Challis's sense of the ludicrous gets the upper hand. "I should have thought the chauffeur would be too much preoccupied," says he. "Anyhow, I shouldn't be at all surprised to hear they were engaged, any day. As for the party itself, there were some very interesting people this time, and some most interesting talk on abstruse subjects after dinner."
But the lady felt she would rather hear Mrs. Eldridge on the meaning of the word "abstruse" before she ventured out of her depth about it. A queer word, that! Also, she does not mean to have Judith elided in this way. "What about the other one?" she says bluntly.
There it was!—the gist of the whole situation in a nutshell. What about the other one? As Challis laid down his pipe, half-smoked—a strange thing for him—he was aware that, without being absolutely tremulous, it would not do for him to bring his teeth very near together without touching, or they would chatter. They must be either clutched or parted. It is just possible that people exist who have never had this experience.
[CHAPTER XXXV]
OF MUTUAL MISTRUST. HANDSOME JUDITH! BUT MARIANNE HAD NO WISH TO PRY INTO HER AFFAIRS. HOW MATTERS WERE COMFORTABLER. PLEASE BURN THAT POSTSCRIPT! CHALLIS'S EXPLANATION. HOW IT FAILED, AND HE WENT FOR A WALK
People go on making believe a thing is true which each knows to be false, or vice versa, a very long time. But when each believes the other thinks he knows nothing about the matter—or everything about it, as may suit his case best—reciprocal deception will have a still longer life. And longer still when each believes the other thinks that he believes ... and so on across and across ad infinitum, in shuttlecock flights! Our own belief is that if this topic were discussed by Senior Wranglers, one or more of them would say something intelligible, which we can't, about the term of mutual deception increasing as the square of the distance of the shuttlecock flights, or their number. The first sounds best.
At what stage of the labyrinth of reciprocities were Mr. and Mrs. Challis left when the gentleman laid down his pipe? Perhaps, considering that one has other uses for one's brain, it is safest to leave that question unanswered. But there was this difference between them—that Mrs. Steptoe's Ramsgate tale had made of Marianne's mind a fruitful soil for suspicion; while Titus's, apart from a tendency to detect the influence now and again of Charlotte Eldridge, was disposed to acquit his wife of any ingenuity in cultivating crops of the weed—indeed, of very few mental subtleties of any sort whatever. She was to him the incarnation of stupidity and abstract goodness, a solid substratum of which was an article of faith with him, reconcilable with any amount of little tempers, or big ones. And this faith went the length of supposing that Polly Anne credited him with it, and knew it would prevent him imagining that she could think him capable of believing that she could foster suspicions against him. Simple and intelligible!
But the nervous tremor that seized on Challis when he laid his pipe down just now was too palpable to leave reciprocal deceptions intact, unless accounted for as foreign to the subject. Therefore, when Marianne recognized the abnormal nature of the pipe-movement by saying, with the mien of an answer-seeker, "Are not you going to finish your pipe?" he felt that some intrepidity was called for, for both their sakes.