E Phillips Oppenheim

by The Wicked Marquis

  "You won't mind," she begged, "if I choose my own time? It may be very soon, it may be a little time. You will leave it to me, and you will trust me. From to-night, of course—"

  She hesitated, but his gesture was sufficient. She knew that she was understood.

  "You have made me the happiest man in the world," he said. "I can't stop a moment longer—I should simply say extravagant things. And I know how you feel. It isn't quite time for them yet. But you'll send for me?"

  "Of course!"

  "And about your visit to Mandeleys?" he asked. "I shan't begin to be busy again for another fortnight."

  She hesitated.

  "Somehow," she confessed, "it seems a little different now.

  "It needn't," he replied. "I am content with what I have."

  She glanced at the calendar.

  "Tuesday?" she suggested.

  "Tuesday would suit me admirably," he assented.

  She let him out herself, and he kissed her fingers. He was never quite sure whether he walked down the stairs or whether he rang for the lift. He was never quite sure whether he looked for a taxi or decided to walk. He passed over the bridge, and the lights reflected in the dark waters below seemed suddenly like jewels. He made his way to his club because of the sheer impossibility of sleep. He stood on the threshold of the reading room and looked in at the little group of semi-somnolent men. In his way he was popular, and he received a good many sleepy greetings.

  "What's the matter with Borden?" one man drawled. "He looks as though some one had left him a fortune."

  "He has probably discovered another literary star," a rival publisher suggested.

  "I wish to God some one would send him to a decent tailor!" a third man yawned.

  Borden rang the bell for a drink.

  "Dickinson was right," he said. "I've found a new star."

  Letitia, on her return from the theatre that same evening, found her father seated in a comfortable corner of the library, with a volume of Don Quixote in his hand, a whisky and soda and a box of cigarettes by his side. He had exchanged his dinner jacket for a plain black velvet coat, and, as he laid his book down at her coming, she seemed to notice again that vague look of tiredness in his face.

  "Quiet evening, dad?" she asked, flinging herself into a low chair by his side.

  "A very pleasant one," he replied. "Montavon's party was postponed, but I have reopened an old fund of amusement here. With the exception of Borrow, none of our modern humourists appeal to me like Cervantes."

  "You wouldn't call Borrow exactly modern, would you?"

  "Perhaps not," the Marquis conceded. "I may be wrong to ignore the literature of the present day, but such attempts as I have made to appreciate it have been unsatisfactory. You enjoyed the play, dear?"

  "Very much," Letitia acquiesced. "The house was crowded."

  "Any one you know?"

  She mentioned a few names, then she hesitated. "And that clever woman who wrote 'The Changing Earth' was there in a box—Marcia Hannaway. She was with rather a dour-looking man—her publisher, I think Charlie said it was."

  The Marquis received the information with no signs of particular interest. Letitia stretched out for a cigarette, lit it and looked a little appealingly at her father.

  "Dad," she said, "I've made an awful idiot of myself."

  "In what direction?" the Marquis enquired sympathetically. "If it is a financial matter, I am fortunately—"

  "Worse!" Letitia groaned. "I've promised to marry Charlie Grantham."

  The Marquis stretched out his long, elegant hand and patted his daughter's.

  "But, my dear child," he said, "surely that was inevitable, was it not? I have looked upon it as almost certain to happen some day."

  "Well, I'm rather glad you take it like that," Letitia remarked. "Now I come to think of it, I suppose I should have had to say 'yes' sometime or another."

  "Where is Charlie?"

  "Gone home in a huff, because I wouldn't let him kiss me in the car or bring him in with me."

  "Either course would surely have been usual," the Marquis ventured.

  "Perhaps, but I feel unusual," Letitia declared. "It isn't that I mind marrying Charlie, but I know I shall detest being married to him."

  "One must remember, dear," her father went on soothingly, "that with us, marriage is scarcely a subject for neurotic ecstasies or most unwholesome hysterics. Your position imposes upon you the necessity of an alliance with some house of kindred associations. The choice, therefore, is not a large one, and you are spared the very undignified competitive considerations which attach themselves to people when it does not matter whom on earth they marry. The Dukedom of Grantham is unfortunately not an ancient one, nor was it conferred upon such illustrious stock as the Marquisate of Mandeleys. However, the Granthams have their place amongst us, and I imagine that the alliance will generally be considered satisfactory."

  "Oh, I hope so," Letitia replied, without enthusiasm. "I only hope I shall find it satisfactory. I didn't mean to say 'yes' for at least another year."

  The Marquis smiled tolerantly.

  "Then what, my dear child," he asked, "hastened your decision?"

  Letitia became suddenly more serious. She bit her lip and frowned distinctly into the fire. At that moment she was furious with a thought.

  "I can't tell you, dad," she confessed. "I'd hate to tell you. I'd hate to put it in plain words, even to myself."

  He patted her hand tolerantly.

  "You must not take yourself too hardly to task, Letitia," he said, "if at times you feel the pressure of the outside world. You are young and of versatile temperament. Believe me, those voices to which you may have listened are only echoes. Nothing exists or is real in life which the brain does not govern. I am quite sure that you will never regret the step which you have taken this evening."

  Letitia stood up.

  "I hope not, father," she sighed, a little wistfully. "There are times when I am very dissatisfied with myself, and to-night, I am afraid, is one of them."

  "You analyse your sentiments, my dear, too severely," her father told her. "You are too conscientious. Your actions are all that could be desired."

  "You won't be lonely if that idiot takes me away from you soon?" she asked.

  The Marquis looked almost shocked.

  "Loneliness is not a complaint from which I ever expect to suffer, dear," he said, as he rose and opened the door for her.

  He returned to his empty chair, his half consumed whisky and soda, his vellum-bound volume, carefully marked. Somehow or other, the echoes of his last words seemed to be ringing in his ears. The fire had burned a little low, the sound of passing vehicles from outside had grown fainter and fainter. He took up his book, threw himself into his chair, gazed with vacant eyes at the thick black print. There was a sudden chill in his heart, a sudden thought, perhaps a fear. There was one way through which loneliness could come.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Marcia, who had dreamed all night of blue skies flecked with little fragments of white cloud, a soft west wind and sun-bathed meadows, descended the creaking stairs of the Inn at Fakenham, paused upon the broad landing to admire the great oak chests and the cupboards full of china, and then made her way to the coffee room. She found Borden standing at the window, looking down into the country street and talking with a stranger, whom he left, however, at her entrance. They took their places at the breakfast table to which a waiter ushered them.

  "Still lucky," her companion remarked, as he watched Marcia pour out the coffee. "It's going to be another delightful day."

  She glanced out into the sunlit street. Just opposite was a house almost hidden in clematis, and in the background was a tall row of elm trees amongst the branches of which the rooks were cawing.

  "I feel like Rip van Winkle," she whispered. "Do you know that twenty-five years ago I came to what is called a Farmers' Ordinary in this very room? Tell me," she went on, "who was the man with whom you were talking? His face
is quite familiar to me."

  He glanced around. Thain had taken his place at the further end of the room.

  "The man of whom we were speaking the other day," he said,—"David Thain. I think that you have met him, haven't you?"

  She nodded.

  "Why, of course! I didn't recognise him in tweeds. Whatever is he doing down here? But I know before you can tell me," she continued quickly. "He has taken Broomleys, hasn't he?"

  "He told me that he had taken a house in the neighbourhood," Borden replied. "He is going over there this morning to meet the present occupiers."

  "It is a very small world," Marcia observed. "I wonder whether he recognised me."

  "Without undue flattery, I think I might say that I should think it probable."

  "And of course he is imagining all sorts of improper things,—chuckling about them, I dare say, in the way men do. He is being what I suppose he thinks tactful. He never glances in this direction at all. I'll give him a surprise in a minute or two!"

  They finished their breakfast, and Marcia crossed towards David's table. As soon as he was conscious of her approach, he rose. He welcomed her, however, without a smile.

  "From Trewly's at dinner to the Mandeleys Arms for breakfast," she remarked, smiling. "I feel quite flattered that you remembered me, Mr. Thain."

  "Did I show any signs of remembering you?" he asked a little grimly.

  "Of course you didn't," she acknowledged. "You ignored even my sweetest bow. That is why I felt sure that you recognised me perfectly."

  David remained silent, standing still with an air of complete but respectful patience.

  "You have taken a house down here, the Marquis tells me," she continued.

  "I have taken Broomleys."

  "I hope that you will like the neighbourhood," she said. "I used to live here once myself."

  "So I understood."

  She was for a moment taken aback, conscious now of a certain definitely inimical attitude in the man who stood looking coldly into her eyes.

  "You know all about me, then? That is the worst of getting into 'Who's Who.'"

  "I know more about you than I do about your companion, certainly," he admitted.

  She laughed mockingly. To a downright declaration of war she had no objection whatever.

  "That is Mr. Borden, who publishes my stories," she told him. "I don't suppose you read them, do you?"

  "I am not sure," he replied. "I read very little modern fiction, and I never look at the names of the authors."

  "Then we must take it for granted," she sighed, "that my fame is unknown to you. If you should see the Marquis before I do, please tell him that he was entirely wrong about the best route here. His advice has cost us nearly thirty miles and a punctured tire. You won't forget?"

  "Certainly not," he promised.

  She turned away with a little nod of farewell, to which David's response was still entirely formal. Left alone in the room he resumed his breakfast, finished it with diminished appetite, and within a few minutes was speeding through the country lanes in his great Rolls-Royce car. The chauffeur sat a little uneasily in his place. It was very seldom that his master showed such signs of haste. In a quarter of an hour they were in the avenue of Mandeleys. Instead of turning to the right, however, to Broomleys, he took the turning to the Abbey and pulled up short when within a hundred yards of the house.

  "Wait here for me," he directed. "If you see another car coming up, blow your horn."

  He walked across the smooth, ancient turf, stepped over the wire fence and raised the latch of Richard Vont's cottage gate. His uncle, a little disturbed, came hastily down the garden path. His clothes were stained with clay, and the perspiration was on his forehead. David looked at him in surprise.

  "Working so early?"

  Vont nodded.

  "You forget," he said, "that this is not early for me. All my life I have risen with the sun and gone to bed with it. Come inside, David. I'll get this muck off my hands. You spoke of the afternoon."

  "I came direct from the village," David replied, as he followed his uncle into the house. "I came because I thought you would like to know that there is another visitor on the way to see you."

  Richard Vont looked round and faced his nephew. His shirt was open at the throat, his trousers were tied up with little pieces of string. In whatever labour he had been engaged, it had obviously been of a strenuous character. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

  "What's that, David?" he demanded. "A visitor?"

  "Marcia is at the Mandeleys Arms," David told him. "I am taking it for granted that she is on her way to see you."

  Vont turned deliberately away, and David heard his heavy feet ascending the staircase. In a few moments he called downstairs. His voice was as usual.

  "Step round this afternoon, lad, if you think it's well."

  David passed out of the little garden, crossed the strip of park, and, taking the wheel, drove slowly round by the longer route to Broomleys. He passed before the front of the Abbey—a mansion of the dead, with row after row of closed blinds, masses of smokeless chimneys, and patches of weeds growing thick in the great sweep before the house. Even with its air of pitiless desertion, its severe, semi-ecclesiastical outline, its ruined cloisters empty to the sky on one wing, its unbroken and gloomy silence, the place had its atmosphere. David slackened the speed of his car, paused for a moment and looked back at the little creeper-covered cottage on the other side of the moat. So those two had faced one another through the years—the Abbey, silent, magnificent, historical, with all the placid majesty of its countless rows of windows; its chapel, where Mandeleys for generations had been christened and buried,—at its gates the little cottage, whose garden was filled with spring flowers, and from whose single stack of chimneys the smoke curled upwards. Even while he watched, Richard Vont stood there upon the threshold with a great book under his arm.

  David shivered a little as he threw in the clutch, passed on round the back of the building and through the iron gates of the ancient dower house. He felt a little sigh of relief as he pulled up in front of the long, grey house, in front of which Sylvia Laycey was waiting to receive him. She waved her hand gaily and looked with admiration at the car.

  "They are all here, Mr. Thain," she exclaimed,—"Mr. Merridrew and father and your own builder. Come along and quarrel about the fixtures. I thought I had better stay with you because dad loses his temper so."

  David descended almost blithely from his car. He was back again in a human atmosphere, and the pressure of the girl's fingers was an instant relief to him.

  "I am not going to quarrel with any one," he declared. "I shall do exactly what Mr. Muddicombe tells me—and you."

  She was a very pleasant type of young Englishwoman—distinctly pretty, fair-skinned, healthy and good-humoured. Notwithstanding the fact that their acquaintance was of the briefest, David was already conscious of her charm.

  "You'll find me, in particular, very grasping," she declared, as they entered the long, low hall. "I want to make everything I can out of you, so that daddy and I can have a real good two months in London. I don't believe you know the value of things a bit, do you—except of railways and those colossal things? Cupboards, for instance? Do you know anything about cupboards? And are you going to allow us anything for the extra bathroom we put in?"

  "Well, I am rather partial to bathrooms," he confessed, "and I should hate you to take it away with you."

  She drew a sigh of relief.

  "So long as you look upon the bathroom matter reasonably, I am quite sure we shan't quarrel. Tell me about Lady Letitia, please? Is she quite well—and the Marquis and all of them? And when are they coming down?"

  "They are quite well," he told her, "and Lady Letitia sent you her love. They talk of coming down almost at once."

  "I do hope they will," she replied, "because when we leave here dad and I are going to stay for a week or so with some friends quite near. There! Did you hear that no
ise? That's daddy stamping because he is getting impatient."

  "Then perhaps—" David suggested.

  "I suppose we'd better," she interrupted. "Be lenient about the bathroom, please. And if you could manage not to notice that the dining room wants papering, you'd be an angel. This way."

  CHAPTER XIX

  David proved himself such a very satisfactory incoming tenant that the Colonel insisted upon his staying to lunch and hastened off into the cellar to find a bottle of old Marsala, of which he proposed that they should partake with a dry biscuit before Mr. Merridrew's departure. Sylvia sank into a low chair with a little exclamation of despair.

  "Now daddy's done it!" she exclaimed. "Are you hungry, Mr. Thain?"

  "Not very—yet," David replied, glancing at his watch. "You see, it's only half-past eleven."

  "Because," she said impressively, "there are exactly three rather skinny cutlets in the house. All the servants left this morning—'all', I said. We only have two!—and an old woman from the village is coming up at half-past twelve to cook them. One was for me and two were for father. Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do?"

  David smiled.

  "Well," he observed, "I was distinctly asked to luncheon, and I accepted. Haven't you anything—"

  "Anything what?" she asked patiently.

  "Tinned in the house, or that sort of thing?" he suggested, a little vaguely.

  "Of course we haven't," she replied. "Don't you know that we are all packed up and leaving to-morrow? It's the biggest wonder in the world that we have any biscuits to eat with that precious Marsala."

  "Why not," he proposed hopefully, "put on your hat and motor into Fakenham with me? I suppose there is a butcher's shop there. We can buy something together."

  She sprang to her feet.

  "And you can choose exactly what you like!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Thain, you are delightful! That is the best of you Americans. You are full of resource. I shan't be a minute getting a hat and a pair of gloves."