The Wicked Marquis Part 29

Borden showed her his pockets, bulging with newspapers.

"I shall be perfectly content here," he said, "however long you may be.

I shall back the car on to the turf and read."

She nodded, turned away, lifted the latch of the gate and made her way towards the cottage,--curiously silent, and with no visible sign of habitation except for the smoke curling up from the chimney. As she drew nearer to the rustic entrance, she hesitated. A rush of those very sensations at which she had so often gently mocked swept through her consciousness, unsteadying and bewildering her. Mandeleys, imposing in its grim stillness, seemed to be throwing out shadows towards her, catching her up in a whirlpool of memories, half sentimental, half tragical. It was in the little cottage garden where she now stood, and in the woods beyond, that she had wandered with that strange new feeling in her heart of which she was, even at that moment, intensely conscious, gazing through the mists of her inexperience towards the new world and new heaven which her love was unfolding before her. A hundred forgotten fancies flashed into her brain. She remembered, with a singular and most unnerving accuracy, the silent vigils which she had spent, half hidden amongst those tall hollyhocks.

She had seen the grey twilight of morning pa.s.s, seen the mists roll away and, turret by turret, the great house stand out like some fairy palace fashioned from s.p.a.ce in a single night. She had seen the thrushes hop from the shrubberies and coverts on to the dew-spangled lawn, had heard their song, growing always in volume, had seen the faint sunlight flash in the windows, before she had crept back to her room. Another day in that strange turmoil which had followed the coming of her love! She had watched shooting parties a.s.semble in the drive outside, her father in command, she herself hidden yet watchful, her eyes always upon one figure, her thoughts with him. And then the nights--the summer nights--when men and women in evening costume strolled down from the house. She could see their white shirt fronts glistening in the twilight. Again she heard the firm yet loitering step and the quiet, still voice which had changed the world for her.

"Is Vont about, Miss Marcia?" she would hear him say. "I want to have a talk with him about the partridge drives to-morrow." She closed her eyes. The smell of the honeysuckle and the early cottage roses seemed suddenly almost stupefying. There were a few seconds--perhaps even a minute--before Vont had donned his brown velveteen coat and issued from the cottage--just time for a whispered word, a glance, a touch of the fingers.--Marcia felt her knees shake as she lingered underneath the porch. She was swept with recalcitrant memories, stinging like the lash of a whip. Perhaps this new wisdom of hers was, after all, a delusion, the old standards of her Calvinistic childhood una.s.sailable.

Then, for the first time, she was conscious of a familiar figure.

Richard Vont was seated in a hard kitchen chair at the end of the garden, with a book upon his knee and his face turned to Mandeleys. At the sound of her little exclamation he turned his head. At first it was clear that he did not recognise his visitor. He laid down the book and rose to his feet. Marcia came a few steps towards him and then paused. Several very ingenious openings escaped her altogether.

"Father," she began, a little hesitatingly, "you see, I've come to see you. Are you glad?"

He stood looking at her--a man of rather more than middle height but bowed, with silvery hair and a little patch of white whiskers. The rest of his face was clean-shaven, still hard and brown as in his youth, and his eyes were like steel.

"No," he answered, "I am not glad. Since you are here, though, take this chair. I will fetch another while I hear what you have to say."

"Shall we go inside?" she suggested.

He shook his head.

"Your mother lived and died there," he reminded her.

Marcia set her teeth.

"I suppose she walked in the garden sometimes," she said resentfully.

"The garden is different," he declared. "The earth changes from generation to generation, just as the flowers here throw out fresh blossoms and the weeds come and go. But my rooftree stands where it always did. Wait."

He disappeared into the house and returned in a few moments with a chair which he placed a few feet away from Marcia. Then he sat and looked at her steadily.

"So you are Marcia," he said. "You've grown well-looking."

"Marcia--your daughter," she reminded him gently. "Are you going to forget that altogether?"

"Not," he replied, "if you are in need of succour or help, but I judge from your appearance that you need neither. You are flesh of my flesh, as I well know."

"I want nothing from you, father, except a little kindness," she pleaded.

His hands trembled.

"Kindness," he repeated. "That's strange hearing. You are without friends, perhaps? You made some, maybe, and they heard of your disgrace, and they've cast you off?"

She shook her head.

"No, it isn't that at all. I have many friends, and they most of them know my history."

"Friends of your own sort, then!"

Marcia moved uneasily in her chair.

"Father," she said gently, "don't you sometimes think that your views of life are a little narrow? I am very sorry indeed for what I did, inasmuch as it brought unhappiness to you. For the rest, I have nothing to regret."

He was breathing a little harder now.

"Nothing to regret?" he muttered.

"Nothing," she repeated firmly. "For many years the man who took me away from you gave me everything I asked of him in life, everything he promised. He is still willing to do the same. If any change comes into our relations, now or in the future, it will be my doing, not his."

"Meaning," he demanded, "that you've seen the wickedness of it?"

"Meaning nothing of the sort," she replied. "I want you to try and realise, father, if you can, that I have pa.s.sed into a larger world than you or this little village community here know very much about. I have written books and been praised for them by men whose praise is worth having. There are plenty of perfectly good and well-living people who know what I have done and who are glad to be my friends.

There is one who wants to marry me."

Richard Vont looked at her long and steadily. Marcia was, as usual, dressed with extreme simplicity, but her clothes were always good, and economy in boots and hats was a vice which she had never practised.

When she told him that she had pa.s.sed into a world apart from his, he realised it. The only wonder was that she had ever been his daughter!

"To marry you!" he repeated. "It's one of those of your own loose way of thinking, eh? One of those who have forgotten the laws of G.o.d and have set up for themselves some graven image in which there's nought of the truth?"

"The man who wishes to marry me, father," she said warmly, "is a man of honour and position. Can't you believe me when I a.s.sure you that there is another way of looking at what you consider so terrible? I have been as faithful to my vows as you to your marriage ones. The man whom I am told you still hate has never wavered in his loyalty to me, any more than I have in my fidelity to him. Can't you believe that to some extent, at least, we have sanctified our love?"

James Vont pa.s.sed his hand a little wearily over his forehead.

"It's blasphemous gibberish that you're talking," he declared. "If you had come back to me, Marcia, in rags and in want, maybe there is something in my heart would have gone, and I'd have taken you and we'd have found a home somewhere far away. But to see you sitting there, soft and well-spoken, speaking of your success, pleased with your life, turns that very hatred you spoke of into fury! You and your learning and your writing of books! Why, you're ignorant, woman, more ignorant than the insects about you. You don't know right from wrong."

"Father," she pleaded--

"Aye, but listen," he went on. "You've children, eh?"

"No," she answered softly.

"No children to bear your shame, eh? And why not?"

She looked for a moment into his eyes, and then away.

"That may be the one weak spot," she confessed.

"The one weak spot!" he repeated bitterly. "Shall I tell you what you are, you women who live cheerfully with the men you sell yourselves to, and defy the laws of G.o.d and the teaching of the Bible? You're just wastrels and Jezebels. Ay, and there's the garden gate, Marcia, and my heart's as hard as a flint, even though the tears are in your eyes and you look at me as your mother used to look. It's no such tears as you're shedding as'll bring you back into my heart. Your very prosperity's an offence. You carry the price of your shame on your back and in your smooth speech and in this false likeness of yours to the world you don't belong to. If it's duty that's brought you here, you'd better not have come."

Marcia rose to her feet.

"You're very hard, father," she said simply.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You're very hard, father," she said simply.]

"The ways of the transgressors are hard," he replied, pointing still towards the gate. "If you'd come here in shame and humiliation, if you'd come here as one as had learnt the truth, you'd have found me all that you sought. But you come here a very ignorant woman, Marcia, and you leave me a little harder than ever before, and you leave the curses that choke my throat a little hotter, a little more murderous."

His clenched fist was pointing towards Mandeleys, his face was like granite. Marcia turned and left him without a word, opened the gate, walked across the little strip of turf, and half shrank from, half clung to the hand which helped her up into the car.