Читать книгу The Interloper - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 7

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So far as a nobleman of ancient lineage, excellent breeding and sufficient understanding could be said to be a snob, Henry Duke of Chatfield was a snob as regards his own relations and the relations of his family with Royalty. He spent a very pleasant few minutes in his study one fine April morning some three years after his tour amongst the hill towns of Italy, turning over the pages of the Tatler and studying photographs of his daughter Monica attended by an obviously devoted princeling. There had been paragraphs in the daily papers too, hints in various society columns. The whole thing was exceedingly flattering. Monica could scarcely have chosen a more fortunate moment for her descent upon him.

"Busy, Dad, or can I have a word with you?" she asked.

"Never too busy, my dear, to see you," he assured her, rising and resting his hand upon the back of a chair. "You are riding this morning, I see," he added with a glance at her habit.

She nodded, threw herself into the easy-chair, crossed her legs and lit a cigarette. In any one else the attitude and action taken in conjunction would have seemed a little risky. Lady Monica, however, was fast establishing a law of her own.

"Dad," she said, "I'm awfully sorry, but I want some money."

In a way this was rather a shock. Eighty thousand a year with four large houses to keep up, tenants to propitiate, and an extravagant son, is by no means an enormous income. The Duke, however, was a philosopher, and he was intensely proud of his daughter.

"Well, my dear, if you want it, you must have it," he replied. "Clothes, I suppose?"

"Clothes and gambling," she admitted coolly. "One must amuse oneself."

He winced.

"I'm not sure that the gambling is worth while," he remarked. "I know it can't be avoided now and then, and personally I see no harm in it, although it doesn't happen to be one of my vices. I'd leave it out as much as I could, though. An unmarried girl can't possibly compete with the people she may run up against."

Monica assented languidly.

"Oh, I just play when I feel like it. I'd prefer to dance, only all the men worth spending an hour or two with dance so badly. A thousand will do, Dad. My allowance will be due next month, won't it?"

The Duke produced his cheque-book with some reluctance. He made out the cheque, however, and passed it across.

"There you are, my dear," he said. "Make it last as long as you can. Whom are you riding with this morning?"

"I forget," she confessed. "Some young man is calling for me presently."

He stood looking down at her. Amongst those human weaknesses which he permitted to disturb the prim regularity of his life, was a distinct affection for his daughter.

"I am not sure that you're looking well, Monica," he observed.

"Entirely a mental indisposition," she assured him. "I'm bored."

"That's queer," he reflected. "Why?"

She made no immediate reply. He shrugged his shoulders as he returned to his seat.

"Every paper I pick up," he continued, "tells me that you are the most popular young woman in society. You take the lead wherever you go. You dabble in philanthropy, in sport, even in politics. There isn't a paper that doesn't proclaim you the reigning beauty amongst the younger set. I really can't see how you find time to be bored."

"Nor can I," she admitted. "But I am."

"You've tried most things," he went on. "There would appear to be only one new experience left for you in life."

"Marriage, I suppose."

"Precisely."

She was silent for a moment. She sat with her face to the window and with the full warmth of the spring sunshine around her. Her father's heart glowed with pride. In all the forty-seven oil paintings of his female ancestry in Chatfield House and Chatfield Castle there was no woman whose beauty could compare with hers.

"Marriage is, I am afraid, where I come to grief," she confessed. "I can't face it, Dad."

"That's strange," he murmured. "You seem, if I may say so, a perfectly normal person."

"I think I am on every other subject," she assented. "I've started no end of new crazes. I'm supposed to be absolutely up to date in most things. But, between you and me, Dad, I'm hopelessly old-fashioned about marriage. I've tried to consider it in connection with several of the men who've asked me, and it seems like a hideous impropriety. I've been reading Jane Austen and I know exactly why. There must be a right man and I haven't met him."

The Duke coughed. It seemed a delicate matter to discuss even with one's own daughter.

"Your sex, my dear," he observed, "is generally capable of great adaptability in this matter. If a man presents himself who is in every way desirable, it is astonishing how soon the average young woman can discover the existence for him of that remarkable feeling which the novelists are accustomed to call 'love'."

"I know, Dad," Monica agreed, "but I'm not an average young woman. I know, because I've tried. I let a young man kiss me last night, to see if that would help things along. Absolutely horrible, the sensation! I was very disappointed and very rude about it. Besides rubbing all the carmine off my lips!"

The Duke sighed. He guessed at the identity of the young man.

"Well, my dear," he said, "your mother and I are in no hurry to lose you. There are certain connections which would gratify us very much. But that, I think, you know. You must take your own time, however. You realise, of course, that spinsterhood is a most impossible condition?"

She laughed softly.

"It sha'n't be as bad as that, Dad, I promise you."

The butler knocked at the door and entered, announcing the arrival of Monica's illustrious escort. She rose to her feet, gathered up her skirt, threw a kiss at her father and left the room. Her mother joined him and they stood at the window watching her start.

"How much did Monica want this time?" she enquired.

"A thousand," was the gloomy reply. "I had to give it to her, of course. All the same, I wish she'd marry. Won't you sit down, my dear?"

The Duchess seated herself in Monica's vacated chair.

"I mustn't stay," she declared. "I've a great many things to do. Mrs. Marsham has just brought me the books. They're more than ever this month. You'll have to pay in something extra to the housekeeping account."

"Damn the housekeeping account!" the Duke exclaimed testily.

"People must be paid," she sighed.

"Well, overdraw then," he advised. "Monica's cleared me out for a week or so. Upon my word, I wish she'd marry."

"I can't think why she doesn't," the Duchess complained. "Most unnatural, I call it."

"I have just had some conversation with her upon the subject," he confided. "I must confess that she surprised me very much. I should never have considered Monica a sentimentalist."

"I wonder," her mother reflected, "whether you have noticed any change in Monica since our tour abroad three years ago."

"I can't say that I have particularly," he confessed. "What sort of change?"

The Duchess hesitated.

"A very difficult change to put into words. It was when she returned to England or during the next season, perhaps, that she attained her greatest success. She seemed to have developed gifts which surprised me—an amazing capacity for leading people, for doing the most daring things in an entirely irreproachable manner,—and yet she appeared to have lost something. I don't know how to express it, Henry, but I always fancy that there has been a certain hardness about her since that time. She is far more indifferent, for instance, as to the feelings of her admirers."

"I don't know about hardness," the Duke objected; "she was talking what, in any one else, would have seemed sentimental twaddle just before you came in."

"I know," his wife sighed. "I only hope that when her Prince Charming does come along, he won't be an opera singer or a professional cricketer! Underneath her coldness Monica has the most amazing temperament."

"Let us," the Duke suggested, "not meet trouble halfway. I see," he added, looking out of the window, "that Sir Stephen is here. He has asked for an interview this morning."

"I hope none of the tenants are going to be troublesome," she remarked, as she rose to her feet.

He looked for a moment almost severe.

"My dear," he said, "they can be as troublesome as they like. I wouldn't even discuss the matter of another shilling off their rents. What Eustace and I are talking about is cutting the entail and selling the Yorkshire property. There is no house. It doesn't go with the other land. And wherever there isn't a house the tenants give trouble."

"A little ready money would be a wonderful thing," the Duchess confessed, as she moved towards the door.—"How do you do, Sir Stephen," she went on, meeting him on the threshold. "Stay and have some luncheon with us, if you're not in a hurry this morning. You can take Henry for a little walk in the Park first. I tell him he'll lose his figure if he doesn't take more exercise."

"You're very kind, Duchess," the lawyer replied. "I'm afraid I shall have to go on to the City this morning."

"Well, any time you like. We're generally in for luncheon. Henry prefers to dine out but to lunch in. It's his nap afterwards he thinks about."

She departed, closing the door behind her. The Duke invited his visitor to take an easy-chair.

"Glad to see you, Dobelle," he declared. "Your coming has probably saved me a journey down into the City. I wanted to talk to you about our proposition—selling the Yorkshire property, you know. Eustace is all for it."

"I think you'll have to put the idea out of your mind," was the grave reply. "I—the fact is, Duke, I am afraid I am bringing you very bad news."

"The deuce you are! Don't tell me that my Norfolk people are expecting another reduction. It simply can't be done."

"My business is far more serious," the lawyer pronounced. "Can you bear a shock?"

The Duke was more perplexed than alarmed. He could think of no possible impending calamity.

"Out with it!" he enjoined.

"The Yorkshire estates are not yours to dispose of—or the Norfolk ones, or any of the Chatfield property. Francis married that Italian girl in Rome and had a son. The son is living at the present moment."

The Duke gripped the sides of his chair. The situation was too big for him. He failed to grasp it.

"A son! Francis married!" he exclaimed. "Ridiculous! Why, if that were true, Dobelle, the young man would be Duke of Chatfield!"

"He is," the lawyer affirmed solemnly.

"And what am I?" the Duke gasped.

"Just what you were before, Lord Henry Wobury, uncle of the Duke, and I regret to say, without any settled income."

"God bless my soul!" the bewildered man exclaimed. "We're disinherited then!"

"I regret to say that such is the case," the lawyer assented.