The Philanderers Part 18

'Oh, well,' said Drake. 'It's easy enough to see, if you can compare English with the foreign colonies.' He rose from his chair and launched forth, walking about the room. 'Look at the Germans! There are seven hundred German colonists, all told, in the German colonies, and each of them costs the German tax-payer little short of eight hundred a year. How many of them are in the English colonies? And what's the reason? Why, they want to have the inst.i.tutions of the Fatherland ready-made in five minutes. They need the colonies made before they can prosper in it. The French are better, but they are spoilt by officialdom. The Englishman just adapts himself to the conditions, and sets to work to adapt the conditions to himself too. He strikes a sort of mean, and the Home Government leaves him alone--leaves him too much alone some say, and rightly, in cases. There's a distinction to be drawn, and it's difficult to draw it so far away. It's this, when the colony's made, then it isn't a bad thing for the Government to keep a fairly tight hold on it. But in the making it's best left to itself; you can lay a cable between London and a colony too soon for the good of that colony. There's no fear of the colonist forgetting the mother country--he may forget the Home Government, does at times, and then there's a mistake or two. But that's the defect of the quality.' He checked himself abruptly. 'But I'm running away from what we were talking about. Yes; I think we shall do all right in Matanga.'

'You don't mean to go back there yourself?'

'Not to live there. To tell the truth, I think there's a man or two wanted in England just now, who has had a practical experience of our colonies.' Drake spoke without the least trace of boastfulness, but in a tone of quiet self-reliance, and Clarice had a thrill of intuition that he would not have said so much as that to any one but herself.

Clarice began to play again, this time a waltz tune. Drake came over to the piano, and stood leaning upon the lid of it; he took up the ring and turned it over in his fingers. She said thoughtfully:

'I suppose that's true of men as well'; and then, with a hesitating correction, 'I mean of men like you.'

'What's true?'

'Well, that they are best without--help from any one--that they stand in no need of it.' She spoke quite seriously, with a note almost of regret.

'Oh, I don't know that,' he answered, with a laugh. 'It would be a rash thing to say. Of course a man ought to depend upon himself.'

'Oh, of course,' she agreed, and went on playing.

Drake was still holding the ring, and he said slowly:

'You remember that afternoon I told you about'--he hesitated for a second--'Gorley?' Clarice looked up in surprise.

'Yes,' she said.

'You were wearing this ring. You hid your face in your hands. It was the last thing I saw of you.'

She lowered her eyes from his face, and said, with a certain timidity, 'He gave it to me.'

Drake started and leaned on the piano.

'And you still wear it?' he asked sharply.

She nodded, but without looking at him. Drake rose upright, straightening himself; for a moment or two he stood looking at her, and then he walked away towards the window. His hat was lying on a table close by it.

'But I don't think that I shall again,' she murmured. She heard him turn quickly round and come back. He stood behind her; she could see his shadow thrown across the bar of sunlight on the carpet; but he did not speak. Clarice became anxious that he should, and yet afraid too. The music began to falter again; once she stopped completely, and let her fingers rest upon the keys, as though she had no power to lift them and continue. Then she struck a chord with a loud defiance. If only he would move, she thought--if only he would come round and stand in front of her! It would be so much easier to speak, to divert him. So long as he stood silent and motionless behind her, she felt, in a strange manner, at his mercy.

She rose from her seat suddenly, and confronted him. There was challenge in the movement, but none the less her eyes sought the ground, and, once face to face with him, she stood in an att.i.tude of submission.

'What does that mean?' she heard him ask in a low voice. 'You won't wear it again.'

She did not answer, but in spite of herself, against her will, she raised her eyes until they met his. She heard a cry, hoa.r.s.e and pa.s.sionate; she felt herself lifted, caught, and held against him. She saw his eyes above hers, burning into hers; she felt the pressure of two lips upon hers, and her own respond obediently.

'Is it true?' The words were whispered into her ear with an accent of wonder, almost of awe.

'Yes,' she whispered back, compelled to the answer, subservient to his touch, to his words, and, to the full, conscious of her subservience. She felt the big breath he drew in answering her monosyllable. He held her unresisting, pa.s.sive in his arms, watching her cheeks fire. She realised, in a kind of detached way, that he was holding her so that the tips of her toes only touched the floor, and somehow that seemed of a piece with the rest. Then he set her down, and stood apart, keeping her hands. 'It's funny,' he said, 'how one goes on year after year, quite satisfied, knowing nothing of this, meaning not to know.'

She caught at the phrase and stammered, 'Perhaps that was wise.'

'It was. For so I met you.'

He released her hands, and she sank into the nearest chair. Drake walked to the window and stood facing the sunlight, breathing it in. 'Clarice,'

she heard him murmur, with a shake of his shoulders like a great Newfoundland dog; and then the cry of a newspaper boy shouting the headlines of a special edition rasped into the room.

Drake leaned out of the window. 'Hi!' he called, and tossed a penny into the street.

'Threepence,' shouted the boy from below.

'It's a penny paper,' cried Drake.

'Threepence. There's a corner in 'em.'

Clarice listened to the argument. Most men, she thought helplessly, don't buy newspapers the moment they have been accepted, and, at all events, it is an occasion when they are disposed to throw their money about. It made no difference of any kind to him.

Drake finally got the better of the bargain, and the paper was brought up to the room. Clarice saw Drake open it hurriedly, and his face cloud and harden as he glanced down the column.

'What's the matter?' she asked in a rising voice.

'A rebellion in Matanga,' he said slowly. 'I thought that danger was averted,' and there was a distinct note of self-reproach in his tone.

Clarice felt her heart beat quicker. She rose from her chair. 'What does that mean to you?' she asked.

'Delay,' he replied, with the self-reproach yet more accentuated.

'Nothing more, I am sure; but it does mean that.'

'Nothing more?'

He noticed an expression of disappointment upon the girl's face, and, mistaking it, repeated, 'Nothing more than that, Clarice.' He took a step towards her. 'Of course I ought not to have spoken to you yet,--not until everything was settled. I am sorry--of course it will come out all right, only till then it wasn't fair. I didn't mean to,--not even when I came this afternoon. But seeing you,--I wasn't strong enough,--I gave in.'

Clarice felt a pulse of satisfaction, and her lips shaped to a smile.

'Ah, you don't regret it,' he exclaimed, and the look of humiliation pa.s.sed from his face. 'Your father's in the library,' he went on; 'I had better go and tell him. Shall I go alone, or will you come with me?'

'No, you go; I will wait here.'

She stood alone in the centre of the room while Drake went downstairs, staring fixedly in front of her. Once or twice she set her hands to her forehead and drew them down her flushed cheeks. Then she walked to the window. There was something floating on the edge of her mind, just eluding her. A thought was it, or a phrase? If a phrase, who had spoken it? She began to remember; it was something Stephen Drake had said, but about what? And then, in a flash, her recollection defined it for her. It was about moonlight being absorbed into the darkness of an African veld, just soaking into it like water into dry ground. She had a vision of the wide rolling plain, black from sky's rim to sky's rim, and the moonlight pouring a futile splendour into its lap. She moved with a quick and almost desperate run to the door, opened it, and leaned over the bal.u.s.trade of the staircase. The hall was empty and no sound of voices came from the library. She stepped cautiously down the stairs; as she reached the last step the door of the library opened and Drake appeared on the threshold.

Clarice leaned against the wall, holding her hand to her heart.

'Why, Clarice!' he cried, and started towards her.

'Hush!' She tried to whisper the word, but her voice rose. She thrust out a hand between herself and Drake, and cast a startled glance across his shoulder, expecting to see her father come forward smiling congratulations at her. Drake caught the outstretched hand, and, setting an arm about her waist, drew her into the library.

'I have not seen Mr. Le Mesurier,' he said; 'he's out, I am afraid.'

The room was empty. Clarice looked round it, doubting her eyes, and with a sudden revulsion of feeling dropped into a chair by the table and sat with her face buried in her arms in a flood of tears.