The Wicked Marquis Part 15

David a.s.sented.

The Marquis collected himself. Colonel Laycey had been asked three hundred a year and was paying two hundred, a sum which, somehow or other, the Marquis had always considered his own pocket money, and which had never gone into the estate accounts. A little increase would certainly be pleasant.

"Would five hundred a year seem too much, Mr. Thain?" he asked. "I cannot for the moment remember what Colonel Laycey is paying, but I know that it is something ridiculously inadequate."

"Five hundred a year would be quite satisfactory," David agreed.

"I will have the papers drawn up and sent to you at once," the Marquis promised. "You will be able to enter into possession as soon as you like. You would like a yearly tenancy, I presume?"

"That would suit me quite well."

"You will be able, also, to resume your acquaintance with that singular old man whom you met upon the steamer--Richard Vont," the Marquis remarked, with a slight grimace. "I hear that he is in residence there."

"I have already done so," David announced.

The Marquis raised his eyebrows.

"You have probably heard his story, then, from his own lips," he observed carelessly. "I am told that he sits out on the lawn of his cottage, reading the Bible and cursing Mandeleys. It is a most annoying thing, Mr. Thain, as I dare say you can understand, to have your ex-gamekeeper entrenched, as it were, in front of your premises, hurling curses across the moat at you. That cla.s.s of person is so tenacious of ideas as well as of life. Here comes my daughter Let.i.tia, already well escorted, I see."

Let.i.tia, with Grantham by her side, waved her hand without pausing, from the other side of the broad pathway. David for a moment felt the chill of the east wind.

"Grantham," the Marquis told his companion confidentially, "is one of Lady Let.i.tia's most constant admirers. My daughter, as I dare say you have discovered, Mr. Thain, is rather an unusual young woman. Her predilections are almost anti-matrimonial. Still, I must confess that an alliance with the Granthams would give me much pleasure. I should, in that case, be enabled to give up my town house and be content with bachelor apartments--a great saving, in these hard times."

"Naturally," David murmured.

"Often, in the course of our very agreeable conversations," the Marquis went on, "I am inclined to ignore the fact of your most amazing opulence. My few friends, I am sorry to say, are in a different position. Money in this country is very scarce, Mr. Thain--very scarce, at least, on this side of Temple Bar."

David answered a little vaguely. His eyes were lifted above the heads of the scattered crowd of people through which they were pa.s.sing.

"May I ask--if it is not an impertinence," he said,--"is Lady Let.i.tia engaged to Lord Charles Grantham?"

The Marquis's manner was perhaps a shade stiffer. Mr. Thain was just given to understand that about the family matters of such a personage as the Marquis of Mandeleys there must always be a certain reticence.

"There is no formal engagement, Mr. Thain," he replied. "The fas.h.i.+on nowadays seems to preclude anything of the sort. One's daughter just brings a young man in, and, in place of the delightful betrothal of our younger days, the date for the marriage is fixed upon the spot."

Luncheon at 94 Grosvenor Square, notwithstanding the c.o.c.ktails, was an exceedingly simple meal, a fact which the Marquis himself seemed scarcely to notice. He kept his eye on his visitor's plate, however, and pa.s.sed the cutlets with an unnoticeable sigh of regret.

"Charlie wouldn't come in to lunch, father," Let.i.tia announced. "I think he was afraid you were going to ask him his intentions."

The Marquis glanced at the modic.u.m of curry with which he was consoling himself.

"Upon the whole, my dear," he said, "I am glad that he stayed away. He is a most agreeable person, but not at his best at luncheon time.

By-the-by, do you know who our new neighbour is to be at Broomleys?"

"You haven't let it?" she asked eagerly.

"This morning, my dear," her father replied, bowing slightly towards their guest. "Mr. Thain has been spending the week-end at Cromer, was offered Broomleys by the agent there, and he and I fixed up the matter only a few minutes ago."

"How perfectly delightful!" Let.i.tia exclaimed.

David glanced up quickly. He looked his hostess in the eyes.

"That is very kind of you, Lady Let.i.tia," he said. She laughed at him.

"Well, I meant it," she declared, "and I still mean it, but not, perhaps, exactly in the way it sounded. Of course, it will be very pleasant to have you for a neighbour, but to tell you the truth--you see, although we're poor we are honest--our own sojourn at Mandeleys rather depends on whether we let Broomleys, and Colonel Laycey, although he has the most delightful daughter, with whom you are sure to fall in love, was a most troublesome tenant. He was always wanting things done, wasn't he, father?"

"It is certainly a relief," the Marquis sighed, watching with satisfaction the arrival of half a Stilton cheese, a present from his son-in-law, "a great relief to find a tenant like Mr. Thain."

"I asked your agent," David remarked a little diffidently, "about the shooting."

The Marquis touched his gla.s.s.

"Serve port, Gossett," he directed,--"the light wood port, if we have any," he added a little hastily, to the obvious relief of his domestic.

"The shooting, eh, Mr. Thain?"

He sipped his wine and considered. First Broomleys, and then the shooting! The G.o.ds were very kind to him on this pleasant April morning.

"You haven't preserved lately, I understand," his guest observed.

"Not for some years," the Marquis acknowledged.

"I don't mind about that at all," David went on. "I am just American enough, you know, to find no pleasure in shooting tame birds. I shall have no parties, and I shall not be ambitious about bags. I like to prowl about myself with a gun."

His host nodded appreciatively.

"You shall have the refusal of the shooting," he promised. "At the moment I am not prepared to quote terms. My people of business can do that."

"Have you no friends in England, Mr. Thain?" Let.i.tia asked, a little abruptly.

"Very few," David replied. "I do not make friends easily."

"I always thought Americans were so sociable," she remarked. "A great many of your compatriots have settled down here, you know."

David considered the matter for a moment.

"You would smile, I suppose," he said, "if I were to tell you that there are more so-called 'sets' in American Society than in your own.

I am a very self-made man indeed, and I possess no womenkind to entertain for me. I am therefore dependent upon chance acquaintances."

"Such friends as may make your sojourn in Norfolk more agreeable, Mr.

Thain," the Marquis promised genially, "you shall most certainly find.

Mandeleys will always be open to you."

David made no immediate response. His teeth had come together with a little click. He felt a strange repugnance to lifting the gla.s.s, which the butler had just filled, to his lips. A queer little vision of Mandeleys and the cottage was there, Richard Vont, seated amongst those drooping rose bushes, his face turned towards the Abbey, his eyes full of that strange, expectant light. A sudden wave of self-disgust almost broke through a composure which had so far resisted all a.s.saults upon it. Almost he felt that he must rise from his place, tell this strange, polished, yet curiously childlike being the truth--that he was being drawn into the nets of ruin--that he was entertaining an enemy unawares.

"You must really try that wine, Mr. Thain," he heard his host say gently. "I make no excuse for not offering you vintage port. At Mandeleys I have at least the remnants of a cellar. You shall dine with us there, Mr. Thain, and I will give you what my grandfather used to declare was 1838 vintage."

David roused himself with an effort. He brushed aside the uncomfortable twinge of conscience which had suddenly depressed him, and turning away from Let.i.tia, looked his host in the eyes.

"You are very kind," he said. "I shall come with much pleasure."