Second String Part 15

"I thought you were going to be a friend of ours." Andy, sitting in the twilight, listening to the bells, smiled at the echo of those regretful words. He cherished their kindliness, and smiled at their prejudice. The shop and Vivien were always connected in his mind since the first day he had met her. Her words came back to him now, summing up all that he would have lost by acceptance, hinting pregnantly at all that his refusal might save or bring.

He stretched his arms and yawned; mind and body both enjoyed a happy relaxation after effort.

"What a week-end it's been!" he thought. Indeed it had--a week-end that was the beginning of many things.

Chapter VIII.

WONDERFUL WORDS.

Fully aware of his son's disposition and partly acquainted with his experiences, Mr. Belfield had urged Harry to "go slow" in his courting of Vivien Wellgood. An opinion that marriage was Harry's best chance was not inconsistent with advising that any particular marriage should be approached with caution and due consideration, that a solid basis of affection should be raised, calculated to stand even though the winds of time carried away the lighter and more fairy-like erections of Harry's romantic fancy. To do Harry justice, he did his best to obey the paternal counsel; but ideas of speed in such matters, and of cautious consideration, differ. What to Harry was sage delay would have seemed to many others lighthearted impetuosity. He waited a full fortnight after he was absolutely sure of--well, of the wonderful thing he was so sure of--a fortnight after he was absolutely sure that Vivien was absolutely sure also. (The fortnights ran concurrently.) Then he began to feel rather foolish. What on earth was he waiting for? A man could not be more than absolutely sure. Yet perhaps, in pure deference to his father, he would have waited a week longer, and so achieved, or sunk to, an almost cold-blooded deliberation. (He had known Mrs. Freere only a week before he declared--and abjured--a pa.s.sion!) He was probably right; it was no good waiting. No greater security could be achieved by that.

Whether the pursuit were deliberate or impetuous, an end must come to it. It was afterwards--when the chase was over and the quarry won--that the danger came for Harry and men like him. Sage delay and a solid basis of affection could not obviate that peril; the born hunter would still listen to the horn that sounded a new chase. Somewhere in the world--so the theory ran--there must live the woman who could deafen Harry's ears to a fresh blast of the horn. On that theory monogamy depends for its personal--as distinguished from its social--justification. So Mr.

Belfield reasoned, with a smile, and counselled delay. But there were no means of ransacking the world, and even the theory itself was doubtful.

Harry was an eager advocate of the theory, but thought that there was no need to search beyond little Meriton for the woman. At any rate, if Meriton did not hold her, she did not exist--the theory stood condemned.

Still he would wait one week more--to please his father.

A thing happened, a word was spoken, the like of which he had never antic.i.p.ated. To defend himself laughingly against comparisons with the proverbial Lothario, to protest with burlesque earnestness against charges of susceptibility, fickleness, and extreme boldness of a.s.sault--Harry played that part well, and was well-accustomed to play it. But to suffer a challenge, to endure a taunt, to be subjected to a sneer, as a slow-coach, a faint-heart, a boy afraid to tell a girl he loved her, afraid to s.n.a.t.c.h what he desired! This was a new experience for Harry Belfield, new and unbearable. And when he had only been trying to please his father! Hang this pleasing of one's father, if it leads to things like that!

He dashed up to Nutley one fine afternoon on his bicycle; he was teaching Vivien the exercise, and she was finding that even peril had its charms. But he was late for his appointment. Isobel Vintry sat alone on the terrace by the water.

"How are you, Miss Vintry? I say, I'm afraid I'm late. Where's Vivien?"

"You're nearly half an hour late."

"Well, I know. I couldn't help it. Where is she?"

"She got tired of waiting for you, and went for a walk in the wood."

"She might have waited."

"Well, yes. One would think she'd be accustomed to it by now," said Isobel. Her tone was lazily indolent, but her eyes were set on him in mockery.

Harry looked at her with a sudden alertness. He looked at her hard.

"Accustomed to waiting for me?"

"Yes." She was exasperating in her malicious tranquillity, meaning more than she said, saying nothing that he could lay hold of, quite grave, and laughing at him.

"Any hidden meanings, Miss Vintry?" For, as a fact, Harry had generally been punctual, and knew it.

"Nothing but what's quite obvious," she retorted, dexterously fencing.

"Or ought to be, to a man not so slow as I am?"

"You slow, Mr. Harry! You're Meriton's ideal of reckless das.h.!.+"

"Meriton's?"

"That's the name of the town, isn't it? Or did you think I said London's?"

Harry laughed, but he was stung; she put him on his mettle. "Oh no, I understood your emphasis."

"You needn't keep her waiting any longer--while you talk about nothing to me. You'll find her in the west wood--if you want to. She left you that message."

Harry had no doubt of what she meant, yet she had not spoken a word of it. The saying goes that words are given us to conceal our thoughts; has anybody ever ventured to say that lips and eyes are? Her meaning carried without speech; understanding it, Harry took fire.

"I won't be late again, Miss Vintry," he said. "It would be a pity to disappoint Meriton in its ideal!"

He would have liked to speak to her for a moment sincerely, to ask her if she really thought--But no, it could not be risked. She would make him feel and look ridiculous. Asking her opinion about the right moment to--to--to come up to the scratch (he could find no more dignified phrase)! Her eyes would never let him hear the end of that.

"Still lingering?" she said, stifling a yawn. "While poor Vivien waits!"

There are unregenerate atavistic impulses; Harry would dearly have liked to box her ears. "Meriton's ideal" rankled horribly. What business was it of hers? It could not concern her in the least--a conclusion which made matters worse, since disinterested criticism is much the more formidable.

"I can find her in a few minutes."

"Oh yes, if you look! Shall you be back to tea?"

"Yes, we'll be back to tea, Miss Vintry. Both of us--together!"

Isobel smiled lazily again. "Come, you are going to make an effort.

Nothing of the laggard now!"

"Oh, that's the word you've been thinking suits me?"

"It really will if you don't get to the west wood soon."

"I'll get there--and be back--in half an hour."

The one thing he could not endure was that any woman--above all, an attractive woman--should find in him, Harry Belfield, anything that was ridiculous. She might chide, she might admire; laugh she must not, or her laugh should straightway be confounded. Isobel's hint that he had been a laggard in love banished, in a moment, the uncongenial prudence which he had been enforcing on himself.

She watched him with a contemptuous smile as he strode off on his quest.

Why had she mocked, why had she hinted? In part for pure mockery's sake.

She found a malicious pleasure in giving his complacency a dig, in shaking up his settled good opinion of himself. In part from sheer impatience of the simple obvious love affair, to which she was called by her situation to play witness, chaperon, and practically accomplice. It was quite clear how it was going to end--better have the end at once!

Her smile of contempt had been not so much for Harry as for the business on which he was engaged; yet Harry had his share of it, since her veiled banter had such power to move him. But that same thing in him had its fascination; there was a great temptation to exercise her power when the man succ.u.mbed to it so easily. In this case she had used it only to send him a little faster whither he was going already; but did that touch the limits of it?

So she speculated within herself, yet not quite candidly. Her feeling for Harry was far from being all contempt. She mocked him with her "Meriton ideal," but she was not independent of the Meriton standard herself. To her as to the rest of his neighbours he was a bright star; to her as to them his looks, his charm, his accomplishments appealed. In her more than in most of them his emotions, so ready and quick to take fire, found a counterpart. To her more than to most of them indifference from him seemed in some sort a slight, a slur, a mark of failure.

Unconsciously she had fallen into the Meriton way of thinking that notice from Harry Belfield was a distinction, his favour a thing marking off the recipient from less happy mortals. She had received little notice and little favour--a crumb or two of flirtation, flung from Vivien's rich table!

To Vivien, after all the person most intimately concerned, Harry had seemed no laggard; she would have liked him none the worse if he had shown more of that quality. Nothing that he did could be wrong, but some things could be--and were--alarming. Her fastidiousness was not hurt, but her timidity was aroused. She feared crises, important moments, the crossing of Rubicons, even when the prospect looked fair and delightful on the other side of the stream.

To-day, in the west wood, the crossing had to be made. It by no means follows that the man who falls in love lightly makes love lightly; he is as much possessed by the feeling he has come by so easily as though it were the one pa.s.sion of a lifetime. In his short walk from Isobel Vintry's side to Vivien's, Harry's feelings had found full time to rise to boiling-point. Isobel was far out of his mind; already it seemed to him inconceivable that he should not, all along, have meant to make his proposal--to declare his love--to-day. How could he have thought to hold it in for an hour longer?

"I know I was late, Vivien," he said. "I'm so sorry. But--well, I half believe I was on purpose." He was hardly saying what was untrue; he was coming to half-believe it--or very nearly.

"On purpose! O Harry! Didn't you want to give me my lesson to-day?"