Double Harness. Anthony Hope
"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