Kitabı oku: «The Duke's Sweetheart: A Romance», sayfa 5
He had told her the simple truth. If he had told her the simplest lie, it would have been just as satisfactory to her; for she did not think in any matter which concerned him. She was willing to do, to dare, to suffer anything for the love of him. So she took him at his word, and ran away with him on the understanding that they were to be married in some quiet out-of-the-way place, and that she was to say nothing of their marriage until he came into his fortune.
He brought her first to London, where she wrote that letter dictated by him. Then he took her to Anerly, where he married her. Between the time of his taking her away from the Gores' house until the ceremony at Anerly Church he treated her as though she were a foreign princess whom he was escorting to espouse a prince.
For a few months after the marriage the life of Harriet Cheyne went on like a dream of delight. Her husband was erratic; but he was kindly erratic. He never tired of inventing or devising some agreeable treat or pleasing wonder for her. They travelled much in England and on the Continent. Every place she went to was Fairyland, and he was the enchanter. He was never from her side. He told her he would rather hear her call his name than find the praise of all the world else within his ears. She was intoxicated with happiness, and could scarcely speak, her joy was so great. The black dreary past was more than a million times compensated for. When she lay down at night she dreaded to go to sleep, lest on waking she should find herself back in cold wretched Wyechester. Each waking of mornings was a new delivery from the past. She now knew how unwise her mother's treatment of her had been. But she forgave her; and often, when she woke at dead of night, she thought of her hard-faced stern mother at home, and a tear stole down her cheek-a tear of pity for the poor woman who had the misfortune to bring up a daughter that had acted with such perfect indifference to a mother's feelings.
But at last a sad change came. They were abroad. A letter arrived one day to her husband, saying that some of his enemies had got hold of the fact of his marriage, and were preparing to sell the information to his creditors. Something must be done at once. The bride and bridegroom were then at Brussels. It was essential he should set off at once for England, and under the circumstances it would be exceedingly dangerous for her to accompany him. So he went, giving her emphatic instructions not to leave Brussels, no matter what might happen, until she saw him or heard from him.
She never heard from him nor saw him afterwards.
He got to England safely, and reached Anerly, made an ineffectual attempt to bribe Goolby, left Anerly that day, and died within a couple of days. His death made a final settlement with his creditors, and whether he had married or not was no longer a matter of the least consequence to them.
At Brussels, Cheyne's child was born months afterwards. The mother, whose stock of money had by this time dwindled down to almost nothing, had saved a twenty-pound note, and this she gave to a woman whom she knew she could trust to bring her baby-boy to Wyechester to her mother; for she was dying, and knew it. She sent a very brief note with the boy, saying he had not been christened, that his name was Charles Augustus Cheyne, that she was dying, that she had been legally married, but that owing to circumstances the fact of her marriage could not be divulged. Then she appealed to her mother in very pathetic terms to be kind to the boy and provide for him, as she had no means, and had not heard of her husband for months. She also said she sent by bearer a sealed packet of letters and papers belonging to her husband, and begged her mother to keep it, and not to break the seals until some momentous occasion arose for doing so, as she was under important promises to her husband regarding certain matters reference to which was contained in the papers in the packet. Then there came a plea for forgiveness.
At first Mrs. Mansfield was filled with dismay. It was horrible to think of her daughter dying, deserted by the man who had taken her away, and dying in a foreign land too. There was of course an appeal for forgiveness in the letter; but to Mrs. Mansfield's mind the appeal came far too late, and even if it had come earlier it would have appeared an appeal to an affection of the flesh, which was in itself an offence against the spirit.
Mrs. Mansfield had tried to crush down Nature, but Nature was too strong for her; and when the messenger threw back the covering from the face of the infant, the tears, tears of the flesh, stood in her eyes, and her hand trembled. For that small, white, contented, sleeping baby-face reminded her of the time when her own infant lay in her own arms, and she speculated as to what her baby's future might be. And now here was her child's child; and the little one who had lain sleeping in her lap years ago, that seemed no farther off than yesterday, was dying in disgrace among strangers. Her own baby had come into the world sanctified, to her mind, by the very atmosphere in which it was born. Its father was an exemplar of what a man and a clergyman should be. There was every reason to suppose her baby would grow up into a woman who would be spoken of as a model of all a woman should be. Now here was her child's child. It was an unholy, an unrighteous child. There was no blessing or grace about it.
Ah, it was hard to hold that babe in her arms and think of her own child, and have a proper Christian feeling towards its father!
And the grandmother, who was not yet forty-five years of age, undid the baby's hood and passed her hand over the child's beating head, and touched the little fat double chin with her bent finger, softly pinched its white cheeks, and forgot for a while all that had happened since, and was back again in the old time.
Then all at once, as though God had taken pity on her, her tears began to fall, and she became less of a rigid Christian of the poor and narrow kind, and more of a Christian in light of the Sermon on the Mount and the story of the Good Samaritan. She said: "I'll take the boy and do my duty by him." She added after a pause: "I'll take the boy and do all I can for him," At that moment she did not so much want to do her own duty as to be good to him.
But when the messenger had gone, and she found herself alone with the baby, she receded somewhat from the advanced position she had taken. She had resolved for a few moments to keep the boy and live down the talk of idle tongues. Now that idea seemed no more than a temptation to give way to vainglory, and she resolved to send the boy away as speedily as possible.
She took the boy with her to a town a hundred miles from Wyechester, and had him there baptized Charles Augustus Cheyne. Subsequently she got a nurse for him, and, having made a liberal arrangement with the nurse, she said:
"I shall come and see you and him at irregular intervals; and whenever I come and find him looking well and comfortable, I will give you a guinea in addition to what I have arranged with you for."
By this she intended to secure the continual good treatment of the child; for though she had failed in her heroic resolve of living down talk of the idle tongues of Wyechester, she had made up her mind to be as good to the orphan as she could.
When she got home she found news awaiting her of the death of her daughter. She put away the thought of her daughter as much as she could from her mind; and, in a few years, when the boy was old enough to go to school, she went to that town again, and having requested an attorney to preserve secrecy in the matter, without giving him any reason for it, she asked the lawyer to find a school for the boy. Accordingly he was sent to the school kept by the old maid, and later to a college. Subsequently he was put to business in London; but from the time he left the place where he had been brought up, he had never seen his grandmother, and the early days at his nurse's had completely faded out of his memory.
The grandmother was now a very old woman. She still lived in her house at Wyechester. She had altered greatly in face and figure, but her nature had softened in no way with years. She was still as stiff and intellectually assured as ever she had been. She had the willing power of one hundred and fifty pounds a year; the other seventy died with her; and she had made this will in favour of Charles Augustus Cheyne, of Long Acre, in London. Although he had never within his memory heard her name, she had always taken care to know what he was doing, and how he was getting on.
She had even so far given way to worldliness as to read the publications to which he contributed; and as she read them she thought of how strange it should be that his grandfather was younger than his grandson when he died, and here was she now reading what the grandson had written!
But in all that Charles Augustus Cheyne had ever written, there was nothing so surprising as would have been the result of bringing together the sealed packet held by his grandmother, the registry of Anerly Church, and Charles Augustus Cheyne.
CHAPTER VIII.
ON BOARD THE YACHT "SEABIRD."
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, the Seabird lay 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 yacht Seabird, 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 the Seabird into the still blue waters of Silver Bay, under the Duke of Shropshire's stately castle.
