Second String Part 65

Harry stood in silence, fingering his hat. He cast a glance across at them--where they stood opposite to him, side by side, her arm in Andy's.

Very fresh across his memory struck the look on her face--the trustful happiness which had followed on the tremulous joy evoked by his wonderful words. It was not his nor for him any more, that look. He hated that it should be Andy's. He gave the old impatient protesting shrug of his shoulders. What other comment was there to make? He was what he was--and these things happened! The Restless Master plays these disconcerting tricks on his devoted servants.

"Well, good-bye," he mumbled.

"Good-bye, Harry," said both, she in her clear soft voice, Andy in his weightier note, both with a grave pity which recognised, even as did his shrug of the shoulders, that there was no more to be said. It was just good-bye, just a parting of the ways, a severing of lives. Even good wishes would have seemed a mockery; from neither side were they offered.

With one more look, another slightest shrug, Harry Belfield turned his back on them. They stood without moving till the door closed behind him.

He was gone. Andy gave a deep sigh and dropped into the arm-chair by his office desk. Vivien bent over him, her hand on his shoulder.

"Why did you let me meet him, Andy?"

Andy was long in answering. He was revolving the processes of his own mind, the impulse under which he had acted, why he had exposed her to such an ordeal as had once been in the day's work at Nutley.

"It was a chance, your coming while he was here, we three being here together. But since it happened like that"--he raised his eyes to hers--"well, I just thought that neither of us ought to funk him." The utterance seemed a simple result of so much cogitation.

But Vivien laughed softly as she daintily and daringly laid her hand on Andy's big head.

"If I 'funked him' still, I shouldn't have come at all," she said. "I think I'm just getting to know something about you, Andy. You're like some big thing in a dim light; one only sees you very gradually. I used to think of you as fetching and carrying, you know."

Andy chuckled contentedly. "You thought about right," he said. "That's what I'm always doing, just what I'm fit for. I shall go on doing it all my life, fetching and carrying for you."

"Not only for me, I think. For everybody; perhaps even for the nation--for the world, Andy!"

He caught the little hand that was playing over his broad brow. "For you first. As for the rest of it--!" He broke into a laugh. "I say, Vivien, the first time I saw you I was following the hounds on foot! That's all I can do. The hunt gets out of sight, but sometimes you can tell where it's going. That's about my form. Now if I was a clever chap like Harry!"

With a laugh that was half a sob she kissed his upturned face. "Keep me safe, keep me safe, Andy!" she whispered.

Andy slowly rose to his feet, and, turning, faced her. He took her hands in his. "By Jove, you kissed me! You kissed me, Vivien!"

She laughed merrily. "Well, of course I did! Isn't it--usual?"

Andy smiled. "If things like that are going to be usual--well, life's looking a bit different!" he said.

Suddenly there were wild sounds in the outer office--a door slammed, a furious sweet voice, a swish of skirts. The door of the inner office flew open.

"What about lunch?" demanded the Nun accusingly.

"I'd forgotten it!" Vivien exclaimed.

"So had I, but I'm awfully hungry, now I come to think of it," said Andy. "The usual place?"

"No," said the Nun. "Somewhere else. Harry's there--lunching alone! The first time I ever saw him do that!" She looked at the pair of them. Her remark seemed not to make the least impression. It did not matter where or how Harry Belfield lunched. She looked again from Vivien to Andy, from Andy to Vivien.

"Oh!" she said.

"Yes, Doris," said Vivien meekly.

The Nun addressed Andy severely. "Mrs. Belfield will consider that you're marrying above your station, Andy."

Andy scratched his big head. "Yes, Doris, and she'll be quite right," he said apologetically. "Of course she will! But a fellow can only--well, take things as they come." He broke into his hearty laugh. "What'll old Jack say?"

The Nun knew what old Jack would say--very privately. "I wish it had been you, miss!" But she had no envy in her heart.

"For people who do fall in love, it must be rather pleasant," she observed.

"The worst of it is, I've got so little time," said Andy.

The two girls laughed. "I only want you to have time to be in love with one girl," Vivien explained rea.s.suringly.

"And, perhaps, just friends with another," the Nun added.

Andy joined in the laughter. "I shall fit those two things in all right!" he declared.

The afternoon saw them back at Meriton; it was there that Andy Hayes truly tasted the flavour of his good fortune. There the winning of Vivien seemed no isolated achievement, not a bit of luck standing by itself, but the master-knot among the many ties that now bound him to his home. The old bonds held; the new came. In the greetings of friends of every degree--from c.h.i.n.ks, the Bird, and Miss Miles, up to the great Lord Meriton himself--in Wellgood's hard and curt, yet ready and in truth triumphant, endors.e.m.e.nt of an arrangement that banned the very thought of the man he hated, in old Jack's satisfaction in the vision of Andy in due time reigning at Nutley itself (his bit of sentiment about the Nun was almost swallowed up in this)--most of all perhaps in Belfield's cordial yet sad acceptance of his son's supplanter--he found the completion of the first stage of his life's journey and the definition of its future course and of its goal. His face was set towards his destination; the love and confidence of the friends of a lifetime accompanied, cheered, and aided his steady progress. No high thoughts were in his mind. To find time for the work of the day, his own and what other people were always so ready to leave to him, and to move on a little--that was his task, that bounded his ambition. Anything else that came was, as he had said to Harry Belfield, not of his seeking--and never ceased rather to surprise him, to be received by him with the touch of simple wonder, which made men smile at him even while they admired and followed, which made women laugh, and in a sense pity, while they trusted and loved. He saw the smiles and laughter, and thought them natural. Slowly he came to rely on the love and trust, and in the strength of them found his own strength growing, his confidence gradually maturing.

"With you beside me, and all the dear old set round me, and Meriton behind me, I ought to be able to get through," he said to Vivien as they walked together in the wood at Nutley before dinner.

She stopped by a bench, rudely fas.h.i.+oned out of a tree trunk. "Lend me your knife, Andy, please."

He gave it to her, and stood watching while she stooped and scratched with the knife on the side of the bench. Certain initials were scratched out.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing to the spot where they had been.

"Only a memorandum of something I don't want to remember any more," she answered. She came back to him, blus.h.i.+ng a little, smiling, yet with tears in her eyes. "Yes, Meriton, and the old friends, and I--we're all with you now--all of us with all our hearts now, dear Andy!"

Andy made his last protest. "I'd have been loyal to him all my life, if he'd have let me!"

"I know it. And so would I. But he wouldn't let us." She took his arm as they turned away from the bench. "The sorrow must be in our hearts always, I think. But now it's sorrow for him, not for ourselves, Andy."

In the hour of his own triumph, because of the greatness of his own joy, tenderness for his friend revived.

"Dear old chap! How handsome he looked to-day!"

Vivien pressed his arm. "You can say that as often as you like! There's no danger from him now!"

The shadow pa.s.sed from Andy Hayes' face as he turned to his own great joy.

THE END.