Double Harness Part 4

CHAPTER III

THE WORLDLY MIND

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 circ.u.mstances 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!"

"Bos.h.!.+" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 pa.s.s 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 ent.i.tled to a visit. But word has never come to me, and I've never seen him."

She paused and st.i.tched 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 pa.s.sed 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.