The Duke's Sweetheart: A Romance

CHAPTER XX.

FAME

The little household in Knightsbridge, where Marion Durrant lived with her invalid aunt, Miss Traynor, did not breakfast early. It was very rarely the teapot found its way to the table until ten o'clock. Miss Traynor was one of those invalids who suffer from sleeplessness, together with other maladies; and it was often three, four, or five o'clock in the morning before she closed her eyes.

Miss Traynor was old-fashioned and kindly, with none of the irritability or exactingness of the invalid about her. She was often in great pain; but at such times she wished to be alone. She was never irritable or capricious. She always behaved in her own house as though she were a guest, as far as herself was concerned. She hated ringing bells for the servant, and tried to prevent Marion doing a number of little services which many women in health exact of those around them.

But she was most decidedly old-fashioned. She had a great number of settled notions, notions acquired long ago, and which nothing in the world could shake. All the eloquence or argument in the world would not move her on any subject she had made up her mind about twenty or thirty years ago. She had an antipathy to new theories, new places, new people. She was an enthusiastic admirer of Church and State. She considered all Liberals murderers and regicides at heart, not that she had even a dim idea of what a Liberal was. Personally she would not have hurt the meanest of God's creatures, but she could have read with lively satisfaction that all the Liberals and Radicals had been drowned, provided all detail were omitted, and a bishop had something to do with the matter.

She looked on clergymen of the Church of England with the greatest respect, and she considered bishops infallible and impeccable. She did not put the least faith in missions to savages. She had a mean opinion of savages, and did not think them worth the trouble taken with them by pious folk of a certain way of thinking.

Her father before her had taken in The Times, and she took it in too; not that she read much of it, but that she thought every staid respectable house ought to have The Times; and that, after the Church and State, The Times was the most important institution in the country. She had no comprehensive notion of what the Church was, and her idea of the State was The Court Circular. But in what way The Times contributed to the welfare of the country, she had no conception whatever. She was always quite sure that whatever The Times said must infallibly be right. Any suggestion that, possibly, a conflict or difference of any kind could arise between these three, she would have treated with merciless scorn. There were the Church, State, and Times; and as long as they went on, England must continue to be the greatest, most pious, and most successful country under the sun.

After the Church, State, and Times the institution which claimed her greatest respect was the Peerage of England. She would cheerfully have allowed art and commerce to die if we might only retain our old nobility. She had no social ambition for herself. She knew she was not of the metal peers are made of. If a lord had spoken to her, she would have felt he was doing something derogatory to his order. She was a firm believer in caste, and did not wish those above her to come down any more than she wished herself to go up.

"We ought all to keep in our own places, my dear," she would say. "It pleases Heaven that we shall be born in a certain state of life. If Heaven intended we should fill any other, there is no doubt we should have been born in that state. We ought not to try and change these things. We are not in our own hands, but in the hands of those above. If a king is wanted, one is sent; if a lord is wanted, one is sent; and so on. And we ought not to try and alter these laws of Nature any more than any other laws of Nature."

Upon being reminded that great generals and lawyers and statesmen are often made lords of, she would say:

"These, my dear, were intended by Nature to be lords, but there was no vacancy for them at the time. But you see, in the end, Nature found a vacancy, and they became lords. If a man is intended by Nature to be a lord, nothing in the world will keep him from being one."

The morning after the wreck of the yacht Seabird, Miss Traynor was later than usual for breakfast. She came down looking white and worn. She had been more sleepless than usual that night. But on mornings after such nights she was more gentle and considerate than at other times.

"How are you this morning, Marion?" she asked as she kissed the girl and sank into her elbow-chair.

"Pretty well, aunt, only I slept badly. How are you? You look as if you had had one of your bad nights," said Marion, as she began pouring out the tea.

"So I had, my child, so I had. I heard every hour till four; and I did not go to sleep even soon after that. What kept you awake?"

"Oh, I don't know, aunt," said the girl wearily.

"Well, if you don't know, I do, Marion; and you are a little goose to fret about the matter. I know him, dear, better than you do."

Marion smiled. As though anyone, or all the world together, could know her Charlie as she knew him.

"And he's a noble-hearted splendid fellow any girl might rely on and be proud of!"

Marion pouted. As though any human being could be more proud of any other than she was of him!

"And, Marion, you ought not to be a goose and go fidget your life out because you have not heard from him for two or three days. Now, if it were weeks or months, you might have cause to be uneasy."

Marion looked at her aunt in horror. As though it would be possible for her to live if she were months without hearing from him!

"You know very well, child, there is not a more loyal or gentle-minded man in all London."

Marion looked and smiled. As though anyone knew anything of Charlie's gentle-mindedness compared with what she knew of it!

"I'll take another cup of tea, and I'll engage you hear from him before the week is out."

"Before the week is out, aunt!" said Marion, speaking aloud for the first time on the subject. "Before the week is out! If I don't hear before then, I shall know something dreadful has happened."

"But I tell you you shall. I have a presentiment, a very strong presentiment, you will have a letter from him the morning after to-morrow, saying he is in town, and will be out to see you that afternoon."

"But why could he not come out, aunt, if he was in London the night before, instead of writing?" Even talking of the chance of his being in London was so much better than thinking of him as far away.

"I did not say he would be in London the night before. Might he not post his letter in Wales, or Cornwall, or Scotland, or Ireland?"

"Yes; but then, aunt, he ought to be here as soon as his letter."

"Now you are an impatient girl. Business might prevent his coming on by the mail. He might come by a late train. My presentiments are always right, or nearly always; and this is one of the very strongest I ever had in all my life."

Marion shook her head in despair rather than incredulity. Whatever was the matter, Charlie might have written. What business had he anywhere? In the ordinary sense of the word, he had no business. What he had to do with editors and proprietors of papers and publishers, was all done in London, not in that hateful place to which he had gone, wherever it was.

She did not care for her breakfast that morning. She drank a cup of tea, ate a mouthful of dry bread, but left the eggs and bacon untouched.

Miss Traynor having done all she could to cheer her niece, and being one of those gentle natures which cannot endure the sight of unhappiness in others when she was powerless to lessen it, took up The Times, partly to try and distract herself, and partly to shut out from her eyes the painful sight of the young girl's saddened face.

The gale of the night and day before had been general in England, and London had got its share of it. But a whole gale on the coast never seems more than a stiff breeze in London. Nevertheless, the gale of yesterday had not passed over London without inflicting injury; and among the other things which it had done within the ten-mile radius was to fling a chimney-pot into the street, just opposite Miss Traynor's front-door.

This had been a terrible event in the mind of Miss Traynor.

She had been fascinated at the time, and anticipated nothing short of the destruction of her own house and of everyone in it. She had eventually congratulated herself a dozen times on the fact that her will was made, and that Marion should have all she had the power to bequeath, in complete forgetfulness that according to her own theory, Marion would be included among the slain.

However, as afternoon passed into evening, the gale subsided, and Miss Traynor's apprehensions declined. But as she ceased to fear, she began to feel an interest in the perils she had passed. Therefore when, this morning, she saw a column of The Times headed "Yesterday's Gale," it instantly attracted her interest, and settling her spectacles on her nose, she began to read.

"Oh dear!" she cried suddenly.

"What is it, aunt?" said Marion, with little interest.

"There has been a dreadful wreck of a yacht; and the owner of it, the great Duke of Shropshire, is drowned."

"Good gracious!" said Marion, somewhat roused from the contemplation of her own unhappiness.

The old woman read on, but did not say anything further.

Marion had raised her eyes in expectation of more news, and was now looking with awakened interest at her aunt.

Gradually Miss Traynor's face lengthened with astonishment. The mouth opened, the eyebrows went up, the eyes grew round, and the plump cheeks became almost hollow.

"What is it?" said Marion, now thoroughly alert.

At last Miss Traynor put down the paper, and looked speechlessly at her niece for awhile.

"Aunt, do tell me what it is!"

"What did I say about your being proud?"

"I'm sure I don't think I'm very proud," said the girl, in uneasy perplexity.

"Of him?"

"Of whom, aunt? Do tell me!"

"Of Charles?"

"Well, I'm sure I'm very proud of him. But what has he to do with the storm, and the wreck, and a duke, and the paper?" asked the girl almost piteously.

From her aunt's manner one might assume anything, so long as the thing was very violent and unusual.

"There, read for yourself!" cried the aunt, handing the paper across the table to her niece.

With sparkling eyes and trembling hands, Marion caught the paper and began to read.

The comment on the rescue wound up with these words:

"For endurance and gallantry we may search in vain for a case parallel to this of Mr. Charles Augustus Cheyne. He will receive the medal of the Royal Humane Society, as a matter of course. But in a case of this kind it is to be regretted that some even higher distinction cannot be awarded for endurance and courage inferior to nothing which has gained for a handful of our boldest soldiers the Victoria Cross."

When Marion had finished reading she put the paper down on the table before her, looked feebly at her aunt for a moment, and then fell fainting back in her chair.

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.