Loe raamatut: «The Twickenham Peerage»

BOOK I. – THE SLEEPING MAN
THE STORY IS BEGUN BY THE HON.
DOUGLAS HOWARTH

CHAPTER I
A SIDE SHOW

'You and I can never marry.'

Edith's words had been in my thoughts ever since she had uttered them. All night; all the morning; now that in the afternoon I had come out to take the air. I was strolling from the club to George Douglas's rooms in Ashley Gardens. More for the sake of the exercise than in the desire of seeing him. As I was passing the Abbey I glanced at the Aquarium on my right. My eye was caught by the words on a board which ran right across the front of the building, 'At No Place In The World Can So Many Sights Be Seen.' I hesitated. It was years since I had been in the place. One might as well spend half an hour beneath its roof as with George Douglas. I crossed the road and entered.

The first thing which struck me was the general grimness of everything. A winter garden it was called. Anything less garden-like one could hardly fancy. Coming from the clear sunshine of the autumn afternoon, the effect was curious. There was a larger audience than I had expected. The people were gathered, for the most part, round the central stage, on which a performance was taking place. Three girls in tights were displaying themselves on a trapeze. A moment's glance was enough. It was the sort of thing one has seen a thousand times. I passed on.

There were numerous side shows. There was a Harem; a Giant Lady; a Miraculous Dwarf; a Working Gold Mine; a Palace of Mirrors; the old familiar things. On the extreme left a huge placard was displayed:

THE MARVELLOUS SLEEPING MAN

THIS IS THE TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY OF MONTAGU BABBACOMBE'S THIRTY-DAYS' SLEEP, WITHOUT EATING OR DRINKING

COME AND SEE THE MOST WONDERFUL SIGHT IN THE WORLD

I am not consciously attracted by such spectacles, even granting their genuineness-which is to grant a good deal. But, at the moment, I had nothing to do, and the idea of a man being able to forget, at will, for thirty consecutive days, the worries and troubles of life appealed to me with singular force. I went to see the sleeping man.

In the centre of a good-sized apartment stood a table. It was entirely covered by a large glass case. Under the case was a mattress. On the mattress lay a man. He had no pillows or bolster; no bedclothes with which to cover himself; and the fact that he was clad, so far as one could see, only in a suit of white linen pyjamas lent him, as one first caught sight of him on coming in, an appearance of peculiar uncanniness. One's first impression was that under the glass case was an effigy, not a man.

If it was a trick, it was certainly well done. He lay on his back, his legs stretched out, his arms gathered to his sides. In his attitude there was a starkness, a rigidity, which suggested death. It seemed incredible that a man could lie like that for twenty-eight days and be alive. This was borne in upon me so soon as I saw the peculiar position of his body. Then I saw his face.

It was Twickenham!

The shock was so overwhelming, that in a moment my whole physical organisation seemed at a standstill. I lost my balance. The whole place swam before me. I felt myself swaying to and fro. If I had not leaned against the glass case, I believe I should have fallen. In my whole life I had never before behaved so stupidly. A voice recalled me to myself.

'Take care there, sir! Do you want to break the glass? – or to knock the whole thing over?'

A person who seemed to have charge of the place addressed to me this, under the circumstances, not unnatural inquiry. I steadied myself as best I could. After a second or two I began to see things with something approaching to clearness. By degrees I got the man inside the case, as it were, in focus.

Was it Twickenham? I could not decide. It was fifteen years since I had seen him. As regards certain details my memory had possibly become a trifle blurred. Yet it was absurd to suppose that I could by any possibility fail to recognise him if we met. If it was not he, then it was his double. His very self, reproduced in another form.

Fifteen years make a difference in a man's appearance-especially fifteen such years as it might be taken for granted that Twickenham had lived. Allowing, in my mind's eye, for that difference, I became more and more at a loss to determine whether this was or was not the absentee. Never before had I been conscious of such a condition of mental bewilderment. I lost my presence of mind; was unable to arrange my thoughts; became incapable of deciding what to say or do. The situation was the very last I had expected. Coming at such a moment it found me wholly unprepared.

If this was Twickenham, this uncanny-looking mountebank in the guise of death, then the entire edifice we had been laboriously constructing for fifteen years crumbled at a touch. Edith's words, 'You and I can never marry,' would be indeed proved true. And Reggie and Vi-what of them? Where would Reggie be if his brother turned up at this hour of the day? And I? Reggie was my debtor to the extent of nearly every penny I had ever had. If he was not the Marquis, because Leonard still was in the flesh, then he and Vi, and I, were ruined. And Edith could never marry a pauper.

Down toppled our whole card edifice, never again to be rebuilt by us.

But the question was-was the man under the glass case, lying on the mattress, in the white pyjamas, Leonard Sherrington, third Marquis of Twickenham? The Twickenham peerage carried with it rather over than under a hundred thousand pounds a year. It might, therefore, on the face of it, seem absurd to suppose that its present holder could be found posing as the Marvellous Sleeping Man in a side show at the Westminster Aquarium. But that was only seeming. To those who had the honour of the present peer's acquaintance, such a state of affairs seemed about as likely as any other. Twickenham was born mad, and continued as he was born. His father was, if anything, madder than he was. They consistently, and persistently quarrelled. Some of the capers Leonard cut were a trifle high. The old man resented any one's cutting higher capers than he did. As Leonard spent money like water, his sire let him have as little to spend as he could help. The result was disastrous. Leonard got money in ways which suggested congenital insanity. Then there came the crash. When Leonard was thirty-one, it became known that Morris Acrodato held a bill for five and twenty thousand pounds to which he had forged his father's name. Leonard vanished. The old man declined to pay. Six months after he was dead. His wife had predeceased him. He left two sons-Leonard, and a second son, born seventeen years later, Reginald. Oddly enough, considering the terms on which he had lived with him, a will was found in which he left everything to his firstborn. Under these circumstances one wondered why he had not handed over that five and twenty thousand without a fuss. But both father and son were men who were, in all things, superior to the ordinary rules of common sense. The thing which every reasonable creature did, was the one thing they never did.

Nothing had been seen of Leonard since the day of his flight. Although it was not generally known, something had, however, been heard. On seven different occasions his lawyers, Foster, Charter, and Baynes, had received intimations that he was alive. He had dropped these hints, it would seem, in a spirit of pure 'cussedness.' They had come at varying intervals, from different parts of the world. They all took the form of holograph notes, in which the writer curtly observed that he was alive and in good health, and trusted that the firm was giving to his interests all the attention they required. They bore no address, and it proved impossible to trace by whom they had been posted; but that they were bona-fide emanations from Twickenham himself seemed undoubted.

The last of these notes had come to hand more than seven years back. Since then he had given no sign. As, previously, no two years had elapsed without advice being received of his existence, the continued silence seemed to suggest that, at last, he might be dead. That he was so, I, for one, devoutly hoped. All that I required was proof of his decease.

When the old man died, all that his second son, Reginald, had he inherited from his mother. It was barely enough to keep him alive. He was fourteen years of age. Soon after he was in the twenties he was as good as penniless. By this time I had become mixed up with his fortunes in rather a curious fashion. I had a sister, Violet, who was a year younger than he was. He had a cousin, Edith Desmond, who was four younger than myself. Violet and he, and Edith and I, belonged, as it were, to two different generations. I had a tiny place on the borders of Hants, which adjoined his aunt's. He lived with her when his father died; she was Lady Desmond, the baronet's widow. Edith and I always had a liking for one another. If my father had left me a little better off, or if Violet had been older, we should have been married years ago. But she was an only child; the most beautiful I ever saw. Her mother hoped, by her help, to restore the faded glories of the Desmonds. That meant that she was to marry money.

I was hardly in a position to marry at all, with Vi on my hands, regarding me as a sort of father. When Reggie came to live at the Moat House Vi and he became acquainted. In course of time I was informed that they were engaged. Almost in the same breath he told me that he was practically without a penny piece. I lent him something to go on with. Later I lent him more. Then again. And again. I did not like the business, but, partly for Edith's sake, partly for Vi's, partly for his own, by degrees I was practically financing him. Until it came to this-that I had invested in him, on the strength of Twickenham's death, nearly everything I had. As time went on he became convinced that his brother was dead. The brothers were practically strangers; Reggie had scarcely seen his senior a dozen times. There were enormous accumulations, amounting to over a million. If Reggie succeeded I should do well. Edith and I could be married to-morrow. If, on the other hand, Reggie did not succeed, and that soon, so far as I could see, he and I were ruined together.

And here, at the crucial moment, if I could trust my eyes, ruin was. It was not surprising that, momentarily, I became a trifle giddy.

Had the man stepped into a room in which I was, I should unhesitatingly have recognised him as Leonard, Marquis of Twickenham. There would have been no necessity for him to announce his name and title. I should have known him then and there. But, as matters stood, the case was altered. There was room for doubt. Or I tried to persuade myself there was. To begin with, a man with practically unlimited resources at his command, would hardly be likely to masquerade in such a fashion. That was what I told myself. At the bottom of my heart I was aware that it would be quite in keeping with what I myself knew of Leonard's character. He had never lost an opportunity of making an exhibition of himself, but always had an insane leaning in the direction of the esoteric and the bizarre.

I was on safer ground when I came to the questions of the likeness. There were points of difference between the two. This man looked a little shorter and thinner; smaller altogether; too old for Twickenham. Twickenham was only forty-six; his double looked sixty. Then he had a scar on his right cheek, which Twickenham had never had.

Still these things, I had perforce to admit, were quite reconcilable with the fact that the man was Twickenham. What alterations might not have taken place in such a fifteen years!

The exhibition was not liberally patronised. There had been two or three other spectators when I came in, but they had gone, and no others had taken their place. The duration of my visit, and the unmistakable interest which I took in the figure on the mattress, probably, also, the peculiar quality of my interest, attracted the attention of the individual in charge. This was the gentleman who had requested me not to lean against the glass case. He was a short, slight person, with red hair and moustache. He wore a frock coat and a hat which had seen better days, and had a trick of stroking his moustache with one of the dirtiest right hands I had ever seen; which, however, matched the voluminous shirt-cuff which protruded from the sleeve of his coat. I was conscious that for some seconds he had been eyeing me askance. Now he came sidling up-his dirty hand on his moustache.

'Wonderful man, sir.'

He alluded to the figure on the mattress.

'I suppose he really is asleep?'

'What do you think he is-dead?'

'He looks to me as if he were dead.'

'That's not surprising, considering that for eight-and-twenty days he's tasted neither bite nor sup.'

'Is that really the case?'

'Certainly. He hasn't had so much as a drop of water. The case is locked; the key is in possession of the manager of the Aquarium. Doctors are constantly in and out to see there's no collusion. You'll find their reports outside. It's will-power does it. He wills that he shall go to sleep for thirty days, and he goes to sleep for thirty days. To try to wake him up before the end of the thirty days, to give him, say, a glass of water, would probably cause his death.'

'That's very curious.'

'It's more than curious; it's the greatest marvel of the age.'

'And when does he wake?'

'At ten o'clock on Saturday evening next-in the presence of the manager and staff of the Aquarium, and a large representative body of distinguished medical gentlemen. It will be the sensation of the hour. Though we shall charge double prices for admission, the room won't hold the people.'

I wondered. At present there seemed a good deal of space to spare.

'What is his name?'

'Montagu Babbacombe-a name known all over the world.'

The little man eyed me sharply.

'I meant, what is his real name?'

'His real name? What do you mean? That is his real name.'

'How long have you known him?'

'May I ask, sir, what prompts you to put that inquiry to me?'

'I merely thought that Mr. Babbacombe resembles a person with whom I was once acquainted, and I wondered if he might be any relation of his; that is all.'

'Ah, as to that, I know nothing. I am only here to testify to Mr. Montagu Babbacombe's bona-fides as a sleeping man, and that I unhesitatingly do.'

I held out a sovereign between my finger and thumb.

'Can you give me Mr. Babbacombe's private address?'

'If my becoming the possessor of that coin is contingent on my doing what you require, then it can't be done. There's an etiquette in my profession which on me is binding.'

'Your sentiments do you credit, Mr. – '

'FitzHoward; Augustus FitzHoward is my name, sir. But I tell you what might be managed. If you're here on Saturday night when Mr. Babbacombe wakes, I might arrange to introduce you to him. But you will have to remember, sir, that Mr. Babbacombe is a public man, and that to him, as to me, time is money.'

'If I do come I shall not fail to bear it well in mind.' The coin changed hands. 'You will not forget me?'

'No, sir, I shall not. What name?'

'What name? You say yours is FitzHoward. Well, mine is Smith; John Smith.'

There was a twinkle in Mr. FitzHoward's eye which suggested that he was more of a humorist than might at first appear.

'Smith? An unusual name like that, sir, is not likely to escape my recollection. You may rely on me.'

Some other people entered, two women and two men. They were followed by still more. Mr. Augustus FitzHoward and I parted. I went out into the main building. One thing seemed tolerably certain: 'Montagu Babbacombe,' unless appearances were even more deceptive than usual, could hardly have been conscious of my recognition, if recognition it really was. On that point I had until Saturday night to think things over. Practically two clear days.

CHAPTER II
LADY DESMOND GIVES A DINNER PARTY

That Thursday evening I dined with Lady Desmond. The old lady had been in town since Monday; staying at some rooms which she favoured in Clarges Street. She had issued her commands to me to attend on her at dinner. Had it not been for the conversation which I had had with Edith the night before, I should have still been wondering what it meant. Edith, however, had made matters perfectly clear.

Reggie and I were both to be in attendance. We were both of us to receive our dismissal. I was to be finally informed that I could not marry Edith, he that he could not marry Vi. The dowager had made other arrangements of her own. I looked forward to their announcement with feelings which were a little mixed.

Vi came to me just as I was starting. I had made no secret of my engagement. She had not commented on it till then. I thought I had seldom seen her look better. She is a willowy slip of a girl, with about her that air of the thoroughbred which, nowadays, is as great a distinction as a woman can have. She was born to be a great lady; the Howarth women always have been: yet, with it all, she is just a girl. Her chief fault is a proneness to impetuous speech. But that is a quality of youth. She let fly at me at once.

'Douglas, why hasn't Lady Desmond invited me?'

'My dear Vi, how can I tell you?'

'I know. And so do you.'

'I assure you that I do not know why Lady Desmond has not invited you.'

'Then I'll tell you. She has not invited me because it is quite likely that she never means to invite me again. She intends to wash her hands of me entirely. I shouldn't be surprised if she cuts me dead. She wants Reggie to marry Mary Magruder.' I said nothing. This was clearly a case in which silence was golden. 'I have told him he may.'

'I should have expected you to do no less.'

'He says he won't.'

'As matters are likely to turn out, that is a pity.'

'Douglas! – What do you mean?'

'Reggie is in a bad way. I'm afraid that before long he'll be in a worse.'

'How about you? Don't you stand or fall together?'

'Just so. That is it. It's because my hours are numbered that I say it's a pity. If he were to marry Mary Magruder then you might marry her masculine equivalent. You know as well as I do that he is to be found.'

I was thinking of George Charteris. An extra shade of colour came into her cheeks, just to show she knew it.

'Douglas, are you trying to be humorous?'

'Not at all. My dear Vi, I'll be plain with you. I've reason to believe that before very long both Reggie and I may come a cropper. My very earnest advice to both of you is that you agree to treat the past as past, and try to retrieve your positions while there still is time.'

She eyed me; reading on my face that I meant what I said.

'You can tell Reggie from me that I think it would be better that he should marry Mary Magruder as soon as he possibly can. We all know that she's willing enough. You may add, if you like, that I will never marry him, if things are going to be as you say they are.'

'And you?'

'I shall never marry any one but him. Please, Douglas, don't worry me to do so. You know that is so. But then I'm not one of those girls to whom marriage is all in all.'

I knew that, if that was not a falsehood, it was at least an evasion of the truth; for I was aware that, to her, happiness meant being Reggie Sherrington's wife. She asked, as I was leaving the room.

'How about Edith?'

I was still, pretending that I had not heard. She had spoken softly, so that the pretence seemed plausible; though I was conscious that it was but seeming, for Vi reads me as if I were an open book. But I had not the courage to reply. Indeed, it was a question to which I had not yet found an answer. In that lay the sting. How about Edith? was what I kept asking myself all the time. Nor had I found a solution to the problem when I reached the door of Milady's lodgings.

Lady Desmond's taste is not in all things mine; particularly is that the case with her taste in lodgings. The rooms in Clarges Street are kept by an ancient man and woman who are, no doubt, worthy folk enough, but who are also stupid, slow, and behind the times. I was shown into what is called the drawing-room-a fusty apartment, the very atmosphere of which was synonymous with depression. My hostess rose to receive me; a little stiff, bony figure, dressed in old clothes, which were ill-fitting and old-fashioned when she first had them. It was an extraordinary thing, but I have never seen that woman in what looked like a new dress yet. I believe that when she buys things she stores them away, never putting them on till they are old-and rumpled. In her left hand she had a stick; she extended two fingers of her right to me by way of greeting.

Edith came towards me from the struggling fire in the dingy fireplace. God knows she is past her first beauty; but she will always be young to me. As I took her hand in mine I told myself, for the thousandth time, what a coward I was not to have made her my wife long ago. This is not a sentimental age, and I am not a sentimental man; but for her I would go through the fires of hell. Yet there we were, I an old bachelor, she a spinster yet. Marriage, nowadays, is surrounded with so many complications.

'Hollo, Douglas! Going strong? Isn't this place enough to give you the horrors?'

This was Reggie, who had preceded me. The final portion of his remark was whispered.

The dinner was in keeping with the rooms; badly chosen, badly cooked, badly served. No one ate anything; no one talked. One couldn't even drink; the wine was frightful. We sat there like mutes at our own funerals. For my part I was glad when the cloth was cleared; though I knew that a bad quarter of an hour was coming. It could scarcely be worse than what had gone before. The old lady fired the first shot.

'Edith, had you not better withdraw?'

'No, mother. I know what you are going to say, and, as I am as much interested in it as any one else, I should prefer to stop.'

My hostess wasted no time in argument or preamble; she came straight to the point.

'Mr. Howarth, I have asked you to come here in order to tell you that any sentimental understanding which may have existed between Edith and yourself is, henceforward, at an end.' I essayed to speak; she stopped me. 'I know what you are going to say. I've heard it over and over again. What I say is this. Edith is getting on. You certainly are no longer young; you are going both bald and grey. Financially, you are worse off than when I first knew you. Isn't that the case?'

'It is.'

'You have absolutely no prospects.'

Reggie struck in.

'O aunt, come! If he's hard up it's only because I owe him such a heap. There's no doubt whatever that Twickenham's dead. We only have to prove it to be both of us in clover.'

'Twickenham is not dead. During the last few nights I've seen him several times.'

'You've seen Twickenham?'

'In dreams. I could not quite make out where he was, but he was in some extraordinary situation, from which you will find that he will presently emerge. It is no use your counting on his death. He's alive. Twickenham is not the kind of man who dies easily.'

'I thought dreams went by contraries.'

'Not such dreams as I have had.' She turned to me with a question which took me aback. 'Don't you know that he's alive?'

'My dear Lady Desmond!'

'You do know that he's alive; and I know you know. I don't want any discussion; you will only fence and quibble. But I appeal to you as a man of honour not to stand in the way of Edith's happiness.'

'That I undertake at once not to do.'

'Mother, hadn't you better tell Douglas that you wish me to marry Colonel Foljambe, and that's your idea of my happiness?'

'Colonel Foljambe is a very worthy gentleman.'

'If he isn't now,' I said,' he never will be.'

'He's not much older than you are.'

That was monstrous. Foljambe had turned seventy. But I let her go on.

'Then there's Reggie and that sister of yours. Violet Howarth's a sensible girl. She can do very well for herself if she likes, and she knows that she never will do anything at all with Reggie. The probabilities are that when Twickenham does return, it will be with a wife and family at his heels.'

'Leaving that eventuality out of the question, I am instructed by Violet to say that Reggie is at perfect liberty to do as he likes. So far as she is concerned she is quite willing to consider the engagement at an end.'

'That's Vi all over. She'd cut off her hand and throw it into the fire if she thought it would do me good. But I don't happen to be taking any; and I'll go straight from here and tell her so. It's all nonsense about Twickenham's being alive; he's as dead as that is.'

He rapped his knuckle against the table. His aunt leant over the board.

'Reggie, he's alive. Miss Sandford is right.'

'Miss Sandford?'

'Miss Sandford sees things which we don't see, and she knows things which we don't know. But now I've seen things, and I know. And what's more, Mr. Howarth knows too.'

'Douglas, what does my aunt mean by saying that you know Twickenham's alive?'

'I have not the least conception.'

'Do you know?'

'I do not.'

'Have you any reason to suppose that he's alive?'

I hesitated. Whether it was or was not a lie which I told, I could not say.

'None whatever.'

'You see, aunt: there's his answer for you.'

'For reasons of his own, Mr. Howarth has chosen to conceal the truth. But he does know; and he knows I know.'

The old lady's persistence roused me.

'May I ask, Lady Desmond, on what grounds you base your assertion?'

'I am unable to tell you; on no grounds, if you like to put it that way. But you do know; and you know I know you know.'

I rose from my chair.

'In that case discussion would be fruitless. Since Lady Desmond's reasons are of such an extremely recondite nature it would be useless for me to attempt to probe for them. Let us understand each other before I go. Edith, is it to be with us as your mother desires?'

'Not with my goodwill. I certainly will never marry Colonel Foljambe.'

'Then you never shall be asked to. I will not give you up, nor shall you give me up; but you shall be my wife before the year is out.'

'Douglas!'

'I don't know how it is to come about, but it shall come about; I do know so much. All these years have been wasted, but they shall be made up for you before long. You shall be as happy a wife as a man can make you.'

'Douglas!'

She had her elbows on the table, and her face upon her hands.

'What nonsense is this?' demanded Lady Desmond. 'Haven't I said that I brought you here to tell you that I would have no more of it?'

'My dear Lady Desmond, I think you will admit that Edith and I have arrived at years of discretion?'

'You'll never do that if you live to be a hundred. You've ruined my life, and you've ruined hers. You've made her prematurely old. Look at her! Who would think, to see her now, that not long ago she was the most beautiful girl in England, and that she had only to lift her finger to have any man in England at her feet? She has no father or brother to protect her, or she'd have been rid of you long ago. But you've promised that you'll stand no longer in her way, and if you've a shred of manhood in you, you'll keep your word.'

I went round to where she sat.

'Edith, what am I to do?'

Getting up, she put her hands upon my shoulders.

'Marry me in what I stand up in; and take me to live with you in country lodgings.'

'You hear, Lady Desmond. Edith is going to be my wife.'

'Then she'll be no daughter of mine.'

'Excuse me,' cried Reggie, 'but it strikes me that I ought to have a word in this. You seem to forget, aunt, that if Douglas is in a hole, it's because of what he's done for me.'

'I forget nothing. If you choose to behave like a sensible person, you will be able to repay Mr. Howarth any moneys he may have advanced you, together with sufficient interest, within three months.'

'In other words, if I choose to behave like a blackguard, perjure myself all round, make myself and every one connected with me unhappy, I may be able to wheedle enough money out of the woman I've lied to to enable me to treat the best friend a man had as if he were a sixty per center. Then, when it does turn out that Twickenham's dead, where shall I be? Saddled with a wife I hate; more in love than ever with the girl I've treated badly; in the bad books of the man who has stuck to me closer than any brother I ever heard of. Thank you; I'm obliged. If Vi won't marry me, it won't be because I'm not willing. Do you know, aunt, I believe that you're a bad lot.'

'How dare you speak to me like that, sir?'

'I use the term in a Parliamentary sense only. Of course I know that as a matter of fact your goodness is established beyond all question. But you don't seem to realise what Vi is to me. If it weren't that I've been living on her brother I'd have made her marry me long ago; for, hang me if I wouldn't marry her on nothing rather than not marry her at all. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to bring it off the same day Douglas brings off his little event; especially if he can manage to make the date an early one.'

Reggie winked at me. I am afraid that his aunt perceived the movement of his eyelid. She rose with an air of extreme dudgeon.

'I will not say what I think of you all. It would only be a waste of good words. You have heard me give expression to my wishes. If you choose to act in opposition to them, you must do so. You have all arrived at what Mr. Howarth was pleased to call, I presume ironically, the age of discretion. Some of you got there a good many years ago. It only remains for me to wash my hands of any responsibility for what you may do, and, if I think it necessary, to decline your further acquaintance. Edith, are you coming with me?'

'Good-night,' I said to Edith as she turned to accompany her mother. 'I shall not see you again.'

'I shall hear from you?'

'You shall hear from me very soon. I will lose no time in making arrangements for our joint occupation of those country lodgings.'