The Wicked Marquis Part 25

"You are like all women," he declared furiously. "You complicate every situation in life by thinking of other people. Think for yourself, Marcia. What about your own future? I promise you that your Marquis would think for himself, if he were up against a similar problem. He is getting all he wants. Are you? Of course you aren't!"

"Does anybody get all they want out of life?"

"It is generally their own fault if they don't get the main things," he insisted. "But, see here, I'll attack you with your own weapons. Here am I, forty-one years old, in love with you since I was thirty-two.

What about those nine years? I am dropping into the ways of untidy, unsatisfactory bachelordom. I only order new clothes when some friend chaffs me into it, and if I do I forget the ties and s.h.i.+rts and those sorts of things. I've lost all interest in myself. I loaf at the club, play auction bridge when I might be doing something a great deal better, and drink a whisky and soda when any one asks me. I hang on to the business, but when I've finished my work I drift. In another five years' time I shall begin to stoop, I shall live with cigar ash all over my clothes, and I shall have to be taken home from the club every other night. Your doing, Marcia--your responsibility."

"I should think," she said severely, "that your self-respect--"

"Oh, don't bother about my self-respect!" he interrupted. "I am a human being, and I tell you, Marcia, that every man needs something in his life to lift him just a little, to live up to, not down to. There is only one person in the world can take that place for me. I'm a clear charge upon your hands. You know that I love you, that you've driven all thoughts of other women out of my head, that you keep me beating against the walls of my impotence every time we meet and part.

I am perfectly certain, if you don't come down to the world of common sense, I shall sink into the world of melodrama and go and tackle your Marquis myself. He must let you go."

"Do you want me as much as all that?" she asked, a little wistfully.

He was by her side in a moment, inspired by the break in her tone, the sweet, soft look in her eyes. He sank on one knee by the side of her couch and took her hands in his, kissing them one after the other.

"Ah, Marcia," he murmured, "I want you more than anything else on earth! I want you so much that, when you come, you will make the years that have pa.s.sed seem like nothing but a nightmare, and the minutes, as they come, years of happiness. I am awkward, I know, sometimes, and gruff and morose, but so is any man who spends his life fretting for the thing he can't get. I only ask you, dear, to be fair. I have never said an unkind word about the man for whom you have cared so long. I only say now that you belong to me. I am not a bit foolish--I am not even jealous--only your time has come, your time for that little home in the country, a husband always with you, and, I hope to Heaven, children."

She took his face between her hands and kissed him. He understood her so perfectly that, as she drew her lips away, he rose and stood on the hearthrug, a conqueror yet humble.

"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 a.s.sented.

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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d some one would send him to a decent tailor!" a third man yawned.

Borden rang the bell for a drink.

"d.i.c.kinson was right," he said. "I've found a new star."

Let.i.tia, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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," Let.i.tia 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. Let.i.tia 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!" Let.i.tia 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," Let.i.tia 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," Let.i.tia 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 a.s.sociations. The choice, therefore, is not a large one, and you are spared the very undignified compet.i.tive 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 ill.u.s.trious 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," Let.i.tia replied, without enthusiasm. "I only hope I shall find it satisfactory. I didn't mean to say 'yes' for at least another year."