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 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!