Second String Part 60

"Oh, the mistake's ours! For many men I say nothing against the life.

I'm not one of the preachers, and there's something to be said for it for some people. We made our own idol, Andy; it's our fault. We saw the capacities, we didn't appreciate the weakness. I can't be hard on poor old Harry, can you? We parted capital friends, I'm glad to say--though he was distinctly in a hurry to keep an appointment at a tea-shop.

Somebody pa.s.sing through London, he said--and through his fancy too, I imagine." He looked across at Andy. "I suppose it all seems uncommon queer to you, Andy?"

"It's a bit of a waste, isn't it?"

"So we think, we at Meriton. That's our old idea, and we shan't get over it. Yes, a bit of a waste! But it's nature's way, I suppose. A fine fabric with one unsound patch! It does seem a waste, but she's lavish; and the fabric may be very pleasing to the eye all the same, and serve all right--so long as you don't strain it!"

In the garden Mrs. Belfield discoursed placidly to Miss Doris Flower; it was perhaps fortunate that the veil of night rendered that young lady's face hard to read.

"Yes, my dear, we must let bygones be bygones. I took a very strong view, a stronger view than I generally take, of her conduct down here--though I can't acquit Mr. Wellgood of a large part of the blame.

But now she's trying to be a good wife to him, I'm sure she is. So I made up my mind to forgive her; it's a very fine boy, and like my family, I think. As for the politics and all that, I'm sure Harry is right, and his father is wrong to regret his withdrawal. Harry is not fit for that rough work; both his mind and his feelings are too fine and sensitive. I hope he will be firm and keep out of it all. Mr. Hayes is much more fit for it, much coa.r.s.er in fibre, you know, dear Miss Flower; and though, of course, we can't expect from him what we did from Harry--if only his health had stood it--Mr. Wigram tells me he is doing really very well. The common people like him, I understand. Oh, not in the way they thought of Harry! That was admiration, almost worship, my dear. But they think he understands them, and naturally they feel on easy terms with him. His stepmother was an excellent woman, and I'm sure we all respect Mr. Rock. Of course in my young days he'd never have done for a county member; but we must move with the times, and I'm really glad that he's got this chance."

The Nun listened to the kindly patronizing old dame in respectful silence. It was really a good thing that she could look at the matter like that--evidently aided by the fine boy and the fine boy's likeness to her family. It was hard to grudge Harry his last worshipper; yet Miss Flower's smile had not been very sympathetic under the veil of night.

"Of course there's poor Vivien--such a sweet girl, and so nice to us!

She's never let it make any difference as far as we're concerned. I am sorry for her, and her father's very wrong in keeping her all alone there at Nutley to brood over it. He ought to have given her a season in London or taken her abroad--somewhere where she could forget about it, and have her chance. What chance has she of forgetting Harry here at Meriton?"

"You can never tell about that, can you, Mrs. Belfield? These things happen so oddly."

"Oh, but, my dear, the poor child never sees anybody! Now you see quite a number of young men, I daresay?"

"Yes, quite a number, Mrs. Belfield," the Nun admitted demurely.

"She sees absolutely n.o.body, except Mr. Hayes and Mr. Gilly Foot. I don't think she's very likely to be taken with Mr. Gilly Foot! Oh no, my dear, it's a sad case."

"You ought to talk to Mr. Wellgood about it."

"I never talk to Mr. Wellgood at all now, my dear, if I can help it. I don't like him, and I think his att.i.tude has been very hard--quite unlike dear Vivien's own! Well, Harry did no more than hint at it, and Isobel, of course, said nothing; but we may have our own opinions as to whether it's all for Vivien's sake!" Mrs. Belfield almost achieved viciousness in this remark. "And--it may seem selfish of me to say it--if she married and went away, Harry might be more inclined to come down here. As it is, he feels it would be awkward. He's so sensitive!"

Belfield and Andy came out--the old man m.u.f.fled in shawls and, even so, fearing his wife's rebuke, Andy drawing the fresh air eagerly into his lungs. He had dined for the first time since the Sunday before; the miles he had covered, the speeches he had made, defied calculation. He had hardly any voice left. His work was nearly done; the polling was on the morrow. But he was due in a neighbouring const.i.tuency the day after that--for one more week. Then back to Gilbert Foot and Co., to make up arrears. Surveying the work he had done and was about to do, he rejoiced in his strength, as formerly he had rejoiced to follow Lord Meriton's hounds on his legs and to antic.i.p.ate the fox's wiles.

He sat down by Mrs. Belfield. Vivien and Sally, who had been strolling, joined the group, of which he made the centre.

"Yes, it looks all right," he said, continuing his talk with Belfield.

"Wigram promises me a thousand. A strong candidate would get that. I hope for about six hundred."

"You think it's safe, though, anyhow?" asked Vivien.

"Yes, I think it's safe." He broke into a laugh. "If anybody had told me this!"

They discussed the fight in all its aspects, especially the last great meeting in the Town Hall the night before. The Nun mimicked Andy's croaking notes with much success, and Miss Dutton commented on popular inst.i.tutions with some severity. They were full of excitement as to the morrow, when the three girls meant to follow Andy's progress through the Division. Mrs. Belfield gave tokens of an inclination to doze. Belfield sat listening to the girls' voices, to their eager excited talk, and their constant appeals to the hero of the day.

The hero of the day! It was Andy Hayes, son of old Mr. Hayes of the Grammar School, _protege_, for his stepmother's sake, of Jack Rock the butcher. He had nearly gone back abroad in failure; he had nearly taken on the shop. He stood now the winner in the fight, triumphant in a contest which he had never sought, from the idea of which he would have shrunk as from rank folly and rank treason. Into that fight he had been drawn unconsciously, insensibly, irresistibly, by another man's doings and by his own, by another man's character and by the character that was his. His conscious part had always been to help his adversary; his adversary unconsciously worked all the while for him. What his adversary had bestowed in ready kindness stood as nothing beside what he had given unwittingly, by accident, never thinking that the results of what he did would transcend the limits of his own fortunes, and powerfully mould and shape another's life. Whom Andy loved he had conquered; whom he followed he had supplanted. The cheers and applause which had rung out for him last night had, a short year ago, been the property of another. His place was his by conquest.

So mused Belfield, father of the vanquished, as he sat silent while the merry voices sounded in his ears. A notable example of how each man finds his place, in spite of all the starts, or weights, or handicaps with which he enters on the race! These things tell, but not enough to land an unsound horse at the post before a sound one. The unsound falters; slowly and surely the sound lessens the gap between them. At last he takes the lead. Then the cry of the crowd is changed, and he gallops on to victory amidst its plaudits. Jack Rock had made no mistake when he entered his horse and put up the stakes.

The hero of that day, the victor in that fight, yes! Against his wishes, without premeditation, so he stood. There was another day of strife, another fight to be waged, one that could not be unmeant or unconscious.

Here the antagonism must come into the open, must be revealed to the mind and heart of the fighter. Here he must not only follow, he must himself drive out; he must not only supplant, he must strive to banish, nay, to annihilate. There was a last citadel which, faithful to faithlessness and true against desertion, still flew the flag of that loved antagonist. Would the flag dip and the gates open at his summons?

Or would the response to his parley be that, though the faithless might be faithless, yet the faithful must be faithful still? Before that answer his arm would be paralyzed.

"Well, I'm sure you'll deserve your success, Mr. Hayes," said Mrs.

Belfield, rising and preparing to retreat indoors. "I hear you've worked very hard and made an extremely good impression."

A quiet smile ran round the circle. The speech, with its delicate, yet serenely sure, patronage would have sounded so natural a year before. In the darkness Andy found himself smiling too. A sense of strength stirred in him. The day for encouragement was past; he did not need it. Save for that last citadel! There still he feared and shrank. With his plain mind, in his strenuous days, he had done little idealising. Only two people had he ever treated in that flattering exacting fashion. His idealising stood in his path now. The weak spot of his st.u.r.dy common-sense had always been about Harry; it was so still, and he had an obstinate sense of trying to kick his old idol, now that it was overthrown. And for her--how if his approach seemed a rude intrusion, the invasion of a desolate yet still holy spot, sacrilege committed on a ruined shrine? On the one side was Harry, or the memory of Harry, stronger perhaps than Harry himself. On the other he himself stood, acutely conscious of his a.s.sociations for her, remembering ever the butcher's shop, recollecting that what favour he had won had been in the capacity of a buffer against the attack of others. How if the buffer, forsaking its protective function, encroached on its own account?

Yet in the course of the months past they had grown into so close a friendship, so firm an alliance. On his part there had been no wooing, on hers neither coquetry nor sentiment displayed. To Harry Belfield their relations to each other would have appeared extremely dull, unpermissibly stagnant, reflecting no credit on the dash of the man or the sensibility of the lady. Sally Dutton, suspecting Andy's hopes, had a caustic word of praise for his patience--the sort of remark which, repeated to Harry about himself, would have sent him straight off to a declaration (the like had happened once by the lake at Nutley). But through these long days, as Andy came and went on his twofold work, from Division to business, from business to Division, they had become wonderfully necessary to one another. For her not to expect him, for him not to find her, would have taken as it were half the heart out of life.

Who else was there? Vivien had drawn a little nearer to that dour father of hers, but nearness to him carried the command for self-repression, for reticence. Andy seemed to have no other with whom to talk of himself and his life, as even the strongest feel a craving to talk sometimes.

Perhaps there was one other ready to serve. He did not know it; she ranked for him among the cherished friends of his lighter hours. He craved an intimate companionship for the deeper moments, and seemed to find it only in one place.

At his own game, his speciality, Harry Belfield could give away all the odds, and still be a formidable opponent. The incomparable love-maker could almost overcome his own treasons; he left such a memory, such a pattern. Isobel loved still; Mrs. Freere was ready to come back; Lady Lucy owned to herself that she was in danger of being very silly. Even the Nun was in the habit of congratulating herself on a certain escape, with the implication that the escape was an achievement. To resist him an achievement! To forget him--what could that be? To Andy it seemed that for any woman it must be an impossibility. In the veiled distance of Vivien's eyes, when the talk veered towards her unfaithful lover, he could find no dissent. Was oblivion a necessity? Here he was--in Harry's place. Did he forget?

They let him rest--with his thoughts; they saw that the big fellow was weary. The old Belfields conducted one another into the house; Vivien took Sally off again with her. Only Doris Flower sat on by him, silent too, revolving in her mind the chronicles of Meriton, the little town with which her whim had brought her into such close touch, from which she was not now minded wholly to separate herself. It seemed like an anchorage in the wandering sea of her life. It offered some things very good--a few firm friends, a sense of home, a place where she was Doris Flower, not merely the Nun, the Quaker, or Joan of Arc. Did she wish that it offered yet more? Ah, there she paused! She was a worker born, as Andy himself was. No work for her lay in Meriton. Perhaps she desired incompatibles, like many of us; being clear-eyed, she saw the incompatibility. And she was not subjected to temptation. She was taken at the valuation which she so carefully put on herself--the good comrade of the lighter hours. No cause of complaint then? None! She did not cry, she did not fall in love. She did not break her records. There is small merit in records unless they are hard to make, and sometimes hard to keep.

She stretched out her hand and laid it on his arm. He turned to her with a start, roused from his weariness and his reverie.

"Dear Andy, have you learnt what we have, I wonder? Not yet, I expect!"

"What do you mean, Doris?"

"Trust in you. A certainty that you'll bring it off!" She laughed--a little nervously. "I've a professional eye for a situation. Try for a double victory to-morrow! Make a really fine day for yourself--one to remember always!" She drew her hand away with another nervous laugh; her clear soft voice had trembled.

Andy's inward feelings leapt to utterance. "Have you any notion of what I feel? I--I'm up against him in everything! It's almost uncanny. And I think he'll beat me in this. At least I suppose you mean--?"

"Yes, I mean that." Her voice was calm again, a little mocking. "But I shall say no more about it."

Andy pressed her hand. "I like to have your good wishes more than anybody's in the world," he said, "unless, perhaps, it were his, Doris.

Don't say I told you, but he grudges me the seat. He'd grudge me the other thing worse, much worse."

"Oh, but that's quite morbid. It's all his own fault."

"Yes, I suppose so. But he's never been to you what he has to me." He smiled. "We at Meriton still have to please Harry, and to have him pleased with us. The old habit's very strong."

"Heavens, Andy, you wouldn't think of sacrificing yourself--and perhaps her--to an idea like that?"

"No, that would be foolish, and wrong--as you say, morbid. But it can't be--whatever she says to me--it can't be as if he had never existed--as if it all hadn't happened."

"Some people feel things too little, some feel them too much," the Nun observed. "Both bad habits!"

"I daresay the thing's a bit more than usual on my mind to-night--because of to-morrow, you know." He was silent for a moment; then he broke into one of his simple hearty laughs. "And I am such an awful duffer at making love!"

"You certainly have no great natural talent for it and, as you've told me, very little practice. Oh, I wonder how big your majority will be, Andy!"

Andy readily turned back to the election. Yet even here the att.i.tude she had reproved in him seemed to persist. "I expect, as I said, about six hundred. Harry would have got a thousand easily."

Andy escorted Vivien back to Nutley. He had it in mind to speak his heart--at least to sound her feeling for him; but she forestalled his opening.

"Mr. Belfield's been talking to me about Harry to-night, for the first time. He wrote me a letter once, but he has never spoken of him before.

He was rather pathetic. Oh, Andy, why can't people think what they are doing to other people? And poor Isobel--I'm afraid she won't be happy. I used to feel very hard about her. I can't any more, now that the little child has come. That seems to make it all right somehow, whatever has happened before. At any rate she's got the best right now, hasn't she?"

She was silent a moment. "It was like this that I came home with him that last evening. He was so gay and so kind. Then--in a flash--it happened!"