Second String Part 61

"I've been thinking about him too to-night. It seemed natural to do it--over this election."

They had reached Nutley, but Andy pleaded for a walk on the terrace by the lake before she bade him good-night.

"Yes," she said, "I know what you must feel, because you loved him. I loved him, and I feel it too. But we must neither of us think about it too much. Because it's no use. What Mr. Belfield told me makes it quite clear that it's no use." She spoke very sadly. They had not to do with an accident or an episode; they had to recognise and reckon with the nature of a man. "When once we see that it's no use, it seems to me that there's something--well, almost something unworthy in giving way to it."

She turned round to Andy. "At least I don't want you to go on doing it.

You've made your own success. Take it whole-heartedly, Andy; don't have any regrets, any searchings of heart."

"There may be other things besides the seat at Meriton that I should like to take. When I search my heart, Vivien, I find you there."

Through the darkness he saw her eyes steadily fixed on his.

"I wonder, Andy, I wonder! Or is it only pity, only chivalry? Is it the policeman again?"

"Why shouldn't it be the policeman?" he asked. "Is it nothing if you think you could feel safe with me?"

"So much, so much!" she murmured. "Andy, I'm still angry when I remember--still sore--and angry again with myself for being sore. I oughtn't still to feel that."

"You'd guessed my feelings, Vivien? You're not surprised or--or shocked?"

"I think I've known everything that has been in your heart--both about him and about me. No, I'm not surprised or shocked. But--I wonder!" She laughed sadly. "How perverse our hearts are--poor Harry's, and poor mine! And how unlucky we two should have hit on one another! That for him it should be so easy, and for me so sadly difficult!"

"I won't ask you my question to-night," said Andy.

"No, don't to-night." She laid her hand on his arm. "But you won't go away altogether, will you, Andy? You won't be sensible and firm, and tell me that you can't be at my beck and call, and that you won't be kept dangling about, and that if I'm a silly girl who doesn't know her own luck I must take the consequences? You'll go on being the old Andy we all know, who never makes any claims, who puts up with everybody's whims, who always expects to come last?" Her voice trembled as she laughed. "You won't upset all my notions of you, because you've become a great man now, will you, Andy?"

"I don't quite recognise myself in the picture," said Andy with a laugh.

"I thought I generally stood up for myself pretty well. But, anyhow, I've no intention of going away. I shall be there when--I mean if--you want me."

She gave him her hand; he gripped it warmly. "You're--you're not very disappointed, Andy? Oh, I hate to cloud your day of triumph to-morrow!"

Her voice rose a little, a note almost of despair in it. "But I can't help it! The old thing isn't gone yet, and, till it is, I can do nothing."

Andy raised the hand he held to his lips and kissed it lightly. "I see that I'm asking for an even bigger thing than I thought," he said gently. "Don't worry, and don't hurry, my dear. I can wait. Perhaps it's too big for me to get at all. You'll tell me about that at your own time."

They began to walk back towards the house, and presently came under the light of the lamp over the hall door. Her face now wore a troubled smile, amused yet sad. How obstinate that memory was! It was here that Harry had given her his last kiss--here that, only a few minutes later, she had seen him for the last time, and Isobel Vintry with him! Their phantoms rose before her eyes--and the angry shape of her father was there too, denouncing their crime, p.r.o.nouncing by the same words sentence of death on the young happiness of her heart.

"Good-night, Andy," she said softly. "And a great triumph to-morrow.

Over a thousand!"

A great triumph to-morrow, maybe. There was no great triumph to-night, only a long hard-fought battle--the last fight in that strangely-fated antagonism. Verily the enemy was on his own ground here. With everything against him, he was still dangerous, he was not yet put to the rout. The flag of the citadel was not yet dipped, the gates not opened, allegiance not transferred.

Andy Hayes squared his shoulders for this last fight--with good courage and with a single mind. The revelation she had made of her heart moved him to the battle. It was a great love which Harry had so lightly taken and so lightly flung away. It was worth a long and a great struggle. And he could now enter on it with no searchings of his own heart. As he mused over her words, the appeal of memory--of old loyalty and friends.h.i.+p grew fainter. Harry had won all that, and thrown all that away--had been so insensible to what it really was, to what it meant, and what it offered. New and cogent proof indeed that he was "no good."

The depths of Vivien's love made mean the shallows of his nature. He must go his ways; Andy would go his--from to-morrow. With sorrow, but now with clear conviction, he turned away from his broken idol. From the lips of the girl who could not forget his love had come Harry's final condemnation. The spell was broken for Andy Hayes; he was resolute that he would break it from the heart of Vivien. Loyalty should no more be for the disloyal, or faith for the faithless. There too Andy would come by his own--and now with no remorse. At last the spell was broken.

But no double victory to-morrow! The loved antagonist retreated slowly, showing fight. The next day gave Andy a victory indeed, but did not yield the situation which the Nun's professional eye had craved for its satisfaction.

Chapter XXVI.

TALES OUT OF SCHOOL FOR ONCE.

The inner circle of Andy Hayes' friends, who were gradually accustoming themselves to see him described as Mr. Andrew Hayes, M.P., included some of a sportive, or even malicious, turn of wit. It cannot be denied that to these the spectacle of Andy's wooing--it never occurred to him to conceal his suit--presented some material for amus.e.m.e.nt. All through his career, even after he had mounted to eminences great and imposing, it was his fate to bring smiles to the lips even of those who admired, supported, and followed him. To the comic papers, in those later days when the Press took account of him, he was always a slow man, almost a stupid man, inclined to charge a brick wall when he might walk round it, yet, when he charged, knocking a hole big enough to get through. For the cartoonists--when greatness bred cartoons, as by one of the world's kindly counterbalances it does--he was always stouter in body and more stolid in countenance than a faithful photograph would have recorded him. The idea of him thus presented did him no harm in the public mind.

That a career is open to talent is a fact consolatory only to a minority; flatter mere common-sense with the same prospect, and every man feels himself fit for the Bench--of Judges, Bishops, or Ministers.

But as a lover--a wooer? Pa.s.sion, impetuosity, a total absorption, great eloquence in few words, the eyes beating the words in persuasion--such seemed, roughly, the requisites, as learnt by those who had sat at Harry Belfield's feet and marked his practical expositions of the subject.

Andy was neither pa.s.sionate nor eloquent, not even in glances. Nor was he absorbed. Gilbert Foot and Co. from nine-thirty to two-thirty: the House from two-thirty to eleven, with what Gilly contemptuously termed "stoking" slipped in anywhere: there was hardly time for real absorption. He was as hard-worked as Mr. Freere himself, and, had he married Mrs. Freere, would probably have made little better success of it. He was not trying to marry Mrs. Freere; but he was trying to win a girl who had listened to wonderful words from Harry Belfield's lips and suffered the persuasion of Harry Belfield's eyes.

In varying fas.h.i.+on his friends made their jesting comments, with affection always at the back of the joke; nay more, with a confidence that the efforts they derided would succeed in face of their derision--like the comic papers of future days.

"He wants to marry, so he must make love; but I believe he hates it all the time," said the Nun compa.s.sionately.

"That shows his sense," remarked Sally Dutton.

"He's a natural monogamist," opined Billy Foot, "and no natural monogamist knows anything about making love."

"He ought to have been born married," Gilly yawned, "just as I ought to have been born retired from business."

Mrs. Billy (_nee_ Amaranth Macquart-Smith) was also of the party. Among these sallies she spread the new-fledged wings of her wit rather timidly. To say the truth, she was not witty, but felt bound to try--a case somewhat parallel to his at whom her shaft was aimed. She was liked well enough in the circle, yet would hardly have entered it without Billy's pa.s.sport.

"He waits to be accepted," she complained, "as a girl waits to be asked."

"Used to!" briefly corrected Miss Dutton.

Billy Foot cut deeper into the case. "He's never imagined before that he could have a chance against Harry. He's got the idea now, but it takes time to sink in."

"Harry's out of it anyhow," drawled Gilly.

"Out of what?" asked the Nun.

Billy's nod acknowledged the import of the question. Out of reason, out of possibility, out of bounds! Not out of memory, of echo, of the mirror of things not to be forgotten.

"He still thinks he can't compete with Harry," she went on, "and he's right as far as this game is concerned. But he'll win just by not competing. To be utterly different is his chance." With a glance round the table, she appealed to their experience. "n.o.body ever begins by choosing Andy--well, except Jack Rock perhaps, and that was to be a butcher! But he ends by being indispensable."

"You all like him," said Amaranth. "And yet you all give the impression that he's terribly dull!" Her voice complained of an enigma.

"Well, don't you know, what would a fellow do without him?" asked Gilly, looking up from his _pate_.

"Gilly has an enormous respect for him. He's shamed him into working,"

Billy explained to his wife.

"That's it, by Jove!" Gilly acknowledged sadly. "And the worst of it is, work pays! Pays horribly well! We're getting rich. I've got to go on with it." He winked a leisurely moving eyelid at the Nun. "I wish the deuce I'd never met the fellow!"

"I must admit he points the moral a bit too well," Billy confessed. "But I'm glad to say we have Harry to fall back upon. I met Harry in the street the other day, and he was absolutely radiant."

"Who is she?" asked Sally Dutton.