The Wicked Marquis Part 41

"I am pa.s.sing through a time of some anxiety," he acknowledged.

She remained on the side of his chair, still holding his arm. The Marquis sank back with a little air of relief. There seemed to be something different, something warmer in the world. He was moved by a rare and unaccountable impulse--he drew her towards him and kissed her lips.

"I had a birthday last week," he said, with a very slight smile. "I think that it affected me. One begins to wonder after one has pa.s.sed middle age, not what there is to look forward to, but how much it is worth while enduring."

"Of course," she declared, with a grimace, "you've been diving into musty old volumes at Mandeleys and reading the mutterings of one of those primitive philosophers who growled at life from a cave."

"I have found myself a little lonely at Mandeleys," he confessed.

"But this visit to London," she persisted. "Is it business? Is there anything wrong?"

"I came to see you."

"My head is going round," she declared. "This is Wednesday. Besides, I thought you were going to stay away until I wrote you--not that I wanted you to."

"I changed my mind," he told her, "in consequence of a visit which I received yesterday from a Mr. James Borden."

She gave vent to an exclamation of dismay.

"You mean that Jimmy has been down to see you?"

"If Jimmy and Mr. James Borden are identical," the Marquis replied, a little stiffly, "he undoubtedly has."

She looked at him helplessly.

"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "how could he be so foolish!"

"He wanted, it seems," the Marquis continued, "to have what he called a man-to-man talk. I am not the sort of person, as you know, Marcia, who appreciates man-to-man talks with strangers. I listened to all that he had to say, and because I gathered that he was your friend, I was polite to him. That is all. He gave me to understand that he was your suitor."

"He'd no right to tell you anything of the sort," she declared, "but in a sense I suppose it is true. He wants me to marry him. It's most fearfully unsettling. But that he should come to you! I wish he hadn't, Reginald."

"It appeared to me to be a quixotic action," the Marquis a.s.sented.

"However, indirectly it has been conducive of good--it has brought me a great pleasure. I have missed you very much, Marcia. I am very happy to be here again, for however short a time."

"You are going back, then, to Mandeleys?"

"When we part, directly after luncheon. I have guests arriving there to-night--my sister and Grantham, and I believe some others. But after my talk with Borden, or rather his talk to me, I felt that I must see you."

"Well, I've missed you," she confessed frankly. "I seem to have had lots to do, and I have been going to the theatres, and I have quite made up my mind to write a play. But I have missed you.--Shall I go and put on my hat?"

"If you will," he answered. "We can talk in the car and at luncheon."

The Marquis watched her cross the room and sighed. At thirty-nine, he thought, she was wonderfully young. Her figure was a little more mature, but in all other respects she seemed only to have found poise and a.s.surance with the pa.s.sing years. He leaned back in his chair almost with a sense of luxury. He was back again in the atmosphere which had kept him young, the atmosphere which unconsciously had hung around him and kept him warm and contented--kept him, too, from looking over the edge into strange places. The room was deliciously feminine, notwithstanding a certain fascinating disorder. There were magazines, Reviews and ill.u.s.trated papers everywhere in evidence, an open box of cigarettes upon the chimneypiece, an armful of flowers thrown loose upon the table, as well as the roses upon her desk. One of her gloves lay upon a chair by the side of a pile of proofs. It seemed to him that there were some new photographs on the mantelpiece, but his own, in the uniform of his county yeomanry, still occupied the central position. There were songs upon the piano; on the sideboard a silver c.o.c.ktail shaker, and, as he noticed with a little pang, two gla.s.ses.

Nevertheless, he sat there waiting in great content until Marcia came in, dressed for the street. She was followed by a servant with some ice upon a tray, and bottles.

"Now for my new vice," she exclaimed gaily, taking up the c.o.c.ktail shaker and half filling it with ice. "You are not going to be obstinate, are you?"

"I shall take anything you may give me, with great pleasure," he a.s.sured her, a little stiffly.

She saw him looking at the second gla.s.s, and laughed.

"It is Phyllis Grant who is responsible for this," she explained. "She lives in the next flat, you know, and she comes in most days, either before luncheon or before dinner, for an apritif and a cigarette."

The Marquis's face cleared. He drank his c.o.c.ktail and p.r.o.nounced it delicious. On the threshold he paused and looked back.

"I like your little room, Marcia," he said. "I find it a strange thing to confess, but there is nowhere else in the world where I feel quite as much at home, quite as contented, as I do here."

She seemed almost startled, for a moment unresponsive. Such a speech was so unlike him that it seemed impossible that he could be in earnest. She walked down the stairs by his side with a new gravity in her face. Perhaps he noticed it. At any rate, as soon as they were seated in the car he began to talk to her.

"The object of Mr. Borden's visit to me, I gathered, was to impress upon me the fact that by marrying him you would gain many advantages from which you are at present debarred. I naturally made no comment, nor did I argue the matter with him. I have come to you."

She sat silent in her corner. Her eyes were fixed upon a nursemaid, with two or three young children, pa.s.sing by. Suddenly she touched her companion on the arm and pointed to them.

"There is that, you know," she faltered.

The Marquis nodded.

"My great fear," he continued, "is that sometimes I am too much inclined to treat you as a contemporary, and to forget that you have never known those things which are a part of every woman's life. I must give Mr. Borden the credit for having had the good taste not to mention them."

"Oh, Jimmy isn't a cad," she answered, "but, without mentioning them, I cannot understand what he came to you for. As regards the other things you have spoken of, I don't care a rap about them, in fact I love my independence. I go where I choose, I have found no one indisposed to make my acquaintance, and the more I see of life--such life as comes to me--the more I love it. When Jim--Mr. Borden--uses such arguments, he bores me. They are directly against him instead of for him. If I were Mrs. James Borden, people would leave cards upon me and I should have to eat dinners with fellow-publishers' wives, and exchange calls, and waste many hours of my life in all the tomfoolery of middle-cla.s.s respectable living. It doesn't appeal to me, Reginald. He is an idiot not to realise it."

"What does appeal to you, then?" he asked.

"That," she answered, moving her head backwards.

They crossed Battersea Bridge in silence.

"It's such a silly, ordinary problem," she went on presently, "and yet it's so difficult. It's either now or never, you know, Reginald. I shall say good-by to the thirties before long."

"It is your problem," he said sadly, "not mine."

She held his fingers in hers.

"If only, when we were both so much younger," she sighed, "we had had a little more courage. But I was so ignorant, and there was so much else, too, to distract. I shall never forget our first few months of travel--Paris, the Riviera, Italy. I was impressionable, too, and I loved it all so--the colour and the beauty, the rich, warm stream of life, after that wretched village school. I was so aching to understand, and you were such a good tutor. You fed my brain wonderfully. Oh, I suppose I ought to be content!"

"And I," he murmured, "I, too, ought to be ready to creep into my own little shelter and be content with--memories."

"Ah, no!" she protested, laying her hand upon his. "If you feel like that, it is ended.--Now come, this is a gala day. You have come so far to see me. I am seriously flattered. You must be starved, too. Not another word until we have lunched."

At Trewly's their entrance produced a mild sensation. Their usual table was fortunately unoccupied. The manager himself welcomed them with many compliments. Marcia glanced around her a little listlessly.

"There is something rather mausoleum-like about this restaurant in the daytime," she declared. "Won't you take me somewhere else one day, Reginald?"

"Why not?" he answered. "It is for you to choose."

"There are some queer, foreign little places," she went on hastily.

"The things to eat, perhaps, are not so good, but the people seem alive. There is an air here, isn't there, of faded splendour about the decorations and the people, too."

"I will make enquiries," the Marquis promised.