CHAPTER X

Drake bent over her, stroking her hair with a gentle helpless movement of his hand and occasionally varying his consolation by a pat on the shoulders. The puffed sleeves of silk yielding under his touch gave him a queer impression of the girl's fragility.

'Oh don't, child!' he entreated. 'It's my fault for speaking so soon. But really there's nothing to fear--nothing. It'll all come out right--not a doubt of that. You'll see.'

Consolation of this kind did but make the tears flow yet more freely.

Drake perceived the fact and stood aside, wondering perplexedly at the reason. The sound of each sob jerked at his heart; he began to walk restlessly about the room. The storm, from its very violence, however, wore itself quickly out; the sobs became less convulsive, less frequent.

Clarice raised her head from her arms and stared out of the window opposite, with just now and then a little shiver and heave of her back.

Drake stopped his walk and advanced to her. She antic.i.p.ated his speech, turning with a start to face him.

'You haven't seen my father?'

'No; the servant told me he had gone out. But I wrote a note saying I would call again this evening. It is under your elbow.'

Clarice picked up the crumpled envelope and looked at it absently.

'Stephen,' she said, and she tripped upon the name, 'there's something I ought to tell you--now. But it's rather difficult.'

Drake walked to the window and stood with his back towards her. She felt grateful to him for the action, and was a little surprised at the tact which had prompted it.

'Yes?' he said.

'We are not very well off,' she continued; 'perhaps you know that.'

'Yes,' he interrupted.

'But the position's more complicated than you can know'; she was speaking carefully, weighing her words. 'Of course you know that I have a sister younger than myself. She's at school in Brussels. Well, by the Sark laws, the Seigneurie can't be split up between the members of a family. I think it's the same with all land there. It must go--what's the word?--unenc.u.mbered to the eldest child. So it must come to me--all of it. That leaves my sister still to be provided for. Father explained the whole thing to me. As it is, he has as much as he can do to keep the Seigneurie up. This house we can't really afford, but father thought he ought to take it,--well, for my sake, I suppose. So, you see, whatever money he has he must leave to my sister, and there's still the Seigneurie for me to keep up.'

'Yes, I understand. You are bound by duty, if you marry, to marry some one with means. But, Clarice, it won't be long to wait,' and he turned back from the window into the room.

'But till then--don't you see? Of course I know you will be successful,'

and she laid considerable emphasis on the _I_.

Drake reflected for a moment. 'You mean there would be trouble between your father and you. The weight of it would fall on you. He might distrust me. Yes; after all, why should he not? But still the thing's done, isn't it?'

Clarice rose from her chair and walked to the grate. A fire was burning, and she still held Drake's letter in her hand. 'We might keep it to ourselves,' she said diffidently. She saw Drake's forehead contract.

'For my sake,' she said softly, laying a hand upon his sleeve. She lifted a tear-stained face up to his with the prettiest appeal. 'I know you hate it, but it will spare me so much.'

He said nothing, and she dropped the letter into the fire.

As Drake was leaving the house she heard, through the closed door, the sound of her father's voice in the hall speaking to him, and felt a momentary pang of alarm. The next instant, however, she laughed. He might have broken his word to himself; he would not break it to her.

Drake went home, reckoning up the harm he had done with a feeling of degradation quite new to him. Not the least part of that harm was the compromise finally agreed upon. But for the traces of tears upon the girl's cheeks, he would hardly have agreed to it even in the face of her appeal. Once alone, however, he saw clearly all--the deception that it implied--deception which involved the girl, too, as well as himself. He rose the next day in no more equable frame of mind, and leaving his office at three o'clock in the afternoon, walked along Cheapside, Holborn, and Oxford Street, and turned down Bond Street, meaning to pa.s.s an hour in the fencing-rooms half-way down St. James Street. At the corner of Bruton Street he came face to face with Miss Le Mesurier. She coloured for an instant, and then came frankly forward and held out her hand.

'It's funny meeting you here,' she said, and laughed without the least embarra.s.sment.

Drake turned and walked by her side with a puzzled conjecture at the reason of woman's recuperative powers. Clarice's eyes were as clear, her forehead as sunny, as though she had clean wiped yesterday from her consciousness. The conjecture, however, brought the reality of yesterday only yet more home to him. He stopped in the street and said abruptly, 'Clarice, I can't.'

She stopped in her turn and drew a little pattern on the pavement with the point of her umbrella. 'Why?'

A pa.s.ser-by jostled Drake in the back. Standing there they were blocking the way. 'Isn't there anywhere we could go? Tea? One drinks tea at this hour, eh?'

'No.'

Clarice felt more mistress of herself in the open street, more able to cope with Drake while they walked in a throng. She remembered enough of yesterday to avoid even the makeshift solitude of a tea-table in a public room. 'Let us walk on,' she said. 'Can't you explain as we go?

I am late.'

She moved forward as she spoke, and Drake kept pace with her, shortening his strides. The need of doing that, trifle though it was, increased his sense of responsibility towards her. 'It's so abominably deceitful, and it's my doing. I should involve you in the deceit.'

Clarice glanced at him sharply. The distress of his voice was repeated in the expression of her face. There was no doubting that he spoke sincerely.

'I had better see your father to--day,' he added.

'No,' she replied energetically; and, after a moment's pause, 'There's another way.'

'Well?'

'Let everything be as it was before yesterday. I shall not change. It will be better for you to be free. Come to me when you are ready.'

She signed to a pa.s.sing hansom, and it drew up by the curb. She got into it while Drake stood with brows knitted, revolving the proposal in his mind. 'But you see it can't be the same,' he said; 'because I kissed you, didn't I?'

'Yes, you did,' she replied.

The tremble of laughter in her voice made him look up to her face. The rose deepened in her cheeks, and the laughter rippled out. 'You are quaint,' she said. 'I will forget--well--what you said, until you are ready. Till then it's to be just as it was before--only not less. You are not to stay away'; and without waiting for an answer she lifted the trap, gave the cabman his order, and drove off. Drake watched the hansom disappear, and absently retraced his steps down the street. He stopped once or twice and stared vaguely into the shop-windows. One of these was a jeweller's, and he turned sharply away from it and quickened his pace towards the fencing-rooms. How could it be the same, he asked himself, when the mere sparkle of an emerald ring in a jeweller's shop-window aroused in him a feeling of distaste?

Towards the end of this week Clarice called upon Mrs. Willoughby, and seemed for the moment put out on finding that Mallinson and Fielding were present. Mrs. Willoughby welcomed her all the more warmly because she was finding it difficult to keep the peace between her two visitors. She understood Clarice's embarra.s.sment when Percy Conway arrived close upon her heels. Clarice, however, quietly handed him over to Mrs. Willoughby, and seated herself beside Mallinson in one of the windows. 'I see nothing of you now,' she said, and she looked the reproach of the hardly-used. 'I thought we had agreed to be friends?'

Mallinson sighed wearily. 'I will come and call--some day,' he said dejectedly.

'I have not so many friends that I can afford a loss,' she answered pathetically; and then, 'Tell me about yourself. What are you doing?'

'Nothing.'

'No work?'

'No.' Mallinson shook his head.

'Why?'

'I have no incentive--nothing to work for.'

'That's cruel.'

They played out their farce of sham sentiment with a luxurious earnestness for a little while longer, and then Mallinson went away.

'So he's doing no work?' said Fielding maliciously to Miss Le Mesurier.

He leaned forward as he spoke from the embrasure of the second window, which was in a line with, and but a few feet apart from, that at which she was sitting.