'You intend to stay in England?' asked Mallinson sharply.
'Yes,' replied Drake. He addressed himself to Miss Le Mesurier. 'You were kind enough to invite me to your house on the evening I arrived.'
Mr. Le Mesurier's eyebrows went up at the mention of the day.
'Mr. Mallinson had talked of you,' she explained. 'We seemed to know you already. I saw that you had landed from an interview in theMeteor, and thought you might have liked to come with your friend.'
The words were spoken indifferently.
'TheMeteor?' inquired Mr. Le Mesurier. 'Isn't that the paper which attacked you, Mr. Drake? You let yourself be interviewed by it? I didn't know that.'
He glanced keenly at his daughter, and Mallinson intercepted the look. His conviction was proved certain. There was something concealed, something maybe worth his knowing.
'The attack was of no importance,' replied Drake, 'but I wanted it to be known in some quarters that I had landed without losing time.'
'You replied to the attack?'
'Not so much that. I gave the itinerary of the march to Boruwimi.'
Mr. Le Mesurier perceived his daughter's eyes quietly resting upon him, and checked a movement of impatience, less at the answer than at his own folly in provoking it. Drake turned to Clarice and was offered a seat by her side. He realised, now that she was near, talking to him, that his impression of her, gained from the distance between the box and the stalls, did her injustice. She seemed now the vignette of a beautiful woman, missing the stateliness, perhaps, too, the distinction, but obtaining by very reason of what she missed a counterbalancing charm, to be appreciated only at close quarters, a charm of the quiet kind, diffused about her like a light; winsome—that was the epithet he applied to her, and remained doubtfully content with it, for there was a gravity too.
Clarice invited him to speak of Matanga, but Drake was reticent on the subject, through sheer disinclination to talk about himself, a disinclination which the girl recognised, and gave him credit for, shooting a comparing glance at Mallinson.
Mr. Le Mesurier, it should be said, remarked this reticence as well, and it gave him an idea. From Matanga Drake led the conversation back to London, and they fell to discussing the play.
'You are very interested in it,' she said.
'Yes,' said he, 'I have never seen the play before.'
'I should hardly have thought it would have suited your taste,'Conway observed.
'Why? It's French of course, but you can discount the sentiment. There is a stratum of truth left, don't you think?'
Mallinson raised pitying shoulders. 'Of the ABC order perhaps,' he allowed.
'I am afraid it appeals to me all the more on that account,' Drake answered, with a genial laugh. 'But what I meant really was truth to those people—truth to the characters presumed. Consistency is perhaps the better word. I like to see a play run on simple lines to an end you can't but foresee. The taste's barbarian, I don't doubt.'
Miss Le Mesurier's lips instinctively pouted a mischievous 'bourgeois' towards Mallinson. He remarked hastily that he thought the curtain was on the point of rising, and Miss Le Mesurier pushed her opera-glasses towards him with a serene 'Not yet, I think.' Mallinson understood the suggestion of her movement and relapsed into a sullen silence.
By the time that Conway and Drake rose to leave the box Mr. Le Mesurier had thought out his idea. His manner changed of a sudden to one of great cordiality; he expressed his pleasure at meeting Drake, and shook him by the hand, but destroyed the effect of his action through weakly revealing his diplomacy to his daughter by a triumphant glance at her.
At the close of the performance he met Drake in the vestibule of the theatre and lingered behind his party. Fielding, Mallinson, and Conway meanwhile saw Miss Le Mesurier into her carriage.
'What in the world is papa doing?' asked Clarice.
'Exchanging cards with Drake,' replied Fielding. Mallinson turned his head round quickly and beheld the two gentlemen affably shaking hands again. Conway bent into the carriage.
'Do you like him?' he asked.
'Oh yes,' she replied indifferently.
'Then I am glad I introduced him to you,' and some emphasis was laid upon the 'I.'
Mr. Le Mesurier came out to the brougham and the coachman drove off.
'I like that young fellow, Drake,' he said, with a wave of the hand. 'I have asked him to call.'
Clarice did not inform her diplomatic father that unless she had foreseen his intention she would have undertaken the discharge of that act of courtesy herself.
Mallinson took a hansom and drove straight from the theatre to his chambers in South Kensington, Conway walked off in the opposite direction, so that Drake and Fielding were left to stroll away together. They walked across Leicester Square towards St. James's Street, each occupied with his own thoughts. Fielding's were of an unusually stimulating kind; he foresaw the possibility of a very diverting comedy, to be played chiefly for his amusement and partly for Miss Le Mesurier's, by Clarice herself, Drake, and Mallinson. From the clash of two natures so thoroughly different as those of the two men, played off against one another with all the delicate manipulation of Miss Le Mesurier's experienced hand, there was much enjoyment to be anticipated for the purely disinterested spectator which he intended to be. Of the probabledénouementhe formed no conception, and in fact avoided purposely any temptation to do so. He preferred that the play should unroll itself in a series of delightful surprises. The one question which he asked himself at this time was whether Drake might not decline to act his proper and assigned part. He glanced at him as they walked along. Drake looked thoughtful, and was certainly silent; both thought and silence were propitious signs. On the other hand, Drake had interests in the City, had them at heart too, and, worse still, had the City itself at heart.
Fielding recollected an answer he had made to Mallinson. The word 'heart' brought it to his mind. Mallinson was jeering at the journalist's metaphor of the 'throbbing heart' as applied to London. 'The phrase,' Drake had said, 'to me is significant of something more than cheap phraseology. I know that half a throb could create an earthquake in Matanga.' What if the man's established interest in this direction were to suppress his nascent interest in Clarice! Fielding immediately asked Drake what he thought of Miss Le Mesurier.
'Oh!' said the latter, palpably waking from reflections of quite another order, 'I liked her,' and he spoke of her looks.
'She has the art of dressing well,' corrected Fielding, disappointment spurring him to provoke advocacy of the lady. Drake, however, was indifferent to the correction.
'I like her eyes,' he said.
'She is skilled in the use of them.'
'I didn't notice that. They seemed of the quiet kind.'
'At need she can swing a wrecker's light behind them.'
'I like her hand too. It has the grip of a friend.'
'A friend! Yes. There's the pitfall.'
Drake only laughed. He was not to be persuaded to any strenuous defence, and Fielding felt inclined to harbour a grudge against him as needlessly a spoil-sport. Later on, however, when he was in bed it occurred to him that the play might still be performed, though upon different lines, and with a plot rather different from what he had imagined—his plot inverted, in fact. Clarice Le Mesurier, he remembered, had made the first advance to Drake. What if she for once in a while were to figure as the pursuer! That alternative would, perhaps, be the more diverting of the two. He must consult Mrs. Willoughby as to the effect which Drake's bearing would produce on women—consult her cautiously, prudence warned him. Mrs. Willoughby, a cousin and friend of Miss Le Mesurier's, was not of the sort to lend a helping hand in the game if the girl was to provide the sport—or indeed in the other event. The one essential thing, however, was that there should be a comedy, and he must see to it that there was one, with which reflection he drew the bed-clothes comfortably about him and went to sleep.
There was, however, one other condition equally essential to his enjoyment, but so apparently inevitable that he did not stop to consider it, namely, that Hugh Fielding should be a mere spectator. It did not occur to him at all that he might be drawn into an unwilling assumption of a part in his own play.
Mallinson on reaching home unlocked a little oak cabinet which hung against the wall beside his writing-table, and searched amongst a litter of newspaper cuttings and incomplete manuscripts. He unearthed at last a copy of theMeteor, bought between the Grand Hotel and Beaufort Gardens on the night of Drake's dinner, and, drawing up a chair to the fire, he read through the interview again. The something to be known was gradually, he felt, shaping into a definite form; it had acquired locality this very evening, as he was assured by the recollection of a certain repressed movement upon Mr. Le Mesurier's part at the mention of Boruwimi. Could he add to the knowledge by the help of the interview? Mr. Le Mesurier had not known of its publication until to-night, and so clearly had not read it; his knowledge was antedated. But on the other hand it was immediately after the perusal of the article that Clarice had sent through him her invitation to Drake.
Mallinson studied the article line by line, but without result.
He tossed the newspaper back into the cupboard, changed his coat, and sat down to his writing-table with a feverish impulse to work. He was unable to conceive it possible that Drake should be unaffected by Miss Le Mesurier's attractions. The man was energetic, therefore a dangerous rival. Miss Le Mesurier, besides, seemed bent upon pitting Drake and himself against each other. Why? he asked. Well, whatever the reason, he had a chance of winning—more than a chance, he reflected, remembering a passage of tenderness that evening. His future was promising, if only he worked. Perhaps Clarice only ranged the two men opposite to one another in order to stimulate one of them; he reached an answer to his question 'Why?'
The extravagances of a lover's thoughts have often this much value: they disclose principles of his nature working at the formation of the man, and in Mallinson's case they betrayed his habit of drawing the energy for application from externals, and from no sacred fire within.
He shut his door and worked for a month. At the end of the month, lying in bed at night and watching a planet visible through his window, he saw the ray of light between himself and the star divide into two, and the two beams describe outwards segments of a circle. He turned his face away for a few moments and then looked at the planet again. The phenomenon was repeated. He knew it for a trick of tired eyes and a warning to slacken his labours. On the next afternoon he called at Beaufort Gardens, and was received warmly by Clarice and her aunt.
There was a suggestion of reproach for his long absence in the former's voice, and suggestion of reproach from her kindled him. He explained his plunge under surface on the ground of work. Details were immediately demanded, the plot of the new novel discussed and praised; there was flattery too in the diffident criticism of an incident here and there, and the sweetest foretaste of happiness in the joint rearrangement of the disputed chapter. Mallinson was lifted on a billow of confidence. He was of the type which adjusts itself to the opinions his company may have of him. Praise Mallinson and he deserved praises; ignore him and he sank like a plummet to depths of insignificance, conscious of insignificance and of nothing more except a dull rancour against the person who impressed the knowledge on him. That way Drake had offended unwittingly at the Grand Hotel; he had recognised no distinction between the Mallinson of to-day and the Mallinson of ten years ago.
Mallinson was asked to dinner on Friday of the next week.
'Really,' said the aunt after his departure, 'he is very clever. I didn't understand what he said, but he is very clever.'
'Yes,' said Clarice reflectively, 'I suppose—I mean of course he is.'
She spoke in a tone of hesitation which surprised her auditor, for hitherto Clarice had been very certain as to her impressions on the point.
At dinner on the following Friday Mallinson was confronted by Conway and had Mrs. Willoughby upon his right. Mallinson liked Mrs. Willoughby, the widow of the black hair and blue eyes, now in the mauve stage of widowhood. She drew him out of the secretiveness within which he habitually barred himself, and he felt thankful to her for his prisoner's hour of mid-day airing. Mrs. Willoughby spoke to Clarice, mentioning a private view of an exhibition of pictures at which she had seen Clarice.
'Who was the cavalier?' she added.
'Mr. Drake,' Clarice replied serenely. 'I met him there by accident.'Mrs. Willoughby looked puzzled, and repeated the name in an undertone.
'You don't know him, I think,' Clarice went on. 'He comes here. Papa asked him to call. Captain Drake, I suppose we ought to call him, but he has dropped the Captain.'
Mrs. Willoughby started and shot a bewildered glance at Mr. Le Mesurier.
'I like the man very much,' said Mr. Le Mesurier, with a touch of championship in his voice. 'You should meet him. I am sure you would like him too.'
Mrs. Willoughby made no answer to the suggestion, and resumed her dinner in silence, while Conway sang his usual paean of praise. After a little she turned to Mallinson.
'Do you know this Mr. Drake?'
'Yes, we were boys together in the same suburb before he went to Africa. It was unfortunately through me that he was asked to this house. I had mentioned him as a friend of mine at one time, and Miss Le Mesurier invited me to bring him on the day he reached London.'
'So soon as that! It's funny Clarice never mentioned him to me. You, of course, told her the date of Mr. Drake's arrival.'
'No, she found that out from an interview in theMeteor.'
'I remember.'
'You read it?'
'Yes. So you introduced him to Clarice?'
'No. He did not come that night. Conway brought him up to Mr. LeMesurier's box whenFrou-Frouwas being played a month ago.'
'Never mind, we will talk of something else.'
Mrs. Willoughby had just observed Clarice. She was nodding assent to the words of her neighbour, but plainly lending an attentive ear to Mrs. Willoughby's conversation. Mrs. Willoughby spoke of indifferent subjects until the ladies rose.
When Mallinson, however, entered the drawing-room, he perceived Mrs. Willoughby's fan motioning him to attendance, and she took up the thread of her talk at the point where she had dropped it.
'You said unfortunately.'
'Well, you have read theMeteor.'
'You endorse their view?'
'From what I have seen of Drake since his return, yes.'
'But if there's anything in their charges, why doesn't the ColonialOffice move?'
'The Colonial Office!' Mallinson shrugged his shoulders. 'You forget only natives and Arabs were killed in the Boruwimi expedition, and they don't count. If he had killed a white man—What's the matter?'
'Nothing,' said Mrs. Willoughby, recovering from a start; 'an idea occurred to me, that's all.'
'Tell me.'
For a moment Mrs. Willoughby seemed at a loss. Then she said, with a laugh:
'If you will know, I was wondering whether your explanation covered all you meant by "unfortunately."' She lowered her voice. 'You can be frank with me.'
Mallinson was diverted by her assurance of sympathy, and launched out immediately into an elaborate history of the emotions which the friendliness of Miss Le Mesurier to Drake had set bubbling within him. Mr. Le Mesurier approached the pair before Mallinson had finished, and the latter hurriedly broke off.
'Well,' said Mr. Le Mesurier, 'will you meet Mr. Drake, Constance, at lunch, say on Sunday?'
Mrs. Willoughby stared.
'Do you mean that?'
'Certainly.' Mr. Le Mesurier was defiant. Mrs. Willoughby's stare changed to a look of thoughtfulness.
'No,' she said, 'I don't think I could.' She moved away. Mallinson followed her.
'You know something about Drake,' he exclaimed, 'something which would help me.'
'That is hardly generous rivalry,' she replied.
'Does he deserve generosity?' he asked, with a trace of cunning in his expression which Mrs. Willoughby found distasteful.
'If I can help you,' she answered evasively, 'help you honourably, I will,' and she turned away. Mallinson put out a hand to stop her.
'I need help,' he whispered. 'There is a conspiracy to praise the man.You heard Conway at dinner. It's the same with every one, from Mr. LeMesurier to Fielding.'
'Oh,' she said, her voice kindling to an expression of interest, 'doesMr. Fielding like him? He is fastidious too.' She paused for a second indeliberation, her eyes searching the floor. Raising them, she perceivedMr. Le Mesurier coming towards her.
'I claim our privilege,' she said. 'I will lunch on Sunday, and meet your paragon, after all.'
'I am very glad,' he said impressively. 'Lunch at two.'
Mrs. Willoughby waited until he was out of ear-shot, and turned again toMallinson.
'It is best that I should see the man, and know something more of him than hearsay. Don't you think so?'
A note of apology discounted the explanation. Mallinson understood that the reference to Fielding was the cause of her change of mind.
'Do you value Fielding's opinion?' he asked.
'Oh, I don't know. On some subjects I think yes. Don't you?'
Mallinson began to wonder immediately whether Fielding's opinions might not be valuable after all, since Mrs. Willoughby valued them. If so, the man might be able to throw some light upon other points—for instance, the perplexing question of Miss Le Mesurier's inclinations. Mallinson made up his mind to call upon Fielding. He called on the Sunday morning, and Fielding blandly related to him his history of Sark.
Having worked Mallinson to a sufficiently amusing pitch of indignation, and having hinted his moral that the subjugation of Miss Le Mesurier would be effected only by the raider, Fielding complacently dismissed him and repaired to Beaufort Gardens for lunch. He found Drake upon the doorstep with a hand upon the knocker, and the two gentlemen exchanged greetings.
'I have just left Mallinson,' said Fielding.
Drake's hand fell from the knocker.
'Tell me!' he said. 'Mallinson perplexes me in many ways. For instance, he shows me little good-will now—'
'Does that surprise you?' Fielding interjected, with a laugh.
Drake coloured and replied quickly, 'You didn't let me finish. If he dislikes me, what made him talk about me as his friend to—to the Le Mesuriers before I returned to England?'
'Your name in print. You verged on—well, notoriety. You may laugh, but that's the reason. Mallinson's always on the rack of other people's opinions—judges himself by what he imagines to be their standard of him. Acquaintanceship with a celebrity lifts him in their eyes, he thinks, so really in his own.'
Drake remained doubtfully pondering what credit acquaintanceship with him could confer on any one. He was led back to his old view of Mallinson as a man tottering on a rickety base.
'Will he do something great?' he asked, his forehead puckered in an effort to calculate the qualities which make for greatness.
Fielding chuckled quietly, and answered:
'Unlikely, I think. Clever, of course, the man is, but it is never the work he does that pleases him, but the pose after the work's done. That's fatal.'
Drake looked at Fielding curiously.
'That's a criticism which would never have occurred to me.' He glanced at his watch. 'We have five minutes. Shall we walk round the Gardens?' Fielding chuckled again and assented. He saw the curtain rising on his comedy. For five minutes they paced up and down the pavement, with an interchange of simple questions on Drake's part, and discriminating answers on Fielding's—answers not wholly to encourage, but rather to promote a state of doubt, so much more interesting to the spectator.
When after the five minutes had elapsed they entered the house, they found that Mrs. Willoughby had arrived.
Clarice introduced Stephen Drake to Mrs. Willoughby. He saw a woman apparently in the early twenties, tall, with a broad white forehead, under masses of unruly black hair, and black eyebrows shadowing eyes of the colour of sea-shallows on an August morning. The eyes were hard, he noticed, and the lips pressed together; she bowed to him without a word. Hostility was evidently to be expected, and Drake wondered at this, for he knew Mrs. Willoughby to be Clarice's chief friend and confidante. Mrs. Willoughby fired the first shot of the combat as soon as they had sat down to lunch. She spoke of unscrupulous cruelty shown by African explorers, and appealed to Drake for correction, she said, but her tone implied corroboration.
'I have known cases,' he admitted, 'here and there. You can't always prevent it. The pioneer in a new country doesn't bring testimonials with him invariably. In fact, one case of the kind happened under my own eyes, I might almost say.'
Mrs. Willoughby seemed put out of countenance by Drake's reply. She had plainly expected a strenuous denial of her statement. Drake caught a look of reproof which Mr. Le Mesurier directed towards her, and set it down to his host's courtesy towards his guest. Clarice, however, noticed the look too.
'Indeed,' she said. 'Tell us about it, Mr. Drake. It will be a change from our usual frock-coat conversation.'
Mr. Le Mesurier imposed the interdict of paternal authority.
'I think, my dear, stories of that class are, as a rule, a trifle crude.Eh, Drake?'
Miss Le Mesurier on the instant became personified submission.
'Of course, papa,' she said, 'if you have reason for believing the story isn't suitable, I wouldn't think of asking Mr. Drake to tell it.'
Mr. Le Mesurier raised his hands in a gesture of despair, and looked again at Mrs. Willoughby. His glance said, unmistakably, 'Now see what you've done!' Fielding broke into an open laugh; and Clarice haughtily asked him to explain the joke, so that the others present might share in his amusement.
'I will,' said Fielding. 'In fact, I meant you to ask me to. I laughed, because I notice that whenever you are particularly obedient to Papa, then you are particularly resolved to have your own way.'
Miss Le Mesurier's foot tapped under the table.
'Of course,' she said, with a withering shrug of her shoulders, 'that's wit, Mr. Fielding.' Repartee was not her strong point.
'No,' he replied, 'merely rudeness. And what's the use of being a privileged friend of the family if you can't be rude?'
Drake came to the rescue. 'Mr. Le Mesurier is quite right,' said he.'Incidents of the kind I mentioned are best left untold.'
'I don't doubt it,' said Fielding. 'A man loses all sight of humanitarian principles the moment he's beyond view of a fireside.'
'Oh, does he?' replied Drake. 'The man by the fireside is apt to confuse sentiment with humanitarian principles; and sentiment, I admit, you have to get rid of when you find yourself surrounded with savages.'
'Exactly! You become assimilated with the savages, and retain only one link between yourself and civilisation.'
'And that link?'
'Is a Maxim gun.'
'My dear fellow, that's nonsense,' Drake answered in some heat. 'It's easy enough to sit here and discuss humanitarian principles, but you need a pretty accurate knowledge of what they are, and what they are not, before you begin to apply them recklessly beyond the reach of civilisation. When I went first to Africa, I stayed for a time at Pretoria, and from Pretoria I went north in a pioneer company. You want to have been engaged in an expedition of that kind to quite appreciate what it means. We were on short rations a good part of the time, with a fair prospect of absolute starvation ahead, and doing forced marches all the while. When we camped of an evening, I have seen men who had eaten nothing since breakfast, and little enough then, just slip the saddles from the horses, and go fast asleep under the nearest tree, without bothering about their supper. Then, perhaps, an officer would shake them up, and they'd have to go collecting brushwood for fires. That's a pretty bad business in the dark, when you're dead tired with the day's tramp. You don't much care whether you pick up a snake or a stick of wood. I remember, too,' and he gave a laugh at the recollection, 'we used to be allowed about a thimbleful of brandy a day. Well, I have noticed men walk twenty yards away from the camps to drink their tot, for fear some one might jog their elbows. And it was only one mouthful after all—you didn't need to water it. Altogether, that kind of expedition would be something considerably more than an average strain upon a man's endurance, if it was led through a friendly country. But add to your difficulties the continual presence of an enemy, outnumbering you incalculably, always on the alert for you to slacken discipline for a second, and remember you are not marching to safety, but from it. The odds against you are increasing all the time, and that not for one or two days, but for eighty and a hundred. I can assure you, one would hear a great deal less of the harmlessness of the black, if more people had experienced that grisly hour before daybreak, when they generally make their attacks. Your whole force—it's a mere handful—stands under arms at attention in the dark—and it can be dark on the veld, even in the open, on a starlight night. The veld seems to drink up and absorb the light, as though it was so much water trickling on the parched ground. There you stand! You have thrown out scouts to search the country round you, but you know for certain that half of them are nodding asleep in their saddles. For all you know, you may be surrounded on all sides. The strain of that hour of waiting grows so intense that you actually long to see the flash of a scout's rifle, and so be certain they are coming, or to feel the ground shake under you, as they stamp their war-dance half a mile away. Their battle chant, too, makes an uncanny sound, when it swells across the veld in the night, but, upon my soul, you almost hear it with relief.'
Drake stopped and looked round upon faces fixed intently on his own, faces which mirrored his own absorption in his theme. There was one exception, however; Mrs. Willoughby sat back in her chair constraining herself to an attitude of indifference, and as Drake glanced at her, her lips seemed to be moving as though with the inward repetition of some word or phrase. Even Fielding was shaken out of his supermundane quietism.
For the first time he saw revealed the real quality in Drake; he saw visibly active that force of which, although it had lain hitherto latent, he had always felt the existence and understood why he had made friends so quickly, and compelled those friends so perpetually to count with him in their thoughts. It was not so much in the mere words that Drake expressed this quality as in the spirit which informed, the voice which launched them, and the looks which gave them point. His face flashed into mobility, enthusiasm dispelling its set habit of gravity, sloughing it, Fielding thought, or better still, burning through it as through a crust of lava; his eyes—eyes which listened, Fielding had not inaptly described them—now spoke, and spoke vigorously; enthusiasm, too, rode on his voice, deepening its tones—not enthusiasm of the febrile kind which sends the speech wavering up and down the scale, but enthusiasm with sobriety as its dominant note concentrated into a level flow of sound. His description had all the freshness of an immediate occurrence. Compared with the ordinary style of reminiscence it was the rose upon the tree to the dried leaves of apotpourri.
'But,' said Fielding, unconsciously resisting the influence which Drake exerted, 'I thought you took a whole army of blacks with you on these expeditions?'
'Not on the one I speak of. In Matanga a small force of them, yes! But even they were difficult to manage, and you could not depend upon them. They would desert at the first opportunity, sell their guns, your peace-offerings of brass rods, and whatever they could lay their hands on, and straggle behind in the dusk until they got lost. It was no use sending back for them in the morning. One would only have found their bones, and their bones pretty well scoured too. I speak of them as a class, of course. There were races loyal enough no doubt, the Zanzibari, for instance. But the difficulty with them was to prevent them fighting when there was no occasion. In fact the blacks who were loyal made up for their loyalty by a lack of common-sense.'
'Cause and effect, I should be inclined to call the combination,' remarked Fielding, 'with the lack of common-sense as the cause.'
Mrs. Willoughby looked her gratitude across the table, and again her lips moved. Drake chanced to catch her eye, and in spite of herself she rippled to a laugh. She had been defending herself by a repetition of the editor's comment of "filibuster."
But at the same moment that Drake's glance met hers she had just waked up to the humour of her conduct, and recognised it as a veritable child's device. She could not but laugh, and, laughing there into the eyes of the man, she lost her hostility to him. However, Mrs. Willoughby made an effort to recover it.
'Well, I don't see,' she said to Drake, 'what right you have got to marching into other people's countries even though they are black.'
'Ah!' Drake answered. 'That's precisely what I call, if I may say so, the fireside point of view. We obey a law of nature rather than claim a right. One can discuss the merits of a law of nature comfortably by a fireside. But out there one realises how academic the discussion is, one obeys it. The white man has always spread himself over the country of the black man, and we may take it he always will. He has the pioneer's hankering after the uttermost corners of the earth, and in addition to that the desire to prosper. He obeys both motives; they are of the essence of him. Besides, if it comes to a question of abstract right, I am not sure we couldn't set up a pretty good case. After all, a nation holds its country primarily to benefit itself, no doubt, but also in trust for the world; and the two things hang together. It benefits itself by observing that trust. Now the black man seals his country up, he doesn't develop it. In the first place he doesn't know how to, and in the second, if he did, he would forget as soon as he could. I suppose that it is impossible to estimate the extent of the good which the opening of Africa has done for an overcrowded continent like Europe; and what touches Europe touches the world, no doubt of that, is there? But I'm preaching,' and he came abruptly to an end.
'What I don't understand,' said Mr. Le Mesurier, and he voiced a question the others felt an impulse to ask, 'is, how on earth you are content to settle down as a business man in the City?'
Drake retired into himself and replied with some diffidence:
'Oh, the change is not as great perhaps as you think, I have always looked forward to returning here. One has ambitions of a kind.'
'You ought to go into Parliament,' Clarice said.
Drake laughed, thanking her with the laugh. 'It's rather too early to speak of that.'
Mrs. Willoughby observed that he actually blushed. A blushing filibuster! There was a contradiction of terms in the phrase, and he undoubtedly blushed. A question shot through her mind. Did he blush from modesty, or because Clarice made the suggestion?
Mrs. Willoughby asked Fielding for an answer as he stood by the door of her brougham, before she drove away from Beaufort Gardens.
'For both reasons, I should say,' he replied.
'You think, then, he's attracted? He hardly showed signs of it, except that once, and modesty alone might account for that.'
Mrs. Willoughby laid some insistence upon the possibility.
'I should have been inclined to agree with you,' answered Fielding, 'butDrake dragged me round the square before lunch to question me aboutMallinson.'
'That makes for your view, certainly. What did you tell him?'
'I painted the portrait which I thought he wanted, picked out Mallinson's vices in clear colours and added a few which occurred to me at the moment. However, Drake closed my mouth with—"He's a hard worker, though."'
'I like the man for that!' cried Mrs. Willoughby, and checked herself suddenly.
'Yes, he's honest certainly.'
'But was he right?'
'Quite! Mallinson works very hard; scents danger, I suppose.'
Mrs. Willoughby heaved a sigh of relief.
'There's some chance for him, then. Will he do anything great?'
Fielding laughed.
'That's one of the questions Drake put to me! I think never.'
Mrs. Willoughby accepted the dictum without asking for the reason. She sat for a moment disconsolately thoughtful. Then she gave a start.
'There's Percy Conway. I had forgotten him!'
'And wisely, I should think. He is just making a back for Drake to jump from if he will.'
'Yes, I noticed that,' said Mrs. Willoughby, with a sneer at the folly of the creature. 'He seems to look upon Mallinson and himself as the two figures which tell the weather in a Swiss clock. When one comes out of his box the other goes in. I catch your trick, you see,' and her face relaxed to a smile.
'Only to improve on it in the matter of truth. For you imply a comparison between Miss Le Mesurier and the weather, and the points of resemblance are strong.'
Mrs. Willoughby's smile became a laugh. 'I don't hold with you about Clarice,' she said. 'You don't know her as I do. She can take things seriously.'
'Intensely so—for five minutes. I have never denied it.'
Mrs. Willoughby did not display her usual alacrity to engage in the oft-repeated combat as to Miss Le Mesurier's merits. Her face grew serious again.
'Does Clarice care for him, you think?'
Fielding was admiring Mrs. Willoughby's eyes at the moment, and answered absently. 'Conway, you mean?'
'No, no! How wilfully irritating you are! This Mr. Drake, of course. By the way, I suppose he will get on?' She spoke in a voice which implied regret for the supposition, and almost appealed for a denial of it.
'I should think there's no doubt of it. They tell me he has just sent a force up country in Matanga to locate concessions. You hit harder than you knew at lunch, for the force carries machine-guns. Oh yes, he'll get on. He has been seen arm-in-arm with Israel Biedermann in Throgmorton Street. You must tell that to a city man to realise what it means.'
'But do you think Clarice cares for him?'
'Miss Le Mesurier cares for—' he began, and broke off with a question. 'Do you read Latin?' He was answered with an exasperated shake of the head. 'Because Miss Le Mesurier always reminds me of an ode of Horace, Finished, exquisite to the finger-tips, but still lacking something. Soul, is it? Perhaps that lack makes the perfection. But what's your objection to Drake?'
Mrs. Willoughby started a little. 'Objection?' she laughed. 'Why? I never told you that I had one.'
'You told not only me, but every one at lunch—Drake himself included.'
Mrs. Willoughby looked doubtfully at Fielding. 'Well,' she said, 'there is something. I feel inclined to explain it to you. You may be able to advise me. Not now!' she went on as Fielding bent forward with a very unusual interest. 'Let me see. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday'—she ticked off the days upon her fingers. 'Thursday afternoon. Could you come and see me then?'
'Yes.'
'Thanks. Good-bye, and don't forget; five o'clock. I shall be in to no one else.' And Mrs. Willoughby drove off with the smile again upon her face.
Whether Fielding was correct in limiting Miss Le Mesurier's capacity for continued seriousness, she was undeniably serious when she called upon Mrs. Willoughby at half-past one on the following day. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and the eyes themselves seemed to look pathetic reproaches at a world which had laid upon her unmerited distress. Mrs. Willoughby was startled at her appearance, and imagined some family disaster.
'Why, Clarice, what has happened?' she exclaimed. 'You look as if you hadn't slept all night.'
Clarice kissed her, and for answer sighed wearifully. Mrs. Willoughby was immediately relieved. The trouble was due, she realised, to some new shuffle of Clarice's facile emotions. She returned the kiss, and refrained from further questions; but, being a practical woman, she rang the bell and ordered the servant to lay two places for lunch.
Clarice sank despondently into the most comfortable chair in the room.
'Not for me,' she said. 'I am sure I couldn't eat anything.'
'You may as well try, dear,' replied Mrs. Willoughby; and she crossed to Clarice and unpinned her hat—a little straw hat, with the daintiest of pink ribbons. She held it in her hand for a moment, weighing it with a smile which had something of tenderness in it. She laid a light hand upon the brown hair, touching with a caress the curls about the forehead. A child's face was turned up to hers with a pretty appeal of melancholy. Mrs. Willoughby was moved to kiss the girl again. In spite of a similarity of years, she had an affection almost maternal for Clarice; and, with an intuition, too, which was almost maternal, she was able to appreciate the sincerity of the girl's distress, with a doubtful smile at the gravity of its cause.
Clarice threw her arms about Mrs. Willoughby's neck. 'Oh, Connie,' she quavered, 'you can't guess what has happened!' The voice threatened to break into sobs, and there were tears already brimming the eyes.
'Never mind; you shall tell me after lunch.'
At lunch Mrs. Willoughby industriously beguiled her with anecdotes. She talked of an uncle of Clarice, a Philistine sea-captain with pronounced opinions upon the advance of woman, ludicrously mimicking his efforts to adapt a quarter-deck style of denunciation to the gentler atmosphere of a drawing-room. To sharpen his diatribes the worthy captain was in the habit of straining ineffectually after epigrams. Mrs. Willoughby quoted an unsuccessful essay concerning the novels women favoured. 'A woman with a slice of intellect likes that sort of garbage for the same reason that a girl with a neat pair of ankles likes a little mud in the streets.' Clarice was provoked to a reluctant smile by a mental picture of a violent rubicund face roaring the words. She was induced to play with a fragment of sole; she ended by eating the wing of a chicken.
'Now,' said Mrs. Willoughby when she had set Clarice upon a sofa in front of a cosy fire in her boudoir, 'tell me what all the trouble's about.' She drew up a low chair and sat down with a hand upon the girl's arm.
'It's about Sid—I mean Mr. Mallinson,' she began. 'He called yesterday afternoon after you had left. Papa had gone out for a walk, and aunt was lying down with a sick headache. So I saw him alone. He said he was glad to get the opportunity of speaking to me by myself, and he—he—well, he asked me to marry him. He was quite different from what he usually is, else I might have stopped him before. But he made a sort of rush at it. I told him that I was very sorry, but I didn't care for him in that kind of way—at all events yet. And then it was horrible!' The voice began to break again.
Mrs. Willoughby took hold of Clarice's hand, and the latter nestled towards her.
'He got angry and violent, and said that I had persuaded him to give up his profession, and must have known quite well why he did it, and that no woman had a right to interfere with a man's life until she was prepared to accept the responsibility of her interference. I hardly understood what he said, because he frightened me; but I don't think that was at all a nice thing to say, do you, Connie?' and her hand tightened upon her friend's. 'But he said other things too, much worse than that,—I can't tell you. And at last I felt as if I wanted to scream. I should have screamed in a minute or two, I know, so I told him to go away. Then he became silent all at once, and just stood looking at me—and—and—I think that was worse than being abused. At last he said "Good-bye," so sorrowfully, and I knew it would be for ever, and we shook hands, and he went out into the hall and closed the door. It seemed to me that the door would never open again.'
The threatened tears began to fall; Mrs. Willoughby, however, did not interrupt, and Clarice went on.
'So as I heard the front door unlocked to let him out, I opened the door of the room and went into the hall. Mr. Mallinson was standing on the first step. He never looked back—he was turning up his coat-collar—and somehow it all seemed so sad. I felt as if I hadn't a friend left in the world. So—I—I—I—'
'Well?' asked Mrs. Willoughby quickly.
'I called him back into the room, and asked him if we couldn't be friends.'
'What did he answer?'
'That he didn't see how that was possible since he wanted to marry me. But I said that wouldn't matter as long as he didn't tell me so. I think men are so inconsiderate, don't you, Connie?' she broke off in a tone of reproach. 'I can't understand what there is to laugh at. You wouldn't either if you had seen him then, because he just sat down and cried, not as you and I do, you know, but with great tears running through his fingers and heaves of his shoulders. It was heartbreaking. Then he got up and begged my pardon for what he had said, and that was the worst of it all. He declared that if he went the rest of his way alone the journey would be all the easier for the mile I went along with him, and at that somehow I began to cry too, and—and—that's all.'
Mrs. Willoughby sat silent for a little. 'So you refused him,' she said thoughtfully, and she bent towards Clarice. 'Is it to be Stephen Drake?'
Clarice started up from the sofa, and stood looking into the fire. 'What an extraordinary thing that you should ask me that,' she replied slowly, 'because Mr. Mallinson asked it too.' She paused for a second or so and went on. 'I have never thought of him in that way, I am sure. Oh no!' and she roused herself from her attitude of deliberation and crossed to the window, speaking briskly as she went. 'I had quite a different reason.'
Mrs. Willoughby looked at her sharply but said nothing, and presentlyClarice turned back into the room as though moved by a sudden impulse.'Can I write a note here?' she asked.
'Certainly,' replied Mrs. Willoughby, and she set some envelopes and paper on the table. Clarice wrote a few lines and tore them up. She repeated the process on four sheets of note-paper, and as she was beginning the fifth attempt the door was opened and the servant announced that Mr. Conway was waiting in the drawing-room. Clarice tore up the fifth sheet and rose from her chair. 'I can write it when I get home,' she said.
'Percy Conway!' said Mrs. Willoughby when the door was closed again.'What a funny thing! He's not in the habit of visiting me.'
'The fact is,' said Clarice, without the least embarrassment, as she pinned on her hat, 'I asked him to call for me here. You don't mind, do you?'
'Clarice!' exclaimed Mrs. Willoughby. She stared at the girl, noticing the traces of tears still visible on her face, and then she began to laugh.
'Connie!' said Miss Le Mesurier, and her tone showed that she was hurt.'Youareunsympathetic.'
'I can't help it,' cried Mrs. Willoughby, and she laughed yet louder. 'I can't help it, dear!'
'You can't imagine how lonely I have felt since—'
'Since yesterday,' cried Mrs. Willoughby, and her laughter increased.'Clarice, you'll be the death of me.'
Clarice stood gazing at her patiently, her face grave with reproach, until Mrs. Willoughby succeeded in composing herself to a fitting seriousness. But for all her efforts her mouth worked, and the dimples appeared and vanished in her cheeks, and a little ripple of laughter now and again escaped from her lips.
'Really,' said Clarice, 'I am disappointed in you, Connie.'
'I know it was out of place, dear,' said Mrs. Willoughby with humility, but nevertheless her voice shook as she spoke. Fearing another access she began, as a resource, to lecture Clarice upon the impropriety of making appointments with young gentlemen at other people's houses. The lecture, however, was received with disdain.
'That seems to me still more out of place,' said Clarice.
'Well, we had better go into the drawing-room to Mr. Conway,' said Mrs.Willoughby.
Clarice was indeed excessively indignant with Mrs. Willoughby, for she was in the habit herself of treating her feelings with a tender solicitude, and consequently disliked the want of respect shown to them by her friend. She betrayed the extent of her indignation by a proportionately excessive friendliness towards Conway that afternoon. He was allowed to conduct her to four picture galleries, and a Panopticon museum of tortures; his offer to refresh her with tea in Bond Street was shyly accepted, and at parting he was thanked with effusion, 'for the pleasantest afternoon she had spent for some time.'
On reaching home, however, Miss Le Mesurier immediately wrote out the note which she had begun in Mrs. Willoughby's boudoir. She wrote it now without hesitation, as though she had composed the form of its message while in the company of Conway, and addressed it to Stephen Drake. She had a question to ask him, she stated, of some importance to herself. Would he call on Thursday afternoon and answer it? Clarice read through the note before she sealed up the envelope. The wordimportancecaught her eye, and she pondered over it for a moment. She crossed it out finally and substitutedinterest. Then she sent her letter to the post. At breakfast on the Thursday morning, Clarice casually informed her father of Drake's visit. 'I wrote to him, asking him to call,' she added.
Mr. Le Mesurier looked up from the pages of hisTimes. 'Why?' he asked quickly.
'I want him to tell me something.'
TheTimescrackled in his hands and fluttered to the floor. He opened his mouth to speak and thought better of it, and repeated the action more than once. Then he scratched his head with a helpless air, and picked up his newspaper. 'Silly girl!' he said at last; 'silly girl!' and relapsed into silence. At the close of breakfast, however, he made an effort at expostulation. 'You will make the man believe you're in love with him,' he said, and in fact he could have chanced on no happier objection to present to her. Clarice flushed to the temples. Sidney Mallinson, Mrs. Willoughby, and now her father! All three had made the same suggestion, and the repetition of it vexed her pride. There were others they might have said it of with more appearance of truth, she thought: Sidney Mallinson himself, for instance, or even Percy Conway. But he, Drake! For a moment she felt inclined to telegraph to him telling him not to come. Then she thought of the motive which had induced her to send for him. No! She would ask her question that afternoon, and so have done with him for good. Aloud she answered:
'How ridiculous! I should hardly think he has that sort of conceit. Anyhow, if he has that impression, I will take care that he does not carry it away.'
Mr. Le Mesurier did not pursue the argument, but he gave certain instructions to his butler, and when Drake arrived at the house he was shown into the library. Mr. Le Mesurier received him.
'Pull up a chair to the fire,' he said with an uneasy geniality. 'I have something to say to you, Drake. It won't take long.'
Drake laid down his hat and seated himself opposite to Mr. Le Mesurier.
'My daughter told me this morning, quite spontaneously, of course, that she had asked you to call in order that she might get from you a certain answer to a certain question, and I thought that I had better prepare you for what that question will be.' He hesitated in his speech, searching for the best way to begin his explanation, and he caught sight of a cigar-box on the mantelshelf above his head.
'By the way, do you smoke?'
'Yes, but I won't just now, thank you.'
'You had better. You can throw it away when I have done. These are in rather a good condition.'
Mr. Le Mesurier seemed inclined to branch off upon the quality of different brands, but Drake gave him no assistance. He lit his cigar and patiently waited, his eyes fixed upon his host. Mr. Le Mesurier felt driven back upon the actual point of his explanation, and almost compelled to fine his words down to just the needful quantity.
'Clarice, I believe,' he said brusquely, 'means to ask you how Gorley died. He was engaged to her.'
Drake did not so much as stir a muscle, even his eyes maintained their steadiness, and Mr. Le Mesurier drew a breath of relief. 'I am glad you take it like this,' he went on. 'I was afraid that what I had to say might have been, well, perhaps a blow to you, and if so the fault would have been mine; for I encouraged you to come here.'
Drake bent forward and knocked the ash off the end of his cigar.
'Yes,' he asked; 'why did you do that?'
Mr. Le Mesurier looked uncomfortable.
'It is only right that I should be frank with you,' he replied. 'The mere fact of Gorley's death, apart from its manner, upset Clarice, more, I confess, than we expected, and made her quite ill for a time. She is not very strong, you know. So it was deemed best, not only by me, but by Gorley's family as well, that she should be kept in ignorance of what had actually happened. We simply told her that Gorley had died near Boruwimi. But I fancy that she suspected we were concealing something. Perhaps our avoidance of the subject gave her the hint, or it may have been Mrs. Willoughby.'
'Mrs. Willoughby?'
'She is related to the Gorley family as well as to us. It was through her Clarice first met Gorley,' he explained, and went on. 'Then you returned to England, and were interviewed in theMeteor. Clarice read the interview; you had described in it your march to Boruwimi, and she sent through Mallinson at once an invitation to you. I only found that out the night you were introduced to us at the theatre. It made me certain that she had suspicions, and I admit that I asked you to call in the hope of allaying them. I believed, foolishly as it seems, that if I was cordial, she would give up any ideas she might have, that you were connected in any way with Gorley's death. Afterwards, Drake, I need hardly tell you, I was glad you came here upon other grounds.' Mr. Le Mesurier leaned forward in his chair and touched Drake upon the knee. 'It didn't take long for me to conceive a genuine liking for you, and, of course, I knew all the time that you had only done your duty.'
Drake made no response whatever to Mr. Le Mesurier's sentiment.
'I understand, then,' he said, 'that Miss Le Mesurier was engaged toGorley at the time of his death?'
'Oh dear, no,' exclaimed the other, starting up from his chair. 'You are aware, I suppose, why Gorley left England?'
Drake nodded assent.
'The engagement was broken off then and there. And Clarice at that time did not seem to take it much to heart. I was inclined to believe that the whole affair had been just a girl's whim. Indeed, in spite of her illness, I am not certain now that that isn't the truth. She may have had some notion of reforming him. I find Clarice rather difficult to understand.'
Drake stood up. 'Where is Miss Le Mesurier?' he asked.
'Upstairs in the drawing-room.'
He took a step towards the door, and took the step unsteadily. He stopped for a second, bracing his shoulders; then he walked firmly across the room. While his hand was on the handle, he heard Mr. Le Mesurier speaking.
'What do you mean to tell her?'
'I hardly understand,' he answered, turning round. 'There surely is but one thing to say—the truth. She has a right to know that.'
'Has she? The engagement was broken off finally when Gorley left England. They had nothing more to do with one another, no common interests, no common future. Has she?'
'It seems to me, yes!'
'We have kept the knowledge from her up till now. No one could blame you if you kept it from her a little longer.'
The argument smacked of sophistry to Drake. He had an unreasoned conviction that the girl had a right to learn the truth from him.
'I think I ought to tell her if she asks me.'
'I might forbid you to do it,' grumbled Mr. Le Mesurier.
'Do you?' asked Drake. The question brought Mr. Le Mesurier up short. It was a direct question, inviting a responsible decision, and Mr. Le Mesurier was averse by nature to making such decisions out of hand. If Drake cared for Clarice, he reflected, it was really in Drake's province to decide the point rather than in his own.
'I don't know enough of you,' he replied, 'to either forbid or give you permission.'
Drake wondered what the sentence meant.
'In that case I must take my own course,' he said, and he went out of the room and mounted the stairs.
It was the dusk of a February afternoon. Drake had found the lamps lit in Mr. Le Mesurier's library, and the gas was burning in the hall and on the stairs. But within the drawing-room all the light there was came from the fire leaping upon the hearth and from the two recessed windows which faced it. In the farthest of these windows Drake saw Miss Le Mesurier standing, the outline of her face relieved, as it were, against a gray panel of twilight. As the door closed, she turned and took a step into the room. Drake could no longer see more than the shape of her head and the soft waves of hair crowning it; he could not distinguish a single feature, but none the less, as she stood facing him, he felt of a sudden his heart sink within him and his whole strength race out of his body.
Clarice stood still; and he became possessed with a queer longing that she would move again, forwards, within the focus of the firelight. However, she spoke from where she stood.
'You have seen my father.'
Instinctively Drake walked to the fireplace, but she did not follow.
'I have just left him,' he replied. 'He told me what the question was which you wished me to answer.'
'And forbade you to answer it, I suppose?'
'No. He left the choice to me.'
'Well?' she asked.
'I mean to answer it to the full,' he said. 'I was not aware till a moment ago that you had been engaged to Gorley.' Then he hesitated. Clarice was still standing in the shadow, and his desire that she should move out of it and within the circle of light grew upon him until it seemed almost as though the sight of her face and the knowledge of how she was receiving the history of the incident were necessary conditions of its narration.
'I suppose that is the reason,' he went on, 'which made you ask me here at first. Why did you never put the question before?'
'Why?' repeated Clarice slowly, as if she was putting the question to herself. Then she moved slowly towards the fireplace and seated herself by the side of it, bent forwards towards its glow, her elbows upon her knees, her hands propping her chin. Drake gave a sigh of relief, and Clarice glanced at him in surprise, and turned again to the fire. 'Tell me your story,' she said, and left his question unanswered.
Drake began; but now that his wish was accomplished, of a sudden all the reality seemed to fade out of the tragic events he was to recount. His consciousness became in some queer way centred upon the girl who was listening, to the exclusion of the subject she was listening to. He was intensely conscious of her face, of its changing expressions, of the ebb and flow of the blood from time to time flushing her cheeks and temples, and of the vivid play of lights and shadows upon them as the flames danced and sank on the hearth. He noticed, too, with an observation new to him, and quite involuntary, the details of the room in which he stood, the white panelling of the walls, the engravings in their frames, the china ranged upon a ledge near to the ceiling. Of these things his mind took impressions with the minuteness almost of a camera. They were real to him at this moment, because they formed the framework and setting of the girl's face and figure.
But Gorley's crime and his expiation of it became by contrast as remote to his apprehension in point of all connection with Clarice as they were in point of locality. He could not realise them to himself as events which had actually happened and in which he had played a part, and he spoke in the toneless voice of one who relates a fable of which, through frequent repetition, he is tired. Instinctively, in order to make the truth of his story palpable, he began to corroborate it with particulars which he would otherwise have spared his auditor, but with the same impersonal accent. He told Clarice of the condition of the village after Gorley's raid, as he first came within view of it: here the body of a negro stood pinned upright against the wall of his hut by an assegai fixing his neck; there another was lying charred upon still-smouldering embers; and as he saw her turn pale and shudder he almost wondered why.
But in spite of his efforts to appreciate its actuality the incident grew more unsubstantial the further he progressed in its narration, and he ended it abruptly.
'Gorley was properly tried,' he said—'his relations testified to the justice of his trial—and he was executed in accordance with the verdict.'
Clarice sat motionless after he had ended. Drake watched the flames sparkle in her gray eyes. At his elbow the clock ticked upon the mantelshelf spacing the seconds, and the fire was hot upon his limbs. That dream-world in Africa dissolved to a vapour.
Clarice recalled him to it at last.
'I never imagined,' she said in a low voice, 'that the truth was anything like this. I shouldn't have asked you if I had. A long time ago I knew that something was being concealed, but I thought it was an accident or—well, I couldn't conceive what it was and I grew curious, I suppose. When you came back to England I thought you might be able to tell me. Lately, however, I began to fancy that you were concerned in it some way. You might have sent Mr. ——' she checked herself with the name unspoken and went on, 'you might have sent him on some fatal mission or something of that sort. But this! Oh, why did you tell me?'
She took her hands from beneath her chin and clenched them with a convulsive movement upon her knees. Her memory had gone back to the days when she and Gorley had been engaged, to their meetings, their intimate conversations. This man, in whose hand her hands had lain, whose lips had pressed hers, been pressed by hers, this man had been convicted of a double crime—dastardly murder and dastardly theft—and punished for it! Her pride cried out against her knowledge, and cried out against the man who had vouchsafed the knowledge.
'Why did you tell me?' she repeated, and the words were an accusation.
'You wished to know,' he replied doggedly, 'and it seemed to me that you had the right to know.'
'Right!' she exclaimed, 'right! What right had I to know? What right had you to tell me?'
She rose to her feet suddenly as she spoke and confronted Drake. He looked into her eyes steadily, but with a certain perplexity.
'I felt bound to tell you,' he said simply, and his simplicity appealed to her by its frank recognition of an obligation to her.
'Why,' she asked herself, 'why did he feel bound? Merely because I wished to know the truth of the matter, or because he himself was implicated in it as the instrument of Gorley's punishment?' Either reason was sufficient to appease her. She inclined to the latter; there were conclusions to be inferred from it which staunched her wounded pride.
Clarice turned away. Drake watched her set a foot upon the rail of the fender, lay her hand upon the mantelshelf and support her forehead upon it. After a little she raised her head and spoke with an air of apologising for him.
'Of course,' she said. 'You could not know that there was anything between myself and—and him.'
'No; I could not know that. How should I, for I did not know you? And I am glad that I didn't know.'
Drake spoke with some earnestness, and Clarice looked at him in surprise.
'It would have made my duty so much harder to do,' he explained.
With a little cry of irritation Clarice slipped her foot from the fender and moved from him back to the couch. She had given him the opportunity to escape from his position and he refused to make use of it; he seemed indeed unable to perceive it. However, she clung to it obstinately and repeated it.
'You could not know there was anything between us'; she emphasised the words deliberately. Drake mistook the intention of the emphasis.
'But was there,' he exclaimed, 'at the time? I didn't think of that, MissLe Mesurier—'
'Oh no, no!' she interrupted. 'Not at the time.' The man was impracticable, and yet his very impracticability aroused in a measure her admiration. 'So you would have shot him just the same, had you known?'
'Shot him?' asked Drake almost absently.
'Yes.'
'Didn't I tell you? I beg your pardon. I didn't shoot him at all. I hanged him.'
Clarice was stunned by the words, and the more because of the dull, seemingly callous accent with which they were spoken.
'You hanged him!' she whispered, dropping the words one by one, as though she was striving to weigh them.
'Yes. I have been blamed for it,' he replied with no change of voice. 'People said I was damaging the prestige of the white man. The argument bothered me, I confess, but I think they were wrong. I should have damaged that prestige infinitely more if I had punished him secretly or—'
'Oh, don't!' she cried, with a sharp interruption, and she stared at him with eyes dilating in horror, almost in fear. 'You can discuss it like that,—the man I had been engaged to,—you hanged him!'
She ended with a moan of actual pain and covered her face with her hands. On the instant Drake woke to a full comprehension of all that he had said, and understood something of the humiliation which it meant to her.
Clarice was sitting huddled in her chair, her fingers pressed lightly on her eyes, while now and again a shiver shot through her frame.
'Still I was bound to tell her,' Drake thought. He waited for a little, wondering whether she would look up, but she made no movement. An emerald ring upon her finger caught the light and winked at him maliciously, leering at him, he fancied. There was nothing more for him to say, and he quietly went out of the room.
The click of the door-handle roused Clarice. She saw that the room was empty, and, drawing a breath of relief, started out of her chair. Standing thus she heard Drake's footsteps descending the stairs, and after a pause the slamming of the hall-door. Then she went to the fireplace and knelt down close to it, warming her hands at the blaze.
'The degradation of it!' she whispered.