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Transcriber's Notes:
The frontispiece illustration has been removed from text version.
Italics in original are marked with _underscores_.
Small caps have been changed to ALL CAPS.
Punctuation has been regularized.
The following typographical corrections were made:
p. 517, "dumurely" changed to "demurely." (the Nun admitted demurely)
p. 536, "that's he" changed to "that he's." (that he's terribly)
p. 539, "thing" changed to "think," (think you're perfectly)
SECOND STRING
BY ANTHONY HOPE
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN,
LEEDS, AND NEW YORK
LEIPZIG: 35-37 Koenigstrasse. PARIS: 61 Rue des Saints Peres.
First Published 1910.
CONTENTS.
I. HOME AGAIN 5
II. A VERY LITTLE HUNTING 27
III. THE POTENT VOICE 45
IV. SETTLED PROGRAMMES 66
V. BROADENING LIFE 87
VI. THE WORLDS OF MERITON 106
VII. ENTERING FOR THE RACE 128
VIII. WONDERFUL WORDS 148
IX. "INTERJECTION" 169
X. FRIENDS IN NEED 190
XI. THE SHAWL BY THE WINDOW 212
XII. CONCERNING A STOLEN KISS 235
XIII. A LOVER LOOKS PALE 256
XIV. SAVING THE NATION 278
XV. LOVE AND FEAR 300
XVI. A CHOICE OF EVILS 321
XVII. REFORMATION 342
XVIII. PENITENCE AND PROBLEMS 362
XIX. MARKED MONEY 384
XX. NO GOOD? 404
XXI. THE EMPTY PLACE 424
XXII. GRUBBING AWAY 446
XXIII. A STOP-GAP 468
XXIV. PRETTY MUCH THE SAME! 490
XXV. THE LAST FIGHT 512
XXVI. TALES OUT OF SCHOOL FOR ONCE 533
XXVII. NOT OF HIS SEEKING 555
SECOND STRING.
Chapter I.
HOME AGAIN.
Jack Rock stood in his shop in High Street. He was not very often to be
seen there nowadays; he bred and bought, but he no longer killed, and
rarely sold, in person. These latter and lesser functions he left to his
deputy, Simpson, for he had gradually developed a bye-trade which took
up much of his time, and was no less profitable than his ostensible
business. He bought horses, "made" them into hunters, and sold them
again. He was a rare judge and a fine rider, and his heart was in this
line of work.
However to-day he was in his shop because the Christmas beef was on
show. Here were splendid carcasses decked with blue rosettes, red
rosettes, or cards of "Honourable Mention;" poor bodies sadly
unconscious (as one may suppose all bodies are) of their posthumous
glories. Jack Rock, a spruce spare little man with a thin red face and a
get-up of the most "horsy" order, stood before them, expatiating to
Simpson on their beauties. Simpson, who was as fat as his master was
thin, and even redder in the face, chimed in; they were for all the
world like a couple of critics hymning the praise of poets who have paid
the debt of nature, but are decorated with the insignia of fame. Verily
Jack Rock's shop in the days before Christmas might well seem an Abbey
or a Pantheon of beasts.
"Beef for me on Christmas Day," said Jack. "None of your turkeys or
geese, or such-like truck. Beef!" He pointed to a blue-rosetted carcass.
"Look at him; just look at him! I've known him since he was calved. Cuts
up well, doesn't he? I'll have a joint off him for my own table,
Simpson."
"You couldn't do better, sir," said Simpson, just touching, careful not
to bruise, the object of eulogy with his professional knife. A train of
thought started suddenly in his brain. "Them vegetarians, sir!" he
exclaimed. Was it wonder, or contempt, or such sheer horror as the
devotee has for atheism? Or the depths of the first and the depths of
the second poured into the depths of the third to make immeasurable
profundity?
A loud burst of laughter came from the door of the shop. Nothing
startled Jack Rock. He possessed in perfection a certain cheerful
seriousness which often marks the amateurs of the horse. These men are
accustomed to take chances, to encounter the unforeseen, to endure
disappointment, to withstand the temptations of high success. _Mens
Aequa!_ Life, though a pleasant thing, is not a laughing matter. So Jack
turned slowly and gravely round to see whence the irreverent
interruption proceeded. But when he saw the intruder his face lit up,
and he darted across the shop with outstretched hand. Simpson followed,
hastily rubbing his right hand on the under side of his blue apron.
"Welcome, my lad, welcome home!" cried Jack, as he greeted with a hard
squeeze a young man who stood in the doorway. "First-rate you look too.
He's filled out, eh, Simpson?" He tapped the young man's chest
appreciatively, and surveyed his broad and massive shoulders with almost
professional admiration. "Canada's agreed with you, Andy. Have you just
got here?"
"No; I got here two hours ago. You were out, so I left my bag and went
for a walk round the old place. It seems funny to be in Meriton again."
"Come into the office. We must drink your health. You too, Simpson. Come
along."
He led the way to a back room, where, amid more severe furniture and
appliances, there stood a cask of beer. From this he filled three pint
mugs, and Andy Hayes' health and safe return were duly honoured. Andy
winked his eye.
"Them teetotallers!" he ejaculated, with a very fair imitation of
Simpson, who acknowledged the effort with an answering wink as he
drained his mug and then left the other two to themselves.
"Yes, I've been poking about everywhere--first up to have a look at the
old house. Not much changed there--well, except that everything's
changed by the dear old governor's not being there any more."
"Ah, it was a black Christmas that year--four years ago now. First, the
old gentleman; then poor Nancy, a month later. She caught the fever
nursin' him; she would do it, and I couldn't stop her. Did you go to the
churchyard, Andy?"
"Yes, I went there." After a moment's grave pause his face brightened
again. "And I went to the old school. Nobody there--it's holidays, of
course--but how everything came back to me! There was my old seat,
between Chinks and the Bird--you know? Wat Money, I mean, and young Tom
Dove."
"Oh, they're both in the place still. Tom Dove's helpin' his father at
the Lion, and Wat Money's articled to old Mr. Foulkes the lawyer."
"I sat down at my old desk, and, by Jove, I absolutely seemed to hear
the old governor talking--talking about the Pentathlon. You've heard him
talk about the Pentathlon? He was awfully keen on the Pentathlon; wanted
to have it at the sports. I believe he thought I should win it."
"I don't exactly remember what it was, but you'd have had a good go for
it, Andy."
"Leaping, running, wrestling, throwing the discus, hurling the spear--I
think that's right. He was talking about it the very last day I sat at
that desk--eight years ago! Yes, it's eight years since I went out to
the war, and nearly five since I went to Canada. And I've never been
back! Well, except for not seeing him and Nancy again, I'm glad of it.
I've done better out there. There wasn't any opening here. I wasn't
clever, and if I had been, there was no money to send me to Oxford,
though the governor was always dreaming of that."
"Naturally, seein' he was B.A. Oxon, and a gentleman himself," said
Jack.
He spoke in a tone of awe and admiration. Andy looked at him with a
smile. Among the townsfolk of Meriton Andy's father had always been
looked up to by reason of the letters after his name on the prospectus
of the old grammar school, of which he had been for thirty years the
hard-worked and very ill-paid headmaster. In Meriton eyes the letters
carried an academical distinction great if obscure, a social distinction
equally great and far more definite. They ranked Mr. Hayes with the
gentry, and their existence had made his second marriage--with Jack Rock
the butcher's sister--a _mesalliance_ of a pronounced order. Jack
himself was quite of this mind. He had always treated his brother-in-law
with profound respect; even his great affection for his sister had never
quite persuaded him that she had not been guilty of gross presumption in
winning Mr. Hayes' heart. He could not, even as the second Mrs. Hayes'
brother, forget the first--Andy's mother; for she, though the gentlest
of women, had always called Jack "Butcher." True, that was in days
before Jack had won his sporting celebrity and set up his private gig;
but none the less it would have seemed impossible to conceive of a
family alliance--even a posthumous one--with a lady whose recognition of
him was so exclusively commercial.
"Well, I'm not a B.A.--Oxon. or otherwise," laughed Andy. "I don't know
whether I'm a gentleman. If I am, so are you. Meriton Grammar School is
responsible for us both. And if you're in trade, so am I. What's the
difference between timber and meat?"
"I expect there's a difference between Meriton and Canada, though," Jack
Rock opined shrewdly. "Are you goin' to stay at home, or goin' back?"
"I shall stay here if I can develop the thing enough to make it pay to
have a man on this side. If not, pack up! But I shall be here for the
next six months anyway, I expect."
"What's it worth to you?" asked Jack.
"Oh, nothing much just now. Two hundred a year guaranteed, and a
commission--if it's earned. But it looks like improving. Only the orders
must come in before the commission does! However it's not so bad; I'm
lucky to have found a berth at all."
"Yes, lucky thing you got pals with that Canadian fellow down in South
Africa."
"A real stroke of luck. It was a bit hard to make up my mind not to come
home with the boys, but I'm sure I did the right thing. Only I'm sorry
about the old governor and Nancy."
"The old gentleman himself told me he thought you'd done right."
"It was an opening; and it had to be taken or left, then and there. So
here I am, and I'm going to start an office in London."
Jack Rock nodded thoughtfully; he seemed to be revolving something in
his mind. Andy's eyes rested affectionately on him. The two had been
great friends all through Andy's boyhood. Jack had been "Jack" to him
long before he became a family connection, and "Jack" he had continued
to be. As for the _mesalliance_--well, looking back, Andy could not with
candour deny that it had been a surprise, perhaps even a shock. It had
to some degree robbed him of the exceptional position he held in the
grammar school, where, among the sons of tradesmen, he alone, or almost
alone, enjoyed a vague yet real social prestige. The son shared the
father's fall. The feeling of caste is very persistent, even though it
may be shamed into silence by modern doctrines, or by an environment in
which it is an alien plant. But he had got over his boyish feeling now,
and was delighted to come back to Meriton as Jack Rock's visitor, and to
stay with him at the comfortable little red-brick house adjoining the
shop in High Street. In fact he flattered himself that his service in
the ranks and his Canadian experiences had taken the last of "that sort
of nonsense" out of him. It was, perhaps, a little too soon to pronounce
so confident a judgment.
Andy was smitten with a sudden compunction. "Why, I've never asked after
Harry Belfield!" he cried.
He was astonished at his own disloyalty. Harry Belfield had been the
hero of his youth, his ideal, his touchstone of excellence in all
things, the standard by which he humbly measured his own sore
deficiencies, and contemptuously assessed the demerits of his
schoolfellows. Of these Harry had not been one. No grammar school for
him! He was the son of Mr. Belfield of Halton Park--Harrow and Oxford
were the programme for him. The same favourable conditions gave him the
opportunity--which, of course, he took--of excelling in all the
accomplishments that Andy lacked and envied--riding, shooting, games of
skill that cost money. The difference of position set a gulf between the
two boys. Meetings had been rare events--to Andy always notable events,
occasions of pleasure and of excitement, landmarks in memory. The
acquaintance between the houses had been of the slightest. In Andy's
earliest days Mr. and the first Mrs. Hayes had dined once a year with
Mr. and Mrs. Belfield; they were not expected to return the hospitality.
After Andy's mother died and Nancy came on the scene, the annual dinner
had gone on, but it had become a men's dinner; and Mrs. Belfield, though
she bowed in the street, had not called on the second Mrs. Hayes--Nancy
Rock that had been. It was not to be expected. Yet Mr. Belfield had
recognized an equal in Andy's father; he also, perhaps, yielded some
homage to the B.A. Oxon. And Harry, though he undoubtedly drew a line
between himself and Andy, drew another between Andy and Andy's
schoolfellows, Chinks, the Bird, and the rest. He was rewarded--and to
his worship-loving nature it was a reward--by an adoration due as much,
perhaps, to the first line as to the second. The more definite a line,
the more graciousness lies in stepping over it.
These boyish devotions are common, and commonly are short-lived. But
Andy's habit of mind was stable and his affections tenacious. He still
felt that a meeting with Harry Belfield would be an event.
"He's all right," Jack Rock answered, his tone hardly responding to
Andy's eagerness. "He's a barrister now, you know; but I don't fancy he
does much at it. Better at spendin' money than makin' it! If you want to
see him, you can do it to-night."
"Can I? How?"
"There's talk of him bein' candidate for the Division next election, and
he's goin' to speak at a meeting in the Town Hall to-night, him and a
chap in Parliament."
"Good! Which side is he?"
"You've been a good while away to ask that!"
"I suppose I have. I say, Jack, let's go."
"You can go; I shan't," said Jack Rock. "You'll get back in time for
supper--and need it too, I should say. I never listen to speeches except
when they put me on a jury at assizes. Then I do like to hear a chap
fight for his man. That's racin', that is; and I like specially, Andy,
to see him bring it off when the odds are against him. But this
politics--in my opinion, if you put their names in a hat and drew 'em
blindfolded, you'd get just as good a Gover'ment as you do now, or just
as bad."
"Oh, I'm not going for the politics. I'm going to hear Harry Belfield."
"The only question as particularly interests me," said Jack, with one of
his occasional lapses into doubtful grammar, "is the matter of chilled
meat. But which of 'em does anything for me there? One says 'Free
Trade--let it all come!' The other says, 'No chilled meat, certainly
not, unless it comes from British possessions'--which is where it does
come from mostly. And it's ruin to the meat, Andy, in my opinion. I hate
to see it. Not that I lose much by it, havin' a high-class connection.
Would you like to have another look in the shop?"
"Suppose we say to-morrow morning?" laughed Andy.
Jack shook his head; he seemed disappointed at this lack of enthusiasm.
"I've got some beauties this Christmas," he said. "All the same I shan't
be lookin' at 'em much to-morrow mornin'! I've got a young horse, and I
want just to show him what a foxhound's like. The meet's at Fyfold
to-morrow, Andy. I wish I could mount you. I expect you ride fourteen,
eh?"
"Hard on it, I fancy--and I'm a fool on a horse anyhow. But I shall
go--on shanks' mare."
"Will you now? Well, if you're as good on your legs as you used to be,
it's odds you'll see a bit of the run. I recollect you in the old days,
Andy; you were hard to shake off unless the goin' was uncommon good.
Knew the country, you did, and where the fox was likely to make for. And
I don't think you'll get the scent too good for you to-morrow. Come
along and have tea. Oh, but you're a late-dinner man, eh?"
"Dinner when, where, and how it comes! Tea sounds capital--with supper
after my meeting. I say, Jack, it's good to see you again!"
"Wish you'd stay here, lad. I'm much alone these days--with the old
gentleman gone, and poor Nancy gone!"
"Perhaps I shall. Anyhow I might stay here for the summer, and go up to
town to the office."
"Aye, you might do that, anyhow." Again Jack Rock seemed meditative, as
though he had an idea and were half-minded to disclose it. But he was a
man of caution; he bided his time.
Andy--nobody had ever called him Andrew since the parson who christened
him--seemed to himself to have got home again, very thoroughly home
again. Montreal with its swelling hill, its mighty river, its winter
snow, its Frenchness, its opposing self-defensive, therefore
self-assertive, Britishness, was very remote. A talk with Jack Rock, a
Conservative meeting with a squire in the chair (that was safely to be
assumed), a meet of the hounds next morning--these and a tide of
intimate personal memories stamped him as at home again. The long years
in the little house at the extreme end of Highcroft--Highcroft led out
of High Street, tending to the west, Fyfold way--in the old grammar
school, in the peace of the sleepy town--had been a poignant memory in
South Africa, a fading dream in the city by the great river. They sprang
again into actuality. If he felt a certain contraction in his horizon he
felt also a peace in his mind. Meriton might or might not admire
"hustlers;" it did not hustle itself. It was a parasitic little town; it
had no manufactures, no special industry. It lived on the country
surrounding it--on the peasants, the farmers, the landowners. So it did
not grow; neither did it die. It remained much as it had been for
hundreds of years, save that it was seriously considering the
introduction of electric light.
The meeting was rather of an impromptu order; Christmas holidays are
generally held sacred from such functions. But Mr. Foot, M.P., a rising
young member and a friend of Harry Belfield's, happened to be staying at
Halton Park for shooting. Why waste him? He liked to speak, and he spoke
very well. The more Harry showed himself and got himself heard, the
better. The young men would enjoy it. A real good dinner beforehand
would send them down in rare spirits. A bit of supper, with a
whisky-and-soda or two, and recollections of their own "scores," would
end the evening pleasantly. Meriton would not be excited--it was not
election time--but it would be amused, benevolent, and present in
sufficiently large numbers to make the thing go with _eclat_.
There was, indeed, one topic which, from a platform at all events, one
could describe as "burning." A Bill dealing with the sale of
intoxicating liquor had, the session before, been introduced as the
minimum a self-respecting nation could do, abused as the maximum
fanatics could clamour for, carried through a second reading
considerably amended, and squeezed out by other matters. It was to be
re-introduced. The nation was recommended to consider the question in
the interval. Now the nation, though professing its entire desire to be
sober--it could not well do anything else--was not sure that it desired
to be made sober, was not quite clear as to the precise point at which
it could or could not be held to be sober, and felt that the argument
that it would, by the gradual progress of general culture, become sober
in the next generation or so--without feeling the change, so to say, and
with no violent break in the habits of this generation (certainly
everybody must wish the next generation to be sober)--that this
argument, which men of indisputable wisdom adduced, had great
attractions. Also the nation was much afraid of the teetotallers,
especially of the subtle ones who said that true freedom lay in freedom
from temptation. The nation thought that sort of freedom not much worth
having, whether in the matter of drink or of any other pleasure. So
there were materials for a lively and congenial discussion, and Mr.
Foot, M.P., was already in the thick of it when Andy Hayes, rather late
by reason of having been lured into the stables to see the hunters after
tea, reached the Town Hall and sidled his way to a place against the
wall in good view of the platform and of the front benches where the
big-wigs sat. The Town Hall was quite two-thirds full--very good indeed
for the Christmas season!
Andy Hayes was not much of a politician. Up to now he had been content
with the politics of his _metier_, the politics of a man trying to build
up a business. But it was impossible not to enjoy Mr. Foot. He riddled
the enemy with epigram till he fell to the earth, then he jumped on to
his prostrate form and chopped it to pieces with logic. He set his
audience wondering--this always happens at political meetings, whichever
party may be in power--by what odd freak of fate, by what inexplicable
blunder, the twenty men chosen to rule the country should be not only
the twenty most unprincipled but also the twenty stupidest in it. Mr.
Foot demonstrated the indisputable truth of this strange fact so
cogently before he had been on his legs twenty minutes that gradually
Andy felt absolved from listening any longer to so plain a matter; his
attention began to wander to the company. It was a well-to-do
audience--there were not many poor in Meriton. A few old folk might have
to go to "the house," but there were no distress or "unemployment"
troubles. The tradesfolk, their families, and employees formed the bulk.
They were presided over by Mr. Wellgood of Nutley, who might be
considered to hold the place of second local magnate, after Mr. Belfield
of Halton. He was a spare, strongly built man of two or three and forty;
his hair was clipped very close to his head; he wore a bristly moustache
just touched with gray, but it too was kept so short that the lines of
his mouth, with its firm broad lips, were plain to see; his eyes were
light-blue, hard, and wary; they seemed to keep a constant watch over
the meeting, and once, when a scuffle arose among some children at the
back of the hall, they gave out a fierce and formidable glance of
rebuke. He had the reputation of being a strict master and a stern
magistrate; but he was a good sportsman, and Jack Rock's nearest rival
after the hounds.
Beside him, waiting his turn to speak and seeming rather nervous--he was
not such an old hand at the game as Mr. Foot--sat Andy's hero, Harry
Belfield. He was the pet of the town for his gay manner, good looks, and
cheery accessibility to every man--and even more to every woman. His
youthful record was eminently promising, his career the subject of high
hopes to his family and his fellow-citizens. Tall and slight, wearing
his clothes with an elegance free from affectation, he suggested "class"
and "blood" in every inch of him. He was rather pale, with thick, soft,
dark hair; his blue eyes were vivacious and full of humour, his mouth a
little small, but delicate and sensitive, the fingers of his hands long
and tapering. "A thoroughbred" was the only possible verdict--evidently
also a man full of sensibility, awake to the charms of life as well as
to its labours; that was in keeping with all Andy's memories.
The moment he rose it was obvious with what favour he was regarded; the
audience was predisposed towards all he said. He was not so epigrammatic
nor so cruelly logical as Mr. Foot; he was easier, more colloquial, more
confidential; he had some chaff for his hearers as well as denunciation
for his enemies; his speech was seasoned now by a local allusion, now by
a sporting simile. A veteran might have found its strongest point of
promise in its power of adaptation to the listeners, its gift of
creating sympathy between them and the speaker by the grace of a very
attractive personality. It was a success, perhaps, more of charm than of
strength; but it may be doubted whether in the end the one does not
carry as far as the other.
On good terms as he was with them all, it soon became evident to so
interested an onlooker as Andy Hayes that he was on specially good
terms, or at any rate anxious to be, in one particular quarter. After he
had made a point and was waiting for the applause to die down, not once
but three or four times he smiled directly towards the front row, and
towards that part of it where two young women sat side by side. They
were among his most enthusiastic auditors, and Andy presently found
himself, by a natural leaning towards any one who admired Harry
Belfield, according to them a share of the attention which had hitherto
been given exclusively to the hero himself.
The pair made a strong contrast. There was a difference of six or seven
years only in their ages, but while the one seemed scarcely more than a
child, it was hard to think of the other as even a girl--there was about
her such an air of self-possession, of conscious strength, of a maturity
of faculties. Even in applauding she seemed also to judge and assess.
Her favour was discriminating; she let the more easy hits go by with a
slight, rather tolerant smile, while her neighbour greeted them with
outright merry laughter. She was not much beyond medium height, but of
full build, laid on ample lines; her features were rather large, and her
face wore, in repose, a thoughtful tranquillity. The other, small,
frail, and delicate, with large eyes that seemed to wonder even as she
laughed, would turn to her friend with each laugh and appear to ask her
sympathy--or even her permission to be pleased.
Andy's scrutiny--somewhat prolonged since it yielded him all the above
particulars--was ended by his becoming aware that he in his turn was the
object of an attention not less thoroughgoing. Turning back to the
platform, he found the chairman's hard and alert eyes fixed on him in a
gaze that plainly asked who he was and why he was so much interested in
the two girls. Andy blushed in confusion at being caught, but Mr.
Wellgood made no haste to relieve him from his rebuking glance. He held
him under it for full half a minute, turning away, indeed, only when
Harry sat down among the cheers of the meeting. What business was it of
Wellgood's if Andy did forget his manners and stare too hard at the
girls? The next moment Andy laughed at himself for the question. In a
sudden flash he remembered the younger girl. She was Wellgood's daughter
Vivien. He recalled her now as a little child; he remembered the
wondering eyes and the timidly mirthful curl of her lips. Was it really
as long ago as that since he had been in Meriton? However childlike she
might look, now she was grown-up!
His thoughts, which carried him through the few sentences with which the
chairman dismissed the meeting, were scattered by the sudden grasp of
Harry Belfield's hand. The moment he saw Andy he ran down from the
platform to him. His greeting was all his worshipper could ask.
"Well now, I am glad to see you back!" he cried. "Oh, we all heard how
well you'd done out at the front, and we thought it too bad of you not
to come back and be lionized. But here you are at last, and it's all
right. I must take Billy Foot home now--he's got to go to town at heaven
knows what hour in the morning--but we must have a good jaw soon. Are
you at the Lion?"
"No," said Andy, "I'm staying a day or two with Jack Rock."
"With Jack Rock?" Harry's voice sounded surprised. "Oh yes, of course, I
remember! He's a capital chap, old Jack! But if you're going to
stay--and I hope you are, old fellow--you'll want some sort of a place
of your own, won't you? Well, good-night. I'll hunt you up some time in
the next day or two, for certain. Did you like my speech?"
"Yes, and I expected you to make a good one."
"You shall hear me make better ones than that. Well, I really must--All
right, Billy, I'm coming." With another clasp of the hand he rushed
after Mr. Foot, who was undisguisedly in a hurry, shouting as he went,
"Good-night, Wellgood! Good-night, Vivien! Good-night, Miss Vintry!"
Miss Vintry--that was the other girl, the one with Vivien Wellgood. Andy
was glad to know her name and docket her by it in her place among the
impressions of the evening.
So home to a splendid round of cold beef and another pint of that
excellent beer at Jack Rock's. What days life sometimes gives--or used
to!