The Philanderers written by A.E.W. Mason

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Clarice felt her heart beat quicker. She rose from her chair. 'What does
that mean to you?' she asked.

'Delay,' he replied, with the self-reproach yet more accentuated.
'Nothing more, I am sure; but it does mean that.'

'Nothing more?'

He noticed an expression of disappointment upon the girl's face, and,
mistaking it, repeated, 'Nothing more than that, Clarice.' He took a step
towards her. 'Of course I ought not to have spoken to you yet,--not until
everything was settled. I am sorry--of course it will come out all right,
only till then it wasn't fair. I didn't mean to,--not even when I came
this afternoon. But seeing you,--I wasn't strong enough,--I gave in.'

Clarice felt a pulse of satisfaction, and her lips shaped to a smile.

'Ah, you don't regret it,' he exclaimed, and the look of humiliation
passed from his face. 'Your father's in the library,' he went on; 'I had
better go and tell him. Shall I go alone, or will you come with me?'

'No, you go; I will wait here.'

She stood alone in the centre of the room while Drake went downstairs,
staring fixedly in front of her. Once or twice she set her hands to her
forehead and drew them down her flushed cheeks. Then she walked to the
window. There was something floating on the edge of her mind, just
eluding her. A thought was it, or a phrase? If a phrase, who had spoken
it? She began to remember; it was something Stephen Drake had said, but
about what? And then, in a flash, her recollection defined it for her. It
was about moonlight being absorbed into the darkness of an African veld,
just soaking into it like water into dry ground. She had a vision of the
wide rolling plain, black from sky's rim to sky's rim, and the moonlight
pouring a futile splendour into its lap. She moved with a quick and
almost desperate run to the door, opened it, and leaned over the
balustrade of the staircase. The hall was empty and no sound of voices
came from the library. She stepped cautiously down the stairs; as she
reached the last step the door of the library opened and Drake appeared
on the threshold.

Clarice leaned against the wall, holding her hand to her heart.

'Why, Clarice!' he cried, and started towards her.

'Hush!' She tried to whisper the word, but her voice rose. She thrust out
a hand between herself and Drake, and cast a startled glance across his
shoulder, expecting to see her father come forward smiling
congratulations at her. Drake caught the outstretched hand, and, setting
an arm about her waist, drew her into the library.

'I have not seen Mr. Le Mesurier,' he said; 'he's out, I am afraid.'

The room was empty. Clarice looked round it, doubting her eyes, and with
a sudden revulsion of feeling dropped into a chair by the table and sat
with her face buried in her arms in a flood of tears.

CHAPTER X

Drake bent over her, stroking her hair with a gentle helpless movement of
his hand and occasionally varying his consolation by a pat on the
shoulders. The puffed sleeves of silk yielding under his touch gave him a
queer impression of the girl's fragility.

'Oh don't, child!' he entreated. 'It's my fault for speaking so soon. But
really there's nothing to fear--nothing. It'll all come out right--not a
doubt of that. You'll see.'

Consolation of this kind did but make the tears flow yet more freely.
Drake perceived the fact and stood aside, wondering perplexedly at the
reason. The sound of each sob jerked at his heart; he began to walk
restlessly about the room. The storm, from its very violence, however,
wore itself quickly out; the sobs became less convulsive, less frequent.
Clarice raised her head from her arms and stared out of the window
opposite, with just now and then a little shiver and heave of her back.

Drake stopped his walk and advanced to her. She anticipated his speech,
turning with a start to face him.

'You haven't seen my father?'

'No; the servant told me he had gone out. But I wrote a note saying I
would call again this evening. It is under your elbow.'

Clarice picked up the crumpled envelope and looked at it absently.

'Stephen,' she said, and she tripped upon the name, 'there's something I
ought to tell you--now. But it's rather difficult.'

Drake walked to the window and stood with his back towards her. She felt
grateful to him for the action, and was a little surprised at the tact
which had prompted it.

'Yes?' he said.

'We are not very well off,' she continued; 'perhaps you know that.'

'Yes,' he interrupted.

'But the position's more complicated than you can know'; she was speaking
carefully, weighing her words. 'Of course you know that I have a sister
younger than myself. She's at school in Brussels. Well, by the Sark laws,
the Seigneurie can't be split up between the members of a family. I think
it's the same with all land there. It must go--what's the
word?--unencumbered to the eldest child. So it must come to me--all of
it. That leaves my sister still to be provided for. Father explained the
whole thing to me. As it is, he has as much as he can do to keep the
Seigneurie up. This house we can't really afford, but father thought he
ought to take it,--well, for my sake, I suppose. So, you see, whatever
money he has he must leave to my sister, and there's still the Seigneurie
for me to keep up.'

'Yes, I understand. You are bound by duty, if you marry, to marry some
one with means. But, Clarice, it won't be long to wait,' and he turned
back from the window into the room.

'But till then--don't you see? Of course I know you will be successful,'
and she laid considerable emphasis on the _I_.

Drake reflected for a moment. 'You mean there would be trouble between
your father and you. The weight of it would fall on you. He might
distrust me. Yes; after all, why should he not? But still the thing's
done, isn't it?'

Clarice rose from her chair and walked to the grate. A fire was burning,
and she still held Drake's letter in her hand. 'We might keep it to
ourselves,' she said diffidently. She saw Drake's forehead contract.
'For my sake,' she said softly, laying a hand upon his sleeve. She lifted
a tear-stained face up to his with the prettiest appeal. 'I know you hate
it, but it will spare me so much.'

He said nothing, and she dropped the letter into the fire.

As Drake was leaving the house she heard, through the closed door, the
sound of her father's voice in the hall speaking to him, and felt a
momentary pang of alarm. The next instant, however, she laughed. He might
have broken his word to himself; he would not break it to her.

Drake went home, reckoning up the harm he had done with a feeling of
degradation quite new to him. Not the least part of that harm was the
compromise finally agreed upon. But for the traces of tears upon the
girl's cheeks, he would hardly have agreed to it even in the face of
her appeal. Once alone, however, he saw clearly all--the deception
that it implied--deception which involved the girl, too, as well as
himself. He rose the next day in no more equable frame of mind, and
leaving his office at three o'clock in the afternoon, walked along
Cheapside, Holborn, and Oxford Street, and turned down Bond Street,
meaning to pass an hour in the fencing-rooms half-way down St. James
Street. At the corner of Bruton Street he came face to face with Miss
Le Mesurier. She coloured for an instant, and then came frankly
forward and held out her hand.

'It's funny meeting you here,' she said, and laughed without the least
embarrassment.

Drake turned and walked by her side with a puzzled conjecture at the
reason of woman's recuperative powers. Clarice's eyes were as clear, her
forehead as sunny, as though she had clean wiped yesterday from her
consciousness. The conjecture, however, brought the reality of yesterday
only yet more home to him. He stopped in the street and said abruptly,
'Clarice, I can't.'

She stopped in her turn and drew a little pattern on the pavement with
the point of her umbrella. 'Why?'

A passer-by jostled Drake in the back. Standing there they were blocking
the way. 'Isn't there anywhere we could go? Tea? One drinks tea at this
hour, eh?'

'No.'

Clarice felt more mistress of herself in the open street, more able to
cope with Drake while they walked in a throng. She remembered enough
of yesterday to avoid even the makeshift solitude of a tea-table in a
public room. 'Let us walk on,' she said. 'Can't you explain as we go?
I am late.'

She moved forward as she spoke, and Drake kept pace with her, shortening
his strides. The need of doing that, trifle though it was, increased his
sense of responsibility towards her. 'It's so abominably deceitful, and
it's my doing. I should involve you in the deceit.'

Clarice glanced at him sharply. The distress of his voice was repeated in
the expression of her face. There was no doubting that he spoke
sincerely.

'I had better see your father to--day,' he added.

'No,' she replied energetically; and, after a moment's pause, 'There's
another way.'

'Well?'

'Let everything be as it was before yesterday. I shall not change. It
will be better for you to be free. Come to me when you are ready.'

She signed to a passing hansom, and it drew up by the curb. She got into
it while Drake stood with brows knitted, revolving the proposal in his
mind. 'But you see it can't be the same,' he said; 'because I kissed you,
didn't I?'

'Yes, you did,' she replied.

The tremble of laughter in her voice made him look up to her face. The
rose deepened in her cheeks, and the laughter rippled out. 'You are
quaint,' she said. 'I will forget--well--what you said, until you are
ready. Till then it's to be just as it was before--only not less. You are
not to stay away'; and without waiting for an answer she lifted the trap,
gave the cabman his order, and drove off. Drake watched the hansom
disappear, and absently retraced his steps down the street. He stopped
once or twice and stared vaguely into the shop-windows. One of these was
a jeweller's, and he turned sharply away from it and quickened his pace
towards the fencing-rooms. How could it be the same, he asked himself,
when the mere sparkle of an emerald ring in a jeweller's shop-window
aroused in him a feeling of distaste?

Towards the end of this week Clarice called upon Mrs. Willoughby, and
seemed for the moment put out on finding that Mallinson and Fielding were
present. Mrs. Willoughby welcomed her all the more warmly because she was
finding it difficult to keep the peace between her two visitors. She
understood Clarice's embarrassment when Percy Conway arrived close upon
her heels. Clarice, however, quietly handed him over to Mrs. Willoughby,
and seated herself beside Mallinson in one of the windows. 'I see nothing
of you now,' she said, and she looked the reproach of the hardly-used. 'I
thought we had agreed to be friends?'

Mallinson sighed wearily. 'I will come and call--some day,' he said
dejectedly.

'I have not so many friends that I can afford a loss,' she answered
pathetically; and then, 'Tell me about yourself. What are you doing?'

'Nothing.'

'No work?'

'No.' Mallinson shook his head.

'Why?'

'I have no incentive--nothing to work for.'

'That's cruel.'

They played out their farce of sham sentiment with a luxurious
earnestness for a little while longer, and then Mallinson went away.

'So he's doing no work?' said Fielding maliciously to Miss Le Mesurier.
He leaned forward as he spoke from the embrasure of the second window,
which was in a line with, and but a few feet apart from, that at which
she was sitting.

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 god, that sits with huge hands resting upon
massive 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 gods 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
Saturday 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 constituency in Yorkshire 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 passed 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 repetition 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
grass; 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.

Then he said: 'Miss Le Mesurier'--and the change in his voice made the
girl turn swiftly to face him--'I leave Sark to-morrow morning by the
early boat, so I thought I would say good-bye to you to-night.'

'But you are coming back,' she said quickly; 'I shall see you, of course,
when you come back. What takes you away?'

'There's some land in Matanga which bounds my concession on the north,
and I want to get hold of it. It's, I believe, quite as good, and may be
better, than mine, and I know that some people are after it. It wouldn't
help me if another company was to be started; and as the President of the
Matanga Republic is on his way to England, I thought that I had better go
out to Madeira, catch his steamer there, and secure a concession of it
before he reaches England.'

Clarice gave a laugh. 'Then we are to expect you in a fortnight?'

'Yes, in a fortnight,' and he laid a significance upon the word which
Clarice did not mistake. It was spoken with an accent of entreaty.

But indeed she needed no emphasis to fix it in her mind. The word
besieged her; she caught herself uttering it, and while she uttered it
the time itself seemed to have slipped by. She had but to say 'No' at the
end of the fortnight, she assured herself, and she knew that she would
only have to say it once. But the memory of that Sunday afternoon in
Beaufort Gardens lay upon her like a load crushing all the comfort out of
her knowledge.

Drake caught his steamer at Southampton, and the President at Madeira. He
was received warmly as an old acquaintance, warily as a negotiator.
However, he extracted the concession as the boat passed up Southampton
Water, and disembarked with a signed memorandum in his pocket. At
Southampton post-office he received a bundle of letters which had been
forwarded to him from his chambers in London. He slipped them into his
coat, and went at once on board the Guernsey steamer. At Guernsey, the
next morning, he embarked on the little boat which runs between Guernsey
and Sark. The sun was a golden fire upon the water; the race of the tides
no more than a ripple. The island stuck out its great knees into the sea
and lolled in the heat. Half-way across Drake bethought him of the
letters. He took them out and glanced over the envelopes. One was in
Clarice's handwriting. It announced to him her engagement with Sidney
Mallinson.

CHAPTER XI

Of Drake's arrival at the Seigneurie Mrs. Willoughby wrote some account
to Hugh Fielding, who was taking the waters for no ailment whatever at
Marienbad. 'I was surprised to see him,' she wrote, 'because Clarice told
me that she had written to him. Clarice was running down the stairs when
he came into the hall. She stopped suddenly as she caught sight of him,
clutched at the balustrade, slipped a heel upon the edge of the step, and
with a cry pitched straight into his arms at the bottom. Mr. Mallinson
came out of the library while he was holding her. Clarice was not hurt,
however, and Mr. Drake set her down. "I didn't pass through London," he
said, and he seemed to be apologising. "My letters were forwarded to
Southampton, and I only opened them on the Sark steamer." Then he
congratulated them both. I spoke to Mr. Drake the same evening on the
terrace here, foolishly hinting the feminine consolation that he was well
free from a girl of Clarice's fickleness. He was in arms on the instant.
One gets at truth only by experiment, and through repeated mistakes. Why
except women's hearts from the same law? I give his opinion, not his
words. He doesn't talk of "women's hearts." You know his trick of
suggesting when it comes to talk of the feelings. I slid into a worse
blunder and sympathised with him. He replied that it didn't make the
difference to him which I might think. I felt as if a stream of ice-water
had been turned down my back on Christmas Day. However, he went on in a
sort of shame-faced style, like a schoolboy caught talking sentiment.
"One owes her a debt for having cared for her, and the debt remains." He
stayed out his visit and left this morning. He goes to Switzerland, and
asked for your address. His is _The Bear, Grindelwald_. Write to him
there; better, join him. He talks of going out to Matanga later in the
year for a few months. So there's the end of the business, or rather one
hopes so. I used to hope that Clarice would wake up some morning into a
real woman and find herself--isn't that the phrase? I hope the reverse
now; that she and her husband will philander along to the close of the
chapter. But I prefer your word,--to the close of the "comedy," say. It
implies something artificial. Mallinson and Clarice give me that
impression,--as of Watteau figures mincing a gavotte, and made more
unreal by the juxtaposition of a man. Let's hope they will never perceive
the flimsiness of their pretty bows and ribbons! But I think of your one
o'clock in the morning of the masquerade ball, and frankly I am afraid. I
look at the three without--well, with as little prejudice as weak woman
may. Mallinson, you know him--always on the artist's see-saw between
exaltation and despair. Doesn't that make for shiftiness generally?
Clarice I don't understand; but I incline to your idea of her as at the
mercy of every momentary emotion, and the more for what has happened this
week. Since her engagement she seems to have lost her fear of Stephen
Drake. She has been all unexpressed sympathy. And Drake? There's the
danger, I am sure--a danger not of the usual kind. Had he been
unscrupulous he might have ridden roughshod over Clarice long before now.
But he's too scrupulous for that. I think that he misses greatness as we
understand it, through excess of scruple. But there's that saying of his
about a debt incurred to Clarice by the man caring for her. Well,
convince him that he can pay it by any sacrifice; won't he pay it?
Convince him that it would benefit her if he lay in the mud; wouldn't he
do it? I don't know. I made a little prayer yesterday night, grotesque
enough, but very sincere, that there might be no fifth act of tragedy to
make a discord of your comedy.'

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