Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  The occasion of their meeting was provided by the visit of a French actress to one of the London theatres. Drake and Conway edged into their stalls just before the curtain rose on a performance of Frou-Frou. During the first act the theatre gradually filled, and when the lights were turned up at its close only one box was empty. It was upon the first tier next to the stage. A few minutes after the second act had begun Conway nudged Drake and nodded towards the box.

  ‘You asked what Miss Le Mesurier was like. There’s your answer.’

  Drake glanced in that direction. He saw a girl in a dress of pink silk, standing in the front of the box, with her hands upon the ledge and leaning her head a little forwards beyond it. The glare striking up from the stage beneath her gave a burnish of copper to her hair and a warm light to her face. She seemed of a fragile figure and with features regular and delicate. Drake received a notion of unimpressive prettiness and turned his attention to the stage. When the lights were raised again in the auditorium, he noticed that Fielding was in the box talking to a gentleman with white hair, and that Mallinson was seated by the side of Miss Le Mesurier. The latter couple were gazing about the house and apparently discussing the audience, — at all events conversing with considerable animation. Drake commented upon their manner and drew the conventional inference.

  ‘Oh dear, no!’ answered Conway energetically. ‘Of course Mallinson’s aim is apparent enough, poor fellow.’ A touch of scorn in the voice, which rang false, negatived the pity of the phrase. ‘But I don’t suppose for an instant that she has realised it. She would be the last to do so. No, she has a fad in her head about authors just for the moment.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Drake, turning with some interest to his companion. ‘Does that account for A Man of Influence?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Conway reluctantly, ‘I fancy it does.’

  ‘I wondered what set him to writing.’

  ‘He was at the Bar when he met her. I believe she persuaded him to write the book and give up the Law.’

  ‘She is undertaking a pretty heavy responsibility.’

  Conway looked at his friend and laughed.

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t find that she takes that view, nor indeed do I see why she should. Mallinson was doing no good — well, not much anyway — at the Bar. He has scored by following her advice. So if she ever had any responsibility, which I don’t admit, for there was no compulsion on him to obey, his luck has already wiped it out.’

  ‘I suppose the white-haired man’s her father,’ said Drake.

  ‘Yes. There’s another sister, but she’s at school in Brussels.’

  ‘How did you come across them?’

  ‘Mallinson and I met them one summer when we were taking a holiday at Sark.’

  Drake caught the eye of a man who was passing the end of his row of stalls towards the saloon, and was beckoned out.

  ‘I will join you after the interval,’ he said, turning to Conway, and he saw that his companion was bowing to Miss Le Mesurier.

  Miss Le Mesurier in her box noticed Drake’s movement, and she asked Mallinson, ‘Who is that speaking to Mr. Conway?’

  Mallinson put up his glasses and looked. Clarice read recognition in a lift of eyebrows, and guessed from his hesitation to answer who it was that he recognised.

  ‘Well, who is it?’

  ‘Where?’ asked Mallinson, assuming an air of perplexity.

  ‘Where you were looking,’ said she quietly.

  ‘It’s Stephen Drake,’ interposed Fielding, and ‘Hulloa!’ he added in a voice of surprise as he observed the man whom Drake joined.

  ‘Drake! Stephen Drake!’ exclaimed Mr. Le Mesurier, leaning forward hurriedly. ‘Point him out to me, Fielding.’

  The latter obeyed, and Mr. Le Mesurier watched Drake until he disappeared through the doorway, with what seemed to Mallinson a singular intentness. The father’s manner waked him to a suspicion that he might possibly have mistaken the daughter’s motive in seeking Drake’s acquaintance. Was it merely a whim, a fancy, strengthened to the point of activity by the sight of his name in print? Or was it something more? Was there some personal connection between Drake and the Le Mesuriers of which the former was in some way ignorant? He was still pondering the question when Clarice spoke to him.

  ‘So that was the bourgeois, was it?’ she said, bending forwards and almost whispering the words. Mallinson flushed.

  ‘Was it?’ he asked. ‘I can’t see. I am rather short-sighted.’

  ‘I begin to think you are.’

  The sentence was spoken with an ironic sympathy which deepened the flush upon Mallinson’s cheek. A knock at the door offered him escape; he rose and admitted Conway. Conway was received with politeness by Mr. Le Mesurier, with cordiality by his daughter.

  ‘I have Drake with me,’ said Conway. ‘I came to ask permission, since you invited him to Beaufort Gardens, to introduce him after the next act.’

  Mr. Le Mesurier started up in his chair.

  ‘Did you ask him to the house?’ he asked Clarice abruptly.

  ‘I asked Mr. Mallinson to bring him,’ she replied; and then, with all the appearance of a penitent anxiety, ‘Why? Oughtn’t I to have done so?’ she asked.

  Mr. Le Mesurier cast a suspicious glance at his daughter.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she said; ‘I didn’t know that—’

  ‘Oh well,’ interrupted Mr. Le Mesurier hurriedly, ‘there’s no reason that I know of why you shouldn’t have asked him, except that it’s surely a trifle unusual, isn’t it? You don’t know him from Adam.’

  ‘But I assure you, Mr. Le Mesurier,’ interposed Conway, ‘there’s nothing to be said against Drake.’

  ‘Of course!’ replied Mr. Le Mesurier, with a testy laugh at the other’s warmth. ‘We know the length of your enthusiasms, my dear Conway. But I’ll grant all you like about Drake. I only say that my daughter isn’t even acquainted with the fellow.’

  ‘It is just that drawback which Mr. Conway proposes to remove,’ said Clarice demurely. ‘Of course,’ she went on, ‘I should never have thought of inviting him if Mr. Mallinson had not spoken of him so often as his friend.’ She directed her sweetest smile to Mallinson. ‘You did, didn’t you? Yes! Mr. Drake had been away from England for so long that I thought it would be only kind to ask you to bring him. But if I had known that papa had any objection, I should naturally never have done it. I am very sorry. Perhaps I am not careful enough.’ She ended her speech in a tone of self-reproach, which had its effect; for her father was roused by it to expostulate.

  ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I never hinted that I had an objection to him. You are always twisting people’s words and imputing wrong meanings to them.’

  Mallinson fancied that he detected a note of something more than mere remonstrance in Mr. Le Mesurier’s voice, a consciousness of some thought in his daughter’s mind which he would not openly acknowledge her to possess. The perception quickened Mallinson’s conjecture into a positive conviction. There was evidently some fact about Drake, some incident perhaps in his life which brought him into relations with the Le Mesuriers, — relations ignored by Drake, but known by Mr. Le Mesurier and suspected by Clarice. Was this fact to Drake’s advantage or discredit? The father’s manner indicated rather the latter; but Mallinson put that aside. It was more than overbalanced by the daughter’s — he sought for a word and chanced on ‘forwardness.’ His irritation against her prompted him to hug it, to stamp it on his thoughts of her with a jeer of ‘I have found you out.’ On the other hand, all his knowledge of her cried out against the word. He looked into the girl’s face to resolve his doubts upon the point and found that she was watching him with some perplexity. A question to Conway explained the reason why she was puzzled.

  ‘How did you know that I asked Mr. Drake to Beaufort Gardens?’ she asked.

  ‘I was present when Mallinson asked him to go.’

  ‘Mr. Mallinson asked him!’ she exclaimed, dropping her fan in her surprise. ‘Why, I thought�
�’ She saw the confusion in Mallinson’s face and checked herself suddenly with a little laugh of pure enjoyment. Her companion’s jealousy was more heroical than she had given him credit for; it had induced him to lie.

  To cover his discomfiture Mallinson dived for the fan.

  ‘Oh, don’t trouble,’ she said, sympathy shaping the words into a positive entreaty. ‘You are so short-sighted, you know. Then you will bring Mr. Drake,’ she turned to Conway as he rose and moved towards the door. Mr. Le Mesurier had resumed his conversation with Fielding, and beyond a slight movement of impatience, he gave no sign that he had heard the words.

  ‘After the next act,’ said Conway, and he went out.

  Mallinson picked up the fan and laid it upon the ledge of the box.

  ‘I lied to you that evening,’ he whispered in a low faltering tone. ‘I have no excuse — Can’t you guess why I lied?’

  There was a feeling behind the words, genuine by the ring of it, and to feeling Clarice was by nature responsive. Mallinson saw the mischief die out of her face, the eyelids droop until the lashes touched the cheek. Then she raised them again, tenderness flowered in her eyes.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

  She turned from him and watched Conway making his way along the row of stalls. Drake was already in his seat.

  ‘Then why didn’t Mr. Drake come if you asked him?’ she said with a quick change of tone.

  ‘He gave no reason beyond that it was his first night in London.’

  Miss Le Mesurier looked again at Drake. His indifference irritated her and in a measure interested her in spite of herself. She was not used to indifference, and felt a need to apologise for it to herself. ‘Of course,’ she reflected, ‘he had not seen me then,’ and so was reinstated in her self-esteem. The explanation, however, failed her the next moment. For Drake, at all events, had seen her now; she had caught him looking up into the box before Conway left. Yet when Conway communicated his news, Drake never so much as moved his head in her direction. The three blows of the mallet had just sounded from behind the curtain and he sat upright in his seat, his face fixed towards the stage. Clarice bit her lips and frowned.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed. He is really quite interested in you.’ She looked up. Fielding was standing just behind her shoulder. ‘He asked me quite often what you were like.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said she loftily; and then, ‘He might be a schoolboy at his first pantomime.’

  ‘He gives that kind of impression, I believe, in everything he does.’

  Miss Le Mesurier had not made the remark in order to elicit eulogy.

  ‘He looks old, though,’ she said, and her voice defied Fielding to contradict her.

  ‘Responsibility writes with the cyphers of age,’ he quoted solemnly. It was his habit to recite sentences from A Man of Influence when Mallinson was present, in a tone which never burlesqued but somehow belittled the work. Mallinson was never able to take definite offence, but he was none the less invariably galled by it.

  ‘As a matter of fact there is hardly a year to choose between the ages of Drake, Conway, and you, Mallinson, is there?’ asked Fielding.

  Mallinson admitted that the statement was correct.

  ‘He has lived a hard life, has anxieties enough now, I don’t doubt. You will find the explanation in that. The only people who remain young nowadays are actors. They keep the child in them.’

  The curtain went up as he spoke. As soon as it was lowered again Conway hurried Drake out of the stalls and up the staircase to the box. Clarice welcomed Drake quietly. Mr. Le Mesurier vouchsafed him the curtest of nods.

  ‘Didn’t I see you join Israel Biedermann?’ asked Fielding. The name belonged to a speculator who had lately been raised into prominence by the clink of his millions.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Drake, with a laugh. ‘The city makes one acquainted with strange financiers. I have business with him.’

  Mr. Le Mesurier showed symptoms of interest.

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘You mean to return to Africa, I suppose.’

  ‘If I can help it, no.’

  ‘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 the Meteor, and thought you might have liked to come with your friend.’

  The words were spoken indifferently.

  ‘The Meteor?’ 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 carr
iage.

  ‘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 probable dénouement he 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.