The Philanderers Part 20

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.'

After leaving Mrs. Willoughby's, Conway and Miss Le Mesurier walked together in the direction of Beaufort Gardens.

'Do you see much of Mr. Drake?' she asked, after a considerable silence.

'Not as much as one would wish to. He's generally busy.'

'You like him, then?' she asked curiously. 'Why?'

'Don't you? There's an absence of pretension about him. Nothing of the born-to-command air, but insensibly you find yourself believing in him, following him. I believe even Fielding finds that as well. When Drake first came back I used to stand up for him--well, because, perhaps, I had a reason of my own. I am not sure that I believed all I said, but I am sure now I should say exactly the same and believe every word of it.'

He spoke with a quiet conviction which gave solid weight to his words, owing to its contrast with the flighty enthusiasm which was the usual characteristic of his eulogies.

'You mentioned Mr. Fielding,' she said.

'Yes; haven't you heard? He's investing in Matanga Concessions, and largely for him. He's often seen in Drake's office.'

Clarice walked along in silence for some way further. Then she said, with a distinct irritation in her voice, 'I suppose it all comes from the fact that Mr. Drake doesn't seem to need any one to rely upon, or--well--any particular incentive to work.'

Conway glanced at Miss Le Mesurier with a slight surprise. She was generally given to accept facts without inquiry into their causes. 'I shouldn't wonder if you are right. Drake, I should think, would find his incentive in the work itself. Yes; I believe you _are_ right. It's just his single-mindedness which influences one. There are certain ideas fixed in his mind, combined into one aim, and he lets nothing interfere to obscure that aim.'

So he spoke; so, too, Clarice believed, and that picture of moonlight on the veld became yet more vivid, yet more frequent in her thoughts.

Pondering upon it, her fancy led her to exaggerate Drake into the likeness of some Egyptian G.o.d, that sits with huge hands resting upon ma.s.sive knees, and works out its own schemes behind indifferent eyes. The sight of him, and the sound of commonplace words from his mouth, would at times make her laugh at the conception and restore her to her former familiarity with him. But the fancy returned to her, and, each time, added a fresh layer to the colour of her thoughts. She came now and again to betray a positive shrinking from him. Drake noticed it; he noticed something else as well: in the first week of July the emerald ring reappeared upon her finger.

In the second week Mr. Le Mesurier removed his household G.o.ds to Sark. It was his habit to spend the summer months upon the island, and to entertain there his friends in succession. He invited both Mrs.

Willoughby and Stephen Drake. The former accepted, the latter, being on the eve of floating the Matanga Concessions, declined for the present to Clarice's great relief, but promised to come later. The company was floated towards the end of the month, and with immediate success. Mr. Le Mesurier read out at breakfast a letter which he had received from Drake, announcing that every share had been taken up on the very day of flotation.

'Then he is coming,' said Clarice. 'When?'

Mr. Le Mesurier mistook his daughter's anxiety, and smiled satisfaction at her. 'To-morrow,' he replied; 'but only for three days at first.

There's some new development he speaks of. He will have to leave again on Sat.u.r.day for a fortnight.'

Clarice sat thoughtfully for a minute or two. Then she asked: 'Did you invite Mr. Mallinson this summer?'

Mr. Le Mesurier shuffled his feet under the table. 'No, my dear,'

he said. 'I forgot all about it; and now I don't see that we shall have room.'

'Oh yes,' replied Clarice quickly. 'He might have Mr. Drake's room during that fortnight. I think we ought to ask him. We always have, and it will look rather strange if we leave him out this summer. I will get aunt to write after breakfast.'

Mr. Le Mesurier glanced at Mrs. Willoughby, but made no active resistance, and Clarice took care that the letter was despatched by that day's post. On the next day she organised a picnic in Little Sark, and returned to the Seigneurie at an hour which gave her sufficient time to dress for dinner, but no margin for welcoming visitors. In consequence she only saw Drake at the dinner-table. She saw little of him afterwards, for Mr. Le Mesurier pounced upon him after dinner. 'I want to introduce you to Burl,' he said. 'He's Parliamentary agent for the Northern Counties. There's a const.i.tuency in Yorks.h.i.+re where my brother lives, and I rather think Burl wants a candidate.'

Drake was presented to a gentleman six feet three in his socks, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, with a square rugged face on the slant from the forehead to the chin. Mrs. Willoughby said he looked like a pirate, and rumour made of her simile a fact. It was known that, late one night in the smoking-room of the Seigneurie, he had owned to silver-running on the coast of Mexico. Mr. Burl and Drake pa.s.sed most of that evening smoking together in the garden. Similarly on the next day Clarice avoided a private interview with Drake. On the other hand, however, he made no visible effort to secure one. Mrs. Willoughby wondered at his reticence, and did more than wonder. She had by this time espoused his cause, and knowing no half-measures in her enthusiasms, saw his chances slipping from him, with considerable irritation. She was consequently provoked to hint her advice to him on the evening before he was to leave.

Drake shook his head and replied frankly: 'One can be too previous. I made that mistake once before, and I don't mean to repeat it.'

He remained silent for a moment or two, and added: 'I think I'll tell you about it, Mrs. Willoughby. You have guessed some part of the story, and you are Clarice's friend, and mine too, I believe.'

With an impulsiveness rare in him, which however served to rivet him yet more firmly in Mrs. Willoughby's esteem, he confided to her the history of his proposal and its lame result. 'So you see,' he concluded, 'I am not likely to risk a repet.i.tion of the incident.'

'But,' said she, 'surely there's no risk now?'

'Very likely, but there is just a little. This next fortnight will, I think, make everything secure, but I must wait that fortnight.'

'Well, I believe you are unwise.' Drake turned to her quickly. 'Why?'

'Mr. Mallinson takes your place for the fortnight. Of course I don't know. Clarice has given up confiding in me. But I really think you are unwise.'

Drake sat staring in front of him. He was considering Mallinson's visit in conjunction with the reappearance of the emerald ring upon Miss Le Mesurier's finger. 'All the same,' he said at length, 'I shall wait.'

The reason for this hesitation he explained more fully to Clarice herself some half an hour afterwards. He found her standing by herself upon the terrace. She started nervously as he approached, and it seemed to him that her whole figure stiffened to a posture of defence. She said nothing, however, and for a while they stood side by side looking seawards across the breadth of the island. The ground stretched away broken into little hollows and little hills,--downs in vignette. A cheery yellow light streamed from the windows of a cottage in a dip of the gra.s.s; the slates of a roof glistened from a group of sycamores like a mirror in a dark frame; the whole island lay bared to the moonlight.

Towards the edge of it the land rose upwards to a ridge, but there was a cleft in the ridge opposite to where they stood, and through the cleft they looked downwards to the sea.

Clarice spoke of the moonbeams broken into sparkles by the ripple of the water.

'Like a shoal of silver coins,' said Drake.

'Wouldn't you like to hear them clink?' she asked petulantly.