Book 1 - Chapter 4. The Duchess Asks A Question

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_ BOOK I CHAPTER IV. THE DUCHESS ASKS A QUESTION

Clara stepped through the high French window, and with skirts a little raised crossed the lawn. Lindsay, who was following her, stopped to light a cigarette.

"We're getting frightfully modern," she remarked, turning and waiting for him. "Mrs. Handsell and I ought to have come out here, and you and uncle ought to have stayed and yawned at one another over the dinner-table."

"You have an excellent preceptress--in modernity," he remarked. "May I?"

"If you mean smoke, of course you may," she answered. "But you may not say or think horrid things about my best friend. She's a dear, wonderful woman, and I'm sure uncle has not been like the same man since she came."

"I'm glad you appreciate that," he answered. "Do you honestly think he's any the better for it?"

"I think he's immensely improved," she answered. "He doesn't grub about by himself nearly so much, and he's had his hair cut. I'm sure he looks years younger."

"Do you think that he seems quite as contented?"

"Contented!" she repeated, scornfully. "That's just like you, Richard. He hasn't any right to be contented. No one has. It is the one absolutely fatal state."

He stretched himself out upon, the seat, and frowned.

"You're picking up some strange ideas, Clara," he remarked.

"Well, if I am, that's better than being contented to all eternity with the old ones," she replied. "Mrs. Handsell is doing us all no end of good. She makes us think! We all ought to think, Richard."

"What on earth for?"

"You are really hopeless," she murmured. "So bucolic--"

"Thanks," he interrupted. "I seem to recognize the inspiration. I hate that woman."

"My dear Richard!" she exclaimed.

"Well, I do!" he persisted. "When she first came she was all right. That fellow Borrowdean seems to have done all the mischief."

"Poor Sir Leslie!" she exclaimed, demurely. "I thought him so delightful."

"Obviously," he replied. "I didn't. I hate a fellow who doesn't do things himself, and has a way of looking on which makes you feel a perfect idiot. Neither Mr. Mannering nor Mrs. Handsell--nor you--have been the same since he was here."

"I gather," she said, softly, "that you do not find us improved."

"I do not," he answered, stolidly. "Mrs. Handsell has begun to talk to you now about London, of the theatres, the dressmakers, Hurlingham, Ranelagh, race meetings, society, and all that sort of rot. She talks of them very cleverly. She knows how to make the tinsel sparkle like real gold."

She laughed softly.

"You are positively eloquent, Richard," she declared. "Do go on!"

"Then she goes for your uncle," he continued, without heeding her interruption. "She speaks of Parliament, of great causes, of ambition, until his eyes are on fire. She describes new pleasures to you, and you sit at her feet, a mute worshipper! I can't think why she ever came here. She's absolutely the wrong sort of woman for a quiet country place like this. I wish I'd never let her the place."

"You are a very foolish person," she answered. "She came here simply because she was weary of cities and wanted to get as far away from them as possible. Only last night she said that she would be content never to breathe the air of a town again."

Lindsay tossed his cigarette away impatiently.

"Oh, I know exactly her way of saying that sort of thing!" he exclaimed. "A moment later she would be describing very cleverly, and a little regretfully, some wonderful sight or other only to be found in London."

"Really," she declared, "I am getting afraid of you. You are more observant than I thought."

"There is one gift, at least," he answered, "which we country folk are supposed to possess. We know truth when we see it. But I am saying more than I have any right to. I don't want to make you angry, Clara!"

She shook her head.

"You won't do that," she said. "But I don't think you quite understand. Let me tell you something. You know that I am an orphan, don't you? I do not remember my father at all, and I can only just remember my mother. I was brought up at a pleasant but very dreary boarding-school. I had very few friends, and no one came to see me except my uncle, who was always very kind, but always in a desperate hurry. I stayed there until I was seventeen. Then my uncle came and fetched me, and brought me straight here. Now that is exactly what my life has been. What do you think of it?"

"Very dull indeed," he answered, frankly.

She nodded.

"I have never been in London at all," she continued. "I really only know what men and women are like from books, or the one or two types I have met around here. Now, do you think that that is enough to satisfy one? Of course it is very beautiful here, I know, and sometimes when the sun is shining and the birds singing and the sea comes up into the creeks, well, one almost feels content. But the sun doesn't always shine, Richard, and there are times when I am right down bored, and I feel as though I'd love to draw my allowance from uncle, pack my trunk, and go up to London, on my own!"

He laughed. Somehow all that she had said had sounded so natural that some part of his uneasiness was already passing away.

"Yours," he admitted, "is an extreme case. I really don't know why your uncle has never taken you up for a month or so in the season."

"We have lived here for four years," she said, "and he has never once suggested it. He goes himself, of course, sometimes, but I am quite sure that he doesn't enjoy it. For days before he fidgets about and looks perfectly miserable, and when he comes back he always goes off for a long walk by himself. I am perfectly certain that for some reason or other he hates going. Yet he seems to have been everywhere, to know every one. To hear him talk with Mrs. Handsell is like a new Arabian Nights to me."

He nodded.

"Your uncle was a very distinguished man," he said. "I was only at college then, but I remember what a fuss there was in all the papers when he resigned his seat."

"What did they say was the reason?" she asked, eagerly.

"A slight disagreement with Lord Rochester, and ill-health."

"Absurd!" she exclaimed. "Uncle is as strong as a horse."

"Would you like him," he asked, "to go back into political life?"

Her eyes sparkled.

"Of course I should."

"You may have your wish," he said, a little sadly. "I don't fancy he has been quite the same man since Sir Leslie Borrowdean was here, and Mrs. Handsell never leaves him alone for a moment."

She laughed.

"You talk as though they were conspirators!" she exclaimed.

"That is precisely what I believe them to be," he answered, grimly.

"Richard!"

"Can't help it," he declared. "I will tell you something that I have no right to tell you. Mrs. Handsell is not your friend's real name."

"Richard, how exciting!" she exclaimed. "Do tell me how you know."

"Her solicitors told mine so when she took the farm."

"Not her real name? But--I wonder they let it to her."

"Oh, her references were all right," he answered. "My people saw to that. I do not mean to insinuate for a moment that she had any improper reasons for calling herself Mrs. Handsell, or anything else she liked. The explanations given were quite satisfactory. But she has become very friendly with you and with your uncle, and I think that she ought to have told you both about it."

"Do you know her real name?"

"No! It is not my affair. My solicitors knew, and they were satisfied. Perhaps I ought not to have told you this, but--"

"Hush!" she said. "They are coming out. If you like you can take me down to the orchard wall, and we will watch the tide come in--"

Mannering came out alone and looked around. The full moon was creeping into the sky. The breath of wind which shook the leaves of the tall elm trees that shut in his little demesne from the village, was soft, and, for the time of year, wonderfully mild. Below, through the orchard trees, were faint visions of the marshland, riven with creeks of silvery sea. He turned back towards the room, where red-shaded lamps still stood upon the white tablecloth, a curiously artificial daub of color after the splendour of the moonlit land.

"The night is perfect," he exclaimed. "Do you need a wrap, or are you sufficiently acclimatized?"

She came out to him, tall and slender in her black dinner gown, the figure of a girl, the pale, passionate face of a woman, to whom every moment of life had its own special and individual meaning. Her eyes were strangely bright. There was a tenseness about her manner, a restraint in her tone, which seemed to speak of some emotional crisis. She passed out into the quiet garden, in itself so exquisitely in accordance with this sleeping land, and even Mannering was at once conscious of some alien note in these old-world surroundings which had long ago soothed his ruffled nerves into the luxury of repose.

"A wrap!" she murmured. "How absurd! Come and let us sit under the cedar tree. Those young people seem to have wandered off, and I want to talk to you."

"I am content to listen," he answered. "It is a night for listeners, this!"

"I want to talk," she continued, "and yet--the words seem difficult. These wonderful days! How quickly they seem to have passed."

"There are others to follow," he answered, smiling. "That is one of the joys of life here. One can count on things!"

"Others for you!" she murmured. "You have pitched your tent. I came here only as a wanderer."

"But scarcely a month ago," he exclaimed, "you too--"

"Don't!" she interrupted. "A month ago it seemed to me possible that I might live here always. I felt myself growing young again. I believed that I had severed all the ties which bound me to the days which have gone before. I was wrong. It was the sort of folly which comes to one sometimes, the sort of folly for which one pays."

His face was almost white in the moonlight. His deep-set grey eyes were fixed upon her.

"You were content--a month ago," he said. "You have been in London for two days, and you have come back a changed woman. Why must you think of leaving this place? Why need you go at all?"

"My friend," she said, softly, "I think that you know why. It is very beautiful here, and I have never been happier in all my life. But one may not linger all one's days in the pleasant places. One sleeps through the nights and is rested, but the days--ah, they are different."

"I cannot reason with you," he said. "You are too vague. Yet--you say that you have been contented here."

"I have been happy," she murmured.

"Then you must speak more plainly," he insisted, a note of passion throbbing in his hoarse tones. "I ask you again--why do you talk of going back, like a city slave whose days of holiday are over? What is there in the world more beautiful than the gifts the gods shower on us here? We have the sun, and the sea, and the wind by day and by night--this! It is the flower garden of life. Stay and pluck the roses with me."

"Ah, my friend," she murmured, "if that were possible!"

She sank down into the seat under the cedar tree. Her hands were clasped nervously together, her head was downcast.

"Your words," she continued, her voice sinking almost to a whisper, yet lacking nothing in distinctness, "are like wine. They mount to the head, they intoxicate, they tempt! And yet all the time one knows that it is not possible. Surely you yourself--in your heart--must know it!"

"Not I!" he answered, fiercely. "The world would have claimed me if it could, but I laughed at it. Our destinies are our own. With our own fingers we mould and shape them."

"There is the little voice," she said, "the little voice, which rings even through our dreams. Life--actual, militant life, I mean--may have its vulgarities, its weariness and its disappointments, but it is, after all, the only place for men and women. The battle may be sordid, and the prizes tinsel--yet it is only the cowards who linger without."

"Then let you and me be cowards," he answered. "We shall at least be happy."

She shook her head a little sadly.

"I doubt it," she answered. "Happiness is a gift, not a prize. It comes seldom enough to those who seek it."

He laughed scornfully.

"I am not a seeker," he cried. "I possess. It seems to me that all the beautiful things of life are here to-night. Listen! Do you hear the sea, the full tide sweeping softly up into the land, a long drawn out undernote of breathless harmonies, the rustling of leaves there in the elm trees, the faint night wind, like the murmuring of angels? Lift your head! Was there anything ever sweeter than the perfume from that hedge of honeysuckle? What can a man want more than these things--and--"

"Go on!"

"And the woman he loves! There, I have said it. Useless words enough! You know very well that I love you. I meant to have said nothing just yet, but who could help it--on such a night as this! Don't talk of going away, Berenice. I want you here always."

She held herself away from him. Her face was deathly white now. Her eyes questioned him fiercely.

"Before I answer you. You were in London last week?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I had business."

"In Chelsea, in Merton Street?"

He gave a little gasp.

"What do you know about that?" he asked, almost roughly.

"You were seen there, not for the first time. The person whom you visited--I have heard about. She is somewhat notorious, is she not?"

He was very quiet, pale to the lips. A strange, hunted expression had crept into his eyes.

"I want to know what took you there. Am I asking too much? Remember that you have asked me a good deal."

"Has Borrowdean anything to do with this?" he demanded.

"I have known Sir Leslie Borrowdean for many years," she answered, "and it is quite true that we have discussed certain matters--concerning you."

"You have known Sir Leslie Borrowdean for many years," he repeated. "Yet you met here as strangers."

"Sir Leslie divined my wishes," she answered. "He knew that it was my wish to spend several months away from everybody, and, if possible, unrecognized. Perhaps I had better make my confession at once. My name is not Mrs. Handsell. I am the Duchess of Lenchester."

Mannering stood as though turned to stone. The woman watched him eagerly. She waited for him to speak--in vain. A sudden mist of tears blinded her. She closed her eyes. When she opened them Mannering was gone. _

Read next: Book 1: Chapter 5. The Hesitation Of Mr. Mannering

Read previous: Book 1: Chapter 3. Wanted--A Politician

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