Second String Part 2

"We shall never catch them, shall we? It's not the least use going on, is it?"

"Oh, I don't know. I know the country; if you'd let me pilot you--"

"Harry Belfield was going to pilot me, but--well, I told him not to wait for me, and he didn't. You were at the meeting last night, weren't you?

You're Mr. Hayes, aren't you? What did you think of the speeches?"

"Really, you know, if we're to have a chance of seeing any more of the--" It was not the moment to discuss political speeches, however excellent.

"I don't want to see any more of it. I'll go home; I'll risk it."

"Risk what?" he asked. There seemed no risk in going home; and there was, by now, small profit in going on.

She did not answer his question. "I think hunting's the most wretched amus.e.m.e.nt I've ever tried!" she broke out. "The pony's lame--yes, he is; I've torn my habit" (she exhibited a sore rent); "I've scratched my face" (her finger indicated the wound); "and here I am! All I hope is that they won't catch that poor fox. How far do you think it is to Nutley?"

"Oh, about three miles, I should think. You could strike the road half a mile from here."

"I'm sure the pony's lame. I shall go back."

"Would you like me to come with you?"

During their talk her eyes had wavered between indignation and piteousness--the one at the so-called sport of hunting, the other for her own woes. At Andy's question a gleam of welcome flashed into them, followed in an instant by a curious sort of veiling of all expression.

She made a pathetic little figure, with her habit sorely rent and a nasty red scratch across her forehead. The pony lame too--if he were lame! Andy hit on the idea that it was a question whether he were lame enough to swear by: that was what she was going to risk--in a case to be tried before some tribunal to which she was amenable.

"But don't you want to go on?" she asked. "You're enjoying it, aren't you?" The question carried no rebuke; it recognized as legitimate the widest differences of taste.

"I haven't the least chance of catching up with them. I may as well come back with you."

The curious expression--or rather eclipse of expression--was still in her eyes, a purely negative defensiveness that seemed as though it could spring only from an instinctive resolve to show nothing of her feelings.

The eyes were a dark blue; but with Vivien's eyes colour never counted for much, nor their shape, nor what one would roughly call their beauty, were it more or less. Their meaning--that was what they set a man asking after.

"It really would be very kind of you," she said.

Andy mounted her on the suppositiously lame pony--her weight wouldn't hurt him much, anyhow--and they set out at a walk towards the highroad which led to Nutley and thence, half a mile farther on, to Meriton.

She was silent till they reached the road. Then she asked abruptly, "Are you ever afraid?"

"Well, you see," said Andy, with a laugh, "I never know whether I'm afraid or only excited--in fighting, I mean. Otherwise I don't fancy I'm either often."

"Well, you're big," she observed. "I'm afraid of pretty nearly everything--horses, dogs, motor-cars--and I'm pa.s.sionately afraid of hunting."

"You're not big, you see," said Andy consolingly. Indeed her hand on the reins looked almost ridiculously small.

"I've got to learn not to be afraid of things. My father's teaching me.

You know who I am, don't you?"

"Oh yes; why, I remember you years ago! Is that why you're out hunting?"

"Yes."

"And why you think that the pony--?"

"Is lame enough to let me risk going home? Yes." There was a hint of defiance in her voice. "You must think what you like," she seemed to say.

Andy considered the matter in his impartial, solid, rather slowly moving mind. It was foolish to be frightened at such things; it must be wholesome to be taught not to be. Still, hunting wasn't exactly a moral duty, and the girl looked very fragile. He had not arrived at any final decision on the case--on the issue whether the girl were silly or the father cruel (the alternatives might not be true alternatives, not strictly exclusive of one another)--before she spoke again.

"And then I'm fastidious. Are you?"

"I hope not!" said Andy, with an amused chuckle. A great lump of a fellow like him fastidious!

"Father doesn't like that either, and I've got to get over it."

"How does it--er--take you?" Andy made bold to inquire.

"Oh, lots of ways. I hate dirt, and dust, and getting very hot, and going into butchers' shops, and--"

"Butchers' shops!" exclaimed Andy, rather hit on the raw. "You eat meat, don't you?"

"Things don't look half as dead when they're cooked. I couldn't touch a butcher!" Horror rang in her tones.

"Oh, but I say, Jack Rock's a butcher, and he's about the best fellow in Meriton. You know him?"

"I've seen him," she admitted reluctantly, the subject being evidently distasteful.

For the second time Andy Hayes was conscious of a duty: he must not be--or seem--ashamed of Jack Rock, just because this girl was fastidious.

"I'm related to him, you know. My stepmother was his sister. And I'm staying in his house."

She glanced at him, a slight flush rising to her cheeks; he saw that her lips trembled a little.

"It's no use trying to unsay things, is it?" she asked.

"Not a bit," laughed Andy. "Don't think I'm hurt; but I should be a low-down fellow if I didn't stand up for old Jack."

"I should rather like to have you to stand up for me sometimes," she said, and broke into a smile as she added, "You're so splendidly solid, you see, Mr. Hayes. Here we are at home--you may as well make a complete thing of it and see me as far as the stables."

"I'd like to come in--I'm not exactly a stranger here. I've often been a trespa.s.ser. Don't tell Mr. Wellgood unless you think he'll forgive me, but as a boy I used to come and bathe in the lake early in the morning--before anybody was up. I used to undress in the bushes and slip in for my swim pretty nearly every morning in the summer. It's fine bathing, but you want to be able to swim; there's a strong undercurrent, where the stream runs through. Are you fond of bathing?"

Andy was hardly surprised when she gave a little shudder. "No, I'm rather afraid of water." She added quickly, "Don't tell my father, or I expect I should have to try to learn to swim. He hasn't thought of that yet. No more has Isobel--Miss Vintry, my companion. You know? You saw her at the meeting. I have a companion now, instead of a governess.

Isobel isn't afraid of anything, and she's here to teach me not to be."

"You don't mind my asking your father to let me come and swim, if I'm here in the summer?"

"I don't suppose I ought to mind that," she said doubtfully.

The house stood with its side turned to the drive by which they approached it from the Meriton road. Its long, low, irregular front--it was a jumble of styles and periods--faced the lake, a stone terrace running between the facade and the water; it was backed by a thick wood; across the lake the bushes grew close down to the water's edge. The drive too ran close by the water, deep water as Andy was well aware, and was fenced from it by a wooden paling, green from damp. The place had a certain picturesqueness, but a sadness too. Water and trees--trees and water--and between them the long squat house. To Andy it seemed to brood there like a toad. But his healthy mind reverted to the fact that for a strong swimmer the bathing was really splendid.

"Here comes Isobel! Now nothing about swimming, and say the pony's lame!"