The Wicked Marquis Read online

  CHAPTER XX

  Borden's car came to a standstill in the avenue, and Marcia lookedacross the strip of green turf towards the cottage with a queer littlethrill of remembrance.

  "You are sure you won't mind waiting?" she asked, as she sprang down."If there is any fatted calf about, I'll call you in."

  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 waytowards the cottage,--curiously silent, and with no visible sign ofhabitation except for the smoke curling up from the chimney. As shedrew nearer to the rustic entrance, she hesitated. A rush of thosevery sensations at which she had so often gently mocked swept throughher consciousness, unsteadying and bewildering her. Mandeleys,imposing in its grim stillness, seemed to be throwing out shadowstowards her, catching her up in a whirlpool of memories, halfsentimental, half tragical. It was in the little cottage garden whereshe now stood, and in the woods beyond, that she had wandered with thatstrange new feeling in her heart of which she was, even at that moment,intensely conscious, gazing through the mists of her inexperiencetowards the new world and new heaven which her love was unfoldingbefore her. A hundred forgotten fancies flashed into her brain. Sheremembered, with a singular and most unnerving accuracy, the silentvigils which she had spent, half hidden amongst those tall hollyhocks.She had seen the grey twilight of morning pass, seen the mists rollaway and, turret by turret, the great house stand out like some fairypalace fashioned from space in a single night. She had seen thethrushes hop from the shrubberies and coverts on to the dew-spangledlawn, had heard their song, growing always in volume, had seen thefaint sunlight flash in the windows, before she had crept back to herroom. Another day in that strange turmoil which had followed thecoming of her love! She had watched shooting parties assemble in thedrive outside, her father in command, she herself hidden yet watchful,her eyes always upon one figure, her thoughts with him. And then thenights--the summer nights--when men and women in evening costumestrolled down from the house. She could see their white shirt frontsglistening in the twilight. Again she heard the firm yet loiteringstep 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 havea talk with him about the partridge drives to-morrow." She closed hereyes. The smell of the honeysuckle and the early cottage roses seemedsuddenly almost stupefying. There were a few seconds--perhaps even aminute--before Vont had donned his brown velveteen coat and issued fromthe cottage--just time for a whispered word, a glance, a touch of thefingers.--Marcia felt her knees shake as she lingered underneath theporch. She was swept with recalcitrant memories, stinging like thelash of a whip. Perhaps this new wisdom of hers was, after all, adelusion, the old standards of her Calvinistic childhood unassailable.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 thegarden, with a book upon his knee and his face turned to Mandeleys. Atthe sound of her little exclamation he turned his head. At first itwas clear that he did not recognise his visitor. He laid down the bookand rose to his feet. Marcia came a few steps towards him and thenpaused. Several very ingenious openings escaped her altogether.

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

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

  "No," he answered, "I am not glad. Since you are here, though, takethis 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 fromgeneration to generation, just as the flowers here throw out freshblossoms and the weeds come and go. But my rooftree stands where italways did. Wait."

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

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

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

  "Not," he replied, "if you are in need of succour or help, but I judgefrom 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," shepleaded.

  His hands trembled.

  "Kindness," he repeated. "That's strange hearing. You are withoutfriends, perhaps? You made some, maybe, and they heard of yourdisgrace, 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 themknow 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 viewsof 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 havenothing 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 meaway from you gave me everything I asked of him in life, everything hepromised. He is still willing to do the same. If any change comesinto 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 andrealise, father, if you can, that I have passed into a larger worldthan you or this little village community here know very much about. Ihave written books and been praised for them by men whose praise isworth having. There are plenty of perfectly good and well-livingpeople 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, andeconomy in boots and hats was a vice which she had never practised.When she told him that she had passed into a world apart from his, herealised 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 wayof thinking, eh? One of those who have forgotten the laws of God andhave set up for themselves some graven image in which there's nought ofthe truth?"

  "The man who wishes to marry me, father," she said warmly, "is a man ofhonour and position. Can't you believe me when I assure you that thereis another way of looking at what you consider so terrible? I havebeen as faithful to my vows as you to your marriage ones. The man whomI am told you still hate has never wavered in his loyalty to me, anymore than I have in my fidelity to him. Can't you believe that to someextent, at least, we have sanctified our love?"

  James Vont passed his hand a little wearily over his forehead.

  "It's blasphemous gibberish that you're talking," he declared. "If youhad come back to me, Marcia, in rags and in want, maybe there issomething in my heart would have gone, and I'd have taken you and we'dhave 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 learningand your writing of books! Why, you're ignorant, woman, more ignorantthan the insects about you. You don't know right from wrong."

  "Father," she pleaded--

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

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p; "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 youare, you women who live cheerfully with the men you sell yourselves to,and defy the laws of God and the teaching of the Bible? You're justwastrels and Jezebels. Ay, and there's the garden gate, Marcia, and myheart's as hard as a flint, even though the tears are in your eyes andyou look at me as your mother used to look. It's no such tears asyou're shedding as'll bring you back into my heart. Your veryprosperity's an offence. You carry the price of your shame on yourback and in your smooth speech and in this false likeness of yours tothe 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.

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

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

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

  "Get away quickly, please," she implored him. "Don't talk to me,James. Outside the gates as quickly as you can go!"

  He started his engine, and they drove off, through the lodge gates intothe country lane, where the hedges were beautiful with fresh greenfoliage and fragrant with early honeysuckle.

  "To London," she begged. "Don't stop--anywhere yet."

  He nodded and drove a little faster, his eyes always upon the road. Itwas not until they had reached the heath country and the great openspaces around Newmarket that a little colour came back into her cheeks.

  "It wasn't a success, James," she said quietly.

  "I was afraid it mightn't be," he admitted.

  "Nothing but a Drury Lane heroine would have moved him," she went on,with an uneasy little laugh. "If I could have gone back in rags, in asnowstorm, with a child in my arms, he'd have forgiven me. As I amnow, I am an offence to all that he holds right, and his ideas are likesteel cables--you can't twist or bend them."

  Borden nodded. He relaxed his speed a little and glanced towards hiscompanion.

  "You know what our friend said in that Russian manuscript I lent you,"he reminded her: "'The primitive laws are for the primitive world.'"

  "But what do we learn, Jim?" she asked him tremulously. "What is itsvalue? Is it sophistry or knowledge? I lived in that little cottageonce. I have smiled at the memory of those days so often. I didhomely tasks and dreamed of books and learning. To me it seems,although my fingers are bleeding, that I have climbed. And to him--andhe looked just like something out of the Bible, Jim--I am nothingmore--"

  "Don't," he interrupted. "He is of his world and you of yours. Youcan't work out the sum you are trying to solve, there isn't any commondenominator."

  "I don't know," she answered, a little pitifully. "There was a singlesecond, as I saw him sitting there with his Bible on his knee andremembered that he was a clean, well-living, honest man, when my heartbegan to shake. I remembered that he was my father. It seems to methat it is all wrong that there should be any difference between us. Isuddenly felt that a brain really didn't count for anything, after all,that all the culture in the world wasn't so beautiful as a single rightfeeling."

  He slackened again the speed of the car. As far as they could see wasa great open space of moorland, with flaming bushes of yellow gorse,little clumps of early heather, and, in the distance, a streak of bluefrom the undergrowth of a long belt of firs. She looked about her fora moment and closed her eyes.

  "There," he said, "is one of the simplest phases of beauty, the worldhas ever given us--flowers and trees, an open space and a west wind.There isn't any one who can look at these things and be happy who isn'tsomewhere near the right path, Marcia."

  She leaned back, her eyes fixed dreamily upon the blue distance.

  "Just drive on, please, Jim," she begged.