Second String Part 24

She ran off, ahead of Isobel, who was about to follow, with no word to Harry.

"Oh, wait a minute, please, Miss Vintry! I say, you know, I was only joking. Of course I know it's not your fault. I'm awfully sorry if I sounded rude. I thought you wouldn't mind a bit of chaff."

She stood looking at him with a hostile air.

"Why does it amuse you?" she asked.

The square question puzzled Harry, but he was apt at an encounter. He found a good answer. "I suppose because what you do--what you have to do--seems somehow so incongruous, coming from you. I won't do it again, if you don't like it. Please forgive me--and walk with me to the gate to prove it. There's no rule against that!"

For half a minute she stood, still looking at him. The moonlight was amply bright enough to let them see one another's faces.

"Very well," she said. "Come along."

Harry followed her with a pleasant feeling of curiosity. It was some little while before she spoke again. They had already reached the drive.

"Why do you say that it's incongruous, coming from me?" she asked.

"I'm afraid I can't answer that without being impertinent again,"

laughed Harry.

She turned to him with a slight smile. "Risk that!"

It was many days since he had been alone with her--so devoted had he been to Vivien. Now again he felt her power; again he did not know whether she put it forth consciously.

"Well, then, you playing sheep-dog when you ought to be--" He broke off, leaving his eyes to finish for him.

"So your teasing is to be considered as a compliment?"

"I'll go on with it, if you'll take it like that."

"Does Vivien take it like that, do you think?"

"I don't believe she thinks anything about it--one way or the other.

She's partial to my small efforts to be amusing, that's all."

"Well, if it's a compliment, I don't want any more of it. I think you'd better, under the circ.u.mstances, keep all your compliments for Vivien--till you're married, at all events!"

Harry lifted his brows.

"Rules! Oh, those rules!" he said with mock ruefulness.

"Is there any good in breaking them--for nothing?"

He turned quickly towards her. She was smiling at him. "For nothing?"

"Yes. Here we are at the gate. Good-night, Mr. Harry."

"What do you mean by--?"

"I really can't stay any longer." She was doing the mockery now; his eagerness had given her the advantage. "You can think over my meaning--if you like. Good-night!"

Harry said good-night. When he had gone fifty yards he looked back. She was still there, holding the gate half open with her hand, looking along the road. After him? As he went on, his thoughts were not all of Vivien.

Isobel Vintry was a puzzling girl!

The next evening he brought Vivien into the drawing-room punctually at ten.

"We're good children to-night!" he said gaily. "We've even said good-night to one another already, and Vivien's ready to run up to bed."

"There, Isobel, aren't we good?" cried Vivien, with her good-night kiss to Isobel.

"Any reward?" asked Harry, as the door closed behind his _fiancee_.

"What do you ask?"

"A walk to the gate. And--perhaps--an explanation."

"Certainly no explanation. I don't mind five minutes' walk to the gate."

This time very little was said on the way to the gate. A constraint seemed to fall on both of them. The night felt very silent, very still; the lake stretched silent and still too, mysteriously tranquil.

At last Harry spoke. "You've forgiven me--quite?"

"Oh yes. Naturally you didn't think how--how it seemed to me. It isn't always easy to--" She paused for a moment, looking over the water. "But it's my place in life--for the present, at all events."

"It won't be for long. It can't be." He laughed. "But I must take care--compliments barred!"

"From you to me--yes."

Again her words--or the way she said them--stirred him to an eager curiosity. She half said things, or said things with half-meanings. Was that art or accident? She did not say "from an engaged man to his _fiancee's_ companion," but "from you to me." Was the concrete--the personal--form significant?

No more pa.s.sed, save only, at the gate, "Good-night." But with the word she gave him her hand and smiled at him--and ever so slightly shook her head.

The next day, and the next, and the next, she left Vivien and him entirely to themselves, save when meals forced her to appear; and on none of the three nights would she walk with him to the gate, though he asked twice in words and the third time with his eyes. Was that what the little shake of her head had meant? But the two walks had left their mark. Harry chaffed and teased no more.

Vivien praised his forbearance, adding, "I really think you hurt her feelings a little, Harry. But it was being rather absurdly touchy, wasn't it?"

"She seems to be sensitive about her position."

Vivien made a little grimace. She was thinking that Isobel's position in the house had been at least as pleasant as her own--till Harry came to woo.

"Oh, confound this political business!" Harry suddenly broke out. "But for that we could get married in the middle of August--as soon as your father and my people are back. I hate this waiting till October, don't you? Now you know you do, Vivien!"

She put her hand on his and pressed it gently. "Yes, but it's pleasant as it is. I'm not so very impatient--so long as I see you every day."

But Harry was impatient now, and rather restless. The days had ceased to glide by so easily, almost imperceptibly, in the company of his lover.

There was a feeling in him which did not make for peace--a recrudescence of those impulses of old days which his engagement was utterly to have banished. Marriage was invoked to banish them utterly now. The sooner marriage came, the better! Harry was ardent in his love-making that afternoon, and Vivien in a heaven of delight. If there was no chaff, there was no appeal to Isobel for a walk to the gate either.

"I wish she wasn't there," he said to himself as he walked down, alone, to the gate at a punctual ten o'clock. Somehow his delight in his love for Vivien, and in hers for him, was being marred. Ever so little, ever so faintly, yet still a little, his romance was turning to duty. A delightful duty, of course, one in which his whole heart was engaged, but still no longer just the one thing--the spontaneous voluntary thing--which filled his life. It had now an opposite. Besides all else that it was, it had also--even now, even before that marriage so slow in coming--taken on the aspect of the right thing. In the remote corners of his mind--banished to those--hovered the shadowy image of its opposite.