THE CONSCIENCE OF A STATESMAN
He was shown into her own little boudoir by a smiling maid-servant, who
seemed already to treat him with an especial consideration. The wonder of
this thing was still lying like a thrall upon him, and yet he knew that
the joy of life was burning once more in his veins. He caught sight of
himself in a mirror, and he was amazed. The careworn look had gone from
his eyes, the sallowness from his complexion. His step was elastic, he
felt the firm, quick beat of his heart, even his pulses seem to throb to
a new and a wonderful tune. These moments whilst he waited for her were a
joy to him. The atmosphere was fragrant with the perfume of her favourite
roses, a book lay upon the little inlaid table face downwards as she had
left it. There was a delicately engraved etching upon the wall, which he
recognized as her work; the watercolours, all of a French school which he
had often praised, were of her choosing. Perfect though the room was in
colouring and detail, there was yet a habitable, almost a homely, air
about it. Mannering moved about amidst her treasures like a man in a
dream, only it was a dream of loneliness gone forever, of a grey life
suddenly coloured and transformed. It was wonderful.
Then the soft swish of a skirt, and she came in. She had changed her
gown. She wore white lace, with a string of pearls about her neck. He
looked eagerly into her face, and a great relief took the place of that
single instant of haunting fear. The change was still there. It was not
the great lady who swept in, but the woman who has found an answer to
the one question of life, a little tremulous still, a little less
self-assured. She looked at him almost appealingly. A delicate tinge of
colour lingered in her cheeks. He moved quickly forward to meet her.
"Dear!" she murmured.
He raised her hand to his lips. He was satisfied.
"You see what my new-born vanity has led to," she declared, smilingly. "I
have had to keep you waiting whilst I changed my gown. I hope you like me
in white."
"You are adorable," he declared.
She laughed.
"I wonder," she said, "would you mind dining here alone with me? It will
be quite a scratch meal, but I thought that it would be cosier than a
restaurant, and afterwards--we could come in here and talk."
"I should like it better than anything in the world," he declared,
truthfully.
"You may take me in, then," she said. "I hope that you are as hungry as
I am. No, not that way. I have ordered dinner to be served in the little
room where I dine when I am alone."
To Mannering there seemed something almost unreal about the chaste
perfection of the meal and its wonderful service. They dined at a small
round table, so small that more than once their fingers touched upon the
tablecloth. A single servant waited upon them, swiftly and perfectly. The
butler appeared only with the wine, which he served, and quietly
withdrew. Across the tangled mass of flowers, only a few feet away all
the time, sat the woman who had suddenly made the world so beautiful to
him. A murmur of conversation continually flowed between them, but he was
never very sure what they were talking about. He wanted to sit still, to
feast his eyes, all his senses, upon her, to strive to realize this new
thing, that from henceforth she was his! And then suddenly she broke the
spell. She leaned back in her chair and laughed softly.
"I have just remembered," she said, in response to his inquiring look,
"why I came to call upon you this evening. What a long time ago it
seems."
He smiled.
"And I never thought to ask you," he remarked.
"We must have no secrets now," she said, with a delightful smile. "Leslie
Borrowdean came to see me this afternoon, and he was very anxious about
you. He declared that you wanted to postpone your great meetings in the
North until after you had made some independent investigations in some of
the manufacturing centres. Poor Sir Leslie! You had frightened him so
completely that he was scarcely coherent."
Mannering smiled a little gravely. It was like coming back to earth.
"Politics with Borrowdean are so much a matter of pounds, shillings and
pence that the bare idea of his finding himself a day further away from
office frightens him to death," he said. "We are all like the pawns, to
be moved about the chessboard of his life."
Berenice smiled.
"He is certainly a very self-centred person," she remarked; "but do
you know, I am really a little curious to know how you succeeded in
frightening him so thoroughly."
"I had a fright myself," Mannering said. "I was made to feel for an hour
or so like a Rip van Winkle with the cobwebs hanging about me--Rip van
Winkle looking out upon a new world!"
"You a Rip van Winkle!" she laughed. "What was it that man who wrote in
the _Nineteenth Century_ called you last week? 'The most precise and
far-seeing of our politicians.'"
"The men who write in reviews," he murmured, "sometimes display the most
appalling ignorance. There was also some one in the _Saturday Review_ who
alluded to me last week as a library politician. My friend quoted that
against me. 'A man who essays to govern a people he knows nothing of.' It
was one of the labour party who wrote it, I know, but it sticks."
"You are not losing confidence in yourself, surely?" she remarked,
smiling.
"My views are unchanged, if that is what you mean," he answered. "I
believe I know what is good for the people, and when I am sure of it I
shall not be afraid to take up the gauntlet. But I must be quite sure."
"You puzzle me a little," she admitted. "Has any one written more
convincingly than you? Arguments which are founded upon logic and
statistics must yield truth, and you have set it down in black and
white."
"On the other hand," he said, "my unlearned but eloquent friend dismissed
all statistics, all the science of argument and deduction, with the wave
of a not too scrupulously clean hand. 'Figures,' he said, 'are dead
things. They are the playthings of the charlatan politician, who, by a
sort of mental sleight of hand, can make them perform the most wonderful
antics. If you desire the truth, seek it from live things. If you desire
really to call yourself the champion of the people, come and see for
yourself how they are faring. Figures will not feed them, nor statistics
keep them from the great despair. Come and let me show you the sinews of
the country, whether they are sound or rotten. You cannot see them
through your library walls. It is only the echo of their voice which you
hear so far off. If you would really be the people's man, come and learn
something of the people from their own lips.' This is what my friend said
to me."
"And who," she asked, "was this prophet who came to you and talked like
this?"
"A retired bookmaker," he answered. "I will tell you of our meeting."
She listened gravely. After he had finished there was a short silence.
The dessert was on the table, and they were alone. Berenice was looking
thoughtful.
"Tell me," he begged, "exactly what that wrinkled forehead means?"
"I was wondering," she said, "whether Sir Leslie was right, when he said
that you had too much conscience ever to be a great politician."
"It mirrors Borrowdean's outlook upon politics precisely," he remarked.
She smiled at him with a sudden radiance. She had risen to her feet, and
with a quick, graceful movement leaned over him. This new womanliness
which he had found so irresistible was alight once more in her face. Her
eyes sought his fondly, she touched his lips with hers. The perfume of
her clothes, the touch of her hair upon his cheek, were like a drug. He
had no more words.
"You may have one peach and one glass of the Prince's Burgundy, and then
you must come and look for me," she said. "We have wasted too much time
talking of other things. You haven't even told me yet what I have a right
to hear, you know. I want to be told that you care for me better than
anything else in the world."
He caught her hands. There was a rare passion vibrating in his tone.
"You do not doubt it, Berenice?"
"Perhaps not," she answered, "but I want to be told. I am a middle-aged
woman, you know, Lawrence, but I want to be made love to as though I were
a silly girl! Isn't that foolish? But you must do it," she whispered,
with her lips very close to his.
He drew her into his arms.
"I am not at all sure," he said, "that I have enough courage to make love
to a Duchess!"
"Then you can remember only that I am a woman," she whispered, "very,
very, very much a woman, and--I'm afraid--a woman shockingly in love!"
She disengaged herself suddenly, and was at the door before he could
reach it. She looked back. Her cheeks were flushed. There was even a
faint tinge of pink underneath the creamy white of her slender, stately
neck.
"Don't dare," she said, "to be more than five minutes!"
Mannering poured himself out a glass of wine, and sat quite still with
his head between his hands. He wanted to realize this thing if he could.
The grinding of the great wheels fell no more upon his ears. He looked
into a new world, so different from the old that he was almost afraid.
And in her room, Berenice waited for him impatiently.