The Wicked Marquis Part 40

"I am taking it for granted," he proceeded, "that you are broad-minded enough, Lord Mandeleys, to admit that we can discuss this, or any other matter, on terms of equality. I am unknown to you. My father was a Dean of Peterborough; I was myself at Harrow and Magdalen."

The Marquis's fingers stretched out once more towards the paper knife.

"You mentioned, I believe," he said, "the name of a lady with whom I am acquainted."

"I am coming to that," was the eager reply. "I only wanted to have it understood that this was a matter which we could discuss as equals, as man to man."

"I am so far from agreeing with you," the Marquis declared calmly, "that I prefer to choose my own companions in any discussion, and my own subjects. It happens that you are a stranger to me."

Borden checked a hasty retort, which he realised at once would have placed him at a further disadvantage.

"Lord Mandeleys," he said, "I was at first Miss Hannaway's publisher.

I have become her friend. I desire to become her husband. Her whole story is known to me, even from the day when you brought her away from the Vont cottage and chose her for your companion. I have watched the slow development of her brain, I know how much she has benefited intellectually by the forced seclusion entailed upon her by the conditions of your friendship. I realise, however, that the time has come when in justice to her gifts, which have not yet reached fruition, it is necessary that she should come into closer personal contact with the world of which she knows so little. She can attain that position by becoming my wife."

"Really!" his listener murmured, with a faint note of unruffled surprise in his tone.

Borden set his teeth. The task which had seemed to him so easy was presenting now a very different appearance. Nevertheless, he kept an iron restraint upon himself.

"I do not wish to weary you," he went on, "by making a long story of this. I am forty-one years old and unmarried. Marcia Hannaway is the first woman whom I have wished to make my wife, and I wish it because I--care for her. I have been her suitor for nine years. During all that time she has given me no word of encouragement. I have never once, until these last few days, been permitted to dine alone with her, nor been allowed even the privilege of visiting her at her home. The restrictions upon our intercourse have been, I presume, in obedience to your wishes, or to Marcia's interpretation of them."

"If we could come," the Marquis said gently, "to the reason for this visit--"

The words supplied the sting that Borden needed.

"I believe," he declared, "that Marcia Hannaway in her heart wishes to marry me. I believe that she cares enough to marry me. Only a short time ago she admitted it, and within twelve hours I received a note, retracting all that she had promised."

There was a deep silence throughout the great room. The faces of the two men--a little closer now, for Borden had moved his chair--were both under the little circle of lamplight. For a single second something had disturbed the imperturbability of the Marquis's countenance--it seemed, indeed, as though some strange finger had humanised it, had softened the eyes and drawn apart the lips. Then the moment pa.s.sed.

"Are we nearing the end of this discussion, Mr. Borden?"

"Every word brings us nearer the end," was the ready reply. "I am going to tell you the truth as I feel it in my heart. Marcia would be at her best in the life to which I should bring her. Mentally, spiritually and humanly, as my wife she would be happier. She has refused me out of loyalty to you."

"Are you suggesting," the Marquis enquired, "that I should intervene in favour of your suit?"

Borden struck the table with the flat of his hand.

"d.a.m.n it," he exclaimed, "can't you talk of this like a man! Don't you care enough for Marcia to think a little of her happiness? I want you to let her go--to let her believe, whether it is the truth or not, that she is not, as she seems to think, necessary to your life. Come! Life has its sacrifices as well as its compensations. You've had the best part of a wonderful woman's life. I am not saying a word about the conditions which exist between you. I don't presume. If I did, I should have to remember that Marcia speaks always of your treatment of her with tears of grat.i.tude in her eyes. But your time has come.

Marcia has many years to live. There is something grown up within her which you have nothing to do with--a little flame of genius which burns there all the time, which at this very moment would be a furnace but for the fact of the unnatural life she is forced to lead as your--companion. Now you ask what I've come for, and you know. I want you to forget yourself and to think of the woman who has been your faithful and sympathetic companion for all these years. She hasn't come to her own yet. She can't with you. She can with me. Write and thank her for what she has given you, and tell her that for the future she is free. She can make her choice then, unfettered by these infernal bonds which you have laid around her."

The Marquis turned the lamp a little lower with steady fingers. The necessity for his action was not altogether apparent.

"You suggest, Mr. Borden, if I understand you rightly," he said, "that I am now too old and too unintelligent to afford Marcia the stimulating companionship which her gifts deserve?"

"There can't be a great sympathy between you," the other declared, "and, to be brutal, the place in life which she deserves, and to which she aspires, is not open to her under present conditions."

"You allude, I presume," the Marquis said, "to the absence of any legal tie between Miss Hannaway and myself?"

"I do," Borden a.s.sented. "The world is a broad-minded place enough, but there are differences and backwaters--I am not here to explain them to you. I don't need to. Marcia Hannaway, married to her publisher, going where she will, thinking how she will, meeting whom she will, would be a different person to Miss Marcia Hannaway, living in isolation in Battersea, with nothing warm nor human in her life except--"

"Precisely," the Marquis interrupted, with a little gesture which might have concealed--anything. "I am beginning to grasp your point of view, Mr. Borden."

"And your answer?"

"I have no answer to give you, sir. You have made certain suggestions, which I may or may not be prepared to accept. In any case, matters of so much importance scarcely lend themselves to decisions between strangers. I shall probably allude to what you have said when I see or write Miss Hannaway."

"You've nothing more to say to me about it, then?" Borden persisted, a little wistfully.

"Nothing whatever! You may possibly consider my att.i.tude selfish," the Marquis added, "but I find myself wholly indifferent to your interests in this matter."

"I should be able to reconcile myself even to that," was the grim reply, "if I have been able to penetrate for a single moment that accursed selfishness of yours--if I have been able to make you think, for however short a time, of Marcia's future instead of your own."

The Marquis rose without haste from his place, and rang the bell.

"You will permit me, Mr. Borden," he invited, "to offer you some refreshments?"

"Thank you, I desire nothing."

The Marquis pointed to the door, by which Gossett was standing.

"That, then, I think, concludes our interview," he said, with icy courtesy.

Mr. Borden walked the full length of the very long apartment, suffered himself to be respectfully conducted across the great hall, out on to the flags and into the motor-car which he had hired in Fakenham. It was not until he was on his way through the park that he opened his lips and found them attuned to blasphemy. At the top of the gentle slope, however, where the car was brought to a standstill while the driver opened the iron gate, he turned back and looked at Mandeleys, looked at its time-worn turrets, its mullioned windows, the Norman chapel, the ruined cloisters, the ivy-covered west wing, the beautiful Elizabethan chimneys. A strange, heterogeneous ma.s.s of architecture, yet magnificent, in its way impressive, almost inspiring. He looked at the little cottage almost at its gates, from which a thin, spiral column of smoke was ascending. Perhaps in those few seconds, and with the memory of that interview still rankling, he felt a glimmering of real understanding. Something which had always been incomprehensible to him in Marcia's story stood more or less revealed.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The Marquis, if he had been a keen physiognomist, might perhaps have read all that he had come to London to know in Marcia's expression as he made his unexpected entrance into her sitting room on the following day. She was seated at her desk, with a great pile of red roses on one side of her, and a secretary, to whom she was dictating, on the other.

She swung round in her chair and for a moment was speechless. She looked at her visitor incredulously, a little helplessly, with some traces of an emotion which puzzled him. Her greeting, however, was hearty enough. She sprang to her feet and held out both her hands.

"My dear man, how unlike you! Really, I think that I like surprises.

Give me both your hands--so! Let me look at you."

"I should have warned you of my coming," he said, raising the ink-stained fingers which he was clasping to his lips, "but to tell you the truth it was a caprice."

"I thought you were in the country, at Mandeleys!" she exclaimed.

"I was," he replied. "I have motored up from there this morning. I came to see you."

She dismissed her secretary, gazed at herself in the gla.s.s and made a grimace.

"And a nice sight I look! Never mind. Fancy motoring up from Mandeleys! What time did you start?"

"At six o'clock," he answered, with a little smile. "It was somewhat before my regular hour for rising. If you have no other arrangements, I should be glad if you would take luncheon with me."

"Bless the man, of course I will!" she a.s.sented, pa.s.sing her arm through his and leading him to a chair. "You are not looking quite so well as you ought to after a breath of country air."