Gossett in the country was a very different person from Gossett in
Grosvenor Square. An intimate at Mandeleys was not at all the same
thing as a caller in town, and David found himself welcomed that
evening with a grave but confidential smile.
"The drawing-room here is closed for the present, sir," he observed,
after he had superintended the bestowal of David's coat and hat upon an
underling. "We are using the gallery on the left wing. If you will be
so kind as to come this way."
David was escorted into a long and very lofty apartment, cut off from
the hall by some wonderful curtains, obviously of another generation.
The walls were hung with pictures and old-fashioned weapons. At the
far end was a small stage, and at the opposite extremity a little box
which had apparently at some time been used by musicians. Some large
beech logs were burning in an open fireplace. The room contained
nothing in the way of furniture except a dozen or so old-fashioned
chairs and a great settee.
"These large rooms," Gossett explained, "get a little damp, sir, so his
lordship desired a fire here."
He had scarcely disappeared when a door which led into the gallery was
opened, and Lady Letitia came slowly down the stairs. The place was
lit only by hanging lamps, and David's impression of her, as he turned
around, were a little unsubstantial. All the way down the stairs and
across that strip of floor, it seemed to him that he could see nothing
but her face. She carried herself as usual, there was all the pride of
generations of Mandeleys in her slow, unhurried movements and the
carriage of her head. But her face.--David gripped at the back of one
of the tall chairs. He made at first no movement towards her. This
was the face of a woman into which he looked. The change there was so
complete that the high walls seemed to melt away. It was just such a
vision as he might have conceived to himself. Her words checked the
fancies which were pouring into his brain. He became again the puzzled
but everyday dinner guest.
"I am very glad that you have come, Mr. Thain," she said, giving him
her hand, "and I am very glad indeed to see you alone, even if it is
only for a moment, because I feel--perhaps it is my thoughts that
feel--that they owe you an amende."
"You are very kind," he replied, a little bewildered. "I am glad to be
here. What have you ever done which needs apology?"
"I spoke of my thoughts," she reminded him, with a little smile. "What
I once thought, or rather feared, I am now ashamed of, and now that I
have told you so I am more at ease."
She stood up by his side, little flashes of firelight lighting her soft
white skin, gleaming upon the soft fabric of her gown. She wore no
ornaments. The Mandeleys pearls, generally worn by the unmarried women
of the family, were reposing in the famous vaults of a West End
pawnbroker. Her strong, capable fingers were innocent of even a single
ring, although upon her dressing table there was even at that moment
reposing a very beautiful pearl one, concerning which she had made some
insignificant criticism with only one object, an object which she
refused to admit even to herself. David remained silent through sheer
wonder. He had a sudden feeling that he had been admitted, even if for
only these few moments, into the inner circle of her
toleration--perhaps even more than that.
"I hurried down," she explained, "just to say these few words, and I
see that I was only just in time."
The curtain had been raised without their noticing it, and the Duchess,
with Grantham by her side, had entered. There was a slight frown upon
the latter's forehead; the Duchess was humming softly to herself.
"Well, Sir Anthony, so you've kept your word," she said to David, when
he had shaken hands with Grantham. "I can see quite well what the
country is going to do for you, unless you are looked after. The
amiable misanthrope is the part you have in your mind. Gracious!
Motors outside! Have we got a party, Letitia?"
Letitia, who to David's keen observation seemed already to have lost
something of that strange new quality which she had shown to him only a
few moments ago, shook her head.
"The Vicar and Mrs. Vicar, and the Turnbulls, and Sylvia's father."
"I am not going to be bored," the Duchess declared firmly. "I insist
upon sitting next to Mr. Thain. How pretty Sylvia looks! And what a
becoming colour! Now listen to me, David Thain," she went on, drawing
him a little on one side, "you are not to flirt with that child. It's
like shooting them before they begin to fly. You understand?"
"Not guilty," David protested. "I can assure you that I am a passive
victim."
"Silly little goose," the Duchess murmured under her breath, "waiting
there for you to go and speak to her, with all sorts of sentimental
nonsense shining out of her great eyes, too. I shall go and talk to
old General Turnbull till the gong goes. Why we can't have dinner
punctually with a small party like this, I can't imagine."
Sylvia was certainly glad to welcome David. Her father came up in a
few moments and shook hands heartily.
"Still buy your own cutlets, eh, Mr. Thain?" he asked. "Jolly good
cutlets they were, too!"
"I suppose you have a housekeeper and all sorts of things," Sylvia
laughed, "and live in what they call regal magnificence."
David's protest was almost eager.
"I have a man and his wife who came down with me from London," he said,
"and one or two servants--very few, I can assure you. Won't you come
and try my housekeeping, Colonel, before you move on, and bring Miss
Sylvia?"
"With pleasure, my boy," the Colonel declared. "We leave for town next
Saturday. Any day between now and then that suits Sylvia."
Dinner was announced, and David found himself placed at a round table
between the Duchess and Sylvia. The former looked around the
banqueting hall with a shiver.
"Reginald," she protested, "why on earth do you plant us in the middle
of a vault like this? Why on earth not open up some of the smaller
rooms?"
The Marquis smiled deprecatingly. His extreme pallor of the last few
days had disappeared. He seemed younger, and his tone was more alert.
"This room is really a weakness of mine," he confessed. "I like a
vaulted roof, and I rather like the shadows. It isn't damp, if that is
what you are thinking of, Caroline. We have had fires in it ever since
we came down--timber being the only thing for which we don't have to
pay," he added.
"It makes one feel so insignificant," the Duchess sighed. "If you were
dining fifty or sixty people, of course, I should love it, but a dozen
of us--why, we seem like spectral mites! Look at old Grand-Uncle
Philip staring at us," she went on, gazing at one of the huge pictures
opposite. "Pity you cannot afford to have electric light here,
Reginald, and have it set in the frames."
"A most unpleasant idea!" her brother objected. "Confess, now, if you
could see two rows of ancestors, all illuminated, looking at you while
you ate, wouldn't it make you feel greedy?"
The conversation drifted away and became general. The Duchess leaned
towards her neighbour.
"I think I am rather sorry I came here," she whispered.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because I find you disappointing. I thoroughly enjoyed discovering
you upon the steamer. You were delightfully primitive, an absolute
cave-dweller, but you quite repaid my efforts to make a human being of
you. You were really almost as interesting when we first met in
London. And now, I don't know what it is, but you seem to have gone
thousands of miles away again. You don't seem properly human. Don't
you like women, or have you got some queer scheme in your head which
keeps you living like a man with his head in the clouds? Or are you in
love?"
"I haven't settled down to idleness yet, perhaps," he suggested.
"Of course," she went on, "you ought to be in love with me, and
miserable about it, but I am horribly afraid you aren't. I believe you
have matrimonial schemes in your mind. I believe that your affections
are so well-trained that they mean to trot all along the broad way to
St. George's, Hanover Square."
"And would you advise something different?" he asked bluntly.
"My dear man, why am I here?" she expostulated. "I have a fancy for
having you devoted to me. What I mean to do with it when I have
captured your heart, I am not quite sure."
Every one was listening to a story which old General Turnbull was
telling. Even Sylvia had leaned across the table. David turned and
looked steadily into his companion's face.
"It seems to me," he said, "that only a very short time ago, Duchess,
out of solicitude for my extreme ignorance, you warned me against
setting my affections too high."
"I was speaking then of marriage," she replied coolly.
"I see! And yet," he went on, "I am not quite sure that I do see. Is
there any radical difference between marriage and a really intimate
friendship between a man and a woman?"
She smiled. Her slight movement towards him was almost a caress.
"My dear, unsophisticated cave-dweller!" she murmured. "Marriage is an
alliance which lasts for all time. It is apt, is it not, to leave its
stamp upon future generations. Great friendships have existed amongst
people curiously diverse in tastes and temperament and position. A
certain disparity, in fact, is rather the vogue."
"I begin to understand," he admitted. "That accounts for the curious
club stories which one is always having dinned into one's ears,
hatefully uninteresting though they are, of Lady So-and-So entertaining
a great fiddler at her country house, or some other Society lady
dancing in a singular lack of costume for the pleasure of artists in a
borrowed studio."
"You are not nearly so nice-minded as I thought you were," the Duchess
snapped.
"It is just my painful efforts to understand," he protested.
"Any one but an idiot would have understood long ago," she retorted.
David turned to his left-hand neighbour.
"The Duchess is being unkind," he said. "Will you please take some
notice of me?"
"I'd love to," she replied. "I was just thinking that you were rather
neglecting me. I want to know all about America, please, and American
people."
"I am afraid," he told her, "that I know much more about America than I
do about American people. All my life, since I left Harvard, I have
been busy making money. I never went into Society over there. I never
accepted an invitation if I could help it. When I had any time to
spare I went and camped out, up in the Adirondacks, or further afield
still, when I could. We had lots of sport, and we were able to lead a
simple life, well away from the end of the cable."
"And you killed bears and things, I suppose?" she said. "How lucky
that you are fond of sport! It makes living in England so easy."
He smiled.
"I am not so sure," he confessed, "that I should consider England quite
so much of a sporting country as she thinks herself."
"What heresy!" the Marquis exclaimed, leaning forward.
"Of course, I didn't know that I was going to be overheard," David said
good-humouredly, "but I must stick to it. I mean, of course, sport as
apart from games."
"Shooting?" the Marquis queried.
"I am afraid I don't consider that shooting at birds, half of them
hand-reared, is much of a sport," David continued. "Have you ever
tried pig-sticking, or lying on the edge of a mountain after three
hours' tramp, watching for the snout of a bear?"
Letitia had broken off her conversation with Lord Charles and was
leaning a little forward. The Marquis nodded sympathetically.
"Hunting, then?"
David smiled.
"You gallop over a pastoral country on a highly-trained animal, with a
pack of assistant hounds to destroy one miserable, verminous creature,"
he said. "Of course, you take risks now and then, and the whole thing
looks exceedingly nice on a Christmas card, but for thrills, for real,
intense excitement, I prefer the mountain ledge and the bear, or the
rounding up of a herd of wild elephants."
"Mr. Thain preserves the instincts of the savage," the Duchess
observed, as she sipped her wine. "Perhaps he may be right.
Civilisation certainly tends to emasculate sport."
"The sports to which Mr. Thain has alluded," the Marquis pointed out,
"are the sports of the stay-at-home Englishman. Most of our younger
generation--those whose careers permitted of it--have tried their hand
at big game shooting. I myself," he continued reminiscently, "have
never felt quite the same with a shotgun and a stream of pheasants,
since a very wonderful three weeks I had in my youth, tiger hunting in
India.--I see that Letitia is trying to catch your eye, Caroline."
The women left the room in a little group, their figures merging almost
into indistinctness as they passed out of the lighted zone. David's
eyes followed Letitia until she had disappeared. Then he was conscious
that a servant was standing with a note on a salver by his side.
"This has been sent down from Broomleys, sir," the man explained.
David took it and felt a sudden sinking of the heart. The envelope was
thin, square and of common type, the writing was painstaking but
irregular. There was a smudge on one corner, a blot on another. David
glanced at the Marquis, who nodded and immediately commenced a
conversation with Grantham. He tore open his message and read it:
"The time has arrived. I wait for you here."
He crushed the half-sheet of notepaper in his fingers and then dropped
it into his pocket.
"There is no answer," he told the servant.