 however, promised as little success as that 
 in Scotland. Mr. Strutt's confidential 
 agent wrote that he could discover nothing. 
 He had seen the police commissioner, by 
 whom the inquest on Frank Montcalm had 
 been conducted. This gentleman, a busy, 
 hard-worked official, on being supplied with 
 the date, and referring to his books, was 
 able to remember the inquest. Frank 
 Montcalm was recorded as a troublesome, 
 dangerous character, a hard drinker, an 
 inveterate gambler, a leading spirit in a 
 bad set, known to the police by frequent 
 outbreaks of lawlessness. He was generally 
 near the confines of trouble and frequently 
 over the line. Beyond this the commis- 
 sioner could give no information. The 
 witnesses in the case had disappeared. 
 There had been few; for the evidence 
 clearly showed that the dead man had fallen 
 by violence, and that the murderer had
 
 172 Sibylla chap. 
 
 fled. * Our criminal administration up 
 here,' the commissioner told the agent, 
 ' was, at that time, of the roughest. It 
 was all that we could do to hold our own. 
 Murderous assaults were of daily occurrence. 
 The affair attracted little attention. Such 
 things were too common.' 
 
 The agent wrote that he was at a loss 
 to suggest any further clue. He was 
 completely baffled, and proposed — unless 
 otherwise instructed — to return home at 
 once. 
 
 Meanwhile the revival of a hateful topic 
 and the anxieties of the enquiry began to 
 tell on Montcalm's nerves. He was doing 
 the right thing, he told himself. Life 
 would be unendurable if he had failed to do 
 it ; but, even now, it was almost unendur- 
 able. The pleasant things of existence had 
 ceased to please. Politics had lost their 
 flavour. His wife only reminded him of a 
 subject which she served to make more 
 full of horror. It was on her account that 
 he disliked it so intensely. It was in vain 
 that he buried it deep in the secret places 
 of his heart. Its effect was discernible in
 
 XII A Case of Conscience 173 
 
 increased coldness of manner, in reserve 
 which, more than ever, defied every attempt 
 to penetrate it. When a man has a secret 
 locked up in one chamber of his heart, he 
 can give but a cold welcome to visitors to 
 the rest of the house. One topic so easily 
 leads to another. He never knows at what 
 point embarrassment may arise. He is 
 uneasy, suspicious, on his guard. He 
 entrenches himself in silence. Then only 
 he feels secure. So Charles Montcalm un- 
 consciously repelled his wife's endeavour to 
 woo him to a confidential mood. Sibylla 
 was chilled by the sense of failure. Her 
 husband was becoming daily more hope- 
 lessly remote, more unapproachable. Each 
 failure on Sibylla's part put them further 
 apart. 
 
 There was another cause, if Sibylla 
 could but have known it, which was be- 
 ginning now to intensify her husband's 
 reserve. He was the last man to be 
 jealous. It was an infirmity to which he 
 felt no leaning, and for which, in others, 
 he felt little indulgence. It was a low, 
 degrading feeling, and, in the case of
 
 174 Sibylla chap. 
 
 such a wife as Sibylla — a wife of whose 
 loyalty he felt as assured as of his own 
 existence — it became fatuous — an indignity, 
 almost an outrage. Short of jealousy, how- 
 ever, it was possible for Charles Montcalm 
 to be haunted by a certain aching sensation 
 that there was a space in his wife's thoughts 
 which he failed to fill, and where another 
 was more congenial than himself. With- 
 out the- barest approach to watching, he 
 could scarcely shut his eyes to the fact that 
 Amersham and his wife had become ex- 
 tremely intimate. He had come home, 
 more than once, from the House and found 
 Amersham at his wife's tea table, engaged, 
 apparently, in familiar, interesting, con- 
 fidential talk. Sibylla had greeted him 
 with affection, Amersham with perfect 
 unrestraint and cordiality. It was evident 
 that they had nothing to conceal. Yet 
 Montcalm felt a horrid consciousness of 
 being de trop. The conversation, suddenly 
 interrupted, refused to resume its course, 
 despite the obvious efforts of Sibylla to 
 welcome her husband with kindness and 
 conjugal devotion. When two friends
 
 XII A Case of Conscience 175 
 
 have been talking in a certain vein of 
 thought and feehng, it is impossible, on the 
 arrival of a third person, to pass into 
 another key without the momentary discord, 
 which covers the transition. So all parties 
 felt a pang of discomfort ; all were vexed 
 to feel it, for the consciences of all were 
 clear. No one harboured a dishonourable 
 thought. Why should there be discomfort.^ 
 Montcalm had gone back to the House 
 sometimes, oppressed by the reflection 
 that Amersham — a younger man than him- 
 self, more brilliant, more companionable, 
 more gay, more attractive — was becoming 
 an influence in his wife's existence, and, 
 possibly, in his own — a force that had to 
 be reckoned with — an anxiety, a possible 
 danger for himself — for Sibylla. Amer- 
 sham had gifts in which Charles Montcalm 
 felt himself greatly defective, — brightness, 
 versatility, sentiment, and fun. Montcalm 
 appreciated the force of fun in other men ; 
 he admired his wife's gaiety ; but he could 
 as easily have flown as himself been gay. 
 Amersham had splendid spirits. Mont- 
 calm's stood at a steady \tyt\^ seldom
 
 176 Sibylla chap. 
 
 sinking to melancholy, never rising far 
 above it. A danger now loomed on the 
 horizon. Sibylla was, in a hundred ways, 
 a perfectly delightful woman, transcend- 
 ently delightful. Montcalm had frequently, 
 since his marriage, felt a new access of 
 admiration and devotion. He could recall 
 scenes in which she had acted or spoken 
 or looked in a manner that he at the 
 moment, and now in retrospect, felt to be 
 simply adorable. Other people, no doubt, 
 would feel the same charm — would be 
 prompted, too, to offer adoration. What 
 would be the effect of such adoration upon 
 her.'' What if ever it came to pass that 
 his own ascendency in her affections should 
 be endangered.^ Life had brought him 
 already some unexpectedly bitter things. 
 Suppose that it should bring him this 
 crowning calamity ! Was it already within 
 the range of possibility that this misfortune 
 should befall him .^ This was the thought 
 which, deep in the recesses of his soul, was 
 beginning to torture Charles Montcalm. 
 It blotted out the day, it turned all things 
 to night and chaos. He despised himself
 
 XII A Case of Conscience 177 
 
 for harbouring it. He knew that it was 
 baseless, irrational. Yet the idea persistently 
 presented itself. His fancy kept playing 
 with it. He w^as indignant at his own 
 infirmity, an unworthy weakness. He 
 would, at any rate, conceal it. He would 
 be kinder, politer, more courteous than 
 ever to the man whom he was allowing 
 himself to suspect as a possible rival. Such 
 a suspicion was degrading. It would be 
 ignominious to betray it, or to do or say 
 anything which could be construed as 
 betraying it. He would show an unshaken 
 equanimity. It was easy enough to do this 
 with Amersham : but with one's wife ! How, 
 when one is harbouring such a suspicion, 
 can one behave, so that the delicate sense of 
 love should perceive no difference, should 
 be unconscious of constraint, of effort, of 
 intercourse less free, less unstudied than of 
 old, of a subtle something which has grown 
 up between husband and wife, an imper- 
 ceptible barrier, but none the less real, none 
 the less effective .^ So it came about that 
 talk between Montcalm and his wife some- 
 times languished. There were distressing 
 
 VOL. I N
 
 178 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. XI] 
 
 pauses in the conversation, which used to 
 flow so free and strong. Each had some- 
 thing to conceal. Montcalm harboured 
 the germ of a suspicion ; Sibylla's soul 
 was withering under a sense of isolation.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SOULS 
 
 This is such a creature, 
 Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal 
 Of all professors else, make proselytes 
 Of who she but bid follow. 
 
 There are occasions in the history of every 
 friendship, when, without conscious inten- 
 tion or wish on either side — sometimes 
 despite them — intimacy takes a sudden leap 
 forward. A new vantage-ground is gained. 
 Some barrier is passed ; some dividing, ob- 
 scuring cloud is swept away. Two natures 
 — they know not how or why — have drawn 
 sensibly closer to each other — are more to 
 each other than they were yesterday. 
 Delightful sensation ! not without its 
 questionings, its scruples, its anxieties — 
 but still delightful !
 
 i8o Sibylla chap. 
 
 Amersham had now an agreeable con- 
 sciousness of having passed through such a 
 stage in his friendship with Sibylla. He 
 could not trace the process ; certain it was 
 that he had advanced in intimacy. The truth 
 was that he presented the attraction which 
 at this moment Sibylla felt to be especially 
 powerful — the offer of cordial and sympa- 
 thetic companionship. He wished to be her 
 friend. He valued her opinion ; he desired 
 her esteem. Such an approach is irresistible 
 to a heart that is aching for want of sym- 
 pathy at home. Charles Montcalm was any- 
 thing rather than sympathetic. He was 
 engrossed in his work to a degree that his 
 wife felt to be distinctly selfish. He wanted 
 no one to share it ; he resented intrusion 
 into the mental world in which he lived 
 alone. He guarded his family secret — 
 whatever it might be — with jealous care. 
 No one — not his wife, certainly — might 
 hope to share it. Such a man's wife is 
 likely to be oppressed by a sense of the 
 solitariness of existence. 
 
 Into this void Amersham's sociability 
 poured like a refreshing flood upon a
 
 XIII The Communion of Souls i8i 
 
 thirsty soil. It refreshed, revived, brought 
 new life with it. Here, at any rate, was a 
 companion, who found pleasure in exchange 
 of thought, in comparison of ideas, in frank 
 expression of feeling. Sibylla was weary of 
 isolation. She longed for companionship, 
 geniality, enlivenment, kindness. Every 
 healthy nature feels such a want. Amer- 
 sham brought all these good things in 
 opportune abundance. 
 
 Nothing surprised Sibylla more than the 
 contrast between the Amersham of society 
 — the brilliant creature of drawing-rooms 
 and little dinners — and the man who was 
 now rapidly becoming her confidential 
 friend. His air with her was as far re- 
 moved as possible from the audacious 
 flippancy with which he confronted the 
 world at large. The cup of tea which he 
 drank in her drawing-room might have 
 been a magic potion, administered by an 
 enchantress, so altered a being did Amer- 
 sham appear. The fact was that he had 
 been from the first moment of their meet- 
 ing delighted with his companion. He 
 had been thinking about her ever since.
 
 
 
 1 82 Sibylla chap. 
 
 He was bent on conciliating her, on cultivat- 
 ing her friendship, on finding and touching 
 a sympathetic chord. 
 
 Under such fostering conditions intimacy 
 grew apace. Sibylla began to discover that 
 they were nearer to each other in thought 
 and feeling than she had at first supposed. 
 Despite superficial differences, there was a 
 fellow-feeling between them. Stripped of 
 its cynical garb, Amersham's view of life 
 was not far removed from her own — as of 
 something sad, unsatisfying, and disap- 
 pointing, even to those best supplied with 
 its blessings — full of horrors to the less 
 fortunate. Some things which Amersham 
 said seemed shocking ; but, when their 
 meaning was understood, Sibylla was fain 
 to confess to herself that there was little 
 real occasion to be shocked. He, like her- 
 self, cherished dreams of the ideal revolu- 
 tion, so many ages waited for, which is to 
 bring bliss and refreshment to a weary 
 world. Both of them were convinced that, 
 if life is to be worth living, it must be 
 stirred with better ingredients than from 
 the average constituents of society. So
 
 XIII The Communion of Souls 183 
 
 much in it is dull and petty, so much is 
 commonplace, so much sordid, base and 
 bad. Short of the criminal classes, there 
 are the semi-criminal — the odious people, 
 the heartless, the mean, the cruel, the 
 treacherous. The great thing is not to 
 come across them, or, if needs be, to fight 
 them courageously on behalf of the op- 
 pressed, the weak. In the great world 
 around one, there is such dire need of help 
 on every side, if any one can but give it 
 rightly, and such delight in giving — the true 
 enthusiasm of humanity. Sibylla drank 
 largely of this delight; she was an enthusiast. 
 
 Amersham shared her discontent with 
 the world, if not her enthusiasm for its im- 
 provement, or her belief in its improva- 
 bility. In any case he was delighted to 
 let Sibylla try her hand at improving him. 
 
 Sibylla had, one day, been hearing his 
 political confession — his apology and ex- 
 planation of a recent vote, to which she had, 
 at first, vehemently objected. Amersham 
 defended himself with earnestness, and took 
 the greatest pains to win his companion to 
 his view.
 
 184 Sibylla chap. 
 
 ' No,' said Sibylla, ' I am not convinced ; 
 but I see that you are — seriously convinced 
 — that your advocacy is honest. That is 
 what one really cares about in one's 
 friends.' 
 
 * Ah ! ' said Amersham. ' You care. 
 That is so charming. You take an interest 
 in one's career. I shall be eternally grate- 
 ful. No woman has ever been interested in 
 me before, except as a matrimonial specula- 
 tion ; but you are so delightfully dis- 
 interested.' 
 
 ^ No ! ' said Sibylla, laughingly, ' I am 
 anything but disinterested : I want you for 
 our party. My special mission is to secure 
 you ; I have always told you so. But, 
 apart from that^ I feel an interest in your 
 conversion. It is in the right order of 
 things that you should belong to us.' 
 
 ' I know that you are perfectly dis- 
 interested and perfectly sincere,' said 
 Amersham with an air of enthusiasm ; 
 ' that is why I prize your friendship as a 
 precious possession. You are such a help 
 to me.' 
 
 * Ah, but,' said Sibylla, ' I do not feel so
 
 XIII The Communion of Souls 185 
 
 sure of that. Sometimes I feel as if I could 
 give you least help where I should most 
 wish to give it.' 
 
 ' Indeed,' said Amersham ; ' you help 
 me immensely. I am ten times better 
 whenever I have been with you — better, 
 happier, more interested, more everything 
 that one ought to be and is not. You have 
 my salvation on your hands.' 
 
 ^ The first step towards salvation,' said 
 Sibylla, ' is to hope for the best — to wish 
 to hope ; not to preach the dismal lesson of 
 despair.' 
 
 ' Yes, I know,' said her companion ; 
 * dismal and degrading, is it not ^ I feel 
 ashamed of it when I am with you and 
 catch your delightful hopefulness. But 
 the world, after all, is not a brilliant 
 success. Despite all its clever discoveries, 
 humanity has had a bad time of it, and 
 may be going to have a worse. Some 
 agreeable Frenchman or other described 
 man as the cleverest and worst-behaved of 
 the animals.' 
 
 ' Treason ! ' cried Sibylla. ' Think of 
 him as Hamlet did — as the paragon of the
 
 1 86 Sibylla chap. 
 
 Universe, noble in reason, in action like an 
 angel, in apprehension like a God.' 
 
 ' That is not the sort of man whom one 
 meets at the House,' said Amersham ; ' our 
 apprehension is not God -like, nor our 
 behaviour like any angels except the fallen 
 ones. As for reason, it is such a poor affair, 
 that all sensible people have, long ago, 
 abandoned argument as a method. One 
 sees men struggling against their fate, 
 constantly led astray, falling this way or 
 that. They cannot help it. They are so 
 constructed that they can no more argue 
 straight than a ball with a bias can run 
 straight on the lawn. One has a bias one- 
 self, and cannot roll straight any more than 
 the rest, if one only knew it. Happily 
 one does not.' 
 
 * Yes,' said Sibylla ; ' I know mine, and 
 allow for it. I am on the side of the angels.' 
 
 * Then,' cried Amersham, * I will be on 
 the side of the angels too, — on their side 
 and yours.' 
 
 * Poor angels ! ' said the other, * what 
 will they think of the alliance ^ But you 
 must discard your pessimism. That is an
 
 XIII The Communion of Souls 187 
 
 essentially unangelic mood. The use of 
 great men is to make the world better, and 
 the greatest have been those who have loved 
 their species the best. You seem to dis- 
 like it.' 
 
 ' There is much to dislike,' said Amer- 
 sham, * and much to pity. Man made a 
 bad start of it at the outset and has been 
 doing badly ever since. The gods must pity 
 him surely — his ghastly blunders, his savage 
 moodsj his odious superstitions, his fanatic 
 delusions — what a story it has been and is! ' 
 
 * You forget its sublime side,' said Sibylla, 
 * the saints, the martyrs, the heroes — the 
 good people who ennoble their generation 
 and make life worth living.' 
 
 ' Is it worth living .? ' said Amersham, a 
 sudden melancholy in his tone. ' Look at 
 its catastrophes, its fragile tenure of happi- 
 ness, most fragile to the happiest — a thread, 
 which any of a thousand accidents may snap 
 in a moment ! And it is of such accidents 
 that life consists. Given its conditions, it 
 may be a mistake to cultivate our feelings 
 as we do — to have any deep feelings at all. 
 They involve so much suffering '
 
 1 88 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 * On the other hand,' said Sibylla, ' so 
 much pleasure, such rapture. Surely you 
 would not give up these ? ' 
 
 ' One does not give them up,' said 
 Amersham, ' and so the world goes on. 
 But it might be sensible to do so. The 
 Stoic's idea has much to say for itself. 
 Suffering is the fate of all, and to cultivate 
 endurance the aim of the wise man. The 
 first step towards endurance is indiffer- 
 ence.' 
 
 ' A horrible doctrine ! ' cried Sibylla, 
 * What has thrown you into such a gloomy 
 mood.f^ For my part I dislike Stoics and 
 disbelieve in Stoicism. It is too stagey. 
 The Roman Statesman opening his veins, 
 gracefully despatching himself, on a man- 
 date from the Emperor, and making a polite 
 and appropriate observation ! I was reading 
 of Seneca's death this morning. He could 
 not achieve suicide, in proper stoical fashion, 
 for the excellent reason that he had not got 
 a drop of blood in his veins. It was so 
 characteristic. Philosophy had dried him 
 up — fine sentences and all.' 
 
 ' Perhaps we are drying up ! ' cried
 
 XIII The Communion of Souls 189 
 
 Amersham with a laugh ; ' but one thing, 
 happily, does not dry up — the devotion 
 which a noble woman inspires in her friends 
 — the best sort of inspiration for feeble 
 hearts and a decadent century. Who could 
 despair when Mrs. Montcalm is hopeful, or 
 falter when she preaches enthusiasm.? So 
 far, at any rate, I am an enthusiast.'
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 l'homme serieux 
 
 He loves no plays, 
 As thou dost, Antony ; he hears no music ; 
 Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort 
 As if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit 
 That could be moved to smile at any thing. 
 
 One of the unwholesome fallacies which 
 endanger married life, is the flattering 
 unction, laid to a misguided husband's 
 soul, that it is, in the nature of things, 
 possible for him to be equally well loved 
 when he has ceased to be lovable — that a 
 man may be morose, secretive, despotic, in 
 fact detestable, and yet reign undisturbed 
 in his wife's affections. Woman's inex- 
 haustible long-suffering, her power of 
 bearing in submission every species of ill- 
 treatment, and of smiling serenely through
 
 CHAP. XIV U Homme Serieux 191 
 
 endless vexations and humiliations, is largely 
 responsible for this delusion. But a delusion 
 it is. Every unlovely act and word is a 
 stab to love, for love is the harmony of 
 two well-attuned hearts. When the har- 
 mony is jarred, love itself has no charm 
 to shield the sensitive ear from the discord 
 which ensues. 
 
 One of Sibylla's sorrows, just now, was 
 the growing consciousness of such discords 
 — a terrified sense that there were moments 
 when she loved her husband less than 
 before — moments of disappointment, vex- 
 ation, annoyance, distress, when she could 
 hardly, in a strict sense, be said to love 
 him at all. The shrine where she had so 
 devoutly worshipped was growing dark 
 and cold : the flame was sinking low. 
 Where all had once been brightness and a 
 genial warmth, there was a growing heap 
 of dust and ashes. Charles, by cold act 
 and word, by reserve, by careless neglect 
 of love's observances, by a denial of love's 
 rights, was constantly adding to the heap. 
 Sibylla's heart grew cold at the thought of 
 approaching disaster and her powerlessness
 
 192 Sibylla chap. 
 
 to arrest it. It was the march of doom — 
 quiet, merciless, irresistible. 
 
 When matters have reached such a 
 stage, shortcomings, which in happier 
 times could be ignored or made light of, 
 force themselves into importance, and 
 aggravate the embarrassment of the situ- 
 ation. Charles's matter-of-fact, prosaic 
 view of things had been a recognised joke 
 between them all. Lady Holte, who 
 particularly resented his lack of mirth, 
 and his incapacity for the sort of mild 
 flirtation for which she found the general- 
 ity of mankind prepared, had been accus- 
 tomed to air her pleasantries on the subject 
 with a freedom which sometimes taxed her 
 cousin's good nature, and Charles's polite- 
 ness. 
 
 * Here, Charles,' she had said, one 
 morning, when caught, curled up on a 
 sofa by the drawing-room fire, immersed 
 in a Review, ' here is just the sort of 
 Shakespearian critic you would like — Von 
 Hartman. Juliet, he says, was a naughty, 
 forward girl, of whom German maidens 
 would do well to beware ; and Romeo a
 
 XIV U Homme Serieux 193 
 
 misdemeanant and trespasser, who, under 
 the German Police Act, would have got 
 a fine of twenty -five thalers and three 
 weeks' imprisonment/ 
 
 ' Excellent criticism ! ' said Montcalm, 
 looking down at his assailant with un- 
 perturbed solemnity ; ' yes, I approve it. 
 Romeo was a philanderer. There is a 
 practical side, even to Shakespeare. There 
 was an old woman who summarised the 
 impressions made on her by the Prince 
 of Denmark by observing, with tears in 
 her eyes, " Them Hamlets had a deal of 
 trouble." ' 
 
 ' Come and sit down and tell me another 
 story like that,' said the temptress ; ' you 
 might for once.' 
 
 ' Impossible ! ' said her companion. ' I 
 have a heap of letters to write. By the 
 way, when you have finished your studies, 
 will you send me the Edinburgh into the 
 library } I am in the middle of an article 
 on bi-metallism.' 
 
 ' You would not care to explain bi- 
 metallism to me ? ' asked Lady Holte, 
 some impudent flashes of merriment play- 
 
 VOL. I o
 
 I04 Sibylla chap. 
 
 ing round eyes and lips ; ' you can tell 
 me all about it.' 
 
 'That I shall do better when I have 
 finished the article,' said Montcalm, with 
 a stately bow. ' Meanwhile, pray take 
 your leisure with Von Hartman.' 
 
 Nor was it in the family circle alone 
 that Montcalm's increasing gravity began 
 to be observed. 
 
 ' Why does the great Duke Humphrey knit his 
 
 brows, 
 As frowning at the pleasures of the world ?' 
 
 Miss Everard, with her habitual sauci- 
 ness, had asked her companion, as Charles, 
 who was to meet his wife on his way 
 home from the House, stood in the door- 
 way of a crowded drawing-room — pale, 
 self-centred, unconscious, his thoughts, 
 apparently, a hundred miles away from his 
 surroundings. ' The Government are in 
 a bad way, we all know, but why look so 
 sad about it .^ ' 
 
 ' The cares of State,' said Edenbridge, 
 who was standing, fast blocked, behind her, 
 ' the business of a rising politician. You
 
 XIV L' Homme Serieux 195 
 
 must take it seriously. The first qualifi- 
 cation of a successful augur is not to smile 
 when he meets another augur. And there 
 are a great many augurs here to-night.' 
 
 ' Yes, indeed ; you amongst them. It 
 is tremendously official. We must take 
 care. Well, if political success is as 
 solemn a business as that, I am not sorry 
 to be a woman. Mr. Montcalm knows 
 his business, I suppose.' 
 
 'He does,' said Edenbridge, senten- 
 tiously. ' The paths of glory lead but 
 from the grave.' 
 
 But the gravity which the outer world 
 could afford to joke about, was no jok- 
 ing matter in Charles Montcalm's home. 
 Sibylla felt it increasingly oppressive. She 
 had not till now fully appreciated how 
 bright, in comparison, how gay, how light 
 in hand her father was, how enlivening 
 a tonic his companionship. Life looks 
 portentous when you take it point-blank, 
 with no alleviating touch of humour. No 
 man, and certainly no woman, can live on 
 bread alone — not even on the honest, 
 home-baked loaf of good sense, high prin-
 
 196 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 ciples and laudable intentions. Charles 
 Montcalm was designed for a patriot. 
 He was public-spirited to the core. He 
 loved his country ; he meant to serve it. 
 No amount of trouble, of sacrifice, was too 
 great that would enable him to do so. 
 But the business of patriotism is a grave 
 one for the looker-on. It needs relief. 
 The patriot should now and then unbend. 
 It is a comfort to think of Mr. Pitt, in 
 a holiday moment, digging Wilberforce's 
 hat into the flower-beds. It would not 
 have occurred to any one to take such a 
 liberty with one of Charles Montcalm's 
 hats. 
 
 And now, as so often happens, when the 
 relations of husband and wife have ceased to 
 be perfectly comfortable, the malignity of 
 circumstance lent its aid to enhance the 
 difficulty and precipitate a crisis. 
 
 Charles Montcalm was not what Dr. 
 Johnson would have called a clubbable man. 
 He had no small talk, none of the easy 
 sociability which renders club-life congenial, 
 and makes a man popular among his fellows. 
 His shyness took the form of a reserve,
 
 XIV U Homme Serieux 197 
 
 which even his intimates felt to be chilling, 
 and which the world at large recognised as 
 'stand off.' He shrank from familiarity. 
 Those whom he thus repelled accused him 
 of standing on his dignity. So Montcalm, 
 when he went to his club, often found it a 
 solitude. He generally went, however, on 
 his way to the House, looked at the Papers 
 and Reviews, and exchanged a few sentences 
 with some of his Parliamentary companions. 
 
 One afternoon as he sat reading, deep 
 sunk in the luxury of a large arm-chair, he 
 became aware of a conversation behind him, 
 which suddenly arrested his attention. 
 
 ' There goes Amersham ! ' cried one of 
 a group of idlers, who stood in the bay- 
 window, overlooking St. James's Street, and 
 welcomed any topic from without which 
 was likely to aid a halting, desultory talk. 
 'What the deuce becomes of him all the 
 afternoon .? He is never to be found in the 
 House. He never comes here. He is not 
 a whist player. There must be a mystery.' 
 
 ' As mystery is one word for woman, 
 there probably is,' said a bystander ; ' but 
 it is not a difficult mystery to solve. He is
 
 198 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 going to consult his Egeria. He is so 
 affectionate.' 
 
 * Of course,' cried a profane young 
 diplomatist, who at this moment joined 
 the circle, * nowadays every smart young 
 gentleman has some kind friend whose 
 mission it is to give him five-o'clock tea 
 and help and guidance.' 
 
 ' Help and guidance ! ' said another of 
 the group. ' Is that what they call it } 
 That sounds extremely smart.' 
 
 * Yes,' said the diplomat, ' Amersham is 
 above everything a smart young gentleman. 
 He likes to be in the fashion, and he adores 
 five-o'clock tea. It is the only meal, he says, 
 that a civilised being can enjoy. But the 
 virtue of tea, we all know, depends entirely 
 on who makes it. It is so easy to make it 
 badly. Who is the fascinating tea-maker } ' 
 
 Montcalm got up and walked away 
 before the question could be answered. 
 He would not acknowledge to himself that 
 he dreaded to hear the answer. What 
 mattered to him the random, ribald talk 
 of a chance group of gossips in a club 
 window.^ Still, the horrid possibility kept
 
 XIV UHomme Serieux 199 
 
 recurring to his imagination that the 
 explanation of Amersham's daily dis- 
 appearance from his accustomed haunts was 
 the true one, and that the woman was 
 Sibylla. He had more than once found 
 Amersham by his wife's tea-table, chatting 
 on, it seemed, in pleasant unconsciousness 
 of the flight of time. Could it be that it 
 was with her that his afternoons were spent ^ 
 that his habit of doing so was known in 
 society, and that men dared to breathe her 
 name as the heroine of a vulgar flirtation — 
 her name — Sibylla, the very embodiment of 
 all that was high-minded, refined and 
 scrupulously, exquisitely pure .^ Life would 
 indeed have ceased to be worth living if this 
 were so. All intrusion into domestic 
 privacy — the sacred privacy of married life 
 — was an abomination. But intrusion of 
 this kind — the intrusion of the frivolous 
 searcher for scandal or amusement, of the 
 careless gossip - monger, of the amused 
 onlooker, who see nothing but fun in the 
 ruin of happy homes and honourable lives ! 
 It was horrible even in imagination. 
 
 Montcalm sat stubbornly through the
 
 200 Sibylla chap. 
 
 debate that night, his hat over his brow, his 
 arms crossed, biting his nether Hp, lost to 
 all around him. There are horrors in 
 married life — possible horrors — of which he 
 had never dreamed. They were becoming 
 more than possible. They were close at 
 hand. A deep gloom was settling on his 
 soul. 
 
 There was a great entertainment that 
 evening, a quasi-political function which it 
 was desirable to make as brilliant as might 
 be. Sibylla, it was settled, should attend 
 it. Her husband was to meet her there ; 
 and thither, when the House rose, Charles 
 Montcalm took his way. 
 
 The crowd was enormous, the heat 
 oppressive, Sibylla was not in force or spirits, 
 and, but that she was to wait for her hus- 
 band, would have been glad to get away. 
 The heat, the noise, the crush distressed 
 her. ' Surely the most barbarous of all 
 forms of entertainment ! ' she had said to 
 Amersham as they met in the tide-way 
 of a well -blocked staircase. 'Why do 
 people give them.f* And how is one to 
 breathe ^ '
 
 XIV 
 
 U Homme Serieux 201 
 
 ' I know this house of old,' said 
 Amersham, ' let me take you to a cool 
 retreat. There is a verandah at the end of 
 the passage where we can breathe in peace. 
 The night air will refresh you, and when 
 talk fails, we can look out for Jupiter's 
 fifth moon.' 
 
 * I shall be thankflil,' said Sibylla ; ' but 
 we shall miss Charles. He is to come here 
 from the House : the long gallery is our 
 rendezvous.' 
 
 ' I will leave a message for him at the 
 door,' said Amersham. * The porter is a 
 particular friend of mine. I can trust him 
 implicitly.' 
 
 ' I have left a message,' he said, re-emerg- 
 ing, a few minutes later, from the crowd 
 through which he had made his way. * The 
 porter is watching at the door. We can go 
 and enjoy ourselves with an easy conscience. 
 You must follow me.' 
 
 The verandah was half empty. Only 
 the initiated were aware of it ; and of the 
 initiated, only a wise few preferred the 
 night, the stars and the silent heaven, to 
 the blaze of satin, diamonds, and electric
 
 202 Sibylla chap. 
 
 lights and the roar of talk indoors. Sibylla 
 sank wearily into an easy chair. 
 
 * The pleasures of life,' she said, ' are 
 the least pleasant thing about it. I feel 
 dreadfully oppressed.' 
 
 ' We belong to an oppressed class,' cried 
 Amersham, bringing a comfortable chair 
 near to Sibylla's ; ' the other classes op- 
 press us. They talk of their grievances ; 
 but think of ours ! It is we who are the 
 martyrs.' 
 
 ' Martyrs } ' said Sibylla ; * I am haunted 
 by the consciousness of wanting a little 
 martyrdom and deserving it. We have 
 too much enjoyment.' 
 
 * Too much enjoyment ! ' cried Amer- 
 sham ; * we have all the worst of it. 
 Everybody else fares better than we. Who 
 can doubt, for instance, that servants are 
 far happier than their masters ? It is natural 
 that they should be. One is tempted to re- 
 pine at the inequality of human lots. Just 
 compare our footmen and ourselves, such a 
 night as this. You have been half an hour 
 getting here — two streets at the rate of a 
 slow funeral. You were confronted by a
 
 XIV n Homme Serieux 203 
 
 human avalanche on the stairs. But for my 
 happy thought, you would now be engaged 
 in a veritable struggle for life in a be- 
 diamonded mob — across which Mr. Mont- 
 calm, when he arrives, would look at you 
 in mute despair. It will take you three- 
 quarters of an hour to get away. You will 
 presently enact the same scene at the rival 
 great party of the evening on the other side 
 of the square. You did the same yesterday. 
 You will do the same to-morrow — every 
 to-morrow till July.' 
 
 ' Heaven forbid ! ' cried Sibylla. 
 
 ' Now think of that privileged being, 
 your footman. Having disposed of you at 
 your host's door, he goes away without a 
 care. He sits at ease outside in the cool, 
 delicious night. He watches the procession 
 of the stars, the setting moon, Aurora's 
 first faint blush as she smiles upon the 
 world. He feels the wholesome dews. 
 He need not talk unless he likes, or rack 
 his brains for an appropriate remark. He 
 speaks when he pleases and says what he 
 means. While you are being hustled in 
 the quest of a cup of tea or an ice, he quaffs
 
 204 Si by lie 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 a pot of beer — cool, frothy, ambrosial, much 
 nicer than tea or champagne — and smokes 
 a friendly pipe. He has no care, no anxiety, 
 no duty but to go where the policeman 
 tells him and wait till he is called. He 
 stands serene and unmoved while the link- 
 man bawls out your name and shocks the 
 shuddering ear of night with the announce- 
 ment that Mrs. Montcalm's carriage stops 
 the way ! Which of you has the best of it .^ 
 and who, with such an instance before him, 
 would dare to assert that the favours of 
 Heaven are equally bestowed ^ ' 
 
 Amersham defended his paradox with 
 the mock earnestness that its silliness 
 deserved. He was talking nonsense ; the 
 theme and the argument were equally non- 
 sensical. It was pleasant to him to talk and 
 watch Sibylla half-resting, half-amused. 
 Now, however, a look which spoke neither 
 of rest nor amusement, portrayed itself on 
 Sibylla s features. 
 
 Amersham turned round and saw Mont- 
 calm standing behind him with an angry 
 expression in his eyes, his lips tightly drawn, 
 his air as imperative as politeness would
 
 XIV L! Homme Serieux 205 
 
 allow — altogether an uncongenial intruder. 
 He gave Amersham the coldest possible 
 recognition. 
 
 ' I have been looking everywhere for 
 you, Sibylla,' he said ; ' we agreed to meet 
 in the long gallery.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Sibylla, ' but I was suffering 
 from the heat. Mr. Amersham was kind 
 enough to get me out of the crowd. He 
 left word for you at the door to come and 
 find us here.' 
 
 ' That faithless porter ! ' cried Amer- 
 sham. ' How came he to miss you ^ But 
 sit down now, Montcalm, and cool yourself, 
 or go to the buffet and reward your labours 
 by a glass of Lord Hunstanton's excellent 
 champagne.' 
 
 ' Thank you,' said Montcalm with his 
 coldest and most dignified air, ' I believe 
 that my wife will be glad to get home. 
 Come, Sibylla. Good-night, Amersham.' 
 
 Amersham, thus summarily dismissed, 
 looked after the departing couple in blank 
 amazement. He had read the same amaze- 
 ment in Mrs. Montcalm's eyes as he wished 
 her good-night. Montcalm was evidently
 
 2o6 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. XIV 
 
 in a rage — too great a rage to be polite. 
 His wife would have a disagreeable drive 
 home ; and what a home, if this was the 
 way in which Montcalm was accustomed to 
 behave ! Sibylla's occasional melancholy 
 looks were easily explained ! It was amus- 
 ing, at any rate, to have seen the just man 
 made perfect for once off his balance, and 
 in a common, human passion. But poor 
 Mrs. Montcalm !
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 A QUARREL 
 
 Unkindness may do much ; 
 And his unkindness may defeat my life. 
 But never taint my love. 
 
 * I AM SO sorry that we missed each other,' 
 Sibylla said, as the brougham door closed 
 upon her husband and herself ; * I am sure 
 you had a horrid hunt for us — and what a 
 crowd ! I was thankful to get out of it. 
 The heat distressed me. It was so unlucky 
 that the porter should have let you go by.' 
 
 Sibylla stopped short, for something in 
 her husband's movements bespoke an angry 
 man. 
 
 ' You are not vexed ^ ' she said, laying 
 her hand on his. 
 
 Woe to the husband who rejects the 
 wife's offer of conciliation — the proffered
 
 2o8 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 forgiveness of his ill-temper. A word of 
 affection at this moment — a gesture — a tone 
 of kindness, would have sealed the desired 
 peace-making. But Montcalm was in no 
 mood for peace. His heart was aching. 
 Life seemed very bitter. If he was to 
 answer truthfully, he zvas vexed, sorely 
 vexed. Worst of all, he knew that he had 
 shown his vexation. He had been guilty 
 of an undignified display of ill-temper. 
 He was out of sorts with life, with himself, 
 his wife, his fellow-men. Sibylla's sweet- 
 ness took him by surprise — embarrassed 
 him. He was not prepared for an inter- 
 change of affectionate speeches. His 
 Englishman's awkwardness beset him. In 
 an evil moment for his own happiness, for 
 Sibylla's, he showed himself cold, uncordial, 
 unresponsive. The sight of his wife sitting, 
 listening with evident interest to Amersham 
 — Amersham talking to her with ease and 
 freedom, had sunk into his soul, exasper- 
 ated him. Why would not his own talk 
 flow with equal ease .^ Why did their con- 
 versation halt.'^ Whose was the fault .^ 
 Why now did he find it difficult to speak }
 
 XV The duarrel 209 
 
 There was a few seconds' pause before 
 he was ready with his reply — a few seconds : 
 but for how many thoughts, fears, sugges- 
 tions, influences will not a second's space 
 suffice ? That momentary silence was 
 eloquent, fatally eloquent. Sibylla's heart 
 began to beat quicker. She longed for her 
 husband to speak. A pang of resentment 
 at his injustice, his obduracy, his unre- 
 sponsiveness shot into her soul. She was 
 doing all that love could prompt ; why was 
 he silent ? At last the answer came. 
 
 ' It is not worth talking about,' Mont- 
 calm said in a tone of sullen displeasure ; 
 ' I was bored, of course. You, at any rate, 
 escaped boredom.' 
 
 Sibylla withdrew her hand with a sort of 
 horror. It was as though her husband had 
 struck her. The cold, dry tone, the measured 
 rudeness, was as bad as a blow. She tried to 
 make light to herself of the rebuff — but 
 how vain the attempt ! Each instant the 
 pain grew more acute. In silence she sat, 
 thankful for the darkness that hid her face 
 from her companion. 
 
 Equally vain was Montcalm's secret 
 
 VOL. I p
 
 2IO Sibylla chap. 
 
 wish that he could recall his cross reply, 
 recall or amend it. His angry mood held 
 him tongue-tied. Sibylla's silence was the 
 worst reproof. He could not bring himself 
 to speak. He could not judge how his 
 words had sounded to Sibylla's ear. Had 
 it been a declaration of war? A few 
 minutes later they arrived at home. 
 Montcalm helped his wife out of the 
 carriage. Sibylla passed hurriedly across 
 the hall and went upstairs. She needed to 
 be alone. She was dreadfully perturbed. 
 Silent, reserved, undemonstrative as her 
 husband had, of late, increasingly become, 
 he had never before been guilty of overt 
 unkindness. To-night he had been un- 
 kind and unreasonable. He had put him- 
 self wrong alike with his wife and his 
 friend. His displeasure was irrational. 
 Amersham could not be charged with any- 
 thing to which the most exacting upholder 
 of conjugal rights could take exception. 
 He had been merely polite. He had taken 
 some trouble to promote Sibylla's comfort. 
 Their conversation, it so happened, had 
 been of the kind that all the world would
 
 XV The Quarrel 211 
 
 have been welcome to hear. Montcalm, 
 instead of being grateful for a small act of 
 kindness shown to his wife, had behaved 
 like a bear. Sibylla had felt it, had felt 
 ashamed of it. She had now something 
 more of which to feel ashamed — ashamed 
 and aggrieved. She sat in her room, rest- 
 less, miserable, with no thought of sleep, 
 hoping that her husband would come and 
 be reconciled, hesitating whether it would 
 be well to go to him. She sat on in soli- 
 tude. She heard his step on the stairs. 
 He passed onward to his room. It was 
 clear that he did not intend to come. 
 Sibylla sat and reviewed her married life : 
 the retrospect was painful. There had 
 been some great disappointments : she had 
 tried to ignore them, but now they were 
 not to be ignored. She had dreamed of an 
 ideal union of hearts — in which the most 
 absolute confidence should reign. How far 
 was this ideal from being attained ! Con- 
 fidence, perfect and complete, was the last 
 word which would fitly describe her hus- 
 band's attitude towards her. She knew 
 that he had some secret, safe locked in the
 
 2 1 2 Sibylla chap. 
 
 recesses of his heart, which his wife's eye 
 was forbidden to read. He chose to live 
 alone. He went his way, by himself, in no 
 need of help from her, with no wish for 
 friendly confidence, consultation, advice. 
 Sibylla was pining for sociability. Such 
 companionship was the thing which her 
 husband seemed least able to give : he 
 himself did not care about it ; he could 
 not understand the need of it in another. 
 The presence of a companion disturbed the 
 true balance of his thoughts ; it agitated 
 the still atmosphere in which a logical con- 
 clusion could be worked out with mathe- 
 matical precision. That was the way, Mont- 
 calm felt positive, in which a sensible man 
 should think. The intrusion of a woman's 
 temperament — eager, sensitive, sentimental, 
 nervous — was a fatal disturbance. The 
 highest work, experience had taught him, 
 must be done in solitude. So Sibylla's 
 attempts to share her husband's thoughts 
 and opinions had constantly been repelled. 
 Husband and wife lived in separate worlds. 
 Married life must, it had become clear to 
 Sibylla, mean something very different
 
 XV The Qiuarrel 2 1 3 
 
 from, something very inferior to, her girl- 
 hood's ideah She had borne the disappoint- 
 ment with fortitude, good nature, even 
 cheerfulness. Now it seemed as if even 
 the outward semblance of affection was 
 to disappear. 
 
 Sibylla was pining for sympathetic com- 
 panionship ! One danger which threatens 
 the man who resolves to ignore such a 
 craving on his wife's part, is that some 
 sympathetic companion will, probably, 
 be forthcoming, ready with the boon which 
 he refuses to confer. This danger now 
 threatened the Montcalms. Amersham was 
 above everything companionable. His in- 
 tellect was of the sociable order. It would 
 not work in solitude. That which Mont- 
 calm regarded as an intrusion was to him 
 a help. He needed to test his views by 
 comparison with other people's — by the 
 concurrence or disagreement of a friendly 
 critic. He liked to place an argument 
 before Sibylla, to see how it struck her, 
 to consult her on questions of expediency, 
 justice, or taste. Would such-and-such a 
 reply be the right one in the circumstances
 
 214 Sibylla chap. 
 
 of the case? Was this the wise line to 
 take? What would be felt about it? 
 What would the best minds feel about it ? 
 Sibylla's view on such topics was to him an 
 important guide. Such requests for advice 
 are the choicest form of flattery, — the subt- 
 lest, the pleasantest, the most persuasive. 
 From such topics as these, how easy to 
 pass to problems of a more personal interest 
 — questions affecting life, its aims, its 
 limitations, its reverses — the small philo- 
 sophy of existence which each individual 
 constructs for himself! Such interchange 
 of thought leads naturally to great intimacy 
 — intimacy which grows silently and 
 quickly before one is aware of it. Sibylla 
 found that she and Amersham had be- 
 come very intimate. She valued the 
 intimacy. It gave a new pleasure, a new 
 charm to existence, a new interest. 
 Nothing is so interesting as to come 
 into real contact with another mind — to 
 read another's character, to feel that one 
 can influence another person's action, that 
 one goes for something in his thoughts. 
 This interest had become Sibylla's; and
 
 XV 
 
 The Quarrel 215 
 
 now her husband not only declined to share 
 any such interest with her, but was driving 
 her by actual unkindness to find it in the 
 society of the person most capable of arous- 
 ing it. Charles's affection had sunk to so 
 low an ebb that he could bear to be unkind, 
 to find in the petty mishaps of daily life 
 material for unkindness. 
 
 To how critical a stage had love been 
 brought ! Sibylla was in a despairing 
 mood. Married life, with its privileges of 
 love, confidence, and tenderness denied — 
 the dismal, decent, conventional relation of 
 two unsympathetic natures, hiding their 
 mutual indifference from the eyes of man- 
 kind under the cloak of cold civility — was 
 this to be her doom ? Would such a life 
 be endurable ?
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 A BAD story's END 
 
 Till down upon the filthy ground I dropped, 
 And tore the violets to get the worms : 
 ' Worms ! worms ! ' was all my cry. 
 
 There is something in Eastern life, it has 
 been often said, which exercises a deteriorat- 
 ing effect upon the European character. 
 Nowhere is such deterioration more pain- 
 fully conspicuous than in the Englishman 
 whose crimes or misfortunes have sunk him 
 to the level of what his countrymen in 
 India denounce as a * loafer.' He is the 
 lost spirit of the ruling race, deserted by 
 all the wholesome influences which mem- 
 bership of a ruling race exercises upon its 
 members. He has lost prestige ; he has 
 abandoned respectability ; his degradation 
 has been exhibited to the humblest of a
 
 CHAP. XVI A Bad Story s End 217 
 
 community, which he regards as socially, 
 morally, and physically far below himself. 
 Henceforth no further humiliation is con- 
 ceivable. Shame has emptied her vials 
 upon his head. He is steeped in disgrace : 
 he is clawed by fierce necessity. He has 
 wrung whatever may be extorted from the 
 compassionateness of his countrymen, the 
 credulity of natives too ignorant to gauge 
 the fraud of his pretensions. He has 
 begged, bullied, and lied as opportunity gave 
 a chance of the pittance which will stave ofF 
 starvation for another day. If man spares 
 him, the cruel climate is unsparing. The 
 fierce, pitiless sun fills him with agony and 
 drives him, panting and exhausted, to the 
 first covert which presents itself. The 
 tropical downpour drenches his aching 
 bones : the night frosts pierce him to the 
 very marrow, and send him out shivering 
 and miserable into the chilly dawn, to begin 
 another day of bootless struggle for life. 
 Week by week his shattered frame be- 
 comes less capable of resistance to baneful 
 physical surroundings — surroundings which 
 strong men, instinct with hope and purpose.
 
 21 8 Sibylla chap. 
 
 would scarcely dare to face. Malaria lays 
 its deadly hand upon him, and the in- 
 effectual struggle draws to its close. 
 Fortunate if, at the last dread moment, 
 some friendly compatriot's hand can be 
 found to hold a cup to dying lips, and to 
 breathe into ears, where already all things 
 sound faintly, some pious thought of 
 England and of home. 
 
 Such was the plight of an Englishman 
 who lay, one summer night, in a wretched 
 native hostelry in the suburbs of Faustabad, 
 one of the great military stations of Upper 
 India. There was a crowd of natives 
 around him ; for Faustabad is a busy place, 
 a centre of a great industry in corn and 
 seeds, the meeting-point of many official 
 threads which the spider-like industry of 
 the English administration has woven thick 
 in every direction across the country. 
 Hither, at the appointed seasons, come 
 governors and generals, commissioners 
 and judges, and with them the satellites, 
 which orb in splendour, — only less im- 
 pressive than their own, — around the 
 greater luminaries of the official heaven.
 
 XVI A Bad Story's End 219 
 
 Below the satellites comes a vast array of 
 humbler ministrants to the many necessities, 
 in the way of pomp, business, or comfort, 
 of the Anglo-Indian dignitary. Faustabad, 
 accordingly, abounds in crowds. 
 
 There is a famous shrine, too, where, 
 beneath an immemorial peepul tree, the 
 pious pilgrim loves to worship, and a sacred 
 river, in which, when the moon moves into 
 the proper quarter, and the solemn moment 
 has come, it is bliss to bathe, and a multi- 
 tudinous rabble plunge into the well- 
 churned, turgid flood, happy in the hope of 
 a propitiated deity and a blissful hereafter. 
 
 So the Faustabad bazaars were lively with 
 throngs of traders and customers, holiday- 
 m^akers and devotees, and the Serai — the 
 bequest of a charitable corn-merchant and 
 money-lender to the scene of his prosperity 
 — was in constant request. It was crowded 
 just now with groups of travellers, cooking 
 their evening meal, tending their bullocks, 
 or pouring out the stream of talk that flows 
 — unexhausted and inexhaustible, where 
 natives congregate — through the livelong 
 night. On one side were long rows of
 
 220 Sibylla chap. 
 
 bullock-carts, the cattle tethered in front 
 of them, busily munching their forage. 
 Further away a string of Cabul camels lay 
 chewing the cud and contemplating sadly 
 the burthens, under which they had groaned 
 to-day and would groan again to-morrow. 
 They might well groan, for the day had 
 been one long sultry blaze, and the night 
 had scarcely brought relief The air was 
 heavy with foetid, sickening odours. 
 Everything — walls, trees, and soil — was 
 radiating the heat absorbed through the 
 long burning hours. The moon, blazing 
 in a cloudless sky, seemed actually to 
 scorch : huge bats flapped lazily among the 
 boughs of the peepul trees, which over- 
 shadowed the scene. A thick cloud of dust 
 and smoke — offspring of a sultry, bustling 
 day — hung overhead, like a pall across 
 some city of the doomed. Here and there, 
 wherever a damp, cool spot was to be 
 found, a dog lay panting, his hind legs 
 stretched limply out as if in utter ex- 
 haustion. The ground was thickly strewn 
 with recumbent human forms — sleeping, or 
 that seemed to sleep, save when, now and
 
 XVI A Bad Story's End 221 
 
 again, they tossed with weary gestures of 
 unease, or sought, with little wooden fans, 
 a momentary respite from the glowing air. 
 The weary hours crept on, the groups 
 of talkers, one by one, subsided into silence 
 and rest. The embers of the cooking fires 
 died out ; the moon was sinking in the 
 heaven ; a new gloom settled over the scene ; 
 darkness was gathering upon the earth. 
 All slept — all but the Englishman, whom 
 sleep refused to release, for a moment, from 
 his horrid surroundings, — his pangs of body 
 and soul. No sleep for him, but raging 
 fever, raging heat, raging thirst, parched 
 lips, aching limbs, and the dreadful prostra- 
 tion of an exhausted frame. His senses 
 were acutely awake ; he listened anxiously 
 for the sound of a horse's feet — the 
 horse that might bring him aid, comfort, 
 and deliverance. He had managed, that 
 evening, to send a message to the station 
 surgeon — a message that an European was 
 dying in the Serai and implored his help. 
 There were a hundred chances that such a 
 message would never reach its destination, 
 would not be correctly delivered ; for it had
 
 222 Sibylla chap. 
 
 to pass through several native messengers, 
 the barrier of venal underlings and 
 servants, hard to surmount without the aid 
 of gold. It might not be understood ; it 
 might not be attended to. On the other 
 hand, it might. There was the one chance 
 that the surgeon would come, and on that 
 chance the sick man's hopes were hanging. 
 He listened, hour after hour, for the much- 
 wished-for footfall. Night filled his ear 
 with other sounds. Some pariah dogs in 
 distant villages were howling, in hateful 
 response, at the moon. A pack of jackals 
 swept, like an escaped demon-troop, across 
 the open side of the Serai. Their chorus 
 sounded satanic, sad with the misery of suffer- 
 ing souls. Is there another sound in nature 
 of such unutterable, abysmal melancholy.^ 
 The sounds fell upon Frank Montcalm's 
 dying ears like the knell of doom. For he 
 was dying. He had often been near to death, 
 but never so close as now. Excess, misery, 
 exposure, delirium tremens, and now fever, 
 had at last done their work. He had made 
 his way from Sydney to Madras as one of 
 the grooms in attendance on a cargo of
 
 XVI 
 
 A Bad Story s End 223 
 
 Australian horses — had eluded the local 
 authorities, who would have enforced his 
 reshipment to Australia, and had tramped 
 across India, supporting a precarious exist- 
 ence by such wretched expedients, in the 
 way of swagger, cringing, beggary or 
 imposture, as fortune threw in his way. 
 Now the end was come. He could struggle 
 no more. His one hope, his one desire was 
 to find some countryman who would be- 
 friend him in his last and sorest emergency 
 — would see him through the last terrible 
 hours which still remained to him, say a 
 kindly word before he died, and carry a 
 last farewell, a message of peace, a cry for 
 forgiveness to his brother in England. 
 
 Dawn began to break; hour by hour 
 the fever gathered force, and burnt with 
 fiercer heat. The native lad whom the sick 
 man had sent with the message had delivered 
 it, as best he could, to one of the ' Doctor 
 Sahib's ' subordinates. No answer had come 
 through the long, long night of weary 
 watching, of baffled expectancy, the heart- 
 sickening chill of hope deferred. And now 
 Frank Montcalm's thoughts began to travel,
 
 224 Sibylla chap. 
 
 with dreadful rapidity, dreadful distinctness, 
 over his past life — a horrid retrospect of 
 failure, disgrace, dishonour, crime. He was 
 at home again, and appeasing his father's 
 wrath at some boyish misdoing by an excuse 
 — the first that offered. How easy to find 
 an excuse good enough for that indulgent 
 tribunal ! He was with Lizzie Marsh 
 again — poor Lizzie ! What had become of 
 her.^ Dead, perhaps, and better so. It 
 had been a bad business all along. How 
 ill she was when the child was born, the 
 little ailing baby, which died in her arms 
 as she lay, half dead herself with sorrow, 
 suffering, and the shame of dishonoured 
 motherhood ! It was no bastard, however, 
 on which her mother's tears were shed, for 
 he had yielded to her entreaties — her 
 terror of living on in sin — her passionate 
 prayer to him to save her child from dis- 
 honour. He had at the last moment married 
 her ; and much good it had done her ! He 
 had left her, like the brute he was. Nor 
 was she the only woman he had deserted. 
 What was the good of thinking of it ^ Yes ; 
 but how not to think ! The sick man shut
 
 XVI A Bad Story's End 11 K^ 
 
 his eyes, as if to shut out unwelcome sights ; 
 but the objects which memory, cruelly acute, 
 conjured up before his mind's eye, were not 
 so easily shut out. A horde of accusing 
 spirits flocked in upon him ; each with its 
 burthen of shame, fraud, cruelty; each crying 
 ' Guilty ! guilty I ' Conscience was roused 
 at last, and roused into a mood that would 
 not, as so often heretofore, be silenced or 
 gainsaid. It was in vain to try to think 
 of something else. What else was left to 
 think of? He saw his life lyins; out behind 
 him in dreadful distinctness — all selt- 
 deceptions, illusions, palliations, convenient 
 forgettings swept mercilessly away, like 
 leaves that hide a ruin's outline. The 
 ruined, wasted, dishonoured life stood, stark 
 and clear, a loathsome sight to eyes already 
 dim with death ! appalling record to a 
 despairing soul I 
 
 Then his thoughts travelled back to a re- 
 moter region, a period, which had so long and 
 so utterly passed away from his memory that 
 its recurrence now seemed like an apparition 
 from another world, from another person's 
 
 VOL. I Q
 
 226 Sibylla 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 existence — a period of innocence, happiness 
 and sweet maternal pettings. A mother's 
 eyes were looking down upon him, full of 
 delight, tenderness, adoring love. A voice 
 that breathed only benedictions — a gentle 
 hand that caressed him as no other ever had 
 — a bosom where he had nestled safe from 
 the troubles of the world outside — dear 
 hiding-place where his baby sorrows had 
 been cried to rest. How often, as a boy, 
 had he gone to that good mother for aid 
 or consolation, and there forgotten his 
 troubles. He could see himself again bury- 
 ing his face in her lap in some paroxysm of 
 childish grief : he felt her tender, caressing 
 touch. If he could only go to her now 
 and be nursed and petted and forgiven, and 
 be a child again with life — innocent, un- 
 soiled, unspoilt, the trailing brightness of 
 Heaven still glorifying it — lying before 
 him, instead of the ghastly wreck that 
 lay behind ! What a contrast between now 
 and the time when that dear form had 
 passed away, and with it Frank's best chance 
 of a happy and virtuous life ! 
 
 The native lad sat by the sick man's
 
 XVI A Bad Story s End 227 
 
 side, and from time to time moistened 
 his lips with water. He was getting 
 frightened, for the Englishman was 
 evidently mad : his wild ravings, his 
 staring eyes, his cries and groans and 
 oaths, his frantic gestures, were proofs of 
 madness. It was dangerous to be near 
 him ; it was dangerous to go away. The 
 boy's eyes were heavy with fatigue, but the 
 madman gave him no chance of sleep. By 
 this time it was broad daylight, and the 
 Serai was all astir. Frank Montcalm lay 
 in the verandah, alive and only just alive 
 — prostrate with exhaustion, too exhausted 
 to have any but a faint consciousness, when 
 the surgeon came driving in to the Serai 
 and was presently kneeling over him, and 
 feeling his pulse. His attention was 
 arrested by the long, fine hand, which 
 bore no marks of honest toil. It told 
 of a tragic fall from better things. 
 
 ' He is mad,* the boy said with un- 
 emotional conciseness ; ' mad since the 
 moon set this morning : he is dying. I 
 gave him water. The fault is not mine.* 
 
 ' He will be dead if he stays here
 
 228 Sibylla chap. 
 
 another hour,' said the surgeon : ' go and 
 fetch a dhooHe. He must go to the 
 Infirmary. Be quick, I will give you pice.' 
 
 The boy ran off on his behest, and 
 presently the dhoolie - bearers — nimble, 
 fragile, and intended by nature, one 
 would have guessed, for anything rather 
 than beasts of burden — came staggering 
 in, grunting rhythmically under the pole, 
 which their bare shoulders supported. 
 Frank Montcalm gave but slight signs of 
 life as he was lifted up and borne away. * I 
 will drive on and have all things ready,' the 
 surgeon said, as they emerged from the Serai; 
 * come quickly : there is no time to lose.' 
 
 Some days later Frank Montcalm lay in 
 a cool room in the Infirmary — bloodless, 
 emaciated, without motion or power to 
 move, but still alive. The surgeon had 
 befriended him, and spared neither time nor 
 trouble in helping him to recovery. It 
 was long since the sick man had fared so 
 well ; longer still since any one had regarded 
 him with anything but fear, hatred or 
 contempt. It was a new sensation — new 
 and indescribably delightful.
 
 XVI A Bad Story s End 229 
 
 * You are the first man in India,' 
 Montcalm said one morning, as the 
 surgeon paid him his usual visit, * that has 
 not treated me like a dog. It was thanks 
 to you I did not die that morning in the 
 Serai. You have been very good to me. 
 You would not be if you knew all.' 
 
 ' I know that you are very ill, — ill and 
 destitute,' said the doctor ; ' that is all that 
 concerns me. I want to know nothing 
 more.' 
 
 * But I want to tell you,' said the other ; 
 * I have sunk low, but I was born a gentle- 
 man. I am son of Mr. Montcalm of 
 Frampton. Charles Montcalm, member 
 for Belhaven, is my younger brother. I 
 want you to take him a message. Say that 
 he has heard the last of Frank. He will be 
 glad to hear that. I shall trouble and dis- 
 grace him no more. Have me decently 
 buried, doctor, and ask Charles to pay for it, 
 and to make a present to the Hospital. 
 Thanks to it and you, these have been the 
 pleasantest days I have spent since — I don't 
 know when. I am dying, all the same ; I 
 feel it.' 
 
 VOL. I Q 2
 
 230 Sibylla 
 
 CHAr. 
 
 ' Don't talk about dying, man,' said the 
 other ; ' lie still and give yourself a chance. 
 But whatever happens, I will do what you 
 ask me : Charles Montcalm of Frampton, 
 you said ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said the sick man ; ' and give him 
 this — this old ring; he will know it fast 
 enough. Father gave us both rings when 
 we were schoolboys. It is my mother's 
 hair — I wore it round my neck for luck. 
 Give it to Charles, and tell him it was all 
 I had to leave him. Bid him forgive all 
 the wrongs I did him.' 
 
 After this the sick man grew very 
 communicative. The doctor's visit was 
 his thread of communication with the 
 outside world after which he still hankered. 
 He loved a chat, and the surgeon was 
 good-natured in gratifying the invalid's 
 whim. It was better for him to talk, to 
 listen, than to lie all day in silence and 
 solitude, busied with his own thoughts. 
 Gradually he confided to his kind listener 
 many passages of his life, narrow escapes, 
 strange adventures, unedifying episodes of 
 lawlessness and profligacy. Amongst the
 
 XVI 
 
 A Bad Story's End 231 
 
 rest he told of his escape from the 
 Eldorado Mine. ' That was a wild time,' 
 he said ; ' no mistake about it — a wild time 
 and bad. We were a bad lot, all of us ; 
 each man had a black mark for something. 
 I had run away from my wife. I left her 
 at New Wigan. I had married her under 
 a false name, — Fairfield, one of my father's 
 farms. I am sorry now that I did it. I 
 was sorry from the first ; but I fancied 
 her, and I could get her in no other way. 
 Anyhow she made me sorry before she had 
 done with me. She was a fine girl, and 
 very handsome, but a perfect devil in 
 temper ; drink made her ten times more 
 devilish. At last I could bear it no 
 longer ; I heard of the mine and I went off. 
 It was a low trick, for she was near being 
 a mother ; but I was doing no good, and 
 living with her was a hell on earth. On 
 my way to the mine I had my usual luck, 
 and fell in with a man who had known me 
 in England and bawled out my real name 
 before a room full of listeners. It was no 
 good to try to conceal it, so I became 
 Frank Montcalm again. I was doing
 
 232 Sibylla chap. 
 
 pretty well, and was meaning to send my 
 wife something ; but I got into trouble and 
 had to bolt. Since then I have been almost 
 always nearly starving. I have heard no 
 word of her, or her child, if she had one.' 
 
 * And what was the trouble you had to 
 bolt for ^ ' asked the surgeon, gently en- 
 couraging his patient's flow of talk. 
 
 Montcalm's face darkened. His voice 
 dropped. 
 
 * Did you ever kill a man ? ' he said. ' I 
 did once. I don't mind telling you now. 
 I am not worth hanging, and you will not 
 betray me. It sounds nasty, doesn't it ^ 
 and looks nasty, I can tell you, when you 
 have to face the man you have killed, alone, 
 and to handle him as I had. His eyes 
 were open. I often see them now. There 
 was some blood on his cheek. This was 
 how it was. There was a row one night 
 in an old store, two miles from the Mine, 
 where a few of us used to go to drink and 
 gamble. I was more than half drunk, and 
 had lost every farthing I had earned. 
 There was a man there who kept angering 
 me. He had won most that night ; we
 
 XVI 
 
 A Bad Story's End 233 
 
 came to fierce words, he drew his pistol and 
 was covering me. I shot him in the face. 
 He fell back with a groan and never moved 
 again. When the others saw he was dead, 
 they all scuttled. I don't blame them. It 
 was putting your neck in the halter to stay. 
 But I stayed. I had not a farthing to fly 
 with. Then I remembered what a run of 
 luck the dead man had been having. I 
 took his coat and hat and his waistcoat. 
 His pockets were full of money ; I took it. 
 I left my own clothes. The jury found, I 
 read in the papers, that it was Frank 
 Montcalm who had been murdered. But 
 Frank Montcalm was making his way across 
 the mountains to Frisco. I was nearly 
 starved ! But when I got to Frisco, the dead 
 man's money served me to get a passage to 
 Sydney. There I soon lost all I had in a 
 gambling hell. I worked my way from 
 Sydney to Madras with a cargo of horses. 
 That was a rough job. There was a storm. 
 We had to throw a hundred of them over- 
 board. The police in Madras got hold of 
 me ; they were going to send me back to 
 Sydney ; but I slipped through their fingers,
 
 234 Sibylla chap, xvi 
 
 and tramped my way across India. It is a 
 hell of a country, when you have to beg your 
 way. Twice I had sunstroke. I got drunk 
 on native spirits whenever I had the chance. 
 At last I came to ground here ; and you 
 have been the good Samaritan to me. Now 
 you know my story.' 
 
 A week later Frank Montcalm took a 
 turn for the worse, and next day at sunrise 
 Surgeon Crowder attended, as only mourner, 
 at a very humble ceremonial, while the 
 body of an English loafer was deposited in 
 one of those receptacles which are to be 
 seen^ ready dug, in most Indian cemeteries, 
 awaiting the requirements of the first ap- 
 plicant. The ground closed over the frail- 
 ties and misfortunes of Frank Montcalm. 
 Surgeon Crowder, who was just starting for 
 his furlough in England, kept a note of the 
 name and packed up the ring, in case Mr. 
 Montcalm of Frampton should care to be 
 reminded of a fallen brother. 
 
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