The Duke's Sweetheart: A Romance
The aunt was not going to be baffled. She pondered a long time, and at last cried out cheerfully:
"But, Marion, my dear, his solicitors and the other solicitors may find out some flaw-some flaw that may spoil all."
The girl shot a bright glance up.
"Oh, aunt, thank you for that hope. It was good of you to think of it. I hope with all my heart it may be so."
Marion stooped down and gathered up all the papers at her feet.
For a long time neither spoke. May sat with her lap full of papers, and her eyes fixed dully upon them. Miss Traynor had fallen into a deep reverie, her elbow on the white cloth of the breakfast-table, her white round chin dropped into her white round hand. The elder was the first to speak, and when she did it was in a very timid and apologetic way, as though she was more than half ashamed of referring to such a subject.
"Isn't a duke the greatest after the Queen and the Princes and the Princesses, May?"
"I believe so."
"And he has a right to be presented to the Court, and know the Queen; and maybe now and then she asks a duke or two to dine with her, and advise her what to do about Parliament and Radicals and foreign possessions, and so on?"
"I believe so, aunt dear."
"It is wonderful to think of it! Wonderful to think of it! To think that the young man we knew in this humble little house as Charlie will be sitting down to gold services with the Queen, and that we shall see his name in The Court Circular-'The Duke of Shropshire visited the Queen yesterday, and afterwards enjoyed the honour of dining with Her Majesty.' Wonderful!"
From the lids of the girl's eyes the tears now began to fall. The old Duke had been drowned, the present Duke was dying, and her Charlie, her own, her only darling Charlie, was to be the new Duke. And they should read all those dreadful things in The Court Circular and elsewhere; and she should scarcely be able to take up any kind of a paper in which she should not find his name; but it was plain to her she had lost himself. She, the sweetheart, the wife of a great duke! – she blushed crimson with shame at the bare thought, and she wept for sorrow that a dukedom should rob her of her dear lover.
The elder woman's thoughts went on in quite a different way.
She had, of course, often seen lords and ladies in the Park and the theatres and other places of public assembly, but she had never spoken to one. Her father had, of course, spoken to many, and had been presented at Court; but then her father was to her a god apart, quite as much apart as the members of the peerage. She had, as far as she could now recollect, never seen a duke, except the Duke of Wellington. But then he wasn't a great duke to her mind. He was a great captain, a great soldier, but the ducal quality in him was too new to be interesting. It was overborne by the splendour of his achievements and the glory of his renown. The dukedom was no more in him than the scarf he had put on that morning. But a duke proper, from her point of view, she had never seen; one of whose house there had been dukes three hundred years ago had never come within her ken, and of such dukes she stood in awe, not knowing what manner of men they might be. She had heard of the Dukeries as of some mysterious region, upon which nothing earthly could compel her to enter. She had, of course, seen royal dukes; but these she looked upon as only princes of the blood masquerading.
She had never in all her life spoken to a lord or a lady; and beyond what she read of them in books, which she believed to be mostly lies, she had no means of forming any notion of how they spoke. She knew that judges on the bench were not as other men, and did not speak as other men; but judges were only common men, had been only common barristers at one time. Had a lord spoken to her she should not have known what to say. She should in all likelihood have said Yes or No without any discrimination, and retired. She would not say Yes or No, my lord, for all the world; for to say so would have been to admit she knew the honour which had been thrust upon her; and the burden of such an admission she could not bear. She had a notion that members of the peerage were as much removed from sympathy with common mortals as birds or fishes; and when, once a year or so, in looking idly down the columns of The Times, she could not help seeing that a noble lord had said something about turnips or calves, she hastened on, shocked and affrighted as much as though a clergyman, in whom she had always trusted, had one Sunday, in the pulpit, advised his congregation to come no more to church, but to spend the day in playing whist and billiards, and dancing and singing, and eating and drinking.
But now what had arisen? A man whom she had known for years, who had crossed her threshold hundreds of times, who had sat on every chair in that little drawing-dining-room, who had eaten her beef and broken her eggs at his tea, who had rolled her chair from one room into the other, who had made the salad for tea and praised the condition of her beer, who had kissed her niece in her presence over and over again, and had promised to be a good husband to that young girl, whom she now loved more than all else on earth-this man was now about to be lifted into the front rank of the peerage! He was to be a duke-the ducal son of she knew not how many fathers! It was prodigious! unbelievable!
And what would come of it all? Would he remember them? Plainly: for had he not sent the important papers to Marion? And there was the girl, wretched and dispirited. Why? Ah well, she might guess. Charles Augustus Cheyne with a few hundreds a year from his pen, and Charles Augustus Cheyne, Duke of Shropshire and master of how much wealth she knew not, were widely different persons. But, after all, who could tell? She had met Mr. Cheyne, and liked him. She had never met a duke-how could she tell what would be her feelings towards a duke if she met one? And then the fact of Cheyne and a duke being one! She should let matters take their course, and see how they would turn out.
"Marion dear," she said at the end of these cogitations, "what is it you are to do with those papers Charles sent you?"
"Take them to Macklin and Dowell."
"And had you not better do so at once? They are of the highest consequence."
"Yes, aunt."
She rose and went to her room, and dressed herself listlessly: and when she was dressed, a cab was called and she drove away. She was not more than an hour at Macklin and Dowell's. When she was leaving, the two members of the firm conducted her to the cab. The last words they said to her, as they handed her into the vehicle, were:
"If the documents and the history are good, the case is clear; and we have every reason to believe both are good."
When she found herself alone in the cab rolling to Knightsbridge, she covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed hysterically:
"I wish the history and the documents had left Charlie alone, and left him to me."
CHAPTER III.
THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL
About a fortnight after the arrival of the letter and the documents which caused such a profound sensation at Miss Traynor's, and while the elder and younger women were idling over the end of a very late breakfast, a hansom cab drew up sharply at the hall-door, and a man ran quickly up the steps and knocked briskly.
Marion knew who it was in a moment, and hastened out of the room. Her aunt thought she had, as in the careless old times, gone to open the door for him; but she had fled up to her own room and locked the door, and thrown herself on her knees beside her bed and burst into tears.
In the meantime Anne had opened the door, and when she saw who it was, quiet Anne, who rarely spoke beyond her business, exclaimed:
"Oh Mr. Cheyne, they will be glad to see you!"
"Have the goodness," said he soberly, "to tell Miss Traynor that the Duke of Shropshire would be glad of the honour of a few words with her."
"Yes, my lord," said Anne, curtsying profoundly, blushing deeply, and then running off with a great want of dignity into the sitting room. She left his grace standing in the sunken porch with as little ceremony as if he had been the man for the gas account.
"If you please, my lord, will you walk into the room?" said Anne from the back of the hall, not daring to go near a man who had been so awfully changed in a few days from a plain Mr. to one of the greatest lords, as her mistress had informed her.
As the visitor came up to where she stood, he said:
"Anne, your grace."
"I beg your pardon," faltered timid Anne, "I do not know what you mean."
"That in future you are to call me 'your grace,' and not 'Mr. Charlie,' or 'Mr. Cheyne,' or 'my lord.'"
"But-but, my lord, I-couldn't think of calling you anything so familiar."
"Very well, Anne, I will excuse you. And how are you, Anne?"
"Quite well, thank you, my lord."
"And not married yet, Anne, – my little Anne?"
"No, my lord."
"Ah well, the man is making an awful fool of himself, that it is all I have to say."
Anne ran upstairs and knocked at Marion's door. She was too full of her own surprise and awe to take into consideration the position of her young mistress. Marion rose from her knees and opened the door. Anne exclaimed:
"Oh, Miss May, Mr. Cheyne is below, and he's so changed I hardly knew him."
"Changed, Anne!" cried May eagerly; "is he looking ill?"
"Oh no, miss, he's looking better than ever; but he's so changed and dark and distant-like."
"Is that all?" said May, relapsing into her old sad forlorn manner. "No wonder; you know, Anne, he has had a wonderful change of fortune since we saw him last."
"Yes, miss, I know he has; but, miss, when I called him my lord, as in duty bound, he now being a great lord, he told me I must not call him 'lord,' but 'grace.' The last place I was in I had a fellow-servant called Grace, and I used to call her Grace; and wouldn't it seem very presuming on my part to call him Grace, as it might be after her? So I begged to be excused, and he excused me."
"But, Anne, he is a duke now, and a duke has a right to be called 'your grace.'"
In the meanwhile the Duke had entered the tiny sitting-room, and, having bowed profoundly to Miss Traynor, went over to her, and took her hand and pressed it respectfully, and then drew a chair opposite to the one in which she sat.
She noticed he was dressed in the same clothes as he wore when he was last in that house. "What could a duke mean by wearing old clothes?"
He began speaking immediately.
"My dear Miss Traynor, since I had the pleasure of seeing you last, most extraordinary events have occurred in my career, as, to some extent, you are aware. I left London less than three weeks ago with a most unmanly and barbarous intent. A combination of circumstances, old and new, had almost goaded me into madness, and I went on an expedition of revenge. I am glad to say that I was saved the penalty of my anger; for I was able to give help instead of doing injury when the opportunity for striking the blow came. As you know, the seventh Duke of Shropshire was drowned in that awful storm, and his only son, the Marquis of Southwold, was saved. The Marquis of Southwold, as a matter of course, became, while in a dying condition, eighth Duke of Shropshire. On the death of the eighth duke, a few days ago, I became a claimant to the peerage and all the estates, and so on; and the best lawyers say there is no chance of my claim being even disputed. So that virtually I am now a very rich man, an enormously rich man. Well, when I was poor I offered all I had then to Marion-my heart and hand. I am now rich, and immediately upon my arrival in London this morning I have come to offer what has been added to my store since-riches. As to the title, I daresay if the Queen said I was to be called Tim it would not make much difference in my nature or my feelings towards May; though, as a matter of fact, I'd rather not be called Tim. This little speech of mine. Miss Traynor, may sound like a passage from a book; but talking like a book saves time often."
Poor Miss Traynor broke down and wept like a child.
"I always told her she ought to be proud of you-always; but I never felt it so much as now."
"There now. Miss Traynor, don't distress yourself. We shall all be good friends."
It was some time before he could quiet her. When he had done so he begged that he might be allowed a few moments alone with Marion.
The aunt rang the bell, and, when Anne appeared, told the servant to ask Miss Durrant to come down to the front room, if she pleased.
Aunt and niece met in the doorway, but neither spoke. The aunt looked at the girl, but the eyes of the latter were on the ground.
When the door was closed the girl stood inside it motionless, with her head slightly drooped on one side and her eyes still lowered.
He went over and took her silently into his arms, and held her lightly there awhile and then kissed her lightly. Then he drew her a little closer to him and kissed her again, and put his lips near her ear, whispered into it words which, though old and familiar, are always new as the odours of old springs and old flowers in the new spring and new flowers.
At last she looked up into his face, and, reaching high, put her small hands on his shoulders, and sobbing out, "Oh Charlie!" hid her head upon him.
He carried her across the room and placed her in a chair, and soothed her until he had won her back to her old bright self. When he had accomplished this, he stood up, and bending seriously over her, said:
"And now. May, I have made a long speech to your aunt, and said a lot to you, and I want you to do me a great favour. Will you?"
"Anything, anything, Charlie."
"Well, I want you to bring me up a jug of that delicious cool beer and a couple of biscuits; and if you love me, don't be long. I am ready to fall down from exhaustion. When I have drunk and eaten, I will tell you everything."
She went from the room, and as she walked about the kitchen and the cellar, half forgetting what she came for, she could see nothing clearly for her happy tears.
CHAPTER IV.
THE IMPENDING CORONET
The visitor drank a glass of the beer at a draught, broke and eat a biscuit with great deliberateness, and then bending forward solemnly over May, who sat on a low chair at his side, said:
"I have just been paying a visit to my grandmother at Wyechester, and a very stately and formal reception it was. How do you feel, Duchess?"
"Oh no, no, no! Don't say that, Charlie! For mercy's sake don't say that!" she cried piteously, covering her face with her hands, and dropping her head forward.
"What on earth is the matter, May?" he asked tenderly. He placed his hand on the rich brown hair of the bent head.
"I am terrified! Oh, I am terrified at that-at the thought that you are now-that you have become so rich; and still more, that other awful, awful thing!" she cried.
"What! The title? Why many women would give their right hands for it," he said, in a tone half soothing, half jocose.
"I hate it! I hate it!" she sobbed passionately. "I'd rather I was dead! I would indeed. Oh, oh, oh!" She sobbed and swayed herself to and fro.
"In the name of wonder, what am I to do? I can't get rid of it," he said, in a whimsical tone of voice, as he stroked her hair. "You know, May, the thing was not of my seeking. It was thrust upon me. I had no more notion it was coming than you had. I had no more notion I was related to those great Cheynes than you had. What am I to do? I don't know how to get rid of it. There is only one way, and that is, to commit high treason and get attainted; but in that case they take away one's head when they take away one's title. Of course, I shall no longer need what is inside my head, now that I am rich; still I am not sure that the treason would be a success. Can you suggest nothing that I could do, May?"
"No; nothing. But it is dreadful! Oh, so dreadful!"
He now saw that she was much more seriously distressed than he had at first imagined, and that her uneasiness could not be dispelled by badinage. He drew his chair as near as he could to hers, and taking one of her hands down from her face, held it in both his, and said, in a deep grave voice:
"May darling, I will not have you fret about this thing. It cannot be helped now, and we must only try and accommodate ourselves to circumstances in the best way we can. I'll tell you what I propose; that first all this legal business shall be disposed of, and that when I am getting near the end of that business you go over to Paris with your aunt, and that when I have taken the oath in the House I slip over quietly to Paris, and we get married at the Embassy there. We can then knock about the Continent for a year or two, until the town and country are done talking about us, and then come home, stay quietly for awhile at one of our country places before coming up to our house in Piccadilly, What do you think of that, darling?" He pressed her hand and raised it to his lips.
What did she think of that? It was worse and worse. Every word he said made it seem more dismal and hopeless. He was to go into the House of Lords, and she was to be married at the ambassador's in Paris. She was to stay at one of their country houses-stay there for awhile before coming up to their house in Piccadilly. Oh, it would never, never, do! She could not bear it! She was not suited to any such position. How cruel-how piteously cruel Fate was with her!
All she said was: "I cannot think of it now. I cannot think of it now. Do not ask me."
He saw that for the present it was useless to urge her further, and therefore changed the subject.
"You must know. May, that while I was in the doctor's books in the country-by-the-way, I had a most extraordinary doctor; I'll tell you more of him another time-I made up my mind to celebrate my return to town by spending part of my first day in London with you, and giving a supper to a lot of old pals in my old diggings in Long Acre."
She took down her hand from her face, and sat back in her chair.
"May, you are very pale? Are you unwell?"
"No; I am quite well. Shall you have many at the supper?"
"No; not very many. A dozen or so. Just the old fellows who knew me, and whom I liked when-I mean whom I have always liked." He had been near alluding to the great change, but had stopped in time. Then he gave her the names of those he expected. She knew of them all, and brightened up a little as he went on with his descriptive catalogue of his guests. At length he came to little Porson, the novelist and journalist.
"Little Porson, too, will be there. You know little Porson? Well, no, but I have told you of him. He's a dapper, mild, conceited fellow, with the best heart and the most infernally restless tongue in the world. He has just got out a new novel. It's called 'A Maid of Chelsea,' and is doing very well, I believe. By-the-way, I have had a most polite letter from Blantyre and Ferguson, the firm that published my book. They say that of late the demand for the novel has been so great as to warrant them in getting out, in three volumes, a new edition four times as large as the first. Think of that!"
She looked up brightly, and cried: "Oh, Charlie, that is good news!"
"I should have thought it great news a month ago, but it does not make much difference now."
"Ah, I forgot," she said sadly. All the light left her face suddenly, and during the rest of the time they were together that day she never called him Charlie again.
When he left she went, up to her own room, feeling wretched, and cold, and broken-hearted. She locked herself in once more, and drew down the blind.
Ah, what a change! What an awful change! Not in him; there was no change in his kind nature. And yet there was a change. Of old he thought and spoke of two only things; he seemed to have had only two things to think of-his work and herself.
Now he had to think of the House of Lords, for he was a great lord; and of foreign cities, for he was rich and must travel; and of business of vast importance, for he owned wide tracts of land, with castles, and villages, and towns. By the side of all these things how wretchedly insignificant she seemed! In their presence she was dwarfed into nothing. She could not recognise herself, and surely he could not recognise her. She would be invisible to him, unless, indeed, she happened to be in his way.
Yes, in so far as she might be anything to him, she should be in his way. He was a strong man, who knew the world and was very clever. He would take his place among all these great things naturally. He would be invited to assist in the government of the country, and in course of time add the dignities and honours his intellect would bring him to those he had just inherited. By the side of a man in such a career was not the place for such as she.
Her aunt had always said one should keep in the sphere of life into which one was born, and now the justice of this saying was plain; nothing could be plainer. If he had not come into this thing, if his book had been a success while he was still simple Mr. Cheyne, and if he had got on as a writer, and became famous and rich, she would willingly share his triumph and prosperity with him. In that case all would come gently, softly. Even if he had leaped into fame and fortune it would be no more than they had been dreaming about, hoping for. But in the present case an intolerable burden had been thrust upon her shoulders. She could not, she would not, bear it.
No. She would never marry. Never. She could never marry anyone but him, and now he had been taken from her as much as though the grave had opened and swallowed him. She should only be in his way. He had always been heir to the honours which had now come upon him, and no doubt her aunt had always been right in saying that people were born to high state, although at their birth, and for some time after, it might seem they had been intended for humbler places. Was not the present a case in point? Here was he perfectly at his ease about the new position into which he had come, to which he had been born, but of which he knew nothing until a few days ago. Here was she overwhelmed, appalled by the mere thought of the honours and responsibilities. Why? Why was she so frightened by the phantoms of things which he took as easily as the ordinary events of everyday life? Because he had been born to them, and she had not. Nothing could be plainer. Ah, nothing!
No, she would never marry anyone now. He should marry; marry a lady born; marry one whose whole life had been spent among such things as were to surround him all the days of his life. He should marry someone who was not only accustomed to such things, but who expected their presence always, and would feel uncomfortable if they were withdrawn from her. He should marry such a wife and be happy, and she herself would be happy, knowing she had done her duty by him in refusing to marry him.
Her duty, ay; but what of her love?
Then she threw herself on her bed and sobbed passionately.
Her love! Was all her love for him to count as nothing in this bitter case? Were all her hopes and dreams to vanish? She had been faithful to him with her whole nature; she would be faithful to him until her death. But had the end of all come so soon? So soon, that the end had come while she was only picturing to herself the beginning? Had the love-chambers of her heart to be locked for ever upon merely an image? Were all the sweet thoughts of the future which used to haunt her to fade away for ever? Should she never minister to him, or cheer him, or help him? Of old he had said she should read his proofs to him, for the ear is quicker to catch an error or an unhappy phrase than the writer's eyes. Should she not share his troubles and hear his plans? She had a little money, and he was able to make a little. In the old days their united incomes seemed enough for a quiet pair to start on. Now he would hardly miss their joint incomes multiplied a hundred times. All was over with her. Come, night and darkness! Come, oh grave, for life was over!
Then for a long time she lay and sobbed as though her heart would break. No thoughts were clearly defined to her. She simply felt the great woe around her like a choking mist. There was hope nowhere. Her life was over. There was nothing for her to do.
