The Marquis was occupied for several minutes in exchanging greetings
with passing acquaintances. As soon as they were alone again, he
reverted to his companion's observation.
"There was a matter, I think you said, Mr. Thain, which you wished to
discuss with me."
"I was going to ask you about Broomleys," David replied.
The Marquis was puzzled.
"Broomleys? Are you referring, by chance, to my house of that name?"
"I guess so."
"But, my dear Mr. Thain, you surprise me," the Marquis declared. "When
did you hear of Broomleys?"
"I should have explained," David continued, "that I spent this last
week-end at Cromer. There I visited an agent and told him that I would
like to take a furnished house in the neighbourhood. I motored over,
at his suggestion, to see Broomleys, and the tenant, Colonel Laycey,
kindly showed me over. He is leaving within a few days, I believe."
"Dear me, of course he is!" the Marquis observed genially. "I had
quite forgotten the fact--quite forgotten it."
The Marquis saluted more acquaintances. He was glad of an opportunity
for reflection. The Fates were indeed smiling upon him! A gleam of
anticipatory delight shone in his eyes as he thought of his next
interview with Mr. Wadham, Junior! On his desk at the present moment
there lay a letter from the firm, announcing Colonel Laycey's departure
and adding that they saw little hope of letting the house at all in its
present condition.
"It would be a great pleasure to us, Mr. Thain," the Marquis continued
pleasantly, "to have you for a neighbour. Did the agent or Colonel
Laycey, by-the-by, say anything about the rent?"
"Nothing whatever," David replied. "The Colonel pointed out to me
various repairs which certainly seemed necessary, but as I am a single
man, the rooms affected could very well be closed for a time. It was
the garden, I must confess, which chiefly attracted me."
"Broomleys has, I fear, been a little neglected," the Marquis sighed.
"These stringent days, with their campaign of taxation upon the landed
proprietor, have left me, I regret to say, a poor man. Colonel Laycey
was not always considerate. His last letter, I remember, spoke of
restorations which would have meant a couple of years' rent."
"If I find any little thing wants doing urgently when I get there,"
David promised carelessly, "I will have it seen to myself. If the rent
you ask is not prohibitive, it is exactly the place I should like to
take for, say, a year, at any rate."
"You are a man of modest tastes, Mr. Thain," the Marquis observed.
"The fact that you are unmarried, however, of course renders an
establishment an unnecessary burden. You will bear in mind, so far as
regards the rent of Broomleys, Mr. Thain, that the house is furnished."
"Very uncomfortably but very attractively furnished, from what I saw,"
David assented.
The Marquis collected himself. Colonel Laycey had been asked three
hundred a year and was paying two hundred, a sum which, somehow or
other, the Marquis had always considered his own pocket money, and
which had never gone into the estate accounts. A little increase would
certainly be pleasant.
"Would five hundred a year seem too much, Mr. Thain?" he asked. "I
cannot for the moment remember what Colonel Laycey is paying, but I
know that it is something ridiculously inadequate."
"Five hundred a year would be quite satisfactory," David agreed.
"I will have the papers drawn up and sent to you at once," the Marquis
promised. "You will be able to enter into possession as soon as you
like. You would like a yearly tenancy, I presume?"
"That would suit me quite well."
"You will be able, also, to resume your acquaintance with that singular
old man whom you met upon the steamer--Richard Vont," the Marquis
remarked, with a slight grimace. "I hear that he is in residence
there."
"I have already done so," David announced.
The Marquis raised his eyebrows.
"You have probably heard his story, then, from his own lips," he
observed carelessly. "I am told that he sits out on the lawn of his
cottage, reading the Bible and cursing Mandeleys. It is a most
annoying thing, Mr. Thain, as I dare say you can understand, to have
your ex-gamekeeper entrenched, as it were, in front of your premises,
hurling curses across the moat at you. That class of person is so
tenacious of ideas as well as of life. Here comes my daughter Letitia,
already well escorted, I see."
Letitia, with Grantham by her side, waved her hand without pausing,
from the other side of the broad pathway. David for a moment felt the
chill of the east wind.
"Grantham," the Marquis told his companion confidentially, "is one of
Lady Letitia's most constant admirers. My daughter, as I dare say you
have discovered, Mr. Thain, is rather an unusual young woman. Her
predilections are almost anti-matrimonial. Still, I must confess that
an alliance with the Granthams would give me much pleasure. I should,
in that case, be enabled to give up my town house and be content with
bachelor apartments--a great saving, in these hard times."
"Naturally," David murmured.
"Often, in the course of our very agreeable conversations," the Marquis
went on, "I am inclined to ignore the fact of your most amazing
opulence. My few friends, I am sorry to say, are in a different
position. Money in this country is very scarce, Mr. Thain--very
scarce, at least, on this side of Temple Bar."
David answered a little vaguely. His eyes were lifted above the heads
of the scattered crowd of people through which they were passing.
"May I ask--if it is not an impertinence," he said,--"is Lady Letitia
engaged to Lord Charles Grantham?"
The Marquis's manner was perhaps a shade stiffer. Mr. Thain was just
given to understand that about the family matters of such a personage
as the Marquis of Mandeleys there must always be a certain reticence.
"There is no formal engagement, Mr. Thain," he replied. "The fashion
nowadays seems to preclude anything of the sort. One's daughter just
brings a young man in, and, in place of the delightful betrothal of our
younger days, the date for the marriage is fixed upon the spot."
Luncheon at 94 Grosvenor Square, notwithstanding the cocktails, was an
exceedingly simple meal, a fact which the Marquis himself seemed
scarcely to notice. He kept his eye on his visitor's plate, however,
and passed the cutlets with an unnoticeable sigh of regret.
"Charlie wouldn't come in to lunch, father," Letitia announced. "I
think he was afraid you were going to ask him his intentions."
The Marquis glanced at the modicum of curry with which he was consoling
himself.
"Upon the whole, my dear," he said, "I am glad that he stayed away. He
is a most agreeable person, but not at his best at luncheon time.
By-the-by, do you know who our new neighbour is to be at Broomleys?"
"You haven't let it?" she asked eagerly.
"This morning, my dear," her father replied, bowing slightly towards
their guest. "Mr. Thain has been spending the week-end at Cromer, was
offered Broomleys by the agent there, and he and I fixed up the matter
only a few minutes ago."
"How perfectly delightful!" Letitia exclaimed.
David glanced up quickly. He looked his hostess in the eyes.
"That is very kind of you, Lady Letitia," he said. She laughed at him.
"Well, I meant it," she declared, "and I still mean it, but not,
perhaps, exactly in the way it sounded. Of course, it will be very
pleasant to have you for a neighbour, but to tell you the truth--you
see, although we're poor we are honest--our own sojourn at Mandeleys
rather depends on whether we let Broomleys, and Colonel Laycey,
although he has the most delightful daughter, with whom you are sure to
fall in love, was a most troublesome tenant. He was always wanting
things done, wasn't he, father?"
"It is certainly a relief," the Marquis sighed, watching with
satisfaction the arrival of half a Stilton cheese, a present from his
son-in-law, "a great relief to find a tenant like Mr. Thain."
"I asked your agent," David remarked a little diffidently, "about the
shooting."
The Marquis touched his glass.
"Serve port, Gossett," he directed,--"the light wood port, if we have
any," he added a little hastily, to the obvious relief of his domestic.
"The shooting, eh, Mr. Thain?"
He sipped his wine and considered. First Broomleys, and then the
shooting! The gods were very kind to him on this pleasant April
morning.
"You haven't preserved lately, I understand," his guest observed.
"Not for some years," the Marquis acknowledged.
"I don't mind about that at all," David went on. "I am just American
enough, you know, to find no pleasure in shooting tame birds. I shall
have no parties, and I shall not be ambitious about bags. I like to
prowl about myself with a gun."
His host nodded appreciatively.
"You shall have the refusal of the shooting," he promised. "At the
moment I am not prepared to quote terms. My people of business can do
that."
"Have you no friends in England, Mr. Thain?" Letitia asked, a little
abruptly.
"Very few," David replied. "I do not make friends easily."
"I always thought Americans were so sociable," she remarked. "A great
many of your compatriots have settled down here, you know."
David considered the matter for a moment.
"You would smile, I suppose," he said, "if I were to tell you that
there are more so-called 'sets' in American Society than in your own.
I am a very self-made man indeed, and I possess no womenkind to
entertain for me. I am therefore dependent upon chance acquaintances."
"Such friends as may make your sojourn in Norfolk more agreeable, Mr.
Thain," the Marquis promised genially, "you shall most certainly find.
Mandeleys will always be open to you."
David made no immediate response. His teeth had come together with a
little click. He felt a strange repugnance to lifting the glass, which
the butler had just filled, to his lips. A queer little vision of
Mandeleys and the cottage was there, Richard Vont, seated amongst those
drooping rose bushes, his face turned towards the Abbey, his eyes full
of that strange, expectant light. A sudden wave of self-disgust almost
broke through a composure which had so far resisted all assaults upon
it. Almost he felt that he must rise from his place, tell this
strange, polished, yet curiously childlike being the truth--that he was
being drawn into the nets of ruin--that he was entertaining an enemy
unawares.
"You must really try that wine, Mr. Thain," he heard his host say
gently. "I make no excuse for not offering you vintage port. At
Mandeleys I have at least the remnants of a cellar. You shall dine
with us there, Mr. Thain, and I will give you what my grandfather used
to declare was 1838 vintage."
David roused himself with an effort. He brushed aside the
uncomfortable twinge of conscience which had suddenly depressed him,
and turning away from Letitia, looked his host in the eyes.
"You are very kind," he said. "I shall come with much pleasure."