The Twickenham Peerage Part 60

'You flatter me.'

'I intend to do no such thing. I say that there are many excellent people who, recognising your intention, will be content, and proud, to take you for what you are in the present, and intend in the future to be.'

'Where are those persons to be found?'

'Wherever men and women are gathered together.'

'Let us come to the concrete. Would you suggest, for instance, that I should go to a residential hotel at one of our English watering-places, where sociability is made a feature of the prospectus, and where respectable mothers are to be found with respectable daughters?'

'Your lords.h.i.+p might do worse.'

'You think that at a place of the kind no questions would be asked, and I should be made welcome.'

'I recognise the bitterness of your lords.h.i.+p's humour, but am convinced that under such circ.u.mstances you might find more happiness than you may be disposed to believe.'

'Suppose they find me out?'

'Let me tell you one thing, old bachelor though I am. If you win a woman's love she'll forgive you much, especially those things you did before you knew her. It should not be difficult for your lords.h.i.+p to win such love as that.'

It was the wisest thing the old gentleman had said. It made me think.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE GOING: AND THE COMING

I may mention, incidentally, that I had resolved to act on Foster's advice before he offered it. Only, with a difference. I contemplated seeking a new environment, in a sense which he had not suggested. The Marquis of Twickenham was going on another little excursion, which might endure for another fifteen years, or perhaps for ever.

To be plain, the game was hardly good enough. I was unable, even after mature consideration, to explain to myself exactly what it was I proposed to gain by a.s.suming brevet rank, with the attendant collaterals, but whatever it was I hadn't got it. That was a dead-sure thing. I hadn't even got the fun of the fair. The joke fell flat.

About the business there wasn't even a flavour of adventure. No spice at all. I had walked into the house as through my own front door, and from the first moment no one had said me nay. The excitement wasn't worth a tinker's curse.

All I had gained was a blackguard's name and his unspeakable reputation, a property which no decent creature would approach while I was near, and a s.h.i.+pload of money for which, under existing circ.u.mstances, I had no use whatever. As it happens, my tastes are simple. I like plain food, well cooked, and sound whisky. Those things don't cost much. In the matter of personal adornment I'm not taking anything. I'm not a tailor's block, and as for jewellery, I never wore even a finger ring or a scarf pin--and never will. I've a respectful admiration for the gentleman who plasters his money on his person, but as a general rule I find that I prefer to look at him from the other side of the room. I like a horse, and I'd always have good cattle. But riding alone's no fun, and from driving with a groom for constant company, the Lord preserve us! I've a pretty straight eye along the barrel of a gun: but who wants to go shooting in one's own society?

I've a taste for the sea, but a yacht with only the crew aboard is dull o'nights. There's no one round who's fonder of a gamble, but I do bar sitting down with a job lot of men all with their eyes skinned to notice when you first begin to cheat.

No; if I was to do these things I'd do them as the Marquis of Twickenham should, or not at all. I'd be courted: I'd not court. I'd not descend into the gutter to be hail-fellow-well-met with those to whom my rank and fortune were everything, and who'd be willing, to my face--I'd never dare to turn it away for fear of what they'd say behind my back--to excuse my character on their account. My peers or nothing; and they, at least, on equal ground. My Lord of Twickenham was a great man; if he wasn't, he was nothing. As for living things down, I hadn't the time to spare. I'd be dead before I was a hundred years older; and, anyhow, it wasn't good enough.

It got borne in on me more and more, as I continued to reside in that atmosphere of undignified dignity, that there was something that was good enough, and that was just across the road. Mary and the kids. I had only seen her that once, and I was starving for another sight. I wasn't surrounded by trusting friends; and slipping from Twickenham House to Little Olive Street and back again was a trick which might be played once too often. If it was, Mary would find me out. And then-- I'd be a Marquis of Twickenham to her. The Lord forbid!

I had thought of a better way. The Marquis of Twickenham had placed where he knew he'd always be able to find it a nice little sum of money. I don't want to overload this part with details, so I won't say just how much. It was enough. The interest would enable Mr. and Mrs.

Merrett to live the rest of their lives in something more than comfort. Mary would think herself rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

G.o.d bless the girl!

The Marquis of Twickenham would just go out one morning, and Mr. James Merrett would come home. This time for good. He'd announce that he had had enough of leaving wife and children, and that he had therefore resolved in future, wherever he went, to take them with him. I guessed that Mary would be pleased. So Little Olive Street would soon be a thing of the past, and presently a united family would be found in quite another quarter.

It was a pretty programme, and I was bent on carrying it out. Foster's notion of a new environment wasn't bad, but I was vain enough to think that mine was better. I was going to learn from the best of all teachers, experience, what being married to the woman you're in love with really means. I didn't unduly hurry, but I lost no time. I made all the arrangements I could think of; then I looked at them once or twice all round, to see that they were made. It seemed to me they were.

Then one evening his lords.h.i.+p stepped out of Twickenham House into St.

James's Square, bent on taking another excursion of some length. I had said nothing to any one in the house. The servants did not even know that I was going out. My goings and comings had nothing to do with them. My notion was that I would send Foster, say, from Paris, a letter containing no address. In it I would inform him that I was about to act upon his hint, and seek a fresh environment. How long the search would continue I could not say. Therefore I should be obliged if he would see that during my absence certain arrangements, which I would name, were carried out, so that my affectionate brother might not think it necessary to have me buried by proxy a second time.

I was conscious as I left the house that it was a clear and pleasant evening, and that the sky was peopled with many stars. At the foot of the steps I paused and looked about me. It was not my intention to go straight to Little Olive Street, but to spend that night, and probably the following day, in transacting certain little business matters of my own. As I stood there, my feelings were those of the boy who quits, for ever, a hated school. A whimsical mood came over me. Wheeling round, I shook my fist at the door, which had just been closed.

'I hope I'll never come through you again. The Marquis slips his skin!'

Turning, I moved along the pavement. I hadn't gone a dozen yards when I came upon a man who advanced from the direction in which I was going. At sight, each, on the instant, recognised the other. We both stopped dead.

It was my double--the man with a tongue whom I had seem at M'Croskay's in San Francisco. His lords.h.i.+p's very own self. Simon Pure.

BOOK IV.--THE SINNER

THE AUTHOR THROWS LIGHT UPON AN INTERESTING SITUATION

CHAPTER XXIX

BACK TO THE WORLD

The monks were working in the garden. A little apart, a man, whose costume suggested that he had not yet taken the full monastic vows, was going over a patch of ground with a rake. The patch was on a slope. Here and there were currant-bushes. The rake loosened the soil which was between them. Presently the man came to a piece of printed paper, which apparently had been carried by the wind till it found lodgment against a bush. He picked it up. It was part of a page of an English newspaper, left, probably, by some sight-seeing Englishman, who, mindful of the things which in that part of the world one ought to do, had tasted of the monastic hospitality. The finder, glancing at what he held, was about to crumple it up and throw it from him, when his eye was caught by the heading of a paragraph--'Death of the Marquis of Twickenham.'

When he perceived the words, for a moment his purpose was postponed.

He stared as if they conveyed to his mind something which filled him with amazement. Then, remembering where he was, and looking about him to see if he was observed, he crushed the piece of paper into a pellet, which he placed within his ca.s.sock. Then he continued to rake as if nothing had happened.

Presently the workers retired to their cells to prepare for vespers; the monks first, the man with the rake at a respectful distance in the rear. As soon as he was in his cell, and had closed the door, out came the sc.r.a.p of paper. He scanned what followed the heading which had caught his eye with a show of eagerness which was distinctly uncanonical. It was a brief statement to the effect that Leonard, third Marquis of Twickenham, had died of congenital disease of the heart on the preceding afternoon, at Cortin's Hotel, in the presence of various members of his family; and was apparently going on to give further particulars when the paper stopped short. It had been torn in such a way that only the first three or four lines of that particular paragraph remained. These the man read over and over again, as if desirous of extracting from them the last shred of their significance.

'Died!--died!--died!--What does it mean?' He turned the piece of paper over and over in his hands. 'There's nothing to show from what journal it comes, but--I think--it's from one of the dailies. And nothing to show the date. It isn't new. It's come from England; and looks as if out in the garden there it had been buffeted by wind and rain. I wonder how old it is; and what it means by saying that I died in the presence of members of my family.'

He went down with the monks to vespers, occupied his usual place below the board at supper, joined the fraternity in saying compline, then retraced his steps towards the straw pallet on which he was supposed to rest.

A few minutes afterwards he was standing in the presence of the Father Superior. Without a word of introduction he laid upon the table at which the Prior sat the sc.r.a.p of paper which he had found beneath the currant-bush. The monk glanced from it to his visitor.

'What is this, my son?'

'If you will look at that paper, father, you will see.'

They had spoken in French; but that the Prior understood English was made clear by the evident ease with which he read the printed extract.

As his visitor had done, he gave it a second and a third perusal.

Looking down, he drummed with his fingertips upon the board. Then, glancing up at the Englishman, he addressed him in his own language.

'Where did you get this?'

Its finder explained.