E Phillips Oppenheim

by The Wicked Marquis

  "I am very sorry—very sorry indeed," Mr. Wadham murmured.

  "I discovered yesterday afternoon, entirely by accident, that the allowance which you have my instructions to make to Miss Hannaway has not been paid for the last two quarters."

  "Through no neglect of ours, I assure your lordship," Mr. Wadham insisted gravely. "You will remember that we wrote to you last October, pointing out that the yield from the estates was insufficient, without the help of the bank, to meet the interest on the mortgages, and that, amongst other claims which we were obliged to leave over, we should be unable to forward the usual cheque to the young lady in question."

  The Marquis cleared his throat and tapped with his long forefingers upon the desk. It was a curious circumstance that, although both Mr. Wadham, Senior, and Junior had done more than their duty towards their distinguished client, each had at that moment the feeling of a criminal.

  "You are, I believe, perfectly well aware, Mr. Wadham," the Marquis declared, "that I never read your letters."

  Mr. Wadham, Senior, coughed. His son thrust both hands into his trousers pockets. The statement was unanswerable.

  "I was therefore," the Marquis continued severely, "in complete ignorance of your failure to carry out my instructions."

  Mr. Wadham, Junior, less affected than his father by tradition, and priding himself more upon that negligible gift of common sense, interposed respectfully but firmly.

  "We can scarcely be responsible," he pointed out, "for your lordship's indisposition to read letters containing business information of importance."

  The Marquis changed his position slightly and looked at the speaker. Mr. Wadham, Junior, became during the next few seconds profoundly impressed with the irrelevance, almost the impertinence of his words.

  "I should have imagined," the former said severely, "that my habits are well-known to the members of a firm whose connection with my family is almost historical."

  "We should have waited upon your lordship," Mr. Wadham, Senior, admitted. "But with reference to the case of this young lady, not hearing from your lordship, we wrote to her, very politely, indicating the great difficulties which we had to face in the management of the Mandeleys estates, owing to the abnormal agricultural depression, and we promised to send her a cheque as soon as such a step became possible. In reply we heard from her—a most ladylike and reasonable letter it was—stating that owing to recent literary successes, and to your lordship's generosity through so many years, she was only too glad of the opportunity to beg us to cease from forwarding the quarterly amount as hitherto. Under those circumstances, we have devoted such small sums of money as have come into our hands to more vital purposes."

  "I suppose it did not occur to you," the Marquis observed, "that I am the person to decide what is or is not vital in the disposition of my own moneys."

  "That is a fact which we should not presume to dispute," the lawyer admitted, "but I should like to point out that, on the next occasion when we had a little money in hand, your household steward, Mr. Harrison, was here in urgent need of a thousand pounds for the payment of domestic bills connected with the establishment in Grosvenor Square."

  "It appears to me," the Marquis said, with a trace of irritability in his tone, "that the greater part of my income goes in paying bills."

  The complaint was one which for the moment left Mr. Wadham speechless. He was vaguely conscious that an adequate reply existed, but it eluded him. His son, who had adopted the attitude of being outside the discussion, was engaged in an abortive attempt to appear as much at ease in his own office as this client of theirs certainly was.

  "I will discuss the matter of Miss Hannaway's future allowance with that young lady, and let you know the result," the Marquis announced. "In the meantime, how do we stand for ready money?"

  "Ready money, your lordship!" his interlocutor gasped.

  "Precisely," the Marquis assented. "It is, I believe, a few days after the period when my tenants usually pay their rents."

  "Your lordship," Mr. Wadham said, speaking with every attempt at gravity, "if every one of your tenants paid their full rent and brought it into this office at the present moment, we should still be unable to pay the interest on the mortgages due next month, without further advances from the bank."

  "These mortgages," the Marquis remarked thoughtfully, "are a nuisance."

  So self-evident a fact seemed to leave little room for comment or denial. The Marquis frowned a little more severely and withdrew his forefingers from the desk.

  "Figures, I fear, only confuse me," he confessed, "but for the sake of curiosity, what do my quarterly rents amount to?"

  "Between seven and eight thousand pounds, according to deductions, your lordship," was the prompt reply. "That sum I presume will be coming in from your agent, Mr. Merridrew, within the course of a few days. The interest upon the mortgages amounts to perhaps a thousand pounds less than that sum. That thousand pounds, I may be permitted to point out to your lordship, is all that remains for the carrying on of your Grosvenor Square establishment, and for such disbursements as are necessary at Mandeleys."

  "It is shameful," the Marquis declared severely, "that any one should be allowed to anticipate their income in this way. Mortgages are most vicious institutions."

  Mr. Wadham coughed.

  "Your lordship's expenditure, some ten or fifteen years ago, rendered them first necessary. After that there was the unfortunate speculation in the tin mines—"

  "That will do, Mr. Wadham," his client interrupted. "All I desire to know from you further is a statement of the approximate sum required to clear off the mortgages upon the Mandeleys estates?"

  Mr. Wadham, Senior, looked a little startled. His son stopped whistling under his breath and leaned forward in his chair.

  "Clear off the mortgages," he repeated.

  "Precisely!"

  "The exact figures," was the somewhat hesitating pronouncement, "would require a quarter of an hour's study, but I should say that a sum of two hundred and twenty thousand pounds would be required."

  "I have not a head for figures," the Marquis acknowledged gravely, "but the amount seems trifling. I shall wish you good-day now, gentlemen. Two hundred and twenty thousand, I think you said, Mr. Wadham?"

  "That is as near the amount as possible," the lawyer admitted.

  The Marquis drew on his gloves, a sign that he did not intend to honour his adviser with any familiar form of farewell. He inclined his head slightly to Mr. Wadham, and more slightly still to Mr. Wadham, Junior, who was holding open the door. The small boy, who was on the alert, escorted him to the front steps, and received with delight a gracious word of thanks for his attentions. So the Marquis took his departure.

  Mr. Wadham, Junior, closed the door and threw himself into the chair which had been occupied by their distinguished client. There was a faint perfume of lavender water remaining in the atmosphere. His eyes wandered around the further rows of tin boxes which encumbered the wall.

  "I suppose," he murmured, "it's a great thing to have a Marquis for one's client."

  "I suppose it is," Mr. Wadham, Senior, assented gloomily.

  "Father, do you ever feel at ease with him?" his son asked curiously. "Do you ever feel as though you were talking to a real human being, of the same flesh and blood as yourself?"

  "Never for a single moment," was the vigorous reply. "If I felt like that, John, do you know what I should do? No? Well, then, I'll tell you. I should have those tin boxes taken out, one by one, and stacked in the hall. I should say to him, as plainly as I am saying it to you—'We lose money every year by your business, Marquis. We've had our turn. Try some one else—and go to the Devil!'"

  "But you couldn't do it!" Mr. Wadham, Junior, observed disconsolately.

  "I couldn't," his father agreed, with a note of subdued melancholy in his tone.

  CHAPTER VI

  Lady Margaret, who chanced to be the first arrival on the night of the dinner party in David Thain's honou
r, contemplated her sister admiringly. Letitia was wearing a gown of ivory satin, a form of attire which seemed always to bring with it almost startling reminiscences of her Italian ancestry.

  "So glad to find you alone, Letty," she remarked, as she sank into the most comfortable of the easy chairs. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you for weeks. Bob put it into my head again this afternoon."

  "What is it, dear?" Letitia enquired.

  "Why don't you marry Charlie Grantham?" her sister demanded abruptly.

  "There are so many reasons. First of all, he hasn't really ever asked me."

  "You're simply indolent," Lady Margaret persisted. "He'd ask you in five minutes if you'd let him. Do you suppose Bob would ever have thought of marrying me, if I hadn't put the idea into his head?"

  "You're so much cleverer than I," Letitia sighed.

  "Not in the least," was the prompt disclaimer. "I really doubt whether I have your brains, and I certainly haven't your taste. The only thing that I have, and always had, is common sense, common sense enough to see that girls in our position in life must marry, and the sooner the better."

  "Why only our class of life?"

  "Don't be silly! It's perfectly obvious, isn't it, that the daughters of the middle classes are having the time of their lives. They are all earning money. Amongst them it has become quite the vogue to take situations as secretaries or milliners or that sort of thing, and it simply doesn't matter whether they marry or not. They get all the fun they want out of life."

  "It sounds quite attractive," Letitia admitted. "I think I shall take a course in typewriting and shorthand."

  "You won't," Margaret rejoined. "You know perfectly well that that is one of the things we can never do. You've got to marry first. Then you can branch out in life in any direction you choose—art, travel, amours, or millinery. You can help yourself with both hands."

  "Which have you chosen, Meg?"

  "Oh, I am an exception!" Margaret confessed. "You see, Bob is such fun, and I've never got over the joke of marrying him. Besides, I haven't any craving for things at all. I am not temperamental like you. Where's father?"

  "Just back from the country. He'll be here in time, though."

  "And who's dining?"

  "Charlie, for one," Letitia replied, "Aunt Caroline, of course, and Uncle, Mrs. Honeywell, and the American person. The party was got up on his account, so I expect father wants to borrow money from him."

  "He doesn't look an easy lender," Lady Margaret remarked.

  "There's no one proof against father," Letitia declared. "He is too exquisitely and transparently dishonest. You know, there's a man's story about the clubs that he once borrowed money from Lewis at five per cent. interest."

  Margaret remained in a serious frame of mind.

  "Something will have to be done," she sighed. "Robert went down and looked at the mortgages, the other day. He says they are simply appalling, there isn't an acre missed out. It's quite on the cards, you know, Letty, that Mandeleys may have to go."

  Letitia made a little grimace.

  "I am getting perfectly callous," she confided. "If it did, this house would probably follow, father would realise everything he could lay his hands upon and become the autocrat of some French watering place, and I should cease to be the honest but impecunious daughter of a wicked nobleman, and enjoy the liberty of the middle-class young women you were telling me about. It wouldn't be so bad!"

  "Or marry—" Margaret began.

  "Mr. David Thain," the butler announced.

  The juxtaposition of words perhaps incited in Letitia a greater interest as she turned away from her sister to welcome the first of her guests. He had to cross a considerable space of the drawing-room, with its old-fashioned conglomeration of furniture untouched and unrenovated for the last two generations, but he showed not the slightest sign of awkwardness or self-consciousness in any form. He was slight and none too powerfully built, but his body was singularly erect, and he moved with the alert dignity of a man in perfect health and used to gymnastic training. His clean-shaven face disclosed nervous lines which his manner contradicted. His mouth was unexpectedly hard, his deep-set grey eyes steel-like, almost brilliant. These things made for a strength which had in it, however, nothing of the uncouth. The only singularity about his face and manner, as he took his hostess' fingers, was the absence of any smile of greeting upon his lips.

  "I am afraid that I am a little early," he apologised.

  "We are all the more grateful to you," Lady Margaret assured him. "Letitia and I always bore one another terribly. A married sister, you know, feels rather like the cuckoo returning to the discarded nest."

  "One hates other people's liberty so much," Letitia sighed.

  "I should have thought liberty was a state very easy to acquire," David Thain observed didactically.

  "That is because you come from a land where all the women are clever and the men tolerant," Letitia replied. "Where is that husband of yours, Margaret?"

  "I am ashamed to say," her sister confessed, "that he stayed down in the morning room while Gossett fetched him a glass of sherry. Look at him now," she added, as Sir Robert entered the room unannounced and came smiling towards them. "How can I have any faith in a husband like that. Doesn't he look as though the only thing that could trouble him in life was that he hadn't been able to get here a few minutes earlier!"

  "Given away, eh?" the newcomer groaned, as he kissed Letitia's fingers. "How are you, Mr. Thain? Your country is entirely to blame for my habits. I got so into the habit of drinking cocktails while I was over there that I really prefer my aperitif to my wine at dinner."

  Sir Robert, who had discovered within the last few days exactly where Mr. David Thain stood amongst the list of American multi-millionaires, drew this very distinguished person a little on one side to ask about a railway. Then the Marquis made his appearance, and immediately afterwards the remaining guests. David Thain, of whom many of the morning papers, during the last few days, had found something to say, found himself almost insinuated into the position of favoured guest. He took Mrs. Honeywell—a dark and rather tired-looking lady—in to dinner, but he sat at Letitia's left hand, and she gave him a good deal of her attention.

  "You know everybody, don't you, Mr. Thain?" she asked him, soon after they had taken their places.

  "Except the gentleman on your right," he answered.

  She leaned towards him confidentially.

  "His name," she whispered, "is Lord Charles Grantham. He is the son of the Duke of Leicester, who is, between ourselves, almost as wicked a duke as my father is a marquis. Fortunately, however, his mother left him a fortune. Do you notice how thoughtful he looks?"

  David Thain glanced across the table at the young man in question, who was exchanging rather weary monosyllables with his right-hand neighbour.

  "He is perhaps overworked?"

  Letitia shook her head.

  "Not at all. He cannot make up his mind whether or not he wants to marry me."

  "And can you make up your mind whether you wish to marry him?"

  Letitia lost for a moment her air of gentle banter.

  "What a downright question!" she observed. "However, I can't tell you before I answer him, can I, and he hasn't asked me yet."

  "I should think," David Thain said coolly, "that you would make an excellent match."

  Their eyes met for a moment. There was a challenging light in hers to which he instantly responded. Her very beautiful white teeth closed for a moment upon her lower lip. Then she smiled upon him once more.

  "It is so reassuring," she murmured, "to be told things like that by people who are likely to know. Charles, talk to me at once," she went on, turning towards him. "Mr. Thain and I agree far too perfectly upon everything."

  Thain was deep in conversation with his neighbour before Lord Charles was able to disentangle himself from the conversational artifices of the Duchess. Letitia took note of his aptness with a little, malicious smile. It
was towards the close of dinner when she once more turned towards him.

  "Have you been telling Mrs. Honeywell how you made all your millions?" she asked.

  "I have been trying to point out," he replied, "that the first million is all one has to make. The rest comes."

  "What a delightful country!" Letitia observed. "If I were to borrow from all my friends and collected a million, do you think I could go out there and become a multi-millionaire?"

  "Women are not natural money-makers," he pronounced.

  "What is her real sphere?" she asked sweetly. "I should so much like to know your opinion of us."

  "As yet," he replied, "I have had no time to form one."

  "What a pity!" she sighed. "It would have been so instructive."

  "In the small amenities of daily life," he said thoughtfully, "in what one of our writers calls the insignificant arts, women seem inevitably to excel. They always appear to do better, in fact, in the narrower circles. Directly they step outside, a certain lack of breadth becomes noticeable."

  "Dear me!" she murmured. "It's a good thing I'm not one of these modern ladies who stand on a tub in Hyde Park and thump the drum for votes. I should be saying quite disagreeable things to you, Mr. Thain, shouldn't I?"

  "You couldn't be one of those, if you tried," he replied. "You see, if I may be permitted to say so, nature has endowed you with rather a rare gift so far as your sex is concerned."

  "Don't be over-diffident," she begged. "I may know it, mayn't I?"

  "A sense of humour."

  "When a man tells a woman that she has a sense of humour," Letitia declared, "it is a sure sign that he—"

  She suddenly realised how intensely observant those steely grey eyes could be. She broke off in her sentence. They still held her, however.

  "That he what?"

  "Such a bad habit of mine," she confided frankly. "I so often begin a sentence and have no idea how to finish it. Ada," she went on, addressing Mrs. Honeywell, "has Mr. Thain taught you how to become a millionairess?"

  "I haven't even tried to learn," that lady replied. "He has promised me a subscription to my Cripples' Guild, though."