Chapter XXVI.

TALES OUT OF SCHOOL FOR ONCE.

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 was always 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 (_née_ Amaranth 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's never 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 his _paté_.

"Gilly has an enormous respect for him. He's shamed him into working," Billy explained to his wife.

"That's it, by Jove!" Gilly acknowledged sadly. "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' penal servitude 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 accepting Mrs. 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