If Only etc. Part 26

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 courts.h.i.+p.

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!