The Wicked Marquis E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Wealthy playwright and playboy Jermyn Annerley is smitten by the beautiful and talented actress Sybil Cluley. She is very successful but her life is devoted to the care of her young sister who has been ill. At Jermyn’s country estate, Sybil runs into Lord Lakenham, a roguish playboy who is equally in love with her, but also knows something of her past. Jermyn proposes, much to the chagrin of his lovely cousin Lucille, who has had her eye on him for many years. Lakenham and Lucille conspire to end the engagement. Sybil is broken hearted but puts her sister’s welfare above her own. Then Lakenham is murdered in the billiard room. A romance has become a murder mystery.

Leseprobe

Copyright

First published in 1919

Copyright © 2022 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

Reginald Philip Graham Thursford, Baron Travers, Marquis of Mandeleys, issued, one May morning, from the gloomy precincts of the Law Courts without haste, yet with certain evidences of a definite desire to leave the place behind him. He crossed first the pavement and then the street, piloted here and there by his somewhat obsequious companion, and turned along the Strand, westwards. Then, in that democratic thoroughfare, for the first time since the calamity had happened, his lips were unlocked in somewhat singular fashion.

“Well, I’m damned!” he exclaimed, with slow and significant emphasis.

His companion glanced up furtively in his direction. The Marquis, as Marquises should be, was very tall and slim, with high well-shaped nose, very little flesh upon his face, a mouth of uncertain shape and eyes of uncertain colour. His companion, as solicitors to the aristocracy should be, was of a smaller, more rotund and insignificant shape. He had the healthy complexion, however, of the week-end golfer, and he affected a certain unlegal rakishness of attire, much in vogue amongst members of his profession having connections in high circles. In his heart he very much admired the ease and naturalness with which his patron, in the heart of professional London, strode along by his side in a well-worn tweed suit, a collar of somewhat ancient design, and a tie which had seen better days.

“The judge’s decision was, without doubt, calamitous,” he confessed gloomily.

The Marquis turned in at the Savoy courtyard with the air of a habitué.

“I am in need of a brief rest and some refreshment,” he said. “You will accompany me, if you please, Mr. Wadham.”

The lawyer acquiesced and felt somehow that he had become the tail end of a procession, the Marquis’s entrance and progress through the grillroom towards the smoking room bar was marked by much deference on the part of porters, cloakroom attendants and waiters, a deference acknowledged in the barest possible fashion, yet in a manner which his satellite decided to make a study of. They reached a retired corner of the smoking room, where the Marquis subsided into the only vacant easy chair, ordered for himself a glass of dry sherry, and left his companion to select his own refreshment and pay for both.

“What,” the former enquired, “is the next step?”

“There is, alas!” Mr. Wadham replied, “no next step.”

“Exactly what do you mean by that?” the Marquis demanded, knitting his brows slightly as he sipped his sherry.

“We have reached the end,” the lawyer pronounced. “The decision given by the Court today is final.”

The Marquis set down his glass. The thing was absurd!

“Surely,” he suggested, “the House of Lords remains?”

“Without a doubt, your lordship,” Mr. Wadham assented, “but it is of no use to us in the present instance. The judge of the Supreme Court—this is, by-the-by, our third appeal—has delivered a final decision.”

The Marquis seemed vaguely puzzled.

“The House of Lords,” he persisted, “remains surely a Court of Appeal for members of my order whose claims to consideration are not always fully recognised in the democracy of the common law court.”

“I fear,” Mr. Wadham replied, with a little cough, “that the House of Lords is supposed to have other functions.”

“Other functions?”

“In an indirect sort of fashion,” Mr. Wadham continued, “it is supposed to assist in the government of the country.”

“God bless my soul!” the Marquis exclaimed.

There was a queer, intangible silence. The lawyer was quite aware that a storm was brewing, but as his distinguished client never lost his temper or showed annoyance in any of the ordinary plebeian ways, he was conscious of some curiosity as to what might happen next.

“You mean to say, then,” the Marquis continued, “that for the rest of my days, and in the days of those who may succeed me, that edifice, that cottage which for generations has sheltered one of the family retainers, is to remain the property of—of an alien?”

“I fear that that is the decision of the court,” the lawyer admitted. “The deed of gift was exceptionally binding.”

The Marquis shook his head. The thing was incomprehensible.

“I can stand upon the roof of Mandeleys,” he said, “and I can look north, south, east and west, and in no direction can I look off my own land. Yet you mean to tell me that almost in my garden there is to remain a demesne which can be occupied by any Tom, Dick or Harry which its nominal owner chooses to place in possession?”

The lawyer signed to the waiter for their glasses to be replenished.

“It is certainly not justice, your lordship,” he admitted, “it is not even reasonable—but it is the law.”

The Marquis produced a gold cigarette case, absently lit a cigarette, and returned the case to his pocket without offering it to his companion. He smoked meditatively and sipped his second glass of sherry.

“A state of things,” he declared, “has been revealed to me which I cannot at present grasp. I must discuss the matter with Robert—with my son-in-law, Sir Robert Lees. He is an intensely modern person, and he may be able to suggest something.”

“Sir Robert is a very clever man,” the lawyer acknowledged, “but failing an arrangement with the tenant himself, I cannot see that there is anything further to be done. We have, in short, exhausted the law.”

“A process,” the Marquis observed sympathetically, “which I fear that you must have found expensive, Mr. Wadham.”

“The various suits into which we have entered on behalf of your lordship, and the costs which we have had to pay,” the latter hastened to announce, “amount, I regret to say, to something over eighteen thousand pounds.”

“Dear me!” his companion sighed. “It seems quite a great deal of money.”

“Since we are upon the subject,” the lawyer proceeded, “my firm has suggested that I should approach your lordship with regard to some means of—pardon me—reducing the liability in question.”

So far as the face of Mr. Wadham’s client was capable of expressing anything, it expressed now a certain amount of surprise.

“It appears to me, Mr. Wadham,” he remarked, “that you are asking me to attend to your business for you.”

The lawyer knitted his brows in puzzled fashion.

“I am not sure that I quite follow your lordship,” he murmured.

“Do I employ you,” his patron continued, “to manage my estates, to control my finances, to act as agent to all my properties, and yet need to keep a perspective myself of my various assets? If eighteen thousand pounds is required, it is for your firm to decide from what quarter the money should come. Personally, as you know, I never interfere.”

Mr. Wadham coughed in somewhat embarrassed fashion.

“As a matter of fact, your lordship,” he confessed, with a most illogical sense that it was his duty to apologise for his client’s impecuniosity, “as a matter of fact, neither my partners nor I can at the present moment see where a sum of eighteen thousand pounds can be raised.”

The Marquis rose to his feet and shook the cigarette ash carefully from his coat.

“Our conversation, Mr. Wadham,” he said, “is reaching a stage which bores me. I have just remembered, too,” he added, with a glance at the clock, “that my daughter is entertaining a few friends to lunch. You must write to Merridrew. He is really a most excellent agent. He will tell you what balances are likely to be available during the next few months.”

Mr. Wadham received the suggestion without enthusiasm.

“We made an application to Mr. Merridrew some few weeks ago,” he remarked, “as we needed some ready money for the purpose of briefing the barristers. Mr. Merridrew’s reply was not encouraging.”

“Ah!” the Marquis murmured. “Merridrew is a gloomy dog sometimes. Try him again. It is astonishing how elastic he can be if he is squeezed.”

“I am afraid your lordship has done all the squeezing,” the solicitor observed ruefully.

A little trill of feminine laughter rang through the room. Two smartly attired young ladies were seated upon a divan near the door, surrounded by a little group of acquaintances. One of them leaned forward and nodded as the Marquis and his companion passed.

“How do you do, Marquis?” she said, in distinctly transatlantic accents.

The behaviour of his client, under such circumstances, remained an object lesson to Mr. Wadham for the rest of his life. The Marquis gazed with the faintest expression of surprise at, or perhaps through, the young person who had addressed him. Fumbling for a moment in his waistcoat pocket, he raised a horn-rimmed monocle to his eye, dropped it almost at once, and passed on without the flicker of an eyelid. On their way to the outside door, however, he shook his head gravely.

“What a singular exhibition,” he murmured, “demonstration, perhaps I should say—of the crudeness of modern social intercourse! Was it my fancy, Wadham, or did the young person up there address me?”

“She certainly did,” the other assented. “She even called you by name.”

They were standing in the courtyard now, waiting for a taxi, and the Marquis sighed.

“In a public place, too!” he murmured. “Wadham, I am afraid that we are living in the wrong age. I came to that conclusion only a few days ago, when I was invited, actually invited, to dine at the house of— But I forget, Wadham, I forget. Your grandfather would appreciate these things. You yourself are somewhat imbued, I fear, with the modern taint. A handful of silver if you please,” he added, holding out his hand. “I am not accustomed to these chance conveyances.”

The lawyer searched his trousers pockets, and produced a couple of pink notes and a few half-crowns. In some mysterious fashion, the whole seemed to pass into the Marquis’s long, aristocratic hand. He turned to the porter who was standing bare-headed, and slipped a ten-shilling note into his palm.

“Well, good morning, Wadham,” he said, stepping into his taxicab. “I have no doubt that you did your best, but this morning’s unfortunate happening will take me some time to get over. My compliments to your senior partner. You can say that I am disappointed—no more.”

The Marquis crossed his legs and leaned back in the vehicle. Mr. Wadham remained upon the pavement, gazing for a moment at his empty hand.

“Taxi, sir?” the hall porter asked obsequiously.

Mr. Wadham felt in all his pockets.

“Thank you,” he replied gloomily, “I’ll walk.”

Chapter 2

Lady Letitia Thursford, the only unmarried daughter of the Marquis, stood in a corner of the spacious drawing room at 94 Grosvenor Square, talking to her brother-in-law. Sir Robert, although he wanted his luncheon very badly and, owing to some mistake, had come a quarter of an hour too soon, retained his customary good nature. He always enjoyed talking to his favourite relation-in-law.

“I say, Letty,” he remarked, screwing his eyeglass into his eye and looking around, “you’re getting pretty shabby here, eh?”

Lady Letitia smiled composedly.

“That is the worst of you nouveaux riches,” she declared. “You do not appreciate the harmonising influence of the hand of Time. This isn’t shabbiness, it’s tone.”

“Nouveaux riches, indeed!” he repeated. “Better not let your father hear you call me names!”

“Father wouldn’t care a bit,” she replied. “As for this drawing room, Robert, well, sixty years ago it must have been hideous. Today I rather like it. It is absolutely and entirely Victorian, even to the smell.”

Sir Robert sniffed vigorously.

“I follow you,” he agreed. “Old lavender perfume, ottomans, high-backed chairs, chintzes that look as though they came out of the ark, and a few mouldy daguerreotypes. The whole thing’s here, all right.”

“Perhaps it’s just as well for us that it is,” she observed. “I have come to the conclusion that furniture people are the least trustful in the world. I don’t think even dad could get a van-load of furniture on credit.”

Sir Robert nodded sympathetically. He was a pleasant-looking man, a little under middle age, with bright, alert expression, black hair and moustache, and perhaps a little too perfectly dressed. He just escaped being called dapper.

“Chucking a bit more away in the Law Courts, isn’t he?”

Letitia indulged in a little grimace.

“Not even you could make him see reason about that,” she sighed. “He is certain to lose his case, and it must be costing him thousands.”

“Dashed annoying thing,” Sir Robert remarked meditatively, “to have a cottage within a hundred yards of your hall door which belongs to someone else.”

“It is annoying, of course,” Letitia assented, “but there is no doubt whatever that Uncle Christopher made it over to the Vonts absolutely, and I don’t see how we could possibly upset the deed of gift. I am now,” she continued, moving towards a stand of geraniums and beginning to snip off some dead leaves, “about to conclude the picture. You behold the maiden of bygone days who condescended sometimes to make herself useful.”

The scissors snipped energetically, and Sir Robert watched his sister-in-law. She was inclined to be tall, remarkably graceful in a fashion of her own, a little pale, with masses of brown hair, and eyes which defied any sort of colour analysis. But what Sir Robert chiefly loved about her were the two little lines of humour at the corners of her firm, womanly mouth.

“Yes, you’re in the setting all right, Letty,” he declared, “and yet you are rather puzzling. Just now you look as though you only wanted the crinoline and the little curls to be some one’s grandmother in her youth. Yet at that picture show the other night you were quite the most modern thing there.”

“It’s just how I’m feeling,” she confided, with a little sigh, standing back and surveying her handiwork. “I have that rare gift, you know, Robert, of governing my personality from inside. When I am in this room, I feel Victorian, and I am Victorian. When I hear that Russian man’s music which is driving every one crazy just now—well, I feel, and I suppose I look different. Here’s Meg coming. How well she looks!”

They watched the motor-car draw up outside, and the little business of Lady Margaret Lees’s descent carried out in quite the best fashion. A footman stood at the door, a grey-haired butler in plain clothes adventured as far as the bottom step; behind there was just the suggestion of something in livery.

“Yes, Meg’s all right,” Sir Robert replied. “Jolly good wife she is, too. Why don’t you marry, Letty?”

“Perhaps,” she laughed, leaning a little towards him, “because I did not go to a certain house party at Raynham Court, three years ago.”

“Are you conceited enough,” he inquired, “to imagine that I should have chosen you instead of Meg, if you had been there?”

“Perhaps I should have been a little too young,” she admitted. “Why haven’t you a brother, Robert?”

“I don’t believe you’d have married him, if I had,” he answered bluntly. “I’m not really your sort, you know.”

Lady Margaret swept in, very voluble but a little discursive.

“Isn’t this just like Bob!” she exclaimed. “I believe he always comes here early on purpose to find you alone, Letty! Who’s coming to lunch, please? And where’s dad?”

“Father should be on his way home from the Law Courts by now,” Letitia replied, “and I am afraid it’s a very dull luncheon for you, Meg. Aunt Caroline is coming, and an American man she travelled over on the steamer with. I am not quite sure whether she expects to let Bayfield to him or offer him to me as a husband, but I am sure she has designs.”

“The Duchess is always so helpful,” Robert grunted.

“So long as it costs her nothing,” Lady Margaret declared, “nothing makes her so happy as to put the whole world to rights.”

“Here she comes—in a taxicab, too,” Sir Robert announced, looking out of the window. “She is getting positively penurious.”

“She is probably showing off before the American,” Lady Margaret remarked. “She is always talking about living in a semi-detached house and making her own clothes. Up to the present, though, she has stuck to Worth.”

The Duchess, who duly arrived a few moments later, brought with her into the room a different and essentially a more cosmopolitan atmosphere. She was a tall, fair woman, attractive in an odd sort of way, with large features, a delightful smile, and a habit of rapid speech. She exchanged hasty greetings with every one present and then turned back towards the man who had followed her into the room.

“Letty dear, this is Mr. David Thain—Lady Letitia Thursford. I told you about Mr. Thain, dear, didn’t I? This is almost his first visit to England, and I want everyone to be nice to him. Mr. Thain, this is my other niece, Lady Margaret Lees, and her husband, Sir Robert Lees. Where’s Reginald?”

“Father will be here directly,” Letitia replied. “If any one’s famished, we can commence lunch.”

“Then let us commence, by all means,” the Duchess suggested. “I have been giving the whole of the morning to Mr. Thain, improving his mind and showing him things. We wound up with the shops—although I am sure Alfred’s tradespeople are no use to anyone.”

Letitia moved a few steps towards the bell, and on her way back she encountered the somewhat earnest gaze of her aunt’s protégé. Even in those few moments since his entrance, she had been conscious of a somewhat different atmosphere in the faded but stately room. He had the air of appraising everything yet belonging nowhere, of being wholly out of touch with an environment which he could scarcely be expected to understand or appreciate. He was not noticeably ill-at-ease. On the other hand, his deportment was too rigid for naturalness, and she was conscious of some quality in his rather too steadfast scrutiny of herself which militated strongly against her usual toleration. He seemed to stand for events, and in the lives which they mostly lived, events were ignored.

The butler opened the door and announced luncheon. They crossed the very handsome, if somewhat empty hall, into the sombre, mahogany-furnished dining room, the walls of which were closely hung with oil paintings. Letitia motioned the stranger to sit at her right hand, and fancied that he seemed a little relieved at this brief escape from his cicerone. Having gone so far, however, she ignored him for several moments whilst she watched the seating of her other guests. Her brother-in-law she drew to the vacant place on her left.

“I dare say father will lunch at the club,” she whispered. “Aunt Caroline always ruffles him.”

“I am afraid he will have found something down Temple Bar way to ruffle him a great deal more this morning,” Sir Robert replied.

The door of the dining room was at that moment thrown open, however, and the Marquis entered. Pausing for a moment on the threshold, in line with a long row of dingy portraits, there was something distinctly striking in the family likeness so mercilessly reproduced in his long face, with the somewhat high cheek bones, his tall, angular figure, the easy bearing and gracious smile. One missed the snuffbox from between his fingers, and the uniform, but there was yet something curiously unmodern in the appearance of this last representative of the Mandeleys.

“Let no one disturb themselves, pray,” he begged. “I am a little late. My dear Caroline, I am delighted to see you,” he went on, raising his sister’s fingers to his lips. “Margaret, I shall make no enquiries about your health! You are looking wonderfully well today.”

The Duchess glanced towards her protégé, who had risen to his feet and stood facing his newly arrived host. There was a moment’s poignant silence. The two men, for some reason or other, seemed to regard each other with no common interest.

“This is my friend, Mr. David Thain,” the Duchess announced, “my brother, the Marquis of Mandeleys. Mr. Thain is an American, Reginald.”

The Marquis shook hands with his guest, a form of welcome in which he seldom indulged.

“Any friend of yours, Caroline,” he said quietly, “is very welcome to my house. Robert,” he added, as he took his seat, “they tell me that you were talking rubbish about agriculture in the House last night. Why do you talk about agriculture? You know nothing about it. You are not even, so far as I remember, a landed proprietor.”

Sir Robert smiled.

“And therefore, sir, I am unprejudiced.”

“No one can talk about land, nowadays, without being prejudiced,” his father-in-law rejoined.

“Father,” Letitia begged, “do tell us about the case.”

The Marquis watched the whiskey and soda with which his glass was being filled.

“The case, my dear,” he acknowledged, “has, I am sorry to say, gone against me. A remarkably ill-informed and unattractive looking person, whom they tell me will presently be Lord Chief Justice, presumed not only to give a decision which was in itself quite absurd, but also refused leave to appeal.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir,” Sir Robert remarked. “Cost you a lot of money, too, I’m afraid.”

“I believe that it has been an expensive case,” the Marquis admitted. “My lawyer seemed very depressed about it.”

“And you mean to say that it’s really all over and done with now?” Lady Margaret enquired.

“For the present, it certainly seems so,” the Marquis replied. “I cannot believe, personally, that the laws of my country afford me no relief, under the peculiar circumstances of the case. According to Mr. Wadham, however, they do not.”

“What is it all about, anyway, Reginald?” his sister asked. “I have heard more than once but I have forgotten. Whenever I look in the paper for a divorce case, I nearly always see your name against the King, or the King against you, with a person named Vont also interested. Surely the Vont family have been retainers down at Mandeleys for generations? I remember one of them perfectly well.”

The Marquis cleared his throat.

“The unfortunate circumstances,” he said, “are perhaps little known even amongst the members of my own family. Perhaps it will suffice if I say that, owing to an indiscretion of my uncle and predecessor, the eleventh Marquis, a gamekeeper’s cottage and small plot of land, curiously situated in the shadow of Mandeleys, became the property of a yeoman of the name of Vont. This ill-advised and singular action of my late uncle is complicated by the fact that the inheritors of his bounty have become, as a family, inimical to their patrons. Their present representative, for instance, is obsessed by some real or fancied grievance upon which I scarcely care to dilate. For nearly twenty years,” the Marquis continued ruminatively, “the cottage has been empty except for the presence of an elderly person who died some years ago. Since then I have, through my lawyers, endeavoured, both by purchase and by upsetting the deed of gift, to regain possession of the property. The legal owner appears to be domiciled in America, and as he has been able to resist my lawsuits and has refused all my offers of purchase, I gather that in that democratic country he has amassed a certain measure of wealth. We are now confronted with the fact that this person announces his intention of returning to England and taking up his residence within a few yards of my front door.”

Sir Robert laughed heartily.

“Upon my word, sir,” he exclaimed, “it’s a humorous situation!”

The Marquis was unruffled but bitter.

“Your sense of humour, my dear Robert,” he said, “suffers, I fear, from your daily associations in the House of Commons.”

The man by Letitia’s side suddenly leaned forward. After the smooth and pleasant voice of the Marquis, his question, with its slight transatlantic accent, sounded almost harsh.

“What did you say that man’s name was, Marquis?”

“Richard Vont,” was the courteous reply. “The name is a singular one, but America is a vast country. I imagine it is scarcely possible that in the course of your travels you have come across a person so named?”

“A man calling himself Richard Vont crossed in the steamer with me, three weeks ago,” David Thain announced. “I have not the least doubt that this is the man who is coming to occupy the cottage you speak of.”

“It is indeed a small world,” the Marquis remarked. “I will not inflict this family matter upon you all any longer. After lunch, perhaps, you will spare me a few moments of your time, Mr. Mr. Thain. I shall be interested to hear more about this person.”

Letitia rose, presently, to leave the room. Whilst she waited for her aunt to conclude a little anecdote, she glanced with some interest at the man by her side. More than ever the sense of his incongruity with that atmosphere seemed borne in upon her, yet she was forced to concede to him, notwithstanding the delicacy of his appearance, a certain unexpected strength, a forcefulness of tone and manner, which gave him a certain distinction. He had risen, waiting for her passing, and one lean brown hand gripped the back of the chair in which she had been sitting. She carried away with her into the Victorian drawing room, with its odour of faded lavender, a queer sense of having been brought into momentary association with stronger and more vital things in life.

Chapter 3

Sir Robert preferred to join his wife and sister-in-law in the drawing room after luncheon. The Marquis, with a courteous word of invitation, led his remaining guest across the grey stone hall into the library beyond—a sparsely furnished and yet imposing looking apartment, with its great tiers of books and austere book cases. On his way, he drew attention carelessly to one or two paintings by old masters, and pointed out a remarkable statue presented by a famous Italian sculptor to his great-grandfather and now counted amongst the world’s treasures. His guest watched and observed in silence. There was nothing of the uncouth sight-seer about him, still less of the fulsome dilettante. They settled themselves in comfortable chairs in a pleasant corner of the apartment.

A footman served them with coffee, a second man handed cigars, and the butler himself carried a tray of liqueurs. The Marquis assumed an attitude of complete satisfaction with the world in general.

“I am pleased to have this opportunity of a few words with you, Mr. Thain,” he said. “You are quite comfortable in that chair, I trust?”

“Perfectly, thank you.”

“And my Larangas are not too mild? You will find darker-coloured cigars in the cabinet by your side.”

“Thank you,” David Thain replied, “I smoke only mild tobacco.”

“Personally,” the Marquis sighed, “I can go no further than cigarettes. A vice, perhaps,” he added, watching the blue smoke curl upwards, “but a fascinating one. So you came across this man Vont on the steamer. Might I ask under what circumstances?”

“Richard Vont, as I think he called himself,” was the quiet reply, “shared a cabin in the second class with my servant. I was over there once or twice and talked with him.”

“That is very interesting,” the Marquis observed. “He travelled second class, eh? And yet the man has many thousands to throw away in these absurd lawsuits with me.”

“He may have money,” Thain pointed out, “and yet feel more at home in the second class. I understood that he had been a gamekeeper in England and was returning to his old home.”

“Did he speak of his purpose in doing so?”

“On the contrary, he was singularly taciturn. All that I could gather from him was that he was returning to fulfil some purpose which he had kept before him for a great many years.”

The Marquis sighed. On his high, shapely forehead could be traced the lines of a regretful frown.

“I was sure of it,” he groaned. “The fellow is returning to make himself a nuisance to me. He did not tell you his story, then, Mr. Thain?”

“He showed no inclination to do so—in fact, he avoided so far as possible all discussion of his past.”

“Richard Vont,” the Marquis continued, raising his eyes to the ceiling, “was one of those sturdy, thick-headed, unintelligent yeomen who have been spoiled by the trifle of education doled out to their grandfathers, their fathers and themselves. A few hundred years ago they formed excellent retainers to the nobles under whose patronage they lived. Today, in these hideously degenerate days, Mr. Thain, when half the world has moved forward and half stood still, they are an anachronism. They find no seemly place in modern life.”

David Thain sat very still. There was just a little flash in his eyes, which came and went as sunlight might have gleamed across naked steel.

“But I must not forget,” his host went on tolerantly, “that I am speaking now to one who must to some extent have lost his sense of social proportion by a prolonged sojourn in a country where life is more or less a jumble.”

“You refer to America?”

“Naturally! As a country resembling more than anything a gigantic sausage machine wherein all races and men of all social status are broken up on the wheel, puffed up with false ideas, and thrown out upon the world, a newly fledged, cunning, but singularly ignorant race of individuals, America possesses great interest to those—to those, in short,” the Marquis declared, with a little wave of the hand, “whom such things interest. I am English, my forefathers were Saxon, my instincts are perhaps feudal. That is why I regard the case of Richard Vont from a point of view which you might possibly fail to appreciate. Would it bore you if I continue?”

“Not in the least,” David Thain assured him.

“Richard Vont was head-keeper at Mandeleys when I succeeded to the title and estates, an advent which occurred a few years after my wife’s death. He was already occupying a peculiar position there, owing to the generosity of my predecessor, whose life he had had the good fortune to save. He had very foolishly married above him in station—the girl was a school mistress, I believe. When I came to Mandeleys, I found him living there, a widower with one daughter, and a little boy, his nephew. The girl inherited her mother’s superiority of station and intellect, and was naturally unhappy. I noticed her with interest, and she responded. Consequences which in the days of our ancestors, Mr. Thain, would have been esteemed an honour to the persons concerned, ensued. Richard Vont, like an ignorant clodhopper, viewed the matter from the wrong standpoint… You said something, I believe? Pardon me. I sometimes fancy that I am a little deaf in my left ear.”

"Richard Vont was head-keeper at Mandeleys when I succeeded to the title and estates.”

The Marquis leaned forward but David Thain shook his head. His lips had moved indeed, but no word had issued from them.

“So far,” his host went on, “the story contains no novel features. I exercised what my ancestors, in whose spirit I may say that I live, would have claimed as an undoubted right. Richard Vont, as I have said, with his inheritance of ill-bestowed education, and a measure of that extraordinary socialistic poison which seems, during the last few generations, to have settled like an epidemic in the systems of the agricultural classes, resented my action. His behaviour became so intolerable that I was forced to dismiss him from my service, and finally, to avoid a continuance of melodramatic scenes, which were extremely unpleasant to everyone concerned, I was obliged to leave England for a time and travel upon the Continent.”

“And, in the meantime, what happened at Mandeleys?” David Thain asked.

“Richard Vont and his nephew appear to have left for the United States very soon after my own departure from England. The cottage he left in the care of an elderly relative, who gave little trouble but much annoyance. She attended a Primitive Methodist Chapel in the village, and she passed both myself and the ladies of my household at all times without obeisance.”

“Dear me!” David Thain murmured under his breath.

“After her death, I instructed my lawyers to examine the legal title to the Vont property and to see whether there was any chance of regaining it. Its value would be, at the outside, say six or seven hundred pounds. I advertised and offered two thousand, five hundred pounds to regain, it. My solicitors came into touch with the man Vont through an agent in America. His reply to their propositions on my behalf does not bear repetition. I then instructed my lawyers to take such steps as they could to have the deed of gift set aside, sufficient compensation of course being promised. That must have been some eight years ago. My efforts have come to an end today. The cottage remains the property of Richard Vont. My own law costs have been considerable, but by some means or other this man Vont has contrived to defend his property at the expenditure of some five or six thousand pounds. One can only conclude that he must have prospered in this strange country of yours, Mr. Thain.”

“To a stranger,” the latter observed, “it seems curious that this man should have set so high a value upon a property which must be full of painful associations to him.”

“The very arguments I made use of in our earlier correspondence,” his host assented. “I have told you the story, Mr. Thain, because it occurred to me that this man might have communicated to you his reason for returning after all these years to the neighbourhood.”

“He told me nothing.”

“Then I have wasted your time with a long and, I fear, a very dull story,” the Marquis apologised gracefully. “Shall we join the others?”

“There was just one question, if I might be permitted,” David Thain said, “which I should like to ask concerning the story which you have told me. The girl to whom you have alluded—Vont’s daughter—what became of her?”

The Marquis for a moment stood perfectly still. He had just risen to his feet and was standing where a gleam of sunlight fell upon his cold and passionless features. His silence had, in its way, a curious effect. He seemed neither to be thinking nor hesitating. He was just in a state of suspense. Presently he leaned forward and knocked the ash from his cigarette into the grate.

“The lady in question,” he replied, “has found that place in the world to which her gifts and charm entitle her. I fear that my sister will be getting impatient. My daughter, too, I am sure, would like to improve her acquaintance with you, Mr. Thain.”

David Thain was, in his way, an obstinate and self-willed man, but he found himself, for those first few moments, subject to his host’s calm but effectual closure of the conversation. Nevertheless, he recovered himself in time to ask that other question as they left the room.

“The lady is alive, then?”

“She is alive,” the Marquis acquiesced, in a colourless tone.

A servant threw open the door of the drawing room. The Marquis motioned to his guest to precede him.

“As I imagined,” he murmured, “I see that my sister is impatient. You will forgive me, Caroline,” he went on, turning to the Duchess. “Mr. Thain’s conversation was most interesting. Letitia, my dear, do press Mr. Thain to dine with us one evening. This afternoon I fear that I have been unduly loquacious. I should welcome another opportunity of conversing with him concerning his wonderful country.”

Letitia picked up a little morocco-bound volume from the table and consulted it. Sir Robert drew the prospective guest a little on one side.

“For heaven’s sake,” he whispered, “don’t give the Marquis any financial tips. He has a fancy that he is destined to restore the fortunes of the Mandeleys on the Stock Exchange. He is a delightfully ornamental person, but I can assure you that as a father-in-law he is a distinct luxury.”

David Thain smiled grimly.

“I shall be careful,” he promised.

Chapter 4

The Marquis devoted the remainder of that afternoon, as he did most others, to paying a call. Very soon indeed after David Thain’s departure, he left the house, stepped into the motor-car, which was waiting for him, and, with a little nod to the chauffeur which indicated his indulgence in a customary enterprise, drove off towards Battersea. Here he descended before a large block of flats overlooking the gardens, stepped into the lift and, without any direction to the porter, was let out upon the sixth floor. He made his way along the corridor to a little mahogany front door, on which was a brass plate inscribed with the name of Miss Marcia Hannaway. He rang the bell and was at once admitted by a very trim parlour-maid, who took his hat and cane, and ushered him into a remarkably pleasant little sitting room. A woman, seated before a typewriter, held out two ink-stained hands towards him with a little laugh.

“I’ve been putting a ribbon in,” she confessed. “Did you ever see such a mess! Please make yourself comfortable while I go and wash.”

The Marquis glanced with a slight frown at the machine, and, taking her wrists, stooped down and kissed them lightly.

“My dear Marcia,” he expostulated, “is this necessary!”

She shook her head with a droll smile.

“Perhaps if it were,” she confessed, “I should hate to do it. There’s a Nineteenth Century on the sofa. You can read my article.”

She hurried out of the room, from which she was absent only a very few moments. The Marquis, with a finger between the pages of the review which he had been reading, looked up as she re-entered. She was a woman of nameless gifts, of pleasant if not unduly slim figure. Her forehead was perhaps a little low, her eyes brilliant and intelligent, her mouth large and exceedingly mobile. She was not above the allurements of dress, for her house gown, with its long tunic trimmed with light fur, was of fashionable cut and becoming. Her fingers, cleansed now from the violet stains, were shapely, almost elegant. She threw herself into an easy chair opposite her visitor and reached out her hand for a cigarette.

“Well,” she asked, “and how has the great trial ended?”

“Adversely,” the Marquis confessed.

“You foolish person,” she sighed, lighting the cigarette and throwing the match away. “Of course you were bound to lose, and I suppose it’s cost you no end of money.”

“I believe,” he admitted, a little stiffly, “that my lawyers are somewhat depressed at the amount.”

She smoked in silence for a moment.

“So he will go back to Mandeleys. It is a queer little fragment of life. What on earth does he want to do it for?”

“Obstinacy,” the Marquis declared, “sheer, brutal, ignorant obstinacy.”

“And the boy?” she asked, pursuing her own train of thought. “Have you heard anything of him?”

“Nothing. To tell you the truth, I have made no enquiries. Beyond the fact that it seems as though, for the present, Richard Vont will have his way, I take no interest in either of them.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“If only we others,” she sighed, “could infuse into our lives something of the marvellous persistence of these people whom in other respects we have left so far behind!”

“My dear Marcia,” he protested, “surely, with your remarkable intelligence, you can see that such persistence is merely a form of narrow-mindedness. Your father has shut in his life and driven it along one narrow groove. To you every day brings its fresh sensation, its fresh object. Hence—coupled, of course, with your natural gifts—your success. The person who thinks of but one thing in life must be indeed a dull dog.”

“Very excellent reasoning,” she admitted. “Still, to come back to this little tragedy—for it is a tragedy, isn’t it?—have you any idea what he means to do when he gets to Mandeleys?”

“None at all!”

“Let me see,” she went on, “it is nineteen years ago last September, isn’t it?—nineteen years out of the middle of his life. Will he sit in the garden and brood, I wonder, or has he brought back with him some scheme of mediaeval revenge?”

“There was a time,” the Marquis reflected, “when several of my Irish tenants used to shoot at me every Saturday night from behind a hedge. It was not in the least a dangerous operation, and I presume it brought them some relief. With Vont, however, things would be different. I remember him distinctly as a most wonderful shot.”

“Psychologically,” Marcia Hannaway observed, “his present action is interesting. If he had shot you or me in his first fit of passionate resentment, everything would have been in order, but to leave the country, nurse a sullen feeling of revenge for years, and then come back, seems curious. What shall you do when you see him sitting in his garden?”

“I shall address him,” the Marquis replied. “I fear that his long residence in such a country as America will have altered him considerably, but it is of course possible that the instincts of his class remain.”

“How feudal you are!” she laughed.

The Marquis frowned slightly. Although this was the one person in the world whom he felt was necessary to him, who held a distinct place in his very inaccessible heart, there were times when he entertained a dim suspicion that she was making fun of him. At such times he was very angry indeed.

“In any case,” he said, “we will not waste our time in speculating upon this man’s attitude. I am still hoping that I may be able to devise means to render his occupancy of the cottage impossible.”

“I should like to hear about the boy.”

“If,” the Marquis promised, “I find Vont’s attitude respectful, I will make enquiries.”

“When are you going to Mandeleys?” she asked.

“I am in no hurry to leave London,” he replied.

“When you go,” she told him, “I have made up my mind to take a little holiday. I thought even of going to the South of France.”

The lines of her companion’s forehead were slightly elevated.

“My dear Marcia,” he protested gently, “is that like you? The class of people who frequent the Riviera at this time of the year—”

She laughed at him delightfully.

“Oh, you foolish person!” she interrupted. “If I go, I shall go to a tiny little boarding house, or take a villa in one of the quiet places—San Raphael, perhaps, or one of those little forgotten spots between Hyères and Cannes. Phillis Grant would go with me. She isn’t going to act again until the autumn season.”

Her visitor’s expression was a little blank.

“In the case of your departure from London,” he announced, in a very even but very forlorn tone, “I will instruct Mr. Wadham to make a suitable addition to your allowance. At the same time, Marcia,” he added, “I shall miss you.”

His words were evidently a surprise to her. She threw away her cigarette and came and sat on the sofa by his side.

“Do you know, I believe you would,” she murmured, resting her hand upon his. “How queer!”

“I have never concealed my affection for you, have I?” he asked.

This time the laugh which broke from her lips was scarcely natural.

“Concealed your affection, Reginald!” she repeated. “How strangely that sounds! But listen. You said something just now about my allowance. If I allude to it in return, will you believe that it is entirely for your sake?”

“Of course!”

She rose from her chair and, crossing the room, rummaged about her desk for a moment, produced a letter, and brought it to him. The Marquis adjusted his horn-rimmed eyeglass and read:

Dear Madam,

We feel that some explanation is due to you with regard to the non-payment for the last two quarters of your allowance from our client, the Marquis of Mandeleys. We have to inform you that for some time past we have had no funds in our possession to pay this allowance. We informed his lordship of the fact, some time back, but in our opinion his lordship scarcely took the circumstance seriously. We think it better, therefore, that you should communicate with him on the subject.

Faithfully yours,

Wadham, Son and Dickson

The Marquis deliberately folded up the letter, placed his eyeglass in his pocket, and sat looking into the fire. There was very little change in his face. Only Marcia, to whom he had been the study of a lifetime, knew that so far as suffering was possible to him, he was suffering at that moment.