Marcia Hannaway called upon her publisher during the course of the following day. She found the ready entrée of a privileged client—with scarcely a moment's delay she was ushered into the presence of James Borden, the person who for some years now had occupied the second place in her thoughts and life.
"Anything happened, Marcia?" he enquired, after their quiet but familiar greeting. "You look as though you were bringing Fate with you."
She made herself comfortable in the easy-chair which he had drawn up to the fire. Outside, an unexpectedly cold wind made the sense of warmth doubly pleasant. She unfastened her simple furs and smiled at him a little dolefully.
"Just this," she replied, handing him a letter.
He spread it out, adjusted his eyeglasses and read it deliberately:
94, GROSVENOR SQUARE, Thursday.
My dear Marcia:
I have made enquiries with reference to the non-payment of your allowance for the last two quarters, and now enclose cheque for the amount, drawn by my agent in Norfolk and payable to yourself. I think I can promise you that no further irregularities shall occur.
I look forward to seeing you to-morrow afternoon, and I must tell you of a financial operation I am now conducting, which, if successful, may enable me to pay off the mortgages which render the Norfolk estates so unremunerative.
I trust that you are well, dear. I have ordered Carlton White's to send in a few flowers, which I hope will arrive safely.
Yours,REGINALD.
James Borden read the letter carefully, glanced at the small coronet at the top of the paper, and folded it up.
"I'm sorry, Marcia," he said simply.
She made a little grimace.
"My dear man," she confessed, "so am I. After all, though, I am not sure that the money makes all the difference. You see, if he really were too poor—or rather if his lawyers couldn't raise the money to send to me—I fancy that I should feel just the same."
The publisher turned his chair round towards the fire. He was a man of barely middle age, although his black hair was besprinkled with grey and growing a little thin at the temples. His features were good, but his face was a little thin, and his clothes were scarcely as tidy, or the appointments of his office so comfortable as his name and position in the publishing world might have warranted. Marcia, who had been looking at him while he read, leaned forward and brushed the cigarette ash from his coat sleeve.
"Such an untidy man!" she declared, straightening his tie. "I am not at all sure that you deserve to have lady clients calling upon you. Were you late last night?"
"A little," he confessed.
"That means about one or two, I suppose," she went on reprovingly.
"I dined at the club and stayed on," he told her. "There was nothing else to do except work, and I was a little tired of that."
"Any fresh stuff in—interesting stuff, I mean?"
He shook his head.
"Three more Russian novels," he replied, "all in French and want translating, of course. The only one I have read is terribly grim and sordid. I dare say it would sell. I am going to read the other two before I decide anything. Then perhaps you'll help me."
"Of course I will," she promised. "I do wish, though, James, you wouldn't stay at the club so late. How many whiskies and sodas?"
"I didn't count," he confessed.
She sighed.
"I know what that means! James, why aren't you a little more human? You get heaps of invitations to nice houses. Much better go out and make some women friends. You ought to marry, you know."
"I am quite ready to when you will marry me," he retorted.
"But, my dear man, I am bespoke," she reminded him. "You know that quite well. I couldn't possibly think of marrying anybody."
"What are you going to do with that money?" he demanded.
"I think I shall keep it," she decided. "Not to do so would hurt him terribly."
"And keeping it hurts me damnably!" he muttered.
She shook her head at him.
"We've had this over so often, haven't we? I cannot leave Reginald as long as he wants me, relies upon me as much as he does now."
"Why not?" was the almost rough demand. "He has had the best of your life."
"And he has given me a great deal of his," she retorted. "For nineteen years I have been his very dear friend. During all that time he has never broken a promise to me, never told a falsehood, never said a single word which could grate or hurt. If he has sometimes seemed a little aloof, it is because he really believes himself to be a great person. He believes in himself immensely, you know, James—in the privileges and sanctity of his descent. It seems so strange in this world, where we others see other things. If I only dared, I would write a novel about it."
"But you don't care for him any more?"
"Care for him?" she repeated. "How could I ever stop caring for him! He was my first lover, and has been my only one."
"Let me ask you a question," James Borden demanded suddenly. "Don't you ever feel any grudge against him? He took you away from a very respectable position in life. He ruined all sorts of possibilities. He was fifteen or twenty years older than you were, and he knew the world. You pleased him, and he deliberately entrapped your affections. Be honest, now. Don't you sometimes hate him for it?"
"Never," she answered without hesitation. "I was, as you say, most respectably placed—a teacher at a village school—and I might have married a young farmer, or bailiff's son, or, with great luck, a struggling young doctor, and lived a remarkably rural life, but, as you have observed, in great respectability. My dear James, I should have hated it. I was, I think, nineteen years old when Reginald, in a most courtly fashion, suggested that I should come to London with him, and I have exactly the same feelings to-day about my acceptance of his proposal as I had then."
"You are a puzzle," he declared. "You wouldn't be, of course, only you're such a—such a good woman."
"Of course I am, James," she laughed. "I am good, inasmuch as I am faithful to any tie I may make. I am kind, or try to be, to all my fellow creatures, and I should hate to do a mean thing. The only difference between me and other women is that I prefer to choose what tie I should consider sacred. I claimed the liberty to do that, and I exercised it. As to my right to do so, I have never had the faintest possible shadow of hesitation."
"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.
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 spare, 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.
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.
He crossed the last stile and was now in the park proper. Several villagers were strolling about under the trees, and they looked at this newcomer, with his dark-coloured clothes and strangely-shaped hat, with some surprise. Nevertheless, he held uninterruptedly on his way until he reached the broad drive which led to the Abbey. He walked on the turf by the side of it, over the bridge which crossed the stream, through the inner iron gates, beyond which the village people were not allowed to pass, and so to the well-remembered spot. On his right was the house—a strange, uneven building, at times ecclesiastical, here and there domestic, always ancient, with its wings of cloisters running almost down to the moat which surrounded it. And just over the moat, crossed by that light iron handbridge, with its back against what he remembered as a plantation, but which had now become a wood, the little red brick cottage, smothered all over with creepers, its tiny garden ablaze with flowers, its empty rows of dog kennels, its deserted line of coops. David glanced for a moment at the drawn blinds of the Abbey. Then he crossed the footbridge and the few yards of meadow, lifted the latch of the gate and, walking up the gravel path, came to a sudden standstill. A man who was seated almost hidden by a great cluster of fox-gloves rose to his feet.
"It's you, then, lad!" he exclaimed, holding out both his hands. "You're welcome! There's no one to the house—there won't be for a quarter of an hour—so I'll wring your hands once more. It's a queer world, this, David. You're back with me here, where I brought you up as a stripling, and yon's the Abbey. Sit you down, boy. I am not the man I was since I came here."
David Thain dragged an old-fashioned kitchen chair from the porch, and sat by his uncle's side. Richard Vont, although he was still younger than his sixty-four years, seemed to his nephew curiously changed during the last week. The hard, resolute face was disturbed. The mouth, kept so tight through the years, had weakened a little. There was a vague, almost pathetic agitation, in the man's face.
"You'll take no notice of me, David," his uncle went on. "I'm honest with you. These few days have been like a great, holy dream, like something one reads of in the Scriptures but never expects to see. There's old Mary Wells—she's doing for me up there. Just a word or two of surprise, and a grip of the hand, and no more. And there's the Abbey—curse it!—not a stone gone, only the windows are blank. You see the weeds on the lawn, David? Do you mark the garden behind? They tell me there's but two gardeners there to do the work of twenty. And the drive—look at it as far as you can see—moss and weed! They're coming down in the world, these Mandeleys, David. Even this last little lawsuit, the lawyers told me, has cost the Marquis nineteen thousand pounds. God bless you for your wealth, David! It's money that counts in these days."
David produced a pouch of tobacco from his pocket and handed it over to his uncle, who filled a pipe eagerly.
"That's thoughtful of you, David," he declared. "I'd forgotten to buy any, and that's a fact, for I can't stand the village yet. You're looking strange-like, David."
"And I feel it," was the quiet answer. "Uncle, hasn't it made any difference to you, this coming back?"
"In what way?" the old man asked.
"Well, I don't know. I walked across those fields to the park, and I seemed suddenly to feel more like a boy again, and I felt that somehow I was letting go of things. Do you know what I mean?"
"Letting go of things," Richard Vont repeated suspiciously. "No!"
"Well, somehow or other," David continued, as he filled his own pipe and lit it, "I found myself looking back through the years, and I wondered whether we hadn't both let one thing grow too big in our minds. Life doesn't vary much here. Things are very much as we left them, and it's all rather wonderful. I felt a little ashamed, as I came up through the park, of some of the things we've planned and sworn. Didn't you feel a little like that, uncle? Can you sit here and think of the past, and remember all that burden we carried, and not feel inclined to let it slip, or just a little of it slip, from our shoulders?"
Vont laid down his pipe. He rose to his feet. His fingers suddenly gripped his nephew's shoulder. He turned him towards the house.
"Listen, David," he said; "there's twilight an hour away yet, but it will soon be here. The blackbirds are calling for it, and the wind's dropping. Now you see. That was her room," he added, touching the window, "and there's the door out, just the same. You see that tree there? I was crouching behind that with my gun ready loaded, and there was murder in my heart—I tell you that, boy. I watched the Abbey. I was supposed to be safe in Fakenham Town, safe for a good two hours, and I lay there and watched because I knew, and no one came. And then I heard a whisper. I turned my head, although I was most afeared, and out of that door—that door from Marcia's room, David—I saw him come. I saw her arms come out and draw him back, and then I began to breathe hard, but the trees were thick that way—I'd been looking for him coming from the Abbey—-and they stole out together, arm in arm. I was so near them that they must have heard me groan, for Marcia started. And then, before I knew what was happening, he—the Marquis, mind—had struck up my gun, caught it by the barrel and sent it flying. My hand was on his throat, but he was as strong as I was, in those days, and a mighty wrestler. It's my shame, boy, after all these years to have to confess it, but he got the better of me. I was crazy with anger, and he had me down. And then he stood aside and bade me get up, and my strength seemed all gone. He stood there looking at me contemptuously. 'Don't make a fool of yourself, Vont,' he said. 'Your daughter and I understand one another, and our concerns have nothing to do with you. If you have anything to say to me, come up to the Abbey to-morrow. You'll find your gun in the thicket.' He turned round and he kissed Marcia's fingers, just like I'd seen them do in the distance at their fine parties up there, and he strolled away. There was the gun in the thicket, and he knew it, and I knew it, and I couldn't move, and he went. And all I could hear was Marcia crying, and those birds singing behind, and I just slipped away into the wood."
"Uncle, is it worth while bringing this all up again?" David interrupted.
"Aye, it's worth while!" the old man insisted fiercely. "It's worth while for fear I should forget, for the old place has its cling on me. That next day I went to the Abbey, and I saw the Marquis. He was quite cool, sent the servants out—he'd no weapon near—and he talked a lot that I don't understand and never shall understand, but it was about Marcia, and that she was his, and was leaving with him for London that evening. I just asked him one question. 'It's for shame, then?' I asked. And he looked at me just as though I were some person whom he was trying to make understand, who didn't quite speak the language. And he said—'Your daughter made her choice months ago, Vont. She will live the life she desires to live. I am sorry to take her away from you. Think it over, and try and feel sensible about it.' It was then I felt a strange joy, that I've never been able rightly to understand. I'd just remembered that the cottage was mine, and I had a sudden feeling that I wanted to sit at the end of the garden and watch the Abbey and curse it, curse it with a Bible on my knee, till its stones fell apart and the grass grew up from the walks and the damp grew out in blotches on the walls. And that's why I've come back after all these years."
"And you're just the same?" David asked curiously. "You feel just the same about him?"
"Don't you, my lad?" his uncle demanded. "You're not telling me that you're climbing down?"
David took the old man's arm.
"On the contrary, uncle," he said, "my promised share of the work is done. I hold his promissory notes for forty thousand pounds, due in three months. I have sold him some shares that aren't worth forty thousand pence, and won't be for many a year. I've cheated him, if you like, but when the three months comes you can make him a bankrupt, if you will. I'll give you the notes."
Richard Vont drew himself up. He turned his face towards the Abbey, growing a little indistinct now in the falling twilight.
"It's grand hearing," was all he said. "There's Mary, coming round with the supper, boy. I'll take the liberty of asking you to have a bite with me and a glass of ale, but I'll not forget that you're the great David Thain, the millionaire from America, who took kindly notice of me on the steamer. Come this way, sir," he went on, throwing open the cottage door. "It's a queer little place, but it's a novelty for you American gentlemen. Step right in, sir. Mrs. Wells," he announced, "this is a gentleman who was kind to me upon the steamer, and he promised that if ever he was this way he'd drop in. He'll take some supper with me. You'll do your best for us?"
The old lady looked very hard at David Thain, and she dropped a curtsey.
"From America, too," she murmured. "'Tis a wonderful country! Aye, I'll do my best, Richard Vont."
Mr. Wadham, Junior, a morning or so later, rang the bell at Number 94 Grosvenor Square and aired himself for a moment upon the broad doorstep, filled with a comfortable sense that this time, at least, in his prospective interview, he was destined to disturb the disconcerting equanimity of his distinguished client. He was duly admitted and ushered into the presence of the Marquis, who laid down the newspaper which he was reading, nodded affably to his visitor and pointed to a chair.
"Your request for an interview, Mr. Wadham," the former said, "anticipated my own desire to see you. Pray be seated. I am entirely at your service."
Mr. Wadham paused for a moment and decided to cross his legs. He was already struggling against that enervating sense of insignificance which his client's presence inevitably imposed upon him.
"We heard yesterday morning from Mr. Merridrew," he commenced. "He made us a remittance which was four hundred pounds short of what we expected. His explanation was that your lordship had received that sum from him."
"Quite right, Mr. Wadham," the Marquis assented affably. "Quite right. I was in the neighbourhood, and, finding Mr. Merridrew with a considerable sum of money in hand, I took from him precisely the amount you have stated."
"Your lordship has perhaps overlooked the fact," Mr. Wadham continued, "that we are that amount short of the interest on the Fakenham mortgage—Number Seven mortgage, we usually call it."
"Dear me!" the Marquis observed. "Surely such a trifling sum does not disturb your calculations? You do not run my affairs on so narrow a margin as this, I trust, Mr. Wadham?"
"It isn't a question of a narrow margin, your lordship," Mr. Wadham replied. "There is, as a rule, no margin at all. We usually have to make the amount up by overdrawing, or by advancing it ourselves. This time the firm wish me to point out that we are unable to do either."
"Dear me! Dear me!" the Marquis ejaculated, in a tone of some concern. "I had no idea, Mr. Wadham, if you will forgive my saying so, that your firm was in so impecunious a position."
"Impecunious?" the lawyer murmured, with his eyes fixed upon his client. "I scarcely follow your lordship."
"Did I not understand you to say," the Marquis continued, "that this trifle of four hundred pounds has upset your arrangements to such an extent that you are unable to make your customary payments on my behalf?"
"Will your lordship forgive my pointing out," Mr. Wadham explained, "that these payments are on your account, and that it is no part of the business of solicitors to finance their clients, without a special arrangement? We have our own more lucrative investments continually open to us, and we are at the present moment several thousand pounds out of pocket on account of recent law expenses."
"The whole thing," the Marquis pronounced, "seems to me very trifling. State in precise terms, if you please, Mr. Wadham, the object of your visit."
"To ask for your lordship's instructions as to the payment of twelve hundred pounds interest, due to-morrow," Mr. Wadham replied. "We have eight hundred pounds in hand from Mr. Merridrew. So far from having any other funds of your lordship's at our disposal, we are, as I have pointed out, your creditor for a somewhat considerable amount."
The Marquis was leaning back in his chair, the tips of his long, elegant fingers pressed gently together.
"It appears to me, Mr. Wadham," he said quietly, "that your visit is, in a sense, an admonitory one. Your firm resents—am I not right?—the fact that I have found it convenient to help myself to a portion of the revenue accruing from my estate."
"We should not presume for a moment to take up such an attitude," the lawyer protested. "On the other hand, the four hundred pounds in question requires replacement by to-morrow."
"And you find the raising of that sum inconvenient, eh, Mr. Wadham?"
The young man was distinctly ill at ease. His instructions were to be firm and dignified but by no means to offend; to deliver a formal protest against this tampering with funds already dedicate, but to do or say nothing which would give the Marquis any excuse for reprisals against the firm. Mr. Wadham began to wonder whether perhaps he was a person of small tact, or whether these instructions were more than usually difficult to carry out.
"There is no sacrifice, your lordship," he said slowly, "which my firm would hesitate to make in your interests and the interests of the Mandeleys estate. At the same time, the unexpected necessity for finding these sums of money is, I must confess, at times a strain upon us."
The Marquis nodded sympathetically. He rose to his feet, crossed the room towards his desk, which he unlocked with a key attached to a gold chain, and returned with a bundle of scrip in his hand.
"I have here, Mr. Wadham," he announced, "scrip in a very famous oil company, the face value of the shares being, I believe, a trifle over forty thousand pounds. I, in fact, paid that price for them at the beginning of the week."
The young lawyer uncrossed his legs and swallowed hard. He was prepared for many shocks, but this one seemed outside the region of all human probability.
"Did I understand your lordship to say that you had paid forty thousand pounds for them?" he gasped.
The Marquis assented with an equable little nod.
"I was somewhat favoured in the matter," he admitted, "as the value of the shares has, I believe, already considerably increased. The amount I actually paid for them was, in round figures, forty thousand and one hundred pounds—transfer duty, or something of that sort. I have little head for figures, as you know, Mr. Wadham. You had better take these—not for sale, mind, but for deposit at one of my banks. You will probably find that, under the circumstances, they will permit you to overdraw an additional five hundred pounds on my account, without embarrassing your own finances."
Mr. Wadham, Junior, took the bundle of scrip into his hand, and glanced hastily through it.
"The Pluto Oil Company of Arizona," he murmured reflectively.
"The name of the company is doubtless unknown to you," the Marquis observed indulgently; "they are, in fact, only just commencing operations—but it is the opinion of my friend and financial adviser, Mr. David Thain, that the forty thousand pounds' worth of shares you have in your hand will be worth at least two hundred thousand before the end of the year."
"Mr. David Thain, the multi-millionaire?" Mr. Wadham faltered.
"The same!"
The lawyer gripped the bundle hard in one hand, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again and struck out boldly.
"As your lordship's adviser," he said, "may I enquire as to the nature of the payment which you have made? Forty thousand pounds is not a sum which either of the banks with whom your lordship has credit—"
The Marquis waved his hand.
"My dear young friend," he explained, "it was not necessary for me to resort to banks. Mr. Thain suggested voluntarily that I should give him my note of hand for the amount. He quite understood that a man whose chief interest in the country is land does not keep such a sum as forty thousand pounds lying at his banker's."
Mr. Wadham groped for his hat.
"The shares shall be deposited, and the interest, of course, paid," he murmured. "I am sorry to have troubled your lordship in the matter."
"Not at all, not at all," the Marquis replied genially. "Very pleased to see you at any time, Mr. Wadham, on any subject connected with the estates. Ah!" he added, glancing at a card which a footman at that moment had brought in, "here is my friend, Mr. David Thain. You must meet him, Mr. Wadham. Such men are rare in this country. They form most interesting adjuncts to our modern civilisation. Show Mr. Thain in, Thomas."
David Thain duly arrived. He shook hands with the Marquis and was by him presented to Mr. Wadham.
"Mr. Wadham is my legal advisor—or rather a junior representative of the firm who conduct my affairs," the Marquis explained. "I have just handed him over my shares in the Pluto Oil Company, for safe keeping."
"Very glad to know you, Mr. Thain," the young lawyer observed, reverently shaking hands. "One reads a great deal of your financial exploits in the newspapers just now."
"I really can't see," David replied, "that your press men are much better over here than in the States. In any case, Mr. Wadham, you mustn't believe all you read."
"You will give my regards to your father and the other members of your firm," the Marquis concluded, with the faintest possible indication of his head towards the door. "I shall probably have some instructions of an interesting nature to give you before long, with regard to the cancellation of, at any rate, the home estate mortgages. Ah, here is Thomas! Very much obliged for your attention, Mr. Wadham."
The lawyer made his adieux in somewhat confused fashion, and left the room with an ignominious sense of dismissal. The Marquis glanced at the clock.
"I am a creature of habit, Mr. Thain," he said. "At twelve o'clock I walk for an hour in the Park. Will you give me the honour of your company?"
"Anywhere you say," David assented. "There was just a little matter I wanted to mention—nothing important."
"Precisely," the Marquis murmured, ringing the bell. "You will return to lunch, of course? I shall take no denial. My daughter would be distressed to miss you. Gossett," he added, as they moved out into the hall, "my coat and hat, and tell Lady Letitia that Mr. Thain will lunch with us. Have you any idea, Gossett," he added, as he accepted his cane and gloves, "how to make cocktails?"
"I have a book of recipes, your lordship," was the somewhat doubtful reply.
"See that cocktails are served before luncheon," the Marquis instructed. "You see, we are not altogether ignorant of the habits of your countrymen, Mr. Thain, even if in some cases we may not ourselves have adopted them. A cocktail is, I gather, some form of alcoholic nourishment?"
Thain indulged in what was, for him, a rare luxury—a hearty laugh. He threw his head back, showing all his white, firm teeth, and the little lines at the sides of his eyes wrinkled up with enjoyment. Suddenly a voice on the stairs interposed.
"I must know the joke," Letitia declared. "How do you do, Mr. Thain? A laugh like yours makes one feel positively delirious with the desire to share it. Father, do tell me what it was?"
"To tell you the truth, my dear," the Marquis replied, quite honestly, "I am a little ignorant as to the humorous application of a remark I have just made."
"It was your father's definition of an American institution, Lady Letitia," David explained, "and I am afraid that its humour depended solely upon a certain environment which I was able to conjure up in my mind—a barroom at the Waldorf, say."
"Another disappointment," Letitia sighed.
"Mr. Thain is lunching with us, dear," her father announced.
"So glad," Letitia remarked, nodding to Thain. "We shall meet again, then."
She passed out of the front door, and David, who was very observant, noticing several things, was silent for the first few moments after her departure. She appeared, as she could scarcely fail to appear in his eyes, charming even to the point of bewilderment. Yet, although the wind was cold, she had only a small and very inadequate fur collar around her neck. Her tailormade suit showed signs of constant brushings. There was a little—a very modest little patch upon her shoes, and a very distinct darn upon her gloves. David frowned in puzzled fashion as he turned into the Park. Some of his boyish antipathies, so carefully nursed by his uncle and fostered by the atmosphere in which they lived during his early days in America, flashed into his memory, only to be instantly discarded. He remembered the drawn blinds, the weedy walks of Mandeleys; the hasty glimpse which he had had of silent, empty rooms and uncarpeted ways in the higher storeys of the mansion in Grosvenor Square.
"I am not a person," the Marquis observed, as they proceeded upon their promenade, "who needs a great deal of exercise, but I am almost a slave to habit, and for many years, when in town, it has been my custom to walk here for an hour, to exchange greetings, perhaps, with a few acquaintances, to call at my club for ten minutes and take a glass of dry sherry before luncheon. In the afternoons," he went on, "I occasionally play a round of golf at Ranelagh. Are you an expert at the game, Mr. Thain?"
"I have made blasphemous efforts," David confessed, "but I certainly cannot call myself an expert. Perhaps what is known as the American spirit has rather interfered with my efforts. You see, we want to get things done too quickly. Golf is a game eminently suited to the British temperament."
"You are doubtless right," the Marquis murmured. "That loitering backward swing, eh?—the lazy indisposition to raise one's head? I follow you, Mr. Thain. Your call this morning, by-the-by," he went on. "You have some news, perhaps, of these Pluto Oils?"
David shook his head.
"I came to see you," he announced, "upon a different matter."