Second String Part 35

"You're going to marry Vivien! I must go--or the door will be locked." A smile wavered at him in the darkness. "It's back to the house or into the lake!"

"Swear you'll manage to see me to-morrow!"

"Yes, yes, anything. And--good-bye."

He let her go--without another kiss. His mind was all of a whirl. She sped swiftly up the avenue. He made for the gate with furtive haste.

Isobel came to a stop. As the shawl had gone once, the letter had gone.

Whither? Had the wind taken it? She had heard no tread, but what could she have heard save the beating of her own heart? No use looking for it.

"Ah, miss," said the butler, who had just come to lock up, "so you'd missed it? I saw it blowing about, and went and picked it up. And you've been searching for it, miss?"

"Yes, Fellowes. Thanks. I must have dropped it this afternoon.

Good-night."

She went in; the hall door was bolted behind her. The letter had served its purpose, but she was hardly awake to the fact that anything had happened about the letter. She had told Harry! The great secret was out.

Oh, such bad tactics! Such a dangerous thing to do! But everybody had a breaking-point. Hers had been reached that night--for herself as well as for his sake. n.o.body could live like this any longer.

Now it was good-night to Wellgood; another ten minutes there--the one brief s.p.a.ce of time in which he played the lover, masterfully, roughly, secure from interruption.

"I can't do it to-night!" she groaned, leaning against the wall of the pa.s.sage between drawing-room and study, as though stricken by a failure of the heart.

There she rested for minutes. The lights were left for Wellgood to find his way by when he went to bed; Fellowes would not come to put them out.

And there the truth came to her. She could not play that deep-laid game.

She could no more try for Harry, and yet keep Wellgood in reserve. It was too hard, too hideous, too unnatural. She dared not try any more for Harry; she had lost confidence in herself. She could not keep Wellgood--it was too odious. Then what to do? To tell Wellgood, too, that from to-morrow there was only Miss Vintry? Yes! And to try to tell Harry so again to-morrow? Yes!

She had sought to make puppets and to pull the strings. Vivien, Wellgood, Harry--all the puppets of her cool, clever, contriving brain.

It had been a fine scheme, bound to end well for her. Now she was revealed as a puppet herself; she danced to the string. The great scheme broke down--because Harry had looked tired and worried, because Wellgood's rough fondness had grown so odious.

"I won't go to him to-night. He can't follow me if I go straight upstairs." The thought came as an inspiration; at least it offered a reprieve till to-morrow.

The study door opened, and Wellgood looked out. Isobel was behind her time; he was waiting for his secret ten minutes, his stolen interview.

"Isobel! What the deuce are you doing there? Why didn't you come in?"

The part she had been trying to play, and had backed herself to play, seemed to have become this evening, of a sudden on this evening, more than hopeless. It had turned ridiculous; it must have been caught from some melodrama. She had been playing the scheming dazzling villain of a woman, heartless, with never a feeling, intent only on the t.i.tle, or the money, or the diamonds, or whatever it might be, single in purpose, desperate in action, glitteringly hard, glitteringly fearless. What nonsense! How away from human nature! She was now terribly afraid.

Playing that part, which seemed now so ridiculous because it a.s.sumed that there was no real woman in her, she had brought herself into a perilous pa.s.s--between one man's love and another man's wrath. She knew which she feared the more; but she feared both. Somehow her confession to Harry had taken all the courage out of her. She felt as if she could not stand any more by herself. She wanted Harry.

She could not tell Wellgood that henceforth there was to be only his daughter's companion, only Miss Vintry; she could not tell him that to-night. Neither could she play the old part to-night--suffer his fondness, and defend herself with the s.h.i.+ning weapons of her wit and her provocative parries.

"I--I think I turned faint. I was coming in, but I turned faint. My heart, I think."

"I never heard of anything being the matter with your heart." His voice sounded impatient rather than solicitous.

"Please let me go straight to bed to-night. I'm really not well."

He came along the pa.s.sage to her. He took her by the shoulders and looked hard in her face. Now she summoned her old courage to its last stand and met his gaze steadily.

"You look all right," he said with a sneer, yet smiling at her handsomeness.

"Oh, of course, yes! At least I shall be to-morrow morning. Let me go now." Really, at the moment, to be let go was her only desire.

"Be off with you, then," he said, smartly tapping--almost slapping--her cheek. "But you'll have to give me twice as long to-morrow."

He turned on his heel. With a smarting cheek she fled down the pa.s.sage.

Though disappointed of his ten minutes, Wellgood was on the whole not ill-pleased. The calm composure, the suppression of emotion which he admired so much in theory--and as exhibited in Vivien's companion--he had begun to find a little overdone for his taste in his own lover.

To-night there was a softness about her, a gentleness--signs of fear.

The signs of fear were welcome to his nature. He felt that he had taken a step towards a.s.serting his proper position, and she one towards acknowledging it. He was also more than ever sure that he need pay no heed to Belfield's silly hints. The old fellow seemed to a.s.sume that his precious son was irresistible! Wellgood chuckled over that. He chuckled again over the thought that, if Isobel were going to be like this, they might have a difficulty in keeping their secret till the proper time.

Isobel's confession to Harry was a confession to herself also. If it left her with one great excuse, it stripped her of all others. She could no longer say that she was making her woman's protest against being reckoned of no account, or that she was merely punis.h.i.+ng Harry for daring to think that he could play with her and come off scathless himself. Even the great excuse found its force impaired, because she had brought her state upon herself. Led by those impulses of pride or of spite, she had set herself to tamper with Vivien's happiness; in the attempt she had fatally involved her own.

Some of her old courage--her old hardness--remained, not altogether swept away by the new current. "I shall get over it in time," she told herself impatiently. "These things don't last a lifetime." True, perhaps! But meanwhile--the time before the wedding? To-morrow, when she had promised to meet Harry? Every day after that--when he must come to woo Vivien? There had been protection for her in pretences. Pretences were over with Harry; they had to go on with Vivien and with Wellgood.

On both sides of her position she felt herself now in a sore peril; it had become so much harder to blind the others, so infinitely harder to hold Harry back, if it were his mind to advance. Tasks like these perhaps needed the zest of pride and spite to make them possible--to make them tolerable anyhow. She loathed them now.

Next day she kept her room. Courage failed. Wellgood grumbled about women's vapours, but in his caution asked no questions and showed no concern. Harry, coming in the afternoon, in his caution risked no more than a polite inquiry and a polite expression of regret. Yet he had come hot of heart, resolved--resolved on what? To break his engagement? No, he was not resolved on that. To know in future only Vivien's companion, Miss Vintry? No. He had been resolved on nothing, save to see Isobel again, and to hear once more her love. To what lay beyond he was blind; his heart was obstinately set on the one desire, and had eyes for nothing else. But Isobel was not to be seen; he accused her of her old tactics--making advances, then drawing back. The whole thing had begun that way; she was at it again! Was he never to feel quite sure of her?

She paid the price of past cunning, she who now lay in simple fear.

Vivien watched her lover's pale face and fretful gestures. Harry seemed always on a strain now, and the means he adopted to relieve it would not be permanently beneficial to his nerves; whisky-and-soda and cigarettes in quick succession were his prescription this afternoon. In vain she tried to soothe him, as she still sometimes could. He was now merry, now moody, often amusing, gay, gallant. He was everything except the contented man he had been in the early days.

"The dear old Rector's a little tiresome, Harry, isn't he? He won't fix the date of his return within a week. And I couldn't be married by anybody else, he'd be so hurt. Naturally he doesn't think a few days one way or the other matter. He doesn't think of my frocks!"

"Nor of my feelings either," said Harry, gallantly kissing her hand.

"Do you mind very much?" she asked shyly.

"I'll do anything you like about it." He caressed her hand gently, kindly. He had at least the grace to feel shame for himself, pity for her--when he was with her.

"Harry, are you quite--quite happy?"

He made his effort. "I should be as happy as the day's long if it weren't for those wretched meetings that take up half my time." His voice grew fretful. "And they worry me to death."

"They'll soon be over now, and then we can have all the time to ourselves together." She looked at him with a smile. "If only you won't get tired of that!"

He made his protest. Suddenly a memory of other protests swept over him--of how they had begun by being wholehearted and vehement, and had sunk first to weakness, then to insincerity, at last to silence. He hoped his present protest sounded all right.

"Oh, you needn't be too vehement!" she laughed, with a little shake of her head. "I know myself, and I believe I know more about you than you think. I'm quite aware that you'll sometimes be bored with me, Harry."

"Who's put that idea in your head?" he asked rather sharply. His mind was on those enemies, that ring of watching eyes.

"n.o.body except yourself--who else should?" she asked in surprise. "After all I've seen of you, I ought to know that you have your moods--I suppose clever men have--and that I don't suit all the moods equally well." She squeezed his hand for a second. "But I'm going to be very wise--Isobel's taught me to be wise, among other things, you know--I'm going to be very wise, and not mind that!"

The true affection rose in him. "Poor little sweetheart!" he murmured.

"I'm afraid you haven't taken on an easy job."

"No, I don't think I have," she laughed. "All the more credit if I bring it off! There'd be nothing to be proud of in making--oh, well, Andy Hayes, for instance--happy. He just is happy as long as he can be working at something or walking somewhere--it doesn't matter where--at five miles an hour--in the dust by preference. A girl would have nothing to do but just smile at him and send him for a walk. But you're different, aren't you, Harry?"

"By Jove, I am! Andy's one of the best fellows in the world."