A Lost Leader Part 52

"That is very kind of you," Hester said. "I have come here because Mr.

Mannering is the greatest friend I have in the world. He stands to me for all the relatives most girls have, and I am very fond of him indeed. I scarcely remember my father, but Mr. Mannering was always kind to me when I was a child. You know, perhaps, that I am living with him now as his secretary?"

Berenice nodded pleasantly.

"I see him every day," Hester continued, "and I notice things. He has changed a great deal during the last few years. I am getting very anxious about him."

"He is not ill, I hope?" Berenice asked. "I too noticed a change. It grieved me very much."

"He is simply working himself to death," Hester continued, "without relaxation or pleasure of any sort. And all the time he is unhappy. Other men, however hard they work, have their hobbies and their occasional holidays. He has neither. And I think that I know why. He fights all the time to forget."

"To forget what?" Berenice asked, slowly turning her head.

"To forget how near he came once to being very happy," Hester answered, boldly. "To forget--you!"

Then her heart sang a little song of triumph, for she saw the instant change in the still, cold face turned now a little away from her. She saw the proud lips tremble and the unmistakable light leap out from the dark eyes. She saw the colour rush into the cheeks, and she had no more fear.

She rose from her chair and dropped on one knee by Berenice's side.

"Make him happy, please," she begged. "You can do it. You only! He loves you!"

Berenice smiled, although her eyes were wet with tears. She laid her long, delicate fingers upon the other's hand.

"But, my dear child," she protested, "what can I do? Mr. Mannering won't come near me. He won't even write to me. I can't take him by storm, can I?"

"He is so foolish," Hester said, also smiling. "He will not understand how unimportant all other things are when two people care for one another. He talks about the difference in your politics, as though that were sufficient to keep you apart!"

Berenice was silent for a moment.

"There was a time," she said, softly, "when I thought so, too."

"Exactly!" Hester declared. "And he doesn't know, of course, that you don't think so now."

Berenice smiled slightly.

"You must remember, dear," she said, "that Mr. Mannering and I are in rather a peculiar position. My great-grandfather, my father and my uncle were all Prime Ministers of England, and they were all staunch Liberals.

My family has always taken its politics very seriously indeed, and so have I. It is not a little thing, this, after all."

"But you will do it!" Hester exclaimed. "I am sure that you will."

Berenice rose to her feet. A sense of excitement was suddenly quivering in her veins, her heart was beating fiercely. After all, this child was wise. She had been drifting into the dull, pa.s.sionless life of a middle-aged woman. All the joys of youth seemed suddenly to be sweeping up from her heart, mocking the serenity of her days, these stagnant days, sheltered from the great winds of life, where the waves were ripples and the hours changeless. She raised her arms for a moment and dropped them to her side.

"Oh, I do not know!" she cried. "It is such an upheaval. If he were here--if he asked me himself. But he will never come now."

"I believe that he would come to-morrow," Hester said, "if he were sure--"

Berenice laughed softly. There was colour in her cheeks as she turned to Hester.

"Tell him to come and have tea with me to-morrow afternoon," she said. "I shall be quite alone."

Hester felt all her confidence slipping away from her. The echoes of her breathless, pa.s.sionate words had scarcely died away, and Mannering, to all appearance, was unmoved. His still, cold face showed no signs of agitation, his dark, beringed eyes were full of nothing but an intense weariness.

"Do I understand, Hester," he asked, "that you have been to see the d.u.c.h.ess?--that you have spoken of these things to her?"

Her heart sank. His tone was almost censorious. Nevertheless, she stood her ground.

"Yes! I have told you the truth. And I am glad that I went. You are very clever people, both of you, but you are spoiling your lives for the sake of a little common sense. It was necessary for some one to interfere."

Mannering shook his head slowly.

"You meant kindly, Hester," he said, "but it was a mistake. The time when that might have been possible has gone by. Neither she nor I can call back the hand of time. The last two years have made an old man of me. I have no longer my enthusiasm. I am in the whirlpool, and I must fight my way through to the end."

She sat at his feet. He was still in the easy-chair into which he had sunk on his first coming into the room. He had been speaking in the House late, amidst all the excitement of a political crisis.

"Why fight alone," she murmured, "when she is willing to come to you?"

He shook his head.

"There would be conditions," he said, "and she would not understand. I may be in office in a month with most of her friends in opposition. The situation would be impossible!"

"Rubbis.h.!.+" Hester declared. "The d.u.c.h.ess is too great a woman to lose so utterly her sense of proportion. Don't you understand--that she loves you?"

Mannering laughed bitterly.

"She must love a shadow, then!" he said, "for the man she knew does not exist any longer. Poor little girl, are you disappointed?" he added, more kindly. "I am sorry!"

"I am disappointed to hear you talking like this," she declared. "I will not believe that it is more than a mood. You are overtired, perhaps!"

"Ay!" he said. "But I have been overtired for a long time. The strength the G.o.ds give us lasts a weary while. You must send my excuses to the d.u.c.h.ess, Hester. The fates are leading me another way."

"I won't do it," she sobbed. "You shall be reasonable! I will make you go!"

He shook his head.

"If you could," he murmured, "you might alter the writing on one little page of history. We defeated the Government to-night badly, and I am going to Windsor to-morrow afternoon."

Hester rose to her feet and paced the room restlessly. Mannering had spoken without exultation. His pallid face seemed to her to have grown thin and hard. He saw himself the possible Prime Minister of the morrow without the slightest suggestion of any sort of gratified ambition.

"I don't know whether to say that I am glad or not," Hester declared, stopping once more by his side. "If you are going to shut yourself off from everything else in life which makes for happiness, to forget that you are a man, and turn yourself into a law-making machine, well, then, I am sorry. I think that your success will be a curse to you. I think that you will live to regret it."

Mannering looked at her for a moment with a gleam of his old self s.h.i.+ning out of his eyes. A sudden pathos, a wave of self-pity had softened his face.

"Dear child!" he said, gravely, "I cannot make you understand. I carry a burden from which no one can free me. For good or for evil the powers that be have set my feet in the path of the climbers, and for the sake of those whose sufferings I have seen I must struggle upwards to the end.

Berenice and the d.u.c.h.ess of Lenchester are two very different persons. I cannot take one into my life without the other. It is because I love her, Hester, that I let her go. Good-night, child!"

She kissed his hand and went slowly to her room, stumbling upstairs through a mist of tears. There was nothing more that she could do.