A Lost Leader Part 27

"You may have one peach and one gla.s.s of the Prince's Burgundy, and then you must come and look for me," she said. "We have wasted too much time talking of other things. You haven't even told me yet what I have a right to hear, you know. I want to be told that you care for me better than anything else in the world."

He caught her hands. There was a rare pa.s.sion vibrating in his tone.

"You do not doubt it, Berenice?"

"Perhaps not," she answered, "but I want to be told. I am a middle-aged woman, you know, Lawrence, but I want to be made love to as though I were a silly girl! Isn't that foolish? But you must do it," she whispered, with her lips very close to his.

He drew her into his arms.

"I am not at all sure," he said, "that I have enough courage to make love to a d.u.c.h.ess!"

"Then you can remember only that I am a woman," she whispered, "very, very, very much a woman, and--I'm afraid--a woman shockingly in love!"

She disengaged herself suddenly, and was at the door before he could reach it. She looked back. Her cheeks were flushed. There was even a faint tinge of pink underneath the creamy white of her slender, stately neck.

"Don't dare," she said, "to be more than five minutes!"

Mannering poured himself out a gla.s.s of wine, and sat quite still with his head between his hands. He wanted to realize this thing if he could.

The grinding of the great wheels fell no more upon his ears. He looked into a new world, so different from the old that he was almost afraid.

And in her room, Berenice waited for him impatiently.

CHAPTER VII

A BLOW FOR BORROWDEAN

There was a somewhat unusual alertness in Borrowdean's manner as he pa.s.sed out from the little house in Sloane Gardens and summoned a pa.s.sing hansom. He drove to the corner of Hyde Park, and dismissing the cab strolled along the broad walk.

The many acquaintances whom he pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed he greeted with a certain amount of abstraction. All the time he kept his eyes upon the road. He was waiting to catch sight of some familiar liveries. When at last they came he contrived to stop the carriage and hastily threaded his way to the side of the barouche.

Berenice was looking radiantly beautiful. The exquisite simplicity of her white muslin gown and large hat of black feathers, the slight flush with which she received him, as though she carried about with her a secret which she expected every one to read, the extinction of that air of listlessness which had robbed her for some time of a certain share of her good looks--of all these things Borrowdean made quick note. His face grew graver as he accepted her not very enthusiastic invitation and occupied the back seat of the carriage. For the first time he admitted to himself the possibility of failure in his carefully laid plans. He recognized the fact, that there were forces at work against which he had no weapon ready. He had believed that Berenice was attracted by Mannering's personality and genius. He had never seriously considered the question of her feelings becoming more deeply involved. So many men had paid vain court to her. She had a wonderful reputation for inaccessibility. And yet he remembered her manner when he had paid his first unexpected visit to Blakely. It should have been a lesson to him. How far had the mischief gone, he wondered!

"So Mannering has gone North," he remarked, noticing that she avoided the subject.

She nodded. Her parasol drooped a little his way, and he wondered whether it was because she desired her face hidden.

"You saw him?"

"Yes," she answered. "He explained how he felt to me."

"And you could not dissuade him?"

"I did not try," she answered, simply. "Lawrence Mannering is not a man of ordinary disposition, you know. He had come to the conclusion that it was right for him to go, and opposition would only have made him the more determined. I cannot see that there is any harm likely to come of it."

"I am not so sure of that," Borrowdean answered, seriously. "Mannering is _au fond_ a man of sentiment. There is no clearer thinker or speaker when his judgment is unbia.s.sed, but on the other hand, the man's nature is sensitive and complex. He has a sort of maudlin self-consciousness which is as dangerous a thing as the nonconformist conscience. Heaven knows into whose hands he may fall up there."

"He is going incognito," she remarked.

"He is not the sort of man to escape notice," Borrowdean answered. "He will be discovered for certain. Of course, if it comes off all right, the whole thing will be a feather in his cap. But when I think how much we are dependent upon him, I don't like the risk."

"You are sure," she remarked, thoughtfully, "that you do not over-rate--"

"Mannering himself, perhaps," Borrowdean interrupted. "There is no man whose personal place cannot be filled. But one thing is very certain.

Mannering is the only man who unites both sides of our scattered party, the only man under whom Fergusson and Johns would both serve. You know quite well the curse which has rested upon us. We have become a party of units, and our whole effectiveness is destroyed. We want welding into one ent.i.ty. A single session, a single year of office, and the thing would be done. We who do the mechanical work would see that there was no breaking away again. But we must have that year, we must have Mannering. That is why I watch him like a child, and I must say that he has given me a good deal of anxiety lately."

"In what way?" she asked.

Borrowdean hesitated. He seemed uncertain how to answer.

"If I explain what I mean," he said, "you will understand that I do not speak to you as a woman and an acquaintance of Mannering's, but simply as one of ourselves. Mannering's private life is, of course, interesting to me only as an index to his political destiny, and my acquaintance with it arises solely from my political interest in him. There are things in connection with it which I feel that I shall never properly be able to understand."

She looked at him steadily. Her cheeks were a little whiter, but her tone was deliberate.

"I do not wish to hear anything about Mr. Mannering's private life," she said. "You will understand that I am not free or disposed to listen when I tell you that I am going to marry him."

This was perhaps the worst blow Borrowdean had ever experienced in the course of his whole life. The possibility of this was a danger which he had recognized might some time have to be reckoned with, but for the present he had felt safe enough. He was taken so completely aback that for a few moments his mind was a blank. He remained silent.

"You do not offer me the conventional wishes," she remarked, presently.

"They go--from me to you--as a matter of course," he answered. "To tell you the truth, I never thought of Mannering, for many reasons, as a marrying man."

"You will have to readjust your views of him," she said, quietly, "for I think that we shall be married very soon."

Borrowdean was a little white, and his teeth had come together. Whatever happened, he told himself, fiercely, this must never be. He felt his breast-pocket mechanically. Yes, the letter was there. Dare he risk it?

She was a proud woman, she would be unforgiving if once she believed. But supposing she found him out? He temporized.

"Thank you for telling me," he said. "Do you mind putting me down here?"

"Why? You seemed in no hurry a few minutes ago."

"The world," he said, "was a different place then."

She looked at him searchingly.

"You had better tell me all about it," she remarked. "You have something on your mind, something which you are half disposed to tell me, a little more than half, I think. Go on."

He looked at her as one might look at the magician who has achieved the apparently impossible.

"You are wonderful," he said. "Yes, I will tell you my dilemma, if you like. I have just come from Sloane Gardens!"

Her face changed instantly. It was as though a mask had been dropped over it. Her eyes were fixed, her features expressionless.

"Well?" she said, simply.