The Philanderers Part 21

Then he said: 'Miss Le Mesurier'--and the change in his voice made the girl turn swiftly to face him--'I leave Sark to-morrow morning by the early boat, so I thought I would say good-bye to you to-night.'

'But you are coming back,' she said quickly; 'I shall see you, of course, when you come back. What takes you away?'

'There's some land in Matanga which bounds my concession on the north, and I want to get hold of it. It's, I believe, quite as good, and may be better, than mine, and I know that some people are after it. It wouldn't help me if another company was to be started; and as the President of the Matanga Republic is on his way to England, I thought that I had better go out to Madeira, catch his steamer there, and secure a concession of it before he reaches England.'

Clarice gave a laugh. 'Then we are to expect you in a fortnight?'

'Yes, in a fortnight,' and he laid a significance upon the word which Clarice did not mistake. It was spoken with an accent of entreaty.

But indeed she needed no emphasis to fix it in her mind. The word besieged her; she caught herself uttering it, and while she uttered it the time itself seemed to have slipped by. She had but to say 'No' at the end of the fortnight, she a.s.sured herself, and she knew that she would only have to say it once. But the memory of that Sunday afternoon in Beaufort Gardens lay upon her like a load crushing all the comfort out of her knowledge.

Drake caught his steamer at Southampton, and the President at Madeira. He was received warmly as an old acquaintance, warily as a negotiator.

However, he extracted the concession as the boat pa.s.sed up Southampton Water, and disembarked with a signed memorandum in his pocket. At Southampton post-office he received a bundle of letters which had been forwarded to him from his chambers in London. He slipped them into his coat, and went at once on board the Guernsey steamer. At Guernsey, the next morning, he embarked on the little boat which runs between Guernsey and Sark. The sun was a golden fire upon the water; the race of the tides no more than a ripple. The island stuck out its great knees into the sea and lolled in the heat. Half-way across Drake bethought him of the letters. He took them out and glanced over the envelopes. One was in Clarice's handwriting. It announced to him her engagement with Sidney Mallinson.

CHAPTER XI

Of Drake's arrival at the Seigneurie Mrs. Willoughby wrote some account to Hugh Fielding, who was taking the waters for no ailment whatever at Marienbad. 'I was surprised to see him,' she wrote, 'because Clarice told me that she had written to him. Clarice was running down the stairs when he came into the hall. She stopped suddenly as she caught sight of him, clutched at the bal.u.s.trade, slipped a heel upon the edge of the step, and with a cry pitched straight into his arms at the bottom. Mr. Mallinson came out of the library while he was holding her. Clarice was not hurt, however, and Mr. Drake set her down. "I didn't pa.s.s through London," he said, and he seemed to be apologising. "My letters were forwarded to Southampton, and I only opened them on the Sark steamer." Then he congratulated them both. I spoke to Mr. Drake the same evening on the terrace here, foolishly hinting the feminine consolation that he was well free from a girl of Clarice's fickleness. He was in arms on the instant.

One gets at truth only by experiment, and through repeated mistakes. Why except women's hearts from the same law? I give his opinion, not his words. He doesn't talk of "women's hearts." You know his trick of suggesting when it comes to talk of the feelings. I slid into a worse blunder and sympathised with him. He replied that it didn't make the difference to him which I might think. I felt as if a stream of ice-water had been turned down my back on Christmas Day. However, he went on in a sort of shame-faced style, like a schoolboy caught talking sentiment.

"One owes her a debt for having cared for her, and the debt remains." He stayed out his visit and left this morning. He goes to Switzerland, and asked for your address. His is _The Bear, Grindelwald_. Write to him there; better, join him. He talks of going out to Matanga later in the year for a few months. So there's the end of the business, or rather one hopes so. I used to hope that Clarice would wake up some morning into a real woman and find herself--isn't that the phrase? I hope the reverse now; that she and her husband will philander along to the close of the chapter. But I prefer your word,--to the close of the "comedy," say. It implies something artificial. Mallinson and Clarice give me that impression,--as of Watteau figures mincing a gavotte, and made more unreal by the juxtaposition of a man. Let's hope they will never perceive the flimsiness of their pretty bows and ribbons! But I think of your one o'clock in the morning of the masquerade ball, and frankly I am afraid. I look at the three without--well, with as little prejudice as weak woman may. Mallinson, you know him--always on the artist's see-saw between exaltation and despair. Doesn't that make for shiftiness generally?

Clarice I don't understand; but I incline to your idea of her as at the mercy of every momentary emotion, and the more for what has happened this week. Since her engagement she seems to have lost her fear of Stephen Drake. She has been all unexpressed sympathy. And Drake? There's the danger, I am sure--a danger not of the usual kind. Had he been unscrupulous he might have ridden roughshod over Clarice long before now.

But he's too scrupulous for that. I think that he misses greatness as we understand it, through excess of scruple. But there's that saying of his about a debt incurred to Clarice by the man caring for her. Well, convince him that he can pay it by any sacrifice; won't he pay it?

Convince him that it would benefit her if he lay in the mud; wouldn't he do it? I don't know. I made a little prayer yesterday night, grotesque enough, but very sincere, that there might be no fifth act of tragedy to make a discord of your comedy.'

Fielding received Mrs. Willoughby's command to join Drake with a grin at her conception of him as fit company for a gentleman disappointed in his love-affairs. He nevertheless obeyed it, and travelling to Grindelwald found Drake waiting him on the platform with the hands of an oak.u.m-picker, and a face toned uniformly to the colour of a ripe pippin.

'You have been climbing mountains, I suppose?' asked Fielding.

'Yes,' nodded Drake.

'Well, don't ask me to join you. It produces a style of conversation I don't like.'

Drake laughed, and protested that nothing was further from his intention.

Certain letters, however, which Fielding wrote to Mrs. Willoughby during this period proved that he did join him, and more than once. The two men returned to London half-way through September.

On the journey from Dover to Charing Cross Drake asked whether Mrs.

Willoughby was in town. He was informed that at the moment she was visiting in Scotland, but she was expected to pa.s.s through London at the end of a fortnight. Drake wrote a note to her address asking her to spare him a few moments when she came south, and receiving a cordial a.s.sent with the statement of the most favourable hour, walked across one evening to Knightsbridge. Mrs. Willoughby remarked a certain constraint in his manner, and awaited tentacle questions concerning Sidney Mallinson and Clarice. She said: 'You look well. You have enjoyed your holiday.'

'I had an amusing companion.'

'You have given him some spark of your activity,' and the sentence was pitched to convey thanks.

'Then you have seen him?' Drake's embarra.s.sment became more p.r.o.nounced. He paused for a second and then rose and walked across the room. 'You know, I suppose,' he resumed, 'that I am going out to Matanga in a month.'

'I heard something of that from Mr. Fielding,' she said gently.

'Yes,' he said, with a change in his voice to brisk cheerfulness. 'It seemed to me that I ought to go. Our interests there are rather large now. I consulted my fellow-directors, and they agreed with me.'

The sudden disappearance of the constraint which had marked him surprised Mrs. Willoughby. 'But can you leave London?' she asked.

'Oh yes; I have made arrangements for that,' he replied. 'I have got Burl to look after things here.'

'Mr. Burl?'

'Yes; it's rather funny,' said Drake, with a laugh. 'He came to ask me whether I was disposed to take up politics. There was a const.i.tuency in Yorkshire he could arrange for me to stand for--Bentbridge. Do you know it?'

'I have been there. Mr. Le Mesurier has a brother just outside the town.

It was there, I believe, that he became acquainted with Mr. Burl.'

'So I gathered. Well, I wanted the question left open for a bit. Then Burl made another proposal. He said they wanted a paper in the district.

There were some people ready to back the idea, but they didn't have quite enough capital. Burl wanted me to provide the rest. He didn't get it, but he nearly did, and it struck me that he was just the man I wanted. So after he had had his say, I had mine, and he has thrown up politics and joined me.' Drake ended his story with a laugh, and added, 'I think I am lucky to have got hold of him.'

'Then you don't mean to go away for good?' exclaimed Mrs. Willoughby.

'Oh dear no! What on earth made you think that? But I will be away a year, I think,--and--and, that's just the point.' His embarra.s.sment returned as suddenly as it had left him.

'I don't understand.'

'Well, I had an idea of persuading Fielding to go with me.' He blurted the proposal brusquely. 'He's interested, you see, in the success of the colony, and--well, altogether, I didn't think it would be a bad thing.'

Mrs. Willoughby walked to the window and looked out of it for a few seconds. 'What does Mr. Fielding say?' she asked.

'I haven't broached the subject to him yet. I thought I wouldn't before--' He stopped and made no effort to finish the sentence.

'It's a year,' she said slowly, lengthening out the word. 'Yes, only a year,' said he briskly, and Mrs. Willoughby smiled in spite of herself.

She thought of the new air of alertness which Fielding had worn since his return from Switzerland. She came back to Drake and held out her hand to him. 'You think very wisely for your friends,' she said.

'It's an inspiriting business to see a community in the making,'

he answered; 'especially when there's money to help it to make itself quickly.'

He wished her good-bye and moved to the door. As he opened it he said, 'By the way, is the date of the marriage fixed?' but without turning towards her.

She said, 'Yes, the 8th of December,' and she saw his shoulders brace, and the weight of his body come backwards from the ball of the foot on to the heel.

'Ah! I shall be in Africa by then,' he said.

It was in fact near upon the end of February that the river-steamer plying between the settlement and the coast of Matanga brought to Drake and Fielding an announcement that the marriage had taken place. There were letters for both the men, and they carried them out to a gra.s.s knoll on the edge of the forest some quarter of a mile away from the little village of tin huts which shone in the sunshine like a tidy kitchen, as Fielding was used to say. Drake read his through, and said to Fielding, 'You have a letter from Mrs. Willoughby?'

'Yes.'

'Any news?'

Fielding looked him in the face. 'Yes,' he said slowly, and putting the letter in his pocket, b.u.t.toned it up. Drake understood alike from his tone and action what news the letter conveyed, and made no further inquiry. He fell instead to talking of some machinery which the boat had brought up along with the letters. The letter, indeed, was written in a vein which made it impossible for Fielding to follow the usual habit of reading Mrs. Willoughby's letters aloud to his companion. 'The wedding,'

she wrote, 'lacked nothing but a costumier and a composer. The bride and bridegroom should have been in fancy dress, and a new Gounod was needed to compose the wedding-march of a marionette. One might have taken the ceremony seriously as an artistic whole under those circ.u.mstances.'

Mrs. Willoughby continued to keep Fielding informed of the progress or the married couple, and in May hinted at dissensions. The hint Fielding let slip one day to Drake. Drake, however, received the news with apparent indifference, and indeed returned to England in September with Fielding without having so much as referred to the subject.