A Lost Leader Part 49

"Come," she said, "I am getting cold and cramped."

He walked by her side to the hotel. At the foot of the steps she left him.

"We shall meet again in London," she said, quietly. "Don't be too hard upon your old friends when you take your seat. Remember that you were once one of us."

She looked round and waved her hand as she disappeared. He caught a glimpse of her face as she pa.s.sed underneath the hanging lamp--the face of a tired woman suddenly grown old. With a little groan he made his way into the hotel, and slowly ascended the stairs.

Early the next morning Mannering left Bonestre, and in twenty-four hours he was back again, summoned by a telegram which had met him in London. It seemed to him that everybody at the station and about the hotel regarded him with shocked and respectful sympathy. Hester, looking like a ghost, took him at once to her room. He was haggard and weary with rapid travelling, and he sank into a chair.

"Tell me--the worst!" he said.

"She started with Mr. Englehall about mid-day," Hester said. "They had luggage, but I explained that he was going to Paris, she was coming back by train. At two o'clock we were rung up on the telephone. Their brake had snapped going down the hill by St. Entuiel, and the chauffeur--he is mad now--but they think he lost his nerve. They were dashed into a tree, and--they were both dead--when they were got out from the wreck."

"G.o.d in Heaven!" Mannering murmured, white to the lips.

There was a silence between them. Mannering had covered his head with his hands. Hester tried once or twice to speak, but the tears were streaming from her eyes. She had the air of having more to say. The white horror of tragedy was still in her face.

"There is a letter," she said at last. "She left a letter for you."

Mannering rose slowly to his feet and moved to the lamp. Directly he had broken the seal he understood. He read the first line and looked up. His eyes met Hester's.

"Who knows--this?" he asked, hoa.r.s.ely.

"No one! They had not been gone two hours. I explained everything."

Then Mannering read on.

"My dear Husband:

"I call you that for the last time, for I am going off with Englehall to Paris. Don't be too shocked, and don't despise me too much. I am just a very ordinary woman, and I'm afraid I've bad blood in my veins.

Anyhow, I can't go on living under a gla.s.s case any longer. The old life was rotten enough, but this is insupportable. I'm going to have a fling, and after that I don't care what becomes of me.

"Now, Lawrence, I don't want you to blame yourself. I did think perhaps that when we were married I might have got you to care for me a little, but I suppose that was just my vanity. It wasn't very possible with a woman like--well, never mind who--about. You did your best. You were very nice and very kind to me last night, but it wasn't the real thing, was it? I knew you hated being where you were. I could almost hear your sigh of relief when I let you go. The fact of it is, our marriage was a mistake. I ought to have been satisfied with your name, I suppose, and the position it gave me, but I'm not that sort of woman. I've been in Bohemia too long. I like cheery friends, even if their names are not in Debrett, and I must have some one to care for me, or to pretend to care for me. You know I've cared for you--only you in a certain way--but I'm not heroic enough to be content with a shadowy love. I'm not an idealist. Imagination doesn't content me in the least. I'd rather have an inferior substance than ideal perfection. You see, I'm a very commonplace person at heart, Lawrence--almost vulgar. But these are my last words to you, so I've gone in for plain speaking. Now you're rid of me.

"That's all! From your point of view I suppose, and your friends, I've gone to the devil. Don't be too sure of it. I'm going to have a good time, and when the end comes I'm willing to pay. If you are idiotic enough to come after me, I shall be angry with you for the first time in my life, and it wouldn't be the least bit of use. Englehall's an old friend of mine, and he's a good sort. He's wanted me to do this often enough for years, but I never felt quite like it. I believe he'd marry me after, but he's got a wife shut up somewhere.

"I expect you think this a callous sort of letter. Well, I can't help it. If it disgusts you with me, so much the better. I'm sorry for the scandal, but you will get over that. Good-bye, Lawrence. Forgive me all the bother I've been to you.

"Blanche."

Mannering looked up from the letter, and again his eyes met Hester's. The secret was theirs alone. Very carefully he tore the pages into small pieces. Then he opened the stove and watched them consumed.

"No one will ever know," Hester said. "She said--when she left--that it was a morning's ride--but motors were so uncertain that she took a bag."

Mannering's eyes were filled once more with tears. The intolerable pity of the whole thing, its awful suddenness swept every other thought out of his mind. He remembered how anxiously she had tried to please him on that last night. He loathed himself for the cold brutality of his chilly affection. Hester came and knelt by his side, but she said nothing. So the hours pa.s.sed.

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I

THE PERSISTENCY OF BORROWDEAN

"And what does Mannering think of it all, I wonder!" Lord Redford remarked, lighting a fresh cigarette. "This may be his opportunity, who can tell!"

"Will he have the nerve to grasp it?" Borrowdean asked. "Mannering has never been proved in a crisis."

"He may have the nerve. I should be more inclined to question the desire," Lord Redford said. "For a man in his position he has always seemed to me singularly unambitious. I don't think that the prospect of being Prime Minister would dazzle him in the least. It is part of the genius of the politician too, to know exactly when and how to seize an opportunity. I can imagine him watching it come, examining it through his eyegla.s.s, and standing on one side with a shrug of the shoulders."

"You do not believe, then," Berenice said, "that he is sufficiently in earnest to grasp it?"

"Exactly," Lord Redford said. "I have that feeling about Mannering, I must admit, especially during the last two years. He seems to have drawn away from all of us, to live altogether too absorbed and self-contained a life for a man who has great ambitions to realize, or who is in downright earnest about his work."

"What you all forget when you discuss Lawrence Mannering is this,"

Berenice said. "He holds his position almost as a sacred charge. He is absolutely conscientious. He wants certain things for the sake of the people, and he will work steadily on until he gets them. I believe it is the truth that he has no personal ambition, but if the cause he has at heart is to be furthered at all it must be by his taking office.

Therefore I think that when the time comes he will take it."

"That sounds reasonable enough," Lord Redford admitted. "By the bye, did you notice that he is included in the house party at Sandringham again this week?"

Anstruther, the youngest Cabinet Minister, and Lord Redford's nephew, joined in the conversation.

"I can tell you something for a fact," he said. "My cousin is Lady-in-Waiting, and she's been up in town for a few days, and she asked me about Mannering. A Certain Personage thinks very highly of him indeed.

Told some one that Mr. Mannering was the most statesman-like politician in the service of his country. I believe he'd sooner see Mannering Prime Minister than any one."

"But he has no following," Borrowdean objected.

"I think," Berenice said, slowly, "that he keeps as far aloof as possible for one reason, and one reason only. He avoids friendship, but he makes no enemies. He cultivates a neutral position whenever he can. What he is looking forward to, I am sure, is to found a coalition Government."

"It is very possible," Lord Redford remarked. "I wonder if he will ask me to join."

"Always selfish," Berenice laughed. "You men are all alike!"

"On the contrary," Lord Redford answered, "my interest was purely patriotic. I cannot imagine the affairs of the country flourishing deprived of my valuable services. Let us go and wander through the crowd. Members of a Government in extremes like ours ought not to whisper together in corners. It gives rise to comment."

Anstruther came hurrying up. He drew Redford on one side.

"Mannering is here," he said, quietly. "Just arrived from Sandringham. He is looking for you."

Almost as he spoke Mannering appeared. He did not at first see Berenice, and from the corner where she stood she watched him closely.

It was two years since those few weeks at Bonestre, and during all that time they had scarcely met. Berenice knew that he had avoided her. For twelve months he had declined all social engagements, and since then he had pleaded the stress of political affairs as an excuse for leading the life almost of a recluse. Unseen herself, she studied him closely. He was much thinner, and every trace of his once healthy colouring had disappeared. His eyes seemed deeper set. There were streaks of grey in his hair. But for all that to her he was unaltered. He was still the one man in the world. She saw him shake hands with Lord Redford and draw him a little on one side.