A LOVER LOOKS PALE.
It speedily appeared that Gilly Foot had other than pecuniary reasons
for wanting a partner; he wanted a pair of hands to work for him. He was
lazy, at times even lethargic; nothing could make him hurry. He hated
details, and, above all other details, figures. His work was to hatch
ideas; somebody else had to bring up the chickens. Andy could hardly
have allowed the cool shuffling-off of all the practical business work
on to his shoulders--which was what happened as soon as he had learnt
even the rudiments of it--had it not been that the ideas were good. The
indolent young man would sit all the morning--not that his morning began
very early--apparently doing nothing, then spend two hours at lunch at
the restaurant, come back smoking a large cigar, and after another
hour's rumination be delivered of an idea. The budding business--Andy
wondered how it had even budded under a gardener who no doubt planted
but never watered--lay mainly with educational works; and here Gilly's
ingenuity came in. He was marvellously good at guessing what would
appeal to a schoolmaster; how or whence he got this instinct it was
impossible to say; it seemed just a freak of genius. The prospectus of a
new "series," or the "syllabus" of a new course of study (contained in
Messrs. Gilbert Foot and Co.'s primers) became in his hands a most
skilful bait. And if he hooked one schoolmaster, as he pointed out to
Andy, it was equivalent to hooking scores, perhaps hundreds, conceivably
thousands, of boys. Girls too perhaps! Gilly was all for the higher
education of girls. Generations of the youth of both sexes rose before
his prophetically sanguine eye, all brought up on Gilbert Foot and Co.'s
primers.
"A single really good idea for a series may mean a small fortune, Andy,"
he would say impressively. "And now I think I may as well go to lunch."
Andy accepted the situation and did the hard work. He also provided his
partner with a note-book, urging him to put down (or, failing that, to
get somebody else to put down) any brilliant idea which occurred to him
at lunch. For himself he made a rule--lunch at the restaurant not more
than once a week. Only ideas justified lunch there every day. Lunch
there might be good for ideas; it was not good for figures.
So Andy was working hard, no less hard than when he was trying to drag
his poor timber business out of the mud, but with far more heart, hope,
and zest. He buckled to the figures; he bargained with the gentlemen who
wrote the primers, with the printers, and the binders, and the
advertisement canvassers; he tracked shy discounts to their lairs, and
bagged them; his eye on office expenses was the eye of a lynx. The
chickens hatched by Gilly found a loving and assiduous foster-mother.
And in September, after the new primers had been packed off to meet the
boys going back to school, Andy was to have a holiday; he was looking
forward to it intensely. He meant to spend it in attending Harry
Belfield on his autumn campaign in the Meriton Division--an odd idea of
a holiday to most men's thinking, but Harry was still Harry, and Andy's
appetite for new experiences had lost none of its voracity. Meanwhile,
for recreation, there was Sunday with its old programme of church, a
tramp, and supper with Jack Rock; there was lunch on Friday at the
restaurant with the Nun--she never missed Andy's day--and other friends;
and on both the Saturdays which followed the Belfields' return home he
was bidden to dine at Halton.
That the Nun had taken a fancy to him he had been informed by that
candid young woman herself; her assurance that he was "attractive" held
good as regarded Belfield at least; even Andy's modesty could not deny
that. Belfield singled him out for especial attention, drew him out,
listened to him, advised him. It was at the first of the two evenings at
Halton that he kept Andy with him after dinner, while the rest went into
the garden--Wellgood and Vivien were there, but not Isobel, who had
pleaded a cold--and insisted on hearing all about his business,
listening with evident interest to Andy's description of it and of his
partner, Gilly Foot.
"And in your holiday you're going to help Harry, I hear?"
"Help him!" laughed Andy. "I'm going to listen to him."
"I recommend you to try your own hand too. You couldn't have a better
opportunity of learning the job than at these village meetings."
"I could never do it. It never entered my head. Why, I know nothing!"
"More than your audience; that's enough. If you do break down at first,
it doesn't matter. After a month of it you wouldn't mind Trafalgar
Square."
"The--the idea's absolutely new to me."
"So have a lot of things been lately, haven't they? And they're turning
out well."
A slow smile spread over Andy's face. "I should look a fool," he
reflected.
"Try it," said Belfield, quite content with the reception of his
suggestion. He saw that Andy would turn it over in his mind, would give
it full, careful, impartial consideration. He was coming to have no
small idea of Andy's mind. He passed to another topic.
"You were at Nutley two or three times when we were away, Harry tells
me. Everything seems going on very pleasantly?"
Andy recalled himself with a start from his rumination over a possible
speech.
"Oh, yes--er--it looks like it, Mr. Belfield."
"And Harry's not been to town more than once or twice!" He smiled. "He
really seems to have said farewell to the temptations of London. An
exemplary swain!"
"I think it's going on all right, sir," said Andy.
Belfield was a little puzzled at his lack of enthusiasm. Andy showed no
actual signs of embarrassment, but his tone was cold, and his interest
seemed perfunctory.
"I daresay you've been too busy to pay much attention to such frivolous
affairs," he said; but to Andy's ears his voice sounded the least bit
resentful.
"No; I--I assure you I take the keenest interest in it. I'd give
anything to have it go all right."
Belfield's eyes were on him with a shrewd kindness. "No reason to
suppose it won't, is there?"
"None that I know of." Now Andy was frowning a little and smoking rather
fast.
Belfield said no more. He could not cross-examine Andy; indeed he had no
materials, even if he had the right. But Andy's manner left him with a
feeling of uneasiness.
"Ah, well, there's only six weeks to wait for the wedding!"
The next Saturday found him again at Halton. One of the six weeks had
passed; a week of happy work, yet somewhat shadowed by the recollection
of Belfield's questions and his own poor answers. Had he halted midway
between honest truth and useful lying? In fact he knew nothing of what
had been happening of late. He had not visited Nutley again--since that
night. Suddenly it struck him that he had not been invited. Then--did
they suspect? How could they have timed his entrance so exactly as to
suspect? He did not know that Harry had seen his retreating figure.
Still it would seem to them possible that he might have seen--possible,
if unlikely. That might be enough to make him a less desired guest.
The great campaign was to begin on the following Monday, though Andy
would not be at leisure to devote himself to it till a week later. The
talk ran on it. Wellgood, who seemed in excellent spirits, displayed
keen interest in the line Harry meant to take, and was ready to be
chairman whenever desired. Even Mrs. Belfield herself showed some mild
excitement, and promised to attend one meeting. The girls were to go to
as many as possible, Vivien being full of tremulous anticipation of
Harry's triumph, Isobel almost as enthusiastic a partisan. She had met
Andy with a perfection of composure which drove out of his head any idea
that she suspected him of secret knowledge.
"I'm afraid Harry's been overworking himself over it, poor boy," said
Mrs. Belfield. "Don't you think he looks pale, Mr. Wellgood?"
"I don't know where he's found the time to overwork," Wellgood answered,
with a gruff laugh. "We can account for most of his time at Nutley."
Harry burst into a laugh, and gulped down his wine. He was drinking a
good deal of champagne.
"I sigh as a lover, mother," he explained.
"That's what makes me pale--if I am pale." His tone turned to sudden
irritation. "Don't all look at me. There's nothing the matter." He
laughed again; he seemed full of changes of mood to-night. "The speeches
won't give me much trouble."
"I'm sure you need have no other trouble, dear," said Mrs. Belfield,
with an affectionate glance at Vivien.
"He'll have much more trouble with me, won't he?" Vivien laughed.
Andy stole a look at Isobel. He was filled with admiration; a smile of
just the right degree of sympathy ornamented her lips. A profane idea
that she must be in the habit of being kissed crossed his mind. It was
difficult to see how she could be, though--at Nutley. Kissing takes two.
He did not suspect Wellgood, and he was innocent himself.
Another eye was watching--shrewder and more experienced than
Andy's--watching Harry, watching Isobel, watching while Andy stole his
glance at Isobel. It was easy to keep bluff Wellgood in the dark; his
own self-confidence hoodwinked him. Belfield was harder to blind; for
those who had anything to conceal, it was lucky that he did not live at
Nutley.
"Well, waiting for a wedding's tiresome work for all concerned, isn't
it?" he said to Isobel, who sat next him.
"Yes, even waiting for other people's. It's such a provisional sort of
time, Mr. Belfield."
"You've forsworn one set of pleasures, and haven't got the other yet.
You've ceased to be a rover, and you haven't got a home."
"You don't seem to consider being engaged a very joyful period?" she
smiled.
"On the whole, I don't, Miss Vintry, though Vivien there looks pretty
happy. But it's telling on Harry, I'm sure."
She looked across at Harry. "Yes, I think it is a little," came
apparently as the result of a scrutiny suggested by Belfield's words. "I
hadn't noticed it, but I'm afraid you're right."
"If there's anything up, she's a cool hand," thought Belfield. "You must
try to distract his thoughts," he told her.
"I try to let them see as little of me as possible."
"Too complete a realization of matrimonial solitude _a deux_ before
marriage--Is that advisable?"
"You put too difficult questions for a poor spinster to answer, Mr.
Belfield."
He got nothing out of her, but from the corner of his eye he saw Harry
watching him as he talked to Isobel. Turning his head sharply, he met
his son's glance full and straight. Harry dropped his eyes suddenly, and
again drank off his champagne. Belfield looked sideways at the composed
lady on his right, and pursed up his lips a little.
Wellgood stayed with him to-night after dinner, the young men joining
the ladies in the garden for coffee.
"Our friend Miss Vintry's in great good looks to-night, Wellgood.
Remarkably handsome girl!"
"That dress suits her very well. I thought so myself," Wellgood agreed,
well-pleased to have his secret choice thus endorsed.
Belfield knew nothing of his secret, nothing of his plans. He was only
trying to find out whether Vivien's father were fully at his ease; of
Isobel's lover and his ease he took no account.
"Upon my word," he laughed, "if I were engaged, even to a girl as
charming as your Vivien, I should almost feel it an injury to have
another as attractive about all day. 'How happy could I be with
either--!' you know. The unregenerate man in one would feel that good
material was being wasted; and my boy used to be rather unregenerate,
I'm afraid."
Wellgood smiled in a satisfied fashion. "Even if Master Harry was
disposed to play tricks, I don't think he'd get much encouragement
from--"
"'T'other dear charmer?' Of course you've perfect confidence in her, or
she wouldn't be where she is."
"No, nor where she's going to be," thought Wellgood, enjoying his
secret.
"My licentious fancy has wronged my son. I must have felt a touch of the
old Adam myself, Wellgood. Don't tell my wife."
"You wouldn't tell me, if you knew a bit more," thought triumphant
Wellgood.
"I think Harry's constancy has stood a good trial. Oh, you'll think I
don't appreciate Vivien! I do; but I know Harry."
Wellgood answered him in kind, with a bludgeon-like wit. "You'll think I
don't appreciate Harry. I do; but I know Miss Vintry, and she doesn't
care a button about him."
"We proud parents put one another in our places!" laughed Belfield.
Wellgood saw no danger, and he had been home a fortnight! True, he had,
before that, been away six weeks. But such mischief, if it existed,
would have grown. If it had been there during the six weeks, it would
have been there, in fuller growth, during the fortnight. Belfield felt
reassured. He had found out what he wanted, and yet had given no hint to
Vivien's father. But one or two of his remarks abode in the mind of
Isobel's lover, to whom he did not know that he was speaking. Wellgood's
secret position towards Isobel at once made Belfield's fears, if the
fears were more than a humorous fancy, absurd, and made them, even
though no more than a fancy, stick. He recked nothing of them as a
father; he remembered them as a lover, yet remembered only to laugh in
his robust security. He thought it would be a good joke to tell to
Isobel, not realizing that it is never a good joke to tell a woman that
she has been, without cause and ridiculously, considered a source of
danger to legitimate affections. She may feel this or that about the
charge; she will not feel its absurdity. She is generally right. Few
women pass through the world without stirring in somebody once or twice
an unruly impulse--a fact which should incline them all to
circumspection in themselves, and to charity towards one another, if
possible, and at any rate towards us.
"And what," asked Belfield, with an air of turning to less important
matters, "about the life of this Parliament?"
Wellgood opined that it would prove much what a certain philosopher
declared the life of man to be--nasty, short, and brutish.
In the garden Mrs. Belfield, carefully enfolded in rugs, dozed the doze
of the placid. Isobel and Harry whispered across her unconscious form.
"You shouldn't drink so much champagne, Harry."
"Hang it, I want it! I said nothing wrong, did I?"
"You don't keep control of your eyes. I think your father noticed. Why
look at me?"
"You know I can't help it. And I can't stand it all much longer."
"You can end it as soon as you like. Am I preventing you?"
"I beg your pardon, Miss Vintry? I'm afraid I'm drowsy."
"I was just saying I hoped I wasn't preventing Mr. Harry from strolling
with Vivien, Mrs. Belfield."
"Oh yes, my dear, of course!" The placid lids fell over the placid eyes
again.
"End it? How?"
"By behaving as Vivien's _fiance_ ought."
"Or by not being Vivien's _fiance_ any longer?"
"What, Harry love? What's that about not being Vivien's _fiance_ any
longer?" Mrs. Belfield was roused by words admitting of so startling an
interpretation.
"Well, we shall be married soon, shan't we, mother?"
"How stupid of me, Harry dear!" Sleep again descended. Harry swore
softly; Isobel laughed low.
"This is ridiculous!" she remarked. "Couldn't you take just one turn
with Vivien's companion? Your mother might hear straight just once."
"I'll be hanged if I chance it to-night," said Harry. "I'll take
Wellgood on at billiards."
"Yes, go and do that; it's much better. It may bring back your colour,
Harry."
Harry looked at her in exasperation--and in longing. "I wish there
wasn't a woman in the world!" he growled.
"It's men like you who say that," she retorted, smiling. "Go and forget
us for an hour."
He went without more words--with only such a shrug as he had given when
he said good-bye to Mrs. Freere. Isobel sat on, by dozing Mrs. Belfield,
the picture of a dutiful neglected companion, while Wellgood and Harry
played billiards, and Belfield, wheezing over an unread evening paper,
honoured her with a tribute of distrustful curiosity. Left alone in the
flesh, she could boast that she occupied several minds that evening.
Perhaps she knew it, as she sat silent, thoughtfully gazing across to
where Vivien and Andy sat together, their dim figures just visible in
enshrouding darkness. "He saw--but he won't speak!" she was thinking.
"How funny of Harry to say he sighed as a lover!" Vivien remarked to
Andy.
Andy had the pride and pleasure of informing her that her lover was
indulging in a quotation from another lover, more famous and more
temperate.
"'I sighed as a lover. I obeyed as a son.' I see! How funny! Do you
think Gibbon was right, Mr. Hayes?"
"The oldest question since men had sons and women had lovers, isn't it?"
"Doesn't love come first--when once it has come?"
"After honour, the poet tells us, Miss Wellgood."
Vivien knew that quotation, anyhow. "It's beautiful, but isn't it--just
a little priggish?"
"I think we must admit that it's at least a very graceful apology,"
laughed Andy.
Their pleasant banter bred intimacy; she was treating him as an old
friend. He felt himself hardly audacious in saying "How you've grown!"
She understood him--nay, thanked him with a smile and a flash, revealing
pleasure, from her eyes, often so reticent. "Am I different from the
days of the lame pony and Curly? Not altogether, I'm afraid, but I hope
a little." She sat silent for a moment. "I love Harry--well, so do you."
"Yes, I love Harry." But he had a sore grudge against Harry at that
moment. Who at Halton had once talked about pearls and swine? And in
what connection?
"That's why I'm different." She laughed softly. "If you'd so far
honoured me, Mr. Hayes, and I had--responded, I might never have become
different. I should just have relied on the--policeman."
"The Force is always ready to do its duty," said Andy.
"Take care; you're nearly flirting!" she admonished him merrily; and
Andy, rather proud of himself for a gallant remark, laughed and blushed
in answer. She went on more seriously, yet still with her serene smile.
"First I've got to please him; then I've got to help him. He must have
both, you know."
"Please him, oh, yes! Help him, how?"
"I'm sure you know. Poor boy! His ups and downs! Sometimes he comes to
me almost in despair. It's so hard to help then. Isobel can't either.
He's not happy, you know, to-night."
She had grown. This penetration was new; should he wish that it might
become less or greater? Less for the sake of her peace, or greater for
her enlightenment's?
"It seems as if a darkness swept over him sometimes, and got between him
and me." Her voice trembled a little. "I want to keep that darkness away
from him; so I mustn't be afraid."
"Whether you're afraid or not, you won't run away. Remember Curly!"
She turned to him with affectionate friendliness. "But you'll be there
in this too, so far as you can, won't you? Don't forsake me, will you?
It's sometimes--very difficult." Her face lit up in a smile again. "I
hope it'll make a man of me, as father used to say of that odious
hunting."
It had, at least, made an end of the mere child in her. The discernment
of her lover's trouble, the ignorance of whence it came, the need of
fighting it--she faced these things as part of her work. Her engagement
was no more either amazement merely, or merely joy. She might still be
afraid of dogs, or shrink from a butcher's shop. She knew a difficulty
when she saw one, and for love's sake faced it. Andy thought it made the
love dearer to her; with an inward groan he saw that it did. For he was
afraid. What she told of Harry told more than she could fathom for
herself.
Andy was a partisan. He cried whole-heartedly, "The pity for Vivien!" He
could say, "The pity for Harry!" for old Harry's sake, and more for
Vivien's. No, "The pity for Isobel!" was breathed in his heart. The case
seemed to him a plain one there; and he was not of the party who would
have the Recording Angel as liberal with tears as with ink, sedulously
obliterating everything that he punctiliously wrote--in the end, on that
view, a somewhat ineffectual registrar, who might be spared both ink and
tears, and provided with a retiring pension by triumphant believers in
Necessity. It may come to that.
"I think Harry may be wanting me." She rose in her slim grace, and held
out a hand to him--not in formal farewell, but in an impulse of
good-will. She had come into her heritage of womanhood, and bore it with
a shy stateliness. "Thank you"--a pause rather merry than timid--"Thank
you, policeman Andy."
"No, but I thank you--and you seem to me rather like the queen of the
fairies."
She smiled, and sighed lightly. "If I can make the king think so
always!"
Then she was gone, a white shadow gliding over the grass--a woman now,
still in a child's shape. She flitted past Isobel Vintry, kissing her
hand, and so passed in to where "Harry wanted her."
Politeness dictated that Andy, thus left to himself, should join his
hostess; he did not know that she was asleep, quite sound asleep by now.
Having sat down before he discovered this state of affairs, he found
himself committed to a virtual _tete-a-tete_ with Isobel Vintry, quite
the last thing he desired. He did not find it easy to open the
conversation.
"Oh, we can talk! We shan't disturb her," Miss Vintry hastened to assure
him with a smile. "You've been quite a stranger at Nutley. Did you find
the atmosphere too romantic? Too much love-making for your taste?"
"I did feel rather in the way now and then."
"Perhaps you were once or twice! When you attached yourself to Vivien
after dinner, and left Mr. Harry no resource but poor me!"
Surely if she spoke like that--actually recalling the critical
occasion--she could have no suspicion? Either she must never have
noticed the shawl at all, or feel sure that it had been removed before
her talk with Harry reached the point of danger.
"I'm sure you entertained him very well. I don't think he'd complain."
"Well, sometimes people like talking over their affairs with a third
person for a change--as I daresay Vivien has been doing with you just
now! And, after all, because you're engaged, everybody else in the world
needn't at once seem hopelessly stupid."
Certainly Isobel Vintry could never seem hopelessly stupid, thought
Andy. Rather she was superbly plausible.
"And perhaps even Mr. Harry may like a rest from devotion--or will you
be polite enough to suggest that a temporary change in its object is a
better way of putting it?"
Precisely what it had been in Andy's mind to suggest--but not exactly by
way of politeness! It was disconcerting to have the sting drawn from his
thoughts or his talk in this way.
"That might be polite to you--in one sense; it might sound rather unjust
to Harry," he answered.
"Am I the first person who has ever dared to make such an insinuation?
How shocking! But I've even dared to do it to Mr. Harry himself, and he
hardly denied that he was an incorrigible flirt."
Andy knew that he was no match for her. For any advantage he could ever
win from her, he must thank chance or surprise.
"Don't be so terribly strict, Mr. Hayes. If you were engaged, would you
like every word--absolutely every word--you said to another girl to be
repeated to your _fiancee_?"
Andy, always honest, considered. "Perhaps I shouldn't--and a few pretty
speeches hurt nobody."
"Why, really you're becoming quite human! You encourage me to confess
that Mr. Harry has made one or two to me--and I've not repeated them to
Vivien. I'm relieved to find you don't think me a terrible sinner."
She was skilfully pressing for an indication of what he knew, of how
much he had seen--without letting him, if he did know too much, have a
chance of confronting her openly with his knowledge. Must he be
considered in the game she was playing, or could he safely be neglected?
Andy's temper was rather tried. She talked of a few idle words, a few
pretty speeches--ordinary gallantries. His memory was of two figures
tense with passion, and of a lover's kiss accepted as though by a
willing lover.
"How far would you carry the doctrine?" he asked dryly.
There was a pause before she answered; she was shaping her reply so that
it might produce the result she wanted--information, yet not
confrontation with his possible knowledge.
"As far as a respectful kiss?" Peering through the darkness, she saw a
quick movement of Andy's head. Instantly she added with a laugh, "On the
hand, I mean, of course!"
"You won't ask me to go any further, if I admit that?" asked Andy.
"No. I'll agree with you on that," she said.
Mrs. Belfield suddenly woke up. "Yes, I'm sure Harry's looking pale,"
she remarked.
Isobel had got her information; she was sure now. The sudden movement of
Andy's head had been too startled, too outraged, to have been elicited
merely by an audacious suggestion put forward in discussion; it spoke of
memories roused; it expressed wonder at shameless effrontery. Andy had
revealed his knowledge, but he did not know that he had. He had parted
with his secret; yet it had become no easier for him to meddle. If he
had thought himself bound to say nothing, not to interfere, before, he
would seem to himself so bound still. And if he tried to meddle, at
least she would be fighting now with her eyes open. There might be
danger--there could be no surprise.
When Harry Belfield put on her cloak for her in the hall, she whispered
to him: "Take care of Andy Hayes! He did see us that first night."