Drake repeated his question to Fielding two days later, after a dinner
with Conway at his club, but in a tone of languid interest.
'Why don't you ask Mallinson?' said Fielding. 'He knows her better
than I do.'
Conway contested the assertion with some heat.
'Besides,' added Drake, 'his imagination may have been at work. About
women, I prefer the estimate of a man of the world.'
The phrase was distasteful to a gentleman whose ambition it was to live
and to be recognised as living within view of, but outside the world, say
just above it in a placid atmosphere of his own creation. Fielding leaned
back in his chair to mete out punishment, joining the finger-tips with an
air of ordering a detailed statement.
'The inhabitants of Sark,' he began, 'were from immemorial times notable
not merely for their predatory instincts, but for the stay-at-home
fashion in which they gave those instincts play. They did not scour the
seas for their victims, neither did they till their island. There was no
need for so much exertion. They lay supine upon their rocks and waited
until a sail appeared above the horizon. Even then they did not stir till
nightfall. But after it was dark, they lighted bonfires upon suitable
promontories, especially towards Brecqhou and the Gouliot channel, where
snags are numerous, and gathered in their harvest in the morning.
'But,' Drake interrupted, 'what on earth has that to do with--'
'Miss Le Mesurier? A great deal, as you will see if you listen patiently.
Lloyd's at that time had not been invented, and the Sarkese were
consequently unpopular with the trading community, and in the reign of
Henry the--well, the particular Henry is immaterial--an irate band of
merchants sailed from Winchelsea on a trip. They depopulated Sark in a
single night, as they thought. But they were mistaken. One family escaped
their attention,--the Le Mesuriers, who were the custodians of the silver
mines--' At this point Conway broke in with an impatient laugh. Fielding
turned a quiet eye upon him and repeated in an even voice, 'Who were the
custodians of the silver mines, and lived under the shelter of a little
cliff close by the main shaft. When Helier de Carteret, who, you know,'
and he inclined suavely towards Conway, 'was Seigneur of somewhere or
other in Jersey, came a few years later to colonise Sark, he found the Le
Mesuriers in possession, and while he confiscated the mines, he allowed
them to retain their ancient dignity of custodians.'
'Fudge!' said Conway rudely. Fielding waved a deprecating hand and
continued:
'Living where they did, it is not to be wondered at that the Le Mesuriers
became gradually rich, and the De Carterets gradually poor, so that when
the latter family was compelled to place the Seigneurie of Sark upon the
market, the Le Mesuriers were the highest bidders. The Le Mesuriers thus
became Seigneurs of Sark. But with their position they reversed their
conduct, and, instead of taking other people's money out of mines, they
put their own in, with the result that they sustained embarrassing
losses. I mention these details incidentally to show that Miss Le
Mesurier of to-day is directly descended from ancestors of predatory
instincts, who did not go a-hunting for victims, but unobtrusively
attracted them in a passive, lazy way which was none the less effectual.'
Conway's patience was exhausted at this period of the disquisition.
'I never heard such a hotch-potch of nonsense in my life,' he said.
'I admit,' returned Fielding with unruffled complacency, 'that I aimed at
an allegory rather than a pedantic narrative of facts. I was endeavouring
to explain Clarice Le Mesurier on the fashionable principle of heredity.'
It flashed across Drake that if Fielding had described, though with some
exaggeration, an actual phase of Miss Le Mesurier's character, she must
have been driven to make the first advance towards his acquaintance by a
motive of unusual urgency. The notion, however, did but flash and flicker
out. He had no mental picture of the girl to fix her within his view; he
knew not, in fact, whether she was girl or woman. She was to him just an
abstraction, and Drake was seldom inclined for the study of abstractions.
His curiosity might, perhaps, have been stronger had Mallinson related to
him the way in which he had been received at the house of the Le
Mesuriers after his dinner with Drake. When he arrived he found the
guests staring hard at each other silently, with the vacant expression
which comes of an effort to understand a recitation in a homely dialect
from the north of the Tweed. He waited in the doorway and suddenly saw
Miss Le Mesurier rise from an embrasure in the window and take half a
step towards him. Then she paused and resumed her seat.
'That's because I come alone,' he thought, and something more than his
vanity was hurt.
The recitation reached its climax. Darby and Joan, quarrelling through
nineteen stanzas as to whether they had been disturbed by a rat or a
mouse, discovered in the twentieth that the animal was a ball of wool.
The company sighed their relief in a murmur of thanks, and Mallinson
crossed the room to the window.
'And Captain Drake?' Clarice asked as she gave him her hand. The
disappointment in her voice irritated him, and he answered with a sharp
petulance.
'He's not a captain really, you know.'
The girl glanced at him in surprise.
'I mean,' he went on, answering the glance, 'Of course he held the rank
over there. But a captain in Matanga!' He shrugged his shoulders. 'There
are more honourable titles.'
'Still I asked you to bring him. You got my note, I suppose?' Her manner
signified a cold request for an explanation.
'I couldn't,' he replied shortly.
'You mean you did not think it worth while to take enough trouble to
find him.'
'No; that's not the reason. In fact I dined with him to-night, but I saw
that I couldn't bring him here.'
'Why?'
'Well, he's changed.'
'In what way?'
'He has grown so hopelessly bourgeois.'
The epithet was a light to Clarice. She knew it for the superlative in
Mallinson's grammar of abuse. Bourgeois! The term was the palm of a hand
squashed upon a lighted candle; it snuffed you out. Convicted of
bourgeoisie, you ought to tinkle a bell for the rest of your life, or at
the easiest be confined east of Temple Bar. Applied to Drake the word
connoted animosity pure and simple, animosity suddenly conceived too, for
it was not a week since Mallinson had been boasting of his friendship
with the man. What was the reason of that animosity? Clarice lowered her
eyelashes demurely and smiled.
'I fancied he was your friend,' she said with inquiring innocence.
'I believe I remarked that he was changed.' Mallinson looked up at a
corner of the ceiling as he spoke, and the exasperation was more than
ever pronounced in his voice.
'Mr. Drake,' she went on, and she laid the slightest possible emphasis on
the prefix, 'Mr. Drake has travelled among the natives a good deal, I
think you told me?'
'Yes.'
'It's funny that that should make a man bourgeois.'
Mallinson became flippant.
'I am not so sure,' he said. 'The natives, I should think, are
essentially bourgeois. They love beads, and that's typical of the class.
Evil communications, you know,' and he laughed, but awkwardly and without
merriment.
'Really?' asked Clarice, looking straight at him with grave eyes. She
seemed to be seriously deliberating the truth of his remark. Mallinson's
laughter stopped short. 'There's my aunt beckoning to you,' she said.
Later in the evening she relented towards him, salving her disappointment
with the flattery of his jealousy. She did not, however, relinquish on
that account her intention to make Stephen Drake's acquaintance. She
merely postponed it, trusting that the tides of accident would drift them
together, as indeed they did, though after a longer delay than she had
anticipated.
The occasion of their meeting was provided by the visit of a French
actress to one of the London theatres. Drake and Conway edged into their
stalls just before the curtain rose on a performance of _Frou-Frou_.
During the first act the theatre gradually filled, and when the lights
were turned up at its close only one box was empty. It was upon the first
tier next to the stage. A few minutes after the second act had begun
Conway nudged Drake and nodded towards the box.
'You asked what Miss Le Mesurier was like. There's your answer.'
Drake glanced in that direction. He saw a girl in a dress of pink silk,
standing in the front of the box, with her hands upon the ledge and
leaning her head a little forwards beyond it. The glare striking up from
the stage beneath her gave a burnish of copper to her hair and a warm
light to her face. She seemed of a fragile figure and with features
regular and delicate. Drake received a notion of unimpressive prettiness
and turned his attention to the stage. When the lights were raised again
in the auditorium, he noticed that Fielding was in the box talking to a
gentleman with white hair, and that Mallinson was seated by the side of
Miss Le Mesurier. The latter couple were gazing about the house and
apparently discussing the audience,--at all events conversing with
considerable animation. Drake commented upon their manner and drew the
conventional inference.
'Oh dear, no!' answered Conway energetically. 'Of course Mallinson's aim
is apparent enough, poor fellow.' A touch of scorn in the voice, which
rang false, negatived the pity of the phrase. 'But I don't suppose for an
instant that she has realised it. She would be the last to do so. No, she
has a fad in her head about authors just for the moment.'
'Oh!' said Drake, turning with some interest to his companion. 'Does that
account for _A Man of Influence_?'
'Yes,' replied Conway reluctantly, 'I fancy it does.'
'I wondered what set him to writing.'
'He was at the Bar when he met her. I believe she persuaded him to write
the book and give up the Law.'
'She is undertaking a pretty heavy responsibility.'
Conway looked at his friend and laughed.
'I'm afraid you won't find that she takes that view, nor indeed do I see
why she should. Mallinson was doing no good--well, not much anyway--at
the Bar. He has scored by following her advice. So if she ever had any
responsibility, which I don't admit, for there was no compulsion on him
to obey, his luck has already wiped it out.'
'I suppose the white-haired man's her father,' said Drake.
'Yes. There's another sister, but she's at school in Brussels.'
'How did you come across them?'
'Mallinson and I met them one summer when we were taking a holiday at
Sark.'
Drake caught the eye of a man who was passing the end of his row of
stalls towards the saloon, and was beckoned out.
'I will join you after the interval,' he said, turning to Conway, and he
saw that his companion was bowing to Miss Le Mesurier.
Miss Le Mesurier in her box noticed Drake's movement, and she asked
Mallinson, 'Who is that speaking to Mr. Conway?'
Mallinson put up his glasses and looked. Clarice read recognition in a
lift of eyebrows, and guessed from his hesitation to answer who it was
that he recognised.
'Well, who is it?'
'Where?' asked Mallinson, assuming an air of perplexity.
'Where you were looking,' said she quietly.
'It's Stephen Drake,' interposed Fielding, and 'Hulloa!' he added in a
voice of surprise as he observed the man whom Drake joined.
'Drake! Stephen Drake!' exclaimed Mr. Le Mesurier, leaning forward
hurriedly. 'Point him out to me, Fielding.'
The latter obeyed, and Mr. Le Mesurier watched Drake until he disappeared
through the doorway, with what seemed to Mallinson a singular intentness.
The father's manner waked him to a suspicion that he might possibly have
mistaken the daughter's motive in seeking Drake's acquaintance. Was it
merely a whim, a fancy, strengthened to the point of activity by the
sight of his name in print? Or was it something more? Was there some
personal connection between Drake and the Le Mesuriers of which the
former was in some way ignorant? He was still pondering the question when
Clarice spoke to him.
'So that was the bourgeois, was it?' she said, bending forwards and
almost whispering the words. Mallinson flushed.
'Was it?' he asked. 'I can't see. I am rather short-sighted.'
'I begin to think you are.'
The sentence was spoken with an ironic sympathy which deepened the flush
upon Mallinson's cheek. A knock at the door offered him escape; he rose
and admitted Conway. Conway was received with politeness by Mr. Le
Mesurier, with cordiality by his daughter.
'I have Drake with me,' said Conway. 'I came to ask permission, since you
invited him to Beaufort Gardens, to introduce him after the next act.'
Mr. Le Mesurier started up in his chair.
'Did you ask him to the house?' he asked Clarice abruptly.
'I asked Mr. Mallinson to bring him,' she replied; and then, with all
the appearance of a penitent anxiety, 'Why? Oughtn't I to have done so?'
she asked.
Mr. Le Mesurier cast a suspicious glance at his daughter.
'I am so sorry,' she said; 'I didn't know that--'
'Oh well,' interrupted Mr. Le Mesurier hurriedly, 'there's no reason that
I know of why you shouldn't have asked him, except that it's surely a
trifle unusual, isn't it? You don't know him from Adam.'
'But I assure you, Mr. Le Mesurier,' interposed Conway, 'there's nothing
to be said against Drake.'
'Of course!' replied Mr. Le Mesurier, with a testy laugh at the other's
warmth. 'We know the length of your enthusiasms, my dear Conway. But I'll
grant all you like about Drake. I only say that my daughter isn't even
acquainted with the fellow.'
'It is just that drawback which Mr. Conway proposes to remove,' said
Clarice demurely. 'Of course,' she went on, 'I should never have thought
of inviting him if Mr. Mallinson had not spoken of him so often as his
friend.' She directed her sweetest smile to Mallinson. 'You did, didn't
you? Yes! Mr. Drake had been away from England for so long that I thought
it would be only kind to ask you to bring him. But if I had known that
papa had any objection, I should naturally never have done it. I am very
sorry. Perhaps I am not careful enough.' She ended her speech in a tone
of self-reproach, which had its effect; for her father was roused by it
to expostulate.
'My dear,' he said, 'I never hinted that I had an objection to him. You
are always twisting people's words and imputing wrong meanings to them.'
Mallinson fancied that he detected a note of something more than mere
remonstrance in Mr. Le Mesurier's voice, a consciousness of some thought
in his daughter's mind which he would not openly acknowledge her to
possess. The perception quickened Mallinson's conjecture into a positive
conviction. There was evidently some fact about Drake, some incident
perhaps in his life which brought him into relations with the Le
Mesuriers,--relations ignored by Drake, but known by Mr. Le Mesurier and
suspected by Clarice. Was this fact to Drake's advantage or discredit?
The father's manner indicated rather the latter; but Mallinson put that
aside. It was more than overbalanced by the daughter's--he sought for a
word and chanced on 'forwardness.' His irritation against her prompted
him to hug it, to stamp it on his thoughts of her with a jeer of 'I have
found you out.' On the other hand, all his knowledge of her cried out
against the word. He looked into the girl's face to resolve his doubts
upon the point and found that she was watching him with some perplexity.
A question to Conway explained the reason why she was puzzled.
'How did you know that I asked Mr. Drake to Beaufort Gardens?' she asked.
'I was present when Mallinson asked him to go.'
'Mr. Mallinson asked him!' she exclaimed, dropping her fan in her
surprise. 'Why, I thought--' She saw the confusion in Mallinson's face
and checked herself suddenly with a little laugh of pure enjoyment. Her
companion's jealousy was more heroical than she had given him credit for;
it had induced him to lie.
To cover his discomfiture Mallinson dived for the fan.
'Oh, don't trouble,' she said, sympathy shaping the words into a
positive entreaty. 'You are _so_ short-sighted, you know. Then you will
bring Mr. Drake,' she turned to Conway as he rose and moved towards the
door. Mr. Le Mesurier had resumed his conversation with Fielding, and
beyond a slight movement of impatience, he gave no sign that he had
heard the words.
'After the next act,' said Conway, and he went out.
Mallinson picked up the fan and laid it upon the ledge of the box.
'I lied to you that evening,' he whispered in a low faltering tone. 'I
have no excuse--Can't you guess why I lied?'
There was a feeling behind the words, genuine by the ring of it, and to
feeling Clarice was by nature responsive. Mallinson saw the mischief die
out of her face, the eyelids droop until the lashes touched the cheek.
Then she raised them again, tenderness flowered in her eyes.
'Perhaps,' she said.
She turned from him and watched Conway making his way along the row of
stalls. Drake was already in his seat.
'Then why didn't Mr. Drake come if you asked him?' she said with a quick
change of tone.
'He gave no reason beyond that it was his first night in London.'
Miss Le Mesurier looked again at Drake. His indifference irritated her
and in a measure interested her in spite of herself. She was not used to
indifference, and felt a need to apologise for it to herself. 'Of
course,' she reflected, 'he had not seen me then,' and so was reinstated
in her self-esteem. The explanation, however, failed her the next
moment. For Drake, at all events, had seen her now; she had caught him
looking up into the box before Conway left. Yet when Conway communicated
his news, Drake never so much as moved his head in her direction. The
three blows of the mallet had just sounded from behind the curtain and
he sat upright in his seat, his face fixed towards the stage. Clarice
bit her lips and frowned.
'Don't be alarmed. He is really quite interested in you.' She looked up.
Fielding was standing just behind her shoulder. 'He asked me quite often
what you were like.'
'I don't understand you,' said she loftily; and then, 'He might be a
schoolboy at his first pantomime.'
'He gives that kind of impression, I believe, in everything he does.'
Miss Le Mesurier had not made the remark in order to elicit eulogy.
'He looks old, though,' she said, and her voice defied Fielding to
contradict her.
'Responsibility writes with the cyphers of age,' he quoted solemnly. It
was his habit to recite sentences from _A Man of Influence_ when
Mallinson was present, in a tone which never burlesqued but somehow
belittled the work. Mallinson was never able to take definite offence,
but he was none the less invariably galled by it.
'As a matter of fact there is hardly a year to choose between the ages of
Drake, Conway, and you, Mallinson, is there?' asked Fielding.
Mallinson admitted that the statement was correct.
'He has lived a hard life, has anxieties enough now, I don't doubt. You
will find the explanation in that. The only people who remain young
nowadays are actors. They keep the child in them.'
The curtain went up as he spoke. As soon as it was lowered again Conway
hurried Drake out of the stalls and up the staircase to the box.
Clarice welcomed Drake quietly. Mr. Le Mesurier vouchsafed him the
curtest of nods.
'Didn't I see you join Israel Biedermann?' asked Fielding. The name
belonged to a speculator who had lately been raised into prominence by
the clink of his millions.
'Yes,' replied Drake, with a laugh. 'The city makes one acquainted with
strange financiers. I have business with him.'
Mr. Le Mesurier showed symptoms of interest.
'Really?' he said. 'You mean to return to Africa, I suppose.'
'If I can help it, no.'
'You intend to stay in England?' asked Mallinson sharply.
'Yes,' replied Drake. He addressed himself to Miss Le Mesurier. 'You were
kind enough to invite me to your house on the evening I arrived.'
Mr. Le Mesurier's eyebrows went up at the mention of the day.
'Mr. Mallinson had talked of you,' she explained. 'We seemed to know you
already. I saw that you had landed from an interview in the _Meteor_, and
thought you might have liked to come with your friend.'
The words were spoken indifferently.
'The _Meteor_?' inquired Mr. Le Mesurier. 'Isn't that the paper which
attacked you, Mr. Drake? You let yourself be interviewed by it? I didn't
know that.'
He glanced keenly at his daughter, and Mallinson intercepted the look.
His conviction was proved certain. There was something concealed,
something maybe worth his knowing.
'The attack was of no importance,' replied Drake, 'but I wanted it to be
known in some quarters that I had landed without losing time.'
'You replied to the attack?'
'Not so much that. I gave the itinerary of the march to Boruwimi.'
Mr. Le Mesurier perceived his daughter's eyes quietly resting upon him,
and checked a movement of impatience, less at the answer than at his own
folly in provoking it. Drake turned to Clarice and was offered a seat by
her side. He realised, now that she was near, talking to him, that his
impression of her, gained from the distance between the box and the
stalls, did her injustice. She seemed now the vignette of a beautiful
woman, missing the stateliness, perhaps, too, the distinction, but
obtaining by very reason of what she missed a counterbalancing charm, to
be appreciated only at close quarters, a charm of the quiet kind,
diffused about her like a light; winsome--that was the epithet he
applied to her, and remained doubtfully content with it, for there was a
gravity too.
Clarice invited him to speak of Matanga, but Drake was reticent on the
subject, through sheer disinclination to talk about himself, a
disinclination which the girl recognised, and gave him credit for,
shooting a comparing glance at Mallinson.
Mr. Le Mesurier, it should be said, remarked this reticence as well, and
it gave him an idea. From Matanga Drake led the conversation back to
London, and they fell to discussing the play.
'You are very interested in it,' she said.
'Yes,' said he, 'I have never seen the play before.'
'I should hardly have thought it would have suited your taste,'
Conway observed.
'Why? It's French of course, but you can discount the sentiment. There is
a stratum of truth left, don't you think?'
Mallinson raised pitying shoulders. 'Of the ABC order perhaps,' he
allowed.
'I am afraid it appeals to me all the more on that account,' Drake
answered, with a genial laugh. 'But what I meant really was truth to
those people--truth to the characters presumed. Consistency is perhaps
the better word. I like to see a play run on simple lines to an end you
can't but foresee. The taste's barbarian, I don't doubt.'
Miss Le Mesurier's lips instinctively pouted a mischievous 'bourgeois'
towards Mallinson. He remarked hastily that he thought the curtain was on
the point of rising, and Miss Le Mesurier pushed her opera-glasses
towards him with a serene 'Not yet, I think.' Mallinson understood the
suggestion of her movement and relapsed into a sullen silence.
By the time that Conway and Drake rose to leave the box Mr. Le Mesurier
had thought out his idea. His manner changed of a sudden to one of great
cordiality; he expressed his pleasure at meeting Drake, and shook him by
the hand, but destroyed the effect of his action through weakly revealing
his diplomacy to his daughter by a triumphant glance at her.
At the close of the performance he met Drake in the vestibule of the
theatre and lingered behind his party. Fielding, Mallinson, and Conway
meanwhile saw Miss Le Mesurier into her carriage.
'What in the world is papa doing?' asked Clarice.
'Exchanging cards with Drake,' replied Fielding. Mallinson turned his
head round quickly and beheld the two gentlemen affably shaking hands
again. Conway bent into the carriage.
'Do you like him?' he asked.
'Oh yes,' she replied indifferently.
'Then I am glad I introduced him to you,' and some emphasis was laid
upon the 'I.'
Mr. Le Mesurier came out to the brougham and the coachman drove off.
'I like that young fellow, Drake,' he said, with a wave of the hand. 'I
have asked him to call.'
Clarice did not inform her diplomatic father that unless she had foreseen
his intention she would have undertaken the discharge of that act of
courtesy herself.
Mallinson took a hansom and drove straight from the theatre to his
chambers in South Kensington, Conway walked off in the opposite
direction, so that Drake and Fielding were left to stroll away together.
They walked across Leicester Square towards St. James's Street, each
occupied with his own thoughts. Fielding's were of an unusually
stimulating kind; he foresaw the possibility of a very diverting comedy,
to be played chiefly for his amusement and partly for Miss Le Mesurier's,
by Clarice herself, Drake, and Mallinson. From the clash of two natures
so thoroughly different as those of the two men, played off against one
another with all the delicate manipulation of Miss Le Mesurier's
experienced hand, there was much enjoyment to be anticipated for the
purely disinterested spectator which he intended to be. Of the probable
_dénouement_ he formed no conception, and in fact avoided purposely any
temptation to do so. He preferred that the play should unroll itself in a
series of delightful surprises. The one question which he asked himself
at this time was whether Drake might not decline to act his proper and
assigned part. He glanced at him as they walked along. Drake looked
thoughtful, and was certainly silent; both thought and silence were
propitious signs. On the other hand, Drake had interests in the City, had
them at heart too, and, worse still, had the City itself at heart.
Fielding recollected an answer he had made to Mallinson. The word 'heart'
brought it to his mind. Mallinson was jeering at the journalist's
metaphor of the 'throbbing heart' as applied to London. 'The phrase,'
Drake had said, 'to me is significant of something more than cheap
phraseology. I know that half a throb could create an earthquake in
Matanga.' What if the man's established interest in this direction were
to suppress his nascent interest in Clarice! Fielding immediately asked
Drake what he thought of Miss Le Mesurier.
'Oh!' said the latter, palpably waking from reflections of quite another
order, 'I liked her,' and he spoke of her looks.
'She has the art of dressing well,' corrected Fielding, disappointment
spurring him to provoke advocacy of the lady. Drake, however, was
indifferent to the correction.
'I like her eyes,' he said.
'She is skilled in the use of them.'
'I didn't notice that. They seemed of the quiet kind.'
'At need she can swing a wrecker's light behind them.'
'I like her hand too. It has the grip of a friend.'
'A friend! Yes. There's the pitfall.'
Drake only laughed. He was not to be persuaded to any strenuous defence,
and Fielding felt inclined to harbour a grudge against him as needlessly
a spoil-sport. Later on, however, when he was in bed it occurred to him
that the play might still be performed, though upon different lines, and
with a plot rather different from what he had imagined--his plot
inverted, in fact. Clarice Le Mesurier, he remembered, had made the first
advance to Drake. What if she for once in a while were to figure as the
pursuer! That alternative would, perhaps, be the more diverting of the
two. He must consult Mrs. Willoughby as to the effect which Drake's
bearing would produce on women--consult her cautiously, prudence warned
him. Mrs. Willoughby, a cousin and friend of Miss Le Mesurier's, was not
of the sort to lend a helping hand in the game if the girl was to provide
the sport--or indeed in the other event. The one essential thing,
however, was that there should be a comedy, and he must see to it that
there was one, with which reflection he drew the bed-clothes comfortably
about him and went to sleep.
There was, however, one other condition equally essential to his
enjoyment, but so apparently inevitable that he did not stop to consider
it, namely, that Hugh Fielding should be a mere spectator. It did not
occur to him at all that he might be drawn into an unwilling assumption
of a part in his own play.