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The Philanderers written by A.E.W. Mason

A >> A.E.W. Mason >> The Philanderers




Clarice, however, paid no great attention to the proceedings in the
waggonette. She was almost oblivious to the husband at her side. The
night was about her, cool with soft odours, wrapping her in solitude.
Love at last veritably possessed her, so she believed; it had invaded her
last citadel to-night. That it sat throned on ruins she had no eyes to
see. It sat throned in quiescence, and that was enough. Clarice, in fact,
was in that compressed fever-heat of the mushroom passions which takes on
the semblance of intense and penetrating calm. And her very consciousness
of this calm seemed to ally her to Drake, to give to them both something
in common. She was troubled by no plans for the future; she had no regret
for anything which had happened in the past. The vague questions which
had stirred her--why had she been afraid of him?--was the failure of her
marriage her fault?--for these questions she had no room. She did not
think at all, she only felt that her heart was anchored to a rock.




CHAPTER XIV


Given a driver who is at once inexperienced and short-sighted, a fresh
horse harnessed to a light dog-cart, a dark night and a narrow gateway,
and the result may be forecast without much rashness. Mallinson upset his
wife and the cart just within the entrance to Garples. Luckily the drive
was bordered by thick shrubs of laurel, so that Clarice was only shaken
and dazed. She sat in the middle of a bush vaguely reflecting that her
heart was anchored to a rock and yet her husband had spilled her out of a
dog-cart. Between the incident and her state of mind immediately
preceding it, she recognised an incongruity which she merely felt to be
in some way significant. Fielding and Captain Le Mesurier picked her out
of the bush before she had time to examine into its significance. All she
said was, 'It's so like him.'

'Yes, hang the fellow!' said the Captain, and under his breath he
launched imprecations at all 'those writer chaps.'

Mallinson raised himself from a bed of mould upon the opposite side of
the drive and apologised. Captain Le Mesurier bluntly cut short the
apology. 'Why didn't you say you couldn't drive? I can't. Who's ashamed
of it? You might have broken your wife's neck.'

'I might, and my own too,' replied Mallinson in a tone not a whit less
aggrieved.

Captain Le Mesurier raised his eyes to the heavens with the apoplectic
look which comes of an intense desire to swear, and the repressive
presence of ladies. 'Will you kindly sit on the horse's head until you
are told to get up? I want the groom to help here,' he said, as soon as
he found words tolerable to feminine ears. A groom was already occupying
the position designated, but he rose with alacrity and Mallinson silently
took his place and sat there until the harness was loosed.

Fielding's visit, however, had another consequence beyond the upsetting
of a gig. A few days later an epigram was circulating through the
constituency. The squires passed it on with a smack of the tongue; it had
a flavour, to their thinking, which was of the town. The epigram was
this: 'Lord Cranston lives a business life of vice, with rare holidays of
repentance, but being a dutiful husband he always takes his wife with him
on his holidays.' From the squires it descended through the grades of
society. Lord Cranston, at the close of a speech, was invited to mention
the precise date at which he intended to end his holidays. Believing that
the question sprang out of an objection to a do-nothing aristocracy, he
answered with emphatic earnestness, 'The moment I am returned for
Bentbridge.' The shout of laughter which greeted the remark he attributed
at first to political opposition.

Subsequently, however, a sympathiser explained to him delicately the true
meaning of the question, and, as a counter-move, Lord Cranston made a
violent attack upon 'Empire building plus finance.' He drew distinctions
between governing men and making money.

Drake accepted the distinctions as obvious platitudes, but failed to see
that the capacity for one could not coexist with the capacity for the
other. He asserted, on the contrary, that money was not as a rule made
without the exercise of tact, and some aptitude for the management of
men. He was, consequently, not disinclined to believe that money-making
afforded a good preliminary lesson in the art of government. Lord
Cranston's argument, in fact, did little more then alienate a few of his
own supporters, who, having raised themselves to affluence, felt quite
capable of doing the same for the nation.

On the night of the polling-day Captain Le Mesurier brought his
house-party into Bentbridge to dine with Drake, and after dinner the
ladies remained in the room overlooking the street, while the gentlemen
repaired to the Town Hall, where the votes were being counted. It seemed
to Clarice as she gazed down that all the seven thousand electors had
gathered to hear the result announced. The street was paved with heads as
with black cobble-stones. Occasionally some one would look up and direct
now a cheer, now a shout of derision towards the 'Three Nuns' or the
'Yellow Boar.' But the rooms of both candidates were darkened, and the
attention of the crowd was for the most part riveted upon the red blinds
of the Town Hall.

For Clarice, the time limped by on crutches. She barely heard the
desultory conversation about her: she felt as if her life was beating
itself out against those red windows. A clock in the market-place chimed
the hour of nine: she counted the strokes, with a sense of wonder when
they stopped. She seemed to have been waiting for a century.

Across the street she could see the glimmer of a light summer dress in
Lord Cranston's apartment. It moved restlessly backwards and forwards
from one window to the other: now it shone out in the balcony above the
street: now it retired into the darkness of the room. Clarice gauged Lady
Cranston's impatience by her own, and experienced a fellow-feeling of
sympathy. 'During this suspense,' she thought, 'you and I ought to be
together.' As the thought flashed into her mind, her husband spoke to
her. She set a hand before her eyes and did not answer him. She realised
that she had been thinking of herself as Drake's wife. On the instant
every force within her seemed to concentrate and fuse into one passionate
longing. 'If only that were true!' She felt the longing throb through
every vein: she acknowledged it: she expressed it clearly to herself. If
only that were true! And then in a second the longing was displaced by an
equally passionate regret.

'It might have been,' she thought.

Again her husband spoke to her. She turned towards him almost fiercely,
and saw that he was offering her a shawl. She steadied her voice to
decline it, and turned back again to the window. But now as she looked
across the street, she was filled with a new and very bitter envy. The
woman over there had the right to suffer for her suspense.

At last the clock doled out ten strokes with a grudging deliberation, and
less than five minutes later the shadow of a man was seen upon one of the
red blinds. In the street below the people surged forward: there was a
running flash of white as their heads were thrown back and their faces
upturned to the Hall; and the shouts and cries swelled to a Babel,
tearing the air. The blind was withdrawn, the window thrown open: Clarice
could see people pressing forward in the room. They looked in the glare
of yellow light like black ninepins. A gleam of bright scarlet shot out
from amongst them, and the Mayor stepped on to the balcony above the
archway. The tumult died rapidly to absolute silence, a silence deeper
than the silence of desolate places, because one saw the crowd and one's
ears were still tingling with the echo of its shouts. It was as though
all sound, all motion had been arrested by some enchantment, and in the
midst of that silence one word was launched down the street.

'Drake!'

The announcement of the numbers was lost in the sudden renewal of
conflicting shouts. Clarice made no effort to ascertain them. That one
word 'Drake' filled the world for her. The very noise in the street came
to her ears with a dull muffled sound as though it had travelled across a
wide space, and it seemed no more than an undertone to the ringing name.

She saw Stephen Drake come forward and give place to his opponent, and
after a little the street began to clear. The number thirty-five,
incessantly repeated by the retiring crowd, penetrated to her mind and
informed her of the actual majority. In about half an hour a little
stream of people trickled from the porch of the Town Hall, and, gathering
in volume, flowed into a narrow passage which led to the Conservative
Club, a few yards to the right of the hotel. Clarice caught a glimpse of
Drake's face at the head of the procession as he passed under a gas-lamp
above the mouth of the passage, and was surprised by its expression of
despondency. A fear sprang up in her mind that some mistake had been made
in the announcement, but the fear was dispelled by the tone of her
uncle's voice as he shouted an invitation to some one across the street
to join them at the Club. It was a tone of boisterous exultation. There
could be no doubt that Drake had been elected, and she wondered at the
cause of his dejection.

A few minutes later a second stream flowed along the opposite pavement
towards the Liberal Club in the Market Square, and drew most of the
remaining loiterers into its current. The noise and bustle grew fainter
and died away: the lights were extinguished in the houses, and only one
small group, clustering excitedly about the passage, relieved the quarter
of its native sleepiness.

Clarice turned with a certain reluctance into the room. It was empty, and
the voices of her companions rose from the hall below. She did not follow
them, however. There was time enough, for the party could not leave until
Captain Le Mesurier returned from the Conservative Club. She went back to
her post. Through the open window opposite to her she perceived the
glimmer of a light dress in the dark of the room, but it was motionless
now, a fixed patch of white. Clarice experienced a revulsion of pity for
Lady Cranston. 'What must be her thoughts?' she asked herself.

She remained at the window until the party from the Club emerged again
from the passage and turned towards the hotel.

Clarice heard her husband's voice asking where Drake was, and what in
the world was the matter with him. Captain Le Mesurier replied, and the
reply rang boisterously. 'He's behind. He's a bit unstrung, I fancy,
and reason enough too, after all his work, eh? You see, Drake's
not in the habit of taking holidays,' and the Captain grew hilarious
over his allusion.

Across the street Clarice saw the light dress flutter and move abruptly.
It was evident that Lady Cranston had heard and understood the words.

Drake followed some few minutes later, and alone. He walked slowly to the
hotel with an air of utter weariness, as though the springs of his
activity had been broken. A moment after, he had entered it; she heard
him ascending the staircase, and she drew instinctively close within the
curtains. He pushed open the door, walked forward into the embrasure of
the window, and stood within a foot of Clarice, apparently gazing into
the street. A pale light from the gas-lamp over the front door flickered
upon his face. It was haggard and drawn, the lips were pressed closely
together, the eyelids shut tightly over the eyes--a white mask of pain.
Or was this the real face, Clarice wondered, and that which he showed to
the world the mask?

She was almost afraid to move; she even held her breath.

Suddenly the echoes of the street were reawakened. Drake roused himself
and opened his eyes. A small group of people strolled out of the
market-place and stopped in front of the 'Yellow Boar.' There was
interchange of farewells, a voice said encouragingly, 'Better luck next
time,' and one man entered the hotel.

In the room opposite a match flared up and Lady Cranston lit the gas. She
stood for a moment underneath the chandelier, in the full light,
listening. Then she walked quickly to the mirror above the mantelpiece
and appeared to dry her eyes and cheeks with her handkerchief. She turned
to the door almost guiltily, just as it opened. Lord Cranston advanced
into the room, and his wife moved towards him. The whole scene, every
movement, every corner of the room was visible to Clarice like a scene on
the stage of a theatre; it was visible also to Drake.

Clarice could note the disconsolate attitude of Lord Cranston, the smile
of tenderness upon his wife's face. She saw Lady Cranston set her arms
gently about his neck, and her lips move, and then a low hoarse cry burst
from Drake at her side.

It sounded to her articulate with all the anguish and all the suffering
of which she had ever heard. There was a harsh note of irony in it too,
which deepened its sadness. It seemed almost an acknowledgment of defeat
in the actual moment of victory--a recognition that after all his
opponent had really won.

The cry was a revelation to Clarice; it struck her like a blow, and she
started under it, so that the rings of the curtain rattled upon the pole.

Drake bent sharply towards her; she caught a gleam of his eyes in the
darkness. Then with a catch of his breath he started back. Clarice heard
the click of a match-box, the scraping of a lucifer, and Drake held the
lighted match above his head.

'You!' he said.

Clarice moved out from the curtain and confronted him. She did not
answer, and he did not speak again. Clarice was in no doubt as to the
meaning of his cry. His eyes even in that unsteady light told it to her
only too clearly.

And this was the man whom she had believed to stand in no need of a
woman's companionship. The thought at the actual moment of its occurrence
sent a strange thrill of disappointment through her; she had built up her
pride in him so confidently upon this notion of his independence. And
having built up her pride, she had lived in it, using this very notion as
her excuse and justification. She ran no risk, she had felt.

'Clarice!'

The name was shouted impatiently from the hall, and came to them quite
audibly through the half-opened door. But neither she nor Drake seemed to
hear it. They stood looking silently into each other's eyes.

At last she began to speak, and as she spoke, her sense of disappointment
diminished and died. She became conscious again of the suffering which
his cry had confessed. The contrast between this one outburst and his
ordinary self-control enforced its meaning upon her. It seemed still to
be ringing in her ears, stretched out to a continuous note, and her voice
gradually took a tone as of one pleading for forgiveness.

'I did not know,' she said. 'I always thought of you as--' and she gave a
queer little laugh, 'as driving about London in hansoms, and working
quite contentedly. I never imagined that you cared at all--really, I
mean, as I know now. Even right at the beginning--that afternoon in
Beaufort Gardens, I never imagined that. Indeed, I was afraid of you.'

'Afraid!' Drake echoed the word with an accent of wonderment.

'Yes, yes, afraid. I believed that I should mean so little to you, that I
should be of no use or help to you. And that's why--I--I--married--'

Drake straightened his shoulders with a jerk as Clarice uttered the word.
He became aware of the tell-tale look in his eyes, and lowered them from
the girl's face to the ground.

'You mustn't fancy,' he began in a hesitating tone. 'You mustn't
misunderstand. I was thinking what men owe to women--that's all--that's
all, indeed--and how vilely they repay it. That way, like Cranston'--he
nodded in the direction of the house across the street--'or worse--or
worse,' he clung to the word on a lift of his voice, as though he found
some protection in it, as though he appealed to Clarice to agree with and
second him, 'or worse.'

The match burned down to his fingers, and he dropped it on the floor and
set his foot on it. Once in the darkness he repeated 'or worse,' with a
note almost of despair, and then he was silent. Clarice simply waited.
She stood, feeling the darkness throb about her, listening to the sharp
irregular breathing which told her where Drake stood. In a few moments
he stirred, and she stretched out her hands towards him. But again she
heard the click of a match-box, and again the thin flame of light flared
up in the room.

'Clarice!'

Her name was shouted up a second time. There was a sound of quicker
footsteps upon the stairs, the door was flung back, and Sidney Mallinson
entered the room. Drake lighted the gas.

'We have been waiting for you,' said Mallinson to his wife. 'I couldn't
think where you had got to,' and he glanced from her to Drake.

'I have been here all the time,' she said with a certain defiance.

Mallinson turned and walked down the stairs again, without as much as a
word to Drake. Clarice followed him, and after her came Drake.

'Ah, here you are!' said Captain Le Mesurier. 'Now we're ready. Drake,
you are coming back with us?'

Drake hesitated.

'You said you would at the Town Hall. So I have had your bag packed, and
put in the waggonette.'

'Very well,' he assented; and the party went outside the hotel.

'Now, how shall we go?' asked the Captain. 'Mallinson, you of course in
the waggonette,' and he chuckled with a cheery maliciousness. 'Clarice,
will you get in?'

'No!' she said with an involuntary vehemence. The idea of driving back
wedged in amongst a number of people, listening to their chatter, and
forced to take her share in it, became suddenly repugnant to her. 'I
would rather drive in the trap, if I might.'

'Very well! But who is to drive you?' Captain Le Mesurier turned to
Drake. 'You can drive, of course.'

Drake replied absently. 'I have driven the coach from Johannesburg to
Pretoria, ten mules and a couple of ponies, and a man beside you swinging
a sixty-foot lash.'

Captain Le Mesurier laughed out. 'Then there'll be no upset to-night.
Come along.'

The guests took their seats, while Drake stood on the pavement.

'Come along, Drake,' shouted the Captain from the box seat of the
waggonette.

Drake roused himself with a start. 'I beg your pardon,' he said, and he
went to the side of the dog-cart. He drew back when he saw Clarice
already in it, and looked from cart to waggonette. 'I am so sorry,' he
said in a low voice. 'I was not listening, I am afraid.'

He mounted beside her, whipped up the horse, and drove ahead of the
waggonette. They passed out of the town into the open country. Behind
them the sounds of wheels grew fainter and fainter and died away. In
front the road gleamed through the night like a white riband; the
hedgerows flung out a homely scent of honeysuckle and wild roses; above,
the stars rode in a clear sky. To Clarice this was the perfect hour of
her life. All her speculations had dropped from her; she had but one
thought, that this man driving her cared for her, as she cared for him.
It was, in truth, more than a thought; she felt it as a glory about her.
Accidentally, as the trap swung round a bend of the road, she leaned her
weight upon his arm and she felt the muscles brace beneath his sleeve.
The sensation confirmed her thought, and she repeated her action
deliberately and more than once. She had but one wish, that this drive
should never end, that they should go forward always side by side through
a starlit night, in a stillness unbroken by the sound of voices. And that
wish was more a belief than a wish.

They ascended the slope and came out upon an open moor. It stretched
around them, dark with heather as far as they could see. The night
covered it like a tent. It seemed the platform of the world. Clarice
suddenly recollected her old image of the veld, and she laughed at the
recollection as one laughs at some queer fancy one has held in childhood.

Across the moor the wind blew freshly into their faces. Drake quickened
the horse's paces, and Clarice imagined a lyrical note in the ringing
beat of its hooves. The road dipped towards a valley. A stream wound
along the bed of it, and as they reached the crest of the moor they could
see below them the stars mirrored in the stream. Upon one of the banks a
factory was built, and its six tiers of windows were so many golden spots
of light like the flames of candles. Drake stopped the trap and sat
watching the factory.

'Night and day,' he said, 'night and day. There is no end to it. It
is the law.'

He spoke not so much dispiritedly, but rather as though he was teaching
himself a lesson which he must needs surely get by heart. He lifted the
reins and drove down the hill, past the factory and along the valley to
the gates of Garples. There he stopped the trap again. For a moment
Clarice fancied that the gates must be shut, but as she bent forward and
looked across Drake, she saw that they were open. She turned her eyes to
her companion. He was sitting bolt upright with an unfamiliar expression
of irresolution upon his face, and he was doubtfully drawing the lash of
the whip to and fro across the horse's back.

Clarice felt that her life was in the balance. 'Yes,' she whispered.

'No!' Drake almost shouted the word. He turned the horse through the
gates and drove in a gallop to the door of the house. Clarice heard him
draw a deep breath of relief as he jumped to the ground. As he was
pulling off his gloves in the hall, Clarice brushed past him and ran
quickly up the stairs. He was roused from his reverie by the arrival of
the rest of the party.

Clarice sent word downstairs that she was tired and would not appear
at supper.

But an hour later Sidney Mallinson found her seated by the open window.
She had not even taken off her hat or gloves. Once or twice he seemed on
the point of speaking, but she faced him steadily and her manner even
invited his questions. Mallinson turned away with the questions unasked.
But he lay long awake that night, thinking; and his resentment against
Drake gained new fuel from his thoughts. The frankness of his wife's
admiration for Drake had before this awakened his suspicions, and the
suspicions had become certain knowledge. He guessed, too, that to some
degree Drake returned his wife's inclination, and he began immediately on
that account to set a higher value upon the possession of her than he had
lately done.

Once Clarice heard him laugh aloud harshly. He was thinking of the
relationship in which he had set Drake to himself in that first novel
which he had written. Actually the relationship was reversed. 'No, not
yet,' he said to himself. But it would be, unless he could hit upon some
plan. The day was breaking when his plan came to him.




CHAPTER XV


The next morning Drake's seat at the breakfast table was empty.

'He caught the early train from Bentbridge,' Captain Le Mesurier
explained. 'Business, I suppose. He told me last thing yesterday night
that he had to go.'

Clarice coloured and lowered her eyes to her plate. Mallinson noticed her
embarrassment, and took it for evidence of some secret understanding
between her and Drake. He became yet more firmly resolved to put his idea
into action.

'You are not in a hurry,' said Captain Le Mesurier. 'You had better stay
the week out.'

Mallinson saw his wife raise her head quickly as though she was about to
object, and immediately accepted the invitation. Parliament would not
meet for three weeks, he reckoned, since there were still the county
members to be elected.

Clarice spent the week in defining the relationship in which she and
Drake were henceforth to stand towards each other. They were to be
animated by a stern spirit of duty,--by the same spirit, in fact, which
had compelled Drake to court-martial Gorley in Africa, and subsequently
to detail the episode to her. Duty was to keep them apart. She came to
think of duty as a row of footlights across which they could from time to
time look into each other's eyes.

Clarice felt that there was something very reassuring and protective in
this notion of duty. It justified her in buying a copy of _Frou-Frou_,
which lay upon the bookstall at Bentbridge railway station, and in
studying it continuously all the way from Bentbridge to London. She was
impelled to purchase it by a recollection that Drake had first been
introduced to her at a performance of that play, and his criticisms
returned to her thoughts as she read the dialogue. The play had seemed
true to him, the disaster inevitable--given the particular characters,
and she bore the qualification particularly in mind. There was a
difference between _Frou-Frou_ and a woman animated by a sense of duty; a
difference of kind, rather than of degree. Sidney Mallinson remarked the
book which she was reading, but he made no comment whatsoever.

The next morning he paid a long call upon the editor of the _Meteor_.

Meanwhile, Drake was devoting himself to the business of the Matanga
Company, with an assiduity unusual even for him. Fielding discovered that
he seldom left the city before ten at night, and felt it incumbent to
expostulate with him. 'You can't go on like this for much longer, you
know. You had better take a rest. There's no need for all this work.'