The Duke's Sweetheart: A Romance
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.
CHAPTER XI.
AT BANKLEIGH
When Cheyne had packed his portmanteau he took it and a hatbox down the steep staircase, carrying at the same time his letters in his teeth. He wore a low-crowned soft hat, instead of his ordinary silk one. He jumped into the street, and having thrust his letters into a pillar-post, hailed the first empty hansom and drove away to the railway-station.
Either his watch must have been slow or he must have looked at the wrong line of figures in the time-table, for when he got to the station they told him the train was on the point of starting, instead of having, as he had calculated, a good ten minutes to spare.
He took a first-class single ticket to Bankleigh, the nearest railway-station to Silver Bay. Then, with his portmanteau in one hand and his hatbox in the other, he dashed along the way leading to the platform from which the train for Bankleigh starts. The door was shut against him. The train had not yet started, but the time was up. The next train did not go till evening, which meant getting into a small unknown town long past midnight, a thing no one cares to do, particularly when he does not know even the name of a hotel or the hotel in it.
The gate was closed against him. The man refused to open the gate. The gate was five feet high, and Cheyne about six. Cheyne raised his hatbox and portmanteau over the barrier and let them fall. The man inside thought the traveller merely wished to get rid of the trouble of carrying his luggage any longer. Instantly Cheyne stepped on the lowest cross-rail of the gate, bent his chest over the top-rail of the gate, seized the ticket-taker by the leather waist-belt, and lifted him slowly over the gate. When he had deposited the ticket-taker safely on the ground he thrust half-a-crown into the man's hand, vaulted the gate, and taking up his portmanteau and hatbox, ran for a seat, and succeeded in scrambling into a carriage just as the train was in motion, and before the astonished but grateful ticket-taker could climb over the gate and regain the platform. Two or three of the porters had seen the feat, but it was not their duty to interfere. One of the guards saw it also; but having been, when younger, something of an athlete, and admiring the way in which the thing had been done, affected not to have seen it, and absolutely held the carriage-door open for Cheyne when he was getting in.
At the first station where the train stopped, the guard who had seen Cheyne lift the man over the gate, thrust his head into Cheyne's compartment, there being no one else in it, and said:
"That was a very neat trick sir, very. It isn't often we see a thing like that nowadays, sir."
"Confound it!" thought Cheyne, "this fellow must have his tip too."
He put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket and drew out a coin.
The guard saw what the passenger was doing, drew back, and said:
"No, sir; nothing for me, sir, thank you. It's not often nowadays we see a trick like that done, and I'd give a trifle myself to see it done again. But 'tisn't everyone, or half everyone, could do it."
And he moved along the platform, shaking his head to himself with the intelligent approval of one who knows a good deal of the difficulties in the performance of the feat which he applauded.
The train took eight hours to get to Bankleigh, but at last it drew up at that station, and Cheyne alighted.
It was then dusk, and the traveller having learned there was only one place in the town or village which accommodated strangers, and that it was only a few hundred yards away, gave his portmanteau to a porter, and bade the man lead him to the Shropshire Arms.
Now on the local London lines of railway, where there was a chance of meeting a friend or acquaintance, Cheyne always travelled first class, the difference in the fares of the first and third being only a few pence. But when he went farther into the open country, where there was practically no chance of meeting anyone who would know him, and where the difference came to many shillings, he always travelled third class. This was the most important journey of his life. He, a gentleman, was about to call upon another gentleman, and demand satisfaction, and it would not do to travel in any way that did not befit the station of men of their class.
All the way down in the train the deadliness of his design had not been lessened. He would meet this man, he would tell this man who he was, and then he would challenge him. There should be no seconds and no doctor. If the Marquis declined pistols and swords, then Cheyne would try to kill him with his hands, his fists, his thumbs dug into his throat. It was not every man, it was not one in ten thousand, could have lifted that burly ticket-collector over that gate with the neat precision he had shown. He could have thrown that man headforemost twenty feet, and broken his neck against a wall.
Cheyne engaged the best room at The Shropshire Arms, and ordered supper. It was only meet that a man come upon such a mission should be housed and fed as became a man of blood.
It would have been quite impossible for Cheyne to indulge in the luxuries of first-class travelling and first-class hotel accommodation, only he was one who always lived within his means, and had by him, when starting from London, all the money he had got for the right of re-publication in three volumes of his novel "The Duke of Fenwick." The money would not last for ever, but it would keep him going comfortably for a month or six weeks.
Cheyne was not in the least superstitious; but he did look on it as an extraordinary coincidence that the money he had got for the book which had exasperated Lord Southwold, now enabled him to come down from London, and seek satisfaction for the affront which had been put upon his mother and himself.
He asked the waiter who served the supper, if his Grace the Duke of Southwold was at home.
"No, sir, I think not. His Grace the Duke and Lord Southwold-that is, you know, sir, his lordship's only son and heir-"
"Yes, yes, I know."
"Well, sir, the two of them are gone to sea in his Grace's yacht, the Seabird, a couple, ay, or maybe three, days ago."
"And where have they sailed for?"
"Nowhere, sir."
"Why, what do you mean?"
"They never sails for nowhere, sir, great folks like them; and they never go nowhere, just as a man might walk out into the middle of a grass field and come back whistling no tune, nor bringing no daisy nor buttercup, nor as much as cutting a switch for himself in the hedge. I have never been to sea, sir, never. Where's the good of going to sea? But I've seen my share of salt water in my time, and all I ever saw of it was as like as two pea's, ay, liker; for some of the green peas is yellow, and some of the yellow peas is green. But all the sea-water I ever saw was the same in colour and smell and beastliness of taste and disposition, only fit for sharks and alligators and sorts like them. And not a single useful fish would be in the sea but would be poisoned by the beastly sea-water, only for the sweet waters of the rivers running into the sea and cheering up the fishes, poor souls, like a pint of cold bitter after a long walk of a hot day."
"And when do you think the yacht will come back?"
"There's no telling that, not unless you was a prophet. Even the sporting prophets knows nothing about it; for his grace has no dealings with dogs or horses, no more than the miller's wife that's been dead this five year."
"Are they often long away-months?"
"No, sir, not often months. But they are often away a tidy bit. It's like hanging a leg of mutton Christmas-time; it mostly depends on the weather whether the leg will ripen by Christmas-day, or will ripen too soon, or won't be ripe enough."
"And is it the bad or the good weather that brings them home?"
"Well, sir, seeing that this house is built on the Duke's property and called after the Duke, and that the landlord, sir, holds it by lease under the Duke, it wouldn't be becoming in me or anyone else of us to call it bad weather that brings the Duke back to us; but I'm free to say it isn't the kind of weather that everybody would order if he was going on a desolate island and wanted to enjoy himself on the sly away from the old woman. We call it the Duke's wind here; for if he's afloat it brings him home, and that's the only good it ever brings, but the doctors and the coffin-makers and grave-diggers. Most people call it the nor'-east wind. You see his grace is over sixty now, and has got all his joints pretty well blocked up with rheumatism; and the minute the nor'-east sets in it screws him up, and they have to run for home. His lordship stops aboard the Seabird in the shelter of the bay, and his grace goes up to the Castle, and never goes out of his warm rooms at the back of the Castle, farthest away from the nor'-east, until the wind changes."
"And how far is the castle from here?"
"About four mile, or maybe a trifle less. We like to think we're a trifle nearer to it than four miles. Anyway, we're sure of one thing-we're the nearest public-house or inn by a mile."
"There is no railway, I suppose, from here to Silverview?"
"Railway! Railway! Why, it's my belief his grace would rather have a row of public-houses opposite the Castle gate, and the courtyard made into a bowling-green with green wooden boxes all round for refreshments, rather than see the snout of a railway-engine within a mile of his place."
"Then I shall walk over to the place and have a look at to-morrow morning," thought Cheyne, as he strolled out into the porch to smoke a couple of cigars before going to bed.
But he did not smoke even half one of his cigars there. The air had grown suddenly chilly, nay, downright cold. So he left the porch and went into the cosy little bar, where there was a fire for boiling water for those who liked a drop of something hot.
Here were half-a-dozen men smoking and chatting and drinking. As he entered, all were silent.
"Turned quite cold, sir," said the host, who was sitting at a table with the rest.
"Yes, indeed," said Cheyne, taking a chair. "I thought I would smoke in the porch, but it was too cold to sit there."
"Ah," said the landlord, "I think we're in for a stinging nor'-easter-the Duke's weather, as we call it hereabouts, sir."
"Do you think so?" said Cheyne.
"Ay, no doubt of it."
"Then," thought Cheyne, "I shall not have long to wait."
CHAPTER XII.
THE DUKE'S WEATHER
That night Cheyne slept heavily. The journey and the change of air had helped to deepen his slumbers. Then there had been the exhausting excitement of the day he had just passed. It was near nine o'clock when he opened his eyes. For awhile he lay awake, unable to recall the events which had brought him to this strange place.
"The sea," he thought-"is that the rolling of the sea? Have I gone to Brighton or to Margate in my sleep?"
He jumped out of bed, and approached the window. Before he had crossed the floor he remembered all. This was Bankleigh, whither he had come for the purpose of settling affairs with the Marquis of Southwold, and this roaring sound abroad was not the beating of the sea upon the shore, but the headlong flight of the wind across the land.
How did the wind blow?
He pulled up the blind, and looked out. The wind beat at an acute angle against his window; but as he did not know how the house faced, he could not tell from what quarter the wind blew. He rang the bell.
When the waiter entered, he asked abruptly:
"How's the wind?"
"Regular Duke's weather, sir. Your boots and the hot water, sir. It has been blowing a gale all night, sir. A gale, sir, it would take soda-water bottles to hold. You couldn't bottle a gale like that in any of your flimsy fifteenpenny claret bottles. Schwepps himself might be proud of a gale like that. Some of the early customers that came in this morning says that the sea is awful, and that many's the tree there's down here and there along the road. Duke's weather all out."
"And you think there is a likelihood the Duke's yacht will be in soon."
"She will, sir, as sure as country eggs are eggs, which they mostly are, sir. But town eggs, sir, especially them at thirteen for a shilling, are very often not eggs at all, but young chickens which hadn't the heart to face life. Talking about eggs, sir, reminds me to ask what you would like for breakfast. I never could make out, sir, why we should eat eggs more in the morning than any other time of the day, unless it may be that we are vexed with the whole breed and generation of fowl by being woke up at first light by cocks crowing, and then, when we see an egg, we revenge ourselves."
Cheyne gave the necessary order for breakfast, and dismissed the talkative waiter.
The wind had not fallen. It was blowing a full gale from the north-east. The landscape, which yesterday had been flushed with the mellow green of early summer, now looked cold and bleak and dispiriting. The trees bent in the blast, and showed the dry faded green of their underleaf to the ashen sky. The grass and corn lay flat and quivering like a muddy green lake. The clouds were low and long, stretching in great jagged strips up into the wind, down into the lee. Birds were silent, and rarely left shelter. Everything was parched and gritty. All the life had gone out of the scene, all Nature looked barren, forlorn.
Cheyne dressed himself with deliberation and care. The yacht might come in to-day, and she might not. It was well to be prepared. When she did come in, he would lose no time in going aboard. He should go aboard, ask for the Marquis of Southwold, tell the Marquis he had something of importance to say which should be said to him alone. When they were alone, he should lock the door, and say what he had to say-do what he had to do. He should not be very long in coming to the point, once he found himself face to face with this cowardly nobleman. Nothing should move him from his resolution of wiping out, in blood, the deadly insult of that letter. When the good name of a man's mother was called in question, and when, at the same time, a man's own honour had been assailed, no one but a mean dastard could for a moment hesitate as to the course one ought to pursue.
No doubt Lord Southwold would refuse to fight. In all likelihood he would refuse pistols or swords. Then he should tell this arrogant liar that they should fight as they stood, armed with only manhood against manhood.
If, again, this lying miscreant refused, he should strike him, with his open hand, across the face. If this son of seven dukes did not respond to this, he would tell him, in plain words, what he was going to do. Then he should seize him and crush the vile breath out of his body, as sure as that they both owed their breath and their bodies and their manhood to the one great Maker.
