The Wicked Marquis Part 18

"I can hear you perfectly," the Marquis acknowledged suavely. "Pray continue."

"Your lordship's bankers sent for me this morning," Mr. Wadham went on, "in connection with these shares. They thought it their duty to point out, either through us or by communication with you direct, that according to the advice of a most reliable broker, their commercial value is practically nil."

"Is what?" the Marquis demanded.

"Nil--nix--not worth a cent," Mr. Wadham, Junior, proclaimed emphatically.

The Marquis, in that slang phraseology which he would have been the first to decry, never turned a hair. He had not the least intention, moreover, of permitting his interlocutor at the other end of the telephone even a momentary sensation of triumph.

"You can present my compliments to the manager," he said, "and tell him that the value of the shares in question does not concern either him or his brokers. In any case, they could not possibly have any information concerning the company, as it is only just registered and has not yet commenced operations. You understand me, Mr. Wadham?"

"Perfectly, your lordship," was the smooth reply. "The fact remains, however, that the brokers do know something about the company and the persons interested in it, and that knowledge, I regret to say, is most unfavourable. We felt it our duty, therefore, to pa.s.s on these facts."

"I am exceedingly obliged to you for your anxieties on my behalf," the Marquis declared. "My legal interests are, I am quite sure, safe in your hands. My financial affairs--my outside financial affairs, that is to say--I prefer to keep under my own control. I might remind you that these shares are supported, and came into my hands, in fact, through the agency of Mr. David Thain, the great financier."

There was a moment's pause.

"I had not forgotten the fact," Mr. Wadham admitted diffidently, "and it certainly seems improbable that Mr. Thain would introduce a risky investment to your lordship within a few weeks of his arrival in this country. At the same time, we feel compelled, of course, to bring to your notice the broker's report."

"Quite so," the Marquis acquiesced. "Kindly let the people concerned know that I am acting in this matter upon special information.

Good-day, Mr. Wadham. My compliments to your father."

So the conversation terminated, but the Marquis for the remainder of that day felt as though just the shadow of a cloud rested upon his happiness. Twice he stared at the address of David's rooms, which occupied a prominent place upon his study table, but on both occasions he resisted the impulse to seek him out and obtain the rea.s.surance he needed. He buried himself instead in a Review.

Let.i.tia came in to see him on the way back from her aunt's tea party.

The Marquis carefully made a note of his place and laid down his periodical.

"You found your aunt well, I trust, dear?"

"Oh, she was all right," Let.i.tia replied. "She had an irritating lot of callers there, though."

Her father nodded sympathetically.

"The extraordinary habit which people in our rank of life seem to have developed lately for making friends outside their own sphere is making Society very difficult," he declared. "Members of our own family are, I am afraid, amongst the transgressors. Whom did you meet this afternoon?"

Let.i.tia mentioned a few names listlessly.

"And Mr. Thain," she concluded.

Her father betrayed his interest.

"Mr. Thain was there, eh? I understood that he was much averse to paying calls."

"He looked as though he had been roped in," Let.i.tia observed, "and aunt was all over herself, apologising to him for having other people there.

She wanted to consult him, it seems, about something or other, and she turned him over to me until she was ready."

"And you," the Marquis enquired, with questioning sympathy, "were perhaps bored?"

"Not bored, exactly--rather irritated! I think I am like you, in some respects, father," Let.i.tia went on, smoothing out her gloves. "I prefer to find my intimates within the circle of our own relatives and connections. A person like Mr. Thain in some way disturbs me."

"That," the Marquis regretted, "is unfortunate, as he is likely to be our neighbour at Mandeleys."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, it is of no consequence," she replied. "I shall never feel the slightest compunction in anything I might do or say to him. If he pays more for Broomleys than it is worth, he has the advantage of our countenance, which I imagine, to a person in his position, makes the bargain equal. Mr. Thain does not seem to me to be one of those men who would part with anything unless he got some return."

"Money, nowadays," the Marquis reflected, pressing the tips of his fingers together, "is a marvellously revitalising influence. People whose social position is almost, if not quite equal to our own, have even taken it into the family through marriage."

Let.i.tia's very charming mouth twitched. Her lips parted, and she laughed softly. Nothing amused her more than this extraordinary blindness of her father to actual facts--such, for instance, as the Lees' woollen mills!

"I do hope," she remarked, "that you are not thinking of offering me up, dad, on the altar of the G.o.d of Dollars?"

"My dear child," the Marquis protested, "I can truthfully and proudly say that I am acquainted with no young woman of your position in connection with whom such a suggestion would be more sacrilegious. I have sometimes hoped," he went on, "that matters were already on the eve of settlement in another direction."

"I don't know, I'm sure," Let.i.tia answered thoughtfully. "I sometimes think that I have a great many more feelings, dad, than the sole remaining daughter of the Right Honourable Reginald Thursford, Marquis of Mandeleys, ought to possess. The fact is, there are times when I can't stand Charlie anywhere near me, and as to discussing any subject of reasonable interest, well, he can only see anything from his own point of view, and that is always wrong."

"You and he, then," the Marquis observed, "appear to share--or rather to possess every essential for domestic happiness. The constant propinquity in which married people of the middle and lower cla.s.ses are forced to live is no doubt responsible, in many cases, for the early termination of their domestic happiness."

"I always thought the middle cla.s.ses were horribly virtuous," Let.i.tia yawned. "However!--Thursday night, dad. You are dining out, aren't you?"

"Thursday night," the Marquis repeated, telling for the hundredth time, with bland ease, the falsehood which had almost ceased to have even the intention to deceive. "Yes, I dine at my club to-night, dear."

She bent over and kissed his forehead.

"Remember, my dear," he enjoined, "that I do not wish you to develop any feelings of positive dislike towards Mr. Thain. Such people have their uses in the world. We must not forget that."

Let.i.tia laughed at him understandingly, but she closed the door in silence.

CHAPTER XIV

Marcia, more especially perhaps during these later days, felt her sense of humour gently excited every time she crossed the threshold of Trewly's Restaurant. The programme which followed was always the same.

The Marquis rose from a cushioned seat in the small entrance lounge to greet her, very distinguished looking in his plain dinner clothes, his black stock, vainly imitated by the younger generation, his horn-rimmed eyegla.s.s, his cambric-fronted shirt with the black pearls, which had been the gift of the Regent to his great-grandfather. The head waiter, and generally the manager, hovered in the background while their greetings were exchanged and Marcia's coat delivered to the care of an attendant. Then they were shown with much ceremony to the same table which they had occupied on these weekly celebrations for many years.

It was in a corner of the room, a corner which formed a slight recess, and special flowers, the gift of the management, were invariably in evidence. The rose-shaded lamp, with its long, silken hangings, was arranged at precisely the right angle. The Marquis asked his usual question and waved away the menu.

"What you choose to offer us, Monsieur Herbrand," he would say, in his old-world but perfect French. "If Madame has any fancy, we will send you a message."

So the meal commenced. Trewly's was a restaurant with a past. In the days of the Marquis's youth, when such things were studied more carefully than now, it was the one first-cla.s.s restaurant in London to which the gilded youth of the aristocracy, and perhaps their sires, might indulge in the indiscretion of entertaining a young lady from the Italian chorus without fear of meeting staider relatives. The world of bohemian fashion had changed its laws since those days, and Trewly's had been left, high and dry, save for a small clientele who remembered its former glories and esteemed its cellar and cuisine. It belonged to the world which the Marquis knew, the world whose maxims he still recognised. After all these years, he would still have thought himself committing a breach of social etiquette if he had invited Marcia to lunch with him at the Ritz or the Carlton.

They drank claret, decanted with zealous care and served by a black-ap.r.o.ned cellarman, who waited anxiously by until the Marquis had gravely sipped his first gla.s.sful and approved. Their dinner to-day was very much what it had been a dozen years ago--the French-fed chicken, the artichokes, and strawberries served with liqueurs remained, whatever the season. And their conversations. Marcia leaned back in her chair for a moment, and again the corners of her lips twitched as she remembered. Faithfully, year after year, she could trace those conversations--the courtly, old-fashioned criticism of the events of the week, criticism from the one infallible standard, the standard of the immutable Whiggism upon which the const.i.tution itself rested; conversation with pa.s.sing references to any new event in art, and, until lately, the stage. To-night Marcia found herself tracing the gradual birth of her stimulating rebellion. She remembered how, years ago, she had sat in that same seat and listened as one might listen to the words of a G.o.d. And then came the faint revolt, the development of her intellect, the necessity for giving tongue to those more expansive and more subtle views of life which became her heritage.

To do him justice, the Marquis encouraged her. He was as good a judge of wit and spirit as he was of claret. If Marcia had expressed a single sentence awkwardly, if her grammar had ever been at fault, her taste to be questioned, he would have relapsed into the stiffness of his ordinary manner, and she would have felt herself tongue-tied. But, curious though it seemed to her when she looked back, she was forced to realise that it was he who had always encouraged the birth of her new thoughts, her new ideals, her new outlook upon life, her own drastic and sometimes unanswerable criticisms of that state of life in which he lived. She represented modernity, seeking for expression in the culture of the moment. He, remaining of the ancient world, yet found himself rejuvenated, mentally refreshed, week by week, preserved from that condition of obstinate ossification into which he would otherwise have fallen, by this brilliant and unusual companionship. In all the many years of their intimacy he had felt no doubts concerning her. He was possessed of a self-confidence wholly removed from conceit, which had spared for him the knowledge of even a moment's jealousy. In her company he had felt the coming and, as he now realised, the pa.s.sing of middle age. It was only within these last few hours that certain formless apprehensions had presented themselves to him.

"You drink your wine slowly to-night," she observed. "I was just thinking how delicious it was."

He touched the long forefinger of his left hand, just a little swollen.