Grantley

“ Grantley argued, or rather pleaded, with a deceptive gravity:
"But if you fall in love with a girl?"
"Heaven forbid!"
"Well, but the world must be peopled, Jeremy."
"Marriage isn't necessary to that, is it?"
"Oho!" whistled Courtland.
"We may concede the point—in theory," said Grantley; "in practice it's more difficult."
"Because people won't think clearly and bravely!" cried Jeremy, with a thump on the bench. "Because they're hidebound, and, as I say, the priests heaven-and-hell them till they don't know where they are."
"Heaven-and-hell them! Good phrase, Jeremy! You speak feelingly. ”

“ His ardour was natural enough to need no nursing; yet Grantley was inclined to caress it. He laughed as he let his horse stretch himself in a gallop; he was delighted, and a trifle amused, to find his emotions so fresh: none of the luxury, none of the pleasure-giving power, had gone out of them. He was still as good a lover as any man.
He was cantering over the turf thirty or forty yards from the road when the omnibus passed him. The driver cried his name, and pointed back with his whip. Grantley saw Sibylla a long way behind. He touched his horse with the spur, and galloped towards her. ”

“ He braved its accusation of treachery to Mumples. He tried to feel quite easy in his mirth, to enjoy the droll turning upside down of the pathetic little story as pleasantly and coolly as Grantley there on his couch, with his cigar and his brandy and soda. For Grantley's reflective smile was entirely devoid of any self-questioning or of any sense of treachery to anybody or to anything with claims to reverence or loyalty. It was for Jeremy, however, the first time he had been asked to turn his theories on to one he loved and to try how his pose worked where a matter came near his heart. ”

“ Her father, who had been a wealthy squire, lost all his money in buying shares in mines, or something of that sort, and died a poor man. His wife had been dead for years, so that Miss Grantley was left an orphan and with few relations except one brother, who had gone abroad to seek his fortune, but without finding it, I suppose, since Miss Grantley, after passing examinations and being a teacher in a great school in London, came down to Barton Vale to be our governess. ”

“ Of course it is only possible for a poor unprotected creature to see a part of the greatest capital in the world; and so when I went to explore the bridges or any other neighbourhood after dusk I took an escort, and one who knew London so well that he was able to say where I ought and where I ought not to go."
"A policeman, was it, Miss Grantley?" said Kate Bell.
"Oh, dear! no. Policemen have no time to go out as escorts to young or middle-aged ladies," said our governess laughing. ”

“ Thus with Captain Grantley. In his time the dear man had had a large experience of women. Some, maybe, he had seen more statuesque, more goddesslike, more rigidly and correctly beautiful, yet never one quite so much herself, so entirely herself, so open yet so elusive, so quick, so captivating. As the evening went, as the board was cleared, and the Captain’s words grew warmer, their talk competed in its energy with the animated winds that struck the windows.
“Now, sir, tell me of these barbarous politics,” she commanded, like one who only knows obedience. ”

“ It was on the Monday evening, after we had come in from the orchard and had finished tea, one toothsome accompaniment to which was some delectable apricot jam upon crisp toast, that Annie Bowers, who had been so quiet that she might have been asleep, said in her usual deliberate way: "Miss Grantley, that lovely silver cup (or shall I call it a vase?) fascinates me more every time I look at it, and I shall never be contented till you let me make a sketch of it; but the worst of it is there is no way of making a drawing that will show all the gleam and shadow that plays upon old silver." ”

“ Yet the knowledge counted; she looked on Grantley with different eyes. The revelation of himself, wrung from him by overpowering necessity, did its work. The resolve he had then announced, presumptuous beyond the right of mortal man, less than human in its cruelty, almost more than human in its audacity of successful revolt against destiny, might leave him hateful still, but showed him not negligible. He could not be put on one side, discarded, eliminated from her life. He was too big for that. Against her will he attracted her attention and constrained her interest. ”

“ The proud, beautiful Helga Lund was once more under hypnotic influence, and Grantley, with devilish ingenuity, was impressing suggestions upon her poor, tortured brain, suggestions which were designed to rob her of her great ability, not only for the moment, but, unless their baneful effect could be removed, for all the rest of her life. ”

“ I wish to Heaven I could! Going back is like going back to death. But perhaps he's right. Better my living death than the thing you meant to do." She paused and ended: "I'll go back to the child, but I will not come back to you."
"You give all I've asked," said Grantley with cold politeness.
She looked round at young Blake with a pitiful smile.
"It's the only way, my dear. With this man what he is, it's the only way. I must leave you alone."
Blake leaned towards her with a passionate cry of pain. She reasoned gently with him.
"But you know the alternative—you've heard it. We can't help it. ”

“ Grantley said ten thousand a year: a thousand would seem riches to the Milldean rectory folk.
"That's right. If you want a thing, you must be ready to wait for it," agreed Grantley, with smiling lips and a pucker on his brow.
"So long as there's any hope," added Sibylla.
These hints of underlying things went unheeded by Jeremy, but Blake marked them. They were becoming more frequent now as the tension grew and grew.
"There's always a hope with reasonable people."
"Opinions differ so much as to what is reasonable."
"Dora's not reasonable at present, anyhow." ”

“ One must believe one's medical man, I suppose, even if he's old Gardiner—and he seems quite sure of it." Grantley drank and sighed. "It's uncommonly perverse, when everything was so prosperous before."
The day had left its traces on Jeremy. Though he had not told Grantley so, yet when he saw Sibylla thrown he had made no doubt she was killed—and she was the one person in the world whom he deeply loved. ”

“ Parmigan! She was a dear old thing; had actually been nursery governess to Miss Grantley; and, having married and been left a widow, had heard of her former pupil and young mistress being left fatherless and motherless, and now brought her small annuity to Barton Vale, and helped to teach in the school [13] and to be a sort of mother to Miss Grantley, without wanting any wages, and only just her board and lodging, beside which she could afford to pay for a good many things towards the housekeeping. ”

“ It was of course a good thing for Miss Grantley that she had her own old nurse there for cook and housekeeper, with a strong girl to do the housework, and a woman from one of the cottages at Vale Farm to help twice a week. The solicitor's villa had a large garden, and the gardener and his wife lived in the cottage which had once belonged to the maltster's foreman at the end of the orchard and close to the old kiln, so they were always ready to help too; and our governess had very little to pay for gardening except a [12] few shillings for a labourer now and then. ”

“ Grantley laughed.
"Oh, well, a week isn't ten years, nor even five," he reminded Jeremy.
"A man can wait for what he wants. Hang it, even a woman can do that! Look at Mumples!"
Grantley asked explanations, and drew out the story which Mrs. Mumple had told earlier in the evening. Grantley's fancy was caught by it, and he pressed Jeremy for a full and accurate rendering, obtaining a clear view of how Mrs. ”

“ It was then that we made a compact with her, after a great deal of trouble, that she should tell or read a story every day after tea, and in return [15] we each promised to make some specially pretty article for her stall—for our governess had been persuaded to take a stall by some of the people who subscribed to the infirmary, and her old school-fellow Mrs. Norbury was to share it with her.
I don't suppose that any of us will ever forget Miss Grantley's pretty parlour. ”

“ Nick’s other assistant, Jack Wise, the well-to-do young society man, had had nothing to do with the Grantley case at all. He had been doing a little “pussyfooting” in the Harlem section, in connection with a totally different investigation, and was about to enter the subway kiosk at Lenox Avenue and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street when he saw Doctor Grantley and Doctor Siebold alight from a taxi. ”

“ Mumple's story and the turn they had given to it, with Grantley's anecdote about himself, and with the idea of him which Jeremy's acute though raw mind set itself to grope after and to realise. The young man again felt that somehow his theories had begun to be no longer theories in a vacuum of merely speculative thought; they had begun to meet people and to run up against facts. ”

“ In his anxiety to see again, Baldwin does not care what liberties Grantley’s knife may have taken with the bodies of obscure persons living on the East Side, or how near he came to murdering us that night, after we had interfered with his bloody scientific pastimes. Your multimillionaire friend feels confident that Grantley would not dare try any tricks on him, and he is willing to overlook the unprofessional manner of the man’s approach. He is impatient toward restraint, used to having his own way in everything, and, fired by a new hope, he is harder to manage than ever. ”

“ Jeremy had been moved by the story, but reluctantly and to his own shame. Now he hesitated whether to laugh or not, nature urging one way, his pose (which he dignified with the title of reason) suggesting the other.
"A different view is possible to the worldly mind," Grantley went on in lazy amusement. "Perhaps the visits bored him. Mumples—if I may presume to call her that—probably cried over him and 'carried on,' as they say. ”

“ Miss Prue languidly professed that she was quite indifferent, being perfectly easy in her mind that her skirts, her powder, and her head-dress would be more than a match for a corporal and five foolish troopers.
[Pg 144]
“So long as that Captain remains strapped to his board in the library,” she assured us, “I snap my fingers at ’em.”
“Then you will confess,” says I, “that Captain Grantley has the power to disconcert you?”
“Well—yes,” says she reluctantly, “because—well Captain Grantley is the devil.”
“He is the devil,” says I, triumphantly, “never a doubt about it. ”

“ Grantley promised.
He made his camp in the library on the ground floor, and there presently Suzette Bligh came to see him. She gave a good account of the wounded child. Sophy slept; the capable cheery woman who had come as nurse gave her courage to sleep.
"We must get her away to the seaside as soon as possible, and she'll get all right, I think; though there must be a mark always. And of course the permanent question remains. Isn't it all hopeless, Mr. Imason?"
"It's a terrible business for you to be involved in." ”

“ Even though it is now a year or two ago that we parted with Miss Grantley, and Mrs. Parmigan took over the school at the request of the parents of the junior pupils, and was joined by a lady [159] from London with famed certificates, none of us can speak without emotion of the happy time when we sat at work in the pretty old parlour or sat under the trees in the pleasant orchard. We are not all at Barton now, for Annie Bowers is studying art abroad, and Sarah Jorring, who is "engaged," is living with her friends at Barton; but those of us who are still in the Vale go and drink tea with Mrs. ”

“ Now, that would be a great point gained, for Archdeacon Grantley was a close friend of Lady Lufton.
“So I understand from Fothergill. Indeed, it will be very wrong of you not to go, and I tell you so plainly; and what is more, when you talk about your duty—you having a curate as you have—why, it is gammon.” These last words he spoke looking back over his shoulder as he stood up in his stirrups, for he had caught the eye of the huntsman who was surrounded by his hounds, and was now trotting on to join him. ”

“ I am so sorry for him and for the dear little girl. She is to come to Grantley Grange to visit me soon.
I can never tell you how splendid George Massie was. He was so brave and so determined. I did not dream he could command men as he did. He says it is football training that made him know what to do and how to do it. He is going to France next week to join the Red Cross as a [294] stretcher bearer, I think. I shall miss him ever so much but know it is right for him to help if he can. Service is in the air here in England. ”

“ The end of all which is Mary Deane became Mary Grantley, and here we are on our own lot, with very pretty farming and a capital dairy, and a good heart's welcome for you if you will only come out to us. Oh, I ought to say as a sequel that about a month after we settled down here one of the men came in and said there was a black fellow at the fence gate asking to speak to me. Out I went, and there, looking at me with a smile or rather a grin, was Jacky Fishook. "How do, sar?" said he. [158] "Just come from Sydney, sar, to look for job. Massa take me for man, sar? yes? ”

“ If such a person existed, it would obviously have been to his interest to have Grantley obtain and seem to make use of the huge fee which Baldwin had promised, for that and Grantley’s own enmity toward the blind financier would supply a sufficient motive for the crime, and prevent the authorities from probing deep enough to discover the surgeon’s secret arrangement with this third person. ”