Bit by bit she sought to reconstruct the scene, piecing it together out of Drake's words; but somehow that scene would not be reconstructed. She gradually found herself considering Drake's words as a light thrown upon the man who spoke them, rather than as the description of an actual incident. The humiliation which she experienced made her shrink with a certain repulsion from her recollections of Gorley and dwell instead upon the contrasting tones in Drake's voice, the contrasting expressions upon his face when he spoke to her and when he merely narrated his story. In the first instance gentleness had been the dominant characteristic, in the second indifference; and that very indifference, while it repelled her, magnetised her thoughts.
Something indeed of the same process which had caused that appearance of indifference in Drake was now repeating itself in Clarice. Drake was superseding Gorley in her mind. She struggled against the obsession and morbidly strove to picture to herself the actual execution: the black troops ranged in a clearing before the smouldering village, looking up at one figure—Gorley's—spinning on a rope. But even upon that picture Drake's face obtruded. She thrust out her hands to keep it off, as though it was living and pressing in upon her; for a moment she tried to conjure up Gorley's face, but it was blurred—only his form she could see spinning on a rope, and Drake beneath it, his features clear like an intaglio and firm-set with that same sense of duty which had forced him sternly to recount to her the truth that afternoon. She recurred to her recent habit of comparing him with Mallinson. She had a vision of Mallinson, with the same experience to relate,—if that were imaginable—fidgeting through evasions, grasping at any diversion she might throw out for him to play with.
But what if Drake's frankness, outspoken to the point of cruelty, sprang from an indifference to her? Clarice had seen a good deal of Drake lately. She caught herself almost smiling at the idea, softening at its palpable falsity. In a last effort at resistance she fixed her thoughts on the cruelty, the callousness, in his method of narration, and began to feel herself on solid ground. She was consequently inspired to run over all that he had said, in order to make her footing yet firmer, and at the outset she was brought to a check. Why had she never questioned him upon the matter before? he had asked. Clarice stopped and asked the question of herself. At the beginning of their acquaintance certainly there had always been others by, but afterwards there had been opportunities enough. But by that time, what with her father's and Mrs. Willoughby's hostility, she had begun to suspect that Drake was in some way implicated in the mystery. Was it because she was afraid to know it for certain that she had refrained? She recalled her letter to him written last Monday, and how she had crossed out 'importance' and substituted 'interest.' Was this knowledge important to her, really important, bearing issues in the future? It could only be important, she realised, if she set great store upon her acquaintanceship with Drake. Drake, in fact, had achieved something of a triumph, though quite unknown to himself, for he had compelled Clarice Le Mesurier to abandon the consideration of his attitude towards her in favour of a search after the state of her feelings towards him.
She was still engaged in the search when the clock struck six, and, rousing herself brusquely, she rang the bell for the lamps to be brought.
At that moment Mrs. Willoughby had just finished telling to Fielding the story which Drake had told to Clarice.
'So that's what Drake was referring to on Sunday,' said Fielding.
'Yes,' said Mrs. Willoughby.
'What in the world made you attack him in that way, if you didn't wantClarice to suspect?'
'The fact was, I was a fool, I suppose. I just put my head down and charged. But what I want your advice upon is this, ought Clarice to be told now—before things go further?'
'No, no!' said Fielding. He saw the curtain descending precipitately upon his comedy before the climax was reached, and he added quite sincerely, 'I like Drake. I don't see why he shouldn't have a run for her money.'
Mrs. Willoughby looked doubtful for a moment, and then she said, 'Very well.' She hesitated for a second: 'I think I like him too.'
This was by no means the last occasion upon which Mrs. Willoughby thought it prudent to take counsel with Fielding concerning the affairs of her friend. Nor was Fielding in any degree backward to respond with his advice. He developed, in fact, an interest in their progress quite disproportionate to his professed attitude of the spectator in the stalls. Mrs. Willoughby lived at Knightsbridge, in a little house, of which the drawing-room overlooked the Park close to the barracks, and he found it very pleasant to sit there of an afternoon and discuss in a cosy duet the future of Clarice.
The subject, besides, had the advantage of inexhaustibility. On the one side Fielding ranged the suitors, or those whom he considered such; on the other the vagaries of the girl. Playing these forces off not merely against each other, but against themselves as well—for, as he pointed out, there was no harmony in the separate camps—he evolved an infinite number of endless complications. There was consequently no end to the discussion, not even when Clarice was argued through the marriage ceremony. For that point Fielding took to represent the one o'clock in the morning of a carnival ball; then the fun really begins, though decent people have to go away.
Mrs. Willoughby was, as ever, staunch in her defence, though a recollection of Clarice's tearful visit with Conway's arrival for a climax prompted her now and again to laugh in the midst of it.
'You mistake thoughtlessness for tricks,' she said. 'Clarice is only a child as yet.'
'She has a child's capacity for emotion, I admit,' corrected Fielding, 'but a woman's knowledge of its use. The combination is deplorable.'
Fielding inquired about Drake, and was told that he had not been seen lately. 'It looks as if he was declining in favour,' Mrs. Willoughby added.
'Not necessarily. The man's busy—there's a company coming out.'
'A solid one?'
'Likely to be, since Drake handles it. I am thinking of taking shares.'
Mrs. Willoughby was surprised. Fielding seemed to her the last man calculated by nature for dabbling in stocks.
'You!' she exclaimed. Fielding nodded assent.
'Then don't do it,' Mrs. Willoughby flashed out vigorously. 'Don't think of it. Oh, I know those men in the City! Their friends get ruined, and they—well, I mustn't say anything against them, because my husband was one of them, poor dear,—but they move into larger offices. Mr. Drake has been asking you to join him?'
'He hasn't done anything of the sort. I heard of the matter through quite an independent channel. However, I am not ruined yet, and the company won't be floated for another four months. And, after all, it's my money.'
Mrs. Willoughby became quiet.
'Well,' she said, and she derived some satisfaction from the thought, 'at all events Clarice has dropped talking about him.'
Fielding laughed.
'That means that it's Mallinson's turn on the roundabout and nothing more.'
'Sidney Mallinson has been refused.'
'Refused! When?'
'On the Sunday we lunched at Beaufort Gardens.'
'Oh!'
Fielding was silent for a moment. He was thinking that he had metMallinson of late with unusual frequency here at Mrs. Willoughby's house.
'But are you sure?' he asked.
'Certain; he told me so himself. Clarice told me too the day after.' Mrs. Willoughby began again to laugh. 'She would have prevented him if she could, but apparently he tried to take her by storm.'
'Oh!' exclaimed Fielding. 'On the Sunday afternoons you say? Then I was to blame, I am afraid, for I gave him precisely that advice on the Sunday morning. Of course, I never thought that he would take it.'
Fielding met Sidney Mallinson again and again at the house in Knightsbridge. He was invited to dinner, but so was Mallinson, and the latter had confidential talks with Mrs. Willoughby. He dined with some friends at the Savoy and went on in a comfortable frame of mind to a concert; there Mrs. Willoughby joined them, so did Mallinson, and the couple sat side by side and conversed through a song. 'The height of bad taste,' commented Fielding in an access of irritation. The fellow was spoiling his comedy by relinquishing his part. He drew Mallinson aside as they passed through the hall.
'You seem to see a good deal of Mrs. Willoughby?'
'Yes, we generally pair off together.'
Fielding dropped plump among the coarse sensations of the ordinary human. He wanted to kick Mallinson, and to kick him hard. He saw with an anticipatory satisfaction the glasses flying off the supercilious gentleman's nose, and felt the jar at the end of his boot as it dashed into the coat-tails. The action would have been too noticeable, however, and he only said, 'What a verybourgeoisthing to do!'
Mallinson's air of complacency vanished as he heard the offensive term levelled against himself. He did not, however, on that account change his attitude towards Mrs. Willoughby. Fielding found him at the house a few days later, and proceeded to sit him out. The contest drove Fielding to the last pitch of exasperation, for, apart from the inherent humiliation of the proceeding, Mrs. Willoughby was directly encouraging Mallinson to stay.
Mallinson at last was suffered to leave, and Mrs. Willoughby, instead of resuming her seat, walked across to the window and scrutinised intently the passers-by.
'That creature visits you pretty often, it appears,' said Fielding.
'Does he?' she asked. 'He comes to me for the sake of consolation,I suppose.'
'And makes love to you for the sake of contrast. He tells me you generally pair off together when you meet. Pair off!' and he grimaced the phrase to show how little he minded it. 'It'll be "keeping company" next.'
Mrs. Willoughby gave a little quiet laugh. Her back was towards him, so that he could not catch her expression, but she seemed to him culpably indifferent to the complexion which Mallinson had given to their friendship.
'It's rather funny,' she said, 'though I can't help feeling sorry for him.'
'I saw that you were sorry for him,' Fielding interrupted.
'But he pretends,' Mrs. Willoughby went on, ignoring the interruption with complete unconsciousness—'he pretends to himself that I am Clarice. He talks to me as if I were. He called me "Clarice" the other day, and never noticed the mistake, and that's not my name, is it?' She turned to him quite seriously as she put the question.
'No,' replied Fielding, 'your name's Constance,' and he dwelt upon the name for a second.
'Yes—Constance,' said Mrs. Willoughby thoughtfully. 'It sounds rather prim, don't you think?'
'Constance,' Fielding repeated, weighing it deliberately. 'Constance—no,I rather like it.'
'Clarice shortens it to Connie.'
'Does she indeed? Connie—Constance.' Fielding contrasted the two names, and again, 'Constance—Connie.'
Mrs. Willoughby's mouth began to dimple at the corners.
'Although one laughs,' she proceeded, 'it's really rather serious aboutMr. Mallinson. He told me once the colour of my eyes was—'
'Do you let him talk to you about the colour of your eyes?' Fielding was really indignant at the supposition.
'He didn't ask my permission,' Mrs. Willoughby said penitently. 'But it isn't a thing people ought to do. He said they were gray, and they aren't, are they?' She turned her face towards him.
'Gray? Of course not,' said Fielding, and starting from his chair, he approached Mrs. Willoughby at the window to make sure.
'Clarice's are, I know, but I am certain mine aren't.' She held up her face towards the light, and the remark was pitched as a question.
'Yours,' said Fielding, examining them, 'Neptune dipped them in the sea at six o'clock on an August morning.'
Mrs. Willoughby moved away from the window precipitately. 'So, if Mr. Mallinson is so fond of Clarice,' she said, 'that he sees her in everybody one can't help pitying him.'
Mrs. Willoughby, however, for a short time subsequently was not seen in the company of the discarded lover, and Fielding inferred with satisfaction that her pity was taking a less active form. He was roused to a perception that his inference was false one night at the opera.
Mrs. Willoughby was present with Mr. Le Mesurier and Clarice. Percy Conway he hardly reckoned, counting him at this time, from his constant attendance, rather as an item of Clarice's toilette; and Fielding took care to descend the staircase after the performance in close proximity to the party.
'And how's Mr. Mallinson?' he asked of Mrs. Willoughby, not without a certain complacency in his voice.
'Oh, poor boy!' she replied with the tenderest sympathy, 'he's in bed, ill.'
'Ill?' asked Clarice quickly. 'You don't mean that.'
'Yes. I'm so concerned. He wrote to tell me all about it.'
Fielding looked displeased, and much the same expression was to be seen on the face of Clarice. Mrs. Willoughby was serenely unconscious of the effect of her words.
'I heard that he was in bed,' interposed Conway carelessly. 'But apparently he has got something to console himself with.'
'Yes. He wrote to me about that too,' said Mrs. Willoughby. 'Fancy, Clarice! He has inherited quite a good income. An uncle or somebody left it to him.'
Clarice expressed an acid satisfaction at the news. She dropped behind with Fielding.
'You didn't know that Mr. Mallinson was ill?' she asked. 'Did none of his friends know except Connie?' and then there was a perceptible accent of pique in her voice.
Fielding did not answer the question immediately. He had been brought of a sudden to the vexatious conclusion that Mrs. Willoughby was a coquette just like the rest of her trivial sex—no better, indeed, than the girl at his side, whose first anxiety was not as to whether Mallinson was seriously ill, but why he wrote the information to Mrs. Willoughby. He felt that Mrs. Willoughby had no right to trifle with Mallinson. The poor fellow had already suffered his full share of that kind of experience.
Miss Le Mesurier repeated her question impatiently, and Fielding suddenly realised that Miss Le Mesurier's pique might prove useful in setting matters right. He determined to encourage it.
'None that I'm aware of,' he replied. 'Mrs. Willoughby, of course, would be likely to know first.'
'Why?'
'Haven't you noticed? They have struck up a great friendship lately—always pair off together, you know.'
Miss Le Mesurier's lips curled at the despicable phrase, but she blamed Mrs. Willoughby for the fact which it described, not Sidney Mallinson. His attitude she could understand, and make allowance for; it had been a despairing act prompted by an instinct of self-preservation to rid himself of the hopeless thought of her. An unsuccessful act too, for the poor fellow had broken down. She had no doubts as to the origin of his illness, and overflowed promptly with sympathy. Her resentment against Mrs. Willoughby none the less remained.
Driving homewards she asked her, 'Why didn't you tell me before that Mr.Mallinson was ill?'
'My dear, I never gave a thought to it until I saw Mr. Fielding. The illness isn't serious,' and Mrs. Willoughby laughed, with peculiar heartlessness thought Clarice. They were, however, not thinking of the same individual.
Mrs. Willoughby, Clarice, and Fielding in consequence suffered some such change in their relative positions as is apt to take place amongst the European Powers. Poor Mrs. Willoughby, in the innocent pursuit of her own ideas, had suddenly roused two former friends into a common antagonism. These friends, besides, had much the same grounds for resentment as the Powers usually have, for Mrs. Willoughby's conduct was a distinct infringement of rights which did not exist. Clarice and Fielding drew perceptibly nearer to one another; they exchanged diplomaticpourparlers. Fielding found a great deal to praise in Mallinson, and Clarice had a word or two to say upon the score of widows. She was doubtful whether they ought ever to re-marry. Fielding kept an open mind on the subject, but was willing to discuss it. On the particular point, however, whether this widow was to marry Mallinson they were both uncompromisingly agreed, and were only hindered from an armed demonstration by the suspicion that the sinner to the overawed would merely laugh at it. On the whole Fielding deemed it best to address a friendly remonstrance to Mrs. Willoughby in the interests of Clarice. He suggested that she should see less of Sidney Mallinson.
'But I have no grounds for slamming my door in his face,' she answered plaintively. 'You see, Clarice has refused him, and really he's very sweet and polite to me.'
Fielding pointed out with the elaborate calmness of intense exasperation that there could be no finality in a refusal given by Miss Le Mesurier. Mrs. Willoughby replied that they had differed before in their views of Clarice, and that the point he mentioned was one upon which Mr. Mallinson must be left to judge for himself. 'Exactly,' said Fielding with emphasis, 'he should be left to judge for himself,' and was for marching off with colours flying. But Mrs. Willoughby could not refrain from declaring that the unprecedented interest which Mr. Fielding took in his friend Mr. Mallinson had raised that friend to a very different position in her esteem from that which he had held before.
The combat was renewed more than once, but with no different result, and upon the same lines. Mrs. Willoughby received his attacks with a patient humility, and rushed out to catch him a flout as he was retiring. Finally, however, she shifted her position, and became the aggressor. She suggested that Fielding was really in love with Clarice, and trying to gain favour with her by bringing an admirer back to her feet. Fielding was furious at the suggestion, and indignantly repudiated it. She ignored the repudiation, and quietly insisted in pointing out the meanness of such a system of making love. The unfortunate gentleman's dignity constrained him to listen in silence, for he felt that he would have spluttered had he opened his lips. The only course open to him was a retreat with a high head, and he declared that it was no longer possible for him to continue a discussion which he had begun as much in her true interests as on behalf of justice and her particular friend Miss Le Mesurier, and went home. By return of post he received a pen-and-ink drawing of himself and Clarice 'pairing off.' He was figured in the costermonger's dress, with his arm tucked under the girl's, and her hat on his head.
Meanwhile Mallinson was still in bed, completely ignorant of the battle which had been waged for the possession of him.
Fielding thought more than once of calling at his flat, since his determination had been sharpened rather than overcome by the victories of Mrs. Willoughby. He was more than ever convinced that Mallinson ought to have a fair chance with Miss Le Mesurier—an equal chance with Drake. The name of Drake made him pause. Miss Le Mesurier knew everything there was to be known about Mallinson, but there were certain facts in Drake's history of which she was ignorant. The question sprang into his mind, 'Could Mallinson have a fair chance unless she was made acquainted with those facts?' Fielding knew Members of Parliament who had been returned over the heads of residents in the constituency because they entered it too late for the electors to become intimate with their defects. Drake's career might provide an analogy unless Clarice was told. He argued to convince himself that he felt she ought to be told, but he could not bring himself to the point of telling. He decided finally upon an alternative which would, he imagined, secure his purpose, while relieving him of the responsibility. He would tell Mallinson of the Gorley episode, for the rival surely had a right to know. Whether Clarice was to be informed or not, Mallinson should be allowed to judge.
Fielding assured himself of the justice of his intention for the space of two days without putting it into execution, but on the third he chanced to meet Conway, and was given the information that Mallinson's inherited income amounted to a thousand pounds. The news decided him. Under these circumstances Mallinson certainly ought to know. He jumped into a hansom and drove down to South Kensington.
Mallinson was still in bed, but sufficiently recovered to write up his diary. The book lay upon the counterpane open, but as Fielding was introduced into the room, its author shut it up and tucked it under his pillow. It was kept entirely for his own perusal, a voluminous record of sensations ranging from a headache to a fit of anger, without the mention of an incident from cover to cover.
'I hear you have had a touch of bronchitis,' said Fielding.
'Something more than a touch, I can tell you. I have been rather ill.However, I am going to get up to-morrow.'
Fielding found it difficult to come to the point of his visit.
'You must have found it dull.'
'Not very. I can always interest myself. Drake came to see me yesterday.'
'Drake! How did he know? Conway told him, I suppose.'
'No, Miss Le Mesurier told him.'
'Miss Le Mesurier?' he asked.
'Yes. Are you surprised?' The question was put with some resentment.
'That she told him? No, I expect she sent him.' A smirk upon the invalid's face showed he shared the thought.
'By the way,' Fielding continued, 'talking of Miss Le Mesurier, did you ever meet a man called Gorley?'
'No. There was a Gorley who was engaged to her. Is that the man?'
'Yes. I heard rather a strange story about him. He went out to Africa, you know.'
Mallinson lifted himself on his elbow.
'Africa,' he said slowly. 'Yes, I heard that. Why do you mention him?'
'Oh, I thought perhaps you might have known the man, that's all.He's dead.'
Fielding spoke with a studied carelessness, looking anywhere except atMallinson.
'Dead,' repeated Mallinson in the same tone, but his heart was beginning to race, and he lifted himself higher into a sitting position. 'Gorley was a relation of Mrs. Willoughby, I believe.'
'A kind of cousin.'
There was silence between the men for a second or two. Mallinson was recalling what Mrs. Willoughby had said that evening at Beaufort Gardens, when Mr. Le Mesurier pressed her to meet Stephen Drake at lunch.
'So Gorley died in Africa,' he remarked. 'Where? Do you know?'
'Yes; at Boruwimi.'
Mallinson started. Fielding glanced at him involuntarily, and their looks crossed.
'A strange story, you said. Suppose you tell it me. It will while away some of my time.'
Fielding lit a cigarette and related the story. At the end of it Mallinson lay back on the pillows, staring at the ceiling. Once or twice Fielding spoke to him, but he did not hear. He was not thinking: the knowledge that the secret to be discovered was his to use was as a sense in him. He felt it pulsing through his veins and throbbing at his heart. Mrs. Willoughby was forgotten. It had been after all but a fictitious fancy which he had conceived for her, a fancy fostered in the main as balm for his self-respect after his refusal by Clarice.
As soon as he was sufficiently recovered he called upon Miss Le Mesurier, confident that his hour and opportunity had come. Drake, however, had reported to Clarice on the condition of Mallinson, and her sympathy had in consequence to a great extent evaporated. Bronchitis was not of the ailments which spring from a broken heart, and she was inclined to hold it as a grievance against him that she had been so wastefully touched with pity. Her sympathy disappeared altogether when with little circumlocution he broached the subject of the Boruwimi expedition, and dropped a mention of Mrs. Willoughby's relative. There was something at the back of it, he hinted.
Clarice wondered whence he had got his information, but made no effort to check him. She stood looking out of the window while he retold her the story of Gorley's death. It became more unreal to her than ever; for while his account was correctly given, as Mrs. Willoughby had given it to Fielding, it lacked the uncompromising details which Drake himself had furnished. Her recollection of these details made the man who had given them stand out in her thoughts.
'It was a pitiful affair,' Mallinson concluded, 'but I thought you ought to know.'
Clarice drew a finger down the frame of glass in front of her.
'Mr. Drake thought so too,' she said quietly.
'Drake!' exclaimed Mallinson, utterly bewildered. 'Drake! The man wouldn't be such a—'
'He was though.'
'Do you mean that he confessed to it?'
'Confess?' she said, turning towards him. 'That is hardly the word. He told me of his own accord the moment he knew I had been engaged to—to—' She broke off at the name, and continued, 'and he spared himself in the telling far less than you have spared him.'
She spoke with a gentle dignity which Mallinson had never known in her before, and he felt that it raised a more solid barrier between them than even her refusal had done.
Fielding, meanwhile, waited with an uneasy conscience which no casuistry would lighten. He threw himself in Mallinson's way time after time in order to ascertain whether the latter had spoken. Mallinson let no word of the matter slip from him, and for the rest seemed utterly despondent. Fielding threw out a feeler at last.
'Of course,' he said, 'you would never repeat what I told you aboutGorley. I forgot to mention that.'
Mallinson flushed. 'Of course not,' he said awkwardly.
Fielding turned on him quickly. 'Then what made you tell Miss LeMesurier?'
Mallinson was too taken aback to deny the accusation. 'Oh, Miss LeMesurier,' he replied, 'knew already.'
'She knew? Who told her?'
'Drake.'
Fielding drew in his breath and whistled. His first feeling was one of distinct relief, that after all he had not been the means by which Clarice had come to her knowledge; his second was one of indignation against Drake. He realised how a frank admission from Drake would outweigh in the girl's susceptible nature the fact admitted. 'What on earth induced him to reveal it?'
'I suppose he is a little more cunning than one took him for. No doubt he saw the thing would get known sooner or later, and thought the disclosure had better come from himself.'
Fielding had been leaning to the same opinion, but the moment he heard it stated, and stated by Mallinson, he felt a certain conviction that it was wrong. 'I don't believe that,' he said sharply.
He was none the less, however, indignant with Drake. To intermeddle at all in other people's concerns was averse to his whole theory of existence. But to intermeddle, and not very creditably, and out of the most disinterested motives of benevolence and expediency, and then to fail! All this was nothing short of degrading. He dined that night at his club, to which Drake had been elected, and lay in wait for him. Drake, however, did not appear, and at ten o'clock Fielding went round to his rooms.
Drake was living in chambers on the Embankment, a little to the west of Hungerford Bridge. As he was shown into the room, Fielding could not help noticing the plainness of its furniture and adornment. The chairs were covered with a cheap red cretonne; there was an armchair or two with the high seat and long elbows, which seemed to have gone astray from a Peckham drawing-room; an ormolu clock under a glass shade ornamented the overmantel, and in the way of literature there was one book in the room—Prescott'sConquest of Peru—and a copy of theTimes.
Drake was seated at the table engaged in the study of a map of Matanga. 'Come in!' he said cordially. Fielding drew up a chair to the fire. 'Have a drink? The cigars are on the mantelshelf.'
Drake fetched a syphon and a decanter of whisky and mixed two glasses. He handed one to Fielding, and brought his map to the fire.
'Ah!' said Fielding. 'There's likely to be a rising in Matanga, I see.'
'Very possibly.'
'How will that affect you?'
'Not at all, I think. It may delay things, of course, but it won't take long, and, besides, it won't touch the interior of the country. There will be a certain amount of shouting in the capital and round the coast, perhaps a gun or two fired off, and then they'll settle down under a new President.'
'But there are a good many Germans there, aren't there? What if they invite the German Government to interfere?'
'I don't fancy that's probable. The German colonist isn't over fond of German rule. You see the first thing a German official wants to do when he catches sight of a black, is to drill him. It's his first and often his last idea. He wants to see him holding the palm of his hand against the stripe of an invisible trouser, and the system doesn't work, because the black clears over the nearest border.'
Fielding laughed and turned to the object of his visit. 'Talking ofMatanga, what in the world made you tell Miss Le Mesurier about Gorley?'
Drake looked up from his map. 'How did you know anything aboutGorley?' he asked.
'Mrs. Willoughby told me. I thought it was decided Miss Le Mesurier should not be told.'
'Mr. Le Mesurier left the choice to me, and it seemed to me that she had a right to know.'
'Why?'
Drake paused for a second in reflection. 'It seemed to me—' he began again.
'Well, she hadn't,' snapped Fielding.
'Well, I think she had,' answered Drake quietly, returning to his map.
'Then you were wrong; she hadn't. The engagement was broken off a long while ago, and you hadn't a right to tell her unless you want to marry her yourself.'
Drake raised his head with a jerk and stared at the wall in front of him fixedly. He made no answer, nor could Fielding distinguish upon his face any expression which gave a clue to his thoughts. He got up from his chair, and Drake turned to him. 'I gather from your tone,' he said in an indifferent voice, 'that Mrs. Willoughby resents my action.'
'My dear fellow, no,' exclaimed Fielding energetically. 'For Heaven's sake, don't take me for a reflex of Mrs. Willoughby!'
No more plotting for him, he determined. He had planned and calculated and interfered, all for other people's good, and this was the thanks he got; to be quietly informed that he hadn't an idea of his own.
The next afternoon Mrs. Willoughby stopped her phaeton beside him in Bond Street. She looked very well, he thought, with her clear complexion,—clear as those clear eyes of hers with just the hint of azure in the whites of them—wind-whipped now to a rosy warmth.
'May I congratulate you yet?' she asked pleasantly.
Fielding was not to be provoked to renew the combat, and he put the question aside. 'You remember what you told me the other day about Gorley,' he said.
'Yes,' she answered, becoming serious.
'Well, Miss Le Mesurier knows.'
'Who told her?' and she leaned forward.
'Guess.'
Mrs. Willoughby thought for a moment and then shook her head. 'I can't.Her father?'
'No; Drake himself.'
She started back in her seat. Then she said, 'Of course, we might have known that he would,' and the 'we' sealed their reconciliation.
When Fielding had gone, Drake opened the window and stepped out on the balcony.
'Unless you want to marry her yourself'; the words were stamped upon his mind in capitals. They formulated to him for the first time the cause of that unreasoned conviction of his, and formulated it too, as he realised, with absolute truth. Yes, it was just his desire for Clarice to which he owed his belief that she had an unquestionable right to know his responsibility for Gorley's death.
He wanted her, and wanting her, was committed to scrupulous frankness.
Drake looked out across the city. At his feet lay the quiet strip of garden, lawn and bush; beyond, the lamps burning on the parapets of the Embankment, and beyond them, the river shining in the starlight, polished and lucent like a slab of black marble, with broad regular rays upon it of a still deeper blackness, where the massive columns of Hungerford Bridge cast shadows on the water. An engine puffed and snorted into the station, leaving its pennant of white smoke in the air. Through the glass walls of the signal-box above the bridge Drake could see the men in a blaze of light working at the levers, and from the Surrey end there came to him a clink, and at that distance a quite musical clink, of truck against truck as some freight-train was shunted across the rails. Away to his right the light was burning on Westminster clock-tower; on Westminster Bridge the lamps of cabs and carriages darted to and fro like fire-flies. Drake watched two of them start across in the same direction a few yards apart, saw the one behind close up, the one in front spirt forward as though each was straining for the lead. They drew level, then flashed apart, then again drew level, and so passing and repassing raced into the myriad lights upon the opposite bank. That bank was visible to him through a tracery of leafless twigs, for a tree grew in front of his window on the farther edge of the gardens, and he could see the lights upon its roadway dancing, twirling, clashing in the clear night, just as they clashed and twirled and danced in the roadway beneath him, sparks from a forge, and that forge, London. In their ceaseless motion they seemed rivulets of fire, and the black sheet of water between them the solid highway. But even while he looked, a ruby light moved on that highway out from the pillars of the bridge, and then another and another. Everywhere was the glitter of lights; fixed, flashing like a star on the curve, or again growing slowly from a pin's point to an orb, and then dwindling to a point and vanishing. And on every side, too, Drake heard the quick beat of horses, and the rattle of wheels struck out not from silence, but from a dull eternal hum like the hum of a mill, sharp particular notes emerging incessantly from a monotonous volume of sound.
It was just this aspect and this noise of restless activity which had always appealed to Drake, and had satisfied him with an assurance that he was on the road to the fulfilment of his aims. He had achieved something of his desires, however small. He was in London working at certain schemes of which he did not doubt the ultimate success. They were built upon a foundation of knowledge arduously gained and tested. The rising in Matanga, if it took place, might delay success, but success would surely come. He might then look forward with confidence to a seat in that Parliament on which the light was burning, to a share perhaps finally in its executive.
But to-night he found that there was something wanting in the contemplation of these aims, something wanting in the very outlook from his window. He needed Clarice here in his balcony by his side, and he pictured the shine of her eyes bent towards him in the dark. And the perception of that need held him in check, gave him a hint of warning that the thought of her might become as a wedge driven into the framework of his purposes and splitting them.
He could still draw back, he assured himself. But if he went on and won! He felt the blood surging through his veins. He might win; there was just a chance. The Gorley incident had made no real difference in Clarice's friendliness. When once, indeed, she had grown used to it, she had seemed almost to express some queer sort of sympathy with him.
Drake closed the window and sat down to calculate the time at which he would be sufficiently established to make known his suit. He fixed that time definitely in July. July! The name sounded pleasantly with its ripple of liquid syllables. Drake found himself repeating it when he should have been at work. It began to rise to his lips the moment a date was asked of him, as the only date at all worth mentioning. Fielding came down to Drake's office in Old Broad Street, in order to apply for shares in 'Matanga Concessions.'
'You had better wait,' said Drake. 'I will let you know before they are offered to the public.'
'That will be soon?'
'Not for the moment. There's the possibility of this rising. Let the country quiet down first!'
'But when do you propose?'
'July.'
'July? That's a long time to come.'
Drake coloured to the roots of his hair. 'I beg your pardon,' he said with evident embarrassment; 'much sooner than that of course. I was thinking of some one else.' He made matters worse by a hurried correction of 'some one' to 'something.'
Fielding noticed the embarrassment and the correction, and drew conclusions. They were conclusions, he thought, of which Mrs. Willoughby should be advised, and he drove to her house accordingly. He had ceased to feel displeasure at Mrs. Willoughby's conduct, for since he had studiously refrained from betraying the slightest irritation at Mallinson's visits, those visits had amazingly diminished.
'Did he happen to mention the date of the month and the time of the day?' was Mrs. Willoughby's comment.
'It sounds cold-blooded? Hardly, if you knew the man. He looks on life as a sort of draughtboard. So many definite moves to be made forward upon definite lines. Then you're crowned king and can move as you please, backwards if you like, till the end of the game.'
'He will be crowned king in July?'
'So I imagine.'
Meanwhile Drake worked on through March and April, outwardly untroubled, but inwardly asking himself ever: 'Shall I win? Shall I win?' The question besieged him. Patient he could be, none more so, when the end in view was to be gained by present even though gradual endeavour; but this passive waiting was a lid shut down on him, forcing his energies inwards to prey upon himself. His impatience, moreover, was increased by the increasing prospects of his undertaking. Additional reports had been received from his engineer appraising at a still higher value the quality of the land. He spoke too of a tract of country bordering Drake's concession on the north, and advised application for it. Biedermann, besides, had taken up the project warmly. The company was to come out early in May; there would be few shares open to the public, and the revolution had not taken place.
Why should he wait till July after all? Drake felt inclined to argue the question one Sunday afternoon in London's lilac time, as he walked across the green park towards Beaufort Gardens. He found Miss Le Mesurier alone and in a melancholy mood. She was singing weariful ballads in an undertone as he entered the room, and she rose dispiritedly to welcome him.
'It's seldom one finds you alone,' he said, and his face showed his satisfaction.
'I don't know,' she replied. 'It seems to me sometimes that I am always alone, even when people are by,' and her eyelids drooped.
'You?'
Clarice's sincerity was of the artist's sort implying a sub-consciousness of an audience. She recognised from the accent upon theyou, that her little speech had not failed of its effect. She continued more cheerfully: 'Aunt has gone up to Highgate to see some relations, and papa's asleep in the library.'
'You were singing. I hope you won't stop.'
'I was only passing the time.'
'You will make me think I intrude.'
'I'll prove to you that you don't,' and she went back to the piano. Drake seated himself at the side of it, facing her and facing the open window. The window-ledges were ablaze with flowers, and the scent of them poured into the room on a flood of sunshine.
Clarice was moved by a sudden whim to a change of humour. She sprang from her dejection to the extreme of good spirits. Her singing proved it, for she chose a couple of light-hearted French ballads, and sang them with a dainty humour which matched the daintiness of the words and music. Her shrugs and pouts, the pretty arching of her eyebrows, the whimsical note of mockery in her voice, represented her to Drake under a new aspect, helped to complete her in his thoughts much as her voice, very sweet and clear for all its small compass, completed in some queer way the flowers and sunshine. Her manner, however, did more than that; it gave to him, conscious of a certain stiffness and inflexibility of temperament, an inner sense of completion anticipated from his hope of a time when their lives would join. He leaned forward in his chair, watching the play of her face, the lights and shadows in the curls of her hair, the nimble touch of her fingers on the keys. Clarice stopped suddenly. 'You don't sing?'
'I have no accomplishments at all.'
She laughed and began to play one of Chopin's nocturnes. Her fingers rattled against the ivory on a run up the piano. She stopped and took a ring from her right hand; Drake noticed that it was the emerald ring which he had seen winking in the firelight on that evening when she had covered her face from him. She dropped the ring on the top of the piano at Drake's side. It spun round once or twice, and then settled down with a little tinkling whirr upon the rim of its hoop Drake fancied that the removal of this particular ring was in some inexplicable way of hopeful augury to him.
Clarice resumed her playing, but as she neared the end of the nocturne, Drake perceived that there was a growing change, a declension, in her style. She seemed to lose the spirit of the nocturne and even her command on the instrument; the firm touch faltered into indecision, from indecision to absolute unsteadiness; the notes, before clear and distinct, now slurred into one another with a tremulous wavering.
'You are fond of music?' she asked at length, with something of an effort.
'Very,' he replied, 'though it puzzles me. It's like opening a book written in a language you don't understand. You get a glimpse of a meaning here and there, but no meaning really. I can't explain what I feel,' he added, with a laugh. 'I want Mallinson to help me.'
'You admire Mr. Mallinson?' asked Clarice, stopping suddenly.
'Well, one always admires the class of work one can't do oneself, eh?'
'That's very generous of you.'
'Why generous?' Drake leaned suddenly forward. His habit of putting questions abrupt and straight to the point had discomposed Miss Le Mesurier upon an occasion before. She answered hurriedly. 'I mean—you spoke as if you meant that class of work was above your own.'
'Oh, there's no basis of comparison.'
Clarice seized the opportunity, and inquired after the prospects of his work in Matanga.
'The place should do,' said Drake. 'The land's good, there's a river running through, and I have got picked men to settle on it; all English, that's the point. But you said generous. I don't see.'
Clarice switched him on the subject of English colonisation. 'It's necessary to have Englishmen to start it? Why?'
'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 institutions 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 attitude 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, hoarse and passionate; 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, passive 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 passed 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 balustrade 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.
Drake bent over her, stroking her hair with a gentle helpless movement of his hand and occasionally varying his consolation by a pat on the shoulders. The puffed sleeves of silk yielding under his touch gave him a queer impression of the girl's fragility.
'Oh don't, child!' he entreated. 'It's my fault for speaking so soon. But really there's nothing to fear—nothing. It'll all come out right—not a doubt of that. You'll see.'
Consolation of this kind did but make the tears flow yet more freely. Drake perceived the fact and stood aside, wondering perplexedly at the reason. The sound of each sob jerked at his heart; he began to walk restlessly about the room. The storm, from its very violence, however, wore itself quickly out; the sobs became less convulsive, less frequent. Clarice raised her head from her arms and stared out of the window opposite, with just now and then a little shiver and heave of her back.
Drake stopped his walk and advanced to her. She anticipated his speech, turning with a start to face him.
'You haven't seen my father?'
'No; the servant told me he had gone out. But I wrote a note saying I would call again this evening. It is under your elbow.'
Clarice picked up the crumpled envelope and looked at it absently.
'Stephen,' she said, and she tripped upon the name, 'there's something I ought to tell you—now. But it's rather difficult.'
Drake walked to the window and stood with his back towards her. She felt grateful to him for the action, and was a little surprised at the tact which had prompted it.
'Yes?' he said.
'We are not very well off,' she continued; 'perhaps you know that.'
'Yes,' he interrupted.
'But the position's more complicated than you can know'; she was speaking carefully, weighing her words. 'Of course you know that I have a sister younger than myself. She's at school in Brussels. Well, by the Sark laws, the Seigneurie can't be split up between the members of a family. I think it's the same with all land there. It must go—what's the word?—unencumbered to the eldest child. So it must come to me—all of it. That leaves my sister still to be provided for. Father explained the whole thing to me. As it is, he has as much as he can do to keep the Seigneurie up. This house we can't really afford, but father thought he ought to take it,—well, for my sake, I suppose. So, you see, whatever money he has he must leave to my sister, and there's still the Seigneurie for me to keep up.'
'Yes, I understand. You are bound by duty, if you marry, to marry some one with means. But, Clarice, it won't be long to wait,' and he turned back from the window into the room.
'But till then—don't you see? Of course I know you will be successful,' and she laid considerable emphasis on theI.
Drake reflected for a moment. 'You mean there would be trouble between your father and you. The weight of it would fall on you. He might distrust me. Yes; after all, why should he not? But still the thing's done, isn't it?'
Clarice rose from her chair and walked to the grate. A fire was burning, and she still held Drake's letter in her hand. 'We might keep it to ourselves,' she said diffidently. She saw Drake's forehead contract. 'For my sake,' she said softly, laying a hand upon his sleeve. She lifted a tear-stained face up to his with the prettiest appeal. 'I know you hate it, but it will spare me so much.'
He said nothing, and she dropped the letter into the fire.
As Drake was leaving the house she heard, through the closed door, the sound of her father's voice in the hall speaking to him, and felt a momentary pang of alarm. The next instant, however, she laughed. He might have broken his word to himself; he would not break it to her.
Drake went home, reckoning up the harm he had done with a feeling of degradation quite new to him. Not the least part of that harm was the compromise finally agreed upon. But for the traces of tears upon the girl's cheeks, he would hardly have agreed to it even in the face of her appeal. Once alone, however, he saw clearly all—the deception that it implied—deception which involved the girl, too, as well as himself. He rose the next day in no more equable frame of mind, and leaving his office at three o'clock in the afternoon, walked along Cheapside, Holborn, and Oxford Street, and turned down Bond Street, meaning to pass an hour in the fencing-rooms half-way down St. James Street. At the corner of Bruton Street he came face to face with Miss Le Mesurier. She coloured for an instant, and then came frankly forward and held out her hand.
'It's funny meeting you here,' she said, and laughed without the least embarrassment.
Drake turned and walked by her side with a puzzled conjecture at the reason of woman's recuperative powers. Clarice's eyes were as clear, her forehead as sunny, as though she had clean wiped yesterday from her consciousness. The conjecture, however, brought the reality of yesterday only yet more home to him. He stopped in the street and said abruptly, 'Clarice, I can't.'
She stopped in her turn and drew a little pattern on the pavement with the point of her umbrella. 'Why?'
A passer-by jostled Drake in the back. Standing there they were blocking the way. 'Isn't there anywhere we could go? Tea? One drinks tea at this hour, eh?'
'No.'
Clarice felt more mistress of herself in the open street, more able to cope with Drake while they walked in a throng. She remembered enough of yesterday to avoid even the makeshift solitude of a tea-table in a public room. 'Let us walk on,' she said. 'Can't you explain as we go? I am late.'
She moved forward as she spoke, and Drake kept pace with her, shortening his strides. The need of doing that, trifle though it was, increased his sense of responsibility towards her. 'It's so abominably deceitful, and it's my doing. I should involve you in the deceit.'
Clarice glanced at him sharply. The distress of his voice was repeated in the expression of her face. There was no doubting that he spoke sincerely.
'I had better see your father to—day,' he added.
'No,' she replied energetically; and, after a moment's pause, 'There's another way.'
'Well?'
'Let everything be as it was before yesterday. I shall not change. It will be better for you to be free. Come to me when you are ready.'
She signed to a passing hansom, and it drew up by the curb. She got into it while Drake stood with brows knitted, revolving the proposal in his mind. 'But you see it can't be the same,' he said; 'because I kissed you, didn't I?'
'Yes, you did,' she replied.
The tremble of laughter in her voice made him look up to her face. The rose deepened in her cheeks, and the laughter rippled out. 'You are quaint,' she said. 'I will forget—well—what you said, until you are ready. Till then it's to be just as it was before—only not less. You are not to stay away'; and without waiting for an answer she lifted the trap, gave the cabman his order, and drove off. Drake watched the hansom disappear, and absently retraced his steps down the street. He stopped once or twice and stared vaguely into the shop-windows. One of these was a jeweller's, and he turned sharply away from it and quickened his pace towards the fencing-rooms. How could it be the same, he asked himself, when the mere sparkle of an emerald ring in a jeweller's shop-window aroused in him a feeling of distaste?
Towards the end of this week Clarice called upon Mrs. Willoughby, and seemed for the moment put out on finding that Mallinson and Fielding were present. Mrs. Willoughby welcomed her all the more warmly because she was finding it difficult to keep the peace between her two visitors. She understood Clarice's embarrassment when Percy Conway arrived close upon her heels. Clarice, however, quietly handed him over to Mrs. Willoughby, and seated herself beside Mallinson in one of the windows. 'I see nothing of you now,' she said, and she looked the reproach of the hardly-used. 'I thought we had agreed to be friends?'
Mallinson sighed wearily. 'I will come and call—some day,' he said dejectedly.
'I have not so many friends that I can afford a loss,' she answered pathetically; and then, 'Tell me about yourself. What are you doing?'
'Nothing.'
'No work?'
'No.' Mallinson shook his head.
'Why?'
'I have no incentive—nothing to work for.'
'That's cruel.'
They played out their farce of sham sentiment with a luxurious earnestness for a little while longer, and then Mallinson went away.
'So he's doing no work?' said Fielding maliciously to Miss Le Mesurier. He leaned forward as he spoke from the embrasure of the second window, which was in a line with, and but a few feet apart from, that at which she was sitting.
Miss Le Mesurier flushed, and asked, 'How did you hear?'
'Both windows are open. Mallinson was leaning out.'
The girl's confusion increased, and with it Fielding's enjoyment. He repeated, 'So he's doing no work?'
'A thousand a year, don't you know?' said Conway, with a sneer. 'It would make a man like that lazy.'
'It's not laziness,' exclaimed Clarice indignantly. She was filled with pity for Mallinson, and experienced, too, a sort of reflex pity for herself as the inappropriate instrument of his suffering. She was consequently altogether tuned to tenderness for him. 'It's not laziness at all. It's—it's—' She cast about for a laudatory explanation.
'Well, what?' Fielding pressed genially.
'It's the artistic temperament,' she exclaimed triumphantly.
Fielding laughed at her vindication, and Miss Le Mesurier walked across the room and said good-bye to Mrs. Willoughby. Conway rose at the same time, and the pair left the house together.
'What a liar that man is!' said Fielding.
'What man?' asked Mrs. Willoughby.
'Why, Mallinson. He said he was doing no work because he had no incentive. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that he is working rather hard.'
'What did Clarice say?'
'What you might expect. She melted into sympathy.'
Mrs. Willoughby looked puzzled. 'Yet she went off with Percy Conway immediately afterwards,' she said, and then laughed at her recollections of a previous visit from that gentleman.
'Yes; and absolutely unconscious of the humour of her behaviour,' said Fielding. 'That's so delightful about her.' He paused for a second and asked, 'Have you ever been inside a camera obscura? You get a picture, an impression, very vivid, very accurate, of something that is actually happening. Then some one pulls a string and you get a totally different picture, equally vivid, equally accurate, of something else which is actually happening. There is no trace of the first picture in the second. Then they open a shutter and you see nothing but a plain white slab. Somehow I always think of Miss Le Mesurier's mind.'