Second String Part 39

So ran the Nun's criticism, full of sympathy with the girl, not perhaps quite so full of sympathy for what seemed to her an over-saintly abnegation of her s.e.x's right. The bitterest anti-feminist will agree that a girl should be worshipped while she is betrothed; he will allow her that respite of dominion in a life which, according to his opponents, his theories reduce, for all its remaining years, to servitude. Vivien was already serving--serving and watching anxiously--amid all her love. At this Doris rebelled--she who never fell in love. But she was quicker to grow fond of people than to criticize their points of view. Vivien's over-saintliness did sinful Harry's cause no service. If this were Vivien's mood in the light of her study of what her lover was, how would she stand towards the knowledge of what he did?

Yet Andy Hayes thought that the best thing now possible was that she should come to the knowledge of it--that was what he meant by there being a "row." That opinion of his was a mightily strong endors.e.m.e.nt of Vivien's anxiety.

"Don't you now and then feel like backing out of it?" the Nun had asked with her usual directness.

Vivien's answer came with a laugh, suddenly scornful, suddenly merry, "Why, it's all my life!"

The Nun shook her sage little head; these things were not all people's lives--oh dear, no! She knew better than that, did Doris! But then the foolish obstinate folk would go on believing that they were, and thereby, for the time, made the trouble just as great as though their delusion were gospel truth.

Then Vivien had turned penitent about her fears, and remorseful for the expression of them. By an easy process penitence led to triumph, and she fell to singing Harry's praises, to painting again that brightly coloured future--the marvellous things to be seen and done by Harry's side. She smiled gently, rather mysteriously; the sound of the wonderful words was echoing in her ears. Doris saw her face, and pressed her hand in a holy silence.

The result of her various conversations, of her own reflections, and of her personal inspection of the situation at Nutley was to throw Miss Doris Flower into perhaps the gravest perplexity under which she had ever suffered. When you are accustomed to rule your life--and other people's, on occasion--by the simple rule of doing the obvious thing, it is disconcerting to be confronted with a case in which there appears to be no obvious thing to do, where there is only a choice of evils, and the choice seems balanced with a perverse and malicious equality. From Vivien's side of the matter--Doris troubled herself no more with her old friend Harry's--the marriage was risky far beyond the average of matrimonial risks; but the "row" was terribly risky too, with the girl in that mood about "all her life." If she had that mood badly upon her, she might do--well, girls did do all sorts of things sometimes, holding that life had nothing left in it.

Though there was nothing obvious, there must be something sensible; at least one thing must be more sensible than the other. Was it more sensible to do nothing--which was to favour the "row"--or to attempt something--which was to work for the marriage? Her temperament a.s.serted itself, and led her to a conclusion in conflict with Andy's. She was by nature inclined always to do something. In the end the "row" was a certain evil; the marriage only a risk. Men do settle down--sometimes!

(She wrinkled her nose as she propounded, and qualified, this proposition.) The risk was preferable to the certainty. After all, her practical sense whispered, in these days even marriage is not wholly irrevocable. Yes, she would be for the marriage and against the "row"--and she would tell Andy that.

Something was to be done then. But what? That seemed to the Nun a much easier question--a welcome reappearance of the obvious thing.

"I must find out what the woman really wants. Until we know that, it's simply working in the dark."

So she concluded, and at last turned on her side and went to sleep.

Chapter XVII.

REFORMATION.

In very truth the atmosphere at Nutley was heavy with threatening clouds; unless a fair wind came to scatter them, the storm must soon break. Isobel had fled within her feminine barricades--the barricades which women are so clever at constructing and at persuading the conventions of life to help them to defend. A woman's solitudes may not be stormed; with address she can escape private encounters. In sore fear of Harry because sore afraid of herself, she gave him no opportunity. In sore fear of Wellgood, she shrank from facing him with a rupture of their secret arrangement. Both men were tricked out of their stolen interviews--Wellgood out of his legitimate privilege, Harry out of his trespa.s.sing. Each asked why; in each jealousy harked back to its one definite starting-point--Harry's to her suggestions about her relations with Vivien's father, Wellgood's to Belfield's hints that, as a companion, Isobel was needlessly good looking. To each of them matter of amus.e.m.e.nt at the time when they were made, they took on now a new significance; so irony loves to confront our past and present moods. But Wellgood held a card that was not in Harry's hand--a card which could not win the game, but could at least secure an opening. He was employer as well as lover. Vivien's father could command the presence of Vivien's companion--not indeed late at night, for that would be a scarcely judicious straining of his powers, but at any reputable business-transacting hour of the day. For two nights--and that day of which the Nun had been a witness--he suffered the evasion of his rights; then, with a suavity dangerous in a man so rough, he prayed Miss Vintry's presence in the study for ten minutes (the established period!) before dinner; there were ways and means to be discussed, he said, matters touching the _trousseau_ and the wedding entertainment. Vivien was bidden to run away and dress. "We're preparing one or two surprises for you, my dear," he said to her, with a grim smile which carried for Isobel a hidden reference.

Thus commanded in Vivien's presence, Isobel was cleverly caught between the duty of obedience and the abandonment of her ostensible position in the house. Her barricade was being outflanked; she was forced into the open.

She was in fear of him, almost actual physical fear; whether more of his fondness or of his roughness she could not tell; she felt that she could hardly bear either. Since her avowal to Harry, her courage had never returned, her weapons seemed blunted, she was no more mistress of all her resources. Yet in the end she feared the fondness more, and would at all costs avoid that. She summoned the remnants of her once brilliant array of bravery.

Alone with her, he wasted no time on the artifice which had secured him privacy.

"What's this new fad, Isobel? You're wilfully avoiding me. One evening you turn faint; another you dodge me, and are off to bed! Though I don't think I've ever made exacting claims on your time, considering!"

"I've been afraid--you'd better hear the truth--to speak to you."

"I should like the truth, certainly, if I can get it. What have you been afraid to speak to me about?"

"Our engagement." She made the plunge, her eyes fixed apprehensively on his face. "I--I can't go on with it, Mr. Wellgood."

He had schooled himself for this answer; he made no outburst. His tone was mild; the cunning of jealousy gave him an alien smoothness.

"Sit down, my dear, and tell me why."

She sat facing him, his writing-table between them.

"My feelings haven't--haven't developed as I hoped they would."

"Oh, your feelings haven't developed?" he repeated slowly. "Towards me?"

"I reserved the right to change my mind--you remember?"

"And I the right to be unpleasant about it." He smiled under intent eyes.

"I'll leave the house to-morrow, if you like," she cried, eager now to accept a banishment she had once dreaded.

"Oh, no! I'm not going to be unpleasant. We needn't do things like that."

"I--I think I should prefer it."

"I'm sorry you should feel that. There's no need; you shan't be annoyed."

"That's good of you. I thought you'd be very, very hard to me."

"Would that be the best way to win you back? I don't know--at any rate I don't feel like following it. But really you can't go off at a moment's notice--and just now! What would Vivien think? What are we to say to her? What would everybody think? And how are Vivien and I to get through all this business of the wedding?"

"I know it would be awkward, and look odd, but it might be better. Your feelings--"

"Never mind my feelings; you know they're not my weak spot. Come, Isobel, you see now you've no cause to be afraid of me, don't you?"

"You're behaving very kindly--more kindly than perhaps I could expect."

Down in her mind there was latent distrust of this unwonted uncharacteristic kindness. Yet it looked genuine enough. There was no reference to the name she dreaded; no hint, no sneer, about Harry Belfield. She rose to a hope that her tricks and her fencing had been successful, that he was quite in the dark, that the issue was to his mind between their two selves alone, with no intruder.

Wellgood's jealousy bade him be proud of his effort, and encouraged him to persevere. The natural temper of the man might be raging, almost to the laying of hands on her; it must be kept down; the time for it was not yet. Rudeness or roughness would give her an excuse for flight; he would not have her fly. A plausible kindness, a considerate smoothness--that was the card jealousy selected for him to play.

"You shan't be troubled, you shan't be annoyed. I'll give up my evening treat. We'll go back to our old footing--before I spoke to you about this. I'll ask nothing of you as a lover--well, except not to decide finally against me till the wedding. Only three weeks! But as my friend, and Vivien's, I do ask you not to leave us in the lurch now--at this particular moment--and not to risk setting everybody talking. If you insist on leaving me, go after the wedding. That means no change in our plan, except that you won't come back. That'll seem quite natural; it's what they all expect."

Still never a word of Harry, no hint of resentment, nothing that could alarm her or give her a handle for offence! Whether from friend or lover, his request sounded most moderate and reasonable. Not to leave the friend in the lurch, not to decide with harsh haste against a patient lover who had been given cause for confident hope, almost for certainty! He left her no plausible answer, for she could adduce no grievance against him. He had but taken what for her own purposes she had been content to allow--first in his bluff flirtation, then in his ill-restrained endearments. There was no plausibility in turning round and pretending to resent these things now. She dared not take false points in an encounter so perilous; that would be to expose herself to a crushing reply.

"If you go now--all of a sudden, at this moment--I can't help thinking you'll put yourself under a slur, or else put me under one. People know the position you've been in here--practically mistress of the house, with Vivien in your entire charge. Very queer to leave three weeks before her wedding! You may invent excuses, or we may. An aunt dying--something of that sort! n.o.body ever believes in those dying aunts!"

It was all true; people did not believe in those dying aunts, not when sudden departures of handsome young women were in question. People would talk; the thing would look odd. His plausible cunning left her no loophole.

"If you wish it, I'll stay till the wedding, on our old footing--as we were before all this, I mean. But you mustn't think there's any chance of my--my changing again."

"Thank you." He put out his hand across the table. She could not but take it. Though he seemed so cool and quiet, the hand was very hot. He held hers for a long while, his eyes intently fixed on her in a regard which she could not fathom, but which filled her anew with fear. She fell into a tremble; her lips quivered.

"Let me go now, please," she entreated, her eyes unable to meet his any longer.

He released her hand, and leant back in his chair. He smiled at her again, as he said, "Yes, go now. I'm afraid this interview has been rather trying to you--perhaps to us both."

Of all the pa.s.sions, the sufferings, the undergoings of mankind, none has so relentlessly been put to run the gauntlet of ridicule as jealousy. It is the sport of the composer of light verses, the born material of the writer of farce--especially when it is well founded. It is perhaps strange to remark--could any strangeness outlast familiarity--that the supreme study of it treats of it as utterly unfounded, and finds its highest tragedy in its baselessness. Ridiculous when justifiable, tragic when all a delusion! Is that nature's view, even as it is so often art's? Certainly the race is obstinate in holding real failure in the conflict of s.e.x as small recommendation in a hero, imagined as the opportunity for his highest effect. King Arthur hardly bears the burden of being deceived; on the baseless suspicion of it the Moor rides through murder to a triumphant death--and a general sympathy--unless nowadays women have anything to say on the latter point.