The Twickenham Peerage

'Reggie, stop. I'll speak to you when we're alone. I have not your capacity for forgetting that we are brothers.' I turned to Fitz. 'The other day, sir, I presented you with the key of the street. Why are you here again?'

Reggie answered.

'He came with me.'

'Allow the man to speak for himself. Why are you here?'

Straightway Fitz began to fidget; and, also, to stammer.

'The plain truth is, sir, I mean, my lord, that the likeness is so striking that-'

'Well?'

For Fitz had stopped. When he continued he went off at a tangent-

'Of course I wasn't acquainted with what I've just now heard, or I should have known that your lordship couldn't possibly be the-the man I thought you were. But at the same time-'

'Well?'

For Fitz had stopped again.

'The fact is, my lord, I've become liable for Mr. Babbacombe in certain directions, and his disappearance puts me in a hole.'

'Well?'

'He went home to his wife the other day-'

'His wife?'

'Yes, my lord, his wife; without saying where he had come from, or where he was going to, or without mentioning a word about the liabilities I had entered into on his behalf. So I-I-I-'

Fitz stopped short in a stutterer's quagmire. I perceived that next time Mr. Merrett went home, Mr. FitzHoward's difficulties would have to be attended to.

'Well? Continue, sir, if you please.'

'My lord, after what has transpired all that remains for me to do is to apologise to your lordship for my intrusion, and to assure your lordship that it shan't occur again. So, begging your lordship's pardon, I wish you, my lord, good day.'

Fitz withdrew. I wondered what would be his mental condition when he found himself in the street. I rang the bell, pointing, when a footman appeared, to Mr. Smith, who sat crumpled up on a chair, as if his backbone was broken.

'Throw that thing into the street.'

As I had expected, Reggie interposed with an air of shocked surprise.

'Twickenham!' He moved towards his invertebrate friend. 'Come, Douglas, let me give you my arm.'

I struck in.

'Reggie, if you allow that man to touch you, you will go with him out of this house, and I will never speak to you again. More! By to-morrow morning he shall be standing in a felon's dock.' I fancy it was because, in spite of himself, my dear brother was influenced by what he saw upon my face, that he refrained from pressing on the other his friendly offices. I turned again to the footman. 'Do you hear what I say? Throw that thing into the street.'

Mr. Smith saved himself from that crowning humiliation-the pressing persuasion of a servant's hand. He got upon his feet.

'I can take myself away.'

He did. As he shuffled towards the door I pushed his shoulder, so that he stumbled into the footman's arms. As he cast a backward glance at me I was reminded of a humorous picture I had seen somewhere, representing St. Peter hurling a lost soul through the gates of Paradise. One could not but feel that the Hon. Douglas Howarth had brought his wares to an uncommonly bad market. Reggie moved as if to offer him assistance; but I stood in his way so that he could not pass.

When we were alone I endeavoured to explain to Reggie what was the kind of brother with whom Providence had blessed him.

'There are men who are content to let their brothers live as long as they conveniently can. You belong to the other class. Foster informs me that for years you have been assuring him that the time had really come for you to pick my bones. I can understand your disappointment at finding that, after assisting at my death and burial, I still persist in remaining alive. But I beg you, for your own sake, not to allow your disappointment to carry you too far. For I assure you that if it comes to my knowledge that you ever again attempt, by word, look, or sign, to associate me with the accomplice of that scoundrel's villainy, although I am your brother, I will chastise you physically, and I will take steps to publicly brand you as the blackguard I shall know you are.'

'Your threats are unnecessary. You speak as if I were to blame for what has happened. I deny it wholly.'

'Explain yourself-with care.'

'Look at the way in which you have treated me, You had no right to leave me for fifteen years in ignorance of whether you were dead or alive.'

'Is that your reason for confounding me with this man Babbacombe?'

'The man's your living image.'

'Is that your reason?'

'I say it is a reason; if you saw the man yourself, you'd know it was a reason.'

'I begin to perceive your point. You were of opinion that I could be that sort of man; an accidental resemblance convinced you that I was. I am obliged to you. I will instruct Foster to see that a sum of five thousand pounds is paid to you annually, and Gayer that you are not to enter this house again. I shall refuse to acknowledge you when we meet; nor will I stay in any room in which you are. Now go.'

'I am sorry that you should take this tone. If I have done you an injustice it has been unintentionally.'

'Go.'

'I am going. I only wished to apologise to you before I went. That's all.'

And my affectionate brother followed his friends.

CHAPTER XXVII

A WHIPPING BOY

I had won all along the line. But I wasn't exhilarated. Fighting's fun; and in a certain kind of row I'm happiest. I can lay my hand on my heart and say I believe that I was born a fighting man. A forlorn hope and a smile to my mind go together. And it's when I'm facing fearful odds, not for the ashes of my fathers and the temples of my gods, but for amusement only, that I'm surest I'm alive.

Yet when those gentlemen retired one after the other, leaving me in possession of the field, I couldn't have bet sixpence that a glass of brandy wouldn't have acted as a pick-me-up. And when a man's reduced to alcoholic bracers there's something ails him somewhere.

The scrap with Acrodato was good business, and the capture of his lordship's pen-slip was an unmitigated joy. Bluff; all bluff. An apt example of how conscience can knock out the toughest subjects. I had had reason to suspect the worst in that business down at Birmingham, but I had never got beyond suspicion. The accessories were invention-pure invention. If he had compelled me to produce that statement, or the other trifles of which I had so boldly boasted, I should have had to plead that a thief had broken in to steal; or that they had got themselves mislaid.

Therefore the capture of that bill was a pure delight.

What worried me was the character of the man whose shoes I occupied. In San Francisco I realised that he was trash, but only in the halls of his fathers did it come home to me what trash he was. He couldn't have been long in the world when he concluded to travel, but he had been long enough to make his name, even after the lapse of fifteen years, stink in men's nostrils. Yes; and women's. It was hard that that man's reputation should be mine. It was because he was that kind of man that people-including my own brother-were so ready to conclude that I was Mr. Babbacombe-perceiving that the trick he had played was quite in keeping with his lordship's character. Figuring as the Marquis of Twickenham wasn't the soft snap I had hoped.

I felt that there wasn't a man or woman in the house, from old Gayer downward, who didn't despise me; who couldn't tell some pretty tale to my discredit. Foster regarded me as a mixture of clumsy rogue and cowardly fool. When I gave him to understand that that was not a point of view which I appreciated, although he gave no outward and visible smile, I knew that at the bottom of his heart he smiled. I could have kicked the man. But then if I had once started I should have had to kick so many.

As the days went on the Twickenham romance was in all the papers. Some of them made it quite a feature. I wished to goodness they wouldn't. They showed how the Marquis had returned-after his family had supposed that he was dead, and had actually buried some one else instead of him. I'm not thin-skinned, but some of their comments made me squirm. The Head of the House of Twickenham could not occupy his proper place in the public eye, while the papers were suffered to print such things of him.

One morning I took a bundle of them down to Foster.

'Have you seen these papers?' I inquired.

'I've seen some of them.'

'Isn't it nice reading?'

'If I were your lordship I should pay no attention to what appears in the public prints.'

'Not when they leave me without a shred of character?'

'Your lordship's return is still a novelty. They may continue to make copy of it for a time. Presently they will cease to speak of you at all.'

'You have a pleasant way of putting things! Then, until they do choose to treat me with silent contempt, I'm to allow them to say that I cheat at cards, that I don't pay my debts, that I'm an evil liver of the lowest type, and, in fact, an all-round beast and blackguard.'

Foster eyed me with a curiosity which was distinctly the reverse of flattering.

'Your lordship will permit me to speak with that frankness which alone can be of service?'

'My good man, be as frank as you choose.'

'Your lordship has surely not forgotten that there were incidents in your youthful career which did not redound to the credit of your character.'

'But when it comes to stating that I was kicked-literally kicked! – down the steps of a club for cheating at cards!'

'It is not a savoury subject, but is that not what happened? I am not aware that your lordship offered any contradiction at the time, although a signed statement of what occurred was posted on the notice board of the club in question. If your lordship will take my very serious advice, you will endeavour to live down the recollection of these things, and not, by legal or other action, drag them into the public eye.'

How I writhed when I left my counsellor's presence. This was indeed to be a whipping boy. Also this was the result of not being a student of the British peerage. If I had known what kind of an ornament to it his lordship really was, I rather fancy the Marquis would have stayed away. That I am a sinner, the saints know well. I'll not say that I'd be aught else if I had the choice. But this man appeared to have committed all the sins for which I've no stomach. He was, before all else, an unmanly man. Nothing mean, it seemed, he had left undone. In none of his misdoings had he shown a spark of courage. Nor, so far as I could learn, had he once remained to face the music. He had lied and cheated, in all sorts of dirty fashions, blubbered and run away.

That was a nice character for a man who ever from his youth upward had been a fighter to find himself possessed of. I did wish he had been a sinner on some other lines. There are offences which a man, having committed, may, as Foster suggested, live down. But none of them seemed to have come his lordship's way. He had done the unforgivable, and unforgettable, things-the things whose memory load a man with ignominy long after he has rotted in his grave. One might as well talk of flying as of living them down. Even though he attained to the years of Methuselah, to the last hour of his life he'd be a pariah. Perhaps, after all, his lordship had done the wisest thing in going away. It was I who had been a fool in coming back.

The Marquis of Twickenham was a frost. The accidents of his position only made that fact the more notorious. Though he had a million in ready money, so huge a rent roll, lands and houses, decent folks would have none of him. It was not necessary for me to have become such a mangy knave if I desired to hobnob with the other sort. Not a clean-smelling soul came near. But I had visits from various representatives of the scum of the earth, who thought, even after fifteen years, that they had a pull on me. Lord! how I enlightened them. They all, with one accord, were struck by certain developments in his lordship's character.

But I hadn't done this thing to convert the riff-raff, nor with any intention of conveying to their benighted intelligence the elementary fact that there's no fool like a certain kind of knave. I wasn't happy.

Better Mary, and the kids, and Little Olive Street, a hundred thousand times than this. The joke was when Foster, who saw how the shoe pinched, suggested I should marry. I thanked him kindly, and asked him, since he had gone so far, if he'd go a little further and name a lady.

'For instance, have you a daughter of your own?'

'My lord, I remain a bachelor.'

'Then who has a daughter, or a sister, who you think would suit?'

'Undoubtedly there are many such.'

'Of my own degree?'

'There are good women of all degrees.'

'Meaning that the good women of my own degree would probably decline.'

'My lord, if you will allow me to say so, I think you take too pessimistic a view of your own position. At first I thought your point of view too optimistic. Now you appear to have gone to the other extreme.'

'I didn't know then what I know now.'

'I don't understand.'

'Possibly not. You think me too pessimistic. Go on.'

'For one who has lived such a youth as your lordship it seems to me that one very desirable course is open.'

'Suicide?'

'No, my lord, not suicide.'

'Murder? To be of the slightest service it would have to be on a wholesale scale.'

'The course I would advise would be a new environment.'

'Meaning?'

'Let the past be past. Treat it as a closed book not to be reopened. Cut it adrift. And let your lordship seek fresh acquaintances, and fresh associations.'

'Without, I presume, making any reference to the contents of that Bluebeard's Chamber, and hoping to goodness that no one else will either.'

'There are, I am thankful to know, a large number of excellent people-excellent in every sense-who, whatever your past may have been, perceiving that it is your present intention to become a worthy member of society-'

'Who says it is?'

'I am not so dull as not to perceive that such is your intention; and I do so with the most heart-felt satisfaction.'

'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 lordship 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 lordship's humour, but am convinced that under such circumstances 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 lordship 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 assuming 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 shipload of money for which, under existing circumstances, 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. God 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 lordship 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 lordship'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 cassock. 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 scrap 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.'