Double Harness

Chapter 3

For a girl of ardent temper and vivid imagination, strung to her highest pitch by a wonderful fairy ride and the still strange embrace of her lover, it may fairly be reckoned a trial to listen to a detailed comparison of the hero of her fancy with another individual-who has been sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude for attempted murder! Concede circumstances extenuating the crime as amply as you please (and My Lord in scarlet on the Bench had not encouraged the jury to concede any), the comparison is one that gives small pleasure, unless such as lies in an opportunity for the exercise of Christian patience. This particular virtue Jeremy Chiddingfold suspected of priestly origin; neither was it the strongest point in his sister's spiritual panoply. He regarded Sibylla's ill-repressed irritation and irrepressible fidgeting with a smile of malicious humour.

"You might almost as well come up to Imason's," he whispered.

"She can't go on much longer!" moaned Sibylla.

But she could. For long years starved of fruition, her love revelled luxuriantly in retrospect and tenderly in prospect; and she was always good at going on, and at going on along the same lines. Mrs. Mumple's loving auditors had heard the tale of Luke's virtues many a time during the period of his absence (that was the term euphemistically employed). The ashes of their interest suddenly flickered up at the hint of a qualification which Mrs. Mumple unexpectedly introduced.

"He wasn't the husband for every woman," she said thoughtfully.

"Thank heaven!" muttered Jeremy, glad to escape the superhuman.

"Eh, Jeremy?"

She revolved slowly and ponderously towards him.

"Thank heaven he got the right sort, Mumples."

"He did," said Mrs. Mumple emphatically; "and he knew it-and he'll know it again when he comes back, and that's only three years now."

A reference to this date was always the signal for a kiss from Sibylla. She rendered the tribute and returned to her chair, sighing desperately. But it was some relief that Mrs. Mumple had finished her parallel, with its list of ideal virtues, and now left Grantley out of the question.

"Why wasn't he the husband for every woman, Mumples?" inquired Jeremy as he lit his pipe. "They're all just alike, you know."

"You wait, Jeremy!"

"Bosh!" ejaculated Jeremy curtly.

"He liked them good-looking, to start with," she went on; "and I was good-looking." Jeremy had heard this so often that he no longer felt tempted to smile. "But there was more than that. I had tact."

"Oh, come now, Mumples! You had tact? You? I'm-well, I'm--"

"I had tact, Jeremy." She spoke with overpowering solidity. "I was there when he wanted me, and when he didn't want me I wasn't there, Sibylla."

"Didn't he always want you?" Brother and sister put the question simultaneously, but with a quite different intention.

"No, not always, dears.-Is that your foot on my table? Take it off this instant, Jeremy!"

"Quite a few thousand years ago there was no difference between a foot and a hand, Mumples. You needn't be so fussy about it."

Sibylla got up and walked to the window. From it the lights in Grantley's dining-room were visible.

"I haven't seen him for ten years," Mrs. Mumple went on; "and you've known that, my dears, though you've said nothing-no, not when you'd have liked to have something to throw at me. But I never told you why."

Sibylla left the window and came behind Mrs. Mumple, letting her hand rest on the fat shoulder.

"He broke out at me once, and said he couldn't bear it if I came to see him. It upset him so, and the time wouldn't pass by, and he got thinking how long the time was, and what it all meant. Oh, I can't tell you all he said before he was stopped by the-the man who was there. So I promised him I wouldn't go any more, unless he fell ill or wanted me. They said they'd let me know if he asked for me and was entitled to a visit. But word has never come to me, and I've never seen him."

She paused and stitched at her work for a minute or two.

"You must leave men alone sometimes," she said.

"But, Mumples, you?" whispered Sibylla.

Mrs. Mumple looked up at her, but made no answer. Jeremy flung down his book with an impatient air; he resented the approaches of emotion-especially in himself.

"He'll be old when he comes out-comes back-old and broken; they break quickly there. He won't so much mind my being old and stout, and he won't think so much of the time when I was young and he couldn't be with me; and he'll find me easier to live with: my temper's improved a lot these last years, Sibylla."

"You silly old thing!" said Sibylla.

But Jeremy welcomed a diversion.

"Rot!" he said. "It's only because you can't sit on us quite so much now. It's not moral improvement; it's simply impotence, Mumples."

Mrs. Mumple had risen in the midst of eulogising the improvement of her temper, and now passed by Jeremy, patting his unwilling cheek. She went out, and the next moment was heard in vigorous altercation with their servant as to the defects of certain eggs.

"I couldn't have done that," said Sibylla.

"Improved your temper?"

"No, stayed away."

"No, you couldn't. You never let a fellow alone, even when he's got toothache."

"Have you got it now?" cried Sibylla, darting towards him.

"Keep off! Keep off! I haven't got it, and if I had I shouldn't want to be kissed."

Sibylla broke into a laugh. Jeremy relit his pipe with a secret smile.

"But I do call it fine of Mumples."

"Go and tell her you've never done her justice, and cry," he suggested. "I'm going up to Imason's now, so you can have it all to yourselves."

"I don't want to cry to-night," Sibylla objected, with a plain hint of mysterious causes for triumph.

Jeremy picked up his cap, showing a studious disregard of any such indications.

"You're going up the hill now? I shall sit up for you."

"You'll sit up for me?"

"Yes. Besides I don't feel at all sleepy to-night."

"I shall when I come back."

"I shan't want to talk."

"Then what will you want? Why are you going to sit up?"

"I've ever so many things to do."

Jeremy's air was weary as he turned away from the inscrutable feminine. While mounting the hill he made up his mind to go to London as soon as he could. A man met men there.

No air of emotion, no atmosphere of overstrained sentiment, hung, even for Jeremy's critical eye, round Grantley Imason's luxurious table and establishment. They suggested rather the ideal of comfort lovingly pursued, a comfort which lay not in gorgeousness or in mere expenditure, but in the delicate adjustment of means to ends and a careful exclusion of anything likely to disturb a dexterously achieved equipoise. Though Jeremy admired the absence of emotion, his rough vigorous nature was challenged at another point. He felt a touch of scorn that a man should take so much trouble to be comfortable, and should regard the achievement of his object as so meritorious a feat. In various ways everything, from the gymnastic apparatus in the hall to the leg-rest in front of the study fire, sought and subserved the ease and pleasure of the owner. That, no doubt, is what a house should be-just as a man should be well dressed. It is possible, however, to be too much of a dandy. Jeremy found an accusation of unmanliness making its way into his mind; he had to banish it by recalling that, though his host might be fond of elegant lounging, he was a keen sportsman too, and handled his gun and sat his horse with equal mastery. These virtues appealed to the English public schoolboy and to the amateur of Primitive Man alike, and saved Grantley from condemnation. But Jeremy's feelings escaped in an exclamation:

"By Jove, you are snug here!"

"I don't pretend to be an ascetic," laughed Grantley, as he stretched his legs out on the leg-rest.

"Evidently."

Grantley looked at him, smiling.

"I don't rough it unless I'm obliged. But I can rough it. I once lived for a week on sixpence a day. I had a row with my governor. He wanted me to give up-- Well, never mind details. It's enough to observe, Jeremy, that he was quite right and I was quite wrong. I know that now, and I rather fancy I knew it then. However, his way of putting it offended me, and I flung myself out of the house with three-and-six in my pocket. Like the man in Scripture, I couldn't work and I wouldn't beg, and I wouldn't go back to the governor. So it was sixpence a day for a week and very airy lodgings. Then it was going to be the recruiting-sergeant; but, as luck would have it, I met the dear old man on the way. I suppose I looked a scarecrow; anyhow, he was broken up about it, and killed the fatted calf-killed it for an unrepentant prodigal. And I could do that again, though I may live in a boudoir."

Jeremy rubbed his hands slowly against one another-a movement common with him when he was thinking.

"I don't tell you that to illustrate my high moral character-as I say, I was all in the wrong-but just to show you that, given the motive--"

"What was the motive?"

"Pride, obstinacy, conceit-anything you like of that kind," smiled Grantley. "I'd told the fellows about my row, and they'd said I should have to knuckle down. So I made up my mind I wouldn't."

"Because of what they'd say?"

"Don't be inquisitorial, Jeremy. The case is, I repeat, not given as an example of morality, but as an example of me-quite different things. However, I don't want to talk about myself to-night; I want to talk about you. What are you going to do with yourself?"

"Oh, I'm all right!" declared Jeremy. "I've got my London B.A. (It didn't run to Cambridge, you know), and I'm pegging away." A touch of boyish pompousness crept in. "I haven't settled precisely what line of study I shall devote myself to, but I intend to take up and pursue some branch of original research."

Grantley's mind had been set on pleasing Sibylla by smoothing her brother's path. His business interest would enable him to procure a good opening for Jeremy-an opening which would lead to comfort, if not to wealth, in a short time, proper advantage being taken of it.

"Original research?" He smiled indulgently. "There's not much money in that."

"Oh, I've got enough to live on. Sibylla's all right now, and I've got a hundred a year. And I do a popular scientific article now and then-I've had one or two accepted. Beastly rot they have to be, though."

Grantley suggested the alternative plan. Jeremy would have none of it. He turned Grantley's story against him.

"If you could live on sixpence a day out of pride, I can live on what I've got for the sake of-of--" He sought words for his big vague ambitions. "Of knowledge-and-and--"

"Fame?" smiled Grantley.

"If you like," Jeremy admitted with shy sulkiness.

"It'll take a long time. Oh, I know you're not a marrying man; but still, a hundred a year--"

"I can wait for what I want."

"Well, if you change your mind let me know."

"You didn't let your father know."

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. Mumple herself read the case.

"Quite a romantic picture! The lady and the lover, with the lady outside the castle and the lover inside-just for a change."

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. He felt a fool before the warder, depend upon it! And perhaps she didn't look her best in tears-they generally don't. Besides we see what Mumples looks like now, and even ten years ago--! Well, as each three months, or whatever the time may be, rolled round, less of the charm of youth would hang about her. We shouldn't suggest any of this to Mumples, but as philosophers and men of the world, we're bound to contemplate it ourselves, Jeremy."

He drank some brandy and soda and lit a fresh cigar. Jeremy laughed applause. Here, doubtless, was the man of the world's view, the rational and unsentimental view to which he was vowed and committed. Deep in his heart a small voice whispered that it was a shame to turn the light of this disillusioned levity on poor old Mumples' mighty sorrow and trustful love.

"And when we're in love with them they can't do anything wrong; and when we've stopped being in love, they can't do anything right," Grantley sighed humorously. "Oh, yes, there's another interpretation of Mr. Mumple's remarkable conduct! You see, we know he's not by nature a patient man, or he wouldn't have committed the indiscretion that brought him where he is. Don't they have bars, or a grating, or something between them at these painful interviews? Possibly it was just as well for Mumples' sake, now and then!"

Despite the small voice Jeremy laughed more. 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. His mirth did not achieve spontaneity. But it was Grantley who said at last, with a yawn:

"It's a shame to make fun out of the poor old soul; but the idea was irresistible, wasn't it, Jeremy?"

And Jeremy laughed again.

Jeremy said good-night and went down the hill, leaving Grantley to read the letters which the evening post had brought him. There had been one from Tom Courtland. Grantley had opened and glanced at that before his guest went away. There were new troubles, it appeared. Lady Harriet had not given her husband a cordial or even a civil welcome; and the letter hinted that Courtland had stood as much as he could bear, and that something, even though it were something desperate, must be done. "A man must find some peace and some pleasure in his life," was the sentence Grantley chose to read out as a sample of the letter; and he had added, "Poor old Tom! I'm afraid he's going to make a fool of himself."

Jeremy had asked no questions as to the probable nature of Courtland's folly (which was not perhaps hard to guess); but the thought of him mingled with the other recollections of the evening, with Mrs. 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. The facts and the people no doubt fitted and justified the theories, but to see how that came about needed some consideration. So far he had got. He had not yet arrived at a modification of the theories, or even at an attitude of readiness to modify them, although that would have been an unimpeachable position from a scientific standpoint.

The sight of Sibylla standing at the gate of their little garden brought his thoughts back to her. He remembered that she had promised to sit up-an irrational proceeding, as her inability to give good ground for it had clearly proved; and it was nearly twelve-a very late hour for Milldean-so well had Grantley's talk beguiled the time. Sibylla herself seemed to feel the need of excuse, for as soon as she caught sight of her brother she cried out to him:

"I simply couldn't go to bed! I've had such a day, Jeremy, and my head's all full of it. And on the top of it came what poor Mumples told us; and-and you can guess how that chimed in with what I must be thinking."

He had come up to her, and she put her hand in his.

"Dear old Jeremy, what friends we've been! We have loved one another, haven't we? Don't stop loving me. You don't say much, and you pretend to be rather scornful-just like a boy; and you try to make out that it's all rather a small and ordinary affair--"

"Isn't it?"

"Oh, I daresay! But to me? Dear, you know what it is to me! I don't want you to say much; I don't mind your pretending. But just now, in the dark, when we're all alone, when nobody can possibly hear-and I swear I won't tell a single soul-kiss me and tell me your heart's with me, because we've been true friends and comrades, haven't we?"

It was dark and nobody was there. Jeremy kissed her and mumbled some awkward words. They were enough.

"Now I'm quite happy. It was just that I wanted to hear it from you too."

Jeremy was glad, but he felt himself compromised. When they went in, his first concern was to banish emotion and relieve the tension. Mrs. Mumple's workbox gave a direction to his impulse. If a young man be inclined, as some are, to assume a cynical and worldly attitude, he will do it most before women, and, of all women, most before those who know him best and have known him from his tender age, since to them above all it is most important to mark the change which has occurred. So Jeremy not only allowed himself to forget that small voice, and, turning back to Mrs. Mumple's story, once more to expose it to an interpretation of the worldly and cynical order, but he went even further. The view which Grantley had suggested to him, which had never crossed his mind till it was put before him by another, the disillusioned view, he represented now not as Grantley's, but as his own. He threw it out as an idea which naturally presented itself to a man of the world, giving the impression that it had been in his mind all along, even while Mrs. Mumple was speaking. And now he asked Sibylla, not perhaps altogether to believe in it, but to think it possible, almost probable, and certainly very diverting.

Sibylla heard him through in silence, her eyes fixed on him in a regard grave at first, becoming, as he went on, almost frightened.

"Do ideas like that come into men's minds?" she asked at the end. She did not suspect that the idea had not been her brother's own in the beginning. "I think it's a horrible idea."

"Oh, you're so high-falutin!" he laughed, glad, perhaps, to have shocked her a little.

She came up to him and touched his arm imploringly.

"Forget it," she urged. "Never think about it again. Oh, remember how much, how terribly she loves him! Don't have such ideas." She drew back a little. "I think-I think it's almost-devilish: I mean, to imagine that, to suspect that, without any reason. Yes-devilish!"

That hit Jeremy; it was more than he wanted.

"Devilish! You call it devilish? Why, it was--" He had been about to lay the idea to its true father-mind; but he did not. He looked at his sister again. "Well, I'm sorry," he grumbled. "It only struck me as rather funny."

Sibylla's wrath vanished.

"It's just because you know nothing about it that you could think such a thing, poor boy!" said she.

It became clearer still that Grantley must not be brought in, because the only explanation which mitigated Jeremy's offence could not help Grantley. Jeremy was loyal here, whatever he may have been to Mrs. Mumple. He kept Grantley out of it. But-devilish! What vehement language for the girl to use!