Yes, it is dark, isn"t it? Good afternoon. (_Closes door.)(To_ SYLVESTER.) Phew! You couldn"t have arrived at a worse time.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Thanks.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
I don"t mean to be inhospitable, but the ice was thin.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Have you done anything to "Susannah?"
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Not a stroke, but I commence to-morrow in earnest. I"ve a model coming this afternoon, and if you"ll let me use your studio, I shall knock in enough in a week for old Schercl to see when he calls again.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Why do you want my studio--what"s the matter with this?
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Well, the fact is my wife is always popping in here, and if she found me with a model posed as Susannah she"d go into hysterics. You understand me?
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Understand you. I"m a married man.
(TEMPENNY _looks at him silently, and then puts out his hand_.
SYLVESTER _grasps it_.)
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
I don"t want to gush, but--I feel for you, old chap.
CHARLES SYLVESTER (_gratefully_).
I know--I know.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY (_offering pouch_).
Smoke?
CHARLES SYLVESTER (_producing pipe_).
Thanks.
(_They fill their pipes without speaking and puff sympathetically_.)
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Not but what she is a good sort--I don"t want to say anything against her.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Of course not.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
But--I suppose she"s too fond of me.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
It"s a way wives have--they repay the superabundance of your devotion during the courtship.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Exactly. She"s jealous.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Of whom?
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
Of n.o.body--of everyone. Of my past, which was rather more decent than most fellows--of my life to-day, which is a pattern for a County Councillor.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Poor beggar.
CHARLES SYLVESTER.
You"re sorry for me?
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Devilishly. To be married to a jealous woman!--what a fate.
CHARLES SYLVESTER (_with a groan_).
Ah! Tempenny, there was a girl I used to know when I was a bachelor--she was a model. My wife found her likeness one day after we were married. A likeness, nothing more--I thought I had destroyed it.
Well, if you"d have heard the ructions she made; you"d have thought she"d found a harem.
REMBRANDT TEMPENNY.
Ah!