THE LAST FIGHT.
On a fine Sunday evening in the following autumn Belfield and Andy Hayes
sat over their wine, the ladies having, as usual, adjourned to the
garden. Among their number were included the Nun and Sally Dutton; a
second stay at Meriton had broken down Sally's shyness. Belfield and his
wife were just back from London, whither they had gone to see their
grandchild, Harry's first-born son. All had gone well, and Belfield was
full of impressions of his visit. His natural pleasure in the birth of
the child was damped by Harry's refusal to promise to take up his
residence at Halton when his turn came.
"But I did get him to promise not to sell--only to let; so his son may
live here, though mine won't." He looked older and more frail; his mind
moved in a near future which, near as it was, he would not see.
"I sometimes think," he went on, "that the professional moralists, all
or most of our preachers of one sort and another--and who doesn't preach
nowadays?--take too narrow a view. Their table of virtues isn't
comprehensive enough. Now my boy Harry, with all his faults, is never
disagreeable. What an enormous virtue! Negative, if you like, but
enormous! What a lot of pain and discomfort he doesn't give! All through
this domestic business his behaviour has been admirable--so kind, so
attentive, so genuinely concerned, so properly gratified. Upon my word,
seeing him in his own home, you'd think he was a model! That's a good
deal. His weakness comes in to save him there; he must be popular--even
in his own house!"
"Oh, this event'll do them no end of good, sir," said Andy, ever ready
to clutch again at the elusive skirts of optimism.
"Some, no doubt," Belfield cautiously agreed. "And she's a brave
woman--I'll say that for her. She understands him, and she loves him.
When I saw her, we had a reconciliation on that basis. We let the past
alone--I wasn't anxious to meet her on that ground--and made up our
minds to the future. Her work is to keep things going, to prevent a
smash. She must shut her eyes sometimes--pretty often, I'm afraid. He'll
always be very pleasant to her, if she'll do that. In fact, the worse
he's behaving the pleasanter the rogue will be. I know him of old in
that."
"Has he any plans?" asked Andy.
Belfield smiled. "Oh yes. He's got a plan for wintering in Algeria;
they'll go as soon as she's well enough, stopping in Paris _en route_.
Yes, he's really full of plans--for enjoying himself and meeting friends
he likes. There's a Lady Lucy Somebody who's got the finest motor-car on
earth. She's going to be in Paris. Oh, well, there it is! Plans of any
other sort are dropped. He's dropped them; she's had to drop them--after
a good deal of fighting, so she told me. He makes no definite refusals;
he puts her off, laughs it off, shunts it, you know, and goes on his own
way. One didn't understand how strong that had grown in him--the dislike
of any responsibilities or limits. Being answerable to anybody seems to
vex him. I think he even resents our great expectations, though we go
out of our way to let him see that we've honestly abandoned them! A
pleasant drifting over summer seas, with agreeable company, and plenty
of variety in it! That's the programme. We shall probably be wise to add
a few storms and a good many minor squalls to get a true idea of it."
"It doesn't seem to lead to much."
"Oh, the mistake's ours! For many men I say nothing against the life.
I'm not one of the preachers, and there's something to be said for it
for some people. We made our own idol, Andy; it's our fault. We saw the
capacities, we didn't appreciate the weakness. I can't be hard on poor
old Harry, can you? We parted capital friends, I'm glad to say--though
he was distinctly in a hurry to keep an appointment at a tea-shop.
Somebody passing through London, he said--and through his fancy too, I
imagine." He looked across at Andy. "I suppose it all seems uncommon
queer to you, Andy?"
"It's a bit of a waste, isn't it?"
"So we think, we at Meriton. That's our old idea, and we shan't get over
it. Yes, a bit of a waste! But it's nature's way, I suppose. A fine
fabric with one unsound patch! It does seem a waste, but she's lavish;
and the fabric may be very pleasing to the eye all the same, and serve
all right--so long as you don't strain it!"
In the garden Mrs. Belfield discoursed placidly to Miss Doris Flower; it
was perhaps fortunate that the veil of night rendered that young lady's
face hard to read.
"Yes, my dear, we must let bygones be bygones. I took a very strong
view, a stronger view than I generally take, of her conduct down
here--though I can't acquit Mr. Wellgood of a large part of the blame.
But now she's trying to be a good wife to him, I'm sure she is. So I
made up my mind to forgive her; it's a very fine boy, and like my
family, I think. As for the politics and all that, I'm sure Harry is
right, and his father is wrong to regret his withdrawal. Harry is not
fit for that rough work; both his mind and his feelings are too fine and
sensitive. I hope he will be firm and keep out of it all. Mr. Hayes is
much more fit for it, much coarser in fibre, you know, dear Miss Flower;
and though, of course, we can't expect from him what we did from
Harry--if only his health had stood it--Mr. Wigram tells me he is doing
really very well. The common people like him, I understand. Oh, not in
the way they thought of Harry! That was admiration, almost worship, my
dear. But they think he understands them, and naturally they feel on
easy terms with him. His stepmother was an excellent woman, and I'm sure
we all respect Mr. Rock. Of course in my young days he'd never have done
for a county member; but we must move with the times, and I'm really
glad that he's got this chance."
The Nun listened to the kindly patronizing old dame in respectful
silence. It was really a good thing that she could look at the matter
like that--evidently aided by the fine boy and the fine boy's likeness
to her family. It was hard to grudge Harry his last worshipper; yet Miss
Flower's smile had not been very sympathetic under the veil of night.
"Of course there's poor Vivien--such a sweet girl, and so nice to us!
She's never let it make any difference as far as we're concerned. I am
sorry for her, and her father's very wrong in keeping her all alone
there at Nutley to brood over it. He ought to have given her a season in
London or taken her abroad--somewhere where she could forget about it,
and have her chance. What chance has she of forgetting Harry here at
Meriton?"
"You can never tell about that, can you, Mrs. Belfield? These things
happen so oddly."
"Oh, but, my dear, the poor child never sees anybody! Now you see quite
a number of young men, I daresay?"
"Yes, quite a number, Mrs. Belfield," the Nun admitted demurely.
"She sees absolutely nobody, except Mr. Hayes and Mr. Gilly Foot. I
don't think she's very likely to be taken with Mr. Gilly Foot! Oh no, my
dear, it's a sad case."
"You ought to talk to Mr. Wellgood about it."
"I never talk to Mr. Wellgood at all now, my dear, if I can help it. I
don't like him, and I think his attitude has been very hard--quite
unlike dear Vivien's own! Well, Harry did no more than hint at it, and
Isobel, of course, said nothing; but we may have our own opinions as to
whether it's all for Vivien's sake!" Mrs. Belfield almost achieved
viciousness in this remark. "And--it may seem selfish of me to say
it--if she married and went away, Harry might be more inclined to come
down here. As it is, he feels it would be awkward. He's so sensitive!"
Belfield and Andy came out--the old man muffled in shawls and, even so,
fearing his wife's rebuke, Andy drawing the fresh air eagerly into his
lungs. He had dined for the first time since the Sunday before; the
miles he had covered, the speeches he had made, defied calculation. He
had hardly any voice left. His work was nearly done; the polling was on
the morrow. But he was due in a neighbouring constituency the day after
that--for one more week. Then back to Gilbert Foot and Co., to make up
arrears. Surveying the work he had done and was about to do, he rejoiced
in his strength, as formerly he had rejoiced to follow Lord Meriton's
hounds on his legs and to anticipate the fox's wiles.
He sat down by Mrs. Belfield. Vivien and Sally, who had been strolling,
joined the group, of which he made the centre.
"Yes, it looks all right," he said, continuing his talk with Belfield.
"Wigram promises me a thousand. A strong candidate would get that. I
hope for about six hundred."
"You think it's safe, though, anyhow?" asked Vivien.
"Yes, I think it's safe." He broke into a laugh. "If anybody had told me
this!"
They discussed the fight in all its aspects, especially the last great
meeting in the Town Hall the night before. The Nun mimicked Andy's
croaking notes with much success, and Miss Dutton commented on popular
institutions with some severity. They were full of excitement as to the
morrow, when the three girls meant to follow Andy's progress through the
Division. Mrs. Belfield gave tokens of an inclination to doze. Belfield
sat listening to the girls' voices, to their eager excited talk, and
their constant appeals to the hero of the day.
The hero of the day! It was Andy Hayes, son of old Mr. Hayes of the
Grammar School, _protege_, for his stepmother's sake, of Jack Rock the
butcher. He had nearly gone back abroad in failure; he had nearly taken
on the shop. He stood now the winner in the fight, triumphant in a
contest which he had never sought, from the idea of which he would have
shrunk as from rank folly and rank treason. Into that fight he had been
drawn unconsciously, insensibly, irresistibly, by another man's doings
and by his own, by another man's character and by the character that was
his. His conscious part had always been to help his adversary; his
adversary unconsciously worked all the while for him. What his adversary
had bestowed in ready kindness stood as nothing beside what he had given
unwittingly, by accident, never thinking that the results of what he did
would transcend the limits of his own fortunes, and powerfully mould and
shape another's life. Whom Andy loved he had conquered; whom he followed
he had supplanted. The cheers and applause which had rung out for him
last night had, a short year ago, been the property of another. His
place was his by conquest.
So mused Belfield, father of the vanquished, as he sat silent while the
merry voices sounded in his ears. A notable example of how each man
finds his place, in spite of all the starts, or weights, or handicaps
with which he enters on the race! These things tell, but not enough to
land an unsound horse at the post before a sound one. The unsound
falters; slowly and surely the sound lessens the gap between them. At
last he takes the lead. Then the cry of the crowd is changed, and he
gallops on to victory amidst its plaudits. Jack Rock had made no mistake
when he entered his horse and put up the stakes.
The hero of that day, the victor in that fight, yes! Against his wishes,
without premeditation, so he stood. There was another day of strife,
another fight to be waged, one that could not be unmeant or unconscious.
Here the antagonism must come into the open, must be revealed to the
mind and heart of the fighter. Here he must not only follow, he must
himself drive out; he must not only supplant, he must strive to banish,
nay, to annihilate. There was a last citadel which, faithful to
faithlessness and true against desertion, still flew the flag of that
loved antagonist. Would the flag dip and the gates open at his summons?
Or would the response to his parley be that, though the faithless might
be faithless, yet the faithful must be faithful still? Before that
answer his arm would be paralyzed.
"Well, I'm sure you'll deserve your success, Mr. Hayes," said Mrs.
Belfield, rising and preparing to retreat indoors. "I hear you've worked
very hard and made an extremely good impression."
A quiet smile ran round the circle. The speech, with its delicate, yet
serenely sure, patronage would have sounded so natural a year before. In
the darkness Andy found himself smiling too. A sense of strength stirred
in him. The day for encouragement was past; he did not need it. Save for
that last citadel! There still he feared and shrank. With his plain
mind, in his strenuous days, he had done little idealising. Only two
people had he ever treated in that flattering exacting fashion. His
idealising stood in his path now. The weak spot of his sturdy
common-sense had always been about Harry; it was so still, and he had an
obstinate sense of trying to kick his old idol, now that it was
overthrown. And for her--how if his approach seemed a rude intrusion,
the invasion of a desolate yet still holy spot, sacrilege committed on a
ruined shrine? On the one side was Harry, or the memory of Harry,
stronger perhaps than Harry himself. On the other he himself stood,
acutely conscious of his associations for her, remembering ever the
butcher's shop, recollecting that what favour he had won had been in the
capacity of a buffer against the attack of others. How if the buffer,
forsaking its protective function, encroached on its own account?
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 of praise 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 being very 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 she was 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 pleaded for 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, pronouncing by 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.