The Half-Hearted Part 5

"Oh, a very able man indeed, one of the best speakers we have. I should like to see a fight between him and Lewie: they would not get on with each other. This Stocks is a sort of living embodiment of the irritable Radical conscience, a very good thing in its way, but not quite in Lewie's style."

The fifth cutting mentioned the presence of Mr. Haystoun at three garden-parties, and hinted the possibility of a mistress soon to be at Etterick.

George lay back in his chair gasping. "I never thought it would come to this. I always thought Lewie the least impressionable of men. I wonder what sort of woman he has fallen in love with. But it may not be true."

"We'll pray that it isn't true. But I was never quite sure of him. You know there was always an odd romantic strain in the man. The ordinary smart, pretty girl, who adorns the end of a dinner-table and makes an admirable mistress of a house, he would never think twice about. But for all his sanity Lewie has many cranks, and a woman might get him on that side."

"Don't talk of it. I can picture the horrid reality. He will marry some thin-lipped creature who will back him in all his madness, and his friends will have to bid him a reluctant farewell. Or, worse still, there are scores of gus.h.i.+ng, sentimental girls who might capture him. I wish old Wratislaw were here to ask him what he thinks, for he knows Lewie better than any of us. Is he a member here?"

"Oh yes, he is a member, but I don't think he comes much. You people are too frivolous for him."

"Well, that is all the good done by subscribing to a news-cutting agency for news of one's friends. I feel as low as ditch water. There is that idiot who goes off to the ends of the earth for three years, and when he comes back his friends get no good of him for the confounded women."

George echoed the ancient complaint which is doubtless old as David and Jonathan.

Then these two desolated young men, in view of their friend's defection, were full of sad memories, much as relations after a funeral hymn the acts of the deceased.

George lit a cigar and smoked it savagely. "So that is the end of Lewis! And to think I knew the fool at school and college and couldn't make a better job of him than this! Do you remember, John, how we used to call him 'Vaulting Ambition,' because he won the high jump and was a c.o.c.ky beggar in general?"

"And do you remember when he got his First, and they wanted him to stand for a fellows.h.i.+p, but he was keen to get out of England and travel? Do you remember that last night at Heston, when he told us all he was going to do, and took a bet with Wratislaw about it?"

It is probable that this sad elegy would have continued for hours, had not a servant approached with letters, which he distributed, two to Arthur Mordaunt and one to Mr. Winterham. A close observer might have seen that two of the envelopes were identical. Arthur slipped one into his pocket, but tore open the other and read.

"It's from Lewie," he cried. "He wants me down there next week at Etterick. He says he is all alone and crazy to see old friends again."

"Mine's the same!" said George, after puzzling out Mr. Haystoun's by no means legible writing. "I say, John, of course we'll go. It's the very chance we were wis.h.i.+ng for."

Then he added with a cheerful face, "I begin to think better of human nature. Here were we abusing the poor man as a defaulter, and ten minutes after he heaps coals of fire on our heads. There can't be much truth in what that newspaper says, or he wouldn't want his friends down to spoil sport."

"I wonder what he'll be like? Wratislaw saw him in town, but only for a little, and he notices nothing. He's rather famous now, you know, and we may expect to find him very dignified and wise. He'll be able to teach us most things, and we'll have to listen with proper humility."

"I'll give you fifty to one he's nothing of the kind," said George. "He has his faults like us all, but they don't run in that line. No, no, Lewie will be modest enough. He may have the pride of Lucifer at heart, but he would never show it. His fault is just this infernal modesty, which makes him s.h.i.+rk fighting some blatant a.s.s or publis.h.i.+ng his merits to the world."

Arthur looked curiously at his companion. Mr. Winterham was loved of his friends as the best of good fellows, but to the staid and rising politician he was not a person for serious talk. Hence, when he found him saying very plainly what had for long been a suspicion of his own, he was willing to credit him with a new acuteness.

"You know I've always backed Lewie to romp home some day," went on the young man. "He has got it in him to do most things, if he doesn't jib and bolt altogether."

"I don't see why you should talk of your friends as if they were racehorses or prize dogs."

"Well, there's a lot of truth in the metaphor. You know yourself what a mess of it he might make. Say some good woman got hold of him--some good woman, for we will put aside the horrible suggestion of the adventuress. I suppose he'd be what you call a 'good husband.' He would become a magistrate and a patron of local agricultural societies and flower shows. And eveybody would talk about him as a great success in life; but we--you and I and Tommy--who know him better, would feel that it was all a ghastly failure."

Mr. Lewis Haystoun's character erred in its simplicity, for it was at the mercy of every friend for comment.

"What makes you dread the women so?" asked Arthur with a smile.

"I don't dread 'em. They are all that's good, and a great deal better than most men. But then, you know, if you get a man really first-cla.s.s he's so much better than all but the very best women that you've got to look after him. To ordinary beggars like myself it doesn't matter a straw, but I won't have Lewie throwing himself away."

"Then is the ancient race of the Haystouns to disappear from the earth?"

"Oh, there are women fit for him, sure enough, but you won't find them at every garden party. Why, to find the proper woman would be the making of the man, and I should never have another doubt about him. But I am afraid. He's a deal too kindly and good-natured, and he'd marry a girl to-morrow merely to please her. And then some day quite casually he would come across the woman who was meant by Providence for him, and there would be the devil to pay and the ruin of one good man. I don't mean that he'd make a fool of himself or anything of that sort, for he's not a cad; but in the middle of his pleasant domesticity he would get a glimpse of what he might have been, and those glimpses are not forgotten."

"Why, George, you are getting dithyrambic," said Arthur, still smiling, but with a new vague respect in his heart.

"For you cannot harness the wind or tie--tie the bonds of the wild a.s.s,"

said George, with an air of quotation. "At any rate, we're going to look after him. He is a good chap and I've got to see him through."

For Mr. Winterham, who was very much like other men, whose language was free, and who respected few things indeed in the world, had unfailing tenderness for two beings--his sister and his friend.

The two young men rose, yawned, and strolled out into the hall. They scanned carelessly the telegram boards. Arthur pointed a finger to a message typed in a corner.

"That will make a good deal of difference to Wratislaw."

George read: "The death is announced, at his residence in Hamps.h.i.+re, of Earl Beauregard. His lords.h.i.+p had reached the age of eighty-five, and had been long in weak health. He is succeeded by his son the Right Hon.

Lord Malham, the present Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs."

"It means that if Wratislaw's party get back with a majority after August, and if Wratislaw gets the under-secretarys.h.i.+p as most people expect, then, with his chief in the Lords, he will be rather an important figure in the Commons."

"And I suppose his work will be pretty lively," said George. He had been reading some of the other telegrams, which were, as a rule, hysterical messages by way of foreign capitals, telling of Russian preparations in the East.

"Oh, lively, yes. But I've confidence in Tommy. I wish the Fate which decides men's politics had sent him to our side. He knows more about the thing than any one else, and he knows his own mind, which is rare enough. But it's too hot for serious talk. I suppose my seat is safe enough in August, but I don't relish the prospect of a three weeks'

fight. Wratislaw, lucky man, will not be opposed. I suppose he'll come up and help Lewis to make hay of Stock's chances. It's a confounded shame. I shall go and talk for him."

On the steps of the club both men halted, and looked up and down the sultry white street. The bills of the evening papers were plastered in a row on the pavement, and the glaring pink and green still further increased the dazzle. After the cool darkness within each shaded his eyes and blinked.

"This settles it," said George. "I shall wire to Lewie to-night."

"And I," said the other; "and to-morrow evening we'll be in that cool green Paradise of a glen. Think of it! Meantime I shall grill through another evening in the House, and pair."

CHAPTER VI

PASTORAL

I

A July morning had dawned over the Dreichill, and the glen was filled with sunlight, though as yet there seemed no sun. Behind a peak of hill it displayed its chastened morning splendours, but a stray affluence of brightness had sought the nooks of valley in all the wide uplands, courier of the great lord of heat and light and the brown summer. The house of Etterick stands high in a crinkle of hill, with a background of dark pines, and in front a lake, set in sh.o.r.es of rock and heather.

When the world grew bright Lewis awoke, for that strange young man had a trick of rising early, and as he rubbed sleep from his eyes at the window he saw the exceeding goodliness of the morning. He roused his companions with awful threats, and then wandered along a corridor till he came to a low verandah, whence a little pier ran into a sheltered bay of the loch. This was his morning bathing-place, and as he ran down the surface of rough moorland stone he heard steps behind him, and George plunged into the cold blue waters scarcely a second after his host.

It was as chill as winter save for the brightness of the morning, which made the loch in open s.p.a.ces a s.h.i.+ning gold. As they raced each other to the far end, now in the dark blue of shade, now in the gold of the open, the hill breeze fanned their hair, and the great woody smell of pines was sweet around them. The house stood dark and silent, for the side before them was the men's quarters, and at that season given up to themselves; but away beyond, the smoke of chimneys curled into the still air. A man was mowing in some field on the hillside, and the cry of sheep came from the valley. By and by they reached the shelving coast of fine hill gravel, and as they turned to swim easily back a sleepy figure staggered down the pier and stumbled rather than plunged into the water.

"Hullo!" gasped George, "there's old John. He'll drown, for I bet you anything he isn't awake. Look!"

But in a second a dark head appeared which shook itself vigorously, and a figure made for the other two with great strokes. He was by so much the best swimmer of the three that he had soon reached them, and though in all honesty he first swam to the farther sh.o.r.e, yet he touched the pier very little behind them. Then came a rush for the house, and in half an hour three fresh-coloured young men came downstairs, whistling for breakfast.

The breakfast-room was a place to refresh a townsman's senses. Long and cool and dark, it was simply Lewis's room, and he preferred to entertain his friends there instead of wandering among unused dining-rooms. It had windows at each end with old-fas.h.i.+oned folding sashes; and the view on one side was to a great hill shoulder, fir-clad and deep in heather, and on the other to the glen below and the s.h.i.+ning links of the Avelin.

It was panelled in dark oak, and the furniture was a strange medley.