The Philanderers written by A.E.W. Mason

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Fielding received Mrs. Willoughby's command to join Drake with a grin at
her conception of him as fit company for a gentleman disappointed in his
love-affairs. He nevertheless obeyed it, and travelling to Grindelwald
found Drake waiting him on the platform with the hands of an
oakum-picker, and a face toned uniformly to the colour of a ripe pippin.
'You have been climbing mountains, I suppose?' asked Fielding.

'Yes,' nodded Drake.

'Well, don't ask me to join you. It produces a style of conversation I
don't like.'

Drake laughed, and protested that nothing was further from his intention.
Certain letters, however, which Fielding wrote to Mrs. Willoughby during
this period proved that he did join him, and more than once. The two men
returned to London half-way through September.

On the journey from Dover to Charing Cross Drake asked whether Mrs.
Willoughby was in town. He was informed that at the moment she was
visiting in Scotland, but she was expected to pass through London at the
end of a fortnight. Drake wrote a note to her address asking her to spare
him a few moments when she came south, and receiving a cordial assent
with the statement of the most favourable hour, walked across one evening
to Knightsbridge. Mrs. Willoughby remarked a certain constraint in his
manner, and awaited tentacle questions concerning Sidney Mallinson and
Clarice. She said: 'You look well. You have enjoyed your holiday.'

'I had an amusing companion.'

'You have given him some spark of your activity,' and the sentence was
pitched to convey thanks.

'Then you have seen him?' Drake's embarrassment became more
pronounced. He paused for a second and then rose and walked across the
room. 'You know, I suppose,' he resumed, 'that I am going out to
Matanga in a month.'

'I heard something of that from Mr. Fielding,' she said gently.

'Yes,' he said, with a change in his voice to brisk cheerfulness. 'It
seemed to me that I ought to go. Our interests there are rather large
now. I consulted my fellow-directors, and they agreed with me.'

The sudden disappearance of the constraint which had marked him surprised
Mrs. Willoughby. 'But can you leave London?' she asked.

'Oh yes; I have made arrangements for that,' he replied. 'I have got Burl
to look after things here.'

'Mr. Burl?'

'Yes; it's rather funny,' said Drake, with a laugh. 'He came to ask
me whether I was disposed to take up politics. There was a
constituency in Yorkshire he could arrange for me to stand
for--Bentbridge. Do you know it?'

'I have been there. Mr. Le Mesurier has a brother just outside the town.
It was there, I believe, that he became acquainted with Mr. Burl.'

'So I gathered. Well, I wanted the question left open for a bit. Then
Burl made another proposal. He said they wanted a paper in the district.
There were some people ready to back the idea, but they didn't have quite
enough capital. Burl wanted me to provide the rest. He didn't get it, but
he nearly did, and it struck me that he was just the man I wanted. So
after he had had his say, I had mine, and he has thrown up politics and
joined me.' Drake ended his story with a laugh, and added, 'I think I am
lucky to have got hold of him.'

'Then you don't mean to go away for good?' exclaimed Mrs. Willoughby.

'Oh dear no! What on earth made you think that? But I will be away a
year, I think,--and--and, that's just the point.' His embarrassment
returned as suddenly as it had left him.

'I don't understand.'

'Well, I had an idea of persuading Fielding to go with me.' He blurted
the proposal brusquely. 'He's interested, you see, in the success of the
colony, and--well, altogether, I didn't think it would be a bad thing.'

Mrs. Willoughby walked to the window and looked out of it for a few
seconds. 'What does Mr. Fielding say?' she asked.

'I haven't broached the subject to him yet. I thought I wouldn't
before--' He stopped and made no effort to finish the sentence.

'It's a year,' she said slowly, lengthening out the word. 'Yes, only a
year,' said he briskly, and Mrs. Willoughby smiled in spite of herself.
She thought of the new air of alertness which Fielding had worn since his
return from Switzerland. She came back to Drake and held out her hand to
him. 'You think very wisely for your friends,' she said.

'It's an inspiriting business to see a community in the making,'
he answered; 'especially when there's money to help it to make
itself quickly.'

He wished her good-bye and moved to the door. As he opened it he said,
'By the way, is the date of the marriage fixed?' but without turning
towards her.

She said, 'Yes, the 8th of December,' and she saw his shoulders brace,
and the weight of his body come backwards from the ball of the foot on
to the heel.

'Ah! I shall be in Africa by then,' he said.

It was in fact near upon the end of February that the river-steamer
plying between the settlement and the coast of Matanga brought to Drake
and Fielding an announcement that the marriage had taken place. There
were letters for both the men, and they carried them out to a grass knoll
on the edge of the forest some quarter of a mile away from the little
village of tin huts which shone in the sunshine like a tidy kitchen, as
Fielding was used to say. Drake read his through, and said to Fielding,
'You have a letter from Mrs. Willoughby?'

'Yes.'

'Any news?'

Fielding looked him in the face. 'Yes,' he said slowly, and putting the
letter in his pocket, buttoned it up. Drake understood alike from his
tone and action what news the letter conveyed, and made no further
inquiry. He fell instead to talking of some machinery which the boat had
brought up along with the letters. The letter, indeed, was written in a
vein which made it impossible for Fielding to follow the usual habit of
reading Mrs. Willoughby's letters aloud to his companion. 'The wedding,'
she wrote, 'lacked nothing but a costumier and a composer. The bride and
bridegroom should have been in fancy dress, and a new Gounod was needed
to compose the wedding-march of a marionette. One might have taken the
ceremony seriously as an artistic whole under those circumstances.'

Mrs. Willoughby continued to keep Fielding informed of the progress or
the married couple, and in May hinted at dissensions. The hint Fielding
let slip one day to Drake. Drake, however, received the news with
apparent indifference, and indeed returned to England in September with
Fielding without having so much as referred to the subject.

During the month which followed his return, he preserved the same
appearance of indifference, seeming, indeed, thoroughly engrossed in
working off arrears of business. The fact, however, of this dissension
was thrust before his notice one evening when he dined with Mr. Le
Mesurier, and that gentleman dealt out extravagant praise to the French
for recognising that the marriages of the children are matters which
solely concern the parents.

'We English,' said he with a shrug of contempt at the fatuity of his
countrymen, 'men and women, or rather boys and girls, choose for
ourselves, and what's the result nine times out of ten? Well, it's the
custom, and it's no use for a man by himself trying to alter it.'

Drake was familiar with Mr. Le Mesurier's habit of shifting
responsibilities, and while he said nothing at the moment, called upon
Mrs. Willoughby the next day and questioned her openly. Mrs. Willoughby
admitted that there were disagreements, but believed them not to be deep.

'The first year,' she said, 'is as a rule a trying time. There are
illusions to be sloughed. People may come out all the stronger in the
end.' Mrs. Willoughby generalised to conceal the little hopefulness she
felt in regard to the particular instance.

'I ask,' continued Drake, 'because I thought money might be at the bottom
of it. In that case something perhaps might be done. Mrs. Mallinson would
be troubled, I believe, by a need to economise.'

'Oh no,' she returned. 'There's no trouble of that kind. You see, Mr. Le
Mesurier sold the Seigneurie, for one thing--'

'Sold it!' exclaimed Drake. 'Why, I was told that it was strictly
entailed from father to child.'

'In one respect it is. It can't be charged with annuities. But any one
who owns it can sell it outright. Mr. Le Mesurier always intended to sell
it if Clarice married a man only moderately well off.'

Drake rose from his chair and walked once or twice quickly across the
room.

'He should have told his daughter that,' he said slowly.

Mrs. Willoughby glanced at him in surprise.

'Well, of course he did.'

'Oh no, he didn't,' said Drake quickly. 'You remember, I told you at Sark
why she wanted our engagement to be kept secret.'

'Because your position wasn't altogether assured. You didn't mention the
Seigneurie.'

'No, I thought you would understand. She believed an engagement between
us would cause trouble with her father, just because it was necessary for
her to marry a man who could keep up the Seigneurie.'

Mrs. Willoughby started. 'Clarice told you that!' she said,
staring at him.

'Yes,' he replied simply. 'So you see she didn't know.'

Mrs. Willoughby sank back into her chair. She had heard Mr. Le Mesurier
announce his intention more than once in Clarice's presence. However, she
fancied that no particular good would be done by informing him of the
girl's deception, and she dropped the subject.

'What about Conway?' asked Drake.

'He still walks up and down London. I fancy he is secretary to
something.'

Drake hesitated for a second. 'Does he go there very much?'

'A good deal, I fancy,' she replied. 'But you mustn't think the
disagreement is really serious. There is no cause outside themselves.
Have you called?'

'No; I go down to Bentbridge to-morrow. I must call when I get back.'

'Then you are going to stand for Parliament?' she exclaimed. 'I am so
glad.'

'Yes; they expect an election in July, I believe. You see, now that
Fielding has been made a director and has settled down to work, I have
got more time. In fact, one feels rather lonely at nights.'

Mrs. Willoughby was willing to hear more concerning Fielding's merits.
She promptly set herself to belittle the importance of his position and
work for the sake of hearing them upheld, and she was not disappointed.

'It's easy enough to laugh at finance, and fashionable into the bargain,'
he said. 'But here's the truth of the matter. Money does to-day what was
the work of the sword a century or so ago, and, as far as I can see, does
it better. To my thinking, it should be held in quite as high esteem. You
can put it aside and let it rust if you like, but other nations won't
follow your good example. Then the time comes when you must use it, and
you find the only men you've got to handle it are the men you can't
trust--the bandit instead of the trained soldier. No! Put the best men
you can find to finance, I say,' and with that he said good-bye.

'Why doesn't he drop them altogether?' asked Fielding with considerable
irritation when Mrs. Willoughby informed him of Drake's intention to
renew his acquaintance with the Mallinsons.

'It would only make matters worse if he did,' replied she. 'Clarice would
be certain to count any falling off of her friends as a new grievance
against her husband.'

'Friends?'

'He is willing to take his place as one.'

'He will find it singularly uninteresting. Friendship between a man
and a woman!'

He shrugged his shoulders; then he laughed to himself. Mrs.
Willoughby got up nervously from her chair and walked to the opposite
end of the room.

'These things,' continued Fielding in a perfectly complacent and
unconscious tone, 'are best understood by their symbols.'

Mrs. Willoughby swung round. 'Symbols?' she asked curiously.

Fielding took a seat and leaned back comfortably. 'The feelings and
emotions,' he began, 'have symbols in the visible world. Of these symbols
the greater number are flowers. I won't trouble you with an enumeration
of them, for in the first place I couldn't give it, and in the second,
Shakespeare has provided a fairly comprehensive list. And by nature I am
averse to challenging comparisons. There are, however, feelings of which
the symbols are not flowers, and amongst them we must reckon friendship
between man and woman. Passion, we know, has its passion flower, but the
friendship I am speaking of has its symbol too'--he paused
impressively--'and that symbol is cold boiled mutton.'

Mrs. Willoughby laughed awkwardly. 'What nonsense!' she said.

'A mere _jeu d'esprit_, I admit,' said he, and he waved his hand to
signify that he could be equally witty every day in the week if he chose.
His satisfaction, indeed, blinded him to the fact that his speech might
be construed as uncommonly near to a proposal of marriage. He thought,
with a cast back to his old dilettante spirit, that it would be amusing
to repeat it, especially to a woman of the sentimental kind--Clarice
Mallinson, for instance. He pictured the look of injury in her eyes and
laughed again.

CHAPTER XII

Clarice was indeed even more disappointed than Mrs. Willoughby imagined.
She had looked forward to her marriage, and had indeed been persuaded to
look forward to it, as to the smiting of a rock in her husband's nature
whence a magical spring of inspiration should flow perennially. 'The
future owes us a great deal,' Mallinson had said. 'It does indeed,'
Clarice had replied in her most sentimental tones. Only she made the
mistake of believing that the date of her marriage was the time appointed
for payment. Instead of that spontaneous flow of inspiration, she had
beneath her eyes a process of arduous work, which was not limited to a
special portion of the day, like the work of a business man, and which,
in the case of a man with Mallinson's temperament, inevitably produced an
incessant fretfulness with his surroundings. Now, since this work was
done not in an office but at home, the burden of that fretfulness fell
altogether upon Clarice.

She took to reading the _Morte d'Arthur_. Fielding found her with the
book in her hand when he called, and commented on her choice.

'There's no romance in the world nowadays,' she replied.

'But there has been,' he replied cheerfully; 'lots.'

Clarice professed not to understand his meaning. He proceeded to tick off
upon his ringers those particular instances in which he knew her to have
had a share, and mentioned the names of the gentlemen. He omitted
Drake's, however, and Clarice noticed the omission. For the rest she
listened quite patiently until he came to an end. Then she asked gravely,
'Do you think that is quite a nice way to talk to a married woman?'

'No,' he admitted frankly, 'I don't.' For a few minutes the
conversation lagged.

This was, however, Fielding's first visit since his home-coming, and
Clarice yielded to certain promptings of curiosity.

'I hardly expected you would be persuaded to go out to Africa, even
by--any one,' she concluded lamely.

'Neither did I,' he replied.

'Did you enjoy it?' she asked.

'I went out a Remus, I return a Romulus.'

There were points in Clarice's behaviour which never failed to excite
Fielding's admiration. Amongst these was a habit she possessed of staring
steadily into the speaker's face with all the appearance of complete
absence of mind whenever an allusion was made which she did not
understand, and then continuing the conversation as though the allusion
had never been made. 'Of course you had a companion,' she said.

Fielding agreed that he had.

'I have not seen him,' she added.

'No?'

'No.' Clarice was driven to name the companion. 'You seem to have struck
up a great friendship with Mr. Drake. I should hardly have thought that
you would have found much in common.'

'_Arcades ambo_, don't you know?'

Clarice did not know, and being by this time exasperated, she showed that
she did not. Fielding explained blandly, 'We both drive the same pigs to
the same market.'

Clarice laughed shortly, and stroked the cover of her _Morte d'Arthur_.
'I suppose that's just what friendship means nowadays?'

'Between man and man--yes. Between woman and woman it's different, and
it's, of course, different too between man and woman. But perhaps that's
best to be understood by means of its symbol,' and he worked up to his
climax of cold boiled mutton with complete satisfaction.

'I gather, then, that you see nothing of Mrs. Willoughby now,' said
Clarice quietly as soon as he had stopped. Fielding was for the moment
taken aback. It seemed to him that the point of view was unfair.
'Widows,' he replied with great sententiousness,--'widows are different,'
and he took his leave without explaining wherein the difference lay. He
wondered, however, if Clarice's point of view had occurred to Mrs.
Willoughby.

Fielding's visit, and in particular his teasing reticence as to his
stay in Matanga, had the effect of recalling Clarice's thoughts to the
subject of Stephen Drake. She recalled her old impression of him as one
self-centred and self-sufficing, a man to whom nothing outside himself
would make any tangible difference; but she recalled it without a trace
of the apprehension with which it had been previously coupled. She
began indeed to dwell upon that idea of him as upon something restful,
and the idea was still prominent in her mind when, a little more than a
week afterwards, Drake galloped up to her one morning as she was
crossing the Park.

'I have been meaning to call, Mrs. Mallinson,' he said, 'but the fact is,
I have had no time. I only got back from Bentbridge last night.'

Clarice received a sudden and yet expected impression of freshness from
him. 'Papa told me you were going to stand,' she replied. 'You stayed
with my uncle, Captain Le Mesurier, didn't you?'

'Yes. Funnily enough, I have met him before, although I didn't know his
name. He travelled in the carriage with me from Plymouth to London when I
first landed in England.'

Clarice wondered what made him pause for a moment in the middle of the
sentence. 'Your chances are promising?' she asked.

'I can't say yet. I have a Radical lord against me. Burl says there's no
opponent more dangerous. It will be a close fight, I think.' He threw
back his head and opened his chest. His voice rang with a vigorous
enjoyment in the anticipation of a strenuous contest.

'So you are glad to get back to London,' she said.

'Rather. I feel at home here, and only here--even in January.' He looked
across the Park with a laugh. It stretched away vacant and dull in the
gray cheerlessness of a winter's morning. 'The place fascinates me; it
turns me into a child, especially at night. I like the glitter of shops
and gas-lamps, and the throng of people in the light of them. One
understands what the Roman citizen felt. I like driving about the streets
in a hansom. There are some one never gets tired of Oxford Street, for
instance, and the turn out of Leicester Square into Coventry Street, with
the blaze of Piccadilly Circus ahead. One hears that poets starve in
London, and are happy; I can believe it. Well, I am keeping you from the
shops, and myself from business.'

He shook hands with her and mounted his horse.

'You have not yet seen my husband,' she said, and she felt that she
forced herself to speak the word.

'Not yet. I must look him up. You live in Regent's Park, don't you?'

'Close by. Will you come some evening and dine?'

The invitation was accepted, and Drake rode off. He rode well, Clarice
noticed, and his horse was finely limbed and perfectly groomed. The
perception of these details had its effect. She stood looking after him,
then she turned slowly and made her way homewards across the Park. Two of
her acquaintances passed her and lifted their hats, but she took no
notice of them; she did not see them. A picture was fixed in her mind--a
picture of a rolling plain, black as midnight, exhaling blackness, so
that the air itself was black for some feet above the ground; and into
this cool and quiet darkness the moonbeams plunged out of a fiery sky and
were lost. They dropped, she fancied, after their long flight, to their
appointed haven of repose.

The street door of her house gave on to a garden. Clarice walked along
the pathway in front of the house towards the door of the hall. As she
passed her husband's study windows she glanced in. He was standing in
front of the fireplace, tearing across some sheets of manuscript. Clarice
hurried forwards. He was always tearing up manuscript. While she was
upstairs taking off her hat she heard his door open and his voice
complaining to the servants about some papers which had been mislaid. She
felt inclined to take the servants' part. After all, what was a man doing
in the house all day? There was a dragging shuffle of his slippers upon
the floor of the hall. The sound jarred on her. She pinned on her hat
again, ran downstairs, gave orders that she would not be in for lunch,
and drove at once to Mrs. Willoughby's. She arrived in a state little
short of hysterical.

'Connie,' she cried, almost before the servant who announced her was out
of the room, 'I know you don't like me, but oh, I'm so unhappy!'

Mrs. Willoughby softened at sight of her evident distress. 'Why, what's
the matter?' she asked, and made her sit down beside her on the sofa.

'It's awful,' she said, and repeated, 'it's awful.'

'Yes, child, but what is?' asked Mrs. Willoughby.

'All is--I mean everything is,' sobbed Clarice.

Mrs. Willoughby recognised that though the correction amended the
grammar, it did not simplify the meaning. She pressed for something
more precise.

'Don't be irritable, Connie,' quavered Clarice, 'because that's just
what Sidney is--and always. It's so difficult to make you understand.
But he's just a lot of wires, and they keep twanging all day. He
nags--there's no other word for it--he nags about everything--the
servants, his publishers, the dinner, and--oh!--oh!--why can't he wear
boots in the morning?'

The point of the question was lost on Mrs. Willoughby. She began to
expostulate with Clarice for magnifying trifles.

'Of course,' replied Clarice, sitting up suddenly--she had been half
lying on the sofa in Mrs. Willoughby's arms--'I know they are trifles; I
know that. But make every day full of them, every day repeat them! Oh,
it's awful! I wonder I don't break down!' She turned again to Mrs.
Willoughby, lapsing from vehemence to melancholy as the notion occurred
to her. 'Connie, I believe I shall--break down altogether. You know I'm
not very strong.' She put her arms about Mrs. Willoughby, and clung to
her in the intensity of her self-compassion. 'You can't imagine the
strain it is. And if that wasn't enough, his mother comes up from Clapham
and lectures me. I wouldn't mind that, only she's not very safe about her
h's, and she stops to dinner and talks about the nobility she's had cooks
from, to impress the servants. It's so humiliating, to be lectured by any
one like that.'

Mrs. Willoughby scented a fact. 'But what does she lecture you about? The
dinner?' she asked, with an irrelevant recollection of Drake's impression
of Clarice as one little adapted for housewifely duties, and not rightly
to be troubled by them.

'Oh no. She says I don't give Sidney the help he expected from me. But
what more can I do? He has got me. Sidney says the same, too. He told me
that he had never had so much difficulty to work properly as since we
were married. And when his work doesn't succeed I know he blames me for
it. Oh, Connie! _is_ it my fault? I think we had better get divorced--and
I--I--c-c-can go into a convent, and never do anybody any more harm.'

Clarice glanced as she spoke down the neatest of morning frocks, and the
mental picture which she straightway had of herself in a white-washed
cell with iron bars, clad in shapeless black, her chin swathed, her face
under eaves of starched linen, induced an access of weeping.

For all her sympathy Mrs. Willoughby was forced to bite her lips.
Clarice, however, was not in the mood to observe the effect which her
words produced on others. She continued: 'It's much the best thing to do,
because whatever I did it would always be the same. I could never make
him content. Connie, if you only knew the strain of it all! He's always
wanting to be something different. One day a clerk, with a nice quiet
routine, another a soldier, another a ----' she hesitated, and gave
Constance an extra squeeze--'a colonist, and fire off Maxim guns. If you
could only see him! He sits in front of the fire, with his glasses on,
and talks about the roaring world of things.'

This time Mrs. Willoughby really laughed. She turned the laugh into a
cough, and cleared her throat emphatically once or twice. Clarice sat up
and looked at her reproachfully, then she said, 'I know it's absurd. I
don't know whether to laugh or cry myself, b-b-but I usually cry. And
then in his books he's--he's always his own hero.' With that Clarice
reached at once the climax of her distress and the supreme charge of her
indictment. The rest was but sighs and sobs and disconnected phrases.
Finally she fell asleep; later she was caressed into eating lunch, taken
for a drive, and sent home subsequently greatly mollified and relieved.

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