A. E. W. Mason

“ In the street below the people surged forward: there was a running flash of white as their heads were thrown back and their faces upturned to the Hall; and the shouts and cries swelled to a Babel, tearing the air. The blind was withdrawn, the window thrown open: Clarice could see people pressing forward in the room. They looked in the glare of yellow light like black ninepins. A gleam of bright scarlet shot out from amongst them, and the Mayor stepped on to the balcony above the archway. ”

“ Clarice spent the week in defining the relationship in which she and Drake were henceforth to stand towards each other. They were to be animated by a stern spirit of duty,—by the same spirit, in fact, which had compelled Drake to court-martial Gorley in Africa, and subsequently to detail the episode to her. Duty was to keep them apart. She came to think of duty as a row of footlights across which they could from time to time look into each other's eyes. ”

“ Drake felt inclined to argue the question one Sunday afternoon in London's lilac time, as he walked across the green park towards Beaufort Gardens. He found Miss Le Mesurier alone and in a melancholy mood. She was singing weariful ballads in an undertone as he entered the room, and she rose dispiritedly to welcome him.
'It's seldom one finds you alone,' he said, and his face showed his satisfaction. ”

“ He mounted beside her, whipped up the horse, and drove ahead of the waggonette. They passed out of the town into the open country. Behind them the sounds of wheels grew fainter and fainter and died away. In front the road gleamed through the night like a white riband; the hedgerows flung out a homely scent of honeysuckle and wild roses; above, the stars rode in a clear sky. To Clarice this was the perfect hour of her life. All her speculations had dropped from her; she had but one thought, that this man driving her cared for her, as she cared for him. ”

“ The dinner, prefaced inauspiciously, failed to remove the awkwardness, since the reticence under which Drake and Mallinson laboured, gradually spread and enveloped Conway. A forced conversation of a curiously impersonal sort dragged from course to course. Absolute strangers would have exhibited less restraint; for the ghost of an old comradeship made the fourth at the feast and prated to them in exiguous voice of paths that had diverged. Drake noticed, besides, an undercurrent of antagonism between Conway and Mallinson. ”

“ Mrs. Willoughby looked puzzled, and repeated the name in an undertone.
'You don't know him, I think,' Clarice went on. 'He comes here. Papa asked him to call. Captain Drake, I suppose we ought to call him, but he has dropped the Captain.'
Mrs. Willoughby started and shot a bewildered glance at Mr. Le Mesurier.
'I like the man very much,' said Mr. Le Mesurier, with a touch of championship in his voice. 'You should meet him. I am sure you would like him too.'
Mrs. Willoughby made no answer to the suggestion, and resumed her dinner in silence, while Conway sang his usual paean of praise. ”

“ I haven't lived my years in Africa to have any feeling left for scum like that. But also I haven't lived my years in Africa without coming to know there's one thing above all others necessary for the white man to do, and that's to keep up the prestige of the white man. String Gorley up if you like, but not here—not before these blacks.'
'But that's just what I am going to do,' answered Drake, 'and just for your reason, too—the prestige of the white man. Every day something is stolen by these fellows, a rifle, a bayonet, rations—something. ”

“ He said that he was proud to be represented in Parliament by a man of Stephen Drake's calibre. If there was anything of which he was prouder, it was the way in which the election had been fought at Bentbridge. That election was the triumph not merely of a man or a cause, but of a method; and that method was honesty and fair-play. 'We never indulged in personalities,' he continued, with shameless sincerity. 'I have always myself been very strong on that point. Fight of course for all you're worth, but never indulge in personalities. ”

“ The epithet was a light to Clarice. She knew it for the superlative in Mallinson's grammar of abuse. Bourgeois! The term was the palm of a hand squashed upon a lighted candle; it snuffed you out. Convicted of bourgeoisie, you ought to tinkle a bell for the rest of your life, or at the easiest be confined east of Temple Bar. Applied to Drake the word connoted animosity pure and simple, animosity suddenly conceived too, for it was not a week since Mallinson had been boasting of his friendship with the man. ”

“ He spoke of their boyhood in the suburb on the heights six miles to the south of London, and in particular of a certain hill, Elm-tree Hill they called it, a favourite goal for walks and the spot where the three had last met on the night before Drake left England. London had lain beneath it roped with lights.
'The enchanted city,' said Conway, catching back some flavour of those times. 'It seemed distant as El Dorado, and as desirable.'
Mallinson responded with the gentle smile with which a man recognises and pities a childishness he has himself outgrown. ”

“ Then she turned back. 'I mean,' she said, 'if two people really care for one another, their love would triumph over everything—everything. De Valréas would have killed the husband.' She spoke with an intense conviction of the truth of what she said.
'But, my dear child!' replied Drake. 'You—oh, you don't really believe that.'
'I do,' she answered. 'You see, there are so few people who really care for one another. If you find two who do, I am sure they would conquer, whatever stood in the way.'
The conversation was interrupted, to Drake's relief, by Captain Le Mesurier. ”

“ Willoughby made an effort to recover it.
'Well, I don't see,' she said to Drake, 'what right you have got to marching into other people's countries even though they are black.'
'Ah!' Drake answered. 'That's precisely what I call, if I may say so, the fireside point of view. We obey a law of nature rather than claim a right. One can discuss the merits of a law of nature comfortably by a fireside. But out there one realises how academic the discussion is, one obeys it. The white man has always spread himself over the country of the black man, and we may take it he always will. ”

“ Indeed, I was afraid of you.'
'Afraid!' Drake echoed the word with an accent of wonderment.
'Yes, yes, afraid. I believed that I should mean so little to you, that I should be of no use or help to you. And that's why—I—I—married—'
Drake straightened his shoulders with a jerk as Clarice uttered the word. He became aware of the tell-tale look in his eyes, and lowered them from the girl's face to the ground.
'You mustn't fancy,' he began in a hesitating tone. 'You mustn't misunderstand. I was thinking what men owe to women—that's all—that's all, indeed—and how vilely they repay it. ”

“ Clarice walked along in silence for some way further. Then she said, with a distinct irritation in her voice, 'I suppose it all comes from the fact that Mr. Drake doesn't seem to need any one to rely upon, or—well—any particular incentive to work.'
Conway glanced at Miss Le Mesurier with a slight surprise. She was generally given to accept facts without inquiry into their causes. 'I shouldn't wonder if you are right. Drake, I should think, would find his incentive in the work itself. Yes; I believe you are right. It's just his single-mindedness which influences one. ”

“ Clarice I don't understand; but I incline to your idea of her as at the mercy of every momentary emotion, and the more for what has happened this week. Since her engagement she seems to have lost her fear of Stephen Drake. She has been all unexpressed sympathy. And Drake? There's the danger, I am sure—a danger not of the usual kind. Had he been unscrupulous he might have ridden roughshod over Clarice long before now. But he's too scrupulous for that. I think that he misses greatness as we understand it, through excess of scruple. ”

“ Conway contested the assertion with some heat.
'Besides,' added Drake, 'his imagination may have been at work. About women, I prefer the estimate of a man of the world.'
The phrase was distasteful to a gentleman whose ambition it was to live and to be recognised as living within view of, but outside the world, say just above it in a placid atmosphere of his own creation. Fielding leaned back in his chair to mete out punishment, joining the finger-tips with an air of ordering a detailed statement. ”

“ Captain Le Mesurier welcomed Clarice with boisterous effusion, and her husband with quarter-deck dignity. 'You look ill,' he said to Clarice. 'It's your husband worrying you. Ah, I know, I know! Those writing chaps!'
To Mallinson, however, he suddenly showed excessive friendliness, and took the opportunity of saying to him loudly in a full room, 'There's something I must tell you. I know it'll make you laugh. It does me whenever I think of it. You know Drake? Well, we travelled up from Plymouth together when he came back from Africa. ”

“ The men were being ranged in their companies. Then the companies in succession were marched, halted, wheeled, and halted again. Gorley traced a plan of their evolutions with his fingers upon the floor of the hut. The companies were formed into a square.
'Drake,' he began again, and he crawled a little way across the hut; 'Drake, do you hear what I'm saying? There's a fortune for you, mind you, all of it; and I am the only one who can tell you where it is. I didn't trust those black fellows—no, no,' and he wagged his head with an attempt at an insinuating laugh. ”

“ He is just making a back for Drake to jump from if he will.'
'Yes, I noticed that,' said Mrs. Willoughby, with a sneer at the folly of the creature. 'He seems to look upon Mallinson and himself as the two figures which tell the weather in a Swiss clock. When one comes out of his box the other goes in. I catch your trick, you see,' and her face relaxed to a smile.
'Only to improve on it in the matter of truth. For you imply a comparison between Miss Le Mesurier and the weather, and the points of resemblance are strong.'
Mrs. Willoughby's smile became a laugh. ”

“ At the close of breakfast, however, he made an effort at expostulation. 'You will make the man believe you're in love with him,' he said, and in fact he could have chanced on no happier objection to present to her. Clarice flushed to the temples. Sidney Mallinson, Mrs. Willoughby, and now her father! All three had made the same suggestion, and the repetition of it vexed her pride. There were others they might have said it of with more appearance of truth, she thought: Sidney Mallinson himself, for instance, or even Percy Conway. But he, Drake! ”

“ Miss Le Mesurier flushed, and asked, 'How did you hear?'
'Both windows are open. Mallinson was leaning out.'
The girl's confusion increased, and with it Fielding's enjoyment. He repeated, 'So he's doing no work?'
'A thousand a year, don't you know?' said Conway, with a sneer. 'It would make a man like that lazy.'
'It's not laziness,' exclaimed Clarice indignantly. She was filled with pity for Mallinson, and experienced, too, a sort of reflex pity for herself as the inappropriate instrument of his suffering. She was consequently altogether tuned to tenderness for him. 'It's not laziness at all. ”

“ He must fall upon the Arabs unawares, like a bolt from the blue. They forgot that he who led that expedition was speaking to them now; they were with him in the obscure depths of the undergrowth, surging against gigantic barriers of fallen tree-trunks, twenty, thirty feet high; they were marching behind him, like him at grips with nature in a six-weeks' struggle of life and death; and when finally he burst into the clearing on the river's bank the ripple went backwards across the hall, and a cheer of relief rang out, as though their lives, too, were saved. ”

“ Drake bent forward and knocked the ash off the end of his cigar.
'Yes,' he asked; 'why did you do that?'
Mr. Le Mesurier looked uncomfortable.
'It is only right that I should be frank with you,' he replied. 'The mere fact of Gorley's death, apart from its manner, upset Clarice, more, I confess, than we expected, and made her quite ill for a time. She is not very strong, you know. So it was deemed best, not only by me, but by Gorley's family as well, that she should be kept in ignorance of what had actually happened. We simply told her that Gorley had died near Boruwimi. ”

“ But there's that saying of his about a debt incurred to Clarice by the man caring for her. Well, convince him that he can pay it by any sacrifice; won't he pay it? Convince him that it would benefit her if he lay in the mud; wouldn't he do it? I don't know. I made a little prayer yesterday night, grotesque enough, but very sincere, that there might be no fifth act of tragedy to make a discord of your comedy.'
Fielding received Mrs. Willoughby's command to join Drake with a grin at her conception of him as fit company for a gentleman disappointed in his love-affairs. ”

“ Through the glass walls of the signal-box above the bridge Drake could see the men in a blaze of light working at the levers, and from the Surrey end there came to him a clink, and at that distance a quite musical clink, of truck against truck as some freight-train was shunted across the rails. ”

“ There was consequently no end to the discussion, not even when Clarice was argued through the marriage ceremony. For that point Fielding took to represent the one o'clock in the morning of a carnival ball; then the fun really begins, though decent people have to go away.
Mrs. Willoughby was, as ever, staunch in her defence, though a recollection of Clarice's tearful visit with Conway's arrival for a climax prompted her now and again to laugh in the midst of it. ”

“ It's like opening a book written in a language you don't understand. You get a glimpse of a meaning here and there, but no meaning really. I can't explain what I feel,' he added, with a laugh. 'I want Mallinson to help me.'
'You admire Mr. Mallinson?' asked Clarice, stopping suddenly.
'Well, one always admires the class of work one can't do oneself, eh?'
'That's very generous of you.'
'Why generous?' Drake leaned suddenly forward. His habit of putting questions abrupt and straight to the point had discomposed Miss Le Mesurier upon an occasion before. She answered hurriedly. ”

“ CHAPTER IX When Fielding had gone, Drake opened the window and stepped out on the balcony.
'Unless you want to marry her yourself'; the words were stamped upon his mind in capitals. They formulated to him for the first time the cause of that unreasoned conviction of his, and formulated it too, as he realised, with absolute truth. Yes, it was just his desire for Clarice to which he owed his belief that she had an unquestionable right to know his responsibility for Gorley's death. ”