Second String Part 62

"Not a bit, Sally! He's just given up Lady Lucy. Going straight again, don't you know? Off to the seaside with his wife and kid."

"How long has Lady Lucy lasted?" asked Gilly.

The Nun gurgled. "I should like to have that set to music," she explained. "The alliteration is effective, Gilly, and I would give it a pleasing lilt."

"I don't wish to hear you sing it," said Billy, in a voice none too loud. Amaranth was looking about the room, and an implied reference to bygones was harmlessly agreeable.

"With his wife and his kid, to the Bedford at Brighton," Billy continued, after his aside. "From something he let fall, I gathered that the Freeres were going to be at the Norfolk."

Amaranth did not see the point. "I don't know the Freeres," she remarked.

"We do," said Gilly. "In fact we're in the habit of turning them to the uses of allegory, Amaranth. I may say that we are coming to regard Mrs.

Freere as a comparative reformation--as the irreducible minimum. If only Harry wouldn't wander from Freere's wife!"

"But the man's got a wife of his own!" cried Amaranth.

"Yes, but we're dealing with practical possibilities," Gilly insisted.

"And, from that point of view, his own wife really doesn't count."

"And yet Vivien Wellgood--!" The Nun relapsed into a silence which was meant to express bewilderment, though she was not bewildered, having too keen a memory of her own achievement.

"Oh, you really understand it better than that, Doris," said Billy.

"Harry can make it seem a tremendous thing--while it lasts. Andy's fault is that he never makes things seem tremendous. He just makes them seem natural. His way is safer; it takes longer, but it lasts longer too.

Neither of them is the ideal man, you know. Andy wants an occasional hour of Harry--"

"Dangerously long!" the Nun opined.

"And Harry ought to have seven years' penal servitude of Andy. Then you might achieve the perfectly balanced individual."

"I think you're perfectly balanced, dear," said Amaranth, and thereby threw her husband into sorest confusion, and the rest of the company into uncontrolled mirth. Moreover the Nun must needs add, with her most innocent expression, "Just what I've always found him, Amaranth!"

"Oh, hang it--when I was trying to talk sense!" poor Billy expostulated.

His bride's remark--admirably bridal in character--choked Billy's philosophising in its hour of birth. The trend of the conversation was diverted, the picture of the perfectly balanced man never painted. Else there might have emerged the interesting and agreeable paradox that the perfectly balanced man was he who knew when to lose his balance, when to kick the scales away for an hour, when to stop thinking of anybody except himself, when to sink consideration in urgency, pity in desire, affection in love. All this, of course, only for an hour--and in the right company. It must be allowed that the perfect balance is a rare phenomenon.

Isobel Vintry had not sought it; it is to her credit that she refrained from accusing fate because she had not found what she did not seek.

Forgiving Harry over the Lady Lucy episode--his penitence was irresistibly sincere--and accepting Mrs. Freere as an orderly and ordinary background to married life, almost a friend, certainly an ally (for Mrs. Freere was now, as ever, a prudent woman), she recalled the courage that had made her a fit preceptress for Vivien, and Wellgood's ideal woman. She saw the trick her heart had played her, and knew--with Harry himself--that hearts would always be playing tricks. The poacher was made keeper, but the poaching did not stop. The thief was robbed, the raider raided. All a very pretty piece of poetical justice--with the unusual characteristic of being quite commonplace, an everyday affair, no matter of melodrama, but just what constantly happens.

She and Wellgood had so often agreed that Vivien must be trained to face the rubs of life, its ups and downs, its rough and smooth; timidity and fastidiousness were out of place in a world like this. The two had taught the lesson to an unwilling pupil; they themselves had now to aspire to a greater apt.i.tude in learning it. Wellgood conned his lesson ill. The gospel of anti-sentimentality fits other people's woes better than a man's own; his seem so real as to defeat the application of the doctrine. The first and loudest to proclaim that no man or woman is to be trusted, that he who does not suspect invites deception and has himself to thank if he is duped--that is the man who nurses bitterest wrath over the proving of his own theories. Aghast at having yourself the honour of proving your own theories! The world does funny things with us. To be taken at your word like that; really to find people about you as bad as you have declared humanity at large to be; to stumble and break your knees over a justification of your cynicism--it would seem a thing that should meet with acquiescence, perhaps even with a sombre satisfaction. Yet it does not happen so. The optimist fares better; he falls from a higher chair but on to a thicker carpet; and he himself is far more elastic. "With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again." Hard measure for hard people seems to fulfil the saying, and is not a just occasion for grumbling--even for internal grumbling, which is the hard man's only resource, since he has accustomed sympathy and confidence to hide their faces from his ridicule, and their tender hands to shrink from the grip of his contempt.

Isobel Belfield possessed just what Isobel Vintry had stolen. Neither Church nor State, no, nor the more primitive sanction of the birth of a son, availed to give a higher validity to her t.i.tle. In rebuking inconstancy she was out of court; she was estopped, as the lawyers call it. How could she refuse to forgive the thing which alone gave her the right to be aggrieved? Her possession was tainted in its origin. Or was she to arrogate to herself the privilege of being the only thief? Harry Belfield confessed new crimes to an old accomplice; severity would have merited a smile. Stolen kisses acknowledged recalled stolen kisses that had been a secret. Condemned by the tribunal of the present, Harry's offences appealed to the past. "See yourself as Vivien--see her (Lady Lucy, Mrs. Freere, or another) as yourself!" Harry's deprecatory smile seemed to threaten some such disarming suggestion. Church and State and the little boy might say, "There's all the difference!" Neither State nor Church nor little boy could deafen the echo of Wellgood's denunciation or blur the image of Vivien's stricken face. They were a pair of thieves; the court of conscience would not listen to her plea if she complained of an unfair division of the plunder. Hands held up in pet.i.tion for justice must be clean--an old doctrine of equity; an account will not be taken between two highwaymen on Hounslow Heath.

Origins are obstinate, leaving marks whatever variations time may bring.

She had begun as one of two--and not the legitimate one. She was to be one of two always, so it appeared, through all the years until the Nun's pitiless vision worked itself out, and even Harry Belfield ceased to suffer new pa.s.sions--or, at least, to inspire them; perhaps the latter ending of the matter was the more likely.

He did nothing else than suffer pa.s.sions and inspire them; that was the hardest rub. Where was the brilliant career? Where the great success of which Vivien had been wont to talk shyly? Isobel was a woman of hard mettle, of high ambition. She could have endured to be official queen, though queens unofficial came and went. But there was to be no kingdom!

There was abdication of all realms save Harry's own. He grew more and more contented to specialise there. Irregularity in private conduct is partially condoned in useful men; as a discreetly hidden diversion, it is left to another jurisdiction--_deorum injuriae dis curae_--but as the occupation of a life? The widest stretch of philosophic contemplation of the whole is demanded to excuse or to justify.

He made a strange thing of her life--a restless, unpeaceful, interesting, and unhappy thing. The old idea of reigning at Nutley, of skilfully managing stubborn Wellgood, of the seeming submission that was really rule (perhaps woman's commonest conception of triumph), did not serve the turn of this life. It was stranger work--living with Harry!

Being so well treated--and so well deceived! So courted and so flouted!

The change was violent from the days when Vivien's companion stole kisses that belonged to her unsuspecting charge. A pretty irony to find herself on the defensive! A prettier, perhaps, to see her best resource in an alliance with Mrs. Freere! But it came to that. Never in words, of course--tacitly, in lifted brows and shoulders shrugged. So long as there was n.o.body except Mrs. Freere--so long as there was n.o.body besides his wife--things were not very wrong for the allies. A sense of security regained, precariously regained--a current of silent but mutual congratulations--ran between the Bedford and the Norfolk hotels at Brighton when Lady Lucy had received her _conge_. Harry's degrees of penitence and of confession at the two houses of entertainment must remain uncertain; at both he was no doubt possessed by the determination to lead a new life; he had been possessed by that when first he heard the potent voice calling him to Meriton.

Harry Belfield--the admired Harry of so many hopes--was in process of becoming a joke! It was the worst fate of all; yet what other refuge had the despair of his friends? Even to condemn with gravity was difficult; gravity seemed to accuse its wearer of making too much of the ridiculous--which was to be ridiculous himself. In old days they had laughed at Harry's love affairs as at his foible; he seemed all foible now--there was nothing else. His life and its possibilities had narrowed and dwindled down to that. Billy Foot had tried to be serious on the subject. What was the use, when there was only one question to be asked about him--who was the latest woman? An atmosphere of ridicule, kindly, tender, infinitely regretful, yet still ridicule, enveloped the figure of him who once had been a hero. This was a different quality of jest from that which found its occasion in Andy Hayes' patient wooing. Andy could afford to be patient; once again his opponent was doing his work for him.

Spring saw the Nun installed in a hired house of her own at Meriton, Seymour being kept busy conveying her to and fro between her new home and London, as and when the claims of her profession called her. But Sunday was always marked by a gathering of friends--the Foots if they were at Halton, Andy, Vivien Wellgood from Nutley; often Belfield would drop in to see the younger folk. Jack Rock had his audiences to himself, for he st.u.r.dily refused to intrude on his "betters"--aye, even though his sign was down, though the National, Colonial, and International Purveyors reigned in his stead, though the Member for the Division occupied rooms in his house. To Jack life seemed to have done two wonderful things for him--one was the rise and triumph of Andy; the other was his friends.h.i.+p with Miss Doris Flower. He was, in fact, hopelessly in love with that young lady; the Nun was quite aware of it and returned his affection heartily. Jack delighted to sit with her, to look and listen, and sometimes to talk of Andy--of all that he had done, of all that he was going to do. Jack's hard-working, honest, and, it may be added, astute life was crowned by a very gracious evening.

The Nun's new home stood in High Street, with a pretty little front garden, where she loved to sit and survey the doings of the town, even as had been her wont from her window at the Lion. Here she was one morning, and Jack Rock with her. She lay stretched on a long chair, with her tiny feet protruding from her white frock, her hair gleaming in the sun, her eyes looking at Jack with a merry affection.

"You do make a picture, miss; you fair do make a picture!" said Jack.

"Don't flirt, Jack," said the Nun in grave rebuke. "You ought to know by now that I don't go in for flirtation, and I can't let even you break the rules. Though I confess at once that you tempt me very much, because you do it so nicely. It's funny, Jack, that both you and I should have chosen the single life, isn't it?"

Jack shook his head reproachfully. "Ah, miss, that's where you're wrong!

I'm not sayin' anythin' against Miss Vivien--she's a sweet young lady."

"What has Vivien got to do with single lives?"

"Well, miss, no offence, I hope? But if it had been so as you'd laid yourself out--so to speak--for Andy."

The Nun blushed just a little, and laughed just a little also. "Oh, that's your idea, Jack? You are a schemer!"

"I've got nothin' to say against Miss Vivien. But I wish it had been you, miss," Jack persisted.

"Oh, Jack, wouldn't you have been jealous? Do say you'd have been jealous!"

"Keepin' him waitin' too the way she does!" Jack's voice grew rather indignant. "It don't look to me as if she put a proper value on him, miss."

"Perhaps you're just a little bit partial to Andy?" the Nun suggested.

"And not a proper value on herself either, if she's still hankerin'

after Mr. Harry. Him as is after half the women in London, if you can trust all you hear."

The Nun's face was towards the street, Jack's back towards it. The garden gate was open.

"Hus.h.!.+" said the Nun softly. "Here comes Vivien!"

Poor old Jack was no diplomatist. He sprang to his feet, red as a turkey c.o.c.k, and turned round to find Vivien at his elbow.

"I--I beg your pardon, miss," he stammered, rus.h.i.+ng at the conclusion that she had overheard.

Vivien looked at him in amused surprise. "But what's the matter, Mr.

Rock? Why, I believe you must have been talking about me!" She looked at the Nun. "Was he?" she asked merrily.

"I don't know that it's much good trying to deny it, is it, Jack?"

Jack was terribly ashamed of himself. "It wasn't my place to do it. I beg your pardon, miss." He stooped and picked up his hat, which he had taken off and laid on the ground by him. "Miss Flower's too kind to me, miss. She makes me forget my place--and my manners."

Vivien held out her hand to him; she was grave now. "But we're all so fond of you, Mr. Rock. And I'm sure you weren't saying anything unkind about me. Was he, Doris?"