Second String Part 23

"Oh, but I can't afford to lunch at that place every day!"

"You'll have to--with Gilly; because lunch is the only time he ever gets ideas--he always says so--and unless he can tell somebody else he forgets them again, and they're lost beyond recall. He used to tell them to me, but I always forgot them too. Now he'll tell you; so you'll have to be at lunch, and put it down as office expenses."

Andy had risen to go. The Nun sat up. "I can only tell you once again how grateful I am for all your kindness," he said.

She gave him a whimsically humorous look. "It's really time somebody told you," she said; "and as I feel rather responsible for you, after my letter to Mr. Jack Rock, I expect I'm the proper person to do it. If you're not told, you may go about doing a lot of mischief without knowing anything about it. Prepare for a surprise. You're attractive!

Yes, you are. You're attractive to women, moreover. People don't do things for you out of mere kindness, as they might be kind to a little boy in the street or to a lost dog. They do them because you're attractive, because it gives them pleasure to please you. That sort of thing will go on happening to you; very likely it'll help you a good deal." She nodded at him wisely, then broke suddenly into her gurgle.

"Oh, dear me, you do look so much astonished, and if you only knew how red you've got!"

"Oh, I feel the redness all right; I know that's there," muttered Andy, whose confusion was indeed lamentable. "But when a--a person like you says that sort of thing to me--"

"A person, like me?" She lifted her brows. "What am I? I'm the fashion for three or four seasons--that's what I am. n.o.body knows where I come from; n.o.body knows where I'm going to; and n.o.body cares. I don't know myself, and I'm not sure I care. My small opinion doesn't count for much. Only, in this case, it happens to be true."

"Where do you come from?" asked Andy, in a sudden impulse of great friendliness.

She looked him straight in the face. "n.o.body knows. n.o.body must ask."

"I've got no people belonging to me either. Even Jack Rock's no relation--or only a 'step.'"

Her eyes grew a little clouded. "You mustn't make me silly. Only we're friends now, aren't we? We don't do what we can for one another out of kindness, but for love?" She daintily blew him a kiss, and smiled again.

"And because we're both very attractive--aren't we?"

"Oh, I'll accept the word if I'm promoted to share it with you. But I can't say I've got over the surprise yet."

"You've stopped blushing, anyhow. That's something. Good-bye. I shall see you at lunch, I expect, to-morrow."

Andy was very glad that she liked him, but he was glad of it because he liked her. His head was not turned by her a.s.surance that he was attractive in a general sense: in the first place, because he remained distinctly sceptical as to the correctness of her opinion, sincere as it obviously was; in the second, because the matter did not appear to be one of much moment. No doubt folks sometimes did one a good turn for love's sake, but, taking the world broadly, a man had to make his way without relying on such help as that. That sort of help had given him a fair start now. He was not going to expect any more of it. It seemed to him that Jack Rock--or Jack and the Nun between them?--had already given him more than his share. It was curious to a.s.sociate her with Jack Rock in the work; a queer freak of chance that she had come into it! But she had come into it--by chance and her own wilful fancy. Odd her share in it certainly was, but it was not unpleasant to him. He felt that he had gained a friend, as well as an opening in Gilly Foot's publishing house.

"But I wish," he found himself reflecting as he travelled back in the Underground, "that she understood Harry better."

Here he fell into an error unusual with him; he overrated his own judgment, led thereto by old love and admiration. The Nun had clear eyes; she had seen much of Harry Belfield, and no small amount of life.

She had had to dodge many dangers. She knew what she was talking about.

In all the side of things she knew so well, Andy, with his one attachment before he left South Africa long ago, was an innocent.

Perhaps it was some dim consciousness of this, some half-realized feeling that he was on strange ground where she was on familiar, which made him find it difficult to get what she had said or hinted out of his head. It was apt to come back to him when he saw Vivien Wellgood; an unlooked-for a.s.sociation in his mind of people who seemed far remote from one another. Thus the Nun had come into the old circle of his thoughts; henceforward she too belonged, in a way, to the world of Meriton.

Chapter XI.

THE SHAWL BY THE WINDOW.

Vivien and Isobel were alone at Nutley. It had been Wellgood's custom to go every summer to Norway by himself, leaving his daughter at school, to the care of her governess, or, for the last year or two, of her companion. He saw no reason against following his practice this year; indeed he was glad to go. The interval before the wedding dragged for him, as perhaps it did for others. He had carried matters with Isobel as far as he well could, unless he meant to carry them to the end--and it was not his intention to do that just yet. A last bachelor excursion--he told himself confidently that it was to be his last--had its attraction.

Early in July he packed his portmanteau and went, leaving instructions with Isobel that her chaperonage was to be vigilant and strict. "Err on the safe side," he said. "No harm in that."

"I shall bore them very much," Isobel suggested.

"That's what you're here for." He added, with his hard confident smile, "Later on we'll try to give you a change from it."

She knew well what he meant, and was glad to see the last of him for a while; nay, in her heart would have been glad to see the last of him for ever. She clung to what his words and acts promised, from no affection for him, but because it saved her from the common fate which her pride despised--being dismissed, turned off, now that she was to become superfluous. She had been in effect Vivien's governess, her schoolmistress, invested with power and authority. She hated to step down; it was open to her to step up. (A case not unlike Andy's.) Here was the secret which maintained her pride. In the strength of it she still ruled her charge with no lessening of prestige. It was no more in Vivien's nature than in her position to wonder at that; her eyes were set on a near sure liberty. Temporary restraint, though it might be irksome, seemed no more than a natural pa.s.sing incident. Harry noticed and was amused. He thought that Wellgood must have said a word to Isobel; hinted perhaps that Vivien was wax in her lover's hands, and that her lover was impetuous. That Wellgood, or Isobel herself, or anybody else, should harbour that idea did not displease Harry Belfield; not to be able to resist him would be a venial sin, even in Vivien.

It was an empty season in the little circle of Meriton society. Harry's father and mother were away, gone to Switzerland. Andy came down for week-ends generally; all the working days his nose was close to the grindstone in the office of Messrs. Gilbert Foot and Co. He was learning the business, delighting in his new activity. Harry would not have been in Meriton either, had he not been in love in Meriton. As it was, he had his early ride, then read his books, then went over to Nutley for lunch, and spent all the rest of the day there. Often the curate would come in and make a four at tennis, but he did not stay to dinner. Almost every evening the three were alone, in the house or on the terrace by the water. One night in the week Harry might be in town, one night perhaps he would bring Andy. Four or five nights those three would be together; and the question for Isobel was how often, for how long, how completely she was to leave the engaged couple to themselves. To put it more brutally--how much of a bore was she to make herself?

To be a spy, a hindrance, a clog, to know that joy waited on the closing of the door behind her back, to listen to allusions half-intelligible, to turn a blind ear to words too tender, not to notice a furtive caress, to play the dragon of convention, the old-maid duenna--that was her function in Vivien's eyes. And the same in Harry's? Oh yes! the same in Harry Belfield's handsome, mischievous, deriding eyes! He laughed at her for what she did--for what she did in the discharge of her duty, earning her bread-and-b.u.t.ter. Earning more than he thought, though! Because of the derision in Harry's eyes, again she would not let Wellgood go.

Vivien should awake to realize that she was more than a chaperon, tiresome for the moment, soon to be dismissed; Harry should understand that to one man she was no old-maid duenna, but the woman he wanted for wife. While she played chaperon at Nutley she wrote letters to Wellgood--letters keeping his pa.s.sion alive, playing with his confidence, transparently feigning to ignore, hardly pretending to deny.

They were letters a lover successful in the end would laugh at. If in the issue the man found himself jockeyed, they would furnish matter for fury as a great deceit.

Harry Belfield was still looking forward to his marriage with ardour; it would not be fair even to say that he was getting tired of his engagement. But he would have been wise to imitate Wellgood--take a last bachelor holiday, and so come back again hungry for Vivien's society.

Much as he liked the fare, he could not be said to hunger for it now, it came to him so easily and so constantly. The absence of his parents, the emptiness of the town, his own want of anything particular to do, prevented even the small hindrances and interruptions that might have whetted appet.i.te by thwarting or delaying its satisfaction. Love-making became the business of his days, when it ought to have been the diversion. Harry must always have a diversion--by preference one with something of audacity, venture, or breaking of bounds in it. His relations with Vivien, legitimate though romantic, secure yet delightful, did not satisfy this requirement. His career might have served, and would serve in the future (so it was to be hoped), but the career was at a temporary halt till the autumn campaign began. He took the diversion which lay nearest to hand; that also was his way. Isobel Vintry possessed attractions; she had a temper too, as he knew very well. He found his amus.e.m.e.nt in teasing, chaffing, and challenging her, in forcing her to play duenna more and more conspicuously, and in laughing at her when she did it; in letting his handsome eyes rest on her in admiration for a second before he hastily turned them back to a renewed contemplation of their proper shrine; in seeming half-vexed when she left him alone with Vivien, not altogether sorry when she came back.

He was up to a dozen such tricks; they were his diversion; they flavoured the sweetness of his love-making with the spice of mischief.

He saw that Isobel felt, that she understood. Vivien noticed nothing, understood nothing. There was a secret set up between Isobel and himself; Vivien was a stranger to it. Harry enlarged his interests! His relations with Vivien were delightful, with Isobel they had a piquant flavour. Well, was not this a more agreeable state of things than that Isobel should be simply a bore to him, and he simply a bore to Isobel?

The fact of being an engaged man did not reconcile Harry Belfield to being simply a bore to a handsome woman.

Among Wellgood's orders there was one that Vivien should go to bed at ten o'clock sharp, and Harry depart at the same hour. Wherever they were, in house or garden, the lovers had to be found and parted--Vivien ordered upstairs, Harry sent about his business. Isobel's duty was to enforce this rule. Harry found a handle in it; his malice laid hold of it.

"Here comes the strict governess!" he cried. Or, "Here's nurse! Bedtime!

Won't you really let us have ten minutes more? I believe you sit with your watch in your hand."

Vivien rebuked him. "It's not poor Isobel's fault, Harry. She's got to."

"No, she likes doing it. She's a born martinet! She positively loves to separate us. You've no sympathy with the soft emotions, Miss Vintry.

You're just a born dragon."

"Please come, Vivien," Isobel said, flushing a little. "It's not my fault, you know."

"Do you never break rules, Miss Vintry? It's what they're made for, you know."

"We've not been taught to think that in this house, have we, Vivien?"

"No, indeed," said Vivien with marked emphasis.

Harry laughed. "A pattern child and a pattern governess! Well, we must kiss good-night. You and I, I mean, of course, Vivien. And I'm sent home too, as usual?"

"You don't want to stay here alone, do you?" asked Isobel.

"Well, no, that wouldn't be very lively." His eyes rested on her a moment, possibly--just possibly--hinting that, though Vivien left him, yet he need not be alone.

One evening, a very fine one--when it seemed more absurd than usual to be ordered to bed or to be sent home so early--Harry chaffed Isobel in this fashion, yet with a touch of real contempt. He did feel a genuine contempt for people who kept rules just because they were rules. Vivien again interceded. "Isobel can't help it, Harry. It's father's orders."

"Surely some discretion is left to the trusty guardian?"

"It's no pleasure to me to be a nuisance, I a.s.sure you," said Isobel rather hotly. "Please come in, Vivien; it's well past ten o'clock."

Vivien rose directly.

"You've hurt Isobel, I think," she whispered to Harry. "Say something kind to her. Good-night, dear Harry!"