"I mean year and a half."
He forced his mobile features to a.s.sume a fixed expression of greedy, though rather too constant, curiosity. Lady Enid brightened up.
"Mr. Vivian," she said, "many girls are born sensible-looking without wishing it."
"Are they really? It never occurred to me."
"Such things very seldom do occur to men. Now that places these girls in a very painful position. I was placed in this position as soon as I was born, or at least as soon as I began to look like anything at all. For babies really don"t."
"That"s very true," a.s.sented the Prophet, with more fervour.
"People continually said to me, "What a nice sensible girl you are"; or--"One always feels your Common sense"; or--"There"s nothing foolish about you, Enid, thank Heaven!" The Chieftain relied upon me thoroughly.
So did the tenants. So did everybody. You can understand that it became very trying?"
"Of course, of course."
"It"s something to do with the shape of my eyebrows, the colour of my hair, the way I smile and that sort of thing."
"No doubt it is."
"Mr. Vivian, I"ll tell you now, that I"ve never felt sensible in all my life."
"Really!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Prophet, still firmly holding all his features together in an unyielding expression of fixed curiosity.
"Never once, however great the provocation. And in my family, with the Chieftain, the provocation you can understand is exceptionally great."
The Marquis of Glome, who was the head of a clan called "The MacArdells," was always named the Chieftain by his relations and friends.
"I felt sure it must be," said the Prophet, decisively.
"Nevertheless it is so extremely difficult, if not impossible, not to try to be what people take you for that I was in a perpetual condition of acting sensibly, against my true nature."
"How very trying!" murmured the Prophet, mechanically.
"It was, Mr. Vivian. It often made me fell quite ill. n.o.body but you knows how I have suffered."
"And why do I know?" inquired the Prophet.
"Because I realised yesterday that you must be almost as silly by nature as I am."
"Yesterday--why? When?"
"When you said to Sir Tiglath that you could prophesy."
The Prophet stiffened. She laughed almost affectionately.
"So absurd! But I was vexed when you said you"d give it up. You mustn"t do that, or you"ll be flying in the face of your own folly."
She drew the Aberdeen lean-to, which ran easily on Edinburgh castors, a little nearer to him, and continued.
"At least I felt obliged to seek an outlet. I could not stifle my real self for ever, and yet I could not be comfortably silly with those who were absolutely convinced of my permanent good sense. I tried to be several times.
"Didn"t you succeed?"
"Not once."
"Tch! Tch!"
"So at last I was driven to the double life."
"Then your coachman knows?"
"MacSpillan! No! I took a cab--a four-wheeler--at the corner of the Square, and the name of Minerva Partridge. It"s a silly name, isn"t it?"
She asked the question with earnest anxiety.
"Quite idiotic," said the Prophet, rea.s.suringly.
"I felt quite sure it was," she cried, obviously comforted. "Because it came to me so inevitably. I was so perfectly natural--and alone--when I invented it. No one helped me."
"I a.s.sure you," reiterated the Prophet, "there is no doubt the name is absolutely and entirely idiotic."
"Thank you, dear Mr. Vivian! What a pleasure it is to talk to you! Under this name I have, for a year and a half, led an idiotic life, such a life as really suits me, such a life as is in complete accord with my true nature. Oh, the joy of it! The sense of freedom! If only all other silly girls who look sensible like me had the courage to do what I have done!"
"It is a pity!" said the Prophet, in a.s.sent, beginning to be genuinely moved by the obvious sincerity of this human being"s bent towards folly. "But what have you done during this year and a half of truth and freedom?"
"More foolish things than many crowd into a lifetime," she cried ecstatically. "It would take me days to tell you of half of them!"
"Oh, then you mustn"t," said the Prophet, glancing furtively at the clock. "Had you come out to be silly yesterday afternoon?"
"Yes, I had--to be sillier even than usual. And if it hadn"t been for Sir Tiglath catching sight of me in the avenue, and then--Mr.
Sagittarius and you being in the parlour--"
She stopped.
"By the way," she said, in her usual tone of breezy common sense, "were you living a double life in the parlour?"
"I!" said the Prophet. "Oh, no, not at all. I never do anything of that kind."
"Sure?"
"Quite certain."
"You"re not going to?"
"Certainly not. Nothing would induce me."
She looked at him, as if unconvinced, raising her dark, sensible eyebrows.