‘By having a better time than you ought, um? So your marriage is off?’
‘Very much so.’
‘Are you in debt?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much do you owe?’
Marjorie Ferrar hesitated. Should she compromise, or blurt it out?
‘No heel-taps, Marjorie.’
‘Well, then, five thousand about’
The old peer screwed up his lips, and a melancholy little whistle escaped.
‘A good deal of it, of course, is due to my engagement.’
‘Your father won a race the other day, I see.’
The old boy knew everything!
‘Yes; but I believe it’s all gone.’
‘It would be,’ said the marquess. ‘What are you going to do now?’
She had a strong desire to answer: ‘What are you?’ but restrained it, and said:
‘I thought of going on the stage.’
‘Well, I suppose that might be suitable. Can you act?’
‘I’m not a Duse.’
‘Duse?’ The marquess shook his head. ‘One must go back to Ristori for really great acting. Duse! Very talented, of course, but always the same. So you don’t choose to marry him now?’ He looked at her intently. ‘That, I think, is right. Have you a list of your debts?’
Marjorie Ferrar rummaged in her vanity bag. ‘Here it is.’
She could see his nose wrinkling above it, but whether at its scent, or its contents, she could not tell.
‘Your grandmother,’ he said, ‘spent about a fifth of what you seem to on about five times the acreage of clothes. You wear nothing nowadays, and yet it costs all this.’
‘The less there is, Grandfather, the better it has to be cut, you know.’
‘Have you sent your presents back?’
‘I’ve had them packed.’
‘They must all go,’ said the marquess. ‘Keep nothing he or anyone else gave you.’
‘Of course not.’
‘To frank you,’ he said, suddenly, ‘I should have to sell the Gainsborough.’
‘Oh, no!’
Gainsborough’s picture of his own grandmother as a little girl – that beautiful thing! She stretched out her hand for the list. Still holding it, he put his foot to the ground, and stood peering at her with his bright, intent old eyes.
‘The question is, Marjorie, how far it’s possible to strike a bargain with you. Have you a “word” to keep?’
She felt the blood mounting in her cheeks.
‘I think so. It depends on what I’ve got to promise. But Grandfather, I don’t want you to sell the Gainsborough.’
‘Unfortunately,’ said the marquess, ‘without doing your uncle Dangerficld in the eye, I’ve nothing else. It’s been my fault, I suppose, for having had expensive children. Other people don’t seem to have had them to the same degree.’
She stifled a smile.
‘Times are hard,’ went on the marquess. ‘Land costs money, collieries cost money, Shropshire House costs money; and where’s the money? I’ve got an invention here that ought to make my fortune, but nobody will look at it.’
The poor old boy – at his age! She said with a sigh:
‘I really didn’t mean to bother you with this, Grandfather. I’ll manage somehow.’
The old peer took several somewhat hampered steps, and she noticed that his red slippers were heel-less. He halted, a wonderfully bright spot among the contraptions.
‘To come back to what we were saying, Marjorie. If your idea of life is simply to have a good time, how can you promise anything?’
‘What did you want me to promise?’
He came and stood before her again, short and a little bent.
‘You look as if you had stuff in you, too, with your hair. Do you really think you could earn your living?’
‘I believe I can; I know a lot of people.’
‘If I clear you, will you give me your word to pay ready money in future? Now don’t say “Yes”, and go out and order yourself a lot of fallals. I want the word of a lady, if you understand what that implies.’
She stood up.
‘I suppose you’ve every right to say that. But I don’t want you to clear me if you have to sell the Gainsborough.’
‘You must leave that to me. I might manage, perhaps, to scrape it up without. About that promise?’
‘Yes; I promise that.’
‘Meaning to keep it?’
‘Meaning to keep it.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
‘Anything else, Grandfather?’
‘I should have liked to ask you not to cheapen our name any more, but I suppose that would be putting the clock back. The spirit of the age is against me.’
Turning from his face, she stood looking out of the window. The spirit of the age! It was all very well, but he didn’t understand what it was. Cheapen? Why! she had raised the price of the family name; hoicked it out of a dusty cupboard, and made of it a current coin. People sat up when they read of her. Did they sit up when they read of grandfather? But he would never see that! And she murmured: