A Lost Leader Part 29

She leaned forward. Her clasped hands rested upon her knee. She seemed to be examining the tip of her patent shoe. Suddenly she looked up at him.

"You ought to have come and told me yourself!" she said.

"I had no opportunity," he reminded her. "I left London the morning after--it happened--and I returned last night."

"Political business?" she asked.

"Entirely."

"Lawrence," she said, "I don't like it."

"Why not?" he asked. "Has mine been such a successful life, do you think, that you need grudge me a little happiness towards its close?"

"Bosh!" she answered. "You are only forty-six. You are a young man still."

"I had forgotten my years," he declared. "I only know that I am tired."

"You look it," she remarked. "I must say that there is very little of the triumphant suitor about you. You work too hard, Lawrence."

"If I do," he asked, with a note of fierceness in his tone, "whose fault is it? I was almost happy at Blakely. I had almost learned to forget. It was you who dragged me out again. You were not satisfied with half of my income; you were always in debt, always wanting more money. Then Borrowdean made use of you. He wanted me back into politics, you wanted more money for your follies and extravagances. Back I had to come into harness. Blanche, I've tried to do my duty to you, but there is a limit.

I owed you a comfortable place in life, and I have tried to see that you have it. I have never refused anything you have asked me, I have never mentioned the sacrifices which I have been forced to make. But there is a limit. I draw it here. I will not suffer any interference between the d.u.c.h.ess of Lenchester and myself!"

Blanche Phillimore rose slowly to her feet. He was used to her fits of pa.s.sion, but there was no sign of anything of the sort in her face. She was agitated, but in some new way. Her words were an attack, but her manner suggested rather an appeal. Her large, fine eyes, her one perfectly natural feature, were soft and luminous. They seemed somehow to transfigure her face. To him it seemed like the foolish, handsome woman of fifteen years ago who had suddenly come to life again.

"You owed me--a comfortable place in life, Lawrence! Thank--you. You have paid the debt very well. You owed me--a respectable guardianship; you paid that, too. Thank you again. Now tell me, do you owe me nothing else?"

"I owed you one debt," he said, gravely, "which neither I nor any other man who incurs it can ever discharge."

"I am glad you realize it," she answered. "But have you ever tried to discharge it? You have given me a home and money to throw away on any folly which could kill thought. What about the rest?"

"Blanche," he said, gravely, "the rest was impossible! You know that as well as I do."

"It is fifteen years ago, Lawrence," she said, "and all that time we have fenced with our words. Now I am going to speak a little more plainly. You robbed me of my husband. The fault may not have been wholly yours, but the fact remains. You struck him, and he died. I was left alone!"

Mannering's face was ashen. The whole horrible scene was rising up again before him. He covered his face with his hands. It was more distinct than ever. He saw the man's flushed face, heard his stream of abuse, felt the sting of his blow, the hot anger with which he had struck back. Then those few awful moments of suspense, the moment afterwards when they had looked at one another. He shivered! Why had she let loose this flood of memories? She was speaking to him again.

"I was left alone," she repeated, quietly, "and I have been alone ever since. You don't know much about women, Lawrence. You never did! Try and realize, though, what that must mean to a woman like myself, not strong, not clever, with very few resources--just a woman. I cared for my husband, I suppose, in an average sort of way. At any rate he loved me.

Then--there was you. Oh, you never made love to me, of course. You were not the sort of man to make love to another man's wife. But you used to show that you liked to be with me, Lawrence. Your voice and your eyes and your whole manner used to tell me that. Then there came--that hideous day! I lost you both. What have I had since, Lawrence?"

"Very little, I am afraid, worth having."

"'Very little--worth having'!" She flung the words from her with pa.s.sionate scorn. "I had your alms, your cold, hurried visits, when you seemed to shiver if our fingers touched. It would have seemed to you, I suppose, a terrible sin to have touched the lips of the woman whom you had helped to rob of her husband, to have spoken kindly to her, to have given her at least a little affection to warm her heart. Poor me! What a h.e.l.l you made of my days, with your selfish model life, your panderings to conscience. I didn't want much, you know, Lawrence," she said, with a sudden choking in her voice. "I would never have robbed you of your peace of mind. All I wanted was kindness. And I think, Lawrence, that it was a debt, but you never paid it."

Mannering had a moment of self-revelation, a terrible, lurid moment.

Every word that she had said was true.

"You have never spoken to me like this before," he reminded her, desperately. "I never knew that you cared."

"Don't lie!" she answered, calmly. "You turned your head away that you might not see. In your heart you knew very well. What else, do you think, made me, a very ordinary, nervous sort of woman, get you out of the house that day, tell my story, the story that shielded you, without faltering, put even the words into your own mouth? It was because I was fool enough to care! And oh, my G.o.d, how you have tortured me since! You would sit there, coldly censorious, and reason with me about my friends, my manner of life. I knew what you thought. You didn't hide it very well. Lawrence, I wonder I didn't kill you!"

"I wish that you had," he said, bitterly.

She nodded.

"Oh, I know how you are feeling just now," she said. "Truth strikes home, you know, and it hurts just a little, doesn't it? In a few days your admirable common sense will prevail. You will say to yourself: 'She was that sort of woman, she had that sort of disposition, she was bound to go to the dogs, anyway!' So you are going to marry the d.u.c.h.ess of Lenchester, Lawrence!"

He stood up.

"Blanche," he said, "that was all a mistake. I didn't understand. Let us forget that day altogether. Marry me now, and I will try to make up for these past years."

She stared at him blankly. The colour in her cheek was like a lurid patch under the pallor of her skin. She gave a little gasp, and her hand went to her side. Then she laughed hardly, almost offensively.

"What a man of sentiment," she declared. "After fifteen years, too, and only just engaged to another woman! No, thank you, my dear Lawrence. I've lived my life, such as it has been. I'm not so very old, but I look fifty, and I've vices enough to blacken an entire neighbourhood. Fancy, if people saw me, and heard that you might have married the d.u.c.h.ess of Lenchester. They'd hint at an asylum."

"Never mind about other people," he said. "Give me a chance, Blanche, to show that I'm not such an absolute brute."

"Rubbish," she interrupted. "Fifteen years ago I would have married you.

In fact, I expected to. The reason why I found the courage to shield you from any unpleasantness that awful day was because I knew if trouble came and there was any scandal you would feel yourself obliged to marry me, and I wanted you to marry me--because you wanted to. What an idiot I was!

Now, please go away, Lawrence. Marry the d.u.c.h.ess, if you like, but don't worry me with your re-awakened conscience. I'm going my own way for the rest of my few years, and the less I see of you the better I shall be pleased. You will forgive me--but I have an engagement--down the river!

I really must hurry you off."

Her teeth were set close together, the sobs seemed tangled in her throat.

It seemed to her that all the longing in her life was concentrated in that one pa.s.sionate desire, that he should seize her in his arms now, hold her there--tell her that it had all been a mistake, that the ugly times were dreams, that after all he had cared--a little! The room swam round with her, but she pointed smilingly to the door, which her trim parlour-maid was holding open. And Mannering went.

CHAPTER IX

THE FALTERING OF MANNERING

Mannering left by the afternoon train for Hampshire, where he was to be the guest for a few days of the leader of his party. He arrived without sending word of his coming, to find the whole of the house party absent at a cricket match. The short respite was altogether welcome to him. He changed his clothes and wandered off into the gardens. Here an hour or so later Berenice's maid found him.

"Her Grace would like to see you, sir, if you would come to her sitting-room," the girl said, with a demure smile.

Mannering, with something of an inward groan, followed her. Berenice, very slim and stately in her simple white muslin gown, rose from the couch as he entered, and held out her hands.

"At last," she murmured. "You provoking man, to stay away so long. And what have you been doing with yourself?"

Her sentence concluded with a little note of dismay. Mannering was positively haggard in the clear afternoon light. There were lines underneath his eyes, and his face had a tense, drawn appearance. He did not kiss her, as she had more than half expected. He held her hands for a moment, and then sank down upon the couch by her side.

"It was not exactly easy work--up there," he said.

She noticed the repression.

"Tell me all about it," she begged.

His thoughts surged back to those three weeks of tragedy. His personal misery became for the moment a shadowy thing. The sorrows of one man, what were they to the breaking hearts of millions? He thought of the children, and he shuddered.