"That's a terrible old man of yours, Reginald," the former observed, glancing over her shoulder. "I never came across such a person off the boards at Drury Lane."
"He is an infernal nuisance," the Marquis grumbled. "It seems absurd, but he gets on my nerves. Day by day, there he sits, wet or fine. You can't see his lips move, but you can always feel sure that he is hunting up choice bits of damnation out of the Old Testament and hurling them across at me."
"I have come to the conclusion," his sister decided, "that he is out of his mind. An ignorant man who lives with one idea all his life is apt to lose his reason. He has never attempted any violence, has he?"
"Never," the Marquis replied, "but since you have mentioned it, Caroline, I always have a queer sensation when I am that side of the house. It is just about the distance to be picked off nicely with a rifle. I can't think why he doesn't do it—why he contents himself with abuse."
"I am going to consult Mr. Thain about him," his companion said. "A man of his robust common sense is much more likely to influence a lunatic like Vont than you or I.—So this is where our millionaire hermit is hidden," she went on, as they reached the gate. "Dear me, the place has changed!"
"It will soon be in order again," the Marquis observed. "Thain has a dozen men at work in the grounds, and he is having the rooms done up, one by one. He lives in the library, I think, and the bedroom over it."
They passed through the plantation and into the gardens. Thain was there, talking to one of the workmen. He came to meet them with a somewhat forced smile of welcome upon his lips.
"This is very unexpected," he declared, as he shook hands. "I should have called upon you this afternoon, Duchess."
"I should think so!" she replied severely. "Will you be so good as to tell me at once what you mean by refusing my niece's invitation to dine?"
He hesitated for a moment, then he smiled. There was something very attractive about his visitor's frank directness of speech and manner.
"I refused," he admitted, glancing around to where the Marquis was engaged in conversation with a gardener, "because I didn't want to come."
"But I am there, you stupid person!" she reminded him. "You are invited to dine with me! I know you don't get on with Lady Letitia, and I know you don't like large parties, but there are only half a dozen of us there, and I promise you my whole protection. Show me something at once. I want to talk to you. Those Dorothy Perkins roses will do, at the other end of the lawn."
He walked in silence by her side. She waited until they were well out of earshot.
"David Thain," she said, "have I shown an interest in you or have I not?"
"You have been extraordinarily kind," he confessed.
"And in return," she continued, "you have decided to avoid me. I won't have it. Are you afraid that I might want you to make love to me?"
He shook his head.
"I am sure you wouldn't find that amusing," he declared. "In the society of your sex I generally behave pretty well as your brother would do if he were dumped down in an office in Wall Street."
"I honestly believe that you are diffident," she admitted. "I never met a millionaire before who was, and at first I thought it was a pose with you. Perhaps I was mistaken. You really don't think, then, that you have any attraction apart from your millions?"
"I'm quite sure that I haven't," he answered bitterly.
"A love affair!" she exclaimed, looking into his face scrutinisingly. "And I knew nothing of it!—I, your sponsor, your lady confessor, your—well, heaven knows what I might not be if you would only behave decently! A love affair, indeed! That little yellow-haired chit, I suppose, who is down here raving about you all the time—Sylvia What's-her-name?"
He smiled.
"I know very little of Miss Sylvia Laycey," he said, "beyond the fact that she seems very charming."
"I suppose you ought to marry," she continued regretfully. "It seems a pity, but they'll never leave you alone till you do. What is your type, then? Sylvia Laycey is much too young for you. I suppose you know that."
"I don't think I have one," he answered.
"That's because I am married, of course," she went on. "If you were a sensible man, you would settle down to adore me and not think of anybody else at all. But you won't do it. You'll want to buy palaces and yachts and town houses and theatres, like all the rest of the superfluously rich, and you'll want a musical comedy star to wear your jewels, and a wife to entertain your friends."
"Well, you must admit that I haven't been in a hurry about any of these things yet," he observed.
She looked at him keenly.
"Look here, my young friend," she said, "you haven't made the one mistake I warned you against, have you? You haven't fallen in love with Letitia?"
He laughed almost brutally.
"I am not quite such a fool as that," he assured her.
"Well, I should hope not," she enjoined severely. "Besides, as a matter of fact, Letitia is engaged. Her young man is staying at Mandeleys now. Just answer me one question, David—why did you refuse that invitation to dinner?"
"Because I didn't feel like coming," he answered. "I thought it would probably be a large party, most of them neighbours, and every one would have to make an effort to entertain me because I am a stranger, and don't know their ways or anything about them."
"There you are again!" she exclaimed. "Just as sensitive as you can be, for all your millions! You'll come, David—please?"
"Of course I will, if you ask me like that," he assented.
She turned to her brother, who was approaching.
"Success!" she announced. "Mr. Thain has promised to dine. He refused under a misapprehension."
"We are delighted," the Marquis said. "At a quarter past eight, Mr. Thain."
CHAPTER XXXI
Gossett in the country was a very different person from Gossett in Grosvenor Square. An intimate at Mandeleys was not at all the same thing as a caller in town, and David found himself welcomed that evening with a grave but confidential smile.
"The drawing-room here is closed for the present, sir," he observed, after he had superintended the bestowal of David's coat and hat upon an underling. "We are using the gallery on the left wing. If you will be so kind as to come this way."
David was escorted into a long and very lofty apartment, cut off from the hall by some wonderful curtains, obviously of another generation. The walls were hung with pictures and old-fashioned weapons. At the far end was a small stage, and at the opposite extremity a little box which had apparently at some time been used by musicians. Some large beech logs were burning in an open fireplace. The room contained nothing in the way of furniture except a dozen or so old-fashioned chairs and a great settee.
"These large rooms," Gossett explained, "get a little damp, sir, so his lordship desired a fire here."
He had scarcely disappeared when a door which led into the gallery was opened, and Lady Letitia came slowly down the stairs. The place was lit only by hanging lamps, and David's impression of her, as he turned around, were a little unsubstantial. All the way down the stairs and across that strip of floor, it seemed to him that he could see nothing but her face. She carried herself as usual, there was all the pride of generations of Mandeleys in her slow, unhurried movements and the carriage of her head. But her face.—David gripped at the back of one of the tall chairs. He made at first no movement towards her. This was the face of a woman into which he looked. The change there was so complete that the high walls seemed to melt away. It was just such a vision as he might have conceived to himself. Her words checked the fancies which were pouring into his brain. He became again the puzzled but everyday dinner guest.
"I am very glad that you have come, Mr. Thain," she said, giving him her hand, "and I am very glad indeed to see you alone, even if it is only for a moment, because I feel—perhaps it is my thoughts that feel—that they owe you an amende."
"You are very kind," he replied, a little bewildered. "I am glad
to be here. What have you ever done which needs apology?"
"I spoke of my thoughts," she reminded him, with a little smile. "What I once thought, or rather feared, I am now ashamed of, and now that I have told you so I am more at ease."
She stood up by his side, little flashes of firelight lighting her soft white skin, gleaming upon the soft fabric of her gown. She wore no ornaments. The Mandeleys pearls, generally worn by the unmarried women of the family, were reposing in the famous vaults of a West End pawnbroker. Her strong, capable fingers were innocent of even a single ring, although upon her dressing table there was even at that moment reposing a very beautiful pearl one, concerning which she had made some insignificant criticism with only one object, an object which she refused to admit even to herself. David remained silent through sheer wonder. He had a sudden feeling that he had been admitted, even if for only these few moments, into the inner circle of her toleration—perhaps even more than that.
"I hurried down," she explained, "just to say these few words, and I see that I was only just in time."
The curtain had been raised without their noticing it, and the Duchess, with Grantham by her side, had entered. There was a slight frown upon the latter's forehead; the Duchess was humming softly to herself.
"Well, Sir Anthony, so you've kept your word," she said to David, when he had shaken hands with Grantham. "I can see quite well what the country is going to do for you, unless you are looked after. The amiable misanthrope is the part you have in your mind. Gracious! Motors outside! Have we got a party, Letitia?"
Letitia, who to David's keen observation seemed already to have lost something of that strange new quality which she had shown to him only a few moments ago, shook her head.
"The Vicar and Mrs. Vicar, and the Turnbulls, and Sylvia's father."
"I am not going to be bored," the Duchess declared firmly. "I insist upon sitting next to Mr. Thain. How pretty Sylvia looks! And what a becoming colour! Now listen to me, David Thain," she went on, drawing him a little on one side, "you are not to flirt with that child. It's like shooting them before they begin to fly. You understand?"
"Not guilty," David protested. "I can assure you that I am a passive victim."
"Silly little goose," the Duchess murmured under her breath, "waiting there for you to go and speak to her, with all sorts of sentimental nonsense shining out of her great eyes, too. I shall go and talk to old General Turnbull till the gong goes. Why we can't have dinner punctually with a small party like this, I can't imagine."
Sylvia was certainly glad to welcome David. Her father came up in a few moments and shook hands heartily.
"Still buy your own cutlets, eh, Mr. Thain?" he asked. "Jolly good cutlets they were, too!"
"I suppose you have a housekeeper and all sorts of things," Sylvia laughed, "and live in what they call regal magnificence."
David's protest was almost eager.
"I have a man and his wife who came down with me from London," he said, "and one or two servants—very few, I can assure you. Won't you come and try my housekeeping, Colonel, before you move on, and bring Miss Sylvia?"
"With pleasure, my boy," the Colonel declared. "We leave for town next Saturday. Any day between now and then that suits Sylvia."
Dinner was announced, and David found himself placed at a round table between the Duchess and Sylvia. The former looked around the banqueting hall with a shiver.
"Reginald," she protested, "why on earth do you plant us in the middle of a vault like this? Why on earth not open up some of the smaller rooms?"
The Marquis smiled deprecatingly. His extreme pallor of the last few days had disappeared. He seemed younger, and his tone was more alert.
"This room is really a weakness of mine," he confessed. "I like a vaulted roof, and I rather like the shadows. It isn't damp, if that is what you are thinking of, Caroline. We have had fires in it ever since we came down—timber being the only thing for which we don't have to pay," he added.
"It makes one feel so insignificant," the Duchess sighed. "If you were dining fifty or sixty people, of course, I should love it, but a dozen of us—why, we seem like spectral mites! Look at old Grand-Uncle Philip staring at us," she went on, gazing at one of the huge pictures opposite. "Pity you cannot afford to have electric light here, Reginald, and have it set in the frames."
"A most unpleasant idea!" her brother objected. "Confess, now, if you could see two rows of ancestors, all illuminated, looking at you while you ate, wouldn't it make you feel greedy?"
The conversation drifted away and became general. The Duchess leaned towards her neighbour.
"I think I am rather sorry I came here," she whispered.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because I find you disappointing. I thoroughly enjoyed discovering you upon the steamer. You were delightfully primitive, an absolute cave-dweller, but you quite repaid my efforts to make a human being of you. You were really almost as interesting when we first met in London. And now, I don't know what it is, but you seem to have gone thousands of miles away again. You don't seem properly human. Don't you like women, or have you got some queer scheme in your head which keeps you living like a man with his head in the clouds? Or are you in love?"
"I haven't settled down to idleness yet, perhaps," he suggested.
"Of course," she went on, "you ought to be in love with me, and miserable about it, but I am horribly afraid you aren't. I believe you have matrimonial schemes in your mind. I believe that your affections are so well-trained that they mean to trot all along the broad way to St. George's, Hanover Square."
"And would you advise something different?" he asked bluntly.
"My dear man, why am I here?" she expostulated. "I have a fancy for having you devoted to me. What I mean to do with it when I have captured your heart, I am not quite sure."
Every one was listening to a story which old General Turnbull was telling. Even Sylvia had leaned across the table. David turned and looked steadily into his companion's face.
"It seems to me," he said, "that only a very short time ago, Duchess, out of solicitude for my extreme ignorance, you warned me against setting my affections too high."
"I was speaking then of marriage," she replied coolly.
"I see! And yet," he went on, "I am not quite sure that I do see. Is there any radical difference between marriage and a really intimate friendship between a man and a woman?"
She smiled. Her slight movement towards him was almost a caress.
"My dear, unsophisticated cave-dweller!" she murmured. "Marriage is an alliance which lasts for all time. It is apt, is it not, to leave its stamp upon future generations. Great friendships have existed amongst people curiously diverse in tastes and temperament and position. A certain disparity, in fact, is rather the vogue."
"I begin to understand," he admitted. "That accounts for the curious club stories which one is always having dinned into one's ears, hatefully uninteresting though they are, of Lady So-and-So entertaining a great fiddler at her country house, or some other Society lady dancing in a singular lack of costume for the pleasure of artists in a borrowed studio."
"You are not nearly so nice-minded as I thought you were," the Duchess snapped.
"It is just my painful efforts to understand," he protested.
"Any one but an idiot would have understood long ago," she retorted.
David turned to his left-hand neighbour.
"The Duchess is being unkind," he said. "Will you please take some notice of me?"
"I'd love to," she replied. "I was just thinking that you were rather neglecting me. I want to know all about America, please, and American people."
"I am afraid," he told her, "that I know much more about America than I do about American people. All my life, since I left Harvard, I have been busy making money. I never went into Society over there. I never accepted an invitation if I could help it. When I had any time to spare I went and camped out, up in the Adirondacks, or further afield still, when I could. We h
ad lots of sport, and we were able to lead a simple life, well away from the end of the cable."
"And you killed bears and things, I suppose?" she said. "How lucky that you are fond of sport! It makes living in England so easy."
He smiled.
"I am not so sure," he confessed, "that I should consider England quite so much of a sporting country as she thinks herself."
"What heresy!" the Marquis exclaimed, leaning forward.
"Of course, I didn't know that I was going to be overheard," David said good-humouredly, "but I must stick to it. I mean, of course, sport as apart from games."
"Shooting?" the Marquis queried.
"I am afraid I don't consider that shooting at birds, half of them hand-reared, is much of a sport," David continued. "Have you ever tried pig-sticking, or lying on the edge of a mountain after three hours' tramp, watching for the snout of a bear?"
Letitia had broken off her conversation with Lord Charles and was leaning a little forward. The Marquis nodded sympathetically.
"Hunting, then?"
David smiled.
"You gallop over a pastoral country on a highly-trained animal, with a pack of assistant hounds to destroy one miserable, verminous creature," he said. "Of course, you take risks now and then, and the whole thing looks exceedingly nice on a Christmas card, but for thrills, for real, intense excitement, I prefer the mountain ledge and the bear, or the rounding up of a herd of wild elephants."
"Mr. Thain preserves the instincts of the savage," the Duchess observed, as she sipped her wine. "Perhaps he may be right. Civilisation certainly tends to emasculate sport."
"The sports to which Mr. Thain has alluded," the Marquis pointed out, "are the sports of the stay-at-home Englishman. Most of our younger generation—those whose careers permitted of it—have tried their hand at big game shooting. I myself," he continued reminiscently, "have never felt quite the same with a shotgun and a stream of pheasants, since a very wonderful three weeks I had in my youth, tiger hunting in India.—I see that Letitia is trying to catch your eye, Caroline."
The women left the room in a little group, their figures merging almost into indistinctness as they passed out of the lighted zone. David's eyes followed Letitia until she had disappeared. Then he was conscious that a servant was standing with a note on a salver by his side.
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