The Wicked Marquis Part 32

"It happens to be the only way in which I can look upon the matter,"

was the cool reply.

"To proceed a little further," the lawyer continued, "I am here to enquire, solely in your own interests and as a matter of business, whether you have made any definite agreement to pay for these shares?

I am under the impression that your lordship mentioned a note of hand."

"I have signed," the Marquis acknowledged, "a bill, I believe the doc.u.ment was called, for forty thousand pounds, due in about two months' time."

"Has your lordship any idea as to how this liability is to be met?"

"None at all. It is possible that the shares will have advanced in value sufficiently to justify my selling them. If not, I take it that the bank will advance the sum against the scrip."

Mr. Wadham, Junior, could scarcely contain himself.

"Does your lordship know," he exclaimed, "that the bank hesitated about advancing a sum of less than a thousand pounds upon the security of those shares?"

The Marquis yawned.

"They will probably have changed their minds in two months' time," he remarked.

"But if they have not?" Mr. Wadham persisted.

"It is the unfortunate proclivity of you who are immersed in the narrow ways of legal procedure," his client observed, "to look only upon the worst side of a matter. Personally, I am an optimist. I rather expect to make a fortune on those shares."

"It is the belief of my firm, on the contrary," Mr. Wadham confessed gloomily, "that they will end in a pet.i.tion in bankruptcy being presented against your lordship."

The Marquis shook out his handkerchief, wiped his lips and lit a cigarette.

"Yours appears to be rather a dismal errand, Mr. Wadham," he said coldly. "Is there any reason why I should detain you further?"

"None whatever, so long as I have made it quite clear that there is no prospect of raising a single half-penny in excess of the mortgages already completed. The matter of the forty thousand pounds draft is, of course, entirely in your lordship's hands. I thought it my duty to inform you as to the value of the shares, in case you were able to persuade the gentleman who sold them to you to cancel the transaction."

"You mean well, Wadham, no doubt," the Marquis declared, a little patronisingly, "but, as I said before, your turn of mind is too legal.

My respects to your father. You will forgive my ringing, will you not?

Lady Let.i.tia is waiting for me to walk with her."

Mr. Wadham departed, saying blasphemous things all the way into Piccadilly, and the Marquis walked with Lady Let.i.tia in the Park. As a rule their conversation, although mostly of personal matters, was conducted in light-hearted fashion enough by Let.i.tia, and responded to with a certain dry though stately humour by her father. This morning, however, a silence which amounted almost to constraint reigned between them. The Marquis, realising this, finally dragged his thoughts with difficulty away from his own affairs.

"I had intended to speak to you, Let.i.tia," he began, "concerning the announcement of your marriage. Some festivities must naturally follow, and a meeting between myself and the Duke."

"Whom you hate like poison, don't you, dad!" Let.i.tia said, with a little grimace. "Well, so do I, for the matter of that."

"One's personal feelings are scarcely of account in such a case," the Marquis averred; "that is to say, any personal feelings with the exception of yours and Grantham's. The match is suitable in every way, and at a time when every young man of account is being chased by a new race of ineligible young women, it must be a comfort to his family to contemplate an alliance like this."

Let.i.tia shrugged her shoulders.

"With regard to the actual announcement, dad," she said, "we are going to keep it to ourselves for a few weeks longer, or at any rate until we are safely settled in the country. It's such a bore to have every one you have ever spoken to in your life come rushing round to wish you happiness and that sort of thing. Charlie rather agrees with me."

"The matter, naturally, is in your hands," the Marquis replied, with a slight air of relief.

"Of course, I am seeing rather more of Charlie," Let.i.tia went on, "but people won't take any notice of that. There have been rumours of our engagement at least half a dozen times already. Aren't you getting just a little sick, dad, of this everlasting walk and these everlasting people we keep on bowing to and wish we didn't know?"

"I hadn't thought of it exactly in that way," her father confessed, "and yet perhaps London is a little wearisome this season."

"I think," Let.i.tia sighed, "that I never felt so keen about leaving town and getting into the country. I suppose you wouldn't care to go down to Mandeleys a week earlier, would you?" she asked tentatively.

The Marquis looked upwards towards the tops of the trees. He thought of that particular spot on the hall table where notes were left for him, of the old-fashioned silver salver laid by his side on the breakfast table, upon which his letters were placed. He thought of the queer new feeling with which, day by day, he glanced them through, opening none, searching always, covering his disappointment by means of some ingenious remark; and of the days when he returned from such a walk as this, or from the club, his eyes glued upon the sideboard even while the butler was relieving him of his coat and gloves. This morning all the acc.u.mulated sickness, all the little throbs of disappointment, seemed to be lumped into one gigantic and intolerable depression, so that his knees even trembled a little while he walked, and his feet felt as though they were shod with lead. He remembered his sleepless nights. He thought of that dull ache which came to him sometimes in the still hours, when he lay and fancied that he could hear her voice, her cheerful laugh, the tender touch of her fingers.

He felt a sudden, overmastering desire to be free, at any rate, from that minute by minute agony. At Mandeleys there would be only the post. Or perhaps, if he made up his mind to leave town earlier than he had expected, he would not be breaking his word to himself if he sent just a line to tell her of his changed plans. The country, by all means!

"So far as I am concerned, Let.i.tia," he said, "I think that I have never before felt so strongly the desire to leave London. I suppose that, if we were content to take things quietly, we could collect a few servants and be comfortable there?"

"I am sure of it, dad!" she exclaimed eagerly. "You don't need to bother. I could arrange it all," she went on, pa.s.sing her arm through his. "Four or five women will be all that we need, and Mrs. Harris can collect those in the village. Then we need only take Gossett and Smith from here, and of course cook. The others can go on to board wages."

The Marquis smiled indulgently.

"You must not disperse the establishment too completely, my dear," he said. "I have great hopes that a certain business venture which I have made will place us in a very different financial position before very long."

She looked a little dubious.

"Was that what Mr. Wadham was worrying about this morning?" she asked.

"Mr. Wadham, Junior, is a most ignorant young man," her father proclaimed stiffly. "The venture, such as it is, is one which I have made entirely on my own responsibility."

A sudden thought struck her. Her arm tightened upon her father's.

"Has it anything to do with Mr. Thain?"

"It was Mr. Thain who placed the matter before me," he a.s.sented.

"And Mr. Wadham doesn't approve?"

"You really are a most intelligent young person," her father declared, smiling. "Mr. Wadham's disapproval, however, does not disturb me."

Let.i.tia was conscious of a curious uneasiness.

"Are you quite sure that Mr. Thain is an honest man, father?" she asked.

The Marquis's eyebrows were slightly elevated.

"My dear!" he said reprovingly. "Mr. Thain's position as a financier is, I believe, beyond all question. Your aunt, who, you will remember, first brought him to us, spoke of his reputation in the States as being entirely unexceptionable."

"After all, aunt only met him on the steamer," Let.i.tia observed.

"Consider further," the Marquis continued, "that he has taken Broomleys and will therefore be a neighbour of ours for some time. Do you think that he would have done this with the knowledge in his mind he had involved me in a transaction which was destined to have an unfortunate conclusion?"

Let.i.tia was silent. Her fine forehead was clouded by a little perplexed frown. The problem of David Thain was not so easily solved.

Then the d.u.c.h.ess called to them from her car and beckoned Let.i.tia to her side.

"I have heard rumours, Let.i.tia," she whispered.