The Philanderers written by A.E.W. Mason
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A.E.W. Mason >> The Philanderers
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Mrs. Willoughby refrained from tendering advice that afternoon. There was
nothing sufficiently tangible in the story which she had heard. In fact
the only thing really tangible was the girl's distress in telling it, and
that Mrs. Willoughby attributed to some dispute between her and Sidney
that morning. She could not know that Clarice's outburst had been
preceded by that chance meeting in the Park with Stephen Drake, for
Clarice had made no allusion to it of any kind. She felt, besides, that
advice in any case would be of little use. The couple had to work out
their own salvation, and time and experience alone could help them.
Events seemed to justify Mrs. Willoughby's reticence, for the winter
blossomed into spring, the spring flowered into summer, and the Mallinson
household remained to the external view unshaken.
Drake's visits to Bentbridge increased in frequency as the prospect of
the general election became more real. A snap vote in the House of
Commons on a minor question of administrative expenditure decided the
matter suddenly towards the end of June. The Government determined on a
dissolution. Fielding took Clarice Mallinson into dinner at Mr. Le
Mesurier's house on the day after the date of the dissolution was fixed.
He noticed that she looked worn. There were shadows about her eyes, her
colour had lost its freshness, and there was a melancholy droop about the
corners of her mouth. Fielding suggested the advisability of a change.
'I'm to have one,' said she. 'I'm going down to stay with my uncle at
Bentbridge in a week's time.'
'At Bentbridge?' asked Fielding sharply. 'For the election.'
She saw his lips tighten. 'My husband goes with me,' she replied
quickly and stopped, flushing as she realised that she had meant and
conveyed an apology.
'I should have thought that the Continent would have been more advisable
as a change.'
'The Continent! I don't want to travel far. I am so tired.' She spoke in
a tone of weariness which touched Fielding in spite of himself. He looked
at her more closely. 'Yes,' he said gently, 'you look very tired. You
have been doing too much.'
'No, it isn't that,' she replied. 'One thinks of things, that's all.' She
bent her head and was silent for a little, tracing a pattern on the
table-cloth with a finger absently. Then she added in a low voice, 'I
suppose few women ever think at all until after they are married.'
The voice was low, and Fielding was conscious of something new in the
tone of it, a deeper vibration, a sincerity different in kind from that
surface frankness which he had always known in her. He wondered whether
she had struck down from her pinchbeck sentimentality into something that
rang solid in the depths of her nature. He looked at her again, her eyes
were turned to his. With the shadows about them, they looked bigger,
darker, more piteously appealing. She was no less a child to him, the
child looked out of her eyes, sounded in the commonplace sentiment she
had spoken, and the air of originality with which she had spoken it. But
the child seemed beginning to learn the lesson of womanhood, and from the
one mistress which could teach it her.
'But why think then?' he asked lightly. 'It ruins a complexion no less
than before. Or does a complexion cease to count? Look!' He leaned
forward. A pink carnation was in a glass in front of him, already
withering from the heat. He touched the faded tips of the petals. 'That
is the colour which conies from thinking.'
Clarice lifted her shoulders with more of sadness than impatience in the
gesture. 'You believe,' she said, 'no woman at all has a right to dare
to think.'
'I notice,' he answered with the same levity, 'that the woman who thinks
generally thinks of what she ought not to.'
Later, in the drawing-room, he looked for her again, and looked
unsuccessfully. The window, however, was open, and he advanced to
it. Clarice was on the balcony alone, her elbows on the rail, a hand
on either side of her cheek. Something in her attitude made him
almost pity her.
'Mrs. Mallinson,' he said, 'you will probably think me intrusive, but do
you think your visit really wise?' Clarice turned towards him quickly
with something of defiance in her manner. 'You are tired,' he went on,
'you want rest. Well, an election isn't a very restful time, even for the
onlooker.'
Clarice did not reply for a moment, and when she did she replied with an
impulsive frankness, to which his friendly tone had prompted her. 'To
tell you the truth, I am not anxious to go. I don't want to, but Sidney
wants to.'
'Your husband?'
'You don't believe me.'
'Of course I do.' He left her on the balcony, and went in search of
Mallinson. 'So you go to Bentbridge for the election,' he said.
'Yes,' replied the other, lighting up. 'I am looking forward to it like a
schoolboy to a football match. The prospect of activity exhilarates
me--bodily activity, don't you know--a town humming with excitement.'
Fielding cut him short. 'My dear fellow, you're a damned fool,' he said.
CHAPTER XIII
Stephen Drake had decided to stay during the period of the election at a
hotel in the centre of the town, rather than to accept an invitation from
Captain Le Mesurier, who lived some miles beyond the outskirts. He
travelled down to Bentbridge on the day that the dissolution was
announced, and during the journey Mr. Burl gave him much sage advice.
'Keep the arguments for buildings; they're in place there. Mass-meetings
in the open air want something different. Many a good man has lost his
seat from not observing that rule. In the open air pitch out a fact or
two--not too many--or a couple of round sums of figures first of all,
just to give them confidence in you, and then go straight for your
opponent. No rapier play--it's lost then--but crack him on the top-knot
with a bludgeon. They'll want to hear his skull ring before they'll
believe that you have touched him. Phrases! Those are the things to get
you in, not arguments. Pin a label on his coat-tails. You'll see them
laugh as he squirms round to pull it off. And, mind you, there'll be no
walking over, you'll want all you know. The man's a Radical and a Lord!
The combination satisfies their democratic judgments and their snobbish
instincts at the same time. People forget to count the snob in the
democrat, but he's there all the same, as in most Englishmen. A veneer of
snobbishness over solid independence. That's our characteristic. Lord
Cranston! Can't you hear their tongues licking it? Luckily, there are
things against him. He's a carpet-bagger like yourself, and he's been
more than once separated from his wife. His fault, too--once it was an
opera dancer. I've got up the facts. He only joined his wife again a few
months ago--probably for the purpose of this election.'
Mr. Burl pulled out a pocket-book, and began to turn over the leaves in
search of the damning details, when Drake interrupted him. 'You don't
expect me to discuss the man's private life?'
'My dear Drake, do be practical. It's no use being finicking. The
essential thing is to win the seat.'
'Whatever the price?'
'Look here; I am not asking you to do anything so crude as to make
platform speeches about the man's disgraceful conduct to his wife.' Mr.
Burl assumed the look of a Rhadamanthus. 'But'--and again he relaxed into
the tactician--'you might take a strong social line on morals generally,
and the domestic hearth, and that sort of thing.' He looked critically at
Drake. 'You're one of the few chaps I know who look as if they could do
that and make people believe they really mean it.'
He finally discredited his advice by adding impressibly, 'You needn't
go into the instance at all, you know. They'll understand what you're
alluding to, never fear'; and Drake flatly refused to dance into
Parliament to that tune, however persuasively Mr. Burl played upon
the pipes.
The hotel at which Drake put up was situated in a short broad street
which ran from the Market Square. From the balcony of his sitting-room on
the first floor he could see the market sheds at the end of the street to
his left. The opposite end was closed in by the Town Hall, which was
built upon an ancient gate of the town. From Drake's windows you got a
glimpse through the archway of green fields and trees. Almost facing him
was a second hotel on the opposite side of the street, the 'Yellow Boar.'
It was tricked out, he noticed, with the colours of his opponent. While
he was standing at the window an open carriage turned out of the
market-place, and drove up to the 'Yellow Boar.' Lord Cranston got down
from it, and a lady. The candidate was of a short and slight build; a
pencil--line of black moustache crossed a pallid and indecisive face, and
he seemed a year or two more than thirty. The lady looked the younger,
and was certainly the taller of the two. Drake was impressed by her face,
which bore womanly gentleness, stamped on features of a marked
intellectuality. The couple disappeared into the hall, and appeared again
in a large room with big windows upon the first floor. From where he
stood Drake could see every corner of the room. Lord and Lady Cranston,
the land-lord informed him, were staying at the 'Yellow Boar.' The two
candidates overlooked each other.
In this street, morning and evening, they met for a moment or two, and
took a breath of friendly intercourse. Drake was introduced to Lady
Cranston, but she would have none of the truce. To her he was the enemy,
and to be treated as such consistently, with a heart-and-soul hostility,
until he confessed himself beaten. Drake liked her all the better for her
attitude. Meanwhile he made headway in the constituency. He was in
earnest, with a big theme to descant upon--the responsibility of the
constituency to the empire. His fervour brought it home to his audiences
as a fact; he set the recognition of that responsibility forwards as the
prime duty of the citizen, sneering at the parochial notion of politics.
Mr. Burl shook his head over Drake's method of fighting the battle, and
hinted more than once at the necessity of that lecture upon morals. Drake
not only refused to reconsider it, but flatly forbade Mr. Burl to allude
to the subject in any speech which he might make. Burl shrugged his
shoulders and confided his doubts to Captain Le Mesurier. Said the
Captain, 'I think he's wise; a speech might offend. What's wanted is an
epigram--a good stinging epigram. We could set it about, and, if it's
sharp enough, no need to fear it won't travel.' He paused dubiously.
'After all, though, it's a bit unfair on Cranston. Hang it, I've been a
married man myself,' and he chuckled in unregenerate enjoyment. 'However,
the seat's got to be won. Let's think of an epigram,' and he scratched
his head and slapped his thigh. It was the Captain's way of thinking. The
satisfactory epigram would not emerge. He could fashion nothing better as
a description of Cranston than, 'A refreshment-room sandwich; two great
chunks of sin and a little slice of repentance between.' Mr. Burl
condemned it as crude, and for the moment the epigram was dropped.
The Mallinsons arrived a week after the contest had begun. Captain Le
Mesurier welcomed Clarice with boisterous effusion, and her husband with
quarter-deck dignity. 'You look ill,' he said to Clarice. 'It's your
husband worrying you. Ah, I know, I know! Those writing chaps!'
To Mallinson, however, he suddenly showed excessive friendliness, and
took the opportunity of saying to him loudly in a full room, 'There's
something I must tell you. I know it'll make you laugh. It does me
whenever I think of it. You know Drake? Well, we travelled up from
Plymouth together when he came back from Africa. He bought your book at
the bookstall, and sat opposite me reading it. What was it called? I
know, _A Man of Influence_. You should have seen Drake's face. Lord, he
couldn't make head or tail of it. How should he? I asked him what he
thought of it, and imagine what he answered! You can't, though. It's the
funniest thing I ever heard. He said it was a very clever satire. Satire!
Good Lord, I almost rolled off the seat. It is funny, isn't it?'
Mallinson, with a wry face, agreed that the story was funny.
'I knew you would think so,' pursued the Captain relentlessly.
'Everybody does I have told it to, and that's everybody I know. Satire!
Lord help us!' and he shook with laughter and clapped Mallinson in the
small of the back.
Mallinson felt the fool that he was intended to look, with the result
that his dormant resentment against Drake sprang again into activity.
That resentment became intensified, as the date of the election drew
nearer, by an unconfessed jealousy. They both made speeches, but
Mallinson chiefly at the smaller meetings. And when they stood upon the
same platform he was continually forced to compare the difference in the
acclamation with which their speeches were severally received. As a
matter of fact, Drake spoke from a fire of conviction, and the conviction
not merely burnt through his words, but minted them for him, gave him
spontaneously the short homely phrase which sank his meaning into the
minds of his hearers. Mallinson took refuge in a criticism of Drake's
speeches from the standpoint of literary polish. He recast them in his
thoughts, turning this sentence more deftly, whittling that repartee to a
finer point. The process consoled him for Drake's misreckoning of his
purpose in the matter of _A Man of Influence_, since it pointed to a
certain lack of delicacy, say at once to crassness in the man's
intellect.
Mallinson began immediately to imagine himself in Drake's position, the
candidate for whom brass bands played, and hats went spinning into the
air. And it needed no conscious effort for one so agile in egotistical
leaps to spring thence to the fancy that Drake was a kind of vicarious
substitute for himself, doing his work, too, not without blemishes.
Ten days before the polling-day Fielding ran down from town, and attended
a meeting at the Town Hall, at which both Drake and Mallinson were to
speak. He sat on the platform by Clarice's side and paid some attention
to her manner during the evening. He noticed the colour mount in her
cheeks and her eyes kindle, as on first entering the room she looked down
upon the crowded floor. The chairs had been removed, and the audience
stood packed beneath the flaring gas-jets--artificers for the most part,
their white faces smeared and stained with the grime of their factories.
The roar of applause as Drake rose by the table swelled up to three
cheers in consonance, and a subsequent singing of 'For he's a jolly good
fellow' stirred even Fielding to enthusiasm. He noted that feeling of
enthusiasm as strange in himself, and had a thought in consequence that
such scenes were hardly of the kind to help Clarice to the rest she
needed. The hall for a moment became a sea of tossing handkerchiefs. He
took a glance at Clarice. She sat bent forward with parted lips and a
bosom that heaved. Fielding turned on his cold-water tap of flippancy.
'It's a bad omen,' said he, with a nod towards the waving handkerchiefs.
'They hang out flags of surrender.'
'Hardly,' she replied, with a smile. 'I can't recognise that the flags
are white'; and she added, 'I should like it less if they were. These men
are the workers.'
'The workers.' Fielding could hear Drake uttering the word in just the
same tone, and his compassion for Clarice deepened. Why? he asked
himself. The girl was undergoing not a jot more punishment than a not
over-rigid political justice would have meted out to her. The question
inexplicably raised to view a pair of the clearest blue eyes, laughing
from between the blackest of eyelashes. He promptly turned his attention
to the speaker at the table.
Drake commenced that night with an apology. It was necessary that he
should speak about himself. An utterly baseless story had, within the
last few days, and doubtless with a view to this election, been revived
by the London evening paper which originally made it. He regretted also
to notice that his opponent had accepted the story, and was making use of
it to prejudice him in the eyes of the electors. Accordingly he felt
bound to put the facts simply and briefly before his audience, although
the indifference of the Colonial Office to what, if true, was a crime
committed by an Englishman on English soil, and against practically
English subjects, in effect acquitted him of the charge.
Drake thereupon proceeded to describe his march to Boruwimi. The story,
modestly recited in simple nervous English, did more to forward his
candidature than all the political speeches he could have made during a
twelvemonth. It came pat at the right time, when arguments were growing
stale. His listeners hung upon the words; in the intense silence Fielding
could feel the sympathy between speaker and audience flowing to and fro
between them like a current. Drake instinctively lowered his voice; it
thrilled through the hall the more convincingly. There was a perceptible
sway of heads forwards, which started at the back and ran from line to
line towards the platform like a quick ripple across a smooth sea. It was
as though this crowded pack of men and women was drawn to move towards
the speaker, where indeed there was no room at all to move.
And in truth the subject was one to stir the blood. Drake prefaced his
account by a description of the geography of Boruwimi; he instanced
briefly the iniquities of the Arab slave-dealers whom he was attacking.
Thereupon he contrasted the numbers of his little force with the horde of
his enemies, and dwelt for a second upon their skill as marksmen; so that
his auditors, following him as he hewed his path through the tangle of an
untrodden forest, felt that each obstacle he stopped at might mean not
merely failure to the expedition, but death to all who shared in it.
Success and life were one and the same thing, and the condition of that
thing was speed. He must fall upon the Arabs unawares, like a bolt from
the blue. They forgot that he who led that expedition was speaking to
them now; they were with him in the obscure depths of the undergrowth,
surging against gigantic barriers of fallen tree-trunks, twenty, thirty
feet high; they were marching behind him, like him at grips with nature
in a six-weeks' struggle of life and death; and when finally he burst
into the clearing on the river's bank the ripple went backwards across
the hall, and a cheer of relief rang out, as though their lives, too,
were saved.
Upon Fielding the relation produced a somewhat peculiar effect. He was
fascinated, not so much by the incident described or by the earnestness
of the man who described it,--for with both he was familiar,--but by the
strangeness of the conditions under which it was told--this story of
Africa, before these serried rows of white eager faces, in this stifling
hall, where the gaslight struggled with the waning day. From the raised
platform on which he sat he could see through the open windows away
across green fields to where the sun was setting in a clear sky behind
quiet Yorkshire wolds. The combination of circumstances made the episode
bizarre to him; he was, in fact, paying an unconscious tribute to the
orator's vividness.
Clarice paid the same tribute, but she phrased it differently, and the
difference was significant. She said, 'Isn't it strange that he should
_be here_--in a frock-coat? I half thought the room would dissolve and we
should find ourselves at Boruwimi.' Fielding started. Coming from her
lips the name sounded strange; yet she spoke it without the least
hesitation. For the moment it had plainly one association in her
thoughts, and only one. It sounded as though every recollection of Gorley
had vanished from her mind. 'Oh, he must get in!' she whispered, clasping
her hands upon her knees.
After Drake had concluded, Mallinson moved a resolution. He spoke
fluently, Fielding remarked, and with a finished phrasing. The very
finish, however, imparted an academic effect; he was, besides, hampered
by the speech which had preceded his. The audience began to shuffle
restlessly; they were capping a rich Burgundy with _vin ordinaire_, and
found the liquor tasteless to the palate. Fielding perceived from certain
movements at his side that Clarice shared in the general restlessness.
She gave an audible sigh of relief and patted her hands with the most
perfunctory applause when her husband sat down. 'You are staying with Mr.
Drake at the Three Nuns?' she asked, turning to Fielding.
'Only till to-morrow. I leave by the night-train.'
'Oh, you are going back!'
'Yes. You see Drake and Burl are both here. Somebody must keep the shop
open, if it's only to politely put the customers off.' He interpreted the
look of surprise upon Mrs. Mallinson's face. 'Yes, I have been gradually
sucked into the whirlpool,' and he laughed with a nod towards Drake.
She turned to him with her eyes shining. 'And you are proud of it.'
Fielding smiled indulgently. 'That's a woman's thought.'
'But you don't deny it's truth.'
Clarice said nothing more until the meeting had terminated and the
party was in the street. They walked from the Town Hall to Drake's
hotel, Clarice and Fielding a few paces behind the rest. The first
words which she spoke showed to him that her thoughts had not altered
their drift. 'Yes, you have changed,' she said, and implied
unmistakably, 'for the better.'
'You only mean,' laughed Fielding, 'that I have given up provoking you.'
'No, no,' she said. 'Besides, you evidently haven't given that up.'
'Then in what way?'
'I shall offend you.'
'I can hardly think so.'
'Well, you were becoming a kind of--'
'Say it.'
'Paul Pry.'
To a gentleman whose ambition it had been to combine the hermit's
indifference to social obligations with an indulgence in social
festivities, the blow was a cruel one; and the more cruel because he
realised that Clarice's criticism contained a grain of truth. He hit back
cruelly. 'Drake tells me he thinks of taking a place here. I suppose he
means to marry.'
'I believe he does,' replied Clarice promptly. 'Mrs. Willoughby.'
Fielding stopped and apostrophised the stars. 'That is perfectly untrue,'
he said. He walked on again as soon as he perceived that he had stopped,
adding, with a grumble, 'I pity the woman who marries Drake.'
'Why?' asked Clarice in a tone of complete surprise, as though the idea
was incomprehensible to her, and she repeated insistently, 'Why?'
'Well,' he said, inventing a reason, 'I think he would never stand in
actual need of her.' Clarice drew a sharp breath--a sigh of longing, it
seemed to her companion, as for something desirable beyond all blessings.
He continued in the tone of argument, 'And she would come to know that.
Surely she would feel it.'
'Yes, but feel proud of it perhaps,' replied Clarice, 'proud of him just
for that reason. All her woman's tricks she would know useless to move
him. Nothing she could do would make him swerve. Oh yes, she would feel
proud--proud of him and proud of herself because he stooped to choose
her.' She corrected the ardency of her voice of a sudden; it dropped
towards indifference. 'At all events I can imagine that possible.'
They were within fifty yards of the hotel, and walked silently the rest
of the way. At the door, however, she said, turning weary eyes upon
Fielding, 'And think! The repose of it for her.'
'Ah, here you are!' The robustious voice of Captain Le Mesurier sounded
from the hall. 'Look here,' to Fielding, 'we are going to take you back
with us. Drake won't come. He's tired--so we don't miss him.'
Fielding protested vainly that he would crowd the waggonette. Besides, he
had business matters to discuss with Drake before he left for London.
'Well, you can talk them over to-morrow. You don't go until to-morrow
night. And as to crowding the waggonette, I have ordered a trap here; so
you can drive it back again to-night, if you like, from Garples.
Otherwise we'll be happy to put you up. You must come; we want to talk to
you particularly. Mallinson will drive his wife in the trap, so there'll
be plenty of room.'
The party in the waggonette consisted of Captain Le Mesurier, Burl,
Fielding, and five country gentlemen belonging to the district.
Clarice, riding some yards behind them through the dark fragrant lanes,
saw eight glowing cigars draw together in a bunch. The cigars were
fixed points of red light for a little. Then they danced as though
heads were wagging, retired this side and that and set to partners. A
minute more and the figure was repeated: cigars to the centre, dance,
retire, set to partners. A laugh from the Captain sounded as though he
laughed from duty, and Mr. Burl was heard to say, 'Not too subtle, old
man, you know.' At the third repetition the Captain bellowed
satisfaction from a full heart, and Mr. Burl cried, 'Capital!' The
country gentlemen could be understood to agree in the commendation.
Whence it was to be inferred that the dance of the cigars was to have a
practical result upon the election.
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