Second String. Anthony Hope

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      "I'm feeling happy to-night, old fellow," said Harry suddenly. "You may not happen to know it, but I've gone it a bit for the last two or three years, made rather a fool of myself, and—well, one gets led on. Now I've made up my mind to chuck all that. Some of it's all right—at any rate it seems to happen; but I've had enough. I really do want to work at the politics, you know."

      "It's all before you, if you do," said Andy in unquestioning loyalty.

      "I'm going to work, and to pull up a bit all round, and—" Harry broke off, but a smile was on his lips. There on the bank of the Thames, fresh from his party in the gay restaurant, he heard the potent voice calling. It seemed to him that the voice was potent enough not only to loose him from Mrs. Freere, to lure him from London delights, to carry him down to Meriton and peaceful country life; but potent enough, too, to transform him, to make him other than he was, to change the nature that had till now been his very self. He appealed from passion to passion; from the soiled to the clean, from the turgid to the clear. A new desire of his eyes was to make a new thing of his life.

Chapter IV.

      SETTLED PROGRAMMES.

       Table of Contents

      Mark Wellgood of Nutley had a bugbear, an evil thing to which he gave the name of sentimentality. Wherever he saw it he hated it—and he saw it everywhere. No matter what was the sphere of life, there was the enemy ready to raise its head, and Mark Wellgood ready to hit that head. In business and in public affairs he warred against it unceasingly; in other people's religion—he had very little of his own—he was keen to denounce it; even from the most intimate family and personal relationships he had always been resolved to banish it, or, failing that, to suppress its manifestations. Himself a man of uncompromising temper and strong passions, he saw in this hated thing the root of all the vices with which he had least sympathy. It made people cowards who shrank from manfully taking their own parts; it made them hypocrites who would not face the facts of human nature and human society, but sought to cover up truths that they would have called "ugly" by specious names, by veils, screens, and fine paraphrases. It made men soft, women childish, and politicians flabby; it meant sheer ruin to a nation.

      Sentimentality was, of course, at the bottom of what was the matter with his daughter, of those things of which, with the aid of Isobel Vintry's example, he hoped to cure her—her timidity and her fastidiousness. But it was at the bottom of much more serious things than these—since to make too much fuss about a girl's nonsensical fancies would be sentimental in himself. Notably it was at the bottom of all shades of opinion from Liberalism to Socialism, both included. Harry Belfield, lunching at Nutley a week or so after his return to Meriton, had the benefit of these views, with which, as a prospective Conservative candidate, he was confidently expected to sympathise.

      "I've only one answer to make to a Socialist," said Wellgood. "I say to him, 'You can have my property when you're strong enough to take it. Until then, you can't.' Under democracy we count heads instead of breaking them. It's a bad system, but it's tolerable as long as the matter isn't worth fighting about. When you come to vital issues, it'll break down—it always has. We, the governing classes, shall keep our position and our property just as long as we're able and willing to defend them. If the Socialists mean business, they'd better stop talking and learn to shoot."

      "That might be awkward for us," said Harry, with a smile at Vivien opposite.

      "But if they think we're going to sit still and be voted out of everything, they're much mistaken. That's what I hope, at all events, though it needs a big effort not to despair of the country sometimes. People won't look at the facts of nature. All nature's a fight from beginning to end. All through, the strong hold down the weak; and the strong grow stronger by doing it—never mind whether they're men or beasts."

      "There's a lot of truth in that; but I don't know that it would be very popular on a platform—even on one of ours!"

      "You political fellows have to wrap it up, I suppose, but the cleverer heads among the working men know all about it—trust them! They're on the make themselves; they want to get where we are; gammoning the common run helps towards that. Oh, they're not sentimental! I do them the justice to believe that."

      "But isn't there a terrible lot of misery, father?" asked Vivien.

      "You can't cure misery by quackery, my dear," he answered concisely. "Half of it's their own fault, and for the rest—hasn't there always been? So long as some people are weaker than others, they'll fare worse. I don't see any particular attraction in the idea of making weaklings or cowards as comfortable as the strong and the brave." His glance at his daughter was stern. Vivien flushed a little; the particular ordeal of that morning, a cross-country ride with her father, had not been a brilliant success.

      "To him that hath shall be given, eh?" Harry suggested.

      "Matter of Scripture, Harry, and you can't get away from it!" said Wellgood with a laugh.

      Psychology is not the strong point of a mind like Wellgood's. To study his fellow-creatures curiously seems to such a man rather unnecessary and rather twaddling work; in its own sphere it corresponds to the hated thing itself, to an over-scrupulous worrying about other people's feelings or even about your own. It had not occurred to Wellgood to study Harry Belfield. He liked him, as everybody did, and he had no idea how vastly Harry's temperament differed from his own. Harry had many material guarantees against folly—his birth, the property that was to be his, the career opening before him. If Wellgood saw any signs of what he condemned, he set them down to youth and took up the task of a mentor with alacrity. Moreover he was glad to have Harry coming to the house; matters were still at an early stage, but if there were a purpose in his coming, there was nothing to be said against the project. He would welcome an alliance with Halton, and it would be an alliance on even terms; for Vivien had some money of her own, apart from what he could leave her. Whether she would have Nutley or not—well, that was uncertain. Wellgood was only forty-three and young for his years; he might yet marry and have a son. A second marriage was more than an idea in his head; it was an intention fully formed. The woman he meant to ask to be his wife at the suitable moment lived in his house and sat at his table with him—his daughter's companion, Isobel Vintry.

      Isobel had sat silent through Wellgood's talk, not keenly interested in the directly political aspect of it, but appreciating the view of human nature and of the way of the world which underlay it. She also was on the side of the efficient—of the people who knew what they wanted and at any rate made a good fight to get it. Yet while she listened to Wellgood, her eyes had often been on Harry; she too was beginning to ask why Harry came so much to Nutley; the obvious answer filled her with a vague stirring of discontent. An ambitious self-confident nature does not like to be "counted out," to be reckoned out of the running before the race is fairly begun. Why was the answer obvious? There was more than one marriageable young woman at Nutley. Her feeling of protest was still vague; but it was there, and when she looked at Harry's comely face, her eyes were thoughtful.

      Though Wellgood had business after lunch, Harry stayed on awhile, sitting out on the terrace by the lake, for the day was warm and fine. The coming of spring had mitigated the grimness of Nutley; the water that had looked dreary and dismal in the winter now sparkled in the sun. Harry was excellently well content with himself and his position. He told the two girls that things were shaping very well. Old Sir George Millington had decided to retire. He was to be the candidate; he would start his campaign through the villages of the Division in the late summer, when harvest was over; he could hardly be beaten; and he was "working like a horse" at his subjects.

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