Kitabı oku: «The Duke's Sweetheart: A Romance», sayfa 6

CHAPTER IX.
THE MARQUIS OF SOUTHWOLD'S LETTER

"Oh, what a way it is up! My wind isn't now what it used to be, when first I met you warm and young, Cheyne, is it? Such confounded stairs!" said Mr. John Wilkinson, a very stout puffy-looking man for thirty-six years of age, and editor and staff of The Coal-Vase Reporter, one of the most prosperous of the minor trade papers in London.

"My wind is as sound as ever," said the Duke of Long Acre, rising; for Wilkinson was not alone.

"Going up and down these breakneck flights once a day would keep a man in training. Cheyne, allow me to introduce my friend Freemantle. He has a great taste for poetry, writes very beautiful poetry indeed, and is most anxious to make your acquaintance. He has just read your book, 'The Duke of Fenwick,' and is delighted with it. I haven't had time to read it yet! but I shall read it this week, and review it in next week's Reporter. "

Cheyne shook hands with Freemantle, set a chair for him, and pushed his new acquaintance down on it in his jovial freehanded manner.

"And how are you, Freemantle?" asked Cheyne, as though they had known one another for many years. Turning to Wilkinson, he said: "Look up a chair for yourself."

"I am quite well, thank you, Mr. Cheyne."

"For Heaven's sake don't Mister me. I am never Mistered by anyone but duns."

"I beg your grace's pardon," said Wilkinson. "May I have the honour of presenting to your grace Mr. Harry Freemantle? Mr. Harry Freemantle, his Grace the Duke of Long Acre."

The two men rose and bowed profoundly to one another. Then Cheyne, again bowing profoundly and causing his head to describe a semicircle parallel to the horizon, said:

"The interesting preliminaries of introduction having been disposed of, his grace left the room to draw the beer out of his four-and-a-half-gallon cask, kept on the landing outside his grace's bedroom."

He returned in a few minutes with a jug and three glasses. When the three men had settled themselves and lighted their pipes, Wilkinson said:

"I hope we are not disturbing you now, Cheyne? You are not busy?"

"No, not a bit. I have just written a reply to a letter I had this morning from the Earl of Sark. He is an old chum of mine, and has read my book. He wants me to go and stay with him for awhile. But I can't-not just now, anyway."

"Well, you see," said Wilkinson, "Freemantle here is very anxious to do something in the way of verse-publishing it, I mean. He has several poems ready for publication. Poetry isn't in my way, Cheyne, so I thought I'd bring him to you."

"May I ask if you expect it to pay?"

"Well, no," said Freemantle, with a candid smile.

"You are independent of it?"

"In a certain sense I am. I am an attorney, and am employed in the office of Baker and Tranter, Bedford Street."

"Oh, that is all right. Is your purpose to publish a volume?"

"No, I do not aim so high as that."

"I am glad to hear it. There aren't more than six men whose volumes pay the mere expenses of printing and publication. Poetry is the most beggarly of all arts now. Living poets of fame and exquisite merit do not make as much by their trade as the humblest Italian artisan employed in casting plaster-of-Paris in Leather Lane. Writing and publishing poetry is an expensive luxury, and the readers of poetry are now a lost tribe."

"I thought of a much more modest attempt than a book. I thought I might be able to get a few little bits of verse into a magazine or two. I have brought a few little bits with me; I should feel very much obliged to you if you will look at them, and tell me what you think of them, and if there is any chance of their getting in anywhere; and if there is, when?"

"Oh, I'll be glad to do you more than that, if they are all right. I'll give you an introduction to an editor or two, whom I think likely to take them. In fact, if they are all right, I think there can be no question of our planting them somewhere."

"I am sure I am very much obliged to you. You were speaking a moment ago of having had a letter from a nobleman who has read your novel."

"Yes, my old friend, my kind old chum, the Earl of Sark."

"Well, if both of you will promise me to keep a secret anything I may say about another nobleman who has read your book, I can tell you something which will interest you a good deal."

The promise asked was given.

"I know I may depend on you both."

"Entirely."

Wilkinson answered for the two.

"Now, you know of the Duke of Shropshire and his son, the Marquis of Southwold? And you know they happen to bear the same name as you, Cheyne?"

"Yes," said the Duke of Long Acre guardedly. If Freemantle had not thus early mentioned the identity of names between the two, no doubt Cheyne would have claimed acquaintance with both; but here was the wretched name springing up again. Should he never get rid of this odious name?

"Well, Baker and Tranter have had a letter from the Marquis of Southwold, saying he has read your novel (Baker and Tranter are the Duke of Shropshire's lawyers), and that he thinks it a most impudent and barefaced outrage upon his father and his house-"

"What!" exclaimed the Duke of Long Acre, in the profoundest astonishment.

"It is a fact. He says the book is all about a dukedom which is on the point of becoming extinct, as in the case of the dukedom of Shropshire. That you have no claim or title to the name of Cheyne-"

"He lies!" cried Cheyne, all the more vehemently because he was not certain.

"And he wants to know if criminal proceedings cannot be taken against you for slander, malicious injury, and assuming a great name, with a view to annoy or-"

"Go on."

"Or possibly extract money."

"Great heavens! What next?"

"Of course, Cheyne, you do not confound mine with any of the opinions expressed in this letter. Indeed, I now think it would have been better if I had not mentioned it at all. And, for more reasons than one, I should not have done so, only that, of course, the whole thing is utterly absurd. Baker and Tranter have written back that, having had the book and the case placed before counsel, counsel and they agree no action of a criminal or civil nature can be taken in the matter. You will, of course, make no use of anything I have told you?"

"What, sir! Do you, too, doubt my word, question my honour?"

He struck the leaf of the table a mighty blow of his right fist. The leaf of the table flew to the ground, torn from the table; the table tilted up; and all the glasses, pipes, books, and papers went flying in wild confusion around the room. Cheyne sprang to his feet with an oath, and stood, pale as death, except his eyes, which were blazing. He looked like a wild beast ready to spring.

The other two men were also standing now.

"No, no, no, old man," said Wilkinson, in a soothing voice; "nothing is farther from the thoughts of anyone here. Why, we know you-old man!"

Wilkinson did not like to call the furious man either your grace or Cheyne now. Mortal offence might be in either.

"For if any man asperses my mother's name or impugns my honour, I shall take him by the hips and pitch him head downward through that window."

He meant what he said; and they both felt sure he could do it.

"Do be quiet, old man!" said Wilkinson. "I am sure either Freemantle or myself would be one of the very first to defend your mother's name or your honour, if anyone here had dared to call either in question. But no one here has dreamed of any such absurdity."

"Then where is this leprous Marquis, who has dared to do both? By-, I'll choke him with the tongue that said these things, as sure as my name is-" His whole frame was convulsed, the muscles of his throat and his face flushed, deepened into purple. He could not speak. The conflict was too terrible. At last he got breath. "Oh God, is it not horrible that a wretch whom Thou has marked with the sign of Thine own displeasure should try to sully spotless names, and spit its unclean venom on wholesome men with wholesome honours? As sure as the same Great Power made you and me, you shall answer to me for this, foot to foot, eye to eye, life to life!"

Without saying another word, he took up his hat, crushed it down on his head, and dashed out of the room, leaving the two men mute, incapable of speech.

Freemantle was the first to recover.

"Don't you think we ought to follow him? He'll do mischief to himself or somebody else, I am afraid. He's a raving maniac at this moment."

"I do not think he will do any mischief."

"I never saw a man look so like as if he meant what he said."

"No doubt. But I have known Cheyne many years, and you have met him for the first time today. All the time I have known him he has been the most peaceful of men."

"Yes; but these peaceful men, when they break out, are always the worst. How infernally unlucky I was to say anything about that letter!"

"But no one could have foreseen the consequences. Ninety-nine out of a hundred would have laughed at the whole thing. But you did not know Cheyne is sensitive about his name being the same as that of the Duke of Shropshire."

"I hadn't the slightest idea of anything of the kind."

"Of course not, or you would not have spoken. Cheyne is the very soul of honour, and a very excellent fellow, although he tells lies about knowing peers and big pots of all kinds. He said to you he had just had a letter from the Earl of Sark. Now 111 lay you a level shilling that there is-"

"No such title."

"Oh no! Cheyne isn't such a fool as that. But I'll lay you a level shilling that if you look in a morning paper you'll find the Earl of Sark has been doing or saying something. He has either spoken in the House, or written a letter to the secretary of a club, or laid the foundation-stone of a church, or bought a racer of some note, or done something else that has for the moment lifted him out of the ruck of the peers."

"Then you don't attach any importance to what he said?"

"I think he is very angry now, but that before he has got half a mile he will cool down. How far is it from here to where this Marquis lives?"

"Oh, a long way! A couple of hundred miles or more: two-fifty."

"It would be sheer nonsense to suppose his anger could last half the way. And I believe this Marquis spends most of his life at sea?"

"A good deal of it. He was so knocked up by reading this book that he put out to sea almost at once, he and the Duke."

"Then we may dismiss the matter altogether from our minds. I'll lay you another level shilling he draws no blood over this affair. What a horrible mess he has made of the place! He has spilt all the beer and tobacco. There's no cure for spilt beer, but there is for spilt 'baccy. Let us pick up a fill each and have another pipe before we go."

CHAPTER X.
ROUSING THE LION

But, notwithstanding John Wilkinson's opinion to the contrary, there was not a man in all London so sure of the endurance of his rage as Charles Augustus Cheyne. That letter of the Marquis of Southwold had hit him on two of his sore points, namely, his doubtful parentage and personal honour. It used to be his boast that he never lost his temper, never once in all his life; and even still he might say the same thing. He had not lost his temper; his reason had fled him. He was not in a legal sense insane, but morally he could scarcely be held responsible for his acts.

Ever since he had been old enough to be capable of appreciating feelings of the kind, his most anxious thoughts had been devoted to reducing as much as possible all inquiry respecting his parentage. And here now was the wretched, drivelling, imbecile Marquis not only directing attention to his early history, but putting forth in as many words the horrible suspicion that he, Charles Cheyne, had no right or title to the name he bore! The one great fear of his life had been realised. He had been called an impostor of the most shameful class, and in addition to this, his own honour had been impugned. He had in effect been called a knave, a liar, a cheat, a low-minded bully, who wanted to levy blackmail on unoffending people. It was intolerable, monstrous, unendurable.

Nothing but a personal encounter with the man who had dared to say or insinuate such things would appease him.

He would go to this wretched Marquis of Southwold; he would give the man his name; he would confess his authorship of the book, and then-

Suppose, when he had done all this, the Marquis said nothing; what farther should he do? For had he not promised the man who told him that he would not speak of the nature of that letter? What should he do? How could he bring that wretched man to book? Yet the thing must be done somehow, anyhow.

Then he suffered a revulsion. All his life he had been boasting of his acquaintance with lords, and yet he had never, to his knowledge, spoken to one. Now he was quite resolved to meet and to speak with one, no matter what the risk, no matter what the consequences. He would never allude to the aristocracy in the old way again. He was conscious there was a kind of poetic justice in the fact that a fatal stab to the reputation of his mother and his own honour had been dealt by one of the class with which he claimed intercourse. Henceforth and for ever let that class be to him accursed. Henceforth and for ever he would be a Radical, a Socialist.

But how should he manage to keep his word with Freemantle, and yet be able to taunt Southwold with his calumnies? He could think of only one way. He would go to the Marquis, declare who he was, state he was the author of "The Duke of Fenwick," and await the course events might then take. It was more than likely that the Marquis would say something offensive to him. He would then challenge the heir; and if the latter would not fight him with pistol or sword, if the Marquis declined such a combat, Cheyne would, after warning him, attack him with such weapons as Nature had given him-his hands and his vast strength. He would take the neck of that man in his hands, and strangle him with his thumbs; then they might hang him upon the nearest tree.

He knew the Marquis was a man of delicate health, of poor physique. He, Cheyne, would first offer him an equal combat, that the matter might be settled with pistols. If the heir refused, Cheyne would then offer him swords, in which skill would compensate for strength. If swords were refused, then he should tell the Marquis to defend himself as best he could, as he, Cheyne, meant to kill him as they stood.

No doubt in a stand-up man-to-man fight for life without artificial weapons, the Marquis would have no chance. Still, was it in essence an unequal fight? Who had struck the first blow? Who had given the affront? This man had slandered his mother and himself. Suppose what had been published to the few had been published to the many; suppose, instead of writing to his lawyers, he had written to the newspapers, and he, Cheyne, had taken an action against him, and recovered, say a thousand, say ten thousand pounds damages, what injury would that be to the heir to one of the richest dukedoms in England? But the stain could never be washed out of his own or his mother's character. Give a dog a bad name, and hang him. Give the lie twenty-four hours' start of the truth, and the truth will never overtake the lie. In any conflict whatever, a rich nobleman must have enormous advantages over a poor commoner-except in one. There is no law or rule for giving the rich noble as fine a physique as the poor commoner. When, therefore, the rich noble has a physique inferior to the poor commoner, all the noble's other advantages must be put into the scale with him before the two are weighed for a physical encounter. Therefore he, Cheyne, would be perfectly justified in using every resource of his muscles, and, by Heaven, he would; and he would strangle that libellous ruffian as he would strangle a venomous snake!

Cheyne found himself in Hyde Park before he had any consciousness of surrounding objects. In every man, it is a common saying, there is a chained-down madman. We are all capable of being driven insane by something or other-we may not know what. Men have gone mad for joy, for sorrow, for success, for reverse, for love, for hate, for faith, for unfaith, for gold, for lack of gold. All Cheyne's life he had been devoted to the nobility and the concealment of his own early history. This blow therefore fell with a double weight. It was, dealt by a member of the nobility at his early history. So that his own mind, never very well rooted in firm ground, was torn up and scattered, and he could not now recognise any of the old landmarks, or see anything in the old way. All mental objects were obscured by one-the figure of the man who, he believed, had done him irreparable wrong. He did not wait to see whether the Marquis had merely made a random guess, or had spoken from ascertained facts. To Cheyne it was as bad as bad could be even to hint at the chance of his having no right to the name he bore, or the title of an honourable man. If he had known anything, no matter how small, of his parents, his birth, his early history, he should not have minded it so much. But here was his titled namesake, the head of all the Cheynes in the empire, plainly asserting that he, Charles Augustus Cheyne, had no right or title to the name.

Then, out of the depths of his own mind-depths which he did not dare to explore-came the question: Was the Marquis's shot a chance one, or did he, the Marquis, absolutely know that he, Cheyne, had no right to carry the name?

Horrible! Horrible question! Most horrible question because it was unanswerable-because he had no more clue to it than he had to the mysteries that would be solved by man a thousand years hence. The Marquis and he were of the one name. Could it be the Marquis knew his history? Could it be the Marquis knew the history of Charles Cheyne; and into that book, at no particular leaf, at no single paragraph, should he ever be permitted to look, save with the sanction of the Shropshire family?

After thinking over this for awhile, he dismissed the supposition with a contemptuous gesture. The idea of the great Shropshire house knowing anything of his humble history was absurd. The Marquis had shot a random shaft, which hit an old sore and rankled. But the very fact that it had been shot at random made the offence the more grievous. Why should the titled scoundrel be privileged to blast the name of a woman whom he had never seen, never heard of-that of a man of whose existence he had not known of until the publication of that novel?

It never occurred to Cheyne for a moment to think that, when the Marquis spoke of his possibly having no title to the name, the writer might have meant that the name Cheyne had merely been assumed for literary purposes, and that the man's real name was Brown, or Jones, or Robinson, or Smith, and that the Marquis did not intend the slightest imputation on the character of any woman who ever lived. Long brooding on the subject of his birth and parentage had made Cheyne's mind morbidly sensitive to any allusion of the kind; and one might as well try to talk down a storm, or to obtain practical results by expostulation with an earthquake, as to make him see the matter in any other than its very worst and most offensive light. Hence his wild homicidal fury.

When he became conscious, he was in Hyde Park. He never noticed the warm sweet sunshine, the bright-green, well-kept grass, the wholesome looking well-dressed people, the fair, slight, blue-eyed children, the brilliant equipages and stately footmen and coachmen, the trees in the pride of their full primal leafiness. He took no heed of all these; and yet they all contributed in an obscure way, in a way he could not trace, to bring his mind suddenly back to the one object which constituted the shining brightness of his own life. He thought of his bright and sprightly May.

Under the circumstances, the vision of her was anything but quieting. It was all very well for him who had no relative in the world to talk of killing this man, and being himself hanged to the nearest tree; but if he had no relatives in the world, there was a being with whom he purposed forming the closest of human ties. To the world it would not matter a fig whether he were hanged or died quietly in his bed. He was no cynic. There was not a flaw of cynicism in his large generous nature. Yes, he knew the boys would be sorry if he died in his bed or were hanged; but then May? How would it be with his little May, his bright, gay, winsome little sweetheart, who was to be his wife?

It was easy to ask that question, and easy to answer it. May would be heart-broken. What heart he ever had to give woman he had given her. He knew that what heart she had to give man she had given him. On neither heart had there been a previous mortgage. Each heart was perfectly unencumbered. Yes; it would break May's heart, as the saying went. That is, it would take all the brightness and hope out of her life; it would crush her for ever. She would never again be the same gay, animated, cheering darling she was now.

Then for a long time he walked about the Park, with eyes cast down, brooding over the image and the memories of May.

The question arose in his mind, whether he owed more to the name of his dead mother than to the happiness of his affianced wife? To him there could not be a moment's pause in answering this question. A man, whether married or single, engaged or free, was bound, if occasion demanded, to die in defence of his country, of his home, of the honour of his name-the last part of the code was growing a little obsolete now; but the man who could sit still while they blackened the memory of a dead mother must be that worst of all reptiles-a cowardly cad.

No; he had resolved not to go near May. Seeing her might jeopardise his revenge; and revenge his mother he would at any peril. How could a man who was not ready and able to defend his mother's name be considered capable of defending a sweetheart or a wife? It would be a poor rascally world for us, if men learned to sit still while evil tongues wagged over the fame of their womankind, mothers or sisters or wives.

So he set his back towards Knightsbridge and walked in the direction of Long Acre. When he arrived at his own place, he gathered up the papers which had been scattered on the floor, kicked the broken glasses into one corner, and then, taking some notepaper, wrote three notes, two of these being to editors, and one to Marion Durrant. The last was as follows:

"My darling May,

"News which I heard quite by accident this morning obliges me to leave town very suddenly. I am unable to say good-bye. In fact, I haven't time to write even a reasonably long letter; for the train I go by to the east leaves very soon, and I have to pack a portmanteau and get to the station in a very short time. I am not sure how long I shall be away; a few days, anyway. I hope my darling girl will take great care of herself until I get back, for her own ever fond

"Charlie."

Three days passed, and she heard no more of him than of the dead. What had happened to him-to her darling, darling Charlie? She knew him too well to think he could write and would not. She knew him too well to think he had deserted her for some other woman. What had happened to her darling Charlie? When, hour after hour, she heard the postman knock in the street, and yet no tidings came to her of him, she began to think the postman must have been bribed to suppress his letters.

Only two men suspected whither Cheyne had gone, and they waited in fear and trembling of some terrible catastrophe; and at last news was at hand, filling the whole country with his name.

From the day Charles Augustus Cheyne set out for the east coast of England his name never appeared to another story or on the title page of another book.