A Lost Leader Part 9

She hesitated.

"It is difficult to explain," she said. "But my being here makes a difference. I found it out once when I went away for a week. Some of--of mother's friends came to the house then whom she will not have when I am here. If I were away altogether--oh, I can't explain, but I would not dare to go."

Mannering seemed to have much to say--and said nothing. This queer, pale-faced girl, with her earnest eyes and few simple words, had silenced him. She was right--right at least from her own point of view. A certain sense of shame suddenly oppressed him. He was acutely conscious of his only half-admitted reason for this visit. He had argued for himself. It was his own pa.s.sionate desire to free himself from a.s.sociations that were little short of loathsome which had prompted this visit. And then what he had dreaded most of all happened. As they sat facing one another in the silent, half-darkened room, Mannering trying to bring himself into accord with half-admitted but repugnant convictions, she watching him hopelessly, the tinkle of a hansom bell sounded outside. The sudden stopping of a horse, the rattle of a latchkey, and she was in the room.

Mannering rose to his feet with a little exclamation.

The woman stood and looked in upon them. She wore a pink cloth gown, a flower-garlanded hat, a white coaching veil, beneath which her features were indistinguishable. She brought with her a waft of strong perfume.

Her figure was a living suggestion of the struggle between maturity and the corsetiere. Before she spoke she laughed--not altogether pleasantly.

"You here again!" she exclaimed to Mannering. "Upon my word! I'm not a ghost! Hester, go and see about some tea, and a brandy and soda. Billy Foa brought me up on his motor, and I'm half choked with dust."

The girl rose obediently and quitted the room. The woman untwisted her veil, drew out the pins from her hat, and threw both upon the sofa. Then she turned suddenly upon Mannering.

"Look here," she said, "the last twice you've been here you seem to have carefully chosen times when I am out. I don't understand it. It can't be that you want to see that chit of a girl of mine. Why don't you come when I ask you? Why do you act as though I were something to be avoided?"

Mannering rose to his feet.

"I came to-day without knowing where you were," he answered, "but I will admit that I wished to see Hester."

"What for?"

"I have asked her to come and live at Blakely with my niece and myself.

She is an excellent typist, and I require a secretary."

The woman looked at him angrily. Without her veil she displayed features not in themselves unattractive, but a complexion somewhat impaired by the use of cosmetics. The powder upon her cheeks was even then visible.

"What about me?" she asked, sharply.

Mannering looked her steadily in the face.

"I do not think," he said, "that such a life would suit you."

She was an angry woman, and she did not become angry gracefully.

"You mean that I'm not good enough for you and your friends in the country. That's what you mean, isn't it? And I should like to know, if I'm not, whose fault it is. Tell me that, will you?"

Mannering flinched, though almost imperceptibly.

"I meant simply what I said," he said. "Blakely would not suit you at all. We have few friends there, and our simple life would not attract you in the slightest. With Hester it is different. She would have her work, in which she takes some interest, and I believe the change would be in every way good for her."

"Well, she shan't come," the woman said, throwing herself into a chair, and regarding him insolently. "I'm not going to live all alone--and be talked about. Don't stare at me like that, Lawrence. I'm the child's mother, am I not?"

"It is because you are her mother," he said, quietly, "that I thought you might be glad to find a suitable home for her."

"What's good enough for me ought to be good enough for her," she answered, doggedly.

Mannering was silent for a moment. This woman seemed to belong to a different world from that with whose denizens he was in any way familiar.

Years of isolation, and a certain epicureanism of taste, from which necessity had never taken the fine edge, had made him a little intolerant. He could see nothing that was not absolutely repulsive in this woman, whose fine eyes were seeking even now to attract his admiration. She was making the best of herself. She had chosen the darkest corner of the room, and her pose was not ungraceful. Her skirts were skilfully raised to show just as much as possible of her long, slender foot, with the patent shoes and silver buckles. She knew that her ankles were above reproach, and her dress becoming. A dozen men had paid her compliments during the day, yet she knew that every admiring glance, every whispered word which had come to her to-day, or for many days past, would count for nothing if only she could pierce for a single moment the unchanging coldness of the man who sat watching her now with the face of a Sphynx. A slow tide of pa.s.sion welled up in her heart. Was not he a man and free, and was not she a woman? It was not much she asked from him, no pledge, no bondage. His kindness only, she told herself, was all she craved. She wanted him to look at her as other men looked at her. Who was he that he should set himself on a pedestal? Perhaps he had grown shy from the rust of his country life, the slow drifting apart from the world of men and women. Perhaps--she rose swiftly to her feet and crossed the room.

CHAPTER VI

SACRIFICE

She leaned over him, one hand on the back of his chair, the other seeking in vain for his.

"Lawrence," she said, "you grow colder and more unkind every day. What have I done to change you so? I am a foolish woman, I know, but there are things which I cannot forget."

He rose at once to his feet, and stood apart from her.

"I thought," he said, "I believed that we understood one another."

She laughed softly.

"I am very sure that I do not understand you," she said. "And as for you--I do not believe that you have ever understood any woman. There was a time, Lawrence--"

His impa.s.sivity was gone. He threw out his hands.

"Remember," he said, "there is a promise between us. Don't break it.

Don't dare to break it!"

She looked at him curiously. A new idea concerning this man and his avoidance of her crept into her mind. It was at least consoling to her vanity, and it left her a chance. She had roused him too, at last, and that was worth something.

"Why not?" she asked, moving a step towards him. "It was a foolish promise. It has done neither of us any good. It has spoilt a part of my life. Why should I keep silence, and let it go on to the end? Do you know what it has made of me, this promise?"

He shrank back.

"Don't! I have done all I could!"

"All you could!" she repeated, scornfully. "You drew a diagram of your duty, and you have moved like a machine along the lines. You talk like a Pharisee, Lawrence! Come! You knew me years ago! Do you find me changed?

Tell me the truth."

"Yes," he admitted, "you are changed."

She nodded.

"You admit that. Perhaps, perhaps," she continued more slowly, "there are things about me now of which you don't approve. My friends are a little fast, I go out alone, I daresay people have said things. There, you see I am very frank. I mean to be! I mean you to know that whatever I am, the fault is yours."

"You are as G.o.d or the Devil made you," he answered, hardly. "You are what you would have become, in any case."

"Lawrence!"

Already he hated the memory of his words. True or not, they were spoken to a woman who was cowering under them as under a lash. He was at a disadvantage now. If she had met him with anger they might have cried quits. But he had seen her wince, seen her sudden pallor, and it was not a pleasant sight.

"Forgive me," he said. "I do not know quite what I am saying. You have broken a compact which I had hoped might have lasted all our days. Let us be better friends, if you will, but let us keep that promise which we made to one another."