The Half-Hearted Part 15

He struggled to act the part of the cheerful host, and Wratislaw watched his efforts grimly. He ate little at dinner, showed no desire to smoke, and played billiards so badly that Wratislaw, an execrable player, won the first and last game of his life. The victor took him out of doors thereafter to walk on the moonlit, fragrant lawn.

"You are taking things to heart," said he.

"And I'm blessed if I can understand you. To me it's sheer mania."

"And to me it's the last link in a chain. I have suspected myself for long, now I know myself and--ugh! the knowledge is a hideous thing."

Wratislaw stood regarding his companion seriously. "I wonder what will happen to you, Lewie. Life is serious enough without inventing a crotchety virtue to make it miserable."

"Can't you understand me, Tommy? It isn't that I'm a cad, it's that I am a coward. I couldn't be a cad supposing I tried. These things are a matter chiefly of blood and bone, and I am not made that way. But G.o.d help me! I am a coward. I can't fight worth twopence. Look at my performance a fortnight ago. The ordinary gardener's boy can beat me at making love. I am full of generous impulses and sentiments, but what's the use of them? Everything grows cold and I am a dumb icicle when it comes to action. I knew all this before, but I thought I had kept my bodily courage. I've had a good enough training, and I used to have pluck."

"But you don't mean to tell me that it was funk that kept you out of the pool to-day?" cried the impatient Wratislaw.

"How do I know that it wasn't?" came the wretched answer.

Wratislaw turned on his heel and made to go back.

"You're an infernal idiot, Lewie, and an infernal child. Thank heaven!

your friends know you better than you know yourself."

The next morning it was a different man who came down to breakfast. He had lost his haggard air, and seemed to have forgotten the night's episode.

"Was I very rude to everybody last night?" he asked. "I have a vague recollection of playing the fool."

"You were particularly rude about yourself," said Wratislaw.

The young man laughed. "It's a way I have sometimes. It's an awkward thing when a man's foes are of his own household."

The others seemed to see a catch in his mirth, a ring as of something hollow. He opened some letters, and looked up from one with a twitching face and a curious droop of the eyelids. "Miss Wishart is all right,"

he said. "My aunt says that she is none the worse, but that Stocks has caught a tremendous cold. An unromantic ending!"

The meal ended, they wandered out to the lawn to smoke, and Wratislaw found himself standing with a hand on his host's shoulder. He noticed something distraught in his glance and air.

"Are you fit again to-day?" he asked.

"Quite fit, thanks," said Lewis, but his face belied him. He had forgiven himself the incident of yesterday, but no proof of a non sequitur could make him relinquish his dismal verdict. The wide morning landscape lay green and soothing at his feet. Down in the glen men were winning the bog-hay; up on the hill slopes they were driving lambs; the Avelin hurried to the Gled, and beyond was the great ocean and the infinite works of man. The whole brave bustling world was astir, little and great s.h.i.+ps hasting out of port, the soldier scaling the breach, the adventurer travelling the deserts. And he, the fool, had no share in this braggart heritage. He could not dare to look a man straight in the face, for like the king in the old fable he had lost his soul.

CHAPTER XIV

A GENTLEMAN IN STRAITS

The fall of the leaf found Etterick very full of people, and new dwellers in Glenavelin. The invitations were of old standing, but Lewis found their fulfilment a pleasant trick of Fortune's. To keep a bustling household in good spirits leaves small room for brooding, and he was famous for his hospitality. The partridges were plentiful that year, and a rainless autumn had come on the heels of a fine summer. So life went pleasantly with all, and the master of the place cloaked a very sick heart under a ready good-humour.

His thoughts were always on Glenavelin, and when he happened to be near it he used to look with anxious eyes for a slim figure which was rarely out of his fancy. He had not seen Alice since the accident, save for one short minute, when riding from Gledsmuir he had pa.s.sed her one afternoon at the Glenavelin gates. He had earnestly desired to stop, but his curious cowardice had made him pa.s.s with a lifted hat and a hasty smile. Could he have looked back, he might have seen the girl watching him out of sight with tearful eyes. To himself he was the hopeless lover, and she the scornful lady, while she in her own eyes was the unhappy girl for whom the soldier in the song shakes his bridle reins and cries an eternal adieu.

Matters did not improve when the Manorwaters left and Mr. Wishart himself came down, bringing with him Stocks, a certain Mr. Andrews and his wife, and an excellent young man called Thompson. All were pleasant people, with the manners which the world calls hearty, well-groomed, presentable folk, who enjoyed this life and looked forward to a better.

Mr. Wishart explored the place thoroughly the first evening, and explained that he was thankful indeed that he had been led to take it.

He was a handsome man with a worn, elderly face, a square jaw and somewhat weary eyes. It is given to few men to make a great fortune and not bear the signs of it on their persons.

"I expect you enjoyed staying with Lady Manorwater, Alice?" Mrs.

Andrews declared at dinner. "They are very plain people, aren't they, to be such great aristocrats?

"I suppose so," said the girl listlessly.

"I once met Lady Manorwater at Mrs. Cookson's at afternoon tea. I thought she was badly dressed. You know Manorwater, don't you, George?"

said the lady to her husband, with the boldness which comes from the use of a peer's name without the handle.

"Oh yes, I know him well. I have met him at the Liberal Club dinners, and I was his chairman once when he spoke on Irish affairs. A delightful man!"

"I suppose they would have a pleasant house-party when you were here, my dear?" asked the lady. "And of course you had the election. What fun!

And what a victory for you, Mr. Stocks! I hear you beat the greatest landowner in the district."

Mr. Stocks smiled and glanced at Alice. The girl flushed; she could not help it; and she hated Mr. Stocks for his look.

Her father spoke for the first time. "What is the young man like, Mr.

Stocks? I hear he is very proud and foolish, the sort of over-educated type which the world has no use for."

"I like him," said Mr. Stocks dishonestly. "He fought like a gentleman."

"These people are so rarely gentlemen," said Mrs. Andrews, proud of her high att.i.tude. "I suppose his father made his money in coal and bought the land from some poor dear old aristocrat. It is so sad to think of it. And that sort of person is always over-educated, for you see they have not the spirit of the old families and they bury themselves in books." Mrs. Andrews's father had kept a crockery shop, but his daughter had buried the memory.

Mr. Wishart frowned. The lady had been asked down for her husband's sake, and he did not approve of this chatter about family. Mr. Stocks, who was about to explain the Haystoun pedigree, caught his host's eye and left the dangerous subject untouched.

"You said in your letters that they had been kind to you at this young man's place. We must ask him down here to dinner, Alice. Oh, and that reminds me I found a letter from him to-day asking me to shoot. I don't go in for that sort of thing, but you young fellows had better try it."

Mr. Stocks declined, said he had given it up. Mr. Thompson said, "Upon my word I should like to," and privately vowed to forget the invitation. He distrusted his prowess with a gun.

"By the by, was he not at the picnic when you saved my daughter's life?

I can never thank you enough, Stocks. What should I have done without my small girl?"

"Yes, he was there. In fact he was with Miss Alice at the moment she slipped."

He may not have meant it, but the imputation was clear, and it stirred one fiery expostulation. "Oh, but he hadn't time before Mr. Stocks came after me," she began, and then feeling it ungracious towards that gentleman to make him share a possibility of heroism with another, she was silent. More, a lurking fear which had never grown large enough for a suspicion, began to catch at her heart. Was it possible that Lewis had held back?

For a moment the candle-lit room vanished from her eyes. She saw the warm ledge of rock with the rowan berries above. She saw his flushed, eager face--it was her last memory before she had fallen. Surely never--never was there cowardice in those eyes!

Mrs. Andrews's vulgarities and her husband's vain repet.i.tions began to pall upon the anxious girl. The young Mr. Thompson talked shrewdly enough on things of business, and Mr. Stocks abated something of his pomposity and was honestly amiable. These were her own people, the workers for whom she had craved. And yet--were they so desirable? Her father's grave, keen face pleased her always, but what of the others?

The radiant gentlewomen whom she had met with the Manorwaters seemed to belong to another world than this of petty social struggling and awkward ostentation. And the men! Doubtless they were foolish, dilettanti, barbarians of sport, half-hearted and unpractical! And she shut her heart to any voice which would defend them.

Lewis drove over to dine some four days later with dismal presentiments.

The same hopeless self-contempt which had hung over him for weeks was still weighing on his soul. He dreaded the verdict of Alice's eyes, and in a heart which held only kindness he looked for a cold criticism. It was this despair which made his position hopeless. He would never take his chance; there could be no opportunity for the truth to become clear to both; for in his plate-armour of despair he was s.h.i.+elded against the world. Such was his condition to the eyes of a friend; to himself he was the common hopeless lover who sighed for a stony mistress.

He noticed changes in Glenavelin. Businesslike leather pouches stood in the hall, and an unwontedly large pile of letters lay on a table. The drawing-room was the same as ever, but in the dining-room an escritoire had been established which groaned under a burden of papers. Mr.

Wishart puzzled and repelled him. It was a strong face, but a cold and a stupid one, and his eyes had the gla.s.sy hardness of the man without vision. He was bidden welcome, and thanked in a tactless way for his kindness to Mr. Wishart's daughter. Then he was presented to Mrs.