Marcia Hannaway called upon her publisher during the course of the
following day. She found the ready entree of a privileged client--with
scarcely a moment's delay she was ushered into the presence of James
Borden, the person who for some years now had occupied the second place
in her thoughts and life.
"Anything happened, Marcia?" he enquired, after their quiet but
familiar greeting. "You look as though you were bringing Fate with
you."
She made herself comfortable in the easy-chair which he had drawn up to
the fire. Outside, an unexpectedly cold wind made the sense of warmth
doubly pleasant. She unfastened her simple furs and smiled at him a
little dolefully.
"Just this," she replied, handing him a letter.
He spread it out, adjusted his eyeglasses and read it deliberately:
94, GROSVENOR SQUARE, Thursday.
_My dear Marcia:_
I have made enquiries with reference to the non-payment of your
allowance for the last two quarters, and now enclose cheque for the
amount, drawn by my agent in Norfolk and payable to yourself. I think
I can promise you that no further irregularities shall occur.
I look forward to seeing you to-morrow afternoon, and I must tell you
of a financial operation I am now conducting, which, if successful, may
enable me to pay off the mortgages which render the Norfolk estates so
unremunerative.
I trust that you are well, dear. I have ordered Carlton White's to
send in a few flowers, which I hope will arrive safely.
Yours,
REGINALD.
James Borden read the letter carefully, glanced at the small coronet at
the top of the paper, and folded it up.
"I'm sorry, Marcia," he said simply.
She made a little grimace.
"My dear man," she confessed, "so am I. After all, though, I am not
sure that the money makes all the difference. You see, if he really
were too poor--or rather if his lawyers couldn't raise the money to
send to me--I fancy that I should feel just the same."
The publisher turned his chair round towards the fire. He was a man of
barely middle age, although his black hair was besprinkled with grey
and growing a little thin at the temples. His features were good, but
his face was a little thin, and his clothes were scarcely as tidy, or
the appointments of his office so comfortable as his name and position
in the publishing world might have warranted. Marcia, who had been
looking at him while he read, leaned forward and brushed the cigarette
ash from his coat sleeve.
"Such an untidy man!" she declared, straightening his tie. "I am not
at all sure that you deserve to have lady clients calling upon you.
Were you late last night?"
"A little," he confessed.
"That means about one or two, I suppose," she went on reprovingly.
"I dined at the club and stayed on," he told her. "There was nothing
else to do except work, and I was a little tired of that."
"Any fresh stuff in--interesting stuff, I mean?"
He shook his head.
"Three more Russian novels," he replied, "all in French and want
translating, of course. The only one I have read is terribly grim and
sordid. I dare say it would sell. I am going to read the other two
before I decide anything. Then perhaps you'll help me."
"Of course I will," she promised. "I do wish, though, James, you
wouldn't stay at the club so late. How many whiskies and sodas?"
"I didn't count," he confessed.
She sighed.
"I know what that means! James, why aren't you a little more human?
You get heaps of invitations to nice houses. Much better go out and
make some women friends. You ought to marry, you know."
"I am quite ready to when you will marry me," he retorted.
"But, my dear man, I am bespoke," she reminded him. "You know that
quite well. I couldn't possibly think of marrying anybody."
"What are you going to do with that money?" he demanded.
"I think I shall keep it," she decided. "Not to do so would hurt him
terribly."
"And keeping it hurts me damnably!" he muttered.
She shook her head at him.
"We've had this over so often, haven't we? I cannot leave Reginald as
long as he wants me, relies upon me as much as he does now."
"Why not?" was the almost rough demand. "He has had the best of your
life."
"And he has given me a great deal of his," she retorted. "For nineteen
years I have been his very dear friend. During all that time he has
never broken a promise to me, never told a falsehood, never said a
single word which could grate or hurt. If he has sometimes seemed a
little aloof, it is because he really believes himself to be a great
person. He believes in himself immensely, you know, James--in the
privileges and sanctity of his descent. It seems so strange in this
world, where we others see other things. If I only dared, I would
write a novel about it."
"But you don't care for him any more?"
"Care for him?" she repeated. "How could I ever stop caring for him!
He was my first lover, and has been my only one."
"Let me ask you a question," James Borden demanded suddenly. "Don't
you ever feel any grudge against him? He took you away from a very
respectable position in life. He ruined all sorts of possibilities.
He was fifteen or twenty years older than you were, and he knew the
world. You pleased him, and he deliberately entrapped your affections.
Be honest, now. Don't you sometimes hate him for it?"
"Never," she answered without hesitation. "I was, as you say, most
respectably placed--a teacher at a village school--and I might have
married a young farmer, or bailiff's son, or, with great luck, a
struggling young doctor, and lived a remarkably rural life, but, as you
have observed, in great respectability. My dear James, I should have
hated it. I was, I think, nineteen years old when Reginald, in a most
courtly fashion, suggested that I should come to London with him, and I
have exactly the same feelings to-day about my acceptance of his
proposal as I had then."
"You are a puzzle," he declared. "You wouldn't be, of course, only
you're such a--such a good woman."
"Of course I am, James," she laughed. "I am good, inasmuch as I am
faithful to any tie I may make. I am kind, or try to be, to all my
fellow creatures, and I should hate to do a mean thing. The only
difference between me and other women is that I prefer to choose what
tie I should consider sacred. I claimed the liberty to do that, and I
exercised it. As to my right to do so, I have never had the faintest
possible shadow of hesitation."
"Oh, it all sounds all right when you talk about it," he admitted, "but
let's come to the crux of this thing now we are about it, Marcia. I am
eating my heart out for you. I should have thought that one of the
great privileges of your manner of life was your freedom to change, if
you desired to do so. Change, I mean--nothing to do with infidelity.
You may have the nicest feelings in the world towards your Marquis, but
I don't believe you love him any more. I don't believe you care for
him as much as you do for me."
"In one sense you are perfectly right," she acknowledged. "In another
you are altogether wrong."
"And yet," he continued, almost roughly, "you have never allowed me to
touch your fingers, much more your lips."
"But, my dear man," she remonstrated, "you must know that those things
are impossible. I would kiss you willingly if you were my friend, and
if you were content with that, but you know it would only be hypocrisy
if you pretended that you were. But listen," she went on. "I, too,
sometimes think of these things. I will be very frank with you. I
know that I have changed lately, and I know that the change has
something to do with you. Reginald is sometimes a little restless
about it. A time may come when he will provoke an explanation. When
that time comes, I want to answer him with a clear conscience."
Mr. James Borden brightened up considerably.
"That's the most encouraging thing I've heard you say for a long time,"
he confessed.
She smiled.
"There are all sorts of possibilities yet," she said. "Now fetch a
clothes brush and let me give you a good brushing, and you can take me
out to lunch--that is to say, if you can find something decent to wear
on your head," she went on, pointing to a somewhat disreputable looking
hat which hung behind the door. "I won't go out with you in that."
"That," he replied cheerfully, "is easily arranged. I can change my
clothes in five minutes, if you prefer it."
She shook her head.
"You look quite nice when you're properly brushed," she assured him.
"Send upstairs for another hat, and we'll go into the grill room at the
Savoy. I want a sole colbert, and a cutlet, and some of those little
French peas with sugar. Aren't I greedy!"
"Delightfully," he assented. "If you only realised how much easier it
is to take a woman out who knows what she wants!"
They lunched very well amidst a crowd of cosmopolitans and lingered
over their coffee. Their conversation had been of books and nothing
but books, but towards the end Marcia once more spoke of herself.
"You see, James," she told him, "I have the feeling that if Reginald
really does succeed in freeing the estates from their mortgages, he
will have any quantity of new interests in life. He will probably be
lord-lieutenant of the county, and open up the whole of Mandeleys.
Then his town life would of course be quite different. I shall
feel--can't you appreciate that?--as though my task with him had come
naturally and gracefully to an end. We have both fulfilled our
obligations to one another. If he can give me his hand and let me
go--well, I should like it."
She looked so very desirable as she smiled at him that Borden almost
groaned. She patted his hand and changed the conversation.
"Very soon," she continued, "I am going to undertake a painful duty. I
am going down to Mandeleys."
"Not with him?"
She shook her head.
"My father is back in England," she explained. "He has come back from
America and is living in the cottage of many lawsuits. I must go down
and see him."
"Has the boy returned, too?" he enquired.
"I have heard nothing about him," Marcia replied. "He was very
delicate when he was young, and I am not even sure whether he is alive.
My father probably doesn't want to see me in the least, but I feel I
ought to go."
"You wouldn't like me to motor you down, I suppose?" Borden suggested
diffidently. "The country is delightful just now, and it would do us
both good. I could get away for three days quite easily, and I could
bring some work with me to peg away at whilst you are being dutiful."
"I should love it," she declared frankly, "and I don't see the least
reason why we shouldn't go. You won't mind," she went on, after a
second's hesitation, "if I mention it to Reginald? I am sure he won't
object."
James Borden bit through the cigarette which he had just lit, threw it
away and started another.
"You must do whatever you think right," he said. "Perhaps you will
telephone."
"As soon as I know for certain," she promised him.