Yet in the course of the months past they had grown into so close a friendship, so firm an alliance. On his part there had been no wooing, on hers neither coquetry nor sentiment displayed. To Harry Belfield their relations to each other would have appeared extremely dull, unpermissibly stagnant, reflecting no credit on the dash of the man or the sensibility of the lady. Sally Dutton, suspecting Andy's hopes, had a caustic word ofpraise for his patience—the sort of remark which, repeated to Harry about himself, would have sent him straight off to a declaration (the like had happened once by the lake at Nutley). But through these long days, as Andy came and went on his twofold work, from Division to business, from business to Division, they had become wonderfully necessary to one another. For her not to expect him, for him not to find her, would have taken as it were half the heart out of life. Who else was there? Vivien had drawn a little nearer to that dour father of hers, but nearness to him carried the command for self-repression, for reticence. Andy seemed to have no other with whom to talk of himself and his life, as even the strongest feel a craving to talk sometimes. Perhaps there was one other ready to serve. He did not know it; she ranked for him among the cherished friends of his lighter hours. He craved an intimate companionship for the deeper moments, and seemed to find it only in one place.
At his own game, his speciality, Harry Belfield could give away all the odds, and still be a formidable opponent. The incomparable love-maker could almost overcome his own treasons; he left such a memory, such a pattern. Isobel loved still; Mrs. Freere was ready to come back; Lady Lucy owned to herself that she was in danger of beingvery silly. Even the Nun was in the habit of congratulating herself on a certain escape, with the implication that the escape was an achievement. To resist him an achievement! To forget him—what could that be? To Andy it seemed that for any woman it must be an impossibility. In the veiled distance of Vivien's eyes, when the talk veered towards her unfaithful lover, he could find no dissent. Was oblivion a necessity? Here he was—in Harry's place. Did he forget?
They let him rest—with his thoughts; they saw that the big fellow was weary. The old Belfields conducted one another into the house; Vivien took Sally off again with her. Only Doris Flower sat on by him, silent too, revolving in her mind the chronicles of Meriton, the little town with which her whim had brought her into such close touch, from which she was not now minded wholly to separate herself. It seemed like an anchorage in the wandering sea of her life. It offered some things very good—a few firm friends, a sense of home, a place where she was Doris Flower, not merely the Nun, the Quaker, or Joan of Arc. Did she wish that it offered yet more? Ah, there she paused! She was a worker born, as Andy himself was. No work for her lay in Meriton. Perhaps she desired incompatibles, like many of us; being clear-eyed, she saw the incompatibility. And shewas not subjected to temptation. She was taken at the valuation which she so carefully put on herself—the good comrade of the lighter hours. No cause of complaint then? None! She did not cry, she did not fall in love. She did not break her records. There is small merit in records unless they are hard to make, and sometimes hard to keep.
She stretched out her hand and laid it on his arm. He turned to her with a start, roused from his weariness and his reverie.
"Dear Andy, have you learnt what we have, I wonder? Not yet, I expect!"
"What do you mean, Doris?"
"Trust in you. A certainty that you'll bring it off!" She laughed—a little nervously. "I've a professional eye for a situation. Try for a double victory to-morrow! Make a really fine day for yourself—one to remember always!" She drew her hand away with another nervous laugh; her clear soft voice had trembled.
Andy's inward feelings leapt to utterance. "Have you any notion of what I feel? I—I'm up against him in everything! It's almost uncanny. And I think he'll beat me in this. At least I suppose you mean—?"
"Yes, I mean that." Her voice was calm again, a little mocking. "But I shall say no more about it."
Andy pressed her hand. "I like to have your good wishes more than anybody's in the world," he said, "unless, perhaps, it were his, Doris. Don't say I told you, but he grudges me the seat. He'd grudge me the other thing worse, much worse."
"Oh, but that's quite morbid. It's all his own fault."
"Yes, I suppose so. But he's never been to you what he has to me." He smiled. "We at Meriton still have to please Harry, and to have him pleased with us. The old habit's very strong."
"Heavens, Andy, you wouldn't think of sacrificing yourself—and perhaps her—to an idea like that?"
"No, that would be foolish, and wrong—as you say, morbid. But it can't be—whatever she says to me—it can't be as if he had never existed—as if it all hadn't happened."
"Some people feel things too little, some feel them too much," the Nun observed. "Both bad habits!"
"I daresay the thing's a bit more than usual on my mind to-night—because of to-morrow, you know." He was silent for a moment; then he broke into one of his simple hearty laughs. "And I am such an awful duffer at making love!"
"You certainly have no great natural talent for it and, as you've told me, very little practice.Oh, I wonder how big your majority will be, Andy!"
Andy readily turned back to the election. Yet even here the attitude she had reproved in him seemed to persist. "I expect, as I said, about six hundred. Harry would have got a thousand easily."
Andy escorted Vivien back to Nutley. He had it in mind to speak his heart—at least to sound her feeling for him; but she forestalled his opening.
"Mr. Belfield's been talking to me about Harry to-night, for the first time. He wrote me a letter once, but he has never spoken of him before. He was rather pathetic. Oh, Andy, why can't people think what they are doing to other people? And poor Isobel—I'm afraid she won't be happy. I used to feel very hard about her. I can't any more, now that the little child has come. That seems to make it all right somehow, whatever has happened before. At any rate she's got the best right now, hasn't she?" She was silent a moment. "It was like this that I came home with him that last evening. He was so gay and so kind. Then—in a flash—it happened!"
"I've been thinking about him too to-night. It seemed natural to do it—over this election."
They had reached Nutley, but Andy pleadedfor a walk on the terrace by the lake before she bade him good-night.
"Yes," she said, "I know what you must feel, because you loved him. I loved him, and I feel it too. But we must neither of us think about it too much. Because it's no use. What Mr. Belfield told me makes it quite clear that it's no use." She spoke very sadly. They had not to do with an accident or an episode; they had to recognise and reckon with the nature of a man. "When once we see that it's no use, it seems to me that there's something—well, almost something unworthy in giving way to it." She turned round to Andy. "At least I don't want you to go on doing it. You've made your own success. Take it whole-heartedly, Andy; don't have any regrets, any searchings of heart."
"There may be other things besides the seat at Meriton that I should like to take. When I search my heart, Vivien, I find you there."
Through the darkness he saw her eyes steadily fixed on his.
"I wonder, Andy, I wonder! Or is it only pity, only chivalry? Is it the policeman again?"
"Why shouldn't it be the policeman?" he asked. "Is it nothing if you think you could feel safe with me?"
"So much, so much!" she murmured. "Andy,I'm still angry when I remember—still sore—and angry again with myself for being sore. I oughtn't still to feel that."
"You'd guessed my feelings, Vivien? You're not surprised or—or shocked?"
"I think I've known everything that has been in your heart—both about him and about me. No, I'm not surprised or shocked. But—I wonder!" She laughed sadly. "How perverse our hearts are—poor Harry's, and poor mine! And how unlucky we two should have hit on one another! That for him it should be so easy, and for me so sadly difficult!"
"I won't ask you my question to-night," said Andy.
"No, don't to-night." She laid her hand on his arm. "But you won't go away altogether, will you, Andy? You won't be sensible and firm, and tell me that you can't be at my beck and call, and that you won't be kept dangling about, and that if I'm a silly girl who doesn't know her own luck I must take the consequences? You'll go on being the old Andy we all know, who never makes any claims, who puts up with everybody's whims, who always expects to come last?" Her voice trembled as she laughed. "You won't upset all my notions of you, because you've become a great man now, will you, Andy?"
"I don't quite recognise myself in the picture," said Andy with a laugh. "I thought I generally stood up for myself pretty well. But, anyhow, I've no intention of going away. I shall be there when—I mean if—you want me."
She gave him her hand; he gripped it warmly. "You're—you're not very disappointed, Andy? Oh, I hate to cloud your day of triumph to-morrow!" Her voice rose a little, a note almost of despair in it. "But I can't help it! The old thing isn't gone yet, and, till it is, I can do nothing."
Andy raised the hand he held to his lips and kissed it lightly. "I see that I'm asking for an even bigger thing than I thought," he said gently. "Don't worry, and don't hurry, my dear. I can wait. Perhaps it's too big for me to get at all. You'll tell me about that at your own time."
They began to walk back towards the house, and presently came under the light of the lamp over the hall door. Her face now wore a troubled smile, amused yet sad. How obstinate that memory was! It was here that Harry had given her his last kiss—here that, only a few minutes later, she had seen him for the last time, and Isobel Vintry with him! Their phantoms rose before her eyes—and the angry shape of her father was there too, denouncing their crime, pronouncingby the same words sentence of death on the young happiness of her heart.
"Good-night, Andy," she said softly. "And a great triumph to-morrow. Over a thousand!"
A great triumph to-morrow, maybe. There was no great triumph to-night, only a long hard-fought battle—the last fight in that strangely-fated antagonism. Verily the enemy was on his own ground here. With everything against him, he was still dangerous, he was not yet put to the rout. The flag of the citadel was not yet dipped, the gates not opened, allegiance not transferred.
Andy Hayes squared his shoulders for this last fight—with good courage and with a single mind. The revelation she had made of her heart moved him to the battle. It was a great love which Harry had so lightly taken and so lightly flung away. It was worth a long and a great struggle. And he could now enter on it with no searchings of his own heart. As he mused over her words, the appeal of memory—of old loyalty and friendship grew fainter. Harry had won all that, and thrown all that away—had been so insensible to what it really was, to what it meant, and what it offered. New and cogent proof indeed that he was "no good." The depths of Vivien's love made mean the shallows of his nature. He must go his ways; Andy would go his—from to-morrow.With sorrow, but now with clear conviction, he turned away from his broken idol. From the lips of the girl who could not forget his love had come Harry's final condemnation. The spell was broken for Andy Hayes; he was resolute that he would break it from the heart of Vivien. Loyalty should no more be for the disloyal, or faith for the faithless. There too Andy would come by his own—and now with no remorse. At last the spell was broken.
But no double victory to-morrow! The loved antagonist retreated slowly, showing fight. The next day gave Andy a victory indeed, but did not yield the situation which the Nun's professional eye had craved for its satisfaction.
The inner circle of Andy Hayes' friends, who were gradually accustoming themselves to see him described as Mr. Andrew Hayes, M.P., included some of a sportive, or even malicious, turn of wit. It cannot be denied that to these the spectacle of Andy's wooing—it never occurred to him to conceal his suit—presented some material for amusement. All through his career, even after he had mounted to eminences great and imposing, it was his fate to bring smiles to the lips even of those who admired, supported, and followed him. To the comic papers, in those later days when the Press took account of him, he was always a slow man, almost a stupid man, inclined to charge a brick wall when he might walk round it, yet, when he charged, knocking a hole big enough to get through. For the cartoonists—when greatness bred cartoons, as by one of the world's kindly counterbalances it does—he wasalways stouter in body and more stolid in countenance than a faithful photograph would have recorded him. The idea of him thus presented did him no harm in the public mind. That a career is open to talent is a fact consolatory only to a minority; flatter mere common-sense with the same prospect, and every man feels himself fit for the Bench—of Judges, Bishops, or Ministers.
But as a lover—a wooer? Passion, impetuosity, a total absorption, great eloquence in few words, the eyes beating the words in persuasion—such seemed, roughly, the requisites, as learnt by those who had sat at Harry Belfield's feet and marked his practical expositions of the subject. Andy was neither passionate nor eloquent, not even in glances. Nor was he absorbed. Gilbert Foot and Co. from nine-thirty to two-thirty: the House from two-thirty to eleven, with what Gilly contemptuously termed "stoking" slipped in anywhere: there was hardly time for real absorption. He was as hard-worked as Mr. Freere himself, and, had he married Mrs. Freere, would probably have made little better success of it. He was not trying to marry Mrs. Freere; but he was trying to win a girl who had listened to wonderful words from Harry Belfield's lips and suffered the persuasion of Harry Belfield's eyes.
In varying fashion his friends made their jesting comments, with affection always at the back of the joke; nay more, with a confidence that the efforts they derided would succeed in face of their derision—like the comic papers of future days.
"He wants to marry, so he must make love; but I believe he hates it all the time," said the Nun compassionately.
"That shows his sense," remarked Sally Dutton.
"He's a natural monogamist," opined Billy Foot, "and no natural monogamist knows anything about making love."
"He ought to have been born married," Gilly yawned, "just as I ought to have been born retired from business."
Mrs. Billy (néeAmaranth Macquart-Smith) was also of the party. Among these sallies she spread the new-fledged wings of her wit rather timidly. To say the truth, she was not witty, but felt bound to try—a case somewhat parallel to his at whom her shaft was aimed. She was liked well enough in the circle, yet would hardly have entered it without Billy's passport.
"He waits to be accepted," she complained, "as a girl waits to be asked."
"Used to!" briefly corrected Miss Dutton.
Billy Foot cut deeper into the case. "He'snever imagined before that he could have a chance against Harry. He's got the idea now, but it takes time to sink in."
"Harry's out of it anyhow," drawled Gilly.
"Out of what?" asked the Nun.
Billy's nod acknowledged the import of the question. Out of reason, out of possibility, out of bounds! Not out of memory, of echo, of the mirror of things not to be forgotten.
"He still thinks he can't compete with Harry," she went on, "and he's right as far as this game is concerned. But he'll win just by not competing. To be utterly different is his chance." With a glance round the table, she appealed to their experience. "Nobody ever begins by choosing Andy—well, except Jack Rock perhaps, and that was to be a butcher! But he ends by being indispensable."
"You all like him," said Amaranth. "And yet you all give the impression that he's terribly dull!" Her voice complained of an enigma.
"Well, don't you know, what would a fellow do without him?" asked Gilly, looking up from hispaté.
"Gilly has an enormous respect for him. He's shamed him into working," Billy explained to his wife.
"That's it, by Jove!" Gilly acknowledgedsadly. "And the worst of it is, work pays! Pays horribly well! We're getting rich. I've got to go on with it." He winked a leisurely moving eyelid at the Nun. "I wish the deuce I'd never met the fellow!"
"I must admit he points the moral a bit too well," Billy confessed. "But I'm glad to say we have Harry to fall back upon. I met Harry in the street the other day, and he was absolutely radiant."
"Who is she?" asked Sally Dutton.
"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' penalservitude 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 acceptingMrs. 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 aptitude 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 whonurses 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 title. 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 rightto 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 petition 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 suffernew passions—or, at least, to inspire them; perhaps the latter ending of the matter was the more likely.
He did nothing else than suffer passions 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'scompanion 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 nobody except Mrs. Freere—so long as there was nobody 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 hercongé. 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—therewas 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 sturdily 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 ofAndy; the other was his friendship 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.
"Hush!" said the Nun softly. "Here comes Vivien!"
Poor old Jack was no diplomatist. He sprang to his feet, red as a turkey cock, and turned round to find Vivien at his elbow.
"I—I beg your pardon, miss," he stammered, rushing 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?"
Jack took her hand. "It wasn't my place to do it. I ask your pardon." Then he turned to the Nun. "You'll excuse me, miss?"
The Nun smiled radiantly at him. "I hate your going, Jack. Perhaps you'd better, though.Only don't be unhappy. There's no harm done, you know."
Jack shook his head again sadly, then put his hat on it with a rueful air. He regarded Vivien for a moment with a ponderous sorrow, lifted his hat again, shook his head again, and walked out of the garden. The Nun gave a short gurgle, and then regained a serene and silent composure. It was most certainly a case for allowing the other side to take first innings! Vivien sat down in the seat that Jack had vacated in such sad confusion.
"It was about—Harry?" she asked slowly. "You all hear and know! I hear nothing, I know nothing. Nobody mentions him to me. Not Andy, not my father any more. Mr. Belfield said a word or two once—not happy words. Except for that—well, he might be dead! I don't see the use of treating me like that. I think I've a right to know."
"What Jack said was more about you really. There's no fresh news about Harry."
While saying these words, the Nun allowed her look at Vivien to be very direct. "You must accept that as final," the look seemed to say.
"Lots of men, good men, make a mistake, one mistake, about things like that. He'll be all right now—with his boy."
"He's had a love affair, repented of it—andprobably started another since that event. The child, if I remember, is about five months old." Still with her gaze direct, the Nun laughed. Vivien flushed. "There's no other way to take it," the Nun assured her.
Vivien spoke low; her cheeks red, her eyes dim. "I gave him all my heart, oh, so readily—and such trust! Doris, did he ever make love to you?"
"As a general rule I don't tell tales. In this case I feel free to say that he did."
Vivien's smile was woeful. "What, he wanted to marry you too once?"
"Oh no, he never wanted to marry me, Vivien."
It was drastic treatment—and the doctor paid for it as well as the patient.
"But you went on being friends with him!"
"I became friends with him again—presently," the Nun corrected. "I suppose I don't come well out of it, according to your views. I know the difference there is between us in that way. Look at your life and mine! That's bound to make a difference. Besides, it would have been taking him much too seriously."
"I think you're rather hard, Doris."
"Thank God, I am, my dear! I need it."
"It's a terrible thing to make the mistake I did."
"It's worse to go on with it."
"I should have liked to go on with it. I feel as people must who've lost their religion."
"Is that so sad, if the religion is proved not to be true?"
"Yes, terribly sad." Vivien's back was to the street. She wept silently; none saw her tears save Doris. "I thought I had lost everything. It's worse to find that you never had anything, and have lost nothing."
"It's good to find that out, when it's true," Doris persisted stoutly. "But I hope he won't happen on any more girls like you. With the proper people—his Mrs. Freeres and Lady Lucies—the thing's a farce. That's all right!"
Her bitter ridicule pierced the armour of Vivien's recollection. With the proper people it was all a farce. She had taken it as a tragedy. Her tears ceased to flow, but her colour came hot again.
"I don't know anything about those women—I never heard their names—but he seems to have insulted me almost as much as he insulted you."
The Nun was relentless. "In both cases he considered, and still considers, that he paid a very high compliment. And he'll find lots of women to agree with him."
"Doris, be kind to me. I've nobody else!"
"The Lord forgive you for saying so! You've the luck of one girl in ten thousand." Now theNun's colour grew a little hot; she raised herself on her elbow. "Here are your two men. One's going to lead a big life, while the other's chasing petticoats!"
"You think the world of Andy, don't you, Doris?"
"I'd think the universe of him if he'd give you a shaking."
Vivien smiled, rose, came to the Nun, and kissed her. The Nun's lips quivered. "He's coming down at the end of the week," said Vivien. Her voice fell to a whisper. "He's not quite so patient as you think." With another kiss she was swiftly gone.
The Nun sat on, gazing at Meriton High Street. Sally Dutton came out of the house and regarded the same prospect with an air of criticism or even of disfavour.
"I think it's all coming right about Vivien and Andy," the Nun remarked.
Sally turned her critical eyes on her friend. "Have you been helping?"
"Just a little bit perhaps, Sally." She paused a moment. "I shall be rather glad to have it settled."
The motor-car drew up at the door.
"You'll not have more than enough time for lunch before your matinée, Miss Flower," Seymourobserved, with his usual indifferent air. Not his business whether she were in time, but he might as well mention the matter!
"My hat and cloak!" cried the Nun, springing up. She took Sally's arm and ran her into the house with her. "Hurrah for work, Sally!"
Suddenly Sally threw her arms round her friend's neck and exclaimed, with something very like a sob, "Oh, my darling, if only you could have everything you want!"
The Nun's lips quivered again; her bright eyes were a little dim. "But, Sally dear, I never fall in love!"
Miss Dutton relapsed, with equal abruptness, into her habitual demeanour.
"Well, he's a man—and a fool like all the rest of them!" she remarked.
The Nun gurgled. A record was saved—at the last moment. Because she did not cry—any more than she fell in love.
The Nun came out, equipped for the journey. She was smiling still. "Do I look all right, Seymour?"
"At the best of your looks, if I may say so, Miss Flower."
"Thank you very much, Seymour. Get in with you, Sally! You are a slow girl, always!"
She pressed Sally's hand as the car started."Much better like this, really. I have always Seymour's admiration."
His name caught Seymour's ear. "I beg your pardon, Miss Flower?"
"I only said you were an admirable driver, Seymour."
"Naturally I drive carefully when you're in the car, Miss Flower."
"There!" said the Nun triumphantly. "I told you so, Sally!"
Andy Hayes'débutin the House of Commons was not, of course, sensational; very few members witnessed it, and nobody outside took the smallest heed of it. Moreover, like other beginnings of his, it was unpremeditated, in a manner forced upon him. He had not intended to speak that afternoon, or indeed at all in his first session, but in Committee one day an honourable gentleman opposite went so glaringly astray as to the prices ruling for bacon in Wiltshire in the year nineteen hundred and something—which Andy considered a salient epoch in the chequered history of his pet commodity—that he was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, and set the matter right, adding illustrative figures for the year before and the year after, with a modestly worded forecast of the run of prices for the current year. Engrossed in the subject, he remembered that the House was a formidable place only afterhe had sat down; then he hurried home to his books, found that his figures were correct, and heaved a sigh of satisfaction. It was no small thing to get his maiden speech made without meaning to make it—and to find the figures correct! He attempted nothing more that session. He only listened. But how he listened! A man might talk the greatest nonsense, yet Andy's steady eyes would be on him, and Andy's big head untiringly poised at attention. What was the use of listening to so much nonsense? Well, first you had to be sure it was nonsense; then to see why it was nonsense; thirdly, to see how, being nonsense, it was received; fourthly, to revolve how it should be exposed. There were even other things that Andy found to ponder over in all the nonsense to which he listened—and many more, of course, in the sense.
But even Andy took a holiday from public affairs sometimes, nay more, sometimes from the fortunes of Gilbert Foot and Co. He was in the office this morning—the Saturday before Whitsunday—finishing up some odd jobs which his partner had left to him (Gilly had still a trick of doing that), but his thoughts were on Meriton, whither he was to repair in the afternoon. As he mused on Meriton, he slowly shook the big head, thereby indicating not despair or even despondency,but a recognition that he was engaged on rather a difficult job, perhaps on a game that he was not very good at, but which had to be won all the same. This particular game certainly had to be won; his whole heart was in it. Yet now he was accusing himself of a mistake; he had been impatient—impatient that Vivien should still be less than happy, that she should still dwell in gloom with gloomy Wellgood, that she would not yet come into the sunshine. Well, he would put the mistake right that very day, for Vivien was to lunch with him, attended by the Nun, with whom she had been spending a night or two in town; and then the three of them were to go to Meriton in the motor-car together. The Nun was not singing at this time.
"I must go slow," concluded Andy, whose friends were already smiling at the deliberate gait with which he trod the path of love. "Hullo, there's an hour before lunch! I may as well finish some of these accounts for Gilly."
This satisfaction he was not destined to enjoy. He was interrupted by a visitor.
Harry Belfield came in, really a vision to gladden an artist's eyes, in a summer suit of palest homespun—he affected that material—with his usual blue tie unusually bright—shirt and socks to match; a dazzlingly white panama hat crowned his wavydark locks. He looked immensely handsome, and he was gay, happy, and affectionate.
"Thought I might just find you, old chap, because you're always mugging when everybody else is having a holiday. Look here, I want you to do something for me, or rather for Isobel. I'm off yachting for three or four months—rather a jolly party—and Isobel's going to take a house in the country for herself and the boy. She doesn't know much about that sort of business, and I wanted to ask you to let her consult you about the terms, and so on, to see she's not done, you know. That'll be all right, won't it? Because I really haven't time to look after it."
"Of course. Anything I can do—please tell her. She's not going with you?"
"No," said Harry, putting his foot on the table and regarding it fondly, as he had at a previous interview in Andy's office. "No, not this trip, Andy. She doesn't care much for the sea." The slightest smile flickered on his lips. "Besides, it's 'Men only' on board." The smile broadened a little. "At least we're going to start that way, and they're taking me—a respectable married man—along with them to help them to keep their good resolutions. Well, old boy, how do you like it in the House? I haven't observed many orations put down to you!"
"I've only spoken once—hardly a speech. But I'm working pretty well at it."
"I'll bet you are! And at it here too, I suppose? Lazy beggar, Gilly Foot!"
"Gilly's woken up wonderfully. You'd hardly know him."
Harry yawned. "Well, I'm wanting a rest," he said. "I've had one or two worries lately. Oh, it's all over now, but I shall be glad to get away for a bit. By Jove, Andy, the great thing in life is to be able to go where you like, and when you like"—his smile flashed out again—"and with whom you like, isn't it? Are you off anywhere for Whitsuntide?"
"Only down to Meriton."
"Quiet!" But Harry had not always found it so; it was the quieter for his absence.
"I like being there better than anywhere else," was Andy's simple explanation of his movements.
A clerk came in and handed him a card. "I told the lady you had somebody with you, and asked her to take a seat in the outer room for a moment."
Andy read the card. "I'll ring," he said absently, and looked across at Harry.
"Lady? Eminent authoress? Or is this not business? Have her in—don't hide her, Andy!"
"It's Vivien Wellgood."
Harry turned his head sharply. "What brings her here?"
"I don't know. I was to meet her and Doris Flower for lunch, and go down with them to Meriton afterwards. Perhaps something's happened to stop it, and she's come to tell me."
A curious smile adorned Harry's handsome features. He looked doubtful, yet decidedly interested.
"I'd better go out and see her," said Andy. "I mustn't keep her waiting."
Harry broke into a laugh, half of amusement, half of impatience. "You needn't look so infernally solemn over it! It won't kill her to bow to me—or even to shake hands."
Andy came to a sudden resolution. Since chance willed it this way, this way it should be.
"As you please!" he said, and rang the bell.
Harry rose to his feet, and took off the panama hat, which he had kept on during his talk with Andy. His eyes were bright; the smile flickered again on his lips. He had not seen Vivien since that night—and that night seemed a very long way off to Harry Belfield.
In the brief space before the door reopened, a vision danced before Andy's eyes—a vision of Curly the retriever, and of a girl standing motionless in fear, and yet, because he was there, notso much afraid. In his mind was the idea which had suddenly taken shape under the impulsion of chance—that she had better face the present than dream of the past, better see the man who was nothing to her, than pore over the memory of him who had been everything. She might—nay, probably would—resent an encounter thus sprung upon her. Andy knew it; in this moment, with the choice suddenly presented, he chose to act for himself. Perhaps, for once in his life, he yielded to a sort of superstition, a feeling that the chance was not for nothing, that they three would not meet together again without result. Mingled with this was anger that Harry should take the encounter with his airy lightness, that his eyes should be bright and his lips bent in a smile. Andy was ready for the last round of the fight—and ready to take his chance. Suddenly under the pressure of his thoughts—perforce, as it were—he spoke out to Harry.
"None of this has been of my seeking," he said.
"None of what? What do you mean, old fellow?"
There was no time for answer. Vivien was in the room, and the clerk closed the door after she had entered.
She stood for a moment on the threshold and then moved quickly to Andy's side.
"I knew," she said. "I heard your voices."
"I'm just going," said Harry. "I won't interrupt you. I had a hope that you wouldn't mind just shaking hands with an old friend. I should like it—awfully!" His smile now was pleading, propitiatory, yet with the lurking hint that there was sentimental interest in the situation; possibly, though he could not be convicted of this idea—it was too elusively suggested—that there was, after all, a dash of the amusing.
She paused long on her answer. At last she spoke quietly, in a friendly voice. "Yes, I'll shake hands with you, Harry. Because it's all over." She smiled faintly. "I'll shake hands with you if Andy will let me."
"If Andy—?"
"Yes; because my hand belongs to him now. I came here to tell him so this morning." She passed her left arm through Andy's and held out her right hand towards Harry. Her lips quivered as she looked up for a moment at Andy's face. He patted her hand gently, but his eyes were set on Harry Belfield.
The hand she offered Harry did not take. He stretched out his for his hat, and picked it up from the table in a shaking grip. The smile had gone from his lips; his eyes were heavy and resentful; he found no more eloquent, appropriate words.
"Oh, so that's it?" he said with a sullen sneer.
"It's none of it been of my seeking," Andy protested again. In this last moment of the fight the old feeling came strong upon him. He pleaded that he had been loyal to Harry, that he was no usurper; it had never been in his mind.
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 thoughtabout 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, aswish 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 reassuringly.
"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 Chinks, the Bird, and Miss Miles, up to the great Lord Meriton himself—in Wellgood's hard and curt, yet ready and in truth triumphant, endorsement 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 foundthe 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 fashioned out of a tree trunk. "Lend me your knife, Andy, please."
He gave it to her, and stood watching while shestooped 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, blushing 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 passed from Andy Hayes' face as he turned to his own great joy.
No work of unwholesome character orof second-rate quality will beincluded in this Series.
The novel is to-daythepopular form of literary art. This is proved by the number of novels published, and by the enormous sales of fiction at popular prices.
WhileReprintsof fiction may be purchased for a few pence,New Fictionis still a luxury.
The author of a New Novel loses his larger audience, the public are denied the privilege of enjoying his latest work, because of the prohibitive price of 4s. 6d. demanded for the ordinary "six shilling" novel.
In another way both author and public are badly served under the present publishing system. At certain seasons a flood of new novels pours from the press. Selection becomes almost impossible. The good novels are lost among the indifferent and the bad. Good service can be done to literature not only by reducing the price of fiction, but by sifting its quality.
The number of publishers issuing new fiction is so great, that the entrance of another firm into the field demands almost an apology—at least, a word of explanation.
Messrs. Nelson have been pioneers in the issue of reprints of fiction in Library Edition at Sevenpence.The success ofNelson's Libraryhas been due to the careful selection of books, regular publication throughout the whole year, and excellence of manufacture at a low cost, due to perfection of machinery.
Nelson's Sevenpenny Library represents the best that can be given to the public in the way ofReprintsunder present manufacturing conditions.
Nelson's New Novels (of which this book is one of the first volumes) represents the same standard of careful selection, excellence of production, and lowest possible price applied toNew Fiction.
The list of authors of Nelson's New Novels for 1910 includes Anthony Hope, E. F. Benson, H. A. Vachell, H. G. Wells, "Q," G. A. Birmingham, John Masefield, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, J. C. Snaith, John Buchan, and Agnes and Egerton Castle. Arrangements for subsequent volumes have been made with other authors of equally high standing.
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A new volume is issued regularly every month.
The price is the very lowest at which a large New Novel with good material and workmanship, and with an adequate return to author, bookseller, and publisher, can be offered to the public at the present time.
Mr. J. C. Snaith is already known to fame by his historical novels, his admirable cricketing story, his essay in Meredithan subtlety "Brooke of Covenden," and his most successful Victorian comedy "Araminta." In his new novel he breaks ground which has never before been touched by an English novelist. He follows no less a leader than Cervantes. His hero, Sir Richard Pendragon, is Sir John Falstaff grown athletic and courageous, with his imagination fired by much adventure in far countries and some converse with the knight of La Mancha. The doings of this monstrous Englishman are narrated by a young and scandalized Spanish squire, full of all the pedantry of chivalry. Sir Richard is a new type in literature—the Rabelaisian Paladin, whose foes flee not only from his sword but from his Gargantuan laughter. In Mr. Snaith's romance there are many delightful characters—a Spanish lady who dictates to armies, a French prince of the blood who has forsaken his birthright for the highroad. But all are dominated by the immense Sir Richard, who rights wrongs like an unruly Providence, and then rides away.
If the true aim of romance is to find beauty and laughter and heroism in odd places, then Mr. Wells is a great romantic. His heroes are not knights and adventurers, not even members of the quasi-romantic professions, but the ordinary small tradesmen, whom the world has hitherto neglected. The hero of the new book, Mr. Alfred Polly, is of the same school, but heis nearer Hoopdriver than Kipps. He is in the last resort the master of his fate, and squares himself defiantly against the Destinies. Unlike the others, he has a literary sense, and has a strange fantastic culture of his own. Mr. Wells has never written anything more human or more truly humorous than the adventures of Mr. Polly as haberdasher's apprentice, haberdasher, incendiary, and tramp. Mr. Polly discovers the great truth that, however black things may be, there is always a way out for a man if he is bold enough to take it, even though that way leads through fire and revolution. The last part of the book, where the hero discovers his courage, is a kind of saga. We leave him in the end at peace with his own soul, wondering dimly about the hereafter, having proved his manhood, and found his niche in life.
It is Mr. Benson's chief merit that, without losing the lightness of touch which makes good comedy, he keeps a firm hold upon the graver matters which make good fiction. The present book is a tale of conspiracy—the plot of a beautiful woman to save her young niece from a man whom she regards as a blackguard. None of Mr. Benson's women are more attractive than these two, who fight for long at cross-purposes, and end, as all honest natures must, with a truer understanding.