"CHERCHEZ LA FEMME"
Mannering hated dinner parties, but this one had been a necessity.
Nevertheless, if he had known who his companion for the evening was fated
to be he would most certainly have stayed away. Her first question showed
him that she had no intention of ignoring memories which to him were
charged with the most subtle pain.
He looked down the table, and back again into her face.
"You are quite right," he said. "This is different. We cannot compare. We
can judge only by effect--the effect upon ourselves."
"Can you be analytical and yet remain within the orbit of my
understanding?" she asked, with a faint smile. "If so, I should like to
know exactly how you feel about it all."
He passed a course with a somewhat weary gesture of refusal, and leaned
back in his chair.
"You are comprehensive--as usual," he remarked. "Just then I was
wondering whether the perfume of these banks of hot-house flowers--I
don't know what they are--was as sweet as the odour of the salt from
the creeks, or my roses when the night wind touched them."
"You were wondering! And what have you decided?"
"Ah, I must not say. In any case you would not agree with me. Wasn't it
you who once scoffed at my idyll in the wilderness?"
"I do not think that I believe in idylls, nowadays," she answered. "One
risks so many disappointments when one believes in anything."
He raised his eyebrows.
"You did not talk like this at Blakely," he remarked.
"I am nearly a year older," she answered, "and a year wiser."
"You pain me," he answered, with a little sigh. "You are a person of
intelligence, and you talk of growing wiser with the years. Don't you
know that the only supreme wisdom is the wisdom of the child? Our
inherent ignorance is fed and nourished by experience."
"You are hiding yourself," she remarked, "behind a fence of words--words
that mean less than nothing! I don't suppose that even you would hesitate
to admit that you have come into a larger world. You may have to pay for
it. We all do. But at any rate it is an atmosphere which breeds men."
"And changes women," he murmured, under his breath.
She did not speak to him for several moments. Then the alteration in her
tone and manner was almost marked.
"You mentioned Blakely a few minutes ago," she said. "I wonder whether
you remember our discussion there upon precisely what has come to pass."
"Perfectly!"
"I remember that in those days," she continued, reflectively, "you were
very firm indeed, or was it my poor arguments that were at fault? Your
vegetable and sentimental existence was a part of yourself. Ambition! You
had forgotten what it was. Duty! You spouted individualism by the hour.
Gratify my curiosity, won't you? Tell me what made you change your mind?"
Mannering was silent for a moment. A close observer might have noticed
a certain alteration in his face. A touch of the coming weariness was
already there.
"I have never changed my mind," he answered, quietly. "My inclinations
to-day are what they have always been."
She dropped her voice a little.
"You puzzle me," she said, softly. "Do you mean that it was your sense of
duty which was awakened?"
"No, I do not mean that," he answered. "Forgive me--but I cannot tell you
what I do mean. Circumstances brought me here against my will."
"You talk like a slave," she said, lightly enough. She, too, was brave.
She drank wine to keep the colour in her cheeks, and she told herself
that the pain at her heart was nothing. Nevertheless, some words of
Borrowdean's were mocking her all the while.
"We are all slaves," he answered. "The folly of it all is when we stop to
think. Then we realize it."
Their conversation was like a strangled thing. Neither made any serious
effort to re-establish it. It was a great dinner party, chiefly
political, and long drawn out. Afterwards came a reception, and Mannering
was at once surrounded. It was nearly midnight when by chance they came
face to face again. She touched him with her fan, and leaned aside from
the little group by whom she was surrounded.
"Are you very much occupied, Mr. Mannering," she asked, lightly, "or
could you spare me a moment?"
He stopped short. Whatever surprise he may have felt he concealed.
"I am entirely at your service, Duchess," he answered. "Mr. Harrison will
excuse me, I am sure," he added, turning to his companion.
She rested her fingers upon his arm. The house belonged to a relative of
hers, and she knew where to find a quiet spot. When they were alone she
did not hesitate for a moment.
"Lawrence," she said, quietly, "will you imagine for a moment that we are
back again at Blakely?"
"I would to God we were!" he answered, impulsively. "That is--if you wish
it too!"
She did not answer at once. The sudden abnegation of his reserve took her
by surprise. She had to readjust her words.
"At least," she said, "there are many things about Blakely which I regret
all the time. You know, of course, the chief one, our own altered selves.
I know, Lawrence, that I need to ask your forgiveness. I came there under
an assumed name, and I will admit that my coming was part of a scheme
between Ronalds, Rochester and myself. Well, I am ready to ask your
forgiveness for that. I don't think you ought to refuse it me. It doesn't
alter anything that happened. It doesn't even affect it. You must believe
that!"
"I believe it, if you tell me so," he answered.
"I do tell you," she declared. "I can explain it all. I am longing to
have it all off my mind. But first of all, there is just one thing which
I want to ask you."
His face as he looked towards her gave her almost a shock. Very little
was left of his healthy colouring. Already there were lines under his
eyes, and he was certainly thinner. And there was something else which
almost appalled her. There was fear in his manner. He sat like a man
waiting for sentence, a man fore-doomed.
"I want to know," she said, "what has brought you--here. I want to know
what manner of persuasion has prevailed--when mine was so ineffectual.
Don't think that I am not glad that you decided as you did. I am
glad--very. You are in your rightful place, and I am only too thankful
to hear about you, and read--and watch. But--we are jealous creatures, we
women, you know, and I want to know whose and what arguments prevailed,
when mine were so very insufficient."
He answered her without hesitation, but his tone was dull and spiritless.
"I cannot tell you!"
There was a short silence. She gathered her skirts for a moment in her
hand as though about to rise, but apparently changed her mind. She waited
for some time, and then she spoke again.
"Perhaps you think that I ought not to ask?"
He looked at her hopelessly.
"No, I don't think that. You have a right to ask. But it doesn't alter
things, does it? I can't tell you."
"You asked me to marry you."
"It was at Blakely. We were so far out of the world--such a different
world. I think that I had forgotten all that I wished to forget.
Everything seemed possible there."
"You mean that you would have married me and told me nothing of
circumstances in your life, so momentous that they have practically
exercised in this matter of your return to politics a compelling
influence over you?"
"I am sure," he said, "that I should not have told you!"
His unhappiness moved her. She still lingered. She drew a little breath,
and she went a good deal further than she had meant to go.
"It has been suggested to me," she said, "that your reappearance was due
to a woman's influence. Is this true?"
"A woman had something to do with it," he admitted.
"Who is she?"
"Her name," he answered, "is Blanche Phillimore. It was the person to
whom you yourself alluded."
The Duchess maintained her self-control. She was quite pale, however, and
her tone was growing ominously harder.
"Is she a connection of yours?"
"No!"
"Is there anything which you could tell me about her?"
"No!"
"Yet at her bidding you have done--what you refused me."
"I had no choice! Borrowdean saw to that," he remarked, bitterly.
She rose to her feet. She was pale, and her lips were quivering, but she
was splendidly handsome.
"What sort of a man are you, Lawrence Mannering?" she asked, steadily.
"You play at idealism, you asked me to marry you. Yet all the time there
was this background."
"It was madness," he admitted. "But remember it was Mrs. Handsell whom I
asked to be my wife."
"What difference does that make? She was a woman, too, I suppose, to be
honoured--or insulted--by your choice!"
"There was no question of insult, I think."
She looked at him steadfastly. Perhaps for a moment her thoughts
travelled back to those unforgotten days in the rose-gardens at Blakely,
to the man whose delicate but wholesome joy in the wind and the sun and
the flowers, the sea-stained marshes and the windy knolls where they had
so often stood together, she could not forget. His life had seemed to her
then so beautiful a thing. The elementary purity of his thoughts and
aspirations were unmistakable. She told herself passionately that there
must be a way out.
"Lawrence," she said, "we are man and woman, not boy and girl. You asked
me to marry you once, and I hesitated, only because of one thing. I do
not wish to look into any hidden chambers of your life. I wish to know
nothing, save of the present. What claim has this woman Blanche
Phillimore upon you?"
"It is her secret," he answered, "not mine alone."
"She lives in your house--through her you are a poor man--through her you
are back again, a worker in the world."
"Yes!"
"It must always be so?"
"Yes."
"And you have nothing more to say?"
"If I dared," he said, raising his eyes to hers, "I would say--trust me!
I am not exactly--one of the beasts of the field."
"Will you not trust me, then? I am not a foolish girl. I am a woman. You
may destroy an ideal, but there would be something left."
"I can tell you no more."
"Then it is to be good-bye?"
"If you say so!"
She turned slowly away. He watched her disappear. Afterwards, with a
curious sense of unreality, he remained quite still, his eyes still fixed
upon the portiere through which she had passed.