Double Harness. Anthony Hope
Milldean.
Grantley laughed in sheer enjoyment of her. Amusement mingled with his admiration. His balance had quite come back to him. A review of the afternoon, of their wild ride, made him give part of his amusement to his own share in the proceedings. But who expects a man, or need expect himself, to be wise when he is in love? If there be a chartered season for sweet folly, it is there.
"Can we always be careering over the downs in the teeth of the wind, riding into the gold, Sibylla?" he asked her in affectionate mockery.
She looked up at him, answering simply:
"Why not?"
He shook his head with a whimsical smile.
"Whatever else there is, our hearts can be riding together still."
"And when we're old folks? Isn't it only the young who can ride like that?"
She stood silent for a moment or two. Then she turned her eyes up to his in silence still, with the colour shining bright on her cheeks. She took his hand and kissed it. He knew the thought that his words had called into her mind. He had made the girl think that, when they were old, the world would not be; there would be young hearts still to ride, young hearts in whom their hearts should be carried still in the glorious gallop, young hearts which had drawn life from them.
They parted at the gate of Old Mill House. Grantley urged her to come up to his house in the evening and bring Jeremy with her, and laughed again when she said, "Bring Jeremy?" She was confused at the hint in his laughter, but she laughed too. Then growing grave, she went on:
"No, I won't come to-night. I won't see you again to-night. I want to realise it, to think it all over."
"Is it so complicated as that? You're looking very serious!"
She broke into a fresh laugh, a laugh of joyful confession.
"No, I don't want to think it over. I really want to live it over, to live it over alone, many, many times. To be alone with you again up on the downs there."
"Very well. Send Jeremy up. By now he must be dying for an argument; and he's probably not on speaking terms with Mrs. Mumple."
He gave her his hand; any warmer farewell there in the village street was quite against his ways and notions. He observed a questioning look in her eyes, but it did not occur to him that she was rather surprised at his wanting Jeremy to come up after dinner. She did not propose to spend any time with Jeremy.
"I'll tell him you want him," she said; and added in a whisper, "Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!"
He walked his horse up the hill, looking back once or twice to the gate where she stood watching him till a turn of the lane hid him from her sight. When that happened, he sighed in luxurious contentment, and took a cigarette from his case.
To her the afternoon had been a wonder-working revelation; to him it seemed an extremely delightful episode.
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 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