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 a potpourri.
‘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, ‘but Drake dragged me round the square before lunch to question me about Mallinson.’
‘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 supposit
ion, 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.
CHAPTER V
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.’
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 249