Second String Part 18

laughed Harry.

Wellgood laughed too as he rose. "It seems very lucky all round," he said, smiling again as he left them. He was quite secure that they would spend no time in thinking about good luck other than their own.

The lovers sat on beside the water till twilight fell, talking of a thousand things, yet always of one thing--of one thing through which they saw all the thousand other things, and saw them transfigured with the radiance of the one. Even the bright hues of Harry's future grew a hundredfold brighter when beheld through this enchanted medium, while Vivien's simple ideal of life seemed heaven realized. Visions were their only facts, and dreams alone their truth. Neither from without nor from within could aught harm the airy fabric that they built--Vivien out of ignorance, Harry by help of that fine oblivion of his.

For a long while Isobel Vintry--fled to her room lest Wellgood should seek her--watched them from her window with envious eyes. For them the dreams; for her, most uninspiring reality! At last she turned away with a weary impatient shrug.

"Well, it's a good thing to have it over and done with, anyhow!" she exclaimed, and smiled once more to think how she had stung Harry Belfield with her insinuations and her "Meriton ideal." If we cannot be happy ourselves, it is a temptation to make happy people a little uncomfortable. In that lies an evidence of power consolatory to the otherwise unfortunate.

Chapter IX.

"INTERJECTION."

Settling the question of the butcher's shop had seemed to Andy Hayes like a final solution of life's problems. Therein he showed the quality of his mind. One thing at a time, settle that. As he had learnt to say 'on the other side,' "Don't look for trouble!" He had yet to realize what the man of imagination knows instinctively--that the problems of life end only with life itself.

An eight-ten train to town is not, however, favourable to such a large and leisurely survey as a consideration of life in its totality. It involved a half-hour's race for the station. And this morning the Bird--standing at the door of his father's hostelry--delayed a hard-pressed man who had absolutely no time to stop.

"Heard the news about Mr. Harry?" cried the Bird across the street.

Andy slowed down. "About Harry?"

"Engaged to Miss Wellgood!" shouted the Bird.

"No, is he?" yelled Andy in reply. "Hurrah!"

It was but two days after the great event had happened. Recently Andy had seen nothing of his Meriton friends. He had been working early and late in town; down at seven-thirty, up to work again at eight-ten. He had been a very draught-horse, straining at a load which would not move--straining at it on a slippery slope. Business was so "quiet."

Could not work command success? At present he had to be content with the meagre consolation proffered to Semp.r.o.nius. He must be at the office not a second later than nine. If the American letters came in, replies could get off by the same day's mail.

Yet the news of the engagement--he wished he could have had it from Harry's own lips--cut clean across his personal preoccupations. How right! How splendid! Dear old Harry! And how he would like to congratulate Miss Vivien! All that on Sat.u.r.day afternoon or Sunday. Andy was one of the world's toilers; for them works of charity, friends.h.i.+p, and love have for the most part to wait for Sat.u.r.day afternoon or Sunday; the other five days and a half--it's the struggle for life, grimly individual.

He loved Harry Belfield, and stored up untold enthusiasm for Sat.u.r.day afternoon or Sunday--those altruistic hours when we have time to consider our own souls and other people's fortunes. But to-day was only Thursday; Thursday is well in the zone of the struggle. Andy's timber business was--just turning the corner! So many businesses always are.

Shops expensively installed, hotels over-built, newspapers--above all, newspapers--started with a mighty flourish of heavy dividends combined with national regeneration--they are all so often just turning the corner. The phrase signifies that you hope you are going to lose next year rather less than you lost last year. If somebody will go on supplying the deficit--in that sanguine spirit which is the strength of a commercial nation--or can succeed in inducing others to supply it in a similar spirit, the corner may in the end be turned. If not, you stay this side of the magical corner of success, and presently find yourself in another--to be described as "tight." A life-long experience of questions--of problems and riddles--was not, for Andy Hayes, to stop short at the felicitous solution of the puzzle about Jack Rock's butcher's shop in Meriton High Street.

Andy had to postpone reflection on Harry Belfield's happiness and Vivien's emanc.i.p.ation. Yet he had a pa.s.sing appreciation of the end of ordeals--of Curly, cross-country rides, and the like. Would the mail from Montreal bring a remittance for the rent of the London office? The other business men in the fast morning train were grumpy. Money was tight, the bank rate stiff, times bad. No moment to launch out! There were sounded all the familiar jeremiads of the City train. What could you expect with a Liberal Government in office? The stars in their courses fought against business. n.o.body would trust anybody. It was not that n.o.body had the money--n.o.body ever has--but hardly anybody was believed to be able, in the last resort, to get it. That impression spells collapse. The men in the first-cla.s.s carriage--Andy had decided that it was on the whole "good business" to stand himself a first-cla.s.s "season"--seemed well-fed, affluent, possessed of good cigars; yet they were profoundly depressed, antic.i.p.ative of little less than imminent starvation. One of them explicitly declared his envy of a platelayer whom the train pa.s.sed on the line.

"Twenty-two bob a week certain," he said. "Better than losing a couple of hundred pounds, Jack. Not much longer hours either, and an open-air life!"

"Well, take it on," Jack, who had a cynical turn of humour, advised. "He (the platelayer he meant) couldn't very well lose more than you do; and you'll never make more than he does. Swap!"

The first speaker retired behind the _Telegraph_ in some disgust. It is hard to meet a rival wit as early as eight-thirty in the morning.

The American mail was not in when Andy reached Dowgate Hill, in which important locality he occupied an insignificant attic. A fog off the coast of Ireland accounted for the delay. But on his table, as indicated by the small boy who const.i.tuted his staff--the staff would, of course, be larger when that corner was turned--lay a cable. There was no other correspondence. Things were quiet. Andy could not suppress a reflection that a rather later train would have done as well.

Still there was a cable; no doubt it advised the remittance. The remittance was a matter of peremptory necessity, unless Andy were to empty his private pocket.

"Incontestable--Incubation--Ineffective." So ran the cable.

Andy scratched his nose and reached for the code.

If ever a digression were allowable, if expatiation on human fortune and vicissitudes were still the fas.h.i.+on, what a text lies in the cable code!

This cold-blooded provision for all emergencies, this business-like abbreviation of tragedy! "Asbestos" means "Cannot remit." "Despairing"

signifies "If you think it best." (Could despair sound more despairing?) "Patriotic--Who are the heaviest creditors?" Pa.s.sing to other fields of life: "Risible--Doctor gives up hope." "Refres.h.i.+ng--Sinking steadily; prepare for the worst." "Resurrection--There is no hope of recovery."

"Resurgam--Realization of estate proceeding satisfactorily."

The cable code is a masterly epitome of life.

However Andy Hayes was not given to digression or to expatiation.

Patiently he turned the leaves to find the interpretation of his own three mystic words.

The result was not encouraging.

"Incontestable--Incubation--Ineffective."

Which being interpreted ran: "Most essential to retrench all unnecessary expense. Cannot see prospects of your branch becoming paying proposition. Advise you to close up and return as soon as possible."

There was a fourth word. The "operator"--Andy still chose in his mind the transatlantic term--had squeezed it into a corner, so that it did not at first catch the reader's notice. "Infusoria." Andy turned up "Infusoria." It was a hideously uncompromising word, as the code rendered it; the code makes a wonderful effort sometimes. "Infusoria"

meant: "We expect you to act on this advice at once, and we cannot be responsible for expenditure beyond what is strictly necessary to wind up."

Andy did not often smoke in his office in business hours, but he had a cigarette now.

"Well, that's pretty straight," he thought. The instructions were certainly free from ambiguity. "Made a failure of it!" The cigarette tended to resignation. "Needed a cleverer fellow than I am to make it go." This was his usual sobriety of judgment. "Rather glad to be out of it." That was the draught-horse's instinctive cry of joy at being released from a hopeless effort. They were right on the other side--it was not a "paying proposition." He was good at seeing facts; they did not offend him. So many people are offended at facts--really a useless touchiness.

"All right!" said Andy, flinging the end of the cigarette into the grate, and taking up that fateful code again.

"Pa.s.sionately" met his need: "Will act on instructions received without delay and with all possible saving of expense."

"Yes," said Andy, his stylograph moving in mid-air. He turned over the pages again, seeking another word, thinking very hard whether he should send that other word when he found it.

The word was "Interjection." It meant: "My personal movements uncertain.

Will advise you of them at the earliest moment possible."

To cable "Interjection" would mean an admission of considerable import, both to his princ.i.p.als in Montreal and to himself. It would imply that he was thinking of cutting adrift. Andy was thinking terribly hard about it. It might cause his princ.i.p.als to consider that he was taking too much on himself. Andy was not a partner; he was only on a salary, with a small contingent profit from commissions. It seemed complimentary--and delusive--now to call the profit contingent; the salary was all he had in the world. Such an independently minded word as "Interjection"

incurred a risk. Before he had done thinking about cutting adrift, he might find himself cut adrift. The princ.i.p.als were peremptory men. In view of his failure to make the London branch a "paying proposition,"

perhaps he was lucky in that he had not been cut adrift already. There was a code word for that--"Seltzer." It meant, "We shall be able to dispense with your services on the ---- prox."

"Seltzer thirtieth" would have thrown--and might still throw--Andy on the mercy of the world. Turning up the code (if you are not thoroughly familiar with it) may be interesting work--"as exciting as any novel,"

as reviewers kindly say of books of travel.

Andy had suddenly, and with some surprise, become aware how very much he wished not to go back to Montreal, pleasant city as it is. When he was puzzling about the Meriton shop, Canada had stood for freedom, scope, and opportunity. Why should it not stand for them still, just as well as, or better than, London? Canada and London had ranked together then, in sharp opposition to the narrow limits of his native town. n.o.body could deny the scope and the opportunities of Canada. But Andy did not want to go back. He was profoundly apologetic to himself about the feeling; he would not have ventured to justify it; it was wrong. But, after his long exile, his native land had laid hold on him--England with her ripe rich sweetness, London baited with a thousand lures. He had no pluck, no grit, no go; so he said to himself. There were fortunes to be made over there--a mighty nation to help in building up. That was all true, but he did not want to go. The stylograph hung longingly over the cable form; it wanted to write "Interjection."

The fog had apparently been very persistent in the Irish Channel, for no mail came; the princ.i.p.als in Montreal seemed quite right about the London branch, for no business offered. At half-past twelve Andy determined to go out for lunch and a walk. By the time he got back the mail might have come--and he might have made up his mind whether or not to cable "Interjection."

A man who has it in mind to risk his livelihood often decides that he may as well treat himself liberally at lunch or dinner. Monte Carlo is a terribly expensive place to stay at if you do not gamble; if you do, it costs nothing--at least, what it costs does not matter, which comes to the same thing. Andy decided that, having two hours off, he would go west for lunch. His thoughts were on the great restaurant by the river.

If he were really leaving London in a week (obedient to "Infusoria"), it would be interesting to go there once again.

Entering the grill-room, on his left as he came in from the Strand (at the last moment the main restaurant had struck him as absurd for his chop), he was impressed by the air of habituality worn by his fellow-guests. What was humdrum to them was a treat to him, their routine his adventure. They knew the waiters, knew the maitre d'hotel, and inquired after the cook. They knew one another too, marking who was there to-day, who was an absentee. Andy ate his chop, with his mouth healthily hungry, with his eyes voracious of what pa.s.sed about him.