Part 19 (1/2)
”A touch of gout,” he said, ”come to remind me, I suppose, that however much we set our faces against it, change does exist. You are the only person, Marcia, who seems to defy it.”
She laughed at him, but not with entire naturalness. He found himself studying her, during the next few moments. Just as he was a celebrated connoisseur of _objets d'arts_, a valued visitor to Christie's, although his purchases were small, so he was, in his way, an excellent judge of the beautiful in living things. He realised, as he studied her, that Marcia had only more fully developed the charm which had first attracted him. Her figure was a little rounder but it had lost none of its perfections. Her neck and throat were just as beautiful, and the success of her work, and her greater knowledge of life, had brought with them an a.s.sured and dignified bearing. There was not a vestige of grey in her soft brown hair, not a line in her face, nor any sign of the dentist's handiwork in her strong, white teeth. Only--was it his fancy, he wondered, or was there something missing from the way she looked at him?--a half shy, half baffled appeal for affection which had so often shone out upon him during these evenings, a wholly personal, wholly human note, the unspoken message of a woman to her lover. He asked himself whether that had gone, and, if it had, whether the companions.h.i.+p which remained sufficed.
”So the journey down to Mandeleys has not materialised yet?” he asked.
She shook her head.
”To tell you the truth,” she told him, ”I rather shrank from it. I could not seem to bring it into perspective--you know what I mean. How am I to go to him? I don't suppose he has changed. He is still splendidly faithful to the ideas of his earlier days. I do not suppose he has moved a step out of his groove. He is looking at the same things in the same way. Am I to go to him as a Magdalen, as a penitent? Honestly, Reginald, I couldn't play the part.”
Their eyes met, and they both smiled.
”It is very difficult,” he admitted, ”to discuss or to hold in common a matter of importance with a person of another world. Why do you go?”
”Because,” she replied, ”he is, after all, my father; because I know that the pain and rage which he felt when he left England are there to-day, and I would like so much to make him see that they have all been wasted. I want him to realise that my life has been made, not spoilt.”
”I should find out indirectly, if I were you, how he is feeling,” the Marquis advised. ”I rather agree with you that you will find him unchanged. His fierce opposition to my reasonable legal movements against him give one that impression.”
”I shall probably be sorry I went,” she admitted, ”but it seems to me that it is one of those things which must be done. Let us talk of something else. Tell me how you have spent the week?”
”For one thing, I have improved my acquaintance with the American, David Thain, of whom I have already spoken to you,” he told her.
”And your great financial scheme?”
”It promises well. Of course, if it is entirely successful, it will be like starting life all over again.”
”There is a certain amount of risk, I suppose?” she asked, a little anxiously.
The Marquis waved his hand.
”In this affair quite negligible,” he declared.
”It would make you very happy, of course, to free the estates,” she ruminated.
The Marquis for a moment revealed a side of himself which always made Marcia feel almost maternal towards him.
”It would give me very great pleasure, also,” he confessed, ”to point out to my solicitors--to Mr. Wadham, Junior, especially--that the task which they have left unaccomplished for some twenty-five years I have myself undertaken successfully.”
”This Mr. Thain must be rather interesting,” Marcia said musingly.
”Could you describe him?”
It was at that precise moment that the Marquis raised his head and discovered that David Thain was being shown by an obsequious _matre d'htel_ to the table adjoining their own.
In the case of almost any other of his acquaintances, the Marquis's course of action would have been entirely simple. David, however, complicated things. With the nave courtesy of his American bringing up, he no sooner recognised the Marquis than he approached the table and offered his hand.
”Good evening, Marquis,” he said.
The Marquis shook hands. Some ba.n.a.lities pa.s.sed between the two men.
Then, as though for the first time, David was suddenly and vividly aware of Marcia's presence. Some instinct told him who she was, and for a moment he forgot himself. He looked at her steadily, curiously, striving to remember, and Marcia returned his gaze with a strange absorption which at first she failed to understand. This slim, nervous-looking man, with the earnest eyes and the slight stoop of the head, was bringing back to her some memory. From the first stage of the struggle her common sense was worsted. She was looking back down the avenues of her memory. Surely somewhere in that shadowland she had known some one with eyes like these!--there must be something to explain this queer sense of excitement. And then the Marquis, who had been deliberating, spoke the words which brought her to herself.
”Marcia, let me present to you Mr. David Thain, of whom we were speaking a few minutes ago. Mr. Thain, this is Miss Marcia Hannaway, whose very clever novel you may have read.”