A Lost Leader Part 31

Berenice was a proud woman, and for the moment she felt her love for this man a dried-up and shrivelled thing. She was white to the lips, but she commanded her voice, and her eyes met his coldly.

"May I inquire into the circ.u.mstances--of this--somewhat remarkable proceeding?" she inquired.

"There is a woman," he said, "whose life I helped to wreck--not in the orthodox way," he added, with a note of scorn in his tone, "but none the less effectually. The one recompense I never thought of offering her was marriage. I have seen that, despite all my efforts to aid her, her life has been a failure. Her friends have been the wrong sort of friends, her life the wrong sort of life. What it was that was dragging her downwards I never guessed, for she, too, in her way, was a proud woman. To-day she sent for me. What pa.s.sed between us is her secret as much as mine. I can only tell you that before I left I had asked her to marry me."

"I think," she said, calmly, "that you need tell me no more."

"There is very little more that I can tell you," he answered. "I have no affection for her, and she has refused to marry me. But she remains--between us--irrevocably!"

"You are lucidity itself," she replied. "Will you forgive me if I leave you? I am scarcely used to this sort of situation, and I should like to be alone."

"Go by all means, Berenice," he answered. "You and I are better apart.

But there is one thing which I must say to you, and you must hear. What has pa.s.sed between you and me is the epitome of the love-making of my life. You are the only woman whom I have desired to make my wife. You are the only woman whom I have loved, and shall love until I die. I can make you no reparation, none is possible! Yet these things are my justification."

Berenice had turned away. The pa.s.sionate ring of truth in his tone arrested her footsteps. She paused. Her heart was beating very fast, her coldness was all a.s.sumed. It was so much happiness to throw away, if indeed there was a chance. She turned and faced him, nervous, gaunt, hollow-eyed, the wreck of his former self. Pity triumphed in spite of herself. What was this leaven of weakness in the man, she wondered, which had so suddenly broken him down? He had only to hold on his way and he would be Prime Minister in a year. And at the moment of trial he had crumpled up like a piece of false metal. A wave of false sentiment, a maniacal hyper-conscientiousness, had been sufficient to sap the very strength from his bones. And then--there was this other woman. Was she to let him go without an effort? He might recover his sanity. It was perhaps a mere nervous breakdown, which had made him the prey of strange fancies.

She spoke to him differently. She spoke once more as the woman who loved him.

"Lawrence," she said, "you are telling me too much, and not enough. If you want to send me away I must go. But tell me this first. What claim has this woman upon you?"

"It is not my secret," he groaned. "I cannot tell you."

"Leslie Borrowdean knows it," she said. "I could have heard it, but I refused to listen. Remember, whatever you may owe to other people you owe me something, too."

"It is true," he answered. "Well, listen. I killed her husband!"

"You! You--killed her husband!" she repeated vaguely.

"Yes! She s.h.i.+elded me. There was an inquest, and they found that he had heart disease. No one knew that I had even seen him that day, no one save she and a servant, who is dead. But the truth lives. He had reason to be angry with me--over a money affair. He came home furious, and found me alone with his wife. He called me--well, it was a lie--and he struck me.

I threw him on one side--and he fell. When we picked him up he was dead."

"It was terrible!" she said, "but you should have braved it out. They could have done very little to you."

"I know it," he answered. "But I was young, and my career was just beginning. The thing stunned me. She insisted upon secrecy. It would reflect upon her, she thought, if the truth came out, so I acquiesced, I left the house unseen. All these days I have had to carry the burden of this thing with me. To-day--seemed to be the climax. For the first time I understood."

"She can never marry you," Berenice said. "It would be horrible."

"She refused to marry me to-day," he answered, "but she laid her life bare, and I cannot marry any one else."

Berenice was trembling. She was no longer ashamed to show her agitation.

"I am very sorry for you, Lawrence," she said. "I am very sorry for myself. Good-bye!"

She left him, and Mannering sank back upon the seat.

CHAPTER XI

BORROWDEAN SHOWS HIS "HAND"

"To be plain with you," Borrowdean remarked, "Mannering's defection would be irremediable. He alone unites Redford, myself, and--well, to put it crudely, let us say the Imperialistic Liberal Party with Manningham and the old-fas.h.i.+oned Whigs who prefer the ruts. There is no other leader possible. Redford and I talked till daylight this morning. Now, can nothing be done with Mannering?"

"To be plain with you, too, then, Sir Leslie," Berenice answered, "I do not think that anything can be done with him. In his present frame of mind I should say that he is better left alone. He has worked himself up into a thoroughly sentimental and nervous state. For the moment he has lost his sense of balance."

Borrowdean nodded.

"Desperate necessity," he said, "sometimes justifies desperate measures.

We need Mannering, the country and our cause need him. If argument will not prevail there is one last alternative left to us. It may not be such an alternative as we should choose, but beggars must not be choosers. I think that you will know what I mean."

"I have no idea," Berenice answered.

"You are aware," he continued, "that there is in Mannering's past history an episode, the publication of which would entail somewhat serious consequences to him."

"Well?"

It was a most eloquent monosyllable, but Borrowdean had gone too far to retreat.

"I propose that we make use of it," he said. "Mannering's att.i.tude is rankly foolish, or I would not suggest such a thing. But I hold that we are ent.i.tled, under the circ.u.mstances, to make use of any means whatever to bring him to his senses."

Berenice smiled. They were standing together upon a small hillock in the park, watching the golf.

"Charlatanism in politics does not appeal to me," she said, drily. "Any party that adopted such means would completely alienate my sympathies.

No, my dear Sir Leslie, don't stoop to such low-down means. Mannering is honest, but infatuated. Win him back by fair means, if you can, but don't attempt anything of the sort you are suggesting. I, too, know his history, from his own lips. Any one who tried to use it against him, would forfeit my friends.h.i.+p!"

"Success then would be bought too dearly," Borrowdean answered, with a gallantry which it cost him a good deal to a.s.sume. "May I pa.s.s on, d.u.c.h.ess, in connexion with this matter, to ask you a somewhat more personal question?"

"I think," Berenice said, calmly, "that I can spare you the necessity.

You were going to speak, I believe, of the engagement between Lawrence Mannering and myself."

"I was," Borrowdean admitted.

"It does not exist any longer," Berenice said, "I should be glad if you would inform any one who has heard the rumour that it is without any foundation."

Borrowdean looked thoughtfully at the woman by his side.

"I am very glad to hear it," he declared. "I am glad for many reasons, and I am glad personally."

She raised her eyebrows.

"Indeed! I cannot imagine how it should affect you personally."

"I perhaps said more than I meant to," he replied, calmly. "I am a poor, struggling politician myself, whose capital consists of brains and a capacity for work, and whose hopes are coloured with perhaps too daring ambitions. Amongst them--"

"Mr. Mannering has holed out from off the green," she interrupted.

"Positively immoral, I call it."