A Lost Leader Part 50

"Can you spare me five minutes?" he asked. "I have a matter to discuss with you."

"Certainly!" Lord Redford answered. "I am leaving directly, and I might drive you home if you liked. We heard that you were at Sandringham."

"I came up this afternoon," Mannering answered. "I heard that you were likely to be here, and as Lady Herrington had been kind enough to send me a card I came on."

Lord Redford nodded.

"Borrowdean and Anstruther are here too," he remarked. "We all felt in need of diversion. As you know very well, we're in a tight corner."

Berenice came out from her place. At the sound of the rustling of her skirts both men turned their heads. She wore a gown of black velvet and a wonderful rope of pearls hung from her neck. She raised her hand and smiled at Mannering.

"I am glad to see you again," she said, softly. "It is quite an age since we met, isn't it?"

He held her hand for a moment. The touch of his fingers chilled her. He greeted her with quiet courtesy, but there was no answering smile upon his lips.

"I have heard often of your movements from Clara," he said. "You have been very kind to her."

"It has never occurred to me in that light," she said. "Clara needs a chaperon, and I need a companion. We were talking yesterday of going to Cairo for the winter. My only fear is that I am robbing you of your niece."

"Please do not let that trouble you," he said. "Clara would be a most uncomfortable member of my household."

"But are you never at all lonely?" she asked.

"I never have time to think of such a thing," he answered. "Besides, I have Hester. She makes a wonderful secretary, and she seems to enjoy the work."

"I should like to have a talk with you some time," she said. "Won't you come and see me?"

He hesitated.

"It is very kind of you to ask me," he said. "Don't think me churlish, but I go nowhere. I am trying to make up, you see, for my years of idleness."

She looked at him steadfastly, and her heart sank. The change in his outward appearance seemed typical of some deeper and more final alteration in his whole nature. She felt herself powerless against the absolute impenetrability of his tone and manner. She felt that he had fought a battle within himself and conquered; that for some reason or other he had decided to walk no longer in the pleasanter paths of life.

She had come to him unexpectedly, but he had shown no sign of emotion.

Her influence over him seemed to be wholly a thing of the past. She made one more effort.

"I think," she said, "that as one grows older one parts the less readily with the few friends who count. I hope that you will change your mind."

He bowed gravely, but he made no answer. Berenice took Borrowdean's arm and pa.s.sed on. There was a little spot of colour in her cheeks.

Borrowdean felt nerved to his enterprise.

"Let us go somewhere and sit down for a few minutes," he suggested. "The rooms are so hot this evening."

She a.s.sented without words, and he found a solitary couch in one of the further apartments.

"I wonder," he said, after a moment's pause, "whether I might say something to you, whether you would listen to me for a few minutes."

Berenice was absorbed in her own thoughts. She allowed him to proceed.

"For a good many years," he said, lowering his voice a little, "I have worked hard and done all I could to be successful. I wanted to have some sort of a position to offer. I am a Cabinet Minister now, and although I don't suppose we can last much longer this time, I shall have a place whenever we are in again."

The sense of what he was saying began to dawn upon her. She stopped him at once.

"Please do not say any more, Sir Leslie," she begged. "I should have given you credit for sufficient perception to have known beforehand the absolute impossibility of--of anything of the sort."

"You are still a young woman," he said, quietly. "The world expects you to marry again."

"I have no interest in what the world expects of me," she answered, "but I may tell you at once that my refusal has nothing whatever to do with the question of marriage in the abstract. You are a man of perception, Sir Leslie! It will be, I trust, sufficient if I say that I have no feelings whatever towards you which would induce me to consider the subject even for a moment."

She was unchanged, then! This time he recognized the note of finality in her tone. All the time and thought he had given to this matter were wasted. He had failed, and he knew why. He seldom permitted himself the luxury of anger, but he felt all the poison of bitter hatred stirring within him at that moment, and craving for some sort of expression. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say. But if Mannering had been within reach then he would have struck him. He rose and walked slowly away.

CHAPTER II

HESTER THINKS IT "A GREAT PITY"

"You will understand," Mannering said, as the brougham drove off, "that you and I are speaking together merely as friends. I have nothing official to say to you. It would be presumption on my part to a.s.sume that the time is ripe for anything definite while you are still at the head of an unbeaten Government. But one learns to read the signs of the times.

I think that you and I both know that you cannot last the session."

"It is a positive luxury at times," Redford answered, "to be able to indulge in absolute candour. We cannot last the session. You pulled us through our last tight corner, but we shall part, I suppose, on the New Tenement Bill, and then we shall come a cropper."

Mannering nodded.

"The Opposition," he said, "are not strong enough to form a Government alone. And I do not think that a one-man Cabinet would be popular. It has been suggested to me that at no time in political history have the conditions been more favourable for a really strong coalition Government, containing men of moderate views on both sides. I am anxious to know whether you would be willing to join such a combination."

"Under whom?" Lord Redford asked.

"Under myself," Mannering answered, gravely. "Don't think me over-presumptuous. The matter has been very carefully thought out. You could not serve under Rushleigh, nor could he serve under you. But you could both be invaluable members of a Cabinet of which I was the nominal head. I do not wish to entrap you into consent, however, without your fully understanding this: a modified, and to a certain extent an experimental, scheme of tariff reform would be part of our programme."

"You wish for a reply," Lord Redford said, "only in general terms?"

"Only in general terms, of course," Mannering a.s.sented.

"Then you may take it," Lord Redford said, "that I should be proud to become a member of such a Government. Anything would be better than a fourth-party administration with Imperialism on the brain and rank Protection on their programme. They might do mischief which it would take centuries to undo."

"We understand one another, Lord Redford," Mannering said, simply. "I am very much obliged to you. This is my turning."

Mannering, when he found himself alone in his study, drew a little sigh of relief. He flung himself into an easy-chair, and sat with his hands pressed against his temples. The events of the day, from the morning at Sandringham to his recent conversation with Lord Redford, were certainly of sufficiently exciting a nature to provide him with food for thought.

And yet his mind was full of one thing only, this chance meeting with Berenice. It was wonderful to him that she should have changed so little.

He himself felt that the last two years were equal to a decade, that events on the other side of that line with which his life was riven were events with which some other person was concerned, certainly not the Lawrence Mannering of to-day. And yet he knew now that the battle which he had fought was far from a final one. Her power over him was unchanged.

He was face to face once more with the old problem. His life was sworn to the service of the people. He had crowded his days with thoughts and deeds and plans for them. Almost every personal luxury and pleasure had been abnegated. He had found a sort of fierce delight in the asceticism of his daily life, in the unflinching firmness with which he had barred the gates which might lead him into smoother and happier ways. To-night he was beset with a sudden fear. He rose and looked at himself in the gla.s.s. He was pale and wan. His face lacked the robust vitality of a few years ago. He was ageing fast. He was conscious of certain disquieting symptoms in the routine of his daily life. He threw himself back into the chair with a little groan. The mockery of his life of ceaseless toil seemed suddenly to spread itself out before him, a grim and unlovely jest. What if his strength should go? What if all this labour and self-denial should be in vain? He found himself growing giddy at the thought.

He rang the bell and ordered wine. Then he went to the telephone and rang up a doctor who lived near. Very soon, with coat and waistcoat off, he was going through a somewhat prolonged examination. Afterwards the doctor sat down opposite to him and accepted a cigar.

"What made you send for me this evening?" he asked, curiously.

Mannering hesitated.