A Lost Leader Part 7

"Can't help it," he declared. "I will tell you something that I have no right to tell you. Mrs. Handsell is not your friend's real name."

"Richard, how exciting!" she exclaimed. "Do tell me how you know."

"Her solicitors told mine so when she took the farm."

"Not her real name? But--I wonder they let it to her."

"Oh, her references were all right," he answered. "My people saw to that.

I do not mean to insinuate for a moment that she had any improper reasons for calling herself Mrs. Handsell, or anything else she liked. The explanations given were quite satisfactory. But she has become very friendly with you and with your uncle, and I think that she ought to have told you both about it."

"Do you know her real name?"

"No! It is not my affair. My solicitors knew, and they were satisfied.

Perhaps I ought not to have told you this, but--"

"Hush!" she said. "They are coming out. If you like you can take me down to the orchard wall, and we will watch the tide come in--"

Mannering came out alone and looked around. The full moon was creeping into the sky. The breath of wind which shook the leaves of the tall elm trees that shut in his little demesne from the village, was soft, and, for the time of year, wonderfully mild. Below, through the orchard trees, were faint visions of the marshland, riven with creeks of silvery sea. He turned back towards the room, where red-shaded lamps still stood upon the white tablecloth, a curiously artificial daub of color after the splendour of the moonlit land.

"The night is perfect," he exclaimed. "Do you need a wrap, or are you sufficiently acclimatized?"

She came out to him, tall and slender in her black dinner gown, the figure of a girl, the pale, pa.s.sionate face of a woman, to whom every moment of life had its own special and individual meaning. Her eyes were strangely bright. There was a tenseness about her manner, a restraint in her tone, which seemed to speak of some emotional crisis. She pa.s.sed out into the quiet garden, in itself so exquisitely in accordance with this sleeping land, and even Mannering was at once conscious of some alien note in these old-world surroundings which had long ago soothed his ruffled nerves into the luxury of repose.

"A wrap!" she murmured. "How absurd! Come and let us sit under the cedar tree. Those young people seem to have wandered off, and I want to talk to you."

"I am content to listen," he answered. "It is a night for listeners, this!"

"I want to talk," she continued, "and yet--the words seem difficult.

These wonderful days! How quickly they seem to have pa.s.sed."

"There are others to follow," he answered, smiling. "That is one of the joys of life here. One can count on things!"

"Others for you!" she murmured. "You have pitched your tent. I came here only as a wanderer."

"But scarcely a month ago," he exclaimed, "you too--"

"Don't!" she interrupted. "A month ago it seemed to me possible that I might live here always. I felt myself growing young again. I believed that I had severed all the ties which bound me to the days which have gone before. I was wrong. It was the sort of folly which comes to one sometimes, the sort of folly for which one pays."

His face was almost white in the moonlight. His deep-set grey eyes were fixed upon her.

"You were content--a month ago," he said. "You have been in London for two days, and you have come back a changed woman. Why must you think of leaving this place? Why need you go at all?"

"My friend," she said, softly, "I think that you know why. It is very beautiful here, and I have never been happier in all my life. But one may not linger all one's days in the pleasant places. One sleeps through the nights and is rested, but the days--ah, they are different."

"I cannot reason with you," he said. "You are too vague. Yet--you say that you have been contented here."

"I have been happy," she murmured.

"Then you must speak more plainly," he insisted, a note of pa.s.sion throbbing in his hoa.r.s.e tones. "I ask you again--why do you talk of going back, like a city slave whose days of holiday are over? What is there in the world more beautiful than the gifts the G.o.ds shower on us here? We have the sun, and the sea, and the wind by day and by night--this! It is the flower garden of life. Stay and pluck the roses with me."

"Ah, my friend," she murmured, "if that were possible!"

She sank down into the seat under the cedar tree. Her hands were clasped nervously together, her head was downcast.

"Your words," she continued, her voice sinking almost to a whisper, yet lacking nothing in distinctness, "are like wine. They mount to the head, they intoxicate, they tempt! And yet all the time one knows that it is not possible. Surely you yourself--in your heart--must know it!"

"Not I!" he answered, fiercely. "The world would have claimed me if it could, but I laughed at it. Our destinies are our own. With our own fingers we mould and shape them."

"There is the little voice," she said, "the little voice, which rings even through our dreams. Life--actual, militant life, I mean--may have its vulgarities, its weariness and its disappointments, but it is, after all, the only place for men and women. The battle may be sordid, and the prizes tinsel--yet it is only the cowards who linger without."

"Then let you and me be cowards," he answered. "We shall at least be happy."

She shook her head a little sadly.

"I doubt it," she answered. "Happiness is a gift, not a prize. It comes seldom enough to those who seek it."

He laughed scornfully.

"I am not a seeker," he cried. "I possess. It seems to me that all the beautiful things of life are here to-night. Listen! Do you hear the sea, the full tide sweeping softly up into the land, a long drawn out undernote of breathless harmonies, the rustling of leaves there in the elm trees, the faint night wind, like the murmuring of angels? Lift your head! Was there anything ever sweeter than the perfume from that hedge of honeysuckle? What can a man want more than these things--and--"

"Go on!"

"And the woman he loves! There, I have said it. Useless words enough! You know very well that I love you. I meant to have said nothing just yet, but who could help it--on such a night as this! Don't talk of going away, Berenice. I want you here always."

She held herself away from him. Her face was deathly white now. Her eyes questioned him fiercely.

"Before I answer you. You were in London last week?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I had business."

"In Chelsea, in Merton Street?"

He gave a little gasp.

"What do you know about that?" he asked, almost roughly.

"You were seen there, not for the first time. The person whom you visited--I have heard about. She is somewhat notorious, is she not?"

He was very quiet, pale to the lips. A strange, hunted expression had crept into his eyes.

"I want to know what took you there. Am I asking too much? Remember that you have asked me a good deal."

"Has Borrowdean anything to do with this?" he demanded.

"I have known Sir Leslie Borrowdean for many years," she answered, "and it is quite true that we have discussed certain matters--concerning you."