The Wicked Marquis Part 20

"I have never placed any restrictions upon your life," her companion reminded her.

"I know it," she admitted, "but, you see, the princ.i.p.al things between us have always been unspoken. I knew just how you felt about it. What I want to know is, now that the times have changed around you as well as around me, whether you would feel just the same if I, to take an example, were to lunch or dine with Mr. Borden, now and then, or with Morris Hyde, the explorer. I met him at an Authors' Club _conversazione_ and he was immensely interesting. It struck me then that perhaps I was interpreting your wishes a little too literally."

The Marquis selected a cigarette from his battered gold case with its tiny coronet, tapped it upon the table and lit it. Marcia was already smoking.

"I fear that I am very old-fashioned in my notions, Marcia," he confessed. "I should find it very difficult to adapt myself to the perfectly harmless, I am sure, lack of restraint which, as you say, has opened the doors to a much closer friendship between men and women.

The place which you have held in my life has grown rather than lessened with the years. It is only natural, however, that the opposite should be the case with you. I should like to consider what you have said, Marcia."

"You have meant so much to me," she continued, "you have been so much.

In our earlier days, too, especially during that year when we travelled, you were such a wonderful mentor. It was your fine taste, Reginald, which enabled me to make the best of those months in Florence and Rome. You knew the best, and you showed it to me. You never tried to understand why it was the best, but you never made a mistake."

"Those things are matters of inheritance," he replied, "and cultivation. It was a great joy to me, Marcia, to give you the keys."

"Yes," she repeated, "that is what you did, Reginald--you gave me the keys, and I opened the doors."

"And now," he went on, "you have pushed your way further, much further into the world where men and women think, than I could or should care to follow you. Is it likely to separate us?"

She saw him suddenly through a little mist of tears.

"No!" she exclaimed, "it must not! It shall not!"

"Nevertheless," he persisted, "the thought is in your mind. I cannot alter my life, Marcia. I live to a certain extent by tradition, and by habits which have become too strong to break. There is a great difference in our years and in our outlook upon life. There is much before you, flowers which you may pick and heights which you may climb, which can have no message for me."

"Nothing," Marcia declared fervently, "shall disturb our--our friendship."

"That does not rest with you, dear, but rather with Fate," he replied.

"You might control your actions, and I know that you would, but your will, your desires, your temperament, may still lead you in opposite directions. I have been your lover too long to slip easily into the place of your guardian. Hold out your hand, if you will, now, and bid me farewell. Try the other things, and, if they fail you, send for me."

"I shall do nothing of the sort," she objected. "We are both of us much too serious. The only question we are considering is whether you would object to my dining with Mr. Borden and lunching with Mr. Hyde?"

"It would give you an opportunity," he remarked, with a rather grim smile, "of seeing the inside of some other restaurant."

"How understanding you are!" she exclaimed. "Do you know, although I love our dinners here, I sometimes feel as though this room were a little cage, a little corner of the world across the threshold of which you had drawn a chalk line, so that no one of your world or mine might enter. The coming of Mr. Thain was almost like an earthquake."

With every moment it seemed to him that he understood her a little more, and with every moment the pain of it all increased.

"My dear Marcia," he said, "you have spoken the word. More than once lately I have fancied that I noticed indications of this desire on your part. I am glad, therefore, that you have spoken. Dine with your publisher, by all means, and lunch with Mr. Hyde. Take to yourself that greater measure of liberty which it is only too natural that you should covet. We will look upon it as a brief vacation, which certainly, after all these years, you have earned. When you have made up your mind, write to me. I shall await your letter with interest."

"But you mean that you are not coming down to see me before then?" she asked, a little tremulously.

"I think it would be better not," he decided. "I have kept you to myself very stringently, Marcia. You see, I recognise this, and I set you free for a time."

He paid the bill, and they left the room together.

"You are coming home?" she whispered, as they pa.s.sed down the vestibule.

He shook his head.

"Not to-night, if you will excuse me, Marcia," he said. "The car is here. I will take a cab myself. There is a meeting of the committee at my club."

They were on the pavement. She gripped his hand.

"Do come," she begged.

He handed her in with a smile.

"You will go down to Battersea, James," he told the chauffeur, "and fetch me afterwards from the club."

A queer feeling caught at her heart as the car glided off and left him standing there, bareheaded. It was the first time--she felt something like the snap of a chain in her heart--the first time in all these years! Yet she never for a moment deceived herself. The tears which stood in her eyes, the pain in her heart, were for him.

CHAPTER XV

The d.u.c.h.ess, a few mornings later, leaned back in her car and watched the perilous progress of her footman, dodging in and out of the traffic in the widest part of Piccadilly. He returned presently in safety, escorting the object of his quest. The d.u.c.h.ess pointed to the seat by her side.

"Can I take you or drop you anywhere?" she asked. "Please don't look as though you had been taken into custody. I saw you in the distance, walking aimlessly along, and I really wanted to talk to you."

David for a moment indulged in the remains of what was almost a boyish resentment.

"I have to go to the Savoy," he explained, "and I was rather intending to walk across St. James's Park."

"You can walk after your lunch," she insisted. "If you walk before, it gives you too much of an appet.i.te,--afterwards, it helps your digestion, so get in with me, and I will drive you to the Savoy."

He took his place by her side with a distinct air of resignation. The d.u.c.h.ess laughed at him.

"You are a very silly person to dislike other people so," she admonished. "If you begin to give way to misanthropy at your time of life, you will be a withered up old stick whom no one will want to be decent to, except to get money out of, before you're fifty. Don't you know that the society of human beings is good for you?"

"There isn't a medicine in the world one can't take too much of," David ventured, smiling in spite of himself.

"To the Savoy, John," his mistress directed. "Tell Miles to drive slowly. To abandon abstruse discussions," she continued, leaning back, "have you regarded my warning?"

"Which one?" he demanded.

"I mean with reference to my brother. I happen to have come across him once or twice, during the last few days. On Wednesday he was in the most buoyant spirits--for him. He had the air of a man who has accomplished some great feat. If you only knew how amusing Reginald is at such times! His manner isn't in the least different, but you know perfectly well that he is thinking himself one of the most brilliant creatures ever born. There is a note of the finest and most delicate condescension in the way he speaks. I am perfectly certain that if he had happened to come across the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Wednesday, he would have discussed finance with him in a patronising fashion, and probably offered him a few hints as to how to reduce the National Debt."

"On Wednesday this was," David murmured.

"And on Friday," the d.u.c.h.ess continued, "he was a different man. He carried himself exactly as usual, but his footsteps were falling like lead. He looked over the eyes of every one, and there was that queer, grey look in his face which helps one to remember that, notwithstanding his figure, he is nearly sixty years old. What have you been doing to him, Mr. Thain?"

"Nothing that would account for his latter state," David a.s.sured her.

"When did you see him last?" she asked.

"On Thursday."

"Where?"