A Lost Leader Part 47

"No, nor any one else," she answered, softly.

"Yet I can perhaps correct a little your point of view. I think that you overestimate your indebtedness to the woman whom you have made your wife.

Her husband was a weak, dissipated creature and he was a doomed man long before that unfortunate day. It is even very questionable whether that scene in which you figured had anything whatever to do in hastening his death. That is a good many years ago, and ever since then you seem to have impoverished yourself to find her the means to live in luxury. I consider that you paid your debt over and over again, and that your final act of self-abnegation was entirely uncalled for. What more she wants from you I do not know. Perhaps I can imagine."

There was a moment's silence. She turned her head and looked at him--looked him in the eyes unshamed, yet with her secret shining there for him to see.

"There may be others, Lawrence," she said, "to whom you owe something. A woman cannot take back what she has given. There may be sufferers in the world whom you ought also to consider. And a woman loves to think that what she may not have herself is at least kept sacred--to her memory."

"Fore!" cried Lord Redford, who had found his ball. "Awfully decent of you people to wait so long. We were afraid you meant to claim the hole!"

Mannering rose to play his shot.

"The d.u.c.h.ess and I, Lord Redford," he said, lightly, "scorn to take small advantages. We mean to play the game!"

CHAPTER IX

THE TRAGEDY OF A KEY

Blanche, in a plain black net gown, sat on Lord Redford's right hand at the hastily improvised dinner party that evening. Berenice, more subtly and more magnificently dressed, was opposite, by Mannering's side. The conversation seemed mostly to circle about them.

"A very charming place," Lord Redford declared. "I have enjoyed my stay here thoroughly. Let us hope that we may all meet here again next year,"

he added, raising his gla.s.s. "Mannering, you will drink to that, I hope?"

"With all my heart," Mannering answered. "And you, Blanche?"

She raised her almost untasted gla.s.s and touched it with her lips. She set it down with a faint smile. Berenice moved her head towards him.

"Your wife is not very enthusiastic," she remarked.

"She neither plays golf nor bathes," Mannering said. "It is possible that she finds it a little dull."

"Both are habits which it is possible to acquire," Berenice answered. "I am telling your husband, Mrs. Mannering," she continued, "that you ought to learn to play golf."

"Lawrence has offered to teach me more than once," Blanche answered, calmly. "I am afraid that games do not attract me. Besides, I am too old to learn!"

"My dear Mrs. Mannering!" Lord Redford protested.

"I am forty-two," Blanche replied, "and at that age a woman thinks twice before she begins anything new in the shape of vigorous exercise.

Besides, I find plenty to amuse me here."

"Might one ask in what direction?" Berenice murmured. "I have found in the place many things that are delightful, but not amusing."

"I find amus.e.m.e.nt often in watching my neighbours," Blanche said. "I like to ask myself what it is they want, and to study their way of attaining it. You generally find that every one is fairly transparent when once you have found the key--and everybody is trying for something which they don't care for other people to know about."

The d.u.c.h.ess looked at Blanche steadily. There was a certain insolence, the insolence of her aristocratic birth and a.s.sured position in the level stare of her clear brown eyes. But Blanche did not flinch.

"I had no idea, Mrs. Mannering, that you had tastes of that sort,"

Berenice said, languidly. "Suppose you give us a few examples."

"Not for the world," Blanche answered, fervently. "Did you say that we were to have coffee outside, Lord Redford? How delightful! I wonder if Lady Redford is ready."

They all trooped out in a minute or two. Berenice laid her hand upon Mannering's arm.

"Your wife," she said, quietly, "is going a little too far. She is getting positively rude to me!"

Mannering muttered some evasive reply. He, too, had marked the note of battle in Blanche's tone. He had noticed, too, the unusual restraint of her manner. She had drunk little or no wine at dinner time, and she had talked quietly and sensibly. Directly they reached the courtyard she seated herself on a settee for two, and made room for him by her side.

"Come and tell me about the golf match," she said. "Who won?"

Mannering had no alternative but to obey. Lady Redford, however, drew her chair up close to theirs, and the conversation was always general.

Berenice in a few minutes rose to her feet.

"Listen to the sea," she exclaimed. "Don't some of you want to come down to the rocks and watch it?"

Blanche rose up at once.

"Do come, Lawrence, if you are not too tired!" she said.

The whole party trooped out on to the promenade. Blanche pa.s.sed her arm through her husband's, and calmly appropriated him.

"You can walk with whom you please presently, Lawrence," she said, "but I want you for a few minutes. I suppose you will admit that I have some claim?"

"Certainly," Mannering answered. "I have never denied it."

"I am your wife," Blanche said, "though heaven knows why you ever married me. The d.u.c.h.ess is, I suppose, the woman whom you would have married if you hadn't got into a mess with your politics. She is a very attractive woman, and you married me, of course, out of pity, or some such maudlin reason. But all the same I am here, and--I don't care what you do when I can't see you, but I won't have her make love to you before my face."

"The d.u.c.h.ess is not that sort of woman, Blanche," Mannering said, gravely.

"Isn't she?" Blanche remarked, unconvinced. "Well, I've watched her, and in my opinion she isn't very different from any other sort of woman. Do you wish you were free very much? I know she does!"

"Is there any object to be gained by this conversation?" Mannering asked.

"Frankly, I don't like it. I made you no absurd promises when I married you. I think that you understood the position very well. So far as I know I have given you no cause to complain."

They had reached the end of the promenade. Blanche leaned over the rail.

Her eyes seemed fixed upon a light flashing and disappearing across the sea. Mannering stood uncomfortably by her side.

"No cause to complain!" she repeated, as though to herself. "No, I suppose not. And yet, how much the better off do you think I am, Lawrence? I had friends before of some sort or another. Some of them pretended to like me, even if they didn't. I did as I chose. I lived as I liked. I was my own mistress. And now--well, there is no one! I enjoy the respectability of your name, the privilege of knowing your friends, the ability to pay my bills, but I should go stark mad if it wasn't for Hester. I gave myself away to you, I know. You married me for pity, I know. But what in G.o.d's name do I get out of it?"

A note of real pa.s.sion quivered in her tone. Mannering looked down at her helplessly, taken wholly aback, without the power for a moment to formulate his thoughts. There was a touch of colour in her pale cheeks, her eyes were lit with an unusual fire. The faint moonlight was kind to her. Her features, thinner than they had been, seemed to have gained a certain refinement. She reminded him more than ever before of the Blanche of many years ago. He answered her kindly, almost tenderly.

"I am very sorry," he said, "if I have caused you any suffering. What I did I did for the best. I don't think that I quite understood, and I thought that you knew--what had come into my life."

"I knew that you cared for her, of course," she answered, with a little sob, "but I did not know that you meant to nurse it--that feeling. I thought that when we were married you would try to care for me--a little.

I--Here are the others!"