CHAPTER XVII

"I feel like the German lady," Marcia observed, as she stood before her little sideboard and mixed a whisky and soda, "who went on cutting bread and butter. The world falls to pieces before my eyes—and I press the handle of a syphon. There!"

She carried the tumbler to Borden, who was seated by her fireside, and threw herself into an easy-chair opposite to him.

"I know it's all wrong," she declared. "My instincts are so obstinate even about the simplest things. You see, I have even wheeled away his easy-chair so that you shan't sit in it."

"Women always confuse instincts with prejudices," Borden rejoined, calmly sipping his whisky and soda. "May I smoke a pipe?"

Marcia gave a little gesture of despair.

"I never knew a man," she exclaimed, "who exhibited such a propensity for making himself at home! Tell me," she went on, "did you notice a very aristocratic looking, almost beautiful girl, with large brown eyes and a pale skin, seated in the stalls just below our box?"

"The girl with Charles Grantham?"

Marcia nodded.

"That was Lady Letitia Thursford," she told him.

"Is she engaged to Grantham?"

"She wasn't last week," Marcia replied. "I think the Marquis would like it, but Lady Letitia is by way of being difficult. I saw her looking at me thoughtfully, once or twice. I was dying to send down word to her that I had permission."

Borden moved in his chair a little uneasily.

"You are bound to no one," he reminded her. "There is no one of whom you need to ask permission."

"Don't be silly," Marcia replied. "I asked permission, and without it I wouldn't have dined with you alone to-night or lunched with Morris Hyde on Tuesday."

"I trust that both entertainments," he ventured, "have been a success."

Marcia shook her head.

"Morris Hyde was very disappointing," she confessed. "I was looking forward to being tremendously entertained, but instead of telling me all about these unknown tribes in Central America, his only anxiety seemed to be to know if I was going to let him kiss me in the taxi afterwards. Explorers, I am afraid, are far too promiscuous."

"Publishers," Borden said firmly, "are renowned throughout the world for their fidelity."

"Fidelity to their cash boxes," Marcia scoffed.

Borden, who had lit his pipe, blinked at her through a little cloud of smoke. They had come straight from the theatre, and he was in the evening clothes of a man who cares nothing about his appearance,—the black waistcoat, the none-too-well fitting shirt, the plainest of studs, and the indifferently arranged white tie. Nevertheless, Marcia liked the look of him, seated at ease in her low chair, and it was very obvious that he, too, approved of his hostess. She was curled up now at the end of the sofa, a cigarette in her mouth, an expression of curious perplexity upon her face. She was dressed very plainly in black, having alternately tried on and discarded all her more elaborate evening gowns. She had had a queer, almost desperate fancy to make herself look as unattractive as possible, but the very simplicity of her dress enhanced the gleaming perfection of her throat and arms. Even her posture, which should have been ungraceful, suited her. Her disturbed and doubtful frame of mind had softened her firm mouth, and lit with a sort of sweet plaintiveness her beautiful eyes.

"Do you think," he asked, "that I look upon you as a promising investment?"

"Well, I am," Marcia replied. "You admit having made money out of me this spring."

"At any rate, I am willing to divide it," he suggested.

"Upon conditions!"

"No one in the world gives something for nothing," he reminded her.

"We seem to be mixing up business and the other things most shockingly," Marcia declared. "Do you really mean that you are willing to share the profits of my next novel with me?"

"I couldn't do that," he objected, "it would be too unbusinesslike. I am quite willing, however, to share my life and all I have with you."

"Mere rhetoric!" Marcia exclaimed uneasily.

"Solemn earnest," he insisted. "Will you marry me, Marcia?"

She looked across at him. Her eyebrows were a little raised, her eyes inclined to be misty, her mouth tremulous.

"James," she replied, "I believe I'd like to. I'm not quite sure—I believe I would. But just tell me—how can I?"

"He has kept you to himself for pretty well twenty years," Borden said gruffly.

She sighed.

"When I was a child of seventeen," she confided, "a young farmer down at Mandeleys kissed me. If I had been one year younger," she went on, "I should have spat at him. As it was, I never spoke to him again. Then, a few months after that, the schoolmaster at the school where I was teaching made an awkward attempt at the same thing. He missed me, but his lips just touched my cheek. Then Reginald came. Let me see, that was nineteen years ago, and since then no one else has kissed me."

"A record of fidelity," Borden observed, "at which, even in your own stories, you would scoff."

"But then, you see," she reminded him, "I never write about a person with queer ideas like mine, because they wouldn't be interesting. People like a little more resilience about their heroines."

"Couldn't we talk brutal common sense for once?" he asked impatiently. "I have never abused your Marquis. From your own showing, he has played the game, as you have. All I want to say is that the natural time has come for your separation. I have waited for you a good many years, and I am a domestic man. I want a home—and children. It's quite time you wanted the same."

Perhaps for a moment the light in her eyes was a shade softer. She moved uneasily in her place.

"Quite primitive, aren't you, James?" she murmured.

"Life's a primitive thing when we get down to the bone," he answered. "You and I have wasted many an hour discussing the ologies, trying to thrust ourselves into the peculiar point of view of these neurotic Norwegians or mad Russians. When you come down to bedrock, though, for sober, decent people there is only one outlet to passion, only one elementary satisfaction for man and woman."

"You make things sound very simple."

"It isn't that," he persisted. "It's you who make them complex by being maudlin about this man. He has had what many would call the best part of your life. He has given up nothing for your sake, done nothing for your sake. He has kept you in the same seclusion that his grandfather would have done. He has treated you, so far as regards the outside world, as a man does—"

He stopped abruptly. Something in her eyes warned him.

"There are limits," she told him drily, "to my appreciation of unbridled speech. According to his lights, Reginald has been wonderful. To me there has been more romance than ignominy in many of his ideas. My trouble is something different. I can't quite make up my mind what it would mean for him if I were to strike out for myself now."

"You are like all women," he declared furiously. "You complicate every situation in life by thinking of other people. Think for yourself, Marcia. What about your own future? I promise you that your Marquis would think for himself, if he were up against a similar problem. He is getting all he wants. Are you? Of course you aren't!"

"Does anybody get all they want out of life?"

"It is generally their own fault if they don't get the main things," he insisted. "But, see here, I'll attack you with your own weapons. Here am I, forty-one years old, in love with you since I was thirty-two. What about those nine years? I am dropping into the ways of untidy, unsatisfactory bachelordom. I only order new clothes when some friend chaffs me into it, and if I do I forget the ties and shirts and those sorts of things. I've lost all interest in myself. I loaf at the club, play auction bridge when I might be doing something a great deal better, and drink a whisky and soda when any one asks me. I hang on to the business, but when I've finished my work I drift. In another five years' time I shall begin to stoop, I shall live with cigar ash all over my clothes, and I shall have to be taken home from the club every other night. Your doing, Marcia—your responsibility."

"I should think," she said severely, "that your self-respect—"

"Oh, don't bother about my self-respect!" he interrupted. "I am a human being, and I tell you, Marcia, that every man needs something in his life to lift him just a little, to live up to, not down to. There is only one person in the world can take that place for me. I'm a clear charge upon your hands. You know that I love you, that you've driven all thoughts of other women out of my head, that you keep me beating against the walls of my impotence every time we meet and part. I am perfectly certain, if you don't come down to the world of common sense, I shall sink into the world of melodrama and go and tackle your Marquis myself. He must let you go."

"Do you want me as much as all that?" she asked, a little wistfully.

He was by her side in a moment, inspired by the break in her tone, the sweet, soft look in her eyes. He sank on one knee by the side of her couch and took her hands in his, kissing them one after the other.

"Ah, Marcia," he murmured, "I want you more than anything else on earth! I want you so much that, when you come, you will make the years that have passed seem like nothing but a nightmare, and the minutes, as they come, years of happiness. I am awkward, I know, sometimes, and gruff and morose, but so is any man who spends his life fretting for the thing he can't get. I only ask you, dear, to be fair. I have never said an unkind word about the man for whom you have cared so long. I only say now that you belong to me. I am not a bit foolish—I am not even jealous—only your time has come, your time for that little home in the country, a husband always with you, and, I hope to Heaven, children."

She took his face between her hands and kissed him. He understood her so perfectly that, as she drew her lips away, he rose and stood on the hearthrug, a conqueror yet humble.

"You won't mind," she begged, "if I choose my own time? It may be very soon, it may be a little time. You will leave it to me, and you will trust me. From to-night, of course—"

She hesitated, but his gesture was sufficient. She knew that she was understood.

"You have made me the happiest man in the world," he said. "I can't stop a moment longer—I should simply say extravagant things. And I know how you feel. It isn't quite time for them yet. But you'll send for me?"

"Of course!"

"And about your visit to Mandeleys?" he asked. "I shan't begin to be busy again for another fortnight."

She hesitated.

"Somehow," she confessed, "it seems a little different now.

"It needn't," he replied. "I am content with what I have."

She glanced at the calendar.

"Tuesday?" she suggested.

"Tuesday would suit me admirably," he assented.

She let him out herself, and he kissed her fingers. He was never quite sure whether he walked down the stairs or whether he rang for the lift. He was never quite sure whether he looked for a taxi or decided to walk. He passed over the bridge, and the lights reflected in the dark waters below seemed suddenly like jewels. He made his way to his club because of the sheer impossibility of sleep. He stood on the threshold of the reading room and looked in at the little group of semi-somnolent men. In his way he was popular, and he received a good many sleepy greetings.

"What's the matter with Borden?" one man drawled. "He looks as though some one had left him a fortune."

"He has probably discovered another literary star," a rival publisher suggested.

"I wish to God some one would send him to a decent tailor!" a third man yawned.

Borden rang the bell for a drink.

"Dickinson was right," he said. "I've found a new star."

Letitia, on her return from the theatre that same evening, found her father seated in a comfortable corner of the library, with a volume of Don Quixote in his hand, a whisky and soda and a box of cigarettes by his side. He had exchanged his dinner jacket for a plain black velvet coat, and, as he laid his book down at her coming, she seemed to notice again that vague look of tiredness in his face.

"Quiet evening, dad?" she asked, flinging herself into a low chair by his side.

"A very pleasant one," he replied. "Montavon's party was postponed, but I have reopened an old fund of amusement here. With the exception of Borrow, none of our modern humourists appeal to me like Cervantes."

"You wouldn't call Borrow exactly modern, would you?"

"Perhaps not," the Marquis conceded. "I may be wrong to ignore the literature of the present day, but such attempts as I have made to appreciate it have been unsatisfactory. You enjoyed the play, dear?"

"Very much," Letitia acquiesced. "The house was crowded."

"Any one you know?"

She mentioned a few names, then she hesitated. "And that clever woman who wrote 'The Changing Earth' was there in a box—Marcia Hannaway. She was with rather a dour-looking man—her publisher, I think Charlie said it was."

The Marquis received the information with no signs of particular interest. Letitia stretched out for a cigarette, lit it and looked a little appealingly at her father.

"Dad," she said, "I've made an awful idiot of myself."

"In what direction?" the Marquis enquired sympathetically. "If it is a financial matter, I am fortunately—"

"Worse!" Letitia groaned. "I've promised to marry Charlie Grantham."

The Marquis stretched out his long, elegant hand and patted his daughter's.

"But, my dear child," he said, "surely that was inevitable, was it not? I have looked upon it as almost certain to happen some day."

"Well, I'm rather glad you take it like that," Letitia remarked. "Now I come to think of it, I suppose I should have had to say 'yes' sometime or another."

"Where is Charlie?"

"Gone home in a huff, because I wouldn't let him kiss me in the car or bring him in with me."

"Either course would surely have been usual," the Marquis ventured.

"Perhaps, but I feel unusual," Letitia declared. "It isn't that I mind marrying Charlie, but I know I shall detest being married to him."

"One must remember, dear," her father went on soothingly, "that with us, marriage is scarcely a subject for neurotic ecstasies or most unwholesome hysterics. Your position imposes upon you the necessity of an alliance with some house of kindred associations. The choice, therefore, is not a large one, and you are spared the very undignified competitive considerations which attach themselves to people when it does not matter whom on earth they marry. The Dukedom of Grantham is unfortunately not an ancient one, nor was it conferred upon such illustrious stock as the Marquisate of Mandeleys. However, the Granthams have their place amongst us, and I imagine that the alliance will generally be considered satisfactory."

"Oh, I hope so," Letitia replied, without enthusiasm. "I only hope I shall find it satisfactory. I didn't mean to say 'yes' for at least another year."

The Marquis smiled tolerantly.

"Then what, my dear child," he asked, "hastened your decision?"

Letitia became suddenly more serious. She bit her lip and frowned distinctly into the fire. At that moment she was furious with a thought.

"I can't tell you, dad," she confessed. "I'd hate to tell you. I'd hate to put it in plain words, even to myself."

He patted her hand tolerantly.

"You must not take yourself too hardly to task, Letitia," he said, "if at times you feel the pressure of the outside world. You are young and of versatile temperament. Believe me, those voices to which you may have listened are only echoes. Nothing exists or is real in life which the brain does not govern. I am quite sure that you will never regret the step which you have taken this evening."

Letitia stood up.

"I hope not, father," she sighed, a little wistfully. "There are times when I am very dissatisfied with myself, and to-night, I am afraid, is one of them."

"You analyse your sentiments, my dear, too severely," her father told her. "You are too conscientious. Your actions are all that could be desired."

"You won't be lonely if that idiot takes me away from you soon?" she asked.

The Marquis looked almost shocked.

"Loneliness is not a complaint from which I ever expect to suffer, dear," he said, as he rose and opened the door for her.

He returned to his empty chair, his half consumed whisky and soda, his vellum-bound volume, carefully marked. Somehow or other, the echoes of his last words seemed to be ringing in his ears. The fire had burned a little low, the sound of passing vehicles from outside had grown fainter and fainter. He took up his book, threw himself into his chair, gazed with vacant eyes at the thick black print. There was a sudden chill in his heart, a sudden thought, perhaps a fear. There was one way through which loneliness could come.