"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 ill.u.s.trate 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 t.i.tle of reason) suggesting the other.
"A different view is possible to the worldly mind," Grantley went on in lazy amus.e.m.e.nt. "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 att.i.tude of readiness to modify them, although that would have been an unimpeachable position from a scientific standpoint.