Second String Part 58

Being engaged in shopping at certain "stores" which she frequented, she had gone into the tea-room to refresh her jaded energies, and had found herself at the next table to Isobel. Friendly greetings had pa.s.sed; the two had drunk their tea together--with other company, as presently appeared.

"What made you think that?" There was no need to inquire what it was that Sally thought when she spoke of "another of them;" she did not refer to ideally successful unions.

Sally wrinkled her brow. "She said they'd had a delightful winter, travelling and so on, and that she was having a very gay time in London, going everywhere and making a heap of friends. She said they liked their flat, but were looking out for a house. She said Harry was very well and jolly."

"Well, that sounds all right. What's the matter, Sally? Not that I pretend to be particularly anxious for her unruffled happiness. I don't want anything really bad, of course, but--"

"Set your mind at ease; she won't be too happy to please you--and she knows it." Miss Dutton considered. "At least she's a fool if she doesn't know it. Who do you think came in while we were at tea?"

"Harry?" suggested the Nun, in an obviously insincere shot at the answer.

"Harry at Harrod's! Mrs. Freere! You remember Mrs. Freere?--Mrs. Freere, and a woman Mrs. Freere called 'Dear Lady Lucy.'" Sally's sarcastic emphasis on the latter lady's t.i.tle--surely a harmless social distinction?--was absolutely savage.

"Did they join you?" asked the Nun, by now much interested.

"Join us? They swallowed us! Of course they didn't take much notice of me. They'd never heard of 'Miss Dutton,' and I didn't suppose I should make a much better impression if I told them that I lived with you."

"No, of course not, Sally," said the Nun, and drew up on the edge of an ill-timed gurgle. "Mrs. Freere's an old story. Who's Lady Lucy? One of the heap of friends Mrs. Harry is making?"

"Lady Lucy's young--younger than Isobel. Mrs. Freere isn't young--not so young as Isobel. Mrs. Freere's the old friend, Lady Lucy's the new one."

"Did you gather whether Lady Lucy was a married woman?"

"Oh yes. She referred to 'our money troubles,' and 'my motor-car.' She's married all right! But n.o.body bothered to tell me her name. Well, as I say, Mrs. Freere's the old friend, and she's the new friend. They're fighting which of them shall run the Belfields--I don't know what else they may be fighting about! But they unite in sitting on Isobel. Harry's given her away, I gathered--told them what she was before he married her. So, of course, she hasn't got a chance! The only good thing is that they obviously hate one another like poison. In fact I don't think I ever sat at a table with three women who hated one another more--though I've had some experience in that line."

"She hates them both, you think? Well, I shouldn't have thought she was the kind of woman to like being sat upon by anybody."

"Oh, she's fighting; she's putting up a good fight for him."

"Well, we know she can do that!" observed the Nun with a rather acid demureness.

"I'm not asking you to sympathise. I'm just telling you how it is.

'Harry likes this,' says Mrs. Freere. 'He always did.' 'Did he, dear? He tells me he likes the other now,' says Lady Lucy. 'I don't think he's really fond of either of them,' says Isobel. 'Oh yes, my dear. Besides, you must, if you want to do the right thing,' say both of them. I suppose that, when they once get her out of the way, they'll fight it out between themselves."

"Will they get her out of the way? It's rather soon to talk about that."

"They'll probably both of them be bowled over by some newcomer in a few months, and Isobel go with them--if she hasn't gone already."

"Your views are always uncompromising, Sally."

"I only wish you'd heard those two women this afternoon. And, in the end, off they all three went together in the motor-car. Going to pick up Harry somewhere!"

"Rather too much of a good thing for most men. And it might have been Vivien!"

"It's a woman, and one of G.o.d's creatures, anyhow," said Sally with some temper.

"Yes," the Nun agreed serenely. "And Mrs. Freere's a woman--and so, I presume from your description, is Lady Lucy. And I gather that they have husbands? G.o.d's creatures too, we may suppose!"

Sally declined the implied challenge to weigh, in the scales of an impartial judgment, the iniquities of the two s.e.xes. Her sympathies, born on the night when she had given shelter to Isobel at the Lion, were with the woman who was fighting for her husband, who had a plain right to him now, though she had used questionable means to get him. If Doris asked her to discern a Nemesis in Isobel's plight--as Belfield had in the fall of his too well admired son--to see Vivien avenged by Mrs.

Freere and Lady Lucy, Sally retorted on the philosophic counsel by declaring that Doris, a partisan of Vivien's, lacked human pity for Vivien's successful rival, whose real success seemed now so dubious.

Whatever the relative merit of these views, and whatever the truth as to the wider question of the iniquities of the s.e.xes, Sally's encounter at least provided for her friend's contemplation an excellent little picture of the man whose name had been so bandied about among the three women at the tea-table. Her dislike of Isobel enabled the Nun to contemplate it rather with a scornful amus.e.m.e.nt than with the hot indignation with which she had lashed Vivien's treacherous lover. Her feelings not being engaged in this case, she was able to regain her favourite att.i.tude of a tolerant, yet open-eyed, onlooker, and to ask what, after all, was the use of expecting anything else from Harry Belfield. What Mrs. Freere--nay, what prehistoric Rosa Hinde--had found out, what Vivien had found out, what Isobel was finding out, that, in due time, Lady Lucy would find out also. Perhaps some women did not much mind finding out. Vivien had renounced him utterly, but here was Mrs.

Freere back again! And no doubt Lady Lucy had her own ideas about Mrs.

Freere--besides the knowledge, shared by the world in general, of the brief engagement to Vivien and the hurried marriage with Isobel. Some of them did not mind, or at least thought that the game was worth the candle. That was the only possible conclusion. In some cases, perhaps, they were the same sort of people themselves; in others, Harry's appeal was too potent to be resisted, even though they knew that sorrow would be the ultimate issue.

That was intelligible enough. For the moment, to the woman of the moment, his charm was well-nigh irresistible. His power to conquer lay in the completeness with which he was conquered. He had the name of being a great flirt; in the exact sense of words, he did not flirt save as a mere introduction of the subject; he always made love--to the woman of the moment. He did not pay attentions; he was swept into a pa.s.sion--for the woman of the moment. It was afterwards, when that particular moment and that particular woman had gone by, that Harry's feelings pa.s.sed a retrospective Act by which the love-making and pa.s.sion became, and were to be deemed always to have been, flirtation and attention. Amply accepting this legislation for himself, and quite convinced of its justice, he seemed to have power to impose it--for the moment--on others also. And he would go on like that indefinitely? There seemed no particular reason why he should stop. He would go on loving for a while, being loved for a while; deserting and being despaired of; sometimes, perhaps, coming back and beginning the process over again; living the life of the emotions so long as it would last, making it last, perhaps, longer than it ought or really could, because he had no other life adequate to fill its place. The Nun's remorseless fancy skipped the years, and pictured him, Harry the Irresistible, Harry the Incorrigible, still pursuing the old round, still on his way from the woman of the last moment to the woman of the next; getting perhaps rather gray, rather fat, a trifle inclined to coa.r.s.eness, but preserving all his ardour and all his art in wooing, like a great singer grown old, whose voice is feeble and spent, but whose skill is still triumphant over his audiences--still convinced that each affair was "bigger" than any of the others, still persuading his partner of the same thing, still suffering pangs of pity for himself when he fell away, still responding to the stimulus of a new pursuit.

A few days later chance threw him in her way; in truth it could scarcely be called chance, since both, returned from their wanderings, had resumed their habit of frequenting that famous restaurant, and had been received with enthusiasm by the presiding officials. Waiting for her party in the outer room, suddenly she found him standing beside her, looking very handsome and gay, with a mischievous sparkle in his eye.

"May I speak to you--or am I no better than one of the wicked?" he said, sitting down beside her.

"You're looking very well, Harry. I hope Mrs. Belfield is all right?"

"Oh yes, Isobel's first-rate, thank you. So am I. How London agrees with a man! I was out of sorts half the time down at Meriton. A country life doesn't agree with me. I shall chuck it."

"You seemed very well down there--physically," the Nun observed.

"Sleepy, wasn't it? Sleepy beyond anything. Now here a man feels alive, and awake!"

It was not in the least what he had thought about Meriton, it was what he was feeling about Meriton now. He had pa.s.sed a retrospective Act about Meriton; it was to be deemed to have been always sleepy and dull.

"No," he pursued, "when I come into Halton--I hope it won't be for a long while--I think I shall sell it. I can't settle down as a country squire. It's not my line. Too stodgy!"

"What about Parliament? Going to find another place?"

"If I do, it'll be a town const.i.tuency. When I think of those beastly villages! Really couldn't go through with it again! The fact is, I'm rather doubtful about the whole of that game, Doris. No end of a grind--and what do you get out of it? More kicks than ha'pence, as a rule. Your own side doesn't thank you, and the other abuses you like a pickpocket."

She nodded. "I think you're quite right. Let it alone."

He turned to her quite eagerly. "Do you really think so? Well, I'm more than half inclined to believe you're right. Isobel's always worrying me about it--talks about letting chances slip away, and time slip away, and I don't know what the devil else slip away--till, hang it, my only desire is to imitate time and chances, and slip away myself!" He laughed merrily.

The old charm was still there, the power to make his companion take his point of view and sympathise with him, even when the merits were all against him.

"You see now what it is to give a woman the right to lecture you, Harry!"

"Oh, it's kind of her to be ambitious for me," said Harry good-naturedly. "I quite appreciate that. But--" His eyes twinkled again, and his voice fell to a confidential whisper. "Well, you've been behind the scenes, haven't you? My last shot in that direction has put me a bit off."

It was his first reference to the catastrophe; she was curious to see whether he would develop it. This Harry proceeded to do.

"You were precious hard on me about that business, Doris," he said in a gentle reproach. "Of course I don't justify what happened. But my dear old pater and Wellgood pressed matters a bit too quick--oh, not Vivien, I don't mean that for a moment. There's such a thing as making the game too easy for a fellow. I didn't see it at the time, but I see it now.

They had their plan. Well, I fell in with it too readily. It looked pleasant enough. The result was that I mistook the strength of my feelings. That was the beginning of all the trouble."

Vastly amused, the Nun nodded gravely. "I ought to have thought of that before I was so down on you."

He looked at her in a merry suspicion. "I'm not sure you're not pulling my leg, Doris; but all the same that's the truth about it. And at any rate I suppose you'll admit I did the right thing when--when the trouble came?"

"Yes, you did the right thing then."