Kitabı oku: «The Duke's Sweetheart: A Romance», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XXI.
COINCIDENCES

For a few days Edward Graham worked at his big canvas under Anerly Bridge. The weather was superb, the "studio" as quiet as the top of Horeb, and the artist in the very best of spirits. He had already dead-coloured his work, and got in some of the most important shadows.

This cavernous chamber had many advantages for a painter. The light was of the coolest and softest. But few people and fewer vehicles passed over the bridge to disturb the quiet of the place. Owing to the moisture of the air, the rattling of waggons or carts did not cause any dirt or dust to fall from the roof.

Graham had not told any of the people at The Beagle or in the village that he was going to paint the scene under Anerly Bridge. The morning after the easel, canvas, and colours arrived he had arisen at four and carried them to the bridge, and got them over the parapet and under the arch without anyone seeing them or him. He did not want to be haunted by village boys or idle men. He wanted to paint his picture, and to paint it in peace and quietness.

So every morning he arose before the village was stirring, walked to the bridge, and painted until breakfast-time. He waited until all the people were at breakfast, then went down the little glen as far as the church, got into the churchyard, and returned to The Beagle by the church-path and the main road. He had a simple dinner then at the inn, a pint of cider and a pipe under the portico, where he sat until all the village folk were once more at work. Then he went back to the church again, ascended the glen, and recommenced painting.

A more happy or peaceful time Graham never spent than those hours beneath Anerly Bridge. He was young, in full health, had enough money to keep himself comfortably, was by nature light of heart, and had made a good beginning of a picture which he firmly believed would establish his fame. Nothing could be more delightful than working away at his big canvas down there. No one in Town but Cheyne knew where he was or what he was doing; and even Cheyne had only a general notion that he was painting a landscape, nothing more. He should get back to Town in a month or so with his great picture finished. He should not sell it for awhile, not until he had it on the walls of the Academy anyway. He could live very well until next spring or summer without selling this; and he would put a big price on it, and send it to Burlington House. Suppose it was well hung, he would get his money for it, and a lot of press-notices besides. Cheyne could arrange one or two press-notices, anyway.

The afternoon before the gale he had been at work on the sky. The sky was to be full of pure blue morning light, and across it were to float shining white clouds. All was to be calm and radiant; and somehow or another he did not like the look of the sky that afternoon. The colour aloft was thin and dragged out. There was also a disheartening chill in the air. He felt no disposition for work after dinner. This disinclination he attributed to having drank stout instead of cider with his chop.

"It will never do," he said to himself, "to get any bile or stout into that sky. Champagne above and maraschino below are what this picture ought to be painted in. Stout is fit only for still-life and decorative work."

Therefore, a couple of hours after dinner he left his studio, and, descending by the glen, reached the churchyard, whence he returned to the village. It was too early for the elders to assemble, and Graham did not know exactly what to do with his time. It was not inviting out of doors, so he went up to his room and cast about him to see if he could find any not too laborious occupation to fill up the time until he might go down and smoke a big pipe with the elders in the porch.

It was not easy to find any occupation in that room. It was perfectly satisfactory as a sleeping-chamber for a bachelor, but it afforded no means of amusement. Of course Graham could smoke; but merely smoking was not enough to keep a young man employed for hours. Besides, Graham was such an inveterate smoker that a pipe was no more to him than a coat or a pair of boots. It went without saying.

At last he thought he would sit down, and, as he was going to paint the scene under Anerly Bridge, write out the story of Anerly Church told him by Stephen Goolby. Cheyne had not made any allusion to the coincidence between the name of the chief actors in that story and his own.

He wrote on for a long time, telling the story as plainly and as tersely as he could. It was close on six before he had finished, and then he was obliged to leave a blank for the names of the man and woman who had been married. He knew the man's surname was Cheyne, but could not recall the christian-name of the man, or either the christian-name or surname of the woman.

As soon as he heard voices in the porch he went down, and, having called for cider and a long pipe, joined in the conversation. Gradually he worked it round to Stephen Goolby's favourite story, and got the old man to tell him the names once more.

"If you like," said Stephen, "you are welcome to come down and see the entry yourself."

"Oh no; thank you. I only asked out of curiosity," said Graham.

Soon after that the evening turned suddenly cool, and from cool to cold. The men took their measures and pipes and tobacco into the comfortable front parlour, whence, at an early hour, Graham retired to his room.

Here he took up the story, and having found out the blanks for the names, wrote them in. It was not until he had filled in the names, and was reading them over, that another coincidence struck him. Not only were the surnames of the man married thirty-five years ago and his literary friend the same, but the christian-names were also identical. Both men were Charles Augustus Cheyne.

This seemed to Graham a most remarkable circumstance; and when he remembered that Cheyne never spoke of his father and mother except when he could not help it, and that he was now about thirty-four years of age, and that this marriage took place thirty-five years ago, he was more than surprised-he was interested. He made up his mind to keep the story by him until he got back to London, and then work gradually round Cheyne until he got him to tell all he knew of his own history. Then, if there seemed to be any likelihood of this story fitting to the real history of Cheyne, he would give him the manuscript; and if not, he would destroy it.

He went to bed, and slept soundly, so soundly he never heard the gale that tore across the land from the north-east, and smote the fore front of the forest, and beat back the unavailing trees, and thrust the corn flat upon the earth, and winnowed the weakly leaves out of the roaring woods, and hauled great curtains of cloud swiftly across the distracted heavens, and held back the current of the persistent river, and defied the wings of the strongest birds, and beat a level pathway where the young saplings stood.

He slept unusually long that morning. It was six when he awoke. As soon as he knew of the storm, he dressed himself hastily, and walked as quickly as the wind would let him to the bridge.

Here his worst fears were realised. The archway had acted as a funnel, and focussed the wind coming down the glen. The canvas was not to be seen; the easel had been flung halfway through the bridge and smashed. The colour-box, with all the colours out, had been blown out of the vault, and lay in the foreground below.

He swore at the wind and at himself for his folly in leaving the canvas there. Then he started in pursuit of the fugitive picture.

He found it, face down, in a shallow pool, just under the church. He pulled it out of the water, and placed it flat upon the ground. He then stood back from it a few feet, saw it was all cut and torn; jumped on it half-a-dozen times; rolled it up carefully; carried it back to the bridge; and, having emptied the bottle of turpentine over it, succeeded, after many efforts, in lighting a match and setting it on fire.

Then he sat down on his camp-stool-the storm had spared that-and watched the unlucky canvas blaze in the sheltered place he had thrown it.

"If I had only a fiddle now, and could play it, I'd be a kind of Modern Nero. But I haven't a fiddle, and if I had I couldn't play it; so, upon the whole, I think I had better get out of this place."

He rose and went back to the inn. All that day nothing was thought of or talked of but the storm. By night the wind died away. Next morning arose bright and serene. He had made up his mind to stay at Anerly no longer. He would not paint that landscape. He would not try to recover the wreck of that easel. He would not gather up the scattered contents of his colour-box. The place had served him a scurvy trick, and he would leave it without any other recognition of its existence than that of paying what he owed at The Beagle. He would get back to Town at once. Be it ever so humble, there was no place like Town.

At breakfast he called for his bill and paid it.

The London morning papers did not reach Anerly until ten o'clock. Breakfast had softened Graham's mind towards the village. He no longer called down fire and brimstone from heaven on the unlucky place. After all, the wind, which had only been, like himself, a visitor, was more to blame than the place. It was a horrid thing to get to London in the early afternoon-the odious, practical, dinner-eating, business-rushing afternoon. No. He would wait until the shades of eve were falling fast, and then he'd through a Devon village pass, bearing a banner, with the sensible device, "Nearest railway-station where I can book for London?" In the meantime he would sit under the porch, have some cider and a pipe, and look at the London paper, which had just come.

Having been a severe sufferer from the storm, Graham naturally turned to the account of it. The first thing that caught his eye was: "Gallant Rescue of a Yacht's Crew." The Report did not consist of more than two dozen lines, but it contained all the important elements of the story, and wound up by saying that Mr. Charles Augustus Cheyne was now the guest of his Grace the new Duke of Shropshire. In the early part of the paragraph it spoke of Mr. Cheyne as being the author of the late and very successful novel, "The Duke of Fenwick," so that no doubt could exist in Graham's mind as to the individuality of the hero.

"In the fact that Cheyne's name is the same as that of the man mysteriously married here thirty-five years ago, and that the name is the same as that of the Duke of Shropshire, and that Cheyne is at Silverview now, there is more than mere coincidence, and I cannot do better than send off my manuscript to Cheyne to-night."

So he put the sheets into an envelope, with a note, and posted them at the railway-station on his way up to town.

CHAPTER XXII.
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER

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 in The Wyechester Independent. She did not read the general news as a rule. But the Independent as 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 Independent had a long account of the storm and of the wreck of the Seabird, 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 the Independent and the Metropolitan Vindicator the 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.

END OF PART I

PART II.
THE DUKE OF SHROPSHIRE

CHAPTER I.
THE TWO CHEYNES

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 you not to 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?" By they he 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.