A Lost Leader Part 3

"The one thing which we have no time to do is to stand and look at one another," she declared. "However, since you have tried to stare me out of countenance, what do you find?"

"I find you unchanged," he answered, gravely.

"Naturally! I have found a panacea for all the woes of life. Now what do you want down here?"

"Mannering!"

"Of course. But you won't get him. He declares that he has finished with politics, and I never knew a man so thoroughly in earnest."

Borrowdean smiled.

"No man has ever finished with politics!"

"A plat.i.tude," she declared. "As for Mannering, well, for the first few weeks I felt about him as I suppose you do now. I know him better now, and I have changed my mind. He is unique, absolutely unique! Do you think that I could have existed here for nearly two months without him?"

"May I inquire," Borrowdean asked, blandly, "how much longer you intend to exist here with him?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"All my days--perhaps! He and this place together are an anchorage. Look at me! Am I not a different woman? I know you too well, my dear Leslie, to attempt your conversion, but I can a.s.sure you that I am--very nearly in earnest!"

"You interest me amazingly," he remarked, smiling. "May I ask, does Mannering know you as Mrs. Handsell only?"

"Of course!"

"This," he continued, "is not the Garden of Eden. I may be the first, but others will come who will surely recognize you."

"I must risk it," she answered.

Borrowdean swung his eyegla.s.s backwards and forwards. All the time he was thinking intensely.

"How long have you been here?" he asked.

"Very nearly two months," she answered. "Imagine it!"

"Quite long enough for your little idyll," he said. "Come, you know what the end of it must be. We need Mannering! Help us!"

"Not I," she answered, coolly. "You must do without him for the present."

"You are our natural ally," he protested. "We need your help now. You know very well that with a slip of the tongue I could change the whole situation."

"Somehow," she said, "I do not think that you are likely to make that slip."

"Why not?" he protested. "I begin to understand Mannering's firmness now.

You are one of the ropes which hold him to this petty life--to this philandering amongst the flower-pots. You are one of the ropes I want to cut. Why not, indeed? I think that I could do it."

"Do you want a bribe?"

"I want Mannering."

"So do I!"

"He can belong to you none the less for belonging to us politically."

"Possibly! But I prefer him here. As a recluse he is adorable. I do not want him to go through the mill."

"You don't understand his importance to us," Borrowdean declared. "This is really no light affair. Rochester and Mellors both believe in him.

There is no limit to what he might not ask."

"He has told me a dozen times," she said, "that he never means to sit in Parliament again."

"There is no reason why he should not change his mind," Borrowdean answered. "Between us, I think that we could induce him."

"Perhaps," she answered. "Only I do not mean to try."

"I wish I could make you understand," he said impatiently, "that I am in deadly earnest."

"You threaten?"

"Don't call it that."

"Very well, then," she declared, "I will tell him the truth myself."

"That," he answered, "is all that I should dare to ask. He would come to us to-morrow."

"You used not to underrate me," she murmured, with a glance towards the mirror.

"There is no other man like Mannering," he said. "He abhors any form of deceit. He would forgive a murderer, but never a liar."

"My dear Leslie," she said, "as a friend--and a relative--"

"Neither counts," he interrupted. "I am a politician."

She sat quite still, looking away from him. The peaceful noises from the village street found their way into the room. A few cows were making their leisurely mid-day journey towards the pasturage, a baker's cart came rattling round the corner. The west wind was rustling in the elms, bending the shrubs upon the lawn almost to the ground. She watched them idly, already a little shrivelled and tarnished with their endless struggle for life.

"I do not wish to be melodramatic," she said, slowly, "but you are forcing me into a corner. You know that I am rich. You know the people with whom I have influence. I want to purchase Lawrence Mannering's immunity from your schemes. Can you name no price which I could pay? You and I know one another fairly well. You are an egoist, pure and simple.

Politics are nothing to you save a personal affair. You play the game of life in the first person singular. Let me pay his quittance."

Borrowdean regarded her thoughtfully.

"You are a strange woman," he said. "In a few months' time, when you are back in the thick of it all, you will be as anxious to have him there as we are. You will not be able to understand how you could ever have wished differently. This is rank sentiment, you know, which you have been talking. Mannering here is a wasted power. His life is an unnatural one."

"He is happy," she objected.

"How do you know? Will he be as happy, I wonder, when you have gone, when there is no longer a Mrs. Handsell? I think not! You are one of the first to whom I should have looked for help in this matter. You owe it to us.

We have a right to demand it. For myself personally I have no life now outside the life political. I am tired of being in opposition. I want to hold office. One mounts the ladder very slowly. I see my way in a few months to going up two rungs at a time. We want Mannering. We must have him. Don't force me to make that slip of the tongue."

The sound of a gong came through the open window. She rose to her feet.