The Wicked Marquis Part 44

"You are a very obstinate old man, Vont," she said severely.

"I am what the Lord made me."

"Well," she continued, leaning slightly against the paling and looking down at him, "I came down here to say a few words to you, and I shall say them, unless you run away. You are one of those simple, ignorant men, Vont, who love to nurse an imaginary injustice until the idea that you have been wronged becomes so fixed in your brain that you haven't room for anything else there. This behaviour of yours, you know, is perfectly ridiculous."

Vont made no sign even of having heard her. She continued.

"You haven't even a grievance. My brother took your daughter away from her home. Under some conditions, that would have been a very reprehensible thing. As things turned out, it has been the making of the young woman. She has received a wonderful education, has been taken abroad, and has been treated with respect and consideration by every one. My brother has devoted a considerable portion of his lifetime to ensuring her happiness. She is now a contented, clever, talented and respected woman. If she had remained here, she would probably have become the wife-drudge of a farmer or a local tradesman.

You are listening, Richard Vont?"

"Yes, I am listening!"

"If the Marquis had betrayed your daughter, taken her away and deserted her," she continued, "there might have been some justification for this theatrical att.i.tude of yours. Under the present circ.u.mstances, there is none at all. Why don't you rid yourself of the idea, once for all, that you or your daughter have suffered any wrong? You've only a few years to live. Take up your work again. There is plenty to be done here. Go and mix with your old friends and live like a reasonable man.

This brooding att.i.tude of yours is all out of date. Put your Bible away, light a pipe, and set to work and kill some of the rabbits. The farmers are always complaining."

"You have a niece up yonder," Vont said, knitting his s.h.a.ggy grey eyebrows and gazing steadfastly at his visitor, "a well-looking young woman, they say--Lady Let.i.tia Thursford. Would you like her to live with a man and not be married to him?"

"Of course," the d.u.c.h.ess replied, "that is simply impertinent. If you are going to compare the doings of your very excellent yeomen stock with the doings of the Thursfords, you are talking and thinking like a fool. A few hundred years ago, it would have been your duty to have offered your womenkind to your master when you paid your rent. We have changed all that, quite properly, but not all the socialists who ever breathed, or all the democratic teachings you may have imbibed in America, can ent.i.tle you to talk of the Vonts and the Thursfords in the same breath."

The old man rose slowly to his feet. He leaned a little upon his stick, and pointed to Mandeleys.

"You are an ignorant, shameless woman," he said. "Get you home and read your Bible. If you want a last word to carry away with you, here it is. My daughter was just as much to me as the young woman who walked yonder with you in the garden is to her father. Let him remember that."

"But, you foolish person," she expostulated, "Lady Let.i.tia enjoys all the advantages to which her station ent.i.tles her. Your daughter, with a mind and intelligence very much superior to her position, was employed in the miserable drudgery of teaching village children."

"Honest work," he replied, "hurts no one, unless they are full of sickly fancies. It's idleness that brings sin. They tell me you've new creeds amongst those in your walk of life, and a new manner of living. Live as you will, then, but let others do the same. I stand by the Book, and maybe, when your last days come, you will be sorry you cast it aside."

"So far as I remember," she reminded him, "the chief teaching of that Book is forgiveness."

"Your memory fails you, then," he answered grimly, "for what the Book preaches is justice to poor and rich alike."

The d.u.c.h.ess sighed. She was a good-hearted woman and full of confidence, but she recognised her limitations.

"My good man," she said, "I shall not argue with you any more. You won't believe it, but you are simply narrow and pig-headed and obstinate, and you won't believe that there may be a grain of reason in anybody else's point of view but your own. Just look at yourself! You can't be more than sixty-five or so, and you might be a hundred! You sit there nursing your grievance and thinking about it, while your whole life is running to seed. Why don't you get up and be a human being? Send for your daughter to come down and look after you--she'd come--and choke it all down. Put the Book away for a time, or read a little more of the New Testament and a little less of the Old. Come, will you be sensible, and I'll come in and shake hands with you, and we'll write your daughter together."

Vont was still leaning on his stick. Save that his eyebrows were drawn a little closer together, his expression was unchanged. Yet his visitor, though the sunshine was all around them, shivered.

"Did he send you here?"

"Of course not," she replied. "I came of my own accord. I remembered the days when you used to take me rabbiting and let me shoot a pheasant if there was no one about. You were a sensible, well-balanced man then. I came, hoping to find that there was a little of the old Richard Vont left in you."

"There is just enough of the old Richard Vont left," he said, "to send you back to where you came from, with a message, if you care to carry it. Tell him--your brother, the Lord of Mandeleys--that I am not sitting here of idle purpose, that I don't hear the voices around me for nothing, that I don't look day and night at Mandeleys for nothing.

Tell him to make the most of the sun that shines to-day and the soft bed he lies on to-night and the woman he kisses to-morrow, for he is very close to the end. I am an old man, but I'm here to see the end.

It has been promised."

The d.u.c.h.ess, brimful of common sense and good humour, brave as a lion and ready of tongue as she was, felt a little giddy, and clung to the rail as she crossed the little bridge over the moat. She looked back only once. Richard Vont remained standing just as she had left him--grim, motionless, menacing.

CHAPTER x.x.x

The Marquis glanced at the note which was handed to him at luncheon time, frowned slightly and handed it across to Let.i.tia.

"What have you people been doing to Thain?" he asked a little irritably. "He doesn't want to come to dinner."

The d.u.c.h.ess and Sylvia, who had just arrived on her projected visit, made no attempt to conceal their disappointment. Let.i.tia picked, up the note and read it indifferently.

"I am very sorry, aunt," she said. "I gave him all the notice I could."

"There is perhaps some misunderstanding," the Marquis remarked. "In any case, he would not know that you were here for so short a time, Caroline. After luncheon I will walk across and see him."

"I will go with you," the d.u.c.h.ess decided. "I should like to see Broomleys again. As a matter of fact, I meant to go there this morning, but I found one call enough for me."

They took their coffee in the garden. Let.i.tia followed her father to a rose bush which he had crossed the lawn to examine.

"Dad," she asked, pa.s.sing her hand through his arm, "have you had any good news?"

He shook his head.

"Why?"

"Because you look so much better. I think that motoring must agree with you."

He patted her hand.

"I rather enjoyed the drive," he admitted. "As a matter of fact, perhaps I am better," he went on.

"You haven't any good news about the shares, I suppose?" she asked hesitatingly.

For a moment he was grave.

"I have no news at all," he confessed, "or rather what news I have is not good. I put an enquiry through an independent firm of stockbrokers with whom I have had some transactions; and their reply coincided with the information already afforded to me."

Let.i.tia glanced across the park, and her face darkened.

"Has it ever struck you," she asked, "that there is something peculiar about Mr. Thain in his att.i.tude towards us--as a family, I mean?"

The Marquis shook his head.

"On the contrary," he replied, "I have always considered his deportment unimpeachable."

Let.i.tia hesitated, pulled a rose to pieces and turned back with her father towards where the d.u.c.h.ess was reclining in a wicker chair.

"I dare say it's my fancy. Why don't you all go," she suggested, "and take Mr. Thain by storm? He can scarcely resist you, aunt, and Sylvia."

"Why don't you come yourself?" the d.u.c.h.ess asked.