The best parlour—the private sitting-room—at the Lion was on the ground floor, just opposite the private bar, and boasted a large bay window, commanding a full view of High Street. A low broad bench, comfortably cushioned, ran round the window, and afforded to Miss Flower a favourable station from which to observe what was doing in the town. On fine days, such as ruled just now, when the window was thrown up, the position also served as a rendezvous to which her growing band of friends and admirers could resort to exchange compliments, to post her in the latest news, or just to get a sight of her. Jack Rock would stroll across from his shop three or four times a day; Andy would stop a few minutes on his way to or from his lodgings; Billy would stretch his long legs over the sill and effect an entry; Vivien ask if she might come in for a few minutes; Chinks cast an eye as he hurried to his office; the Birdfind an incredible number of occasions for passing on his daily duties. There the Nun sat, surveying the traffic of Meriton, and fully aware that Meriton, in its turn, honoured her with a flattering attention. Within the Lion itself she already reigned supreme; old Mr. Dove was at her feet, so was old Cox and the otherhabituésof the private bar; the Bird, as already hinted, was "knocked silly"—this contemptuous phrase for a sudden passion was Miss Miles'. Yet even Miss Miles was affable, and quite content to avenge herself for the Bird's desertion (which she justly conceived to be temporary) by a marked increase in those across-the-counter pleasantries which she had once assured her employer were carried on wholly and solely for the benefit of his business. The fact was that Miss Miles had once officiated at the bar of a "theatre of varieties," and this constituted a professional tie between the Nun and herself, strong enough to defy any trifling awkwardness caused by a wavering in the Bird's affections.
But the Nun's most notable and complete conquest was over Mr. Belfield. Billy Foot had brought him—not his son Harry—and speedily thereafter he called on his own account, full of courtly excuses because his wife, owing to a touch of cold, was not with him; he hoped that shewould be able to come very soon. (Mr. Belfield was engaged on another small domestic struggle, such as had preceded Andy Hayes' first dinner at Halton.) Serenely indifferent to the minutiæ of etiquette, Miss Flower allowed it to appear that she would just as soon receive Mr. Belfield by himself.
He interpreted her permission as applying to more than one visit; somehow or other, most days found him by the bay window, and generally, on being pressed, at leisure to come in and rest. They would chat over all manner of things together, each imparting to the other from a store of experiences strange to the listener; or together they would discuss their common friends in Meriton. She liked his shrewd and humorous wisdom; her directness and simplicity charmed him no less than the extreme prettiness of her face.
"Well, Miss Flower," he said one morning, "the boys finish their speechifying to-morrow, and then they'll be more at liberty to amuse you, instead of leaving it so much to the old stagers."
"And then you'll all be getting busy about the wedding. In three weeks now, isn't it?"
"Just a few days over three weeks. Individually I shall be glad when it's over."
"Have they done well with their speeches?"she asked. "After all my good intentions, I only went once."
"They think they've made the seat absolutely safe for Harry. Parliament and marriage—the boy's taking on responsibilities!"
"It seems funny, when one's just played about with them! It's a funny thing to be just one of people's amusements—off the stage as well as on it."
"Oh, come!" He smiled. "Is that all you claim to be—to any of those boys?"
"That's the way they look at me—in their sober moments. Except Andy; he's quite different. He's never been about town, you see. For him girls and women are all in the same class."
"I was once about town myself," Belfield remarked thoughtfully.
"Yes, and you take your son's view—and Billy Foot's." He smiled again, and she smiled too, meeting his glance directly. "Oh yes, Billy too—though he may have his temptations! Squarely now, Mr. Belfield, if—for the sake of argument—your son treated Miss Wellgood badly, or even Miss Vintry, it would seem a different thing from treating Sally or me badly, wouldn't it?"
"You do put it pretty squarely," said Belfield, twisting his lips.
"A glass of beer gives you the right to flirt withpoor Miss Miles. It's supposed to be champagne with us. When you were about town—don't you remember?"
"I suppose it was. It's not a tradition to be proud of."
"There are compensations—which some of us like. If Sally or I behave badly, who cares? But if Miss Wellgood or Miss Vintry—! Oh, dear me, the heavens would fall in Meriton!"
"By the way, I'm afraid I drive your friend away? Miss Dutton always disappears when I call."
"She generally disappears when people come. Sally's shy of strangers. Well, you know, as I was saying, Andy Hayes hasn't got that tradition. I think if I ever fell in love—I never do, Mr. Belfield—I should fall in love with a man who hadn't that tradition. But they're very hard to find."
"Let's suppose it's one of those thousand things that are going to change," he suggested, with his sceptical smile.
"Do things between men and women change much, in spite of all the talk? You've read history, I haven't."
"Yes, I have to a certain extent. I don't know that I'm inclined to give you the result of my researches. Not very cheerful! And, meanwhile, there's Andy Hayes!"
"I never do it," the Nun repeated firmly. "Besides, in this case I've not been asked. I'm not the sort of girl he would fall in love with."
"Will you forgive an old man's compliment, Miss Flower, if I say I don't know the sort of man who wouldn't—I'll put it mildly, I'll say mightn't—fall in love with the sort of girl you are?"
"I forgive it, but it's not as clever as you generally are. Andy always wants to help. Well, I don't want anybody to help me, you see."
"The delight of the eyes?" he suggested. "What? That doesn't count? Only such as you can afford to say so!"
"I don't think it counts much with Andy. He appreciates, oh yes! He almost stared me out of countenance the first time we met; and that's supposed to be difficult—in London! But I don't think it really counts for a great deal. Andy's not a love-making man; he's emphatically a marrying man."
"You draw that distinction? But the love-making men marry?"
"In the end perhaps—generally rather by accident. They haven't the instinct."
"You've thought about these things a good deal, Miss Flower."
"I live almost entirely among men, you see," she answered simply. "And they show me morethan they show girls of—of that other class. Shall I call again on your reminiscences?" She smiled suddenly and brightly. "Miss Wellgood's being awfully nice to me. She's been here twice, and I'm going to tea at Nutley to-morrow."
"She's one of the dearest girls in the world," said Belfield. "Harry's a lucky fellow." He glanced at the Nun. "I hope he appreciates it properly. I believe he does."
She offered no comment, and a rather blank silence followed. If Belfield had sought a reassurance, he had not received it. On the other hand she gave away no secrets. She, like the silence, was blank, looking away from him, down High Street.
The Bird passed the window; Jack Rock trotted by on a young horse; one of his business equipages clattered along not far behind him; the quiet old street basked and dozed in the sun.
"What a dear rest it is—this little town!" said the Nun softly. "Surely nothing but what's happy and peaceful and pleasant can ever happen here?"
Sally Dutton came by, returning from a stroll to which she had betaken herself on Belfield's arrival.
"Well, Sally, been amusing yourself?" the Nun called.
"The streets present their usual gay andanimated aspect," observed Miss Dutton, as she entered the Lion.
"There are the two sides of the question," laughed Belfield. "The line between peace and dullness—each man draws it for himself—in pencil—with india-rubber handy! I'm really afraid we're not amusing Miss Dutton?"
"Oh yes, she's all right. That's only her way." She smiled reflectively; Sally always amused her.
Belfield rose to take leave. "We can't let Nutley beat us," he said. "We must have you at Halton too!" He was led into assuming that his little domestic struggle would end in victory.
She looked at him, still smiling. "Wait and see how I behave at Nutley first. If Harry gives a good report of me—I suppose he'll be there?—ask me to Halton!"
He laughed, and so let the question go. After all, it would not do to be too sudden with his wife.
"You needn't be afraid of Harry. But Wellgood's rather a formidable character."
"And Miss Vintry? Is she alarming?"
He pursed up his lips. "I think she might be called a little—alarming."
"I'll have a good look at her—and perhaps I'll let you know what I think of her," said the Nun, with no more than the slightest twinkle in her eyes. It was enough for Belfield's quickness; it wasmuch more informing than the blank silence—though even that had set him thinking.
But the Nun's account of her first visit to Nutley chanced—or perhaps it was not chance—to be rendered not to Belfield, but to Andy Hayes. After the last meeting of the campaign, he had gone round to smoke a pipe with Jack Rock. Leaving him hard on midnight—there had been much to be wormed out of Andy concerning his speeches, their reception, the applause—he saw a light still burning in the window at the Lion. As he drew near, he perceived that the window was open, and he heard a voice crooning softly. He made bold to look in. The Nun was alone; she sat in the window, doing nothing, singing to herself. "Boo!" said Andy, putting his big head in at the window.
"Andy!" she cried, her face lighting up. "Jump in! You've come to scare the devils! There are a hundred of them, and they won't go away for all my singing. And Sally's gone to bed, prophesying a breaking of at least six out of the Ten Commandments! And only yesterday I told Mr. Belfield that nothing unpleasant could happen in Meriton! Where is one to go for quiet if things happen in Meriton?"
An outburst like this was most unusual with the Nun. It produced on Andy's face such a look ofmild wonder as may be seen on a St. Bernard's when a toy-terrier barks furiously.
"What's happened?"
"I've been at Nutley."
"Oh yes! Harry came on from there in the car—got to the meeting rather late."
"Something's happened—or is happening—in that house." She looked at him sharply. "You've been here longer than I have—do you know anything? Go on with your pipe."
Andy considered long, smoking his pipe.
"You do know something!" she exclaimed.
"I've ground for some uneasiness," he admitted.
She nodded. "It was all sort of underground," she said. "Really most uncomfortable! They'd try to get away from it, and yet come back to it—those three—Mr. Wellgood, Harry, and that Miss Vintry. Poor Vivien seemed quite outside of it all, but somehow conscious of it—and unhappy. She saw there was—what shall I say?—antagonism, you know. And she didn't know why. Have you seen anything that would make Mr. Wellgood savage if he saw it?"
"He didn't see what I saw."
"Not that time anyhow!" she amended quickly.
Andy frowned. "That time, I mean, of course. If he's seen anything of that sort, or suspected it, naturally, as Vivien Wellgood's father—"
"Vivien's father!" Her tone was full of impatience for his stupidity. "I suppose no woman has ever been to Nutley lately? Oh, Vivien's not one; she's a saint—and that's neither male nor female. Vivien's father!"
"I've been there off and on," said Andy.
"You! Have you ever seen—not that I suppose you'd notice it—a woman keeping two men from one another's throats, trying to make them think there's nothing to quarrel about, trying to say things that one could take in one way, and the other in the other—and third persons not take in any way at all? Oh, it's a pretty game, and I'm bound to say she plays it finely. But she's on thin ice, that woman, and she knows it. Vivien's father!"
"Why do you go on repeating 'Vivien's father'?"
"I won't." She leant forward and laid her small hand on his arm. "Isobel Vintry's lover, then! The man's in love with her, Andy, as sure as we sit here. In love—and furious!"
"I'd never thought of that. Do you feel sure of it?"
"You have thought of the other thing—and you're sure of that?"
"You know Harry. I hoped it would all—all come to nothing. How much do you think Wellgood knows, or suspects?"
"Hard to say. I think he's groping in the dark. He's had a check, I expect, or a set-back. Men always think that's due to another man—I suppose it generally is. Well, it's not you, and it's not Billy. Who else sees her—who else goes to Nutley?"
"But he'd never suspect his own daughter's—"
"You do!"
"I had the evidence of my eyes."
"Jealousy's quicker than the eyes, Andy." She leant forward again. "What did you see?"
"It seems disloyal to tell—disloyal to Harry."
"My loyalty's for Vivien!" she said. "What about yours?"
"Take it that what I saw justifies your fears about Harry," said Andy slowly. "I think—I'm not sure—I think he suspects I saw. I don't know whether she does." He was not aware that Isobel had made herself quite certain of his knowledge. "But it's nearly a month ago. You know Harry. I hoped it was all over. Only he seemed a little—queer."
"'Come and spend a quiet afternoon in the garden'—that was her invitation. Poor girl!"
"That's what you called her the first time I told you of their engagement."
"A nice quiet afternoon—sitting on the top of a volcano! With an eruption overdue!"
"It isn't possible to feel quite comfortable about it, is it?" said Andy.
The Nun laughed a little scornfully. "Not quite. Going to do anything about it?"
Andy raised his eyes to hers. "I owe almost everything I value most in the world to Harry, directly or indirectly; even what I owe to you and Jack came in a way through him."
"And he's never taken ten minutes' real trouble about you in his life."
"I'm not sure that makes any difference—even if it's true. He stands for all those things to me. As for Miss Vintry—" He shrugged his ponderous shoulders.
"Oh, by all means to blazes with Miss Vintry!" the Nun agreed pleasantly.
Miss Dutton put her head in at the door—her hair about her shoulders. "Ever coming to bed?"
"Not yet. I'm talking to Andy. Don't you see him, Sally?"
"It's not respectable."
"The window's open, there's a street lamp opposite, and a policeman standing under it. Good-night."
"Well, don't come into my room and wake me up jawing." Miss Dutton withdrew.
The Nun looked at Andy. "I wonder if it's quite fair to say 'To blazes with Miss Vintry!'"
"You said it with a good deal of conviction a moment ago. What makes you—?" His eyes met hers.
"Who told you about Sally? I never did," the Nun exclaimed.
"Harry, after our first supper."
"Here was rather the same case—only, of course, she never knew the other girl. I think that makes a difference. And she never really had a chance. That makes no difference, I suppose. The policeman's gone. I expect you'd better go too, Andy."
Andy swung his legs over the window-sill. "Are you going to try and put your oar in?" he asked.
"Would you think me wrong if I did?"
Andy sat quite a long while on the window-sill, dangling his legs over the pavement of High Street.
"I've thought about it a good deal," he answered. "Especially lately."
She knelt on the broad low bench just behind him. "Yes, and the result—when you're ready?"
"I think a row would be the best thing that could happen." He turned his face round to her as he spoke.
The Nun gasped. "That's thorough," she remarked. "So much for your opinion about Harry!"
"Yes, so much for that," Andy admitted.
"If there is a row, I hope you'll be there."
"Oh, I don't!" exclaimed Andy with a natural and human sincerity.
"To prevent bloodshed!" She laid her hand on his arm. "I'm not altogether joking. I didn't like Mr. Wellgood's eyes this afternoon." She patted his arm gently before she withdrew her hand. "Good-night, dear old Andy. You're terribly right as a rule. But about this—" She broke off, impatiently jerking her head.
With a clasp of her hand and a doleful smile, Andy let his legs drop on the pavement and departed.
So that was his verdict, given with all his deliberation, with all the weight of his leisurely broad-viewing judgment. The real thing to avoid was not the "row;" that was his conclusion. There was a thing, then, worse than the "row"—the thing for which Halton and Nutley—nay, all Meriton, would soon be making joyful preparation. His calm face had not moved even at her word "bloodshed." Oh yes, Andy was thorough! Not even that word swayed his mind. Perhaps he did not believe in her fears. But his look had not been scornful; it had been thoughtfully interrogative. He had possessed that knowledge of his for a long while; he had never used it. At first from loyalty to Harry—even now that would, she thought, beenough to make him very loth to use it. But another reason was predominant, born of his long silent brooding. He had come to a conclusion about his hero; the court had taken time for consideration; the judgment was advised. There was no helping some people. They must be left to their own ways, their own devices, their own doom. To help them was to harm others; to fight for them was to serve under the banner of wrong and of injustice. Friendship and loyalty could not justify that.
The conclusion seemed a hard one. She stood long at the big window—a dainty little figure thrown up by the light behind her—painfully reaching forward to the understanding of how what seems hardness may be a broader, a truer, a better-directed sympathy, how it may be a duty to leave a wastrel to waste, how not every drowning man is worth the labour that it takes to get him out of the water—for that once. At all events, not worth the risk of another, a more valuable life.
And that was his conclusion about his hero, the man to whom he owed, as he had said, almost everything he prized? Had he, then, any right to the conclusion, right in the abstract though it might be? It was a hard world that drove men to such hard conclusions.
The case was hard—and the conclusion. Butnot, of necessity, the man who painfully arrived at it. Yet the man might be biassed; sympathy for the deceived might paint the deceiver's conduct in colours even blacker than the truth demanded. Doris did not think of this, in part because the judgment had seemed too calm and too reluctant to be the offspring of bias, more because, if there were any partiality in it, she herself had become a no less strong, and a more impetuous, adherent of the same cause. Vivien had won all her fealty. The one pleasant feature of the afternoon had been when Vivien walked home with her and, wrought upon by the troubled atmosphere of Nutley even though ignorant of its cause, had opened her heart to Harry's old friend, to a girl who, as she felt, must know more of the world than she did, and perhaps, out of her experience, could comfort and even guide. With sweet and simple gravity, with a delicacy that made her confidence seem still reserved although it was well-nigh complete, she showed to her companion her love and her apprehension—a love so pure in quality, an apprehension based on so rare an understanding of the man she loved. She did not know the things he had done, nor the thing he was now doing; but the man himself she knew, and envisaged dimly the perils by which he was beset. Her loving sympathy tried to leap across the wide chasm that separated her life andher nature from his, and came wonderfully little short of its mark.
"I really knew hardly anything about him when I accepted him; he was just a girl's hero to me. But I have watched and watched, and now I know a good deal."
An excellent mood for a wife, no doubt—or for a husband—excellent, and, it may be, inevitable. But for a lover yet unmated, a bride still to be, a girl in her first love? Should she not leave reverend seniors to prate to her—quite vainly—of difficulties and dangers, while her fancy is roaming far afield in dreamy lands of golden joy? To endeavour, by an affectionate study of and consideration for your partner, to avoid unhappiness and to give comfort—such is wont to be the text of the officiating minister's little homily at a wedding. Is it to be supposed that bride and bridegroom are putting the matter quite that way in their hearts? If they were, a progressive diminution in the marriage-rate might be expected.
So ran the Nun's criticism, full of sympathy with the girl, not perhaps quite so full of sympathy for what seemed to her an over-saintly abnegation of her sex's right. The bitterest anti-feminist will agree that a girl should be worshipped while she is betrothed; he will allow her that respite of dominion in a life which, according to his opponents, histheories reduce, for all its remaining years, to servitude. Vivien was already serving—serving and watching anxiously—amid all her love. At this Doris rebelled—she who never fell in love. But she was quicker to grow fond of people than to criticize their points of view. Vivien's over-saintliness did sinful Harry's cause no service. If this were Vivien's mood in the light of her study of what her lover was, how would she stand towards the knowledge of what he did?
Yet Andy Hayes thought that the best thing now possible was that she should come to the knowledge of it—that was what he meant by there being a "row." That opinion of his was a mightily strong endorsement of Vivien's anxiety.
"Don't you now and then feel like backing out of it?" the Nun had asked with her usual directness.
Vivien's answer came with a laugh, suddenly scornful, suddenly merry, "Why, it's all my life!"
The Nun shook her sage little head; these things were not all people's lives—oh dear, no! She knew better than that, did Doris! But then the foolish obstinate folk would go on believing that they were, and thereby, for the time, made the trouble just as great as though their delusion were gospel truth.
Then Vivien had turned penitent about her fears, and remorseful for the expression of them. By an easy process penitence led to triumph, and she fell to singing Harry's praises, to painting again that brightly coloured future—the marvellous things to be seen and done by Harry's side. She smiled gently, rather mysteriously; the sound of the wonderful words was echoing in her ears. Doris saw her face, and pressed her hand in a holy silence.
The result of her various conversations, of her own reflections, and of her personal inspection of the situation at Nutley was to throw Miss Doris Flower into perhaps the gravest perplexity under which she had ever suffered. When you are accustomed to rule your life—and other people's, on occasion—by the simple rule of doing the obvious thing, it is disconcerting to be confronted with a case in which there appears to be no obvious thing to do, where there is only a choice of evils, and the choice seems balanced with a perverse and malicious equality. From Vivien's side of the matter—Doris troubled herself no more with her old friend Harry's—the marriage was risky far beyond the average of matrimonial risks; but the "row" was terribly risky too, with the girl in that mood about "all her life." If she had that mood badly upon her, she mightdo—well, girls did do all sorts of things sometimes, holding that life had nothing left in it.
Though there was nothing obvious, there must be something sensible; at least one thing must be more sensible than the other. Was it more sensible to do nothing—which was to favour the "row"—or to attempt something—which was to work for the marriage? Her temperament asserted itself, and led her to a conclusion in conflict with Andy's. She was by nature inclined always to do something. In the end the "row" was a certain evil; the marriage only a risk. Men do settle down—sometimes! (She wrinkled her nose as she propounded, and qualified, this proposition.) The risk was preferable to the certainty. After all, her practical sense whispered, in these days even marriage is not wholly irrevocable. Yes, she would be for the marriage and against the "row"—and she would tell Andy that.
Something was to be done then. But what? That seemed to the Nun a much easier question—a welcome reappearance of the obvious thing.
"I must find out what the woman really wants. Until we know that, it's simply working in the dark."
So she concluded, and at last turned on her side and went to sleep.
In very truth the atmosphere at Nutley was heavy with threatening clouds; unless a fair wind came to scatter them, the storm must soon break. Isobel had fled within her feminine barricades—the barricades which women are so clever at constructing and at persuading the conventions of life to help them to defend. A woman's solitudes may not be stormed; with address she can escape private encounters. In sore fear of Harry because sore afraid of herself, she gave him no opportunity. In sore fear of Wellgood, she shrank from facing him with a rupture of their secret arrangement. Both men were tricked out of their stolen interviews—Wellgood out of his legitimate privilege, Harry out of his trespassing. Each asked why; in each jealousy harked back to its one definite starting-point—Harry's to her suggestions about her relations with Vivien's father, Wellgood's toBelfield's hints that, as a companion, Isobel was needlessly good looking. To each of them matter of amusement at the time when they were made, they took on now a new significance; so irony loves to confront our past and present moods. But Wellgood held a card that was not in Harry's hand—a card which could not win the game, but could at least secure an opening. He was employer as well as lover. Vivien's father could command the presence of Vivien's companion—not indeed late at night, for that would be a scarcely judicious straining of his powers, but at any reputable business-transacting hour of the day. For two nights—and that day of which the Nun had been a witness—he suffered the evasion of his rights; then, with a suavity dangerous in a man so rough, he prayed Miss Vintry's presence in the study for ten minutes (the established period!) before dinner; there were ways and means to be discussed, he said, matters touching thetrousseauand the wedding entertainment. Vivien was bidden to run away and dress. "We're preparing one or two surprises for you, my dear," he said to her, with a grim smile which carried for Isobel a hidden reference.
Thus commanded in Vivien's presence, Isobel was cleverly caught between the duty of obedience and the abandonment of her ostensible position inthe house. Her barricade was being outflanked; she was forced into the open.
She was in fear of him, almost actual physical fear; whether more of his fondness or of his roughness she could not tell; she felt that she could hardly bear either. Since her avowal to Harry, her courage had never returned, her weapons seemed blunted, she was no more mistress of all her resources. Yet in the end she feared the fondness more, and would at all costs avoid that. She summoned the remnants of her once brilliant array of bravery.
Alone with her, he wasted no time on the artifice which had secured him privacy.
"What's this new fad, Isobel? You're wilfully avoiding me. One evening you turn faint; another you dodge me, and are off to bed! Though I don't think I've ever made exacting claims on your time, considering!"
"I've been afraid—you'd better hear the truth—to speak to you."
"I should like the truth, certainly, if I can get it. What have you been afraid to speak to me about?"
"Our engagement." She made the plunge, her eyes fixed apprehensively on his face. "I—I can't go on with it, Mr. Wellgood."
He had schooled himself for this answer; hemade no outburst. His tone was mild; the cunning of jealousy gave him an alien smoothness.
"Sit down, my dear, and tell me why."
She sat facing him, his writing-table between them.
"My feelings haven't—haven't developed as I hoped they would."
"Oh, your feelings haven't developed?" he repeated slowly. "Towards me?"
"I reserved the right to change my mind—you remember?"
"And I the right to be unpleasant about it." He smiled under intent eyes.
"I'll leave the house to-morrow, if you like," she cried, eager now to accept a banishment she had once dreaded.
"Oh, no! I'm not going to be unpleasant. We needn't do things like that."
"I—I think I should prefer it."
"I'm sorry you should feel that. There's no need; you shan't be annoyed."
"That's good of you. I thought you'd be very, very hard to me."
"Would that be the best way to win you back? I don't know—at any rate I don't feel like following it. But really you can't go off at a moment's notice—and just now! What would Vivien think? What are we to say to her? What would everybodythink? And how are Vivien and I to get through all this business of the wedding?"
"I know it would be awkward, and look odd, but it might be better. Your feelings—"
"Never mind my feelings; you know they're not my weak spot. Come, Isobel, you see now you've no cause to be afraid of me, don't you?"
"You're behaving very kindly—more kindly than perhaps I could expect." Down in her mind there was latent distrust of this unwonted uncharacteristic kindness. Yet it looked genuine enough. There was no reference to the name she dreaded; no hint, no sneer, about Harry Belfield. She rose to a hope that her tricks and her fencing had been successful, that he was quite in the dark, that the issue was to his mind between their two selves alone, with no intruder.
Wellgood's jealousy bade him be proud of his effort, and encouraged him to persevere. The natural temper of the man might be raging, almost to the laying of hands on her; it must be kept down; the time for it was not yet. Rudeness or roughness would give her an excuse for flight; he would not have her fly. A plausible kindness, a considerate smoothness—that was the card jealousy selected for him to play.
"You shan't be troubled, you shan't be annoyed. I'll give up my evening treat. We'll go back toour old footing—before I spoke to you about this. I'll ask nothing of you as a lover—well, except not to decide finally against me till the wedding. Only three weeks! But as my friend, and Vivien's, I do ask you not to leave us in the lurch now—at this particular moment—and not to risk setting everybody talking. If you insist on leaving me, go after the wedding. That means no change in our plan, except that you won't come back. That'll seem quite natural; it's what they all expect."
Still never a word of Harry, no hint of resentment, nothing that could alarm her or give her a handle for offence! Whether from friend or lover, his request sounded most moderate and reasonable. Not to leave the friend in the lurch, not to decide with harsh haste against a patient lover who had been given cause for confident hope, almost for certainty! He left her no plausible answer, for she could adduce no grievance against him. He had but taken what for her own purposes she had been content to allow—first in his bluff flirtation, then in his ill-restrained endearments. There was no plausibility in turning round and pretending to resent these things now. She dared not take false points in an encounter so perilous; that would be to expose herself to a crushing reply.
"If you go now—all of a sudden, at thismoment—I can't help thinking you'll put yourself under a slur, or else put me under one. People know the position you've been in here—practically mistress of the house, with Vivien in your entire charge. Very queer to leave three weeks before her wedding! You may invent excuses, or we may. An aunt dying—something of that sort! Nobody ever believes in those dying aunts!"
It was all true; people did not believe in those dying aunts, not when sudden departures of handsome young women were in question. People would talk; the thing would look odd. His plausible cunning left her no loophole.
"If you wish it, I'll stay till the wedding, on our old footing—as we were before all this, I mean. But you mustn't think there's any chance of my—my changing again."
"Thank you." He put out his hand across the table. She could not but take it. Though he seemed so cool and quiet, the hand was very hot. He held hers for a long while, his eyes intently fixed on her in a regard which she could not fathom, but which filled her anew with fear. She fell into a tremble; her lips quivered.
"Let me go now, please," she entreated, her eyes unable to meet his any longer.
He released her hand, and leant back in his chair. He smiled at her again, as he said, "Yes,go now. I'm afraid this interview has been rather trying to you—perhaps to us both."
Of all the passions, the sufferings, the undergoings of mankind, none has so relentlessly been put to run the gauntlet of ridicule as jealousy. It is the sport of the composer of light verses, the born material of the writer of farce—especially when it is well founded. It is perhaps strange to remark—could any strangeness outlast familiarity—that the supreme study of it treats of it as utterly unfounded, and finds its highest tragedy in its baselessness. Ridiculous when justifiable, tragic when all a delusion! Is that nature's view, even as it is so often art's? Certainly the race is obstinate in holding real failure in the conflict of sex as small recommendation in a hero, imagined as the opportunity for his highest effect. King Arthur hardly bears the burden of being deceived; on the baseless suspicion of it the Moor rides through murder to a triumphant death—and a general sympathy—unless nowadays women have anything to say on the latter point.
Yet this poor passion—commonly so ridiculous, even more commonly, among the polite, held ill-bred—must be allowed its features of interest. It is remarkably alert, acute, ingenious, even laborious, in its sweeping of details into its net. It works up its brief very industriously, be theinstructions never so meagre—somehow it invites legal metaphor, being always plaintiff in the court of sex, always with its grievance to prove, generally faced with singularly hard swearing in the witness box. It has its successes, as witnessed by notable phrases; there is the "unwritten law," and there are "extenuating circumstances." The phrases throw back a rather startling illumination on the sport of versifiers and the material of farce. But the exceptional cases have a trick of stamping themselves on phraseology. Most of us are jealous with no very momentous results. We grumble a little, watch a little, sulk a little, and decide that there is nothing in it. Often there is not. Likewise we are ambitious without convulsing the world—or even our own family circle. So with our lives, our loves, our deaths—history, poetry, elegy find no place for them. Only nature has and keeps a mother's love for the ordinary man, and holds his doings legitimate matter for her interest, nay, essential to her eternal unresting plan. She may be figured as investing the bulk of her fortune in him, as in three per cents.—genius being her occasional "flutter."
Mark Wellgood was an ordinary man, and he was proud of the fact; that must, perhaps, be considered a circumstance of aggravation. He refused the suggestions of civilization to modify,and of sentiment to soften, his primitive instincts; he was proud of them just as they were. If any man had come between him and his woman—primitive also were the terms his thoughts used—that man should pay for it. If there were any man at all, who could it be but Harry Belfield? If it were Harry Belfield, Wellgood refused to hold him innocent of an inkling of how matters stood between Isobel and Vivien's father—he must have pretty nearly guessed, even if she had not told him. At least there were relations between Vivien herself and the suspected trespasser. Did they not give cause enough for a father's anger, deep and righteous, demanding vengeance? They gave cause—and they gave cover. The jealous suitor could use the indignant father's plea, the indignant father's weapons. The lover's revenge would make the father's duty sweet. He was not indifferent to the wrong done to Vivien; yet he almost prized it for the advantage it gave him in his own quarrel. It was not often that jealousy could plume itself on so honourable and so useful an ally!
Single-hearted concern for Vivien would have let Isobel go, as she prayed, and given Harry either his dismissal or the chance to mend his ways in the absence of temptation. Jealousy imperiously vetoed such suggestions. Isobelshould not go. Harry should neither be dismissed nor given a fair chance and a fresh start. If he could, Wellgood would still keep Isobel; at least he would punish Harry, if he caught him. For the sake of these things he compromised his daughter's cause, and made her an instrument for his own purposes. And he did this with no sense of wrong-doing. So masterful was his self-regarding passion that his daughter's claim fell to the status of his pretext.
So he smoothed his face and watched.
But Isobel too was now on the alert. She was no longer merely resolved that she would behave herself because she ought; she saw that perforce she must. At least, no more secret dealings! Harry must be told that. The hidden hope that his answer would be, "Open dealings, then, at any cost," beat still in her heart, faintly, yet without ceasing. But if that answer came not, then all must be over. Word must go to him of that before he next came to Nutley. Such consolation as lay in knowing that she would not marry Wellgood should be his also. Then, perhaps, things would go a little easier, and these terrible three weeks slip past without disaster. Terrible—yes; but, alas, the end of them seemed more terrible yet.
Even had the post seemed safe, there was none which could reach Harry before he was due atNutley again. She had to find a messenger. She decided on Andy Hayes. He was a safe man; he would not forget to fulfil his charge. The very fact of that bit of knowledge he possessed made him in her eyes the safest messenger; if he had not talked about that other thing, he was not likely to talk about the letter; unlikely to mention it in malice, certain not to refer to it in innocence or inadvertence. And she knew where to find him. Andy had, with Wellgood's permission, resumed his practice of bathing before breakfast in Nutley lake. The stripes of his bathing-suit were a familiar object to her as he emerged from the bushes or plunged into the water; from her window she could watch his powerful strokes. His hour was half-past seven; before eight nobody but servants would be about.
Andy, then, emerging from the shrubbery dressed after his dip, found Miss Vintry strolling up and down.
"You're surprised to see me out so early, Mr. Hayes? But I know your habits. My window looks out this way."
"I'm awfully careful to keep well hidden in the bushes."
"Oh yes!" she laughed. "I've not come to warn you off. Are you likely to see Mr. Harry this morning?"
"I easily can; I shall be passing Halton."
"I specially want this note to reach him early in the morning. It's rather important. I should be so much obliged if you'd take it; and will you give it to him yourself?"
Andy stood silent for a moment, not offering to take the letter from her hand. She had foreseen that he might hesitate, knowing what he did; she had even thought that his hesitation might give her an opportunity. Feigning to notice nothing in his manner, she went on, "I must add that I shall be glad if you'll give it to him when he's alone, and if you won't mention it. It relates to a private matter."
Andy spoke slowly. "I'm not sure you'd choose me to carry it if you knew—"
"I do know; at least I never had much doubt, and I've had none since a talk we had together at Halton. Do you remember?"
"I didn't say anything about it then, did I?" asked Andy.
She smiled. "Not in so many words. You saw a great piece of foolishness—the first and last, I need hardly tell you. I'm very much ashamed of it. In that letter I ask Mr. Harry to forget all about it, and to remember only that I am, and want to go on being, Vivien's friend."
It sounded well, but Andy was not quite convinced.
"It's some time ago now. Mightn't you just ignore it?"
"As far as he's concerned, no doubt I might; but I rather want to get it off my own conscience, Mr. Hayes. It'll make me happier in meeting him. I shall be happier in meeting you too, after this little talk. Somehow that wretched bit of silliness seems to have made an awkwardness between us, and I want to leave Nutley good friends with every one."
She sounded very sincere; nay, in a sense she was sincere. She was ashamed; she did want to end the whole matter—unless that unexpected answer came. At any rate she was—or sounded—sincere enough to make Andy hold out his hand for the letter.
"I'll take it and give it to him as you wish, Miss Vintry. I'm bound to say, though, that, if apologies are being made, I think Harry's the one to make them."
"We women are taught to think such things worse in ourselves than in men. Men get carried away; they're allowed to, now and then. We mustn't."
The appeal to his chivalry—another wrong to woman!—touched Andy. "That's infernally unfair!"
"It sometimes seems so, just a little. I'm sincerely grateful to you, Mr. Hayes." She held out her hand to him. "You won't think it necessary to mention to Mr. Harry all I've told you? I don't think he was so sure as I was about—about your presence. And somehow it makes it seem worse if he knew that you—"
"I shall say nothing whatever, if he doesn't," said Andy, as he shook hands.
"Thank you again. I don't think I dare risk asking you to be friends—real friends—yet; but I may, perhaps, on the wedding day."
"I've never been your enemy, Miss Vintry."
"No; you've been kind, considerate"—her voice dropped—"merciful. Thank you. Good-bye."
She left Andy with her letter in his hands, and her humble thanks echoing in his ears—words that, in thanking him for his silence, bound him to a continuance of it. Andy felt most of the guilt suddenly transferred to his shoulders, because he had told the Nun—well, very nearly all about it! That could not be helped now. After all, it was Miss Vintry's own fault; she should have done sooner what she had done now. "All the same," thought chivalrous Andy, "I might give Doris a hint that things look a good bit better."
Certainly Isobel Vintry had cause to congratulateherself on a useful morning's work—Harry safely warned, Andy in great measure conciliated. She felt more able to face Wellgood over the teapot.
The first round had gone in her favour; the zone of danger was appreciably contracted. Her courage rose; her conscience, too, was quieter. She felt comparatively honest. With Wellgood she had gone as near to absolute honesty as the circumstances permitted. She had broken the engagement; she had even prayed to be allowed to go away, with all that meant to her. Wellgood made her stay. Then, so far as he was concerned, the issue must be on his own head. If that unexpected answer should come in the course of the weeks still left for it, it would be Wellgood's own lookout. As for Vivien—well, she was perceptibly more honest even in regard to Vivien. If she fought still, in desperate hope, for Vivien's lover, she fought now in fairer fashion, by refusing, not by accepting, his society, his attentions, his kisses. She would be nothing to him unless he found himself forced to cry, "Be everything!" She would abide no longer on that half-way ground; there were to be no more sly tricks and secret meetings. The kisses, if kisses came, would not be stolen, but ravished in conquest from a rival's lips. If sin, that was sin in the grand manner.
At lunch-time a note came for Vivien, brought by a groom on a bicycle.
"Oh, from Harry!" she exclaimed, tearing it open.
Isobel, sitting opposite Wellgood, set her face. She had expected a note to come for Vivien from Harry. She was on her mettle, fighting warily, risking no points. No note should come to her from Harry, to be opened perhaps under Wellgood's eyes; he had been known to ask to see letters, in his matter-of-course way assuming that there could be nothing private in them. Harry's answer to the note Andy delivered was to come to Isobel through Vivien, and to come in terms dictated by Isobel, terms that she alone would understand. She could always contrive to see Vivien's letters; generally they were left about.
"He's so sorry he can't bring Mr. Foot to tennis with him this afternoon; they're going to play golf," Vivien announced, rather disappointed. But she cheered up. "Oh well, it's rather hot for tennis; and I shall see him to-night, at dinner at Halton."
"Does he say anything else?" asked Isobel carelessly.
"Only that he's bored to death with politics." She laughed. "What's worrying him, I wonder?"
For a moment Isobel sat with eyes lowered;then she raised them and looked across to Wellgood. He was not looking at her; he was carving beef. Then it did not matter if her face had changed a little when she heard that Harry was bored with politics. Neither Wellgood nor Vivien had seen any change there might possibly have been in her face.
That trivial observation about politics was the answer—the expected answer, not that unexpected one. It meant, "I accept your decision."
Oddly enough her first feeling, the one that rose instinctively in her mind, was of triumph over Wellgood. Had she expressed it with the primitive simplicity on which he prided himself, she would have cried, "Sold again!" She had got out of her great peril; she had settled the whole thing. He had not scored a single point against her. She had regained her independence of him, and without cost. There was no longer anything for him to discover. He had no more rights over her; he had to renew his wooing, again to court, to conciliate. He had no way of finding out the past; Andy Hayes was safe. The future was again in her hands. Her smile at Wellgood was serene and confident. She was retreating in perfect order, after fighting a brilliantly successful rearguard action.
Even of the retreat itself she was, for themoment at least, half glad. Fear and longing had so mingled in her dreams of that unexpected answer. To be free from that crisis and that revelation! They would have meant flight for her, pursued by a chorus of condemning voices. They would have meant at least days, perhaps weeks, of straining vigilance, of harrowing suspense—never sure of her ground, never sure of herself; above all, never sure of Harry. Who, if not she, should know that you never could be sure of Harry? Who, if not she, should know that neither his plighted word nor his hottest impulse could be relied upon to last? Yes, she was—half glad; almost more than half glad, when she looked at Vivien. In the back of her mind, save maybe when passion ran at full flood for those rare minutes, the stolen ten that had come for so few days, had been the feeling that it would be a terrible thing to be—to be "shown up" to Vivien. The sage adviser, the firm preceptress, the model of the virtues of self-control—how would she have looked in the eyes of Vivien, even had the open, the triumphant victory come to pass? Really that hardly bore thinking of, if she had still any self-respect to lose.
She walked alone in the drive after lunch—where she had been wont to meet him. Let it all go! At least it had done one thing for her—it hadsaved her from Wellgood. It had taught her love, and made the pretence of love impossible—the suffering of unwelcome caresses a thing unholy. Then it was not all to the bad? It left her with a dream, a vision, a thing unrealized yet real; something to take with her into that new, cold, unknown world of strange people into which, for a livelihood's sake, she must soon plunge—must plunge as soon as she had seen Harry married to Vivien!
The sun was on the lake that afternoon; the water looked peaceful, friendly, consoling. She sat down by the margin of it, and gave herself to memories. They came thick and fast, repeating themselves endlessly out of scant material—full of shame, full of woe; but also full of triumph, for she had been loved—at least for the time desired—by the man of her love and desire. Bought at a great cost? Yes. And never ought to have been bought? No. But now by no means to be forgotten.
She was alone; everything was still, in the calm of a September afternoon. She bowed her head to her hands and wept.
The Nun walked up the drive and saw the figure of a woman weeping.
The Nun stopped, walked on a few paces, came to a stand again. She was visiting Nutley in pursuance of her plan of doing, if not that undiscoverable obvious, yet the more sensible thing—of preventing the "row" and, incidentally thereto, of finding out "what the woman really wanted."
Here was the woman. Whatever she might really want, apparently she was very far from having got it yet. She also looked very different from the adversary with whom Miss Flower had pictured herself as conducting a contest of wits—quite unlike the cool, wary, dexterous woman who had played her difficult game between the two men so finely, and who might be trusted to treat her opponent to a very pretty display of fencing. The position seemed so changed that the Nun had thoughts of going back. To discover a new, and what one has considered rather a hostile, acquaintancein tears is embarrassing; and the acquaintance may well share the embarrassment.
Fortunately Isobel stopped crying. She dried her eyes and tucked away her handkerchief. The Nun advanced again. Isobel sat looking drearily over the lake.
"Dropped your sixpence in the pond, Miss Vintry?" the Nun asked.
Isobel turned round sharply.
"Because—I mean—you're not looking very cheerful."
Isobel's eyes hardened a little.
"Have you been there long?"
"I saw you were crying, if that's what you mean. I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. People should cry in their own rooms if they want to keep it quiet."
"Oh, never mind; it doesn't matter whether you saw or not. Every woman is entitled to cry sometimes."
"I don't cry myself," observed the Nun, "but of course a great many girls do."
"I daresay I shouldn't cry if I were the great Miss Doris Flower."
The Nun gurgled. That ebullition could usually be brought about by any reference to the greatness of her position, not precisely because the position was not great—rather because it was funny that it should be. She sat down beside Isobel.
"Please don't tell Vivien what you saw. I don't want her to know I've been crying. She's remorseful enough as it is about her marriage costing me my 'place.'"
"Was that what you were crying about?"
"It seems silly, doesn't it? But I've been happy here, and—and they've got fond of me. And finding a new one—well, it seems like plunging into this lake on a cold day. So quite suddenly I got terribly dreary."
"Well, you've had it out, haven't you?" suggested the Nun consolingly.
"Yes; and much good it's done to the situation!" laughed Isobel ruefully. "Oh, well, I suppose my feelings are the situation—at any rate there's no other."
"Then if you feel better, things are better too."
The Nun did not feel that she was getting on much with the secret object of her visit; she even felt the impulse to get on with it weakened. She was more inclined just to have a friendly, a consoling chat. However business was business. To get on she must take a little risk. She dug the earth on the edge of the pond with the point of her sunshade and observed carelessly, "If you very particularly wanted to stay at Nutley, I should have thought you might have the chance."
"Oh, are people gossiping about that? Poor Mr. Wellgood!"
"It was the observation of my own eyes," said the Nun sedately. "Oh, of course you can deny it if you like, though I don't see why you should—and I shan't believe you."
"If you've such confidence in your own eyes as that, Miss Flower, it would be wasting my breath to try to convince you. Have it your own way. But even that would be—a new place. And I've told you that I'm afraid of new places."
"All plunges aren't into cold water," the Nun observed reflectively.
"That one would be colder, I think, than a quite strange plunge—away from Nutley."
"It's a great pity we're not built so as to fall in love conveniently. It would have been so nice for you to stay—in the new place."
"I'm only letting you have it your own way, Miss Flower. I've admitted nothing."
"All that appears at present is that you needn't go if you don't like—and yet you cry about going!"
Isobel smiled.
"I might cry at leaving all my friends, especially at leaving Vivien, without wanting to stop—with Mr. Wellgood, as you insist on having it. Is that comprehensible?"
"Well, I expect I've asked enough questions," said the cunning Nun, wondering hard how she could contrive to ask another—and get an answer to it. "But in Meriton there's nothing to do but gossip to and about one's friends. That's what makes it so jolly. Why, this wedding is simply occupation for all of us! What shall we do when it's over? Oh, well, I shall be gone, I suppose."
"And so shall I—so we needn't trouble about that."
The Nun was baffled. A strange impassivity seemed to fall on her companion the moment that the talk was of Harry's wedding. She tried once again.
"I do hope it'll turn out well."
Isobel offered no comment whatever. In truth she was not sure of herself; her agitation was too recent and had been too violent—it might return.
"I've known Harry for so long—and I like Miss Wellgood so much." She gave as interrogative a note as she could to her remarks—without asking direct questions. "I think he really is in love at last!" Surely, that ought to draw some question or remark—that "at last"? It drew nothing. "But—well, we used to say one never knew with poor Harry!" ("Further than that," thought the Nun, "without telling tales, I cannot go.")
Isobel sat silent.
The result was meagre. Isobel would talk about Wellgood, evasively but without embarrassment; references to Harry Belfield reduced her to silence. It was a little new light on the past; its bearing on the future, if any, was negative. She would not, it seemed, stay at Nutley with Wellgood. She would not talk of Harry. She had been crying. The crying was the satisfactory feature in the case.
The Nun rose.
"I must go in and see Miss Wellgood."
"She's gone out with her father, I'm afraid. That's how I happen to be off duty."
"And able to cry?"
"Oh, I hope you'll forget that nonsense. I'm quite resigned to everything, really." She too rose, smiling at her companion. "Only I rather wish it was all over—and the plunge made!"
The Nun reported the fact of her interview—and the results, such as they were—to Miss Dutton when she returned home.
"Her crying shows that she doesn't think she's got much chance," said the Nun hopefully.
"It shows she'd take a chance, if she got one," Miss Dutton opined acutely.
"You mean it all depends on Harry, then?"
"In my opinion it always has."
That indeed seemed the net result. It all depended on Harry—not at first sight a very satisfactory conclusion for those who knew Harry. However, Andy, who came into the Lion later in the afternoon, was hopeful—nay, confident. He had mysterious reasons for this frame of mind—information which he declared himself unable to disclose; he could not even indicate the source from which it proceeded, but he might say that there were two sources. He really could not say more—which annoyed the Nun extremely.
"But I think we may consider all the trouble over," he ended.
For had not Harry, when he got his note, dealt quite frankly with Andy—well, with very considerable frankness as to the past, with complete as to the future? He admitted that he had "more or less made a fool of himself," but declared that it had been mere nonsense, and was altogether over. Absolutely done with! He gave Andy his hand on that, begged his pardon for having been sulky with him, and told him that henceforward all his thoughts would be where his heart had been all through—with Vivien. If Isobel had convinced Andy, Harry convinced him ten times more. Andy had such a habit of believing people. He was not, indeed, easily or stupidly deceived by a wilful liar; but he fell a victim to people whobelieved in themselves, who thought they were telling the truth. It was so hard for him to understand that people would not go on feeling and meaning what they were sincerely feeling and meaning at the moment. They could convince him, if only they were convinced themselves.
"Let's think no more about it, and then we can all be happy," he said to the Nun. It really made a great difference to his happiness how Harry was behaving.
After all, it was rather hard—and rather hard-hearted—not to believe in Harry, when Harry believed so thoroughly in himself. The strongest proof of his regained self-confidence was the visit he paid to the Nun—a visit long overdue in friendship and even in courtesy. Harry asked for no forgiveness; he seemed to assume that she would understand how, having been troubled in his mind of late, he had not been in the mood for visits. He was quite his old self when he came, so much his old self that he scarcely cared to disguise the fact that he had given some cause for anxiety—any more than he expected to be met with doubt when he implied that all cause for anxiety was past. He had quite got over that attack, and his constitution was really the stronger for it. Illnesses are nature's curative processes, so the doctors tell us. Harry was always morevirtuous after a moral seizure. The seizure being the effective cause of his improvement, he could not be expected to regard it with unmixed regret. If, incidentally, it witnessed to his conquering charms, he could not help that. Of course he would not talk about the thing; he did not so much mind other people implying, assuming, or hinting at it.
If the Nun obliged him at all in this way, she chose the difficult method of irony—in which not her greatest admirer could claim that she was very subtle.
"My dear Harry, I quite understand your not calling. How could you think of me when you were quite wrapped up in Vivien Wellgood? I was really glad!"
Now that Harry had come, he found himself delighted with his visit.
"Country air's agreeing with you, Doris. You look splendid." His eyes spoke undisguised admiration.
"Thank you, Harry. I know you thought me good-looking once." The Nun was meek and grateful.
Harry laughed, by no means resenting the allusion. That had been an illness, a curative process, also—though her curative measures had been rather too summary for his taste.
"Whose peace of mind are you destroying down here?"
"I've a right to destroy peace of mind if I want to. It's not as if I were engaged to be married—as you are. I think Jack Rock's in most danger—or perhaps your father."
"The pater inherits some of my weaknesses," said Harry. "Or shares my tastes, anyhow."
"Yes, I know he's devoted to Vivien."
"You never look prettier than when you're trying to say nasty things."
"I'll stop, or in another moment you'll be offering to kiss me."
"Should you object?"
"Hardly worth while. It would mean nothing at all to either of us. Still—I'm not a poacher."
"You don't seem to me to be able to take a joke either." Harry's voice sounded annoyed. "But we won't quarrel. I've been through one of my fits of the blues, Doris. Don't be hard on a fellow."
"It would be so much better for you if people could be hard on you, Harry. Still you'll have to pay for it somehow. We all have to pay for being what we are—somehow. Perhaps you won't know you're paying—you'll call it by some other name; perhaps you won't care. But you'll have to pay somehow."
The Nun made a queer figure of a moralist; she was really far too pretty. But her words got home to Harry—the new, the recovered, Harry.
"I have paid," he said. "Oh yes, you don't believe it, but I have! The bill's paid, and receipted. I'm starting fair now. But you never did do me justice."
"I've always done justice to what you care most about—Harry the Irresistible!"
"Oh, stop that rot!" he implored. "I'm serious, you know, Doris."
"I know all the symptoms of your seriousness. The first is wanting to flirt with somebody fresh."
Harry's laugh was vexed—but not of bitter vexation. "Give a fellow a chance!"
"The whole world's in league to do it—again and again!"
"This time the world is going to find me appreciative. You don't know what a splendid girl Vivien is! If you did, you'd understand how—how—well, how things look different."
The Nun relented. "I really think it may last you over the wedding—and perhaps the honeymoon," she said.
The extraordinary thing to her—indeed to all his friends who did not share his most mercurial temperament—was that this change of mood was entirely sincere in Harry, and his satisfaction withit not less genuine. For two painful hours—from his receipt of Isobel's note to his dispatching of that sentence about being bored with politics—he had struggled, keeping Andy in an adjoining room solaced by newspapers and tobacco, in case counsel should be needed. Then the right had won—and all was over! When all was over, it was with Harry exactly as if nothing had ever begun; his belief in the virtue of penitence beggared theology itself. What he had been doing presented itself as not merely finished, not merely repented of, but as hardly real; at the most as an aberration, at the least as a delusion. Certainly he felt hardly responsible for it. An excellent comfortable doctrine—for Harry. It rather left out of account the other party to the transaction.
What a right he had to be proud of his return to loyalty! Because Isobel Vintry was really a most attractive girl; it would be unjust and ungrateful to deny that, since she had—well, it was better not to go back to that! With which reflection he went back to it, recovering some of the emotions of that culminating evening in the drive; recovering them not to any dangerous extent—Isobel was not there, the thrill of her voice not in his ears, nor the light of her eyes visible through the darkness—but enough to make him pat his virtue on the back again, and againexcuse the aberration. Oh, they had all made too much of it! A mere flirtation! Oh, very wrong! Yes, yes; or where lay the marvel of this repentance? But not so bad as all that! They had been prejudiced to think it so serious—prejudiced by Vivien's charms, her trust, her simplicity, her appeal. Yes, he certainly had been a villain even to flirt when engaged to a girl like that. However he thoroughly appreciated that aspect of the case now; it had needed this little—adventure—to make him appreciate it. Perhaps it had all been for the best. Well, that was going too far, because Isobel felt it deeply, as her words in the drive had shown. Yet perhaps—Harry achieved his climax in the thought that even for her it might have been for the best if it stopped her from marrying Wellgood. By how different a path, in how different a mood, had poor Isobel attained to laying the same unction to her smarting soul!
Wellgood did not know at all how quickly matters had moved. He was still asking about the sin—the aberration; he was not up to date with Isobel's renunciation or Harry's comfortable penitence. Nor was he of the school that accepts such things without sound proof. "Lead us not into temptation" was all very well in church; in secular life, if you suspected a servant of dishonesty,you marked a florin and left it on the mantelpiece. Had Isobel been already his wife, he would have locked her up in the nearest approach to a tower of brass that modern conditions permit; if Vivien had been already Harry's wife, he would no doubt have been in favour of Harry's being kept out of the way of dangerous seductions. But now, whether as father or as lover—and the father continued to afford the lover most valuable aid, most specious cover—he had first to know, to test, and to try. He had to leave his marked florin on the mantelpiece.
It must not, however, be supposed that Meriton lacked problems because Harry Belfield seemed, for the moment at all events, to cease to present one. For days past Billy Foot had been grappling with a most momentous one, and Mrs. Belfield's mind was occupied, and almost disturbed, by another of equal gravity. Curiously enough, the two related to the same person, and were to some degree of a kindred nature. Both involved the serious question of the social status—or perhaps the social desirability would be a better term—of Miss Doris Flower.