The Wicked Marquis Part 46

The walls were hung with pictures and old-fas.h.i.+oned 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-fas.h.i.+oned chairs and a great settee.

"These large rooms," Gossett explained, "get a little damp, sir, so his lords.h.i.+p desired a fire here."

He had scarcely disappeared when a door which led into the gallery was opened, and Lady Let.i.tia 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 p.a.w.nbroker. 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 d.u.c.h.ess, with Grantham by her side, had entered. There was a slight frown upon the latter's forehead; the d.u.c.h.ess 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, Let.i.tia?"

Let.i.tia, 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 a.s.sure you that I am a pa.s.sive victim."

"Silly little goose," the d.u.c.h.ess murmured under her breath, "waiting there for you to go and speak to her, with all sorts of sentimental nonsense s.h.i.+ning 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 a.s.sure 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 Sat.u.r.day. Any day between now and then that suits Sylvia."

Dinner was announced, and David found himself placed at a round table between the d.u.c.h.ess and Sylvia. The former looked around the banqueting hall with a s.h.i.+ver.

"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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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, d.u.c.h.ess, 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+ps 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 had 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."