The Wicked Marquis

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

"It is queer," she admitted, "to hear such professions of fidelity from you."

"Had I a different reputation?" he asked. "Well, you see how I have outlived it."

Marcia's silence, natural enough at the time, puzzled him a little afterwards, puzzled him as he leaned back in his car, on his way homewards, puzzled him through the evening in the few minutes of reflection which he was able to spare from a large dinner party.

"Borden!" he muttered to himself. "I wonder what sort of a man he is."

In his library, where he lingered for a few moments before retiring to bed, he took down a volume of "Who's Who." Borden's name, rather to his surprise, was there. The man, it seemed, was of decent family, had done well at Oxford, both in scholarship and athletics. He was born—the Marquis counted his years. He was forty-one years old—nineteen years younger! He closed the book and sat down in his chair, forgetting for once to mix for himself the whiskey and soda which lay ready to his hand. It seemed to him that there was a tragedy in that nineteen years. Borden was of the age now that he himself had been when Marcia had first listened to his very courtly and yet uncommonly definite love-making. He rose almost like a thief, crossed the hall, and, opening softly the door of the drawing-room, turned up the two lights before a great gilt mirror. He stood and regarded himself thoughtfully, appraisingly, critically. He was tall and very little bowed. His figure was still the figure of a young man, and the court clothes which he was wearing became him. That he was handsome so far as regards his finely chiselled features, his high forehead and his soft grey hair, he granted himself. The world had given him few chances of forgetting it. But there was a little whiteness about his cheeks, a slight dropping of the flesh under his eyes, just something of that tired look which creeps along with the years, a silent, persistent ghost. The Marquis switched off the lights and turned towards the door. He tiptoed his way across the hall and threw himself once more into his easy-chair. His eyes were fixed upon the opposite wall. He still saw that presentment of himself. And there was Marcia, barely in the prime of her life, the figure of her girlhood developed, yet not, even now, matronly; her bright complexion, her broad, intellectual forehead with its masses of brown hair, her humorous mouth, her dark, undimmed eyes, still hungry for what life might have to give. Those nineteen years remained a tragedy.

CHAPTER IX

David Thain, arrived at the end of his journey, seated himself on the second stile from the road, threw away his cigar and looked facts in the face. He who had run the gamut of the Wall Street fever, who in his earlier days had relied almost upon chance for a meal, who had stood the tests of huge successes as well as the anxieties of possible failures without visible emotion—in such a fashion, even, that his closest friends could scarcely tell whether he were winning or losing—found himself now, without any crisis before him, and engaged in the most ordinary undertaking of a stroll from the station across a few fields, suddenly the victim of sensations and weaknesses which defied analysis and mocked at restraint. It was the England of his boyhood, this, the sudden almost overpowering realisation of those dreams which had grown fainter and fainter during his many years of struggle in a very different atmosphere. Birds were singing in the long grove which, behind the high, grey-stone wall, fringed the road for miles. Rooks—real English rooks—were cawing above his head. A light evening breeze was bending the meadow grass of the field which his footpath had cloven, and from the hedge by his side came the faint perfume of hawthorn blossom. Before him was the park with its splendours of giant oaks, with deer resting beneath the trees, and in the distance the grey, irregular outline of Mandeleys Abbey. He had played cricket, when he was a boy, in the very field through which he was passing. Some time in that dim past, he had stood with his uncle, whilst he had issued with the beaters from that long strip of plantation, watching with all a boy's fervid admiration the careless ease with which the Lord of Mandeleys was bringing the pheasants down from the sky. He had skated on the lake there, had watched at a respectful distance the antics of the ladies Letitia and Margaret, anxious to escape from their retinue of servants and attendants. A queer little vision came before him at that moment of Lady Letitia hobbling towards him upon the ice, with one skate unbuckled, and a firm but gracious entreaty that the little boy—he was at least a head taller than she—would fasten it for her. Strange little flashes of memory had come to him now and then in that new world where he had carved his way to success, memories so indistinct that they brought with them no thrills, scarcely even any longing. And now all his strength and hardness, qualities so necessary to him throughout his strenuous life, seemed to have passed away. He was a child again, breathing in all these simple sights and perfumes, his memory taking him even further back to the days when he sat in the meadow, in the hot sun, picking daisies and buttercups, and watching for the fish that sometimes jumped from the stream. It was an entirely unexpected emotion, this. When once more he strode along the footpath, he felt a different man. He had lost his slight touch of assurance. He looked about him eagerly, almost appealingly. He was ashamed to confess even to himself that he had the feeling of a wanderer who has come home.

He crossed the last stile and was now in the park proper. Several villagers were strolling about under the trees, and they looked at this newcomer, with his dark-coloured clothes and strangely-shaped hat, with some surprise. Nevertheless, he held uninterruptedly on his way until he reached the broad drive which led to the Abbey. He walked on the turf by the side of it, over the bridge which crossed the stream, through the inner iron gates, beyond which the village people were not allowed to pass, and so to the well-remembered spot. On his right was the house—a strange, uneven building, at times ecclesiastical, here and there domestic, always ancient, with its wings of cloisters running almost down to the moat which surrounded it. And just over the moat, crossed by that light iron handbridge, with its back against what he remembered as a plantation, but which had now become a wood, the little red brick cottage, smothered all over with creepers, its tiny garden ablaze with flowers, its empty rows of dog kennels, its deserted line of coops. David glanced for a moment at the drawn blinds of the Abbey. Then he crossed the footbridge and the few yards of meadow, lifted the latch of the gate and, walking up the gravel path, came to a sudden standstill. A man who was seated almost hidden by a great cluster of fox-gloves rose to his feet.

"It's you, then, lad!" he exclaimed, holding out both his hands. "You're welcome! There's no one to the house—there won't be for a quarter of an hour—so I'll wring your hands once more. It's a queer world, this, David. You're back with me here, where I brought you up as a stripling, and yon's the Abbey. Sit you down, boy. I am not the man I was since I came here."