Double Harness
He was cantering over the turf thirty or forty yards from the road when the omnibus passed him. The driver cried his name, and pointed back with his whip. Grantley saw Sibylla a long way behind. He touched his horse with the spur, and galloped towards her. Now she stood still, waiting for him. He came up to her at full speed, reined in, and leapt off. Holding his bridle and his hat in one hand, with the other he took hers, and, bowing over it, kissed it. His whole approach was gallantly conceived and carried out.
"Ah, you – you come to me like Sir Galahad!" murmured Sibylla.
"My dear, Sir Galahad! A banker, Sir Galahad!"
"Well, do bankers kiss the hands of paupers?"
"Bankers of love would kiss the hands of its millionaires."
"And am I a millionaire of love?"
Grantley let go her hand and joined in her laugh at their little bout of conceits. She carried it on, but merrily now, not in the almost painful strain of delight which had made her first greeting sound half-choked.
"Haven't I given it all to you – to a dishonest banker, who'll never let me have it back?"
"We pay interest on large accounts," Grantley reminded her.
"You'll pay large, large interest to me?"
She laid her hand on his arm, and it rested there as they began to walk, the good horse Rollo pacing soberly beside them.
"All the larger if I've embezzled the principal! That's always the way, you know." He stopped suddenly, laughing, "It's quite safe!", and kissed her.
He held her face a moment, looking into the depths of her dark eyes. Now he forgot to be amused at himself or even gratified. If he was not as a boy-lover, it was not because he advanced with less ardour, but that he advanced with more knowledge; not because he abandoned himself less, but that he knew to what the self-abandonment was.
She walked along with a free swing under her short cloth skirt; evidently she could walk thus for many a mile with no slackening and no fatigue. The wind had caught her hair, and blew it from under, and round about, and even over the flat cap of red that she wore; her eyes gazed and glowed and cried joy to him. There under the majestic spread of sky, amid the exhilaration of the salt-tasting air, on the green swell of the land, by the green and blue and white of the sea, she was an intoxication. Grantley breathed quickly as he walked with her hand on his wrist.
"It's so new," she whispered in a joyful apology. "I've never been in love before. You have! Oh, of course you have! I don't mind that – not now. I used to before – before you told me. I used to be very jealous! I couldn't be jealous now – except of not being allowed to love you enough."
"When I'm with you I've never been in love before."
"I don't believe you ever have – not really. I don't believe you could – without me to help you!" She laughed at her boast as she made it, drumming her fingers lightly on his arm; his blood seemed to register each separate touch with a beat for each. "When we're married, Grantley, you shall give me a horse, such a good horse, such a fast horse – as good and as fast as dear old Rollo. And we'll ride – we'll ride together – oh, so far and so fast, against the wind, right against it breathlessly! We'll mark the setting sun, and we'll ride straight for it, never stopping, never turning. We'll ride straight into the gold, both of us together, and let the gold swallow us up!"
"A bizarre ending for a respectable West End couple!"
"No ending! We'll do it every day!" She turned to him suddenly, saying, "Ride now. You mount – I'll get up behind you."
"What? You'll be horribly uncomfortable!"
"Who's thinking of comfort? Rollo can carry us easily. Mount, Grantley, mount! Don't go straight home. Ride along the cliff. Come, mount, mount!"
She was not to be denied. When he was mounted she set her foot lightly on his, and he helped her up.
"My arm round your waist!" she cried. "Why, I'm splendid here! Gallop, Grantley, gallop! Think somebody's pursuing us and trying to take me away!"
"Must poor Rollo drop down dead?"
"No, but we'll pretend he will!"
Now and then he cried something back to her as they rode; but for the most part he knew only her arm about him, the strands of her hair brushing against his cheek as the wind played with them, her short quick breathing behind him. The powerful horse seemed to join in the revel, so strong and easy was his gait as he pulled playfully and tossed his head. They were alone in the world, and the world was very simple – the perfect delight of the living body, the unhindered union of soul with soul – all nature fostering, inciting, applauding. It was a great return to the earliest things, and nothing lived save those. They rode more than king and queen; they rode god and goddess in the youth of the world, descended from High Olympus to take their pleasure on the earth. They rode far and fast against the wind, against it breathlessly. They rode into the gold, and the gold swallowed them up.
The blood was hot in him, and when first he heard her gasp "Stop!" he would pay no heed. He turned the horse's head towards home, but they went at a gallop still. He felt her head fall against his shoulder. It rested there. Her breath came quicker, faster; he seemed to see her bosom rising and falling in the stress. But he did not stop. Again her voice came, strangled and faint:
"I can't bear any more. Stop! Stop!"
One more wild rush, and he obeyed. He was quivering all over when they came to a stand. Her hold round him grew loose; she was about to slip down. He turned round in his saddle and caught her about the waist with his arm. He drew her off the horse and forward to his side. He held her thus with his arm, exulting in the struggle of his muscles. He held her close against him and kissed her face. When he let her go and she reached earth, she sank on the ground and covered her face with both hands, all her body shaken with her gasps. He sat on his horse for a moment, looking at her. He drew a deep inspiration, and brushed drops of sweat from his brow. He was surprised to find that there seemed now little wind, that the sun was veiled in clouds, that a waggon passed along the road, that a dog barked from a farmhouse, that the old ordinary humdrum world was there.
He heard a short stifled sob.
"You're not angry with me?" he said. "I wasn't rough to you? I couldn't bear to stop at first."
She showed him her face. Her eyes were full of tears; there was a deep glow on her cheeks, generally so pale. She sprang to her feet and stood by his horse, looking up at him.
"I angry? You rough? It has been more than I knew happiness could be. I had no idea joy could be like that, no idea life had anything like that. And you ask me if I'm angry and if you were rough! You're opening life to me, showing me why it is good, why I have it, why I want it, what I'm to do with it. You're opening it all to me. And all the beauties come out of your dear hand, Grantley. Angry! I know only that you're doing this for me, only that I must give you in return, in a poor return, all I have and am and can be – must give you my very, very self."
He was in a momentary reaction of feeling; his earnestness was almost sombre as he answered:
"God grant you're doing right!"
"I'm doing what I must do, Grantley."
He swung himself off his horse, and the ready smile came to his face.
"I hope you'll find the necessity a permanent one," he said.
She too laughed joyfully as she submitted to his kiss.
It was her whim, urged with the mock imperiousness of a petted slave, that he should mount again, and she walk by his horse. Thus they wended their way home through the peace of the evening. She talked now of how he had first come into her life, of how she had begun to – She hesitated, ending, "How I began first to feel you – " and of how, little by little, the knowledge of the feeling had disclosed itself. She was wonderfully open and simple, very direct and unabashed; yet there was nothing that even his fastidious and much-tested taste found indelicate or even forward. In glad confidence she told all, careless of keeping any secrets or any defences against him. The seed had quickened in virgin soil, and the flower had sprung up in a night – almost by magic, she seemed to fancy. He listened tenderly and indulgently. The flame of his emotion had burnt down, but there was an after-glow which made him delightfully content with her, interested and delighted in her, still more thoroughly satisfied with what he had done, even more glad that she was different from all the others with whom he had been thrown. While she displayed to him at once the joy and the spontaneity of her abandonment of her whole existence and self to him, she made him surer of his wisdom in taking her and all she offered, more convinced of the excellence of this disposition of his life. She could give him all he pictured as desirable – the stretches of tranquillity, the moments of strong feeling. She had it in her to give both, and she would give all she had to give. In return he gave her his love. No analysis seemed needful there. He gave her the love of his heart and the shelter of his arm; what more he could give her the afternoon had shown. But in the end it was all contained and summed up in a word – he gave his love.
They came to the crest of the hill where the road dipped down to Milldean, and paused there.
"What a wonderful afternoon it's been!" she sighed.
The enchantment of it hung about her still, expressing itself in the gleam of her eyes and in her restlessness.
"It's been a very delightful one," he leaned down and whispered to her. "It's given us something to look back on always."
"Yes, a great thing to look back on. But even more to look forward to. It's told us what life is going to be, Grantley. And to think that life used to mean only that!"
She waved her hand towards 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 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."