The Wicked Marquis Part 52

There was no reply. The Marquis drew the letter from his pocket.

"You are a cruel and stubborn man, Vont," he continued. "You have gone far out of your way to bring injury and unhappiness upon me. All your efforts are as nothing. Will you hear from me what has happened?"

There was silence, still grim silence. The Marquis stretched out his hand and leaned a little upon the paling.

"I took your daughter, Richard Vont, not as a libertine but as a lover.

It was perhaps the truest impulse my life has ever felt. If there was sin in it, listen. Hear how I am punished. Month followed month and year followed year, and Marcia was content with my love and I with hers, so that during all this time my lips have touched no other woman's, no other woman has for a moment engaged even my fancy. I have been as faithful to your daughter, Richard Vont, as you to your vindictive enmity. From a discontented and unhappy girl she has become a woman with a position in the world, a brilliant writer, filled with the desire and happiness of life to her finger tips. From me she received the education, the travel, the experience which have helped her to her place in the world, and with them I gave her my heart. And now--you are listening, Richard Vont? You will hear what has happened?"

Still that stony silence from the figure in the chair. Still that increasing mist before the eyes of the man who leaned towards him.

"Your daughter, Richard Vont," the Marquis concluded, "has taken your vengeance into her own hands. Your prayers have come true, though not from the quarter you had hoped. You saw only a little way. You tried to strike only a foolish blow. It has been given to your daughter to do more than this. She has broken my heart, Richard Vont. She grew to become the dearest thing in my life, and she has left me.--Yesterday she was married."

No exclamation, no movement. The Marquis wiped his eyes and saw with unexpected clearness. What had happened seemed so natural that for a moment he was not even surprised. He stepped over the palings, leaned for a single moment over the body of the man to whom he had been talking, and laid the palm of his hand over the lifeless eyes. Then he walked down the tiled path and called to the woman whose face he had seen through the latticed window.

"Mrs. Wells," he said, "something serious has happened to Vont."

"Your lords.h.i.+p!"

"He is dead," the Marquis told her. "You had better go down to the village and fetch the doctor. I will send a message to his nephew."

Back again across the park, very gorgeous now in the fuller suns.h.i.+ne, casting quaint shadows underneath the trees, glittering upon the streaks of yellow cowslips on the hillside. The birds were singing and the air was as soft as midsummer. He crossed the bridge, turned into the drive and stood for a moment in his own hall. A servant came hurrying towards him.

"Run across the park to Broomleys as fast as you can," his master directed. "Tell Mr. Thain to go at once to Vont's cottage. You had better let him know that Vont is dead."

The young man hastened off. Gossett appeared from somewhere in the background and opened the door of the study towards which the Marquis was slowly making his way.

"The shock has been too much for your lords.h.i.+p," the man murmured.

"May I bring you some brandy?"

The Marquis shook his head.

"It is necessary, Gossett," he said, "that I should be absolutely undisturbed for an hour. Kindly see that no one even knocks at my door for that period of time."

Gossett held open the door and closed it softly. He was a very old servant, and in great measure he understood.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

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 d.a.m.nable," 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 cl.u.s.ters of cowslips, golden as the suns.h.i.+ne 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?"