"Oh, it all sounds all right when you talk about it," he admitted, "but let's come to the crux of this thing now we are about it, Marcia. I am eating my heart out for you. I should have thought that one of the great privileges of your manner of life was your freedom to change, if you desired to do so. Change, I mean—nothing to do with infidelity. You may have the nicest feelings in the world towards your Marquis, but I don't believe you love him any more. I don't believe you care for him as much as you do for me."
"In one sense you are perfectly right," she acknowledged. "In another you are altogether wrong."
"And yet," he continued, almost roughly, "you have never allowed me to touch your fingers, much more your lips."
"But, my dear man," she remonstrated, "you must know that those things are impossible. I would kiss you willingly if you were my friend, and if you were content with that, but you know it would only be hypocrisy if you pretended that you were. But listen," she went on. "I, too, sometimes think of these things. I will be very frank with you. I know that I have changed lately, and I know that the change has something to do with you. Reginald is sometimes a little restless about it. A time may come when he will provoke an explanation. When that time comes, I want to answer him with a clear conscience."
Mr. James Borden brightened up considerably.
"That's the most encouraging thing I've heard you say for a long time," he confessed.
She smiled.
"There are all sorts of possibilities yet," she said. "Now fetch a clothes brush and let me give you a good brushing, and you can take me out to lunch—that is to say, if you can find something decent to wear on your head," she went on, pointing to a somewhat disreputable looking hat which hung behind the door. "I won't go out with you in that."
"That," he replied cheerfully, "is easily arranged. I can change my clothes in five minutes, if you prefer it."
She shook her head.
"You look quite nice when you're properly brushed," she assured him. "Send upstairs for another hat, and we'll go into the grill room at the Savoy. I want a sole colbert, and a cutlet, and some of those little French peas with sugar. Aren't I greedy!"
"Delightfully," he assented. "If you only realised how much easier it is to take a woman out who knows what she wants!"
They lunched very well amidst a crowd of cosmopolitans and lingered over their coffee. Their conversation had been of books and nothing but books, but towards the end Marcia once more spoke of herself.
"You see, James," she told him, "I have the feeling that if Reginald really does succeed in freeing the estates from their mortgages, he will have any quantity of new interests in life. He will probably be lord-lieutenant of the county, and open up the whole of Mandeleys. Then his town life would of course be quite different. I shall feel—can't you appreciate that?—as though my task with him had come naturally and gracefully to an end. We have both fulfilled our obligations to one another. If he can give me his hand and let me go—well, I should like it."
She looked so very desirable as she smiled at him that Borden almost groaned. She patted his hand and changed the conversation.
"Very soon," she continued, "I am going to undertake a painful duty. I am going down to Mandeleys."
"Not with him?"
She shook her head.
"My father is back in England," she explained. "He has come back from America and is living in the cottage of many lawsuits. I must go down and see him."
"Has the boy returned, too?" he enquired.
"I have heard nothing about him," Marcia replied. "He was very delicate when he was young, and I am not even sure whether he is alive. My father probably doesn't want to see me in the least, but I feel I ought to go."
"You wouldn't like me to motor you down, I suppose?" Borden suggested diffidently. "The country is delightful just now, and it would do us both good. I could get away for three days quite easily, and I could bring some work with me to peg away at whilst you are being dutiful."
"I should love it," she declared frankly, "and I don't see the least reason why we shouldn't go. You won't mind," she went on, after a second's hesitation, "if I mention it to Reginald? I am sure he won't object."
James Borden bit through the cigarette which he had just lit, threw it away and started another.
"You must do whatever you think right," he said. "Perhaps you will telephone."
"As soon as I know for certain," she promised him.
CHAPTER VIII
It was obvious that the Marquis was pleased with himself when he was shown into Marcia's little sitting room later on that same afternoon. He was wearing a grey tweed check suit, a grey bowler hat, and a bunch of hothouse violets in his buttonhole. His demeanour, as he drew off his white chamois leather gloves and handed them, with his coat and cane, to the little parlourmaid, was urbane, almost benevolent.
"You look like the springtime," Marcia declared, rising to her feet, "and here have I been cowering over the fire!"
"The wind is cold," her visitor admitted, "but I had a brisk walk along the Embankment."
"Along the Embankment?"
"I have been to one of those wonderful, cosmopolitan hotels," he told her, as he bent down and kissed her, "where they have hundreds of bedrooms and every guest is a potential millionaire."
"Business?"
"Business," he assented. "My lawyers—I am very displeased, by-the-by, with Mr. Wadham—having been unable for many years to assist me in disposing of the mortgages upon Mandeleys, I am making efforts myself in that direction, efforts which, as I believe I told you, show much promise of success."
"I am delighted to hear it," she replied. "From every point of view, it would be so satisfactory for you to have the estates freed once more. You would be able to entertain properly, wouldn't you, and take up your rightful position in the county?"
The Marquis seated himself in his favourite easy-chair.
"It is quite true," he confessed, "that I have been unable, for the last ten years, to exercise that position in the county to which I am entitled. I must confess, moreover, that the small economies which have formed a necessary and galling part of my daily life have become almost unendurable. You received my cheque, I hope?"
She nodded and laid it upon the table.
"It was dear of you, Reginald," she said, "but do you know it's astonishing how well I seemed to be able to get on without those last three payments. I am earning quite a great deal of money of my own, you know, and I do wish you would let me try and be independent."
His grey eyes were fixed almost coldly upon her.
"Independent? Why?"
"Oh, don't be foolish about it, please," she begged. "For nineteen years, I think it is now, you have allowed me six hundred a year. Do you realise what a great deal of money that is? Now that I am beginning to earn so much for myself, it is absurd for me to go on taking it."
"Do I understand it to be your desire, then, Marcia," he asked, "to effect any change in our relations?"
She came over and sat on the arm of his chair.
"Not unless you wish it, dear," she replied, "only the money—well, in a sense I've got used to having it all these years, because it was necessary, but now that it isn't necessary, I can't help feeling that I should like to do without it. I earned nearly six hundred pounds, you know, last year, by my stories."
The Marquis had half closed his eyes. He had become momentarily inattentive. Somehow or other, Marcia realised that her words had brought him acute suffering. There were tears in her eyes as she took his hand.
"Don't be silly about this, Reginald dear," she pleaded. "If it means so much to you to feel—I mean, if you look upon this money as really a tie between us—give me a little less, then—say three hundred a year, instead of six."
Her visitor was recovering his momentarily disturbed composure.
"You are still nothing but a child in money matters, dear," he said. "We will speak of this again before the end of the year, but in the meantime, if you have anything to spa
re, invest it. It is always well for a woman to have something to fall back upon."
Tea was brought in, and their conversation for a time became lighter in tone. Presently, however, Marcia became once more a little thoughtful.
"I have made up my mind," she declared abruptly, "to go down to Mandeleys to see my father."
The Marquis was silent for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, why not, if you really feel it to be your duty," he conceded. "Personally, I think you will find that Vont is unchanged. You will find him just as hard and narrow as when he disowned you."
"In that case," Marcia acknowledged, "I shall not trouble him very much, but when I think of all these years abroad—it was through me he left England, you know, Reginald—I feel that I ought to do my best, at any rate, to make him see things differently—to beg his forgiveness with my lips, even if I feel no remorse in my heart. I have a most uncomfortable conviction," she went on reflectively, "that I have grown completely out of his world, but, of course, in all this time he, too, may have changed. I wonder what has become of my little cousin."
"Vont came back alone, I believe," her visitor told her, "and he came back second class, too. I heard of him, curiously enough, from an American gentleman who crossed on the same steamer, and who happened to be a guest at my house the other night."
Marcia nodded.
"The boy left England too young," she remarked, "to miss his country. I suppose he has settled down in America for ever."
"I must say that I wish Vont had stayed with him," the Marquis declared. "Yes, go down and see him, by all means, Marcia. I should rather like to hear from you what his state of mind is. I gather that he is obdurate, as he resisted all my efforts to repossess myself of his cottage, but it would be interesting to hear."
"Should you mind," she asked, "if I motored down there with my publisher—Mr. James Borden? You have heard me speak of him."
"Not in the least," was the ready reply. "Has your friend connections in the locality?"
"None," Marcia admitted. "He would come simply for the sake of a day or two's holiday, and to take me."
"He is one of your admirers, perhaps?"
"He has always been very kind to me."
The Marquis was momentarily pensive.
"You are a better judge than I, Marcia," he observed, "but is such an expedition as you suggest—usual? I know that things have changed very much since the days when I myself found adventures possible and interesting, but have they really progressed so far as this?"
Marcia considered the matter carefully.
"On the whole," she decided, "I should say that our proposed expedition was unusual. On the other hand, Mr. Borden has no near relatives, and I myself enjoy a certain amount of liberty."
The Marquis smiled at her.
"As much liberty as you choose. If I hesitated then for a moment, it was for your own sake. I do not think that I have ever sought to curtail your pleasures, or to interfere in your mode of living."
"You have been wonderful," she admitted gratefully. "Perhaps for that very reason, because my fetters have been of silk, I have never realised but always considered them. Do you know that you are the only man who has ever sat down in this flat as my guest, during the whole sixteen years I have lived here?"
"I should never have asked you," he said, "but I am not in the least surprised to hear it. Sometimes," he went on, drawing her towards him in a slight but affectionate embrace, "you have perhaps thought me a little cold, a little staid and distant from you, even in our happiest moments. I was brought up, you must remember, in the school which considers any exhibition of feeling as a deplorable lapse. The thing grows on one. Yet, Marcia," he added, drawing her still closer and clasping her hand, "you have been my refuge in all these years. It is here with you that I have spent my happiest hours. You have been my consolation in many weary disappointments. I often wish that I could give you a different position than the one which you occupy."
"I should never be so contented in any other," she assured him, patting his hand. "In all these years I have felt my mind grow. I have read—heavens, how I have read! I have felt so many of the old things fall away, felt my feet growing stronger. You have given me just what I wanted, Reginald. To quote one of your own maxims, we have only one life, but it is for us to subdivide. We take up a handful of circumstances, an emotion, perhaps a passion, and we live them out, and when the flame is burnt we are restless for a little time, and then we begin it all over again. That is how we learn, learn to be wise by suffering and change."
"I am afraid," the Marquis sighed, "that I do not live up to my own principles. All my life I have detested change. There could be no other home for me but Mandeleys, no other clubs save those where I spend my spare time, no other pursuits save those which I have cultivated from my youth, no other dear friend, Marcia, to whom one may turn in one's more human moments, than you."
Marcia shrugged her shoulders.
"It is queer," she admitted, "to hear such professions of fidelity from you."
"Had I a different reputation?" he asked. "Well, you see how I have outlived it."
Marcia's silence, natural enough at the time, puzzled him a little afterwards, puzzled him as he leaned back in his car, on his way homewards, puzzled him through the evening in the few minutes of reflection which he was able to spare from a large dinner party.
"Borden!" he muttered to himself. "I wonder what sort of a man he is."
In his library, where he lingered for a few moments before retiring to bed, he took down a volume of "Who's Who." Borden's name, rather to his surprise, was there. The man, it seemed, was of decent family, had done well at Oxford, both in scholarship and athletics. He was born—the Marquis counted his years. He was forty-one years old—nineteen years younger! He closed the book and sat down in his chair, forgetting for once to mix for himself the whiskey and soda which lay ready to his hand. It seemed to him that there was a tragedy in that nineteen years. Borden was of the age now that he himself had been when Marcia had first listened to his very courtly and yet uncommonly definite love-making. He rose almost like a thief, crossed the hall, and, opening softly the door of the drawing-room, turned up the two lights before a great gilt mirror. He stood and regarded himself thoughtfully, appraisingly, critically. He was tall and very little bowed. His figure was still the figure of a young man, and the court clothes which he was wearing became him. That he was handsome so far as regards his finely chiselled features, his high forehead and his soft grey hair, he granted himself. The world had given him few chances of forgetting it. But there was a little whiteness about his cheeks, a slight dropping of the flesh under his eyes, just something of that tired look which creeps along with the years, a silent, persistent ghost. The Marquis switched off the lights and turned towards the door. He tiptoed his way across the hall and threw himself once more into his easy-chair. His eyes were fixed upon the opposite wall. He still saw that presentment of himself. And there was Marcia, barely in the prime of her life, the figure of her girlhood developed, yet not, even now, matronly; her bright complexion, her broad, intellectual forehead with its masses of brown hair, her humorous mouth, her dark, undimmed eyes, still hungry for what life might have to give. Those nineteen years remained a tragedy.
CHAPTER IX
David Thain, arrived at the end of his journey, seated himself on the second stile from the road, threw away his cigar and looked facts in the face. He who had run the gamut of the Wall Street fever, who in his earlier days had relied almost upon chance for a meal, who had stood the tests of huge successes as well as the anxieties of possible failures without visible emotion—in such a fashion, even, that his closest friends could scarcely tell whether he were winning or losing—found himself now, without any crisis before him, and engaged in the most ordinary undertaking of a stroll from the station across a few fields, suddenly the victim of sensations and weaknesses which defied analysis and mocked at restraint. It was the England of his
boyhood, this, the sudden almost overpowering realisation of those dreams which had grown fainter and fainter during his many years of struggle in a very different atmosphere. Birds were singing in the long grove which, behind the high, grey-stone wall, fringed the road for miles. Rooks—real English rooks—were cawing above his head. A light evening breeze was bending the meadow grass of the field which his footpath had cloven, and from the hedge by his side came the faint perfume of hawthorn blossom. Before him was the park with its splendours of giant oaks, with deer resting beneath the trees, and in the distance the grey, irregular outline of Mandeleys Abbey. He had played cricket, when he was a boy, in the very field through which he was passing. Some time in that dim past, he had stood with his uncle, whilst he had issued with the beaters from that long strip of plantation, watching with all a boy's fervid admiration the careless ease with which the Lord of Mandeleys was bringing the pheasants down from the sky. He had skated on the lake there, had watched at a respectful distance the antics of the ladies Letitia and Margaret, anxious to escape from their retinue of servants and attendants. A queer little vision came before him at that moment of Lady Letitia hobbling towards him upon the ice, with one skate unbuckled, and a firm but gracious entreaty that the little boy—he was at least a head taller than she—would fasten it for her. Strange little flashes of memory had come to him now and then in that new world where he had carved his way to success, memories so indistinct that they brought with them no thrills, scarcely even any longing. And now all his strength and hardness, qualities so necessary to him throughout his strenuous life, seemed to have passed away. He was a child again, breathing in all these simple sights and perfumes, his memory taking him even further back to the days when he sat in the meadow, in the hot sun, picking daisies and buttercups, and watching for the fish that sometimes jumped from the stream. It was an entirely unexpected emotion, this. When once more he strode along the footpath, he felt a different man. He had lost his slight touch of assurance. He looked about him eagerly, almost appealingly. He was ashamed to confess even to himself that he had the feeling of a wanderer who has come home.
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