Marcia, more especially perhaps during these later days, felt her sense
of humour gently excited every time she crossed the threshold of
Trewly's Restaurant. The programme which followed was always the same.
The Marquis rose from a cushioned seat in the small entrance lounge to
greet her, very distinguished looking in his plain dinner clothes, his
black stock, vainly imitated by the younger generation, his horn-rimmed
eyeglass, his cambric-fronted shirt with the black pearls, which had
been the gift of the Regent to his great-grandfather. The head waiter,
and generally the manager, hovered in the background while their
greetings were exchanged and Marcia's coat delivered to the care of an
attendant. Then they were shown with much ceremony to the same table
which they had occupied on these weekly celebrations for many years.
It was in a corner of the room, a corner which formed a slight recess,
and special flowers, the gift of the management, were invariably in
evidence. The rose-shaded lamp, with its long, silken hangings, was
arranged at precisely the right angle. The Marquis asked his usual
question and waved away the menu.
"What you choose to offer us, Monsieur Herbrand," he would say, in his
old-world but perfect French. "If Madame has any fancy, we will send
you a message."
So the meal commenced. Trewly's was a restaurant with a past. In the
days of the Marquis's youth, when such things were studied more
carefully than now, it was the one first-class restaurant in London to
which the gilded youth of the aristocracy, and perhaps their sires,
might indulge in the indiscretion of entertaining a young lady from the
Italian chorus without fear of meeting staider relatives. The world of
bohemian fashion had changed its laws since those days, and Trewly's
had been left, high and dry, save for a small clientele who remembered
its former glories and esteemed its cellar and cuisine. It belonged to
the world which the Marquis knew, the world whose maxims he still
recognised. After all these years, he would still have thought himself
committing a breach of social etiquette if he had invited Marcia to
lunch with him at the Ritz or the Carlton.
They drank claret, decanted with zealous care and served by a
black-aproned cellarman, who waited anxiously by until the Marquis had
gravely sipped his first glassful and approved. Their dinner to-day
was very much what it had been a dozen years ago--the French-fed
chicken, the artichokes, and strawberries served with liqueurs
remained, whatever the season. And their conversations. Marcia leaned
back in her chair for a moment, and again the corners of her lips
twitched as she remembered. Faithfully, year after year, she could
trace those conversations--the courtly, old-fashioned criticism of the
events of the week, criticism from the one infallible standard, the
standard of the immutable Whiggism upon which the constitution itself
rested; conversation with passing references to any new event in art,
and, until lately, the stage. To-night Marcia found herself tracing
the gradual birth of her stimulating rebellion. She remembered how,
years ago, she had sat in that same seat and listened as one might
listen to the words of a god. And then came the faint revolt, the
development of her intellect, the necessity for giving tongue to those
more expansive and more subtle views of life which became her heritage.
To do him justice, the Marquis encouraged her. He was as good a judge
of wit and spirit as he was of claret. If Marcia had expressed a
single sentence awkwardly, if her grammar had ever been at fault, her
taste to be questioned, he would have relapsed into the stiffness of
his ordinary manner, and she would have felt herself tongue-tied. But,
curious though it seemed to her when she looked back, she was forced to
realise that it was he who had always encouraged the birth of her new
thoughts, her new ideals, her new outlook upon life, her own drastic
and sometimes unanswerable criticisms of that state of life in which he
lived. She represented modernity, seeking for expression in the
culture of the moment. He, remaining of the ancient world, yet found
himself rejuvenated, mentally refreshed, week by week, preserved from
that condition of obstinate ossification into which he would otherwise
have fallen, by this brilliant and unusual companionship. In all the
many years of their intimacy he had felt no doubts concerning her. He
was possessed of a self-confidence wholly removed from conceit, which
had spared for him the knowledge of even a moment's jealousy. In her
company he had felt the coming and, as he now realised, the passing of
middle age. It was only within these last few hours that certain
formless apprehensions had presented themselves to him.
"You drink your wine slowly to-night," she observed. "I was just
thinking how delicious it was."
He touched the long forefinger of his left hand, just a little swollen.
"A touch of gout," he said, "come to remind me, I suppose, that however
much we set our faces against it, change does exist. You are the only
person, Marcia, who seems to defy it."
She laughed at him, but not with entire naturalness. He found himself
studying her, during the next few moments. Just as he was a celebrated
connoisseur of _objets d'arts_, a valued visitor to Christie's,
although his purchases were small, so he was, in his way, an excellent
judge of the beautiful in living things. He realised, as he studied
her, that Marcia had only more fully developed the charm which had
first attracted him. Her figure was a little rounder but it had lost
none of its perfections. Her neck and throat were just as beautiful,
and the success of her work, and her greater knowledge of life, had
brought with them an assured and dignified bearing. There was not a
vestige of grey in her soft brown hair, not a line in her face, nor any
sign of the dentist's handiwork in her strong, white teeth. Only--was
it his fancy, he wondered, or was there something missing from the way
she looked at him?--a half shy, half baffled appeal for affection which
had so often shone out upon him during these evenings, a wholly
personal, wholly human note, the unspoken message of a woman to her
lover. He asked himself whether that had gone, and, if it had, whether
the companionship which remained sufficed.
"So the journey down to Mandeleys has not materialised yet?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"To tell you the truth," she told him, "I rather shrank from it. I
could not seem to bring it into perspective--you know what I mean. How
am I to go to him? I don't suppose he has changed. He is still
splendidly faithful to the ideas of his earlier days. I do not suppose
he has moved a step out of his groove. He is looking at the same
things in the same way. Am I to go to him as a Magdalen, as a
penitent? Honestly, Reginald, I couldn't play the part."
Their eyes met, and they both smiled.
"It is very difficult," he admitted, "to discuss or to hold in common a
matter of importance with a person of another world. Why do you go?"
"Because," she replied, "he is, after all, my father; because I know
that the pain and rage which he felt when he left England are there
to-day, and I would like so much to make him see that they have all
been wasted. I want him to realise that my life has been made, not
spoilt."
"I should find out indirectly, if I were you, how he is feeling," the
Marquis advised. "I rather agree with you that you will find him
unchanged. His fierce opposition to my reasonable legal movements
against him give one that impression."
"I shall probably be sorry I went," she admitted, "but it seems to me
that it is one of those things which must be done. Let us talk of
something else. Tell me how you have spent the week?"
"For one thing, I have improved my acquaintance with the American,
David Thain, of whom I have already spoken to you," he told her.
"And your great financial scheme?"
"It promises well. Of course, if it is entirely successful, it will be
like starting life all over again."
"There is a certain amount of risk, I suppose?" she asked, a little
anxiously.
The Marquis waved his hand.
"In this affair quite negligible," he declared.
"It would make you very happy, of course, to free the estates," she
ruminated.
The Marquis for a moment revealed a side of himself which always made
Marcia feel almost maternal towards him.
"It would give me very great pleasure, also," he confessed, "to point
out to my solicitors--to Mr. Wadham, Junior, especially--that the task
which they have left unaccomplished for some twenty-five years I have
myself undertaken successfully."
"This Mr. Thain must be rather interesting," Marcia said musingly.
"Could you describe him?"
It was at that precise moment that the Marquis raised his head and
discovered that David Thain was being shown by an obsequious _maitre
d'hotel_ to the table adjoining their own.
In the case of almost any other of his acquaintances, the Marquis's
course of action would have been entirely simple. David, however,
complicated things. With the naive courtesy of his American bringing
up, he no sooner recognised the Marquis than he approached the table
and offered his hand.
"Good evening, Marquis," he said.
The Marquis shook hands. Some banalities passed between the two men.
Then, as though for the first time, David was suddenly and vividly
aware of Marcia's presence. Some instinct told him who she was, and
for a moment he forgot himself. He looked at her steadily, curiously,
striving to remember, and Marcia returned his gaze with a strange
absorption which at first she failed to understand. This slim,
nervous-looking man, with the earnest eyes and the slight stoop of the
head, was bringing back to her some memory. From the first stage of
the struggle her common sense was worsted. She was looking back down
the avenues of her memory. Surely somewhere in that shadowland she had
known some one with eyes like these!--there must be something to
explain this queer sense of excitement. And then the Marquis, who had
been deliberating, spoke the words which brought her to herself.
"Marcia, let me present to you Mr. David Thain, of whom we were
speaking a few minutes ago. Mr. Thain, this is Miss Marcia Hannaway,
whose very clever novel you may have read."
David's eyes were still eagerly fixed upon her face, but the
introduction had brought Marcia back to the earth. There could be no
connection between those half-formed memories and the American
millionaire whose name was almost a household word!
"I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Hannaway," David said. "I was
just telling the Marquis that I was surprised to find any one here whom
I knew. I asked a friend to tell me of a restaurant near my rooms
where I should meet no one, and he sent me here."
"Why such misanthropy?" she asked.
"It is my own bad manners," he explained. "I accepted an invitation
for this evening, and found at the last moment so much work that I was
obliged to send an excuse."
"You carry your work about with you, then?"
"Not always, I hope," he replied, "only I am just now clearing out a
great many of my interests in America, and that alone is sufficient to
keep one busy."
He passed on with a little bow, and took his place at the table which
the _maitre d'hotel_ had indicated. The Marquis, to whom his coming
had been without any real significance, continued his conversation with
Marcia until he found to his surprise that she was giving him less than
her whole attention.
"What do you think of our hero of finance?" he enquired, a little
coldly.
"He seems very much as you described him," Marcia answered. "To tell
you the truth, his sudden appearance just as we were talking about him
rather took my breath away."
"It was a coincidence, without doubt," the Marquis acknowledged.
Her eyes wandered towards the man who had given his brief order for
dinner, and whose whole attention now seemed absorbed by the newspaper
which he was reading.
"It is Mr. Thain, is it not, who introduced to you this wonderful
speculation?" she asked, a little abruptly.
"That is so," the Marquis admitted. "I have always myself, however,
been favourably disposed towards oil."
Marcia suddenly withdrew her glance, laughed softly to herself and
sipped her wine.
"I was indulging in a ridiculous train of thought," she confessed.
"Mr. Thain looks very clever, even if he is not exactly one's idea of
an American financier. I expect the poor man does get hunted about. A
millionaire, especially from foreign parts, has become a sort of Monte
Cristo, nowadays."
The subject of David Thain dropped. The Marquis, as their coffee was
brought, began to wonder dimly whether it was possible that the thread
of their conversation was a little more difficult to hold together than
in the past; whether that bridge between their interests and daily life
became a little more difficult to traverse as the years passed. He
fell into a momentary fit of silence. Marcia leaned towards him.
"Reginald," she said, "do you know, there was something I wanted to ask
you this evening. Shall I ask it now?"
"If you will, dear."
She paused for a moment. The matter had seemed so easy and reasonable
when she had revolved it in her mind, yet at this moment of broaching
it, she realised, not for the first time, how different he was from
other men; how difficult a nameless something about his environment
made certain discussions. Nevertheless, she commenced her task.
"Reginald," she began, "do you realise that during the whole of my life
I have never dined alone with any other man but you?"
"Nor I, since you came, with any other woman," he rejoined calmly.
"You have some proposition to make?"
She was surprised to find that he had penetrated her thoughts.
"Don't you think, perhaps," she continued, "that we are a little too
self-enclosing? Thanks to you, as I always remember, dear, the world
has grown a larger place for me, year by year. At first I really tried
to avoid friendships. I was perfectly satisfied. I did not need them.
But my work, somehow, has made things different. It has brought me
amongst a class of people who look upon freedom of intercourse between
the sexes as a part of their everyday life. I found a grey hair in my
head only the night before last, and do you know how it came? Just by
refusing invitations from perfectly harmless people."
"I have never placed any restrictions upon your life," her companion
reminded her.
"I know it," she admitted, "but, you see, the principal things between
us have always been unspoken. I knew just how you felt about it. What
I want to know is, now that the times have changed around you as well
as around me, whether you would feel just the same if I, to take an
example, were to lunch or dine with Mr. Borden, now and then, or with
Morris Hyde, the explorer. I met him at an Authors' Club
_conversazione_ and he was immensely interesting. It struck me then
that perhaps I was interpreting your wishes a little too literally."
The Marquis selected a cigarette from his battered gold case with its
tiny coronet, tapped it upon the table and lit it. Marcia was already
smoking.
"I fear that I am very old-fashioned in my notions, Marcia," he
confessed. "I should find it very difficult to adapt myself to the
perfectly harmless, I am sure, lack of restraint which, as you say, has
opened the doors to a much closer friendship between men and women.
The place which you have held in my life has grown rather than lessened
with the years. It is only natural, however, that the opposite should
be the case with you. I should like to consider what you have said,
Marcia."
"You have meant so much to me," she continued, "you have been so much.
In our earlier days, too, especially during that year when we
travelled, you were such a wonderful mentor. It was your fine taste,
Reginald, which enabled me to make the best of those months in Florence
and Rome. You knew the best, and you showed it to me. You never tried
to understand why it was the best, but you never made a mistake."
"Those things are matters of inheritance," he replied, "and
cultivation. It was a great joy to me, Marcia, to give you the keys."
"Yes," she repeated, "that is what you did, Reginald--you gave me the
keys, and I opened the doors."
"And now," he went on, "you have pushed your way further, much further
into the world where men and women think, than I could or should care
to follow you. Is it likely to separate us?"
She saw him suddenly through a little mist of tears.
"No!" she exclaimed, "it must not! It shall not!"
"Nevertheless," he persisted, "the thought is in your mind. I cannot
alter my life, Marcia. I live to a certain extent by tradition, and by
habits which have become too strong to break. There is a great
difference in our years and in our outlook upon life. There is much
before you, flowers which you may pick and heights which you may climb,
which can have no message for me."
"Nothing," Marcia declared fervently, "shall disturb our--our
friendship."
"That does not rest with you, dear, but rather with Fate," he replied.
"You might control your actions, and I know that you would, but your
will, your desires, your temperament, may still lead you in opposite
directions. I have been your lover too long to slip easily into the
place of your guardian. Hold out your hand, if you will, now, and bid
me farewell. Try the other things, and, if they fail you, send for me."
"I shall do nothing of the sort," she objected. "We are both of us
much too serious. The only question we are considering is whether you
would object to my dining with Mr. Borden and lunching with Mr. Hyde?"
"It would give you an opportunity," he remarked, with a rather grim
smile, "of seeing the inside of some other restaurant."
"How understanding you are!" she exclaimed. "Do you know, although I
love our dinners here, I sometimes feel as though this room were a
little cage, a little corner of the world across the threshold of which
you had drawn a chalk line, so that no one of your world or mine might
enter. The coming of Mr. Thain was almost like an earthquake."
With every moment it seemed to him that he understood her a little
more, and with every moment the pain of it all increased.
"My dear Marcia," he said, "you have spoken the word. More than once
lately I have fancied that I noticed indications of this desire on your
part. I am glad, therefore, that you have spoken. Dine with your
publisher, by all means, and lunch with Mr. Hyde. Take to yourself
that greater measure of liberty which it is only too natural that you
should covet. We will look upon it as a brief vacation, which
certainly, after all these years, you have earned. When you have made
up your mind, write to me. I shall await your letter with interest."
"But you mean that you are not coming down to see me before then?" she
asked, a little tremulously.
"I think it would be better not," he decided. "I have kept you to
myself very stringently, Marcia. You see, I recognise this, and I set
you free for a time."
He paid the bill, and they left the room together.
"You are coming home?" she whispered, as they passed down the vestibule.
He shook his head.
"Not to-night, if you will excuse me, Marcia," he said. "The car is
here. I will take a cab myself. There is a meeting of the committee
at my club."
They were on the pavement. She gripped his hand.
"Do come," she begged.
He handed her in with a smile.
"You will go down to Battersea, James," he told the chauffeur, "and
fetch me afterwards from the club."
A queer feeling caught at her heart as the car glided off and left him
standing there, bareheaded. It was the first time--she felt something
like the snap of a chain in her heart--the first time in all these
years! Yet she never for a moment deceived herself. The tears which
stood in her eyes, the pain in her heart, were for him.