Second String Part 38

"I'd never thought of that. Do you feel sure of it?"

"You have thought of the other thing--and you're sure of that?"

"You know Harry. I hoped it would all--all come to nothing. How much do you think Wellgood knows, or suspects?"

"Hard to say. I think he's groping in the dark. He's had a check, I expect, or a set-back. Men always think that's due to another man--I suppose it generally is. Well, it's not you, and it's not Billy. Who else sees her--who else goes to Nutley?"

"But he'd never suspect his own daughter's--"

"You do!"

"I had the evidence of my eyes."

"Jealousy's quicker than the eyes, Andy." She leant forward again. "What did you see?"

"It seems disloyal to tell--disloyal to Harry."

"My loyalty's for Vivien!" she said. "What about yours?"

"Take it that what I saw justifies your fears about Harry," said Andy slowly. "I think--I'm not sure--I think he suspects I saw. I don't know whether she does." He was not aware that Isobel had made herself quite certain of his knowledge. "But it's nearly a month ago. You know Harry.

I hoped it was all over. Only he seemed a little--queer."

"'Come and spend a quiet afternoon in the garden'--that was her invitation. Poor girl!"

"That's what you called her the first time I told you of their engagement."

"A nice quiet afternoon--sitting on the top of a volcano! With an eruption overdue!"

"It isn't possible to feel quite comfortable about it, is it?" said Andy.

The Nun laughed a little scornfully. "Not quite. Going to do anything about it?"

Andy raised his eyes to hers. "I owe almost everything I value most in the world to Harry, directly or indirectly; even what I owe to you and Jack came in a way through him."

"And he's never taken ten minutes' real trouble about you in his life."

"I'm not sure that makes any difference--even if it's true. He stands for all those things to me. As for Miss Vintry--" He shrugged his ponderous shoulders.

"Oh, by all means to blazes with Miss Vintry!" the Nun agreed pleasantly.

Miss Dutton put her head in at the door--her hair about her shoulders.

"Ever coming to bed?"

"Not yet. I'm talking to Andy. Don't you see him, Sally?"

"It's not respectable."

"The window's open, there's a street lamp opposite, and a policeman standing under it. Good-night."

"Well, don't come into my room and wake me up jawing." Miss Dutton withdrew.

The Nun looked at Andy. "I wonder if it's quite fair to say 'To blazes with Miss Vintry!'"

"You said it with a good deal of conviction a moment ago. What makes you--?" His eyes met hers.

"Who told you about Sally? I never did," the Nun exclaimed.

"Harry, after our first supper."

"Here was rather the same case--only, of course, she never knew the other girl. I think that makes a difference. And she never really had a chance. That makes no difference, I suppose. The policeman's gone. I expect you'd better go too, Andy."

Andy swung his legs over the window-sill. "Are you going to try and put your oar in?" he asked.

"Would you think me wrong if I did?"

Andy sat quite a long while on the window-sill, dangling his legs over the pavement of High Street.

"I've thought about it a good deal," he answered. "Especially lately."

She knelt on the broad low bench just behind him. "Yes, and the result--when you're ready?"

"I think a row would be the best thing that could happen." He turned his face round to her as he spoke.

The Nun gasped. "That's thorough," she remarked. "So much for your opinion about Harry!"

"Yes, so much for that," Andy admitted.

"If there is a row, I hope you'll be there."

"Oh, I don't!" exclaimed Andy with a natural and human sincerity.

"To prevent bloodshed!" She laid her hand on his arm. "I'm not altogether joking. I didn't like Mr. Wellgood's eyes this afternoon."

She patted his arm gently before she withdrew her hand. "Good-night, dear old Andy. You're terribly right as a rule. But about this--" She broke off, impatiently jerking her head.

With a clasp of her hand and a doleful smile, Andy let his legs drop on the pavement and departed.

So that was his verdict, given with all his deliberation, with all the weight of his leisurely broad-viewing judgment. The real thing to avoid was not the "row;" that was his conclusion. There was a thing, then, worse than the "row"--the thing for which Halton and Nutley--nay, all Meriton, would soon be making joyful preparation. His calm face had not moved even at her word "bloodshed." Oh yes, Andy was thorough! Not even that word swayed his mind. Perhaps he did not believe in her fears. But his look had not been scornful; it had been thoughtfully interrogative.

He had possessed that knowledge of his for a long while; he had never used it. At first from loyalty to Harry--even now that would, she thought, be enough to make him very loth to use it. But another reason was predominant, born of his long silent brooding. He had come to a conclusion about his hero; the court had taken time for consideration; the judgment was advised. There was no helping some people. They must be left to their own ways, their own devices, their own doom. To help them was to harm others; to fight for them was to serve under the banner of wrong and of injustice. Friends.h.i.+p and loyalty could not justify that.

The conclusion seemed a hard one. She stood long at the big window--a dainty little figure thrown up by the light behind her--painfully reaching forward to the understanding of how what seems hardness may be a broader, a truer, a better-directed sympathy, how it may be a duty to leave a wastrel to waste, how not every drowning man is worth the labour that it takes to get him out of the water--for that once. At all events, not worth the risk of another, a more valuable life.

And that was his conclusion about his hero, the man to whom he owed, as he had said, almost everything he prized? Had he, then, any right to the conclusion, right in the abstract though it might be? It was a hard world that drove men to such hard conclusions.

The case was hard--and the conclusion. But not, of necessity, the man who painfully arrived at it. Yet the man might be bia.s.sed; sympathy for the deceived might paint the deceiver's conduct in colours even blacker than the truth demanded. Doris did not think of this, in part because the judgment had seemed too calm and too reluctant to be the offspring of bias, more because, if there were any partiality in it, she herself had become a no less strong, and a more impetuous, adherent of the same cause. Vivien had won all her fealty. The one pleasant feature of the afternoon had been when Vivien walked home with her and, wrought upon by the troubled atmosphere of Nutley even though ignorant of its cause, had opened her heart to Harry's old friend, to a girl who, as she felt, must know more of the world than she did, and perhaps, out of her experience, could comfort and even guide. With sweet and simple gravity, with a delicacy that made her confidence seem still reserved although it was well-nigh complete, she showed to her companion her love and her apprehension--a love so pure in quality, an apprehension based on so rare an understanding of the man she loved. She did not know the things he had done, nor the thing he was now doing; but the man himself she knew, and envisaged dimly the perils by which he was beset. Her loving sympathy tried to leap across the wide chasm that separated her life and her nature from his, and came wonderfully little short of its mark.

"I really knew hardly anything about him when I accepted him; he was just a girl's hero to me. But I have watched and watched, and now I know a good deal."

An excellent mood for a wife, no doubt--or for a husband--excellent, and, it may be, inevitable. But for a lover yet unmated, a bride still to be, a girl in her first love? Should she not leave reverend seniors to prate to her--quite vainly--of difficulties and dangers, while her fancy is roaming far afield in dreamy lands of golden joy? To endeavour, by an affectionate study of and consideration for your partner, to avoid unhappiness and to give comfort--such is wont to be the text of the officiating minister's little homily at a wedding. Is it to be supposed that bride and bridegroom are putting the matter quite that way in their hearts? If they were, a progressive diminution in the marriage-rate might be expected.