The bodily and mental conditions of the Marquis of Southwold, which forbade him living ashore any length of time, were many and almost insurmountable. The greatest doctors had of course been consulted, but without being able to afford any relief. They had called his lordship's symptoms by a number of very learned names, seldom heard in the medical profession. They could go no further than that. They had tried every resource of their art, and had failed. Men at the top of the profession can afford to confess failure much better than their brethren of a less degree. When the greatest doctors declare a patient must die soon, the sooner that patient dies the better for conventional decency.
The doctors had not said that Lord Southwold must die soon; but they had declared him incurable, and advised him to try the sea. He tried the sea, and the remedy was most successful. On shore his eyes were tender and dim, his limbs dumb and nerveless, his appetite failed, and his spirits sank almost to melancholia. But no sooner did he go on board a ship than all these symptoms began to abate. His eyes grew stronger, his sight improved, the lassitude lessened, he could eat with relish, and his spirits gradually returned.
The Marquis of Southwold was now a man of thirty-eight years of age, tall, lank, long-cheeked, and without the hereditary bow-legs. His features were vague and expressionless. He had a remarkably large mouth, and dull faded grey eyes. There was upon his face always the look of pain past rather than pain present. His face was that of one who was fading out, rather than of one who suffered any violent assault. He was more languid and subdued than his father; but, like him too, he was very taciturn.
His health was good while on board the yacht, although she only lay at anchor in Silver Bay, beneath the ducal castle. Thus, for a large portion of the year, his grace's schooner-yacht, theSeabirdlay at anchor in Silver Bay. The bay was excellently suited to the requirements of the ailing nobleman: for it was protected from the wind by high lands on three sides, and from the rolling sea of the German Ocean by a barrier of rocks, extending more than halfway across the bay from the northern side. The best anchorage was just under the shelter of this jagged barrier of rocks. Here, even in the most severe gales from the east, the water was always smooth. The holding ground was also excellent; and the rocks, as they rose twenty, thirty, forty feet high, protected the hull of the schooner from the force of the wind.
The entrance to this bay was safe and easy. It was about a quarter of a mile wide, and quite free from rocks. The largest vessel afloat would have water enough in any part of that opening, from a point twenty fathoms from the end of the bar to a point twenty fathoms from the opposite shore of the bay. The only great danger was if, in tacking in or out in heavy weather, anything should give way; for it was necessary to reach in or out on the one tack, there being no room for tacking in the passage itself in a strong wind and high sea.
Of course, if Lord Southwold wished for a steam-yacht, he might have the finest that could be designed. But he could not endure a steamer. It was almost worse for him than being on shore. The air is never brisk aboard a steamboat, and then the vibration jarred upon him horribly.
He was not an enterprising sailor, and did not court adventure. He did not love the sea for its perils, or for the chance it affords of enjoying the sense of struggling successfully against an enemy. He looked on dwelling afloat as a birthright, or birthwrong, against which there was no good in growling. His father allowed him twenty thousand a year pocket-money. He would have given up his twenty thousand a year and his right of succession to the title and vast estates, if he might have a thousand a year and the constitution of a navvy. It is not utterly impossible that a navvy may become a duke, but it is utterly impossible that a man with such a constitution as his could enjoy the health of a navvy.
He found it impossible to spend his pocket-money, and he hated the notion of it accumulating at his banker's. When he had a large balance, it always seemed as if it were placed there as the wages of his bodily infirmities. He hated money as honourable men hate debt. When he found a balance of ten or twelve thousand at his banker's, he could, he knew, draw it out and drop it over the side of the yacht. But that would be wilful waste. He might have given it in charity; but he had so little contact with the world that he had hardly any sense of the necessity for charity, except through reading, which is a cold and formal way of kindling one's sympathy. He might have gambled; but he had hardly ever attended a race or coursing match. They very rarely had a guest at the Castle or on board the yacht; and he did not care for cards, even if guests were more numerous. He led an isolated and dreary life; but he had experience of hardly any other. He could not with comfort, live more than a few days ashore, or with safety more than a couple of weeks.
He was now no longer what may be called a young man, and he intended not to marry. His feeling was, that when such as he chanced to be the only representative of his race his race ought to die out. On this point his father had expostulated with him in vain. He never would marry. The vital power of his race was expiring in him--let it die.
When his father died he should be Duke of Shropshire, with three to four hundred thousand a year. What better off should he be then than he now was. No better. He should, in fact, be worse, for he would have lost the only friend and companion he had, his father. He should have to draw more cheques, to see more people, to transact more business. But he should eat nor drink nor lie no better, nor should his health be improved. His capacity for enjoyment would be in no way increased, and there would be a great addition to his labours. His father was hale and hardy, and might live twenty-five years yet; and the heir hoped with all his heart he might die before his father.
He marry! Why should he marry? What woman would care to share the stupid life he was compelled to lead? No woman would be likely to love him for himself, for he knew he was an uninteresting invalid. Thousands of women would marry him because he was the Marquis of Southwold and heir to the great dukedom of Shropshire. That went without saying. But no woman would willingly share his life; and why should he marry a woman who would unwillingly abide by him, or insist upon keeping up fitting state in London and the country while he was a frail despised rover of the sea? No! let the race go, and let the lawyers pocket the spoil--the spoil would be enough to found fifty families--and let the title die. What good would the title be to him? Could he soothe the winds with it, or stop a leak with it, or claw off a lee-shore with it?
Neither the Duke nor the Marquis was an intellectual man. But when one is everlastingly on ship-board he must do something. Common sailors who cannot read cultivate superstition, a knowledge of the weather, and the use of abnormal quantities of tobacco.
A sailor carries away from a book he has read a more accurate notion of what is in it than any other class of man of similar intellectual lights and acquirements. As the sailor who has studied his chart by day can see, when approaching an invisible shore through the trackless darkness of water and night, in his mind's eye the shore and the beacons of the shore that still lie hidden below the horizon, so the sailor who has read a book can see that book by aid of the chart he has made of it when the book has been closed up for ever.
As neither father nor son played the fiddle, or carved ivory, or cared much for shooting at bottles in the water, or hunting the great sea-serpent to earth, if the phrase may be allowed, or discovering the North Pole, or exploring cannibal islands, or going in search of novelty in foreign parts, a great deal of their time was spent in reading and fishing. Fishing at sea is not a very high or exciting art. Indeed, it is an art that is almost independent of the artist. And it is almost necessary to have some other occupation at the same time, so that reading goes hand-in-hand with fishing.
Thus it happened that both the Duke and his son read enormous piles of newspapers and books. The Duke read newspapers chiefly, and political books, and articles in the quarterlies. When a young man he had been active in politics, but now he took only a reflected interest in them. He hated Radicals with a complete and abiding hatred. He would root them out of the country at any cost. They disturbed his cities and boroughs. They were a low lot, and never washed their hands.
The Marquis of Southwold, on the contrary, took little or no interest in politics. As far as he had any political feeling, it was against his order and in favour of the Radicals. This feeling he kept to himself, not because he was afraid to put forward anything opposed to his father's views, but because he did not care to speak on a subject he knew so little about. Personally he had a poor opinion of dukes, but they might in reality be better than Radicals for all he knew to the contrary, for he had met two dukes besides his father, but never a Radical. He knew there was a wide gulf between dukes and Radicals. He had an idea a Radical was a kind of political poet. He didn't think much of poets; he knew little of Radicals; and he was perfectly sure dukes were useless. He had a vague general conviction that politicians who were not dukes were fools or rogues, but he was quite sure dukes were supernumeraries without parts in the play of life.
But if he did not care anything about poetry and politics, he was much interested in fiction. One of the few ways open to him, by which he could now and then reduce by a few pounds the balance at his banker's, was in ordering all the new novels which appeared, and ordering them, not at a library, but from the publisher, through his bookseller. Thus while this arrangement existed, every author who got out a novel was sure of finding at least one buyer.
It so happened that in the same month of June Edward Graham set up his easel to paint that landscape under Anerly Bridge, a novel was published called "The Duke of Fenwick: a Romance. By Charles Augustus Cheyne." According to the ordinary rule, the novel had been published in three volumes before it had fully run through the paper in which it appeared from week to week.
The same week the book was published it found its way down to Silverview Castle, and from the Castle to the yachtSeabird, in the hands of George Temple Cheyne, by courtesy called Marquis of Southwold.
The title naturally attracted the nobleman, who had no faith in dukes. He opened the book and found, by a curious coincidence, that the book had been written by a namesake.
"A book by a namesake," thought he; "but by no relative! There never yet was a Cheyne who could write anything more worthy of public notice than 'Trespassers will be prosecuted. Dogs found in these preserves will be shot.'"
But a book by a namesake dealing with a duke was of much more than ordinary interest; so he immediately found the easiest of couches, and lay down under the awning on deck to hear what his namesake had to say about a duke.
Certainly he had never met a duke like his Grace of Fenwick; but then he had met only his own father and two others. The two strange dukes he had met were like the farmers who came to pay his father rent. But then his father was very like a groom or jockey, and yet was not particularly fond of riding or of horses; so that it was, perhaps, not the nature of dukes to look like what they were. His namesake had no thought of drawing any member of the Shropshire family, for his duke was represented as being tall, well-made, and handsome. None of the Shropshire family had been tall, well-made, and handsome. They had all been short and bandy-legged until he had come. He was tall, it was true, and not bandy-legged; but then he was not handsome or well-made.
Stop, there had been his uncle, Lord George Temple Cheyne, who had been tall, well-made, and handsome; but he had died upwards of thirty years ago.
What a strange thing that the two last representatives of the race should have escaped the hereditary bow-legs! What a pity his uncle had not lived! He would have married, no doubt, and then his sons would have come into the title, and the property and the old name might have been carried down generations by men of wholesome make.
"What a ridiculous way that story ended! A violoncello-player turned out to be the real Duke of Fenwick. I wish to goodness he could turn me from being Marquis of Southwold into a man who had only warts on his fingers from the strings of the big fiddle. He wouldn't catch me going back again to the Marquis or Duke of Anything or Anywhere. Not I. I'd very soon pay off that landlord. But stop! How could I pay him off if I had no money? If I was the poor violoncello-player, I shouldn't have any money. But I am always wanting not to have any money; and if I had none when he came, I'd tell him I couldn't pay him then, but that I would the moment I got my next quarter's allowance from the Duke----. But I should be the Duke of Fenwick then, and there would be, as far as I was concerned, no Duke of Shropshire. Who really should I be then? It is the most puzzling thing I ever thought of. What's the good of writing a story that twists a man's head round and round like that, until he doesn't know which is front or which is back--I mean, which is his face or which is his poll? Before I had got rid of tutors they had so twisted my head round and round that, although I have been trying ever since, I have not been able to twist it back again.
"I know why this fellow wrote this book. I know it all now. Cheyne is an assumed name. He knows our name is Cheyne, and that the race dies with me. He knows I am an invalid. He knows--someone told him--I get all the novels which are published; and he has written this one to spite me, and offend my father. Low cad! But I will take good care my father does not see the filthy rubbish. Boy, bring me a marline-spike and a piece of spun-yarn."
The Marquis of Southwold bound up the three volumes of Charles Augustus Cheyne's "The Duke of Fenwick," and having looped to them the marline-spike by way of a sinker, dropped them slowly over the side of theSeabirdinto the still blue waters of Silver Bay, under the Duke of Shropshire's stately castle.
"Oh, what a way it is up! My wind isn't now what it used to be, when first I met you warm and young, Cheyne, is it? Such confounded stairs!" said Mr. John Wilkinson, a very stout puffy-looking man for thirty-six years of age, and editor and staff ofThe Coal-Vase Reporter, one of the most prosperous of the minor trade papers in London.
"My wind is as sound as ever," said the Duke of Long Acre, rising; for Wilkinson was not alone.
"Going up and down these breakneck flights once a day would keep a man in training. Cheyne, allow me to introduce my friend Freemantle. He has a great taste for poetry, writes very beautiful poetry indeed, and is most anxious to make your acquaintance. He has just read your book, 'The Duke of Fenwick,' and is delighted with it. I haven't had time to read it yet! but I shall read it this week, and review it in next week'sReporter. "
Cheyne shook hands with Freemantle, set a chair for him, and pushed his new acquaintance down on it in his jovial freehanded manner.
"And how are you, Freemantle?" asked Cheyne, as though they had known one another for many years. Turning to Wilkinson, he said: "Look up a chair for yourself."
"I am quite well, thank you, Mr. Cheyne."
"For Heaven's sake don't Mister me. I am never Mistered by anyone but duns."
"I beg your grace's pardon," said Wilkinson. "May I have the honour of presenting to your grace Mr. Harry Freemantle? Mr. Harry Freemantle, his Grace the Duke of Long Acre."
The two men rose and bowed profoundly to one another. Then Cheyne, again bowing profoundly and causing his head to describe a semicircle parallel to the horizon, said:
"The interesting preliminaries of introduction having been disposed of, his grace left the room to draw the beer out of his four-and-a-half-gallon cask, kept on the landing outside his grace's bedroom."
He returned in a few minutes with a jug and three glasses. When the three men had settled themselves and lighted their pipes, Wilkinson said:
"I hope we are not disturbing you now, Cheyne? You are not busy?"
"No, not a bit. I have just written a reply to a letter I had this morning from the Earl of Sark. He is an old chum of mine, and has read my book. He wants me to go and stay with him for awhile. But I can't--not just now, anyway."
"Well, you see," said Wilkinson, "Freemantle here is very anxious to do something in the way of verse--publishing it, I mean. He has several poems ready for publication. Poetry isn't in my way, Cheyne, so I thought I'd bring him to you."
"May I ask if you expect it to pay?"
"Well, no," said Freemantle, with a candid smile.
"You are independent of it?"
"In a certain sense I am. I am an attorney, and am employed in the office of Baker and Tranter, Bedford Street."
"Oh, that is all right. Is your purpose to publish a volume?"
"No, I do not aim so high as that."
"I am glad to hear it. There aren't more than six men whose volumes pay the mere expenses of printing and publication. Poetry is the most beggarly of all arts now. Living poets of fame and exquisite merit do not make as much by their trade as the humblest Italian artisan employed in casting plaster-of-Paris in Leather Lane. Writing and publishing poetry is an expensive luxury, and the readers of poetry are now a lost tribe."
"I thought of a much more modest attempt than a book. I thought I might be able to get a few little bits of verse into a magazine or two. I have brought a few little bits with me; I should feel very much obliged to you if you will look at them, and tell me what you think of them, and if there is any chance of their getting in anywhere; and if there is, when?"
"Oh, I'll be glad to do you more than that, if they are all right. I'll give you an introduction to an editor or two, whom I think likely to take them. In fact, if they are all right, I think there can be no question of our planting them somewhere."
"I am sure I am very much obliged to you. You were speaking a moment ago of having had a letter from a nobleman who has read your novel."
"Yes, my old friend, my kind old chum, the Earl of Sark."
"Well, if both of you will promise me to keep a secret anything I may say about another nobleman who has read your book, I can tell you something which will interest you a good deal."
The promise asked was given.
"I know I may depend on you both."
"Entirely."
Wilkinson answered for the two.
"Now, you know of the Duke of Shropshire and his son, the Marquis of Southwold? And you know they happen to bear the same name as you, Cheyne?"
"Yes," said the Duke of Long Acre guardedly. If Freemantle had not thus early mentioned the identity of names between the two, no doubt Cheyne would have claimed acquaintance with both; but here was the wretched name springing up again. Should he never get rid of this odious name?
"Well, Baker and Tranter have had a letter from the Marquis of Southwold, saying he has read your novel (Baker and Tranter are the Duke of Shropshire's lawyers), and that he thinks it a most impudent and barefaced outrage upon his father and his house----"
"What!" exclaimed the Duke of Long Acre, in the profoundest astonishment.
"It is a fact. He says the book is all about a dukedom which is on the point of becoming extinct, as in the case of the dukedom of Shropshire. That you have no claim or title to the name of Cheyne----"
"He lies!" cried Cheyne, all the more vehemently because he was not certain.
"And he wants to know if criminal proceedings cannot be taken against you for slander, malicious injury, and assuming a great name, with a view to annoy or----"
"Go on."
"Or possibly extract money."
"Great heavens! What next?"
"Of course, Cheyne, you do not confound mine with any of the opinions expressed in this letter. Indeed, I now think it would have been better if I had not mentioned it at all. And, for more reasons than one, I should not have done so, only that, of course, the whole thing is utterly absurd. Baker and Tranter have written back that, having had the book and the case placed before counsel, counsel and they agree no action of a criminal or civil nature can be taken in the matter. You will, of course, make no use of anything I have told you?"
"What, sir! Do you, too, doubt my word, question my honour?"
He struck the leaf of the table a mighty blow of his right fist. The leaf of the table flew to the ground, torn from the table; the table tilted up; and all the glasses, pipes, books, and papers went flying in wild confusion around the room. Cheyne sprang to his feet with an oath, and stood, pale as death, except his eyes, which were blazing. He looked like a wild beast ready to spring.
The other two men were also standing now.
"No, no, no, old man," said Wilkinson, in a soothing voice; "nothing is farther from the thoughts of anyone here. Why, weknowyou--old man!"
Wilkinson did not like to call the furious man either your grace or Cheyne now. Mortal offence might be in either.
"For if any man asperses my mother's name or impugns my honour, I shall take him by the hips and pitch him head downward through that window."
He meant what he said; and they both felt sure he could do it.
"Do be quiet, old man!" said Wilkinson. "I am sure either Freemantle or myself would be one of the very first to defend your mother's name or your honour, if anyone here had dared to call either in question. But no one here has dreamed of any such absurdity."
"Then where is this leprous Marquis, who has dared to do both? By----, I'll choke him with the tongue that said these things, as sure as my name is----" His whole frame was convulsed, the muscles of his throat and his face flushed, deepened into purple. He could not speak. The conflict was too terrible. At last he got breath. "Oh God, is it not horrible that a wretch whom Thou has marked with the sign of Thine own displeasure should try to sully spotless names, and spit its unclean venom on wholesome men with wholesome honours? As sure as the same Great Power made you and me, you shall answer to me for this, foot to foot, eye to eye, life to life!"
Without saying another word, he took up his hat, crushed it down on his head, and dashed out of the room, leaving the two men mute, incapable of speech.
Freemantle was the first to recover.
"Don't you think we ought to follow him? He'll do mischief to himself or somebody else, I am afraid. He's a raving maniac at this moment."
"I do not think he will do any mischief."
"I never saw a man look so like as if he meant what he said."
"No doubt. But I have known Cheyne many years, and you have met him for the first time today. All the time I have known him he has been the most peaceful of men."
"Yes; but these peaceful men, when they break out, are always the worst. How infernally unlucky I was to say anything about that letter!"
"But no one could have foreseen the consequences. Ninety-nine out of a hundred would have laughed at the whole thing. But you did not know Cheyne is sensitive about his name being the same as that of the Duke of Shropshire."
"I hadn't the slightest idea of anything of the kind."
"Of course not, or you would not have spoken. Cheyne is the very soul of honour, and a very excellent fellow, although he tells lies about knowing peers and big pots of all kinds. He said to you he had just had a letter from the Earl of Sark. Now 111 lay you a level shilling that there is----"
"No such title."
"Oh no! Cheyne isn't such a fool as that. But I'll lay you a level shilling that if you look in a morning paper you'll find the Earl of Sark has been doing or saying something. He has either spoken in the House, or written a letter to the secretary of a club, or laid the foundation-stone of a church, or bought a racer of some note, or done something else that has for the moment lifted him out of the ruck of the peers."
"Then you don't attach any importance to what he said?"
"I think he is very angry now, but that before he has got half a mile he will cool down. How far is it from here to where this Marquis lives?"
"Oh, a long way! A couple of hundred miles or more: two-fifty."
"It would be sheer nonsense to suppose his anger could last half the way. And I believe this Marquis spends most of his life at sea?"
"A good deal of it. He was so knocked up by reading this book that he put out to sea almost at once, he and the Duke."
"Then we may dismiss the matter altogether from our minds. I'll lay you another level shilling he draws no blood over this affair. What a horrible mess he has made of the place! He has spilt all the beer and tobacco. There's no cure for spilt beer, but there is for spilt 'baccy. Let us pick up a fill each and have another pipe before we go."
But, notwithstanding John Wilkinson's opinion to the contrary, there was not a man in all London so sure of the endurance of his rage as Charles Augustus Cheyne. That letter of the Marquis of Southwold had hit him on two of his sore points, namely, his doubtful parentage and personal honour. It used to be his boast that he never lost his temper, never once in all his life; and even still he might say the same thing. He had not lost his temper; his reason had fled him. He was not in a legal sense insane, but morally he could scarcely be held responsible for his acts.
Ever since he had been old enough to be capable of appreciating feelings of the kind, his most anxious thoughts had been devoted to reducing as much as possible all inquiry respecting his parentage. And here now was the wretched, drivelling, imbecile Marquis not only directing attention to his early history, but putting forth in as many words the horrible suspicion that he, Charles Cheyne, had no right or title to the name he bore! The one great fear of his life had been realised. He had been called an impostor of the most shameful class, and in addition to this, his own honour had been impugned. He had in effect been called a knave, a liar, a cheat, a low-minded bully, who wanted to levy blackmail on unoffending people. It was intolerable, monstrous, unendurable.
Nothing but a personal encounter with the man who had dared to say or insinuate such things would appease him.
He would go to this wretched Marquis of Southwold; he would give the man his name; he would confess his authorship of the book, and then----
Suppose, when he had done all this, the Marquis said nothing; what farther should he do? For had he not promised the man who told him that he would not speak of the nature of that letter? What should he do? How could he bring that wretched man to book? Yet the thing must be done somehow, anyhow.
Then he suffered a revulsion. All his life he had been boasting of his acquaintance with lords, and yet he had never, to his knowledge, spoken to one. Now he was quite resolved to meet and to speak with one, no matter what the risk, no matter what the consequences. He would never allude to the aristocracy in the old way again. He was conscious there was a kind of poetic justice in the fact that a fatal stab to the reputation of his mother and his own honour had been dealt by one of the class with which he claimed intercourse. Henceforth and for ever let that class be to him accursed. Henceforth and for ever he would be a Radical, a Socialist.
But how should he manage to keep his word with Freemantle, and yet be able to taunt Southwold with his calumnies? He could think of only one way. He would go to the Marquis, declare who he was, state he was the author of "The Duke of Fenwick," and await the course events might then take. It was more than likely that the Marquis would say something offensive to him. He would then challenge the heir; and if the latter would not fight him with pistol or sword, if the Marquis declined such a combat, Cheyne would, after warning him, attack him with such weapons as Nature had given him--his hands and his vast strength. He would take the neck of that man in his hands, and strangle him with his thumbs; then they might hang him upon the nearest tree.
He knew the Marquis was a man of delicate health, of poor physique. He, Cheyne, would first offer him an equal combat, that the matter might be settled with pistols. If the heir refused, Cheyne would then offer him swords, in which skill would compensate for strength. If swords were refused, then he should tell the Marquis to defend himself as best he could, as he, Cheyne, meant to kill him as they stood.
No doubt in a stand-up man-to-man fight for life without artificial weapons, the Marquis would have no chance. Still, was it in essence an unequal fight? Who had struck the first blow? Who had given the affront? This man had slandered his mother and himself. Suppose what had been published to the few had been published to the many; suppose, instead of writing to his lawyers, he had written to the newspapers, and he, Cheyne, had taken an action against him, and recovered, say a thousand, say ten thousand pounds damages, what injury would that be to the heir to one of the richest dukedoms in England? But the stain could never be washed out of his own or his mother's character. Give a dog a bad name, and hang him. Give the lie twenty-four hours' start of the truth, and the truth will never overtake the lie. In any conflict whatever, a rich nobleman must have enormous advantages over a poor commoner--except in one. There is no law or rule for giving the rich noble as fine a physique as the poor commoner. When, therefore, the rich noble has a physique inferior to the poor commoner, all the noble's other advantages must be put into the scale with him before the two are weighed for a physical encounter. Therefore he, Cheyne, would be perfectly justified in using every resource of his muscles, and, by Heaven, he would; and he would strangle that libellous ruffian as he would strangle a venomous snake!
Cheyne found himself in Hyde Park before he had any consciousness of surrounding objects. In every man, it is a common saying, there is a chained-down madman. We are all capable of being driven insane by something or other--we may not know what. Men have gone mad for joy, for sorrow, for success, for reverse, for love, for hate, for faith, for unfaith, for gold, for lack of gold. All Cheyne's life he had been devoted to the nobility and the concealment of his own early history. This blow therefore fell with a double weight. It was, dealt by a member of the nobility at his early history. So that his own mind, never very well rooted in firm ground, was torn up and scattered, and he could not now recognise any of the old landmarks, or see anything in the old way. All mental objects were obscured by one--the figure of the man who, he believed, had done him irreparable wrong. He did not wait to see whether the Marquis had merely made a random guess, or had spoken from ascertained facts. To Cheyne it was as bad as bad could be even to hint at the chance of his having no right to the name he bore, or the title of an honourable man. If he had known anything, no matter how small, of his parents, his birth, his early history, he should not have minded it so much. But here was his titled namesake, the head of all the Cheynes in the empire, plainly asserting that he, Charles Augustus Cheyne, had no right or title to the name.
Then, out of the depths of his own mind--depths which he did not dare to explore--came the question: Was the Marquis's shot a chance one, or did he, the Marquis, absolutelyknowthat he, Cheyne, had no right to carry the name?
Horrible! Horrible question! Most horrible question because it was unanswerable--because he had no more clue to it than he had to the mysteries that would be solved by man a thousand years hence. The Marquis and he were of the one name. Could it be the Marquis knew his history? Could it be the Marquis knew the history of Charles Cheyne; and into that book, at no particular leaf, at no single paragraph, should he ever be permitted to look, save with the sanction of the Shropshire family?
After thinking over this for awhile, he dismissed the supposition with a contemptuous gesture. The idea of the great Shropshire house knowing anything of his humble history was absurd. The Marquis had shot a random shaft, which hit an old sore and rankled. But the very fact that it had been shot at random made the offence the more grievous. Why should the titled scoundrel be privileged to blast the name of a woman whom he had never seen, never heard of--that of a man of whose existence he had not known of until the publication of that novel?
It never occurred to Cheyne for a moment to think that, when the Marquis spoke of his possibly having no title to the name, the writer might have meant that the name Cheyne had merely been assumed for literary purposes, and that the man's real name was Brown, or Jones, or Robinson, or Smith, and that the Marquis did not intend the slightest imputation on the character of any woman who ever lived. Long brooding on the subject of his birth and parentage had made Cheyne's mind morbidly sensitive to any allusion of the kind; and one might as well try to talk down a storm, or to obtain practical results by expostulation with an earthquake, as to make him see the matter in any other than its very worst and most offensive light. Hence his wild homicidal fury.
When he became conscious, he was in Hyde Park. He never noticed the warm sweet sunshine, the bright-green, well-kept grass, the wholesome looking well-dressed people, the fair, slight, blue-eyed children, the brilliant equipages and stately footmen and coachmen, the trees in the pride of their full primal leafiness. He took no heed of all these; and yet they all contributed in an obscure way, in a way he could not trace, to bring his mind suddenly back to the one object which constituted the shining brightness of his own life. He thought of his bright and sprightly May.
Under the circumstances, the vision of her was anything but quieting. It was all very well for him who had no relative in the world to talk of killing this man, and being himself hanged to the nearest tree; but if he had no relatives in the world, there was a being with whom he purposed forming the closest of human ties. To the world it would not matter a fig whether he were hanged or died quietly in his bed. He was no cynic. There was not a flaw of cynicism in his large generous nature. Yes, he knew the boys would be sorry if he died in his bed or were hanged; but then May? How would it be with his little May, his bright, gay, winsome little sweetheart, who was to be his wife?
It was easy to ask that question, and easy to answer it. May would be heart-broken. What heart he ever had to give woman he had given her. He knew that what heart she had to give man she had given him. On neither heart had there been a previous mortgage. Each heart was perfectly unencumbered. Yes; it would break May's heart, as the saying went. That is, it would take all the brightness and hope out of her life; it would crush her for ever. She would never again be the same gay, animated, cheering darling she was now.
Then for a long time he walked about the Park, with eyes cast down, brooding over the image and the memories of May.
The question arose in his mind, whether he owed more to the name of his dead mother than to the happiness of his affianced wife? To him there could not be a moment's pause in answering this question. A man, whether married or single, engaged or free, was bound, if occasion demanded, to die in defence of his country, of his home, of the honour of his name--the last part of the code was growing a little obsolete now; but the man who could sit still while they blackened the memory of a dead mother must be that worst of all reptiles--a cowardly cad.
No; he had resolved not to go near May. Seeing her might jeopardise his revenge; and revenge his mother he would at any peril. How could a man who was not ready and able to defend his mother's name be considered capable of defending a sweetheart or a wife? It would be a poor rascally world for us, if men learned to sit still while evil tongues wagged over the fame of their womankind, mothers or sisters or wives.
So he set his back towards Knightsbridge and walked in the direction of Long Acre. When he arrived at his own place, he gathered up the papers which had been scattered on the floor, kicked the broken glasses into one corner, and then, taking some notepaper, wrote three notes, two of these being to editors, and one to Marion Durrant. The last was as follows:
"My darling May,
"News which I heard quite by accident this morning obliges me to leave town very suddenly. I am unable to say good-bye. In fact, I haven't time to write even a reasonably long letter; for the train I go by to the east leaves very soon, and I have to pack a portmanteau and get to the station in a very short time. I am not sure how long I shall be away; a few days, anyway. I hope my darling girl will take great care of herself until I get back, for her own ever fond
"Charlie."
Three days passed, and she heard no more of him than of the dead. What had happened to him--to her darling, darling Charlie? She knew him too well to think he could write and would not. She knew him too well to think he had deserted her for some other woman. What had happened to her darling Charlie? When, hour after hour, she heard the postman knock in the street, and yet no tidings came to her of him, she began to think the postman must have been bribed to suppress his letters.
Only two men suspected whither Cheyne had gone, and they waited in fear and trembling of some terrible catastrophe; and at last news was at hand, filling the whole country with his name.
From the day Charles Augustus Cheyne set out for the east coast of England his name never appeared to another story or on the title page of another book.
When Cheyne had packed his portmanteau he took it and a hatbox down the steep staircase, carrying at the same time his letters in his teeth. He wore a low-crowned soft hat, instead of his ordinary silk one. He jumped into the street, and having thrust his letters into a pillar-post, hailed the first empty hansom and drove away to the railway-station.
Either his watch must have been slow or he must have looked at the wrong line of figures in the time-table, for when he got to the station they told him the train was on the point of starting, instead of having, as he had calculated, a good ten minutes to spare.
He took a first-class single ticket to Bankleigh, the nearest railway-station to Silver Bay. Then, with his portmanteau in one hand and his hatbox in the other, he dashed along the way leading to the platform from which the train for Bankleigh starts. The door was shut against him. The train had not yet started, but the time was up. The next train did not go till evening, which meant getting into a small unknown town long past midnight, a thing no one cares to do, particularly when he does not know even the name of a hotel or the hotel in it.
The gate was closed against him. The man refused to open the gate. The gate was five feet high, and Cheyne about six. Cheyne raised his hatbox and portmanteau over the barrier and let them fall. The man inside thought the traveller merely wished to get rid of the trouble of carrying his luggage any longer. Instantly Cheyne stepped on the lowest cross-rail of the gate, bent his chest over the top-rail of the gate, seized the ticket-taker by the leather waist-belt, and lifted him slowly over the gate. When he had deposited the ticket-taker safely on the ground he thrust half-a-crown into the man's hand, vaulted the gate, and taking up his portmanteau and hatbox, ran for a seat, and succeeded in scrambling into a carriage just as the train was in motion, and before the astonished but grateful ticket-taker could climb over the gate and regain the platform. Two or three of the porters had seen the feat, but it was not their duty to interfere. One of the guards saw it also; but having been, when younger, something of an athlete, and admiring the way in which the thing had been done, affected not to have seen it, and absolutely held the carriage-door open for Cheyne when he was getting in.
At the first station where the train stopped, the guard who had seen Cheyne lift the man over the gate, thrust his head into Cheyne's compartment, there being no one else in it, and said:
"That was a very neat trick sir, very. It isn't often we see a thing like that nowadays, sir."
"Confound it!" thought Cheyne, "this fellow must have his tip too."
He put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket and drew out a coin.
The guard saw what the passenger was doing, drew back, and said:
"No, sir; nothing for me, sir, thank you. It's not often nowadays we see a trick like that done, and I'd give a trifle myself to see it done again. But 'tisn't everyone, or half everyone, could do it."
And he moved along the platform, shaking his head to himself with the intelligent approval of one who knows a good deal of the difficulties in the performance of the feat which he applauded.
The train took eight hours to get to Bankleigh, but at last it drew up at that station, and Cheyne alighted.
It was then dusk, and the traveller having learned there was only one place in the town or village which accommodated strangers, and that it was only a few hundred yards away, gave his portmanteau to a porter, and bade the man lead him to the Shropshire Arms.
Now on the local London lines of railway, where there was a chance of meeting a friend or acquaintance, Cheyne always travelled first class, the difference in the fares of the first and third being only a few pence. But when he went farther into the open country, where there was practically no chance of meeting anyone who would know him, and where the difference came to many shillings, he always travelled third class. This was the most important journey of his life. He, a gentleman, was about to call upon another gentleman, and demand satisfaction, and it would not do to travel in any way that did not befit the station of men of their class.
All the way down in the train the deadliness of his design had not been lessened. He would meet this man, he would tell this man who he was, and then he would challenge him. There should be no seconds and no doctor. If the Marquis declined pistols and swords, then Cheyne would try to kill him with his hands, his fists, his thumbs dug into his throat. It was not every man, it was not one in ten thousand, could have lifted that burly ticket-collector over that gate with the neat precision he had shown. He could have thrown that man headforemost twenty feet, and broken his neck against a wall.
Cheyne engaged the best room at The Shropshire Arms, and ordered supper. It was only meet that a man come upon such a mission should be housed and fed as became a man of blood.
It would have been quite impossible for Cheyne to indulge in the luxuries of first-class travelling and first-class hotel accommodation, only he was one who always lived within his means, and had by him, when starting from London, all the money he had got for the right of re-publication in three volumes of his novel "The Duke of Fenwick." The money would not last for ever, but it would keep him going comfortably for a month or six weeks.
Cheyne was not in the least superstitious; but he did look on it as an extraordinary coincidence that the money he had got for the book which had exasperated Lord Southwold, now enabled him to come down from London, and seek satisfaction for the affront which had been put upon his mother and himself.
He asked the waiter who served the supper, if his Grace the Duke of Southwold was at home.
"No, sir, I think not. His Grace the Duke and Lord Southwold--that is, you know, sir, his lordship's only son and heir----"
"Yes, yes, I know."
"Well, sir, the two of them are gone to sea in his Grace's yacht, theSeabird, a couple, ay, or maybe three, days ago."
"And where have they sailed for?"
"Nowhere, sir."
"Why, what do you mean?"
"They never sails for nowhere, sir, great folks like them; and they never go nowhere, just as a man might walk out into the middle of a grass field and come back whistling no tune, nor bringing no daisy nor buttercup, nor as much as cutting a switch for himself in the hedge. I have never been to sea, sir, never. Where's the good of going to sea? But I've seen my share of salt water in my time, and all I ever saw of it was as like as two pea's, ay, liker; for some of the green peas is yellow, and some of the yellow peas is green. But all the sea-water I ever saw was the same in colour and smell and beastliness of taste and disposition, only fit for sharks and alligators and sorts like them. And not a single useful fish would be in the sea but would be poisoned by the beastly sea-water, only for the sweet waters of the rivers running into the sea and cheering up the fishes, poor souls, like a pint of cold bitter after a long walk of a hot day."
"And when do you think the yacht will come back?"
"There's no telling that, not unless you was a prophet. Even the sporting prophets knows nothing about it; for his grace has no dealings with dogs or horses, no more than the miller's wife that's been dead this five year."
"Are they often long away--months?"
"No, sir, not often months. But they are often away a tidy bit. It's like hanging a leg of mutton Christmas-time; it mostly depends on the weather whether the leg will ripen by Christmas-day, or will ripen too soon, or won't be ripe enough."
"And is it the bad or the good weather that brings them home?"
"Well, sir, seeing that this house is built on the Duke's property and called after the Duke, and that the landlord, sir, holds it by lease under the Duke, it wouldn't be becoming in me or anyone else of us to call it bad weather that brings the Duke back to us; but I'm free to say it isn't the kind of weather that everybody would order if he was going on a desolate island and wanted to enjoy himself on the sly away from the old woman. We call it the Duke's wind here; for if he's afloat it brings him home, and that's the only good it ever brings, but the doctors and the coffin-makers and grave-diggers. Most people call it the nor'-east wind. You see his grace is over sixty now, and has got all his joints pretty well blocked up with rheumatism; and the minute the nor'-east sets in it screws him up, and they have to run for home. His lordship stops aboard theSeabirdin the shelter of the bay, and his grace goes up to the Castle, and never goes out of his warm rooms at the back of the Castle, farthest away from the nor'-east, until the wind changes."
"And how far is the castle from here?"
"About four mile, or maybe a trifle less. We like to think we're a trifle nearer to it than four miles. Anyway, we're sure of one thing--we're the nearest public-house or inn by a mile."
"There is no railway, I suppose, from here to Silverview?"
"Railway! Railway! Why, it's my belief his grace would rather have a row of public-houses opposite the Castle gate, and the courtyard made into a bowling-green with green wooden boxes all round for refreshments, rather than see the snout of a railway-engine within a mile of his place."
"Then I shall walk over to the place and have a look at to-morrow morning," thought Cheyne, as he strolled out into the porch to smoke a couple of cigars before going to bed.
But he did not smoke even half one of his cigars there. The air had grown suddenly chilly, nay, downright cold. So he left the porch and went into the cosy little bar, where there was a fire for boiling water for those who liked a drop of something hot.
Here were half-a-dozen men smoking and chatting and drinking. As he entered, all were silent.
"Turned quite cold, sir," said the host, who was sitting at a table with the rest.
"Yes, indeed," said Cheyne, taking a chair. "I thought I would smoke in the porch, but it was too cold to sit there."
"Ah," said the landlord, "I think we're in for a stinging nor'-easter--the Duke's weather, as we call it hereabouts, sir."
"Do you think so?" said Cheyne.
"Ay, no doubt of it."
"Then," thought Cheyne, "I shall not have long to wait."