A Lost Leader Part 45

"The little white flower which grows in the mountains is what we must always seek," she answered. "The meadows are for the others."

"We are accursed with this knowledge, and the desire for it," he declared, fiercely. "The suffering is for us, and the joy for the beasts of the field. Why not throw down the cards? We are the devil's puppets in this game of life."

"There is no place for us down there," she answered, sadly. "There is joy enough for them, because the finger has never touched their eyes. But for us--no, we have to go on! I was a foolish woman, Lawrence. I lost my sense of proportion. Traditions, you see, were hard to break away from. I did not understand. Let this be the end of all mention of such things between us. We have missed the turning, and we must go on. That is the hardest thing in life. One can never retrace one's steps."

"We go on--apart?"

"We must," she said. "Don't think me prejudiced, Lawrence. I must stand by my party. Theoretically, I think that you are the only logical politician I have ever known. Actually, I think that you are steering your course towards the sandbanks. You will fail, but you will fail magnificently. Well, that is something."

"It is a good deal," he answered, "but if I live long enough, and my strength remains, I shall succeed. I shall place the Government of this country upon an altogether different basis. I shall empty the work-houses and fill the factories. Nothing short of that will content me. Nothing short of that would content any man upon whose shoulders the burden has fallen."

"You have centuries of prejudice to fight," she warned him. "You may not succeed! Yet you have all my good wishes. I shall always watch you."

They turned homeward in silence. All that had pa.s.sed between them seemed to be already far back in the past. Their retrogression seemed almost symbolical. They spoke of indifferent things.

"Tell me," he asked, "how you came to know what was going on in Leeds."

"It was your wife," she said, "who discovered it!"

"My wife?"

"She saw a telegram on Sir Leslie's table at breakfast, a telegram from the man Polden. She read it and demanded an explanation. Sir Leslie tried all he could to wriggle out of it, but in vain. She appealed to me. Even I had a great deal of difficulty in dealing with him, but eventually he gave way."

"Then the telegram," Mannering asked, "wasn't that from you?"

She shook her head.

"It was from your wife," she said. "I cannot take much credit for myself.

It is she whom you must thank for your election. I came out at rather a dramatic moment. Sir Leslie had just offered her money, five hundred pounds, I think, to give him back his telegram and say nothing. She appealed to me at once, and Sir Leslie looked positively foolish."

"I am much obliged to you for telling me," Mannering muttered. He remembered now that he had scarcely spoken a dozen words to his wife since his return.

"Mrs. Mannering appears to have your interests very much at heart,"

Berenice said, quietly. "She proved herself quite a match for Sir Leslie.

I think that he would have left here at once, only we are expecting Clara back."

Mannering smiled scornfully.

"I do not think that even Clara," he said, "is quite fool enough not to recognize in Borrowdean the arrant opportunist. For my part I am glad that all pretence at friendship between us is now at an end. He is one of those men whom I should count more dangerous as a friend than as an enemy."

Berenice did not reply. They were already in the courtyard of the hotel.

Blanche was in a wicker chair in a sunny corner, talking to a couple of young Englishmen. Berenice turned towards the steps. They parted without any further words.

CHAPTER VIII

PLAYING THE GAME

Mannering for a moment hesitated. One of the two young men who were talking to his wife he recognized as a former acquaintance of hers--one of a genus whom he had little sympathy with and less desire to know.

While he stood there Blanche laughed at some remark made by one of her companions, and the laugh, too, seemed somehow to remind him of the old days. He moved slowly forward.

The young men strolled off almost at once. Mannering took a vacant chair by his wife's side.

"I have only just heard," he said, "how much I have to thank you for. I took it for granted somehow that it was the d.u.c.h.ess who had discovered our friend Borrowdean's little scheme and sent that telegram. Why didn't you sign it?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It was the d.u.c.h.ess who made him chuck it up," she said. "I could never have made him do that. I was an idiot to let Parkins stay in England at all."

"I always understood," he said, "that he was dead."

"I let you think so," she answered. "I thought you might worry. But seriously, if he told the truth, now, after all these years, would any one take any notice of it?"

"Very likely not," he said, "so far as regards any criminal responsibility. But our political life is fenced about by all the middle-cla.s.s love of propriety and hatred of all form of scandal.

Parkins's story, authenticated or not, would have lost me my seat for Leeds."

"Then I am very glad," she said, "that I happened to see the telegram. Do you know where Parkins is now?"

"One of my supporters," he said, "a queer little man named Richard Fardell, has him in tow. He is bringing him up to London, I think."

She nodded.

"What are you doing this afternoon?" he asked.

She looked at him curiously.

"Mr. Englehall has asked me to go out in his car," she said. "I am rather tired of motoring, but I think I shall go."

Mannering lit a cigarette which he had just taken from his case.

"I don't think I should," he remarked.

She turned her head slowly, and looked at him.

"Why not?" she asked. "How can it concern you? Your plans for the afternoon are, I presume, already made!"

"It may not concern me directly," he answered, "but I have an idea that Mr. Englehall is not exactly the sort of person I care to have you driving about with."

She laughed hardly.

"I am most flattered by your interest in me," she declared. "Pray consider Mr. Englehall disposed of. You have some other plans, perhaps?"

"If you care to," he said, "we will walk down to the club for lunch and come home by the sea."

"Alone?"