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Mannering left by the afternoon train for Hampshire, where he was to be the guest for a few days of the leader of his party. He arrived without sending word of his coming, to find the whole of the house party absent at a cricket match. The short respite was altogether welcome to him. He changed his clothes and wandered off into the gardens. Here an hour or so later Berenice's maid found him.
"Her Grace would like to see you, sir, if you would come to her sitting-room," the girl said, with a demure smile.
Mannering, with something of an inward groan, followed her. Berenice, very slim and stately in her simple white muslin gown, rose from the couch as he entered, and held out her hands.
"At last," she murmured. "You provoking man, to stay away so long. And what have you been doing with yourself?"
Her sentence concluded with a little note of dismay. Mannering was positively haggard in the clear afternoon light. There were lines underneath his eyes, and his face had a tense, drawn appearance. He did not kiss her, as she had more than half expected. He held her hands for a moment, and then sank down upon the couch by her side.
"It was not exactly easy work—up there," he said.
She noticed the repression.
"Tell me all about it," she begged.
His thoughts surged back to those three weeks of tragedy. His personal misery became for the moment a shadowy thing. The sorrows of one man, what were they to the breaking hearts of millions? He thought of the children, and he shuddered.
"It isn't so much to tell," he said. "I have been to a dozen or so of the largest towns in the North, and have taken the manufacturers one by one. I have taken their wage sheets and compared them with past years. The result was always the same. Less money distributed amongst more people. Afterwards we went amongst the people themselves—to see how they lived. It was like a chapter from the inferno—an epic of loathsome tragedy. I have seen the children, Berenice, and God help the next generation."
"You must not forget, Lawrence," she said, "that character is an essential factor in poverty. Poverty there must always be, because of the idle and shiftless."
"Individual poverty, yes," he answered. "Not wholesale poverty, not streets of it, towns of it. I don't talk about starving people, although I saw them too. Our vicious charitable system may keep their cry from our ears, but my sympathies go out to the man who ought to be earning two pounds a week, and who is earning fifteen shillings; the man who used to have his bit of garden, and smoke, and Sunday clothes, and a day or so's holiday now and then. He was a contented, decent, God-fearing citizen, the backbone of the whole nation, and he has been blotted away from the face of the earth. They work now passively, like dumb brutes, to resist starvation, and human character isn't strong enough for such a strain. The public houses thrive, and the pawnshops are full. But the children haven't enough to eat. They are growing up lank, white, prematurely aged, the spectres to dance us statesmen down into hell."
"You are overwrought, dear," she said, gently. "You have been in the hands of a man whose object it was to show you only one side of all this."
"I have sought for the truth," Mannering answered, "and I have seen it. I have learned more in three weeks than all the Commissions and statistics and Board-of-Trade figures have taught me in five years."
"And yet," she said, thoughtfully, "you hesitated about that last Navy vote. Don't you see that the imperialism which you are a little disposed to shrug your shoulders at is the most logical and complete cure for all this? We must extend and maintain our colonies, and people them with our surplus population."
He shook his head.
"That is not a policy which would ever appeal to me," he answered. "It is like an external operation to remove a malady which is of internal origin. Either our social laws or our political systems are at fault when our trade leaves us, and our labouring classes are unable to earn a fair wage. That is the position we are in to-day."
She rose to her feet, and walked restlessly up and down the room. Mannering had the look of a crushed man. She watched him critically. Writers in magazines and reviews had often made a study of his character. She remembered a brilliant contributor to a recent review, who had dwelt upon a certain lack of cohesion in his constitution, an inability to relegate sentiment to its proper place in dealing with the great workaday problems of the world. Conscientious, but never to be trusted, was the last anomalous but luminous criticism. Was this frame of mind of his a sign of it, she wondered? His place in politics was fixed and sure. What right had he, as a man of principle, with a great following, to run even the risk of being led away by false prophets? A certain hardness stole into her face as she watched him. She tried to steel herself against the sight of his suffering, and though she was not wholly successful, there was a distinct change in her tone and attitude towards him as she resumed her seat.
"Tell me," she asked, "what this means from a practical point of view? How will it effect your plans?"
"I must give up my public meetings," he answered, slowly. "I have written to Manningham to tell him that he must get some one else to lead the campaign."
Berenice was very pale. So many of these wonderful dreams of hers seemed vanishing into thin air.
"This is a terrible blow," she said. "It is the worst thing which has happened to us for years. Are you going over to the other side, Lawrence?"
He shook his head.
"I can't do that altogether," he said. "The position is simply this: I am still, so far as my judgment and research go, opposed to tariff reform. On the other hand, I dare not take any leading part in fighting any scheme which has the barest chance of bringing better times to the working classes. I simply stand apart for the moment on this question."
She laughed a little bitterly.
"There is no other question," she said. "You will never be allowed to remain neutral. You appear to me to be in a very singular position. You are divided between sentiment and conviction, and you prefer to yield to the former. Lawrence, do not be hasty! Think of all that depends upon your judgment in this matter. From the very first you have been the bitterest and most formidable opponent of this absurd scheme. If you turn round you will unsettle public opinion throughout the country. Remember, the power of the statesman is almost a sacred charge."
"I am remembering," he murmured, "those children. I am bound to think this matter out, Berenice. I am going to meet Graham and Mellors next week. I shall not rest until I have made some effort to put my hand upon the weak spot. Somewhere there is a rotten place. I want to reach it."
"Do you mean to give up your seat?" she asked.
"Not unless I am asked to," he answered. "I may need to work from there."
She sighed.
"I suppose your mind is quite made up," she said.
"Absolutely," he answered.
Her maid came in just then, and Mannering offered to withdraw. She made no effort to detain him, and he went at once in search of his host and hostess. He found every one assembled in the hall below. Lord Redford, Borrowdean, and the chief whip of his party were talking together in a corner, and from their significant look at his approach, he felt sure that he himself had been the subject of their conversation. The situation was more than a little awkward. Lord Redford stepped forward and welcomed him cordially.
"I'm afraid you've been knocking yourself up, Mannering," he said. "I've just been proposing to Culthorpe here that we bar politics completely for twenty-four hours. We'll leave the dinner table with the ladies, and you and I will play golf to-morrow. I've had Taylor down here, and I can assure you that my links are worth playing over now. Then on Thursday we'll have a conference."
"I was scarcely sure," Mannering said, with a slight smile, "whether I should be expected to stay until then. Sir Leslie has told you of my telegrams?"
"Yes, yes," Lord Redford said, quickly. "We've postponed the meetings for the present. We'll talk that all out later on. You've had some tea, I hope? No? Well, Eleanor, you are a nice hostess," he added, turning to his wife. "Give Mr. Mannering some tea at once, and feed him up with hot cakes. Come into the billiard-room afterwards, Mannering, will you? I've got a new table in the winter-garden, and we're going to have a pool before dinner."
Berenice came in and laid her hand upon her host's arm.
"You need not worry about Mr. Mannering," she declared. "He is going to have tea with me at that little table, and I am going to take him for a walk in the park afterwards."
"So long as you feed him well," Lord Redford declared, with a little laugh, "and turn up in good time for dinner, you may do what you like. If you take my advice, Berenice, you will join our league. We have pledged ourselves not to utter a word of shop for twenty-four hours."
"I submit willingly," Berenice answered. "Mr. Mannering and I will find something else to talk about."
"You can guess why I brought you here, perhaps," Berenice said, gently, as she motioned him to sit down by her side. "This place, more than any other I know, certainly more than any other at Bayleigh, seems to me to be completely restful. There are the trees, you see, and the water, and the swans, that are certainly the laziest creatures I know. You look to me as though you needed rest, Lawrence."
"I suppose I do," he answered, slowly. "I am not sure, though, whether I deserve it."
"You are rather a self-distrustful mortal," she remarked, leaning back in her corner and looking at him from under her parasol. "You have worked hard all the session, and now you have finished up by three weeks of, I should think, herculean labour. If you do not deserve rest who does?"
"The rest which I deserve," Mannering answered, bitterly, "is the rest of those whose bones are bleaching amongst the caves and corals of the sea there! That is Matapan Point, isn't it, where the hidden rocks are?"
She nodded.
"Really, you are developing into a very gloomy person," she said. "Lawrence, don't let us fence with one another any longer. What you may decide to do politically may be ruinous to your career, to your chance of usefulness in the world, and to my hopes. But I want you to understand this. It can make no difference to me. I have had dreams perhaps of a great future, of being the wife of a Prime Minister who would lead his country into a new era of prosperity, who would put the last rivets into the bonds of a great imperial empire. But one never realizes all one's hopes, Lawrence. I love politics. I love being behind the scenes, and helping to move the pawns across the board. But I am a woman, too, Lawrence, and I love you. Put everything connected with your public life on one side. Let me ask you this. You are changed. Has anything come between us as man and woman?"
"Yes," he answered, "something has come between us."
She sat quite still for several minutes. She prayed that he too might keep silence, and he seemed to know her thoughts. Over the little sheet of ornamental water, down the glade of beech and elm trees narrowing towards the cliffs, her eyes travelled seawards. It was to her a terrible moment. Mannering had represented so much to her, and her standard was a high one. If there was a man living whom she would have reckoned above the weaknesses of the herd, it was he. In those days at Blakely she had almost idealized him. The simple purity of his life there, his delicate and carefully chosen pleasures, combined with his almost passionate love of the open places of the earth, had led her to regard him as something different from any other man whom she had ever known. All Borrowdean's hints and open statements had gone for very little. She had listened and retained her trust. And now she had a horrible fear. Something had gone out of the man, something which went for strength, something without which he seemed to lack that splendid militant vitality which had always seemed to her so admirable. Perhaps he was going to make a confession, one of those crude, clumsy confessions of a stained life, which have drawn the colour and the joy from so many beautiful dreams. She shivered a little, but she inclined her head to listen.
"Well," she said, "what is it?"
"I have asked another woman to marry me only a few hours ago," he said, quietly.
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 circumstances—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 passed 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 passed 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 passionate ring of truth in his tone arrested her footsteps. She paused. Her heart was beating very fast, her coldness was all assumed. 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 shielded 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.
"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-fashioned 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 attitude is rankly foolish, or I would not suggest such a thing. But I hold that we are entitled, under the circumstances, 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 friendship!"
"Success then would be bought too dearly," Borrowdean answered, with a gallantry which it cost him a good deal to assume. "May I pass on, Duchess, 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."
"Amongst them," Borrowdean continued, calmly, "is one which some day or other I must tell you, for indeed you are concerned in it."
"I can assure you, Sir Leslie," she said, looking at him steadily, "that I am not at all a sympathetic person. My strong advice to you would be—not to tell me. I do not think that you would gain anything by it."
Borrowdean met his fate with a bow and a shrug of the shoulders.
"It only remains," he said, "for me to beg you to pardon what might seem like presumption. Shall we meet them on the last green?"
Mannering would have avoided Berenice, but she gave him no option. She laid her hand upon his arm, and volunteered to show him a new way home.
"You must be on your guard, Lawrence," she said. "Lord Redford is very fond of concealing his plans to the last moment, but he is a very clever man. And Sir Leslie Borrowdean would give his little finger to catch you tripping. All this avoidance of politics is part of a scheme. They will spring something upon you quite suddenly. Don't give any hasty pledges."
"Thank you for your warning," he said. "I will be careful."
"Tell me," she said, "as a friend, what are your plans? Forget that I am interested in politics altogether. I simply want to know how you are spending your time for the next few months."
"It depends upon them," he answered, looking downwards into the valley, where Lord Redford and Borrowdean were walking side by side. "If they ask me to resign my seat I shall go North again, and it is just possible that I might come back into the House as a labour member. On the other hand, if they are content with such support as I can give them, and to have me on the fence at present so far as the tariff question is concerned, why, I shall go back and do the best I can for them."
"You are not quite won over to the other side yet, then," she remarked, smiling.
"Not yet," he answered. "If ever there was an honest doubter, I am one. If I had never left my study, England could not have contained a more rabid opponent of any change in our fiscal policy than I. I am like a small boy who is absolutely sure that he has worked out his sum correctly, but finds the answer is not the one which his examiner expects. There is something wrong somewhere. I want, if I can, to discover it. I only want the truth! I don't see why it should be so hard to find, why figures and common sense should clash entirely and horribly with existing facts."
"You wore dun-coloured spectacles when you took your walks abroad," she said, smiling. "No one else seems to have discovered so distressing a state of affairs as you have spoken of."
"Because they never looked beneath the surface," he answered. "I myself might have failed to understand if I had not been shown. Remember that our workingman of the better class does not go marching through the streets with an unemployed banner and a tin cup when he is in want. He takes his half wages and closes the door upon his sufferings. God help him!"
"Adieu, politics," she declared, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Isn't that Clara playing croquet with Major Bristow? I wish I didn't dislike that man so much. I hate to see the child with him."
Mannering sighed.
"Poor Clara!" he said. "I am afraid I have left her a good deal to herself lately."
"I am afraid you have," she agreed, a little gravely. "May I give you a word of advice?"
"You know that I should be grateful for it," he declared.
"Be sure that she never goes to the Bristows again, and ask her whether she has any other card debts. It may be my fancy, but I don't like the way that man hangs about her, and looks at her. I am sure that she does not like him, and yet she never seems to have the courage to snub him."
"I am very much obliged to you," he said. "I will speak to her to-day."
"I don't know where I am going, or what I shall do for the autumn," she continued, with a little sigh, "but if you like to trust Clara with me I will look after her. I think that she needs a woman. Yes, I thought so. Redford and Sir Leslie are waiting for you. Go and have it out with them, my friend."
"You are too kind to me," he said; "kinder than I deserve!"
"Oh, I don't know," she answered. "I am afraid that my kindness is only another form of selfishness. I am rather a lonely person, you know. Lord Redford is beckoning to you. I am going to break up that croquet party."
Mannering joined the other two men. Berenice strolled on to the lawn. Major Bristow eyed her coming with some disfavour. He was one of the men whom she always ignored. Clara, on the other hand, seemed proportionately relieved.
"I want you to come to my room as soon as you possibly can, child," Berenice said. "Shall I wait while you finish your game?"
"Oh, I will come at once," Clara exclaimed, laying down her mallet. "Major Bristow will not mind, I am sure."
Major Bristow looked as though he did mind very much, but lacked the nerve to say so. Berenice calmly took Clara by the arm and led her away.
"You are not engaged to Major Bristow by any chance, are you?" she asked, calmly.
"Engaged to Major Bristow? Heavens, no!" Clara answered. "I don't think he is in the least a marrying man."
"So much the better for our sex," Berenice answered. "I wouldn't spend so much time with him, my dear, if I were you. I have known people with nicer reputations."
Clara turned a shade paler.
"I can never get away from him," she said. "He follows me—everywhere, and—"
"You do not by any chance, I suppose, owe him money?" Berenice asked. "They tell me that he has a somewhat objectionable habit of winning money from girls, more than they can afford to pay, and then suggesting that it stand over for a time."
Clara turned towards her with terrified eyes.
"I—I do owe Major Bristow a little still," she admitted. "I seem to have been so unlucky. He told me that any time would do, that I should win it back again, and I had no idea what stakes we were playing. I don't touch a card now at all, but this was at Ellingham House. They insisted on my making a fourth at bridge."
Berenice tightened her grasp upon the girl's arm.
"Don't say anything about this to your uncle just now," she insisted. "I am going to take you up to my room and write you a cheque for the amount, whatever it may be. Afterwards I will have a talk with Major Bristow. Nonsense, child, don't cry! The money is nothing to me, and I always promised your uncle that I would look after you a little."
"I have been such a fool!" the girl sobbed.
Berenice for a moment was also sad. Her lips quivered, her eyes were wistful.
"We all think that sometimes, child," she said, quietly. "We all have our foolish moments and our hours of repentance, even the wisest of us!"