Part 21 (1/2)
David hesitated.
”At Trewly's Restaurant.”
”He was lunching or dining with some one?”
”Dining.”
The d.u.c.h.ess nodded.
”Of course! With a lady, wasn't it?”
”Is this a fair cross-examination?” David protested.
”My dear Mr. Thain, don't be absurd,” his companion admonished. ”Every one in London and out of it has known of my brother's friends.h.i.+p with Marcia Hannaway for years. As a matter of fact, we all approve of it immensely. The young woman, although she must be getting on now, is a very clever writer, and I think that the influence she has exercised upon Reginald, throughout his life, has been an excellent one. So that was Thursday night, eh?”
David a.s.sented. He was looking out of the window of the car, as though interested in the pa.s.sing throngs.
”I will tell you something,” the d.u.c.h.ess continued. ”You have heard, I dare say, of the lawsuits down at Mandeleys, and of that keeper's cottage within a hundred yards from the lawn, and of the old man Vont, who has come back just as bitter as ever? That girl is his daughter.”
”The Marquis seems to have displayed the most extraordinary fidelity,”
David remarked.
”My dear Mr. Thain,” was the emphatic reply, ”they have been the making of one another's lives. It is the sort of thing one reads more of in French memoirs than meets with in actual life, but I can a.s.sure you that Reginald would be absolutely miserable without her, and she--well, see what she has become through his influence and companions.h.i.+p. Yet they tell me that that old man has come back to his ridiculous cottage, and sits there in the front garden, reading the Bible and blasting the very gooseberry bushes with his curses against Reginald. Most uncomfortable it will be, I should think, when you all get down there.”
”Nothing that you have said alters the fact,” David reminded her, ”that Vont's daughter has been all her life, and is to-day, in an invidious situation with regard to your brother.”
The d.u.c.h.ess's eyebrows were slightly raised.
”And why not?” she asked, in genuine surprise. ”Of course, I don't claim to be so absolutely feudal in my ideas as Reginald, but I still cannot find the slightest disadvantage which has accrued to the young woman from her position.”
”I have been brought up myself in a different school,” David said quietly, ”in the school Richard Vont was brought up in. I see no difference fundamentally between a Marquis and a gamekeeper, and to me the womenkind of the gamekeeper should be as sacred to the Marquis as the womenkind of the Marquis to the gamekeeper.”
The d.u.c.h.ess laughed good-humouredly.
”I have always insisted,” she declared, ”that America is the most backward country in the world. So many of you come to Europe now, though, that one would have thought you would have attained to a more correct perspective of life. But you are certainly much more amusing as you are. No, be quiet, please,” she went on. ”I didn't call for you to enter into general discussions. I just wanted to know about Reginald. Of course, you have discovered already that I am ridiculously fond of him, and I am trying to find out what is depressing him so much. Do you know what I am most afraid of?”
”I have no idea,” David confessed. ”The workings of your mind seem to lead you to such unexpected conclusions.”
”Don't be peevish,” she replied. ”What I am really more afraid of than anything is that Marcia Hannaway will leave him.”
”Why?”
The d.u.c.h.ess shrugged her shoulders.
”She is twenty years younger than Reginald, and she has made for herself an entirely new place in life. That is the wonderful goal a woman reaches who has brains and is enabled to put them to some practical use. She has a circle of friends and admirers and sympathisers, already made. Now Reginald is a dear, but his outlook upon life is almost whimsical, and I have always wondered whether he would be able to hold a woman like this to the end. The only thing is,” she concluded ruminatively, ”that the affair has been going on for so long, and is so well known, that it would be positively indecent of her to break it off. Don't you think so, Mr. Thain?”
David looked at the d.u.c.h.ess and shook his head.
”Honestly,” he admitted, ”I can't give an opinion. I thought I understood something of human nature before I came into touch with you and those few members of your aristocracy whom I have met through you.
But frankly, to use a homely metaphor, you take the wind out of my sails. I don't know where I am when you lay down the law. There is something wrong between us fundamentally. I was brought up the same way Vont was brought up. Things were right or wrong, moral or immoral.