Mrs. Mansfield still lived at Wyechester, and in the same house as she had spent the early days of her widowhood. With the disappearance and disgrace of her daughter, she had closed her heart against the world. She had provided, in a mechanical way, for her grandson, and she kept herself informed of his whereabouts and his doings. Otherwise she lived a blind narrow life of rigid devotion and unscrupulous severity.
From the day the baby-boy and the packet arrived from Brussels, she had never broken the seal of that packet. For thirty-five years it had lain where she had that day placed it in her desk. The brown paper in which it had been wrapped was now rotten, and might be shaken asunder.
Why should she open it? Her daughter had run away with a man, and had not, in her first letter, said she was married. What was the good of looking through those papers? If it contained any statements in favour of that wretched girl, these statements were, beyond all doubt, lies. Nothing in the world would clear her daughter's name or mitigate the disgrace of her conduct.
Mrs. Mansfield took inThe Wyechester Independent. She did not read the general news as a rule. But theIndependentas became the only daily paper in a town whose sole claim upon distinction was that it had a cathedral and a bishop, devoted much of its space to local and general religious topics. The religious news and comments she always read.
That morning after the storm,The Wyechester Independenthad a long account of the storm and of the wreck of theSeabird, the death of the Duke of Shropshire, and of the heroic conduct of "Mr. Charles Augustus Cheyne, a gentleman who had recently won his spurs in the field of literature, and whose latest achievement fills all England this day with wonder and admiration, and of whom the people of Wyechester are naturally proud, as he owes his parentage on one side to this city."
What, Wyechester proud of her grandson, of the child of her unhappy daughter! Wyechester, the pious cathedral-town of Wyechester, proud of him she had looked upon as a disgrace! It was unkind, ungenerous, unmanly of the author of that article to hint thus even distantly at the disgraceful past. It was not necessary or decent for the writer of that article to unearth a long-buried scandal. It was an outrage on the living and the dead. The man who wrote it was a low creature, and ought to be scouted from all decent society; that is, indeed, if ever he had been in decent society. How had this man found out? It must have been the attorney who gave the information.
While the old woman was giving full scope to her anger, there was a knock at the door. A gentleman desired to see Mrs. Mansfield; he gave the name of Fritson. The servant might show him in.
A stout little man entered the room, and bowed to Mrs. Mansfield, and said briskly:
"Mrs. Mansfield, I believe?"
"Yes, sir, I am Mrs. Mansfield," she said, with great coldness and repelling precision.
He took no notice of her manner.
"My name is Fritson, madam."
"And to what, Mr.--er--eh--Fritson, do I owe the honour of this visit? I have no recollection of having seen you before, sir," she said frigidly.
"You are right, my dear madam."
The old woman drew herself back at the unwarrantable freedom of this man calling her "my dear madam."
The visitor took no notice--in fact, did not observe her manner. He went on:
"We have never met before; and you owe my visit to the flattering fact that you have a grandson, whose name is now a household word in all England."
"Sir!" she said, rising angrily.
He did not see her anger.
"I have come, my dear madam, to know if you will be good enough to furnish me with additional particulars about your grandson, about his youth, and so on--in short a brief biography. I represent The Wyechester Independent and one of the most influential metropolitan dailies. Any facts you will be good enough to give me will not, you may be certain, suffer in my hands. I will do the best I can to make them light and readable. Any anecdote of your grandson's prowess as, say, a boxer or a cricketer, while a boy, would be peculiarly acceptable, particularly if there was a touch of magnanimity about it. One of the fruits of my long experience is that nothing appeals so universally to the British public as magnanimous muscle."
The old woman stood pale and without the power of speech while he made this long harangue. When he paused she raised her arm, and, pointing with a long thin yellow finger at the door, said huskily:
"Go, sir; go at once!" She could say no more.
He bounded to his feet in amazement. He had no intention to hurt or offend. Nothing was farther from his thoughts. He had been simply heedless, full of his own mind, unobservant.
"I am sure I beg your pardon," he said, in a tone of sincere apology. "I had no intention of causing you any annoyance. I thought you might like to make theIndependentand theMetropolitan Vindicatorthe medium----"
"Go, sir, go! You are committing an outrage. Go!"
"Believe me, madam," he began, backing towards the door.
"I do not want to hear any more. Go, sir!"
"But, my dear madam, you must allow me to explain----"
"If you do not leave at once I shall send my servant for the police!"
The reporter had reached the door by this time, and as Mrs. Mansfield ceased speaking, he bowed and retired, comforting himself with the assurance that she was mad.
When she was alone she sank down and covered her face with her hands, too much exhausted to think.
For upwards of an hour she did not move; then she took away her hands from before her face, arose, and, with resolute step, crossed the room to where her desk stood on a small table in the pier. With resolute hands she opened the desk, and took out that old bundle which had been sent to her by her dying child by the same messenger that had brought the boy four-and-thirty years ago.
Yes, she would destroy this hateful relic of disgrace and dishonour. She would burn it down to the last atom. Nothing of it, nothing of that perfidious daughter, should survive.
She sat down and broke the seals, and cut the moulding cord, and released what was inside. This proved to be a large leather pocket-book.
The first thing that met her eye was the copy of a certificate of marriage between Charles Augustus Cheyne and Harriet Mansfield at Anerly Church. She searched in the pocket-book and found a small sealed packet, bearing, in a man's writing, these words: "Not to be opened for three years." The date was the same as that on the copy of the marriage-certificate.
With trembling hands the old woman cut the silk and broke the seal. She found nothing but a letter on an old-fashioned sheet of letter-paper, which, on its right-hand corner, bore a coronet surrounded by strawberry leaves.
Dr. RowlandThought, chief physician of Barnardstown, the nearest place of any importance to Silverview, reached the Castle almost as soon as the new Duke of Shropshire and Cheyne. The groom had brought him to the place in a dog-cart.
Dr. Rowland had the reputation of being one of the most intelligent and skilful doctors in the provinces. He had early made his reputation and position, in spite of mean personal appearance, untidiness in dress, and indifference to some nice points in the profession. He had unquestionably genius, and cared nothing for routine or for canons that were not salutary. His first remarkable case had been that of a man whom two of the great formal doctors of Barnardstown had left at night, saying he could not last till morning. This man happened to be a wealthy eccentric bachelor, who lived in a lonely house a little way out of the town. The sick man's servant, Johnson, had been at one time a patient of Rowland's, and entertained the highest respect for Rowland's skill; and it so happened that on the night the sick man was despaired of Dr. Rowland met Johnson. The latter told the former that the great medical men had come and gone, and said his master could by no possibility get through the night. Johnson implored Rowland to see his master. The latter agreed; and next morning the patient was better. In three weeks the man was up and about, and one of his first acts was to give Johnson and Rowland a hundred pounds each, observing that if Johnson had not called in Rowland, Rowland would not have been able to do him any good. After this the two old formal doctors refused to meet Rowland in consultation, which determination in no way discomposed the young man, who replied, caustically, that if he might only come in by himself when they had failed, and be paid by results, he should have a very large and lucrative practice. When asked by what means he had cured the dying man, he had answered: "Gumption, a jug of hot water, and a tin of mustard."
His next cure was that of an old woman whom two other grave and reverend members of the profession had declared beyond help. When he was asked what drugs he had employed in this case, he answered: "Brandy and beef-tea. I wonder the venerables did not do some good there, for you didn't want any gumption in that case."
After this the elder and more regular members of the profession gave up declaring their despair; and although they adhered to their resolution of not meeting Dr. Rowland in consultation, the younger practitioners of the town had no objection to avail themselves of his aid in extreme cases. He was, however, peculiar in more ways than this. He would not take any regular practice. He would not tie himself down to routine work. He had no patience with hypochondriacs, and positively refused to attend trifling cases. "I like to let these old dunderheads ripen a case for me. When they have goaded a patient into a really bad state, then I don't mind tucking up my sleeves and giving them a lesson."
These and many more things he did and said were not professional, but they got him a name in the neighbourhood for being the best man in an emergency. Accordingly, when the Duke's groom asked the steward whom he should fetch, the steward answered, "Rowland."
Dr. Rowland was not only low in stature and untidy in dress, but many other physical details were against him. He had round shoulders and thin legs. He had a yellow shining skin. His nose was too long and too prominent for his face, and his eyes had an uncandid and suspicious look in them. But he diagnosed almost instinctively, knew medicine well, and acted with the promptness of a good general.
The doctor examined first the Duke. He knew the constitution of his grace, and although he had never before attended him, he felt at once that the case was one of extreme gravity. He acted with decision, but he refused to bear the whole responsibility.
"The case is serious, very serious. I don't think anyone can be of use; no one certainly but Granby. Of that I am quite sure. Telegraph for Granby. I'll stop here until he comes."
Accordingly a telegram was sent to the celebrated West-End doctor, Sir Francis Granby, asking the great baronet to come and see the great duke who lay ill.
"And now," said Dr. Rowland, "for the other man. What's the matter with him?"
He was shown into the room where Cheyne lay. He had learned that Cheyne was unknown at the Castle, and not a guest in the ordinary meaning of the word. When Rowland had examined the second patient, he said:
"Nothing wrong with you beyond a few cuts and bruises. You will be all right in a few days. In the meantime you must keep quiet; that's all you want, and some tepid water, a sponge and lint."
Although Sir Francis Granby was one of the most gifted and distinguished of the West-End doctors, it was not every day he was called to go special to a duke with four hundred thousand a-year. It was not every day he enjoyed the advantage of pocketing a thousand-pound fee. It was not every day he had the opportunity of meeting that erratic genius Oliver Rowland; for though the baronet was many years older than the country doctor, he had a great respect for his junior.
"It is all up with him, Granby," said Rowland, when the two were alone after examining the new Duke.
"A very bad case. You found out what was the matter at once?"
"God bless my soul, yes! It is as plain as the nose on your face. I knew you'd find it out, too. That's the reason I sent for you."
"And yet it is obscure, very obscure. I have met only three cases of the kind before. Have you met one?"
"No, not one. Nothing can be done."
"Nothing. He cannot last long."
The burly London baronet shook his head.
"Not a week?"
"Not half that, I think. Is there not another man hurt here? Do you wish me to see him?"
"Oh, he's all right. Only knocked about a bit by wind and water. Cuts and bruises, and nothing more, except exhaustion. He's a kind of hero, you know. Swam out with a rope. Wonderfully fine physique. He must be an uncommonly powerful man. He was the means of saving all the lives that were saved. What a funny thing that only the Duke and the Marquis should have been lost!"
"Funny, Rowland! What a ghastly notion of fun you must have to call the loss of the two most valuable lives in the yacht funny!"
"Valuable! In what way were these lives valuable? They were not valuable even to the men themselves. One was a hopeless invalid and the other was as morose as Boreas. One of them did, it is true, occasionally vote in the House of Lords, but only to oppose all useful measures of reform. The other had not become even one of that most useless body of men in England, members of the House of Commons."
"Rowland! Rowland! this will never do!"
"Who wants it to do? Not I, any way. I don't want myself to do. Wanting to do is one of the common and mean aspirations. It is the father of hypocrisy, and servility, and lies, and all the degrading vices of the time-server; it is the foul pollution upon which the parasites of success fatten and fester."
"Well, well, Rowland. Long ago, before you had grown quite so violent, I used to recommend you to come up to London; but now I would not think of doing so."
"Of course not; nor would I think of going, nor did I ever think of going. London is the grave of independence and self-respect. You cannot be yourself there. You must be the creature of somebody else or the tool of a clique. Give me the hillside and freedom----"
"And five hundred a-year if you are lucky, instead of London and fifteen thousand a-year----"
"And bowing and scraping, and heeling and toeing, and my-lording and my-ladying----"
"Well, well, well," said the great city physician; "I shall never be able to convert you. You are the only man I know in the country who I am sure ought to be in town."
"And you are the only man in town who I know ought to be in the country."
"In very few places in the country will you get such madeira as this," said Sir Francis, in order to change the conversation.
"And nowhere in the town," said Rowland warmly. "No one thinks of keeping good wines in town to be guttled down by foreigners, adventurers, fraudulent speculators, and beggared noblemen. No, no. If your country gentleman has a brand of which he is particularly proud or fond, he keeps it down in the country, where he and his real friends, who come to him on cordial invitations, can discuss it gravely, un-distracted by the bore of comparative strangers, and the noise and smoke of the city. Good wine, Granby, should never be drunk when there is another house within a mile, or with men you have not known twenty years."
"Well, well, well;" which was the great man's formula for dismissing a subject. "Let it be--let it be. Suppose you drop the Duke and his wines. What do you think of your other patient? Don't you think he'd make a very good soldier?"
"Good heavens, Granby, the town has turned your brain! Make a soldier of him! A soldier of a man with such a torso, and limbs, and muscles! Won't the puny and the deformed do you for soldiers? Isn't anything good enough to pull a rifle-trigger or be shot at? Your parade soldiers, all puffed and padded, are good enough to please the vanity of the eye; but their puffs and pads are all in their own way. They don't help them to chase a man or kill a man. They are stuck on them for no more reason than women wore crinolines. Why should we try to get the finest men of all the nation into an institution or force which boasts of being ready to expose these men to sudden death at any moment--a duty which, by-the-way, they are very seldom called upon to fulfil?"
"Rowland, I now go farther than ever I went with you about London: I must strongly recommend younotto go there."
"Of course not; I told you I should never suit it or it me. But I'll tell you what our friend the burly patient would make, Granby--he'd make a magnificent coal-porter, or corn-porter, or backwoodsman."
"Well, well, well, you are hard on the young man. But we cannot agree on several points that have arisen; but on two we are agreed: that the Duke cannot live more than a few days, and that nothing can be done?"
"Yes."
"And that the other man will be all right with care in a very short time?"
"Yes, Granby, that's how I read it."
As the great London physician was leaving later, he said to the country doctor: "When shall I see you again, Rowland? We ought to meet now and then."
"Ay, we ought," said Rowland, with the shadow of sadness on his inexpressive face. This was followed by a gleam of pleasure. "Granby, come down here for a week's fishing. I mean come to my place at Barnardstown. There is capital fishing there. I'll give you new-laid eggs and porridge for your breakfast; beef or fowl and ham, with sound claret for your dinner; and a good supper, with excellent beer, and afterwards a rare good glass of Scotch whisky and a cigar."
The great man shook his head ruefully. "I wish I could, Rowland, my friend. It would remind me of younger and more light-hearted days. But it can't be done now. Is there any chance of inducing you to come up to London to stay with us awhile? Do, Rowland!"
"Pooh, pooh, man."
"And when shall we meet again?"
"When some accident befalls the next duke."
"But," said the London baronet, pausing, as he was about to step into the carriage, "I understood that there was no heir to the title?"
"True, true. I forgot that, Granby. Well, good-bye."
"Good-bye, Rowland."
And the two shook hands.
"I wonder what they would think of him?" Bytheyhe meant the faculty in London.
"Every day I hate London more and more. Granby and I were made for pals. D---- London!" thought Rowland, as he turned back into the house of mourning and pain.
"What's the matter with you, Marion? You are not going to faint again today?"
"I hope not, aunt."
"Then what is the matter with you, my dear? You are shaking as if you had the ague. You are not able to hold those papers in your hand. Who was that large letter from this morning?"
"Charlie, aunt."
"I thought Charlie was too ill to write?"
"A Doctor Rowland wrote it for him."
"And has Doctor Rowland written for Charles such a dreadful letter, so dreadfully unkind a letter, that it takes your breath and your senses away? Come over here to me, my little girl, and tell me all about it."
"It is not unkind, aunt; it's worse. It is dreadful."
"Now, now, Marion, you must not allow yourself to be carried away by every little thing connected with Charlie. Is he worse?"
"No. He's going on well, the doctor says."
"Well, then, child, come over to me and bring all those papers with you; and first of all read out what the doctor says."
With the look of one overwhelmed with sorrow, May crossed the room, carrying the papers in one hand down by her side, and in the other, holding against her brown-red cheek, a tress of her dark hair, which had escaped the fastening behind her head.
She sat down in her low easy-chair behind her aunt, and, having placed the more voluminous documents on the ground beside her, rested one elbow on an elbow of the chair, and began reading out in a doleful voice:
"Dear Madam,
"I am still in medical attendance on both the Duke of Shropshire and Mr. Cheyne, and I have to report with sorrow that the condition of his grace causes the gravest anxiety. Additional medical assistance has been summoned since the hasty note I wrote you a few days ago; but the universal opinion of the medical men is that his grace is not likely to last many days. An old acquaintance and I take the watching in turns.
"With regard to Mr. Cheyne, I am happy to be able to report that he is going on better than we had anticipated. All signs of fever have left him, and he has now only to pull up strength to be no worse than when he first came to this neighbourhood. You may rest quite assured he shall want nothing that can be got or done for him here. He has communicated to me the understanding which exists between you and him, and has desired me to write as much as I please of my own will, and then asked me to take the rest from his dictation. So far I have written from myself. Before I begin taking down his words I may tell you that I am one of the crustiest of old bachelor doctors; but the story which Mr. Cheyne has to tell you is of so romantic a character that I cannot avoid feeling an interest in it, and that if there is anything I can do in the matter for you I shall be most happy to act.
"Your faithful Servant,
"Oliver Rowland."
Then came Cheyne's letter to May, written out for him by Dr. Rowland.
"My dearest May,
"Doctor Rowland will tell you that I am rapidly getting better, and that in a few days I may hope to be able to get up and about. For the first time, this morning they allowed me to look through the letters lying here for me, among which were two from your own good hand, dear, and two more from other sources. These four are all that I need mention now; and of your own you will, for an obvious reason, see why I must confine myself to thanks and good wishes, and telling you how glad I was to hear that you and your kind aunt are so well. I pray you may both continue so.
"And now for the other two.
"One of them is from an old friend of mine of whom you have often heard me speak, and whom you met more than once--Edward Graham, the artist, who, as I told you, has been painting a picture under Anerly Bridge, in Devonshire. This letter is accompanied by a story which goes back to the year before I was born, and tells of a certain marriage in that village between George Temple Cheyne and Harriet Mansfield.
"The second letter is from Mrs. Mansfield of Wyechester, in which she tells me that she is the mother of the Harriet Mansfield married at Anerly, and that I am the only child of that Anerly marriage.
"And now, May dearest, prepare yourself for a most astounding discovery.
"The letter from my grandmother contained several other papers, among them one in my father's and one in my mother's writing. I will not plague you with details, but the facts are simply these:
"My mother met my father by accident, and ran away with him. She thought him a plain gentleman, and for two reasons he wished to keep their marriage private for a while. The first of these was that a rich relative had promised to hand him over a large fortune if he did not marry up to a certain age--an age he had not then reached, though he should reach it in a short time. The second was that a number of men to whom he owed money knew of this, and would have been down on him at once if they suspected him of having married.
"Accordingly the secret was kept, and the married pair went away on the Continent. Here my father caught sound of a rumour that his creditors were on the look-out for him; and, leaving instructions with his wife to remain in Brussels, he went away. She never saw her husband again; and when dying she told the nurse to bring me to my grandmother Mansfield, at Wyechester, at the same time giving in charge to the good woman, for my grandmother, some papers my father had left behind him, with instructions that they were not to be opened until a certain future time. My grandmother provided for me secretly, and had me ultimately put into the publishing house in London.
"It appears my father, on reaching England, being a man always variable and fickle in love, went straight to the village of Anerly, and tried to bribe the clerk to tear out of the register the leaf containing the entry of my father and mother's marriage; but he failed. This part I learn from Graham's story.
"May, I have been a long time preparing you for what is to come. Let it come all at once.
"Now this George Temple Cheyne, my father, was the only brother of the late Duke of Shropshire, and I am first cousin of the present Duke, and heir-presumptive to the titles and estates."
For a moment the woman looked into the girl's eyes. Then Miss Traynor said:
"Marion, dear, read the last bit over again."
The girl did so in a dull, monotonous voice.
"Marion, could it be that his head has been hurt, and he is wandering in his mind?" asked the old lady hopefully.
"But, aunt, the doctor might humour him by writing it down, yet he would hardly send it off to humour him."
"That is very true, Marion; very true," admitted the aunt, ruefully. Then, after a pause, she brightened up wonderfully, and cried in a triumphant voice: "I have it, Marion--I have it! It is a chapter of one of his novels he has sent you by mistake."
"But," said May despairingly, pointing to the documents at her feet, "what are these? I did not read out all the letter, aunt. He tells me, after where I stopped, to go with these things to Macklin and Dowell, his solicitors, ask them to read the papers over, and await further instructions until he comes up to town."
The aunt was not going to be baffled. She pondered a long time, and at last cried out cheerfully:
"But, Marion, my dear, his solicitors and the other solicitors may find out some flaw--some flaw that may spoil all."
The girl shot a bright glance up.
"Oh, aunt, thank you for that hope. It was good of you to think of it. I hope with all my heart it may be so."
Marion stooped down and gathered up all the papers at her feet.
For a long time neither spoke. May sat with her lap full of papers, and her eyes fixed dully upon them. Miss Traynor had fallen into a deep reverie, her elbow on the white cloth of the breakfast-table, her white round chin dropped into her white round hand. The elder was the first to speak, and when she did it was in a very timid and apologetic way, as though she was more than half ashamed of referring to such a subject.
"Isn't a duke the greatest after the Queen and the Princes and the Princesses, May?"
"I believe so."
"And he has a right to be presented to the Court, and know the Queen; and maybe now and then she asks a duke or two to dine with her, and advise her what to do about Parliament and Radicals and foreign possessions, and so on?"
"I believe so, aunt dear."
"It is wonderful to think of it! Wonderful to think of it! To think that the young man we knew in this humble little house as Charlie will be sitting down to gold services with the Queen, and that we shall see his name inThe Court Circular--'The Duke of Shropshire visited the Queen yesterday, and afterwards enjoyed the honour of dining with Her Majesty.' Wonderful!"
From the lids of the girl's eyes the tears now began to fall. The old Duke had been drowned, the present Duke was dying, and her Charlie, her own, her only darling Charlie, was to be the new Duke. And they should read all those dreadful things inThe Court Circularand elsewhere; and she should scarcely be able to take up any kind of a paper in which she should not find his name; but it was plain to her she had lost himself. She, the sweetheart, the wife of a great duke!--she blushed crimson with shame at the bare thought, and she wept for sorrow that a dukedom should rob her of her dear lover.
The elder woman's thoughts went on in quite a different way.
She had, of course, often seen lords and ladies in the Park and the theatres and other places of public assembly, but she had never spoken to one. Her father had, of course, spoken to many, and had been presented at Court; but then her father was to her a god apart, quite as much apart as the members of the peerage. She had, as far as she could now recollect, never seen a duke, except the Duke of Wellington. But then he wasn't a great duke to her mind. He was a great captain, a great soldier, but the ducal quality in him was too new to be interesting. It was overborne by the splendour of his achievements and the glory of his renown. The dukedom was no more in him than the scarf he had put on that morning. But a duke proper, from her point of view, she had never seen; one of whose house there had been dukes three hundred years ago had never come within her ken, and of such dukes she stood in awe, not knowing what manner of men they might be. She had heard of the Dukeries as of some mysterious region, upon which nothing earthly could compel her to enter. She had, of course, seen royal dukes; but these she looked upon as only princes of the blood masquerading.
She had never in all her life spoken to a lord or a lady; and beyond what she read of them in books, which she believed to be mostly lies, she had no means of forming any notion of how they spoke. She knew that judges on the bench were not as other men, and did not speak as other men; but judges were only common men, had been only common barristers at one time. Had a lord spoken to her she should not have known what to say. She should in all likelihood have said Yes or No without any discrimination, and retired. She would not say Yes or No, my lord, for all the world; for to say so would have been to admit she knew the honour which had been thrust upon her; and the burden of such an admission she could not bear. She had a notion that members of the peerage were as much removed from sympathy with common mortals as birds or fishes; and when, once a year or so, in looking idly down the columns ofThe Times, she could not help seeing that a noble lord had said something about turnips or calves, she hastened on, shocked and affrighted as much as though a clergyman, in whom she had always trusted, had one Sunday, in the pulpit, advised his congregation to come no more to church, but to spend the day in playing whist and billiards, and dancing and singing, and eating and drinking.
But now what had arisen? A man whom she had known for years, who had crossed her threshold hundreds of times, who had sat on every chair in that little drawing-dining-room, who had eaten her beef and broken her eggs at his tea, who had rolled her chair from one room into the other, who had made the salad for tea and praised the condition of her beer, who had kissed her niece in her presence over and over again, and had promised to be a good husband to that young girl, whom she now loved more than all else on earth--this man was now about to be lifted into the front rank of the peerage! He was to be a duke--the ducal son of she knew not how many fathers! It was prodigious! unbelievable!
And what would come of it all? Would he remember them? Plainly: for had he not sent the important papers to Marion? And there was the girl, wretched and dispirited. Why? Ah well, she might guess. Charles Augustus Cheyne with a few hundreds a year from his pen, and Charles Augustus Cheyne, Duke of Shropshire and master of how much wealth she knew not, were widely different persons. But, after all, who could tell? She had met Mr. Cheyne, and liked him. She had never met a duke--how could she tell what would be her feelings towards a duke if she met one? And then the fact of Cheyne and a duke being one! She should let matters take their course, and see how they would turn out.
"Marion dear," she said at the end of these cogitations, "what is it you are to do with those papers Charles sent you?"
"Take them to Macklin and Dowell."
"And had you not better do so at once? They are of the highest consequence."
"Yes, aunt."
She rose and went to her room, and dressed herself listlessly: and when she was dressed, a cab was called and she drove away. She was not more than an hour at Macklin and Dowell's. When she was leaving, the two members of the firm conducted her to the cab. The last words they said to her, as they handed her into the vehicle, were:
"If the documents and the history are good, the case is clear; and we have every reason to believe both are good."
When she found herself alone in the cab rolling to Knightsbridge, she covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed hysterically:
"I wish the history and the documents had left Charlie alone, and left him to me."
About a fortnight after the arrival of the letter and the documents which caused such a profound sensation at Miss Traynor's, and while the elder and younger women were idling over the end of a very late breakfast, a hansom cab drew up sharply at the hall-door, and a man ran quickly up the steps and knocked briskly.
Marion knew who it was in a moment, and hastened out of the room. Her aunt thought she had, as in the careless old times, gone to open the door for him; but she had fled up to her own room and locked the door, and thrown herself on her knees beside her bed and burst into tears.
In the meantime Anne had opened the door, and when she saw who it was, quiet Anne, who rarely spoke beyond her business, exclaimed:
"Oh Mr. Cheyne, they will be glad to see you!"
"Have the goodness," said he soberly, "to tell Miss Traynor that the Duke of Shropshire would be glad of the honour of a few words with her."
"Yes, my lord," said Anne, curtsying profoundly, blushing deeply, and then running off with a great want of dignity into the sitting room. She left his grace standing in the sunken porch with as little ceremony as if he had been the man for the gas account.
"If you please, my lord, will you walk into the room?" said Anne from the back of the hall, not daring to go near a man who had been so awfully changed in a few days from a plain Mr. to one of the greatest lords, as her mistress had informed her.
As the visitor came up to where she stood, he said:
"Anne, your grace."
"I beg your pardon," faltered timid Anne, "I do not know what you mean."
"That in future you are to call me 'your grace,' and not 'Mr. Charlie,' or 'Mr. Cheyne,' or 'my lord.'"
"But--but, my lord, I--couldn't think of calling you anything so familiar."
"Very well, Anne, I will excuse you. And how are you, Anne?"
"Quite well, thank you, my lord."
"And not married yet, Anne,--my little Anne?"
"No, my lord."
"Ah well, the man is making an awful fool of himself, that it is all I have to say."
Anne ran upstairs and knocked at Marion's door. She was too full of her own surprise and awe to take into consideration the position of her young mistress. Marion rose from her knees and opened the door. Anne exclaimed:
"Oh, Miss May, Mr. Cheyne is below, and he's so changed I hardly knew him."
"Changed, Anne!" cried May eagerly; "is he looking ill?"
"Oh no, miss, he's looking better than ever; but he's so changed and dark and distant-like."
"Is that all?" said May, relapsing into her old sad forlorn manner. "No wonder; you know, Anne, he has had a wonderful change of fortune since we saw him last."
"Yes, miss, I know he has; but, miss, when I called him my lord, as in duty bound, he now being a great lord, he told me I must not call him 'lord,' but 'grace.' The last place I was in I had a fellow-servant called Grace, and I used to call her Grace; and wouldn't it seem very presuming on my part to call him Grace, as it might be after her? So I begged to be excused, and he excused me."
"But, Anne, he is a duke now, and a duke has a right to be called 'your grace.'"
In the meanwhile the Duke had entered the tiny sitting-room, and, having bowed profoundly to Miss Traynor, went over to her, and took her hand and pressed it respectfully, and then drew a chair opposite to the one in which she sat.
She noticed he was dressed in the same clothes as he wore when he was last in that house. "What could a duke mean by wearing old clothes?"
He began speaking immediately.
"My dear Miss Traynor, since I had the pleasure of seeing you last, most extraordinary events have occurred in my career, as, to some extent, you are aware. I left London less than three weeks ago with a most unmanly and barbarous intent. A combination of circumstances, old and new, had almost goaded me into madness, and I went on an expedition of revenge. I am glad to say that I was saved the penalty of my anger; for I was able to give help instead of doing injury when the opportunity for striking the blow came. As you know, the seventh Duke of Shropshire was drowned in that awful storm, and his only son, the Marquis of Southwold, was saved. The Marquis of Southwold, as a matter of course, became, while in a dying condition, eighth Duke of Shropshire. On the death of the eighth duke, a few days ago, I became a claimant to the peerage and all the estates, and so on; and the best lawyers say there is no chance of my claim being even disputed. So that virtually I am now a very rich man, an enormously rich man. Well, when I was poor I offered all I had then to Marion--my heart and hand. I am now rich, and immediately upon my arrival in London this morning I have come to offer what has been added to my store since--riches. As to the title, I daresay if the Queen said I was to be called Tim it would not make much difference in my nature or my feelings towards May; though, as a matter of fact, I'd rather not be called Tim. This little speech of mine. Miss Traynor, may sound like a passage from a book; but talking like a book saves time often."
Poor Miss Traynor broke down and wept like a child.
"I always told her she ought to be proud of you--always; but I never felt it so much as now."
"There now. Miss Traynor, don't distress yourself. We shall all be good friends."
It was some time before he could quiet her. When he had done so he begged that he might be allowed a few moments alone with Marion.
The aunt rang the bell, and, when Anne appeared, told the servant to ask Miss Durrant to come down to the front room, if she pleased.
Aunt and niece met in the doorway, but neither spoke. The aunt looked at the girl, but the eyes of the latter were on the ground.
When the door was closed the girl stood inside it motionless, with her head slightly drooped on one side and her eyes still lowered.
He went over and took her silently into his arms, and held her lightly there awhile and then kissed her lightly. Then he drew her a little closer to him and kissed her again, and put his lips near her ear, whispered into it words which, though old and familiar, are always new as the odours of old springs and old flowers in the new spring and new flowers.
At last she looked up into his face, and, reaching high, put her small hands on his shoulders, and sobbing out, "Oh Charlie!" hid her head upon him.
He carried her across the room and placed her in a chair, and soothed her until he had won her back to her old bright self. When he had accomplished this, he stood up, and bending seriously over her, said:
"And now. May, I have made a long speech to your aunt, and said a lot to you, and I want you to do me a great favour. Will you?"
"Anything, anything, Charlie."
"Well, I want you to bring me up a jug of that delicious cool beer and a couple of biscuits; and if you love me, don't be long. I am ready to fall down from exhaustion. When I have drunk and eaten, I will tell you everything."
She went from the room, and as she walked about the kitchen and the cellar, half forgetting what she came for, she could see nothing clearly for her happy tears.