CHAPTER XXXV

Richard Vont was buried in the little churchyard behind Mandeleys, the churchyard in which was the family vault and which was consecrated entirely to tenants and dependents of the estate. The little congregation of soberly-clad villagers received more than one surprise during the course of the short and simple service. The Marquis himself, clad in sombre and unfamiliar garments, stood in his pew and followed the little procession to the graveside. The new tenant of Broomleys was there, and Marcia, deeply veiled but easily recognisable by that brief moment of emotion which followed the final ceremony. At its conclusion, the steward, following an immemorial custom, invited the little crowd to accompany him to Mandeleys, where refreshments were provided in the back hall. The Marquis had stepped back into the church. David and Marcia were alone. He came round to her side.

"You don't remember me?" he asked.

"Remember you?" she repeated. "Aren't you Mr. David Thain?"

"Yes," he admitted, "but many years ago I was called Richard David Vont—when I lived down there with you, Marcia."

Emotion had become so dulled that even her wonder found scanty expression.

"I remember your eyes," she said. "They puzzled me more than once. Did he know?"

"Of course," David answered. "We lived together in America for many years, and we came home together. Directly we arrived, however, he insisted on our separating. You know the madness of his life, Marcia."

"I know," she answered bitterly. "Was I not the cause of it?"

"It was part of his scheme that I should help towards his revenge," he explained. "I did his bidding, and the end was disaster and humiliation."

They stood under the little wooden porch which led out into the park.

"You will come up to Broomleys?" he invited.

She shook her head.

"Just now I would rather go back to the cottage," she said. "We shall meet again."

"I shall be in England only for a few more days," he told her gloomily. "I am returning to America."

She looked at him in some surprise.

"I thought you had settled down here?"

"Only to carry out my share in that infernal bargain. I have done it, I kept my word, I am miserably ashamed of myself, and I have but one feeling now—to get as far away as I can."

"But tell me, David," she asked, "what was this scheme? What have you done to hurt him—the Marquis?"

"I have done my best to ruin him," David replied, "and through some accursed scheme in which I bore an evil and humiliating part, I have brought some shadow of a scandal upon—"

He broke off. Marcia waited for him to continue, but he shook his head.

"The whole thing is too insignificant and yet too damnable," he said. "Some day, Marcia, I will tell you of it. If you won't come with me, forgive me if I hurry away."

He was gone before she could remonstrate. She looked around and saw the reason. The Marquis was coming down the gravel path from the church in which he had taken refuge from the crowd. She felt a sudden shaking of the knees, a momentary return of that old ascendency which he had always held over her. Then she turned and waited for him. He smiled very gravely as he held her hand for a moment.

"You are going back to the cottage?" he asked. "I will walk with you, if I may."

They had a stretch of park before them, a wonderful, rolling stretch of ancient turf. Here and there were little clusters of cowslips, golden as the sunshine which was making quaint patterns of shadow beneath the oaks and drawing the perfume from the hawthorn trees, drooping beneath their weight of blossom. Marcia tried twice to speak, but her voice broke. There was the one look in his face which she dreaded.

"I shall not say any conventional things to you," he began gently. "Your father's life for many years must have been most unhappy. In a way, I suppose you and I are the people who are responsible for it. And yet, behind it all—I say it in justice to ourselves, and not with disrespect to the dead—it was his primeval and colossal ignorance, the heritage of that stubborn race of yeomen, which was responsible for his sorrow."

"He never understood," she murmured. "No one in this world could make him understand."

"You know that our new neighbour up there," he continued, moving his head towards Broomleys, "was his nephew—a sharer, however unwilling, in his folly?"

"He has just told me," she admitted.

"I was the first to find your father dead," he went on. "When I received your letter, Marcia, I took it to him. I went to offer him the sacrifice of my desolation. That, I thought, would end his enmity. And I read your letter to dead ears. He was seated there, believing that all the evil he wished me had come. I suppose the belief brought him peace. He was a stubborn old man."

Marcia would have spoken, but there was a lump in her throat. She opened her lips only to close them again.

"I wished to see you, Marcia," he continued, "because I wanted you to understand that I have only one feeling in my heart towards you, and that is a feeling of wonderful gratitude. For many years you have been the most sympathetic companion a somewhat dull person could have had. The memory of these years is imperishable. And I want to tell you something else. In my heart I approve of what you have done."

"Oh, but that is impossible!" she replied. "I cannot keep the bitter thoughts from my own heart. I am ashamed when I think of your kindness, of your fidelity, of all that you have given and done for me throughout these years. And now I have the feeling that I am leaving you when you need me most."

He smiled at her.

"Your knowledge of life," he said gently, "should teach you better. The years that lay between us when you first gave me all that there was worth having of love in the world were nothing. To-day they are an impassable gulf. I have reached just those few years which become the aftermath of actual living, and you are young still, young in mind and body. We part so naturally. There is something still alive in you which is dead in me."

"But you are so lonely," she faltered.

"I should be lonelier still," he answered, "or at least more unhappy, if I dragged you with me through the cheerless years. Life is a matter of cycles. You are commencing a new one, and so am I, only the things that are necessary to you are not now necessary to me. So it is natural and best that we should part."

She pointed to the cottage, now only a few yards away. Its doors and windows were wide open, there was smoke coming from the chimney, a wealth of flowers in the garden.

"The cottage is mine," she said. "Sometimes I believe that it was left to me in the hope that I might come back with my heart, too, full of bitterness, and that I might take his place. It is yours whenever you choose to take it. I shall send the deeds to Mr. Merridrew."

He looked at it thoughtfully. For a moment the shadow passed from his face. He stood a little more upright, his eyes seemed to grow larger. Perhaps he thought of those days when he had stolen down from the house with beating heart, drawn nearer and nearer to the cottage, felt all the glow and fervour of his great love. There was a breath of perfume from the garden, full of torturing memories—a little wind in the trees.

"One of the desires of my life gratified," he declared. "Mr. Merridrew shall draw up a deed of sale. Look," he added, pointing to the drive, "there is some one waiting for you in the car there. Isn't it your husband?"

She glanced in the direction he indicated.

"Yes," she murmured.

"I will not stay and see him now," the Marquis continued. "You will forgive me, I know. Present to him, if you will," he went on, with some faint touch of his old manner, "my heartiest good wishes. And to you, Marcia," he added, raising the fingers of her ungloved hand to his lips, "well, may you find all that there is left in the world of happiness. And remember, too, that every drop of happiness that comes into your life means greater peace for me.—We talk too seriously for such a brilliant morning," he concluded, his voice measured, though kindly, his attitude suddenly reminiscent of that long, pictured line of gallant ancestors. "Take my advice and use some of this beautiful afternoon for your ride to London. There will be a moon to-night and you may enter it as the heroine in your last story—a fairy city."

He left her quite easily, but when she tried to start to meet her husband, her knees gave way. She clung to the paling and watched him cross the bridge and stroll up the little strip of turf, still erect, contemplating the great pile in front of him with the beneficent satisfaction of inherited proprietorship. She watched him pass through the front door and disappear. Then she turned around and drew her husband into the cottage.

"James," she cried, sobbing in his arms, "take me away—please take me away!"