Loe raamatut: «The Twickenham Peerage», lehekülg 18

'And is the presence of such an one incompatible with your ideas of freedom? My son, you'll be on your knees calling for me within a week.'

'At least-at least wait until I call.'

'In that case, take care lest you call in vain. Remember five years ago. If you become again what you were then, it will be for ever, and ever, and ever! You'll be but a voice perpetually calling out of hell.'

'My father, I-I am stronger than I was then.'

'We will hope it. Though I seem to hear the devil laughing. Now, my son, go!'

'Bless me, my father, before I go.'

'Yes, I will bless you. But be careful, O my son, lest, as Aaron's rod was transformed into a serpent, by your own action my blessing becomes a curse.'

His lordship knelt. The Prior blessed him. Then his lordship went to bed, though the straw pallet on which he cast himself could hardly, on that occasion at any rate, be described as a bed of rest.

CHAPTER XXX
THE ONE MAN-AND THE OTHER

There were peas in his lordship's shoes: unboiled.

For some time he had been arriving at the conclusion that he had no so whole-hearted a leaning towards the religious life as he had once imagined. The scrap of paper was the top brick; it crowned the edifice of his discontent. More, it supplied him with the necessary courage to confess his backsliding to his superior; that keen-sighted religious being perhaps better prepared for the confession than the penitent imagined. It is even possible that some expectation of the kind had always been part and parcel of the Prior's plans. The Marquis of Twickenham, who is at once a millionaire and a backboneless scamp, is not the kind of bird which often drops into the monastic draw-net, whether at home or abroad. When caught, he may be even more useful at the end of a piece of string than in a cell.

Which explains the ease with which his lordship regained what he fondly hoped would be his liberty. The truth being that persons of his type are never free; owing to their habit of mistaking licence for liberty placing them in continual bondage to some one or something.

There were peas in his lordship's shoes: unboiled. It is a fact that on the homeward way he proposed to treat himself, in Paris, to what he called a little amusement. Those peas spoilt all his pleasure. At the Moulin Rouge, while the ladies whirled their skirts and leered, and the music blared, the shadow of his monastic vigils obscured it all. Wherever he turned he saw the white Figure on the huge black cross, which had so often loomed down at him in the midnight darkness from over the altar in the chapel; against which, as the Prior said, in his frenzied fervour he had longed to dash his head. When, like a guilty thing, he stole from the unfestive revels he saw a priest standing on the pavement without; the sight of whom filled him with such unreasoning terror that he took to his heels and ran.

Luck had always been against him. Not all the evil he had done had been brought to light, but he was convinced that a most unfair proportion had been dragged into the noontide glare. The majority of men go with even their trivial peccadilloes undiscovered to the grave. In his case seven dirty things out of every ten he did were sure to get him into trouble. Did a man promise him a thrashing, dodge though he might, he was sure to light upon that man at the very moment when he least desired his presence. An instance of which aggravating species of misfortune occurred upon his homeward way.

Hardly had the boat left Boulogne harbour than he ran against a man to whom he had lost a bet-or two-which he had never paid. A bookmaker. There were three or four items outstanding against him in that particular book when the Viscount Sherrington-as his lordship then was-encountered its owner in the ring at Doncaster, and expressed a desire to once more back his fancy. The bookmaker would have none of him until the Viscount protested, with many oaths, that if he lost he would not only pay that particular bet, but all else he owed. But although he lost he did not pay. Whereupon the bookmaker took an early opportunity to inform him that wherever and whenever he met him he would favour him with his candid opinion of his character.

The average declaration of the kind is merely a figure of speech-or many gentlemen, who are now of the elect, would have to peep round every corner before they turned into a street. It was more than fifteen years since they had met, and during five of those years his lordship had been a penitent of quite exceptional strength. In the case of any other man there would probably have been a stare, a muttering beneath the breath, and then an end. But his lordship was not like any other man; his luck was his own. That bookmaker had a most aggressive memory, and he had been drinking. So when he perceived who it was who had all but trodden on his toe he addressed him much above a whisper.

'What, yer? Slippery?'

'Slippery' was the nickname by which his lordship had been known in certain circles once upon a time, but was not a style of address at all suited to a person of pronounced piety who had just emerged from prolonged cloistral seclusion.

Then and there, in the presence of quite a number of persons, that bookmaker gave utterance to his loud-voiced opinion of the man who had made that bet with him more than fifteen years before.

The Marquis set foot on his native soil with a distinct feeling of depression. If he was going, to have many encounters of that kind, better, after all, the religious life. In the cloister self-respect is an offence, and self-abasement the order of the day. It is different in the world. There men dislike to be kicked in public, nor do they even wish to have people informed that they deserve a kicking. In that respect, if in no other, his lordship was one of the crowd.

So, to raise his spirits, when he reached town he had a good dinner, and a large quantity of wine. The result, again, was neither what he expected nor desired. Seeking that feeling of conviviality which should follow a feast, he got indigestion instead. As he paid the reckoning he was painfully conscious that if the waiter would only include a couple of liver pills with the change he would do him a genuine service.

Hence he was hardly in a mood to make a triumphal return to the home of his fathers, particularly as that return was attended with circumstances which might be described as delicate. He had decided to put in an appearance at St. James's Square that very night. When he found himself in the street his resolution wavered. The glare and tumult bewildered him. He was more than half afraid of the kaleidoscopic crowd. When a man, who has crucified himself during a period extending over years, drops off his cross, he is hardly in a mood to appreciate at once London as it is at night. Besides, the place was strange. He saw changes on every hand; and when he had at last concluded to try and play the man, he had to ask his way to his own home. And then he lost himself upon the road.

He found himself, however, when he entered the sombre purlieus of St. James's Square. That was familiar ground. Wherever he had gone he had carried a picture of it in his brain. So far as he could see, for the place was more in shadow than in light, it was unchanged. He walked right round. As he went, a backwater from the past rushed over him, bearing him on its current to the days that were. He seemed to see himself once more a lad. With uncomfortable clarity of vision, he saw what kind of lad he was. He shuddered; and, as he neared his father's house, drew back ashamed. It was almost as if an invisible barrier had prevented his close approach. Round the square he went again. As, coming from the other direction, he approached Twickenham House a second time, he saw a man come through the door; a man who stood upon the pavement for a moment to shake his fist at the building which he had just quitted. Then, wheeling round upon his heels, he came smartly forward. As his lordship observed the approaching figure he was conscious of an odd sensation of amazement-of shock-as if he were staring at something which was not to be explained by the ordinary definitions which we use in our everyday experience, and which he more than half suspected was a trick played him by his eyes.

When they came close together the two men stopped short. Each regarded the other with surprise which, for a moment or two, was speechless. Then the newcomer spoke.

'You're me. What price San Francisco? How goes it, my Lord Marquis?'

There was an interval before the answer came. This took the form of an inquiry.

'What are you doing here?'

'Relinquishing the title. And you?'

'I'm returning home.'

Mr. Merrett whistled.

'Seems as if I might have known you were coming back from the husks and swine, my dropping on to you like this. Anyhow, you're welcome. You come along with me; I'll post you up to date.'

Mr. Merrett, slipping his hand through the other's arm, wheeled him right round. His lordship offered no remonstrance. Not even when, having entered a hansom which Mr. Merrett had hailed, that gentleman directed the cabman to drive to an address in the Euston Road. Scarcely a word was exchanged by the strange companions on the road. Possibly each found his attention fully occupied by a mental revision of this latest phase in the situation. The peer asked a single question as the vehicle stopped.

'What place is this?'

'This is Parkinson's Private Hotel; strictly temperance, and respectable to a fault.'

Mr. Merrett seemed well known in the establishment. He merely stopped to greet a matronly female who met them in the hall, then, leading the way upstairs, entered a spacious apartment on the first floor, which was furnished as a bed- and sitting-room. The gas was lighted; a bright fire burned in the grate. Mr. Merrett, locking the door, drew a heavy curtain in front of it.

'Now, my dear Double, you and I will have a little pleasant conversation.'

Their likeness to each other, as they stood face to face in the well-lighted room, was an illustration of what nature can do when she is in a freakish mood. In height, build, even in feature, there was so close a resemblance that it was not difficult to understand the ease with which either might be mistaken for the other. And yet in carriage and expression there was so marked a difference that, when seen together, it was the unlikeness rather than the likeness which struck one most. Ease of bearing, strength, decision, boldness, were as striking characteristics of the one man as they were wholly lacking in the other. Quickness, resource, courage, were unmistakably attributes of Mr. Merrett, just as plainly as hesitation, doubt, pliancy, were the distinguishing marks of the prodigal peer.

Mr. Merrett's quick eye summed up his lordship in a trice.

'You haven't changed. Those developments haven't taken place in your character which I've announced. It's a pity; so it is.'

'What do you mean?'

'It's to tell you what I mean that I've brought you here.'

Mr. Merrett told. As first one spoke, then the other, the same peculiarity was noticeable in their voices as in their persons. The unlikeness, with the likeness. The tone was the same; so that frequently any one, standing outside the door, for instance, would not have been able to say which of the twain was speaking. But Merrett spoke with an odd clearness, looking the person whom he addressed straight in the face; he had a trick of making his words convey their full natural meaning and more. The peer's utterance, on the other hand, was apt to be both rapid and indistinct; his glance continually wandered; one suspected, as one listened, that words coming from his mouth were both meaningless and valueless.

'And do you mean to tell me that you've been playing at being Marquis of Twickenham in my place?'

'I do. It hasn't been much of a game, but, as Marquis, I'm worth about a hundred and fifty thousand of you. That's the cold truth.'

'You don't lack assurance.'

'I do not. All I ask is to agree with you.'

'And you have the-the impudence to tell me that you've been making free with my money?'

'Free's the word. And the amount's been named. It might have been larger. But I'm a modest man. It will serve.'

'You are aware of the consequences to which you have made yourself liable?'

Mr. Merrett took out, from a pocket-book, a slip of blue paper; which, unfolding, he held out in front of him.

'See that? That's the bill on which you forged your father's name. Now, sir, for a man who takes a liberty of that kind with his own father I have no use. But a prison has. You've had a run for your money-a fifteen years' run. Now that run's over. In a nice warm cell in a police station you'll find your billet for to-night, and then from one of His Majesty's jails you'll have no chance of running for probably the next fifteen years.'

'Why do you talk to me like that? Do you-do you think you frighten me?'

'I'm quite sure I frighten you. It can't be nice to come back to find the danger staring you in the face from which you ran. A man finds prison less cheerful at your time of life than when he was younger.'

'What do you want for the bill?'

'Nothing. It's not for sale. All I want is an understanding. We can't be friends-I never could be friends with a man who forged his father's name-but we can be on terms of common agreement.'

'You've placed me in a most awkward situation.'

'Not a bit of it. I've placed you in a better situation than you were in all your life. The Marquis of Twickenham is more respected at this moment than ever before. It's understood that he's turned over a new leaf; that he's a reformed character; that his character has developed in a manner which is altogether beyond the expectations of his friends. And it's got to be generally known that any one who takes liberties with him does so at his peculiar peril. You've only got to go to Twickenham House, and enter the front door, letting them think that you've come back from a stroll, to find yourself received with an air of deference-which I'm sure that you'll find welcome. You'll have no questions asked, especially no nasty ones. You'll just find yourself on rollers.'

'Are you actually suggesting that I should carry on the fraud which you initiated?'

'Depends on how you call it. This fraud'll drift into the paths of virtue; as fraud sometimes does. You'll be in every way a fool if you drop a word to cause any one to think that you haven't been the Marquis all along. For one thing, you'll lose the good character I've earned you; and, for another, you'll be in jail.'

'But I shan't be able to continue the deception for a moment.'

'Why not? If there's one thing you're good at, it is deception.'

'Suppose that I'm found out?'

'Then you may expect trouble-from me.'

'How did you come in possession of that-that acceptance?'

'For information on that point I refer you to Mr. Acrodato; though I don't advise you to apply for it. So long as he continues to believe that you are me all will be merry as a marriage bell; the moment he suspects that he's been tricked the band will begin to play.'

'Give me that bill and I'll give you a quittance for the money you've taken, and nothing shall be said of what you've done.'

'You'll do all that, and more-without my giving you the bill.'

'Are you proposing to blackmail me?'

'I'm proposing nothing of the kind. I'm proposing to keep that bill; that's all. So soon as it comes to my ears that you've given any one-it doesn't matter who-the least cause to suspect that it isn't you who've been Marquis of Twickenham all the way along you'll hear I've got it-not till.'

'But, Carruthers, or Babbacombe, or Merrett, or whatever your name is-'

'My name, sir, is James Merrett; and don't you ever let on that you knew me as Carruthers at San Francisco, or anywhere else.'

'It seems to me that between us we've got a good many things we don't want people to know of.'

'You've hit it. That's the point to which I've been trying to bring you. Let's sit on them together.'

'Merrett, I quite recognise that you're the stronger man.'

'Recognition's something.'

'But, whether you choose to admit it or not, you've got me in a hole. While it is quite possible, and even probable, that in starting to be Marquis on your own account you've cleared the ground for me in some directions, in asking me to continue on your lines undiscovered, you are setting me a task which is beyond my powers.'

'I see that you are trying to get somewhere. Get.'

'It is quite possible that I may become a monk.'

'A what?'

'A monk. For the past five years I've been living the life of a religious.'

'You don't say! It sounds funny.'

'Therefore you will easily perceive that I am scarcely prepared to take upon myself all at once the responsibilities of the position which-you have arranged for me.'

'Get on. You do move slow.'

'Merrett, I want you to stand by me, and help me through the troubles I see ahead.'

'What do you mean by standing by-and what's your idea of helping?'

'Can't you, with your fertile brain, see some means of rendering me assistance without-compromising either of us?'

Again Mr. Merrett whistled.

'Your head isn't so much on the slant as some might perhaps be thinking. Together we'll be a match for a world in arms. You see, it's this way. There are persons who are foolish enough to think that I'm myself. Between us we might manage to convince them that I'm not. You slip round to Twickenham House. Then sometime to-morrow I'll appear as the injured Merrett-red-hot with an indignant desire to know who has had the cheek and impudence, peer or no peer, to get himself mistaken for me. I shall see you; perceive, with amazement-kept within judicious bounds-how like you are to me. Then I shall understand how the mistake's arisen, and my indignation will tone down. We'll have a little talk together. I may be of assistance to you-in other ways. One never knows.'

Mr. Merrett winked. His lordship smiled.

CHAPTER XXXI
AN INTERIOR

Mr. Merrett gently opened the door, then stood listening, the handle in his hand. The sound of voices reached his ear. He stepped into the passage. The door of the room upon his left was open; he peeped through. A woman was sitting at a table with a pile of photographs in front of her. Two children were standing at her knee; a boy and girl. They regarded the photograph on which the woman's eyes were fixed.

'Shall I be like father when I grow up?' inquired the boy. 'I hope you will; as like him as you can. O Jimmy, I would be proud if you were like your father.'

'Will I be like him too?' This was the little girl. The boy derided her. 'Girls aren't never like their fathers-never!'

The woman, stopping, put her arm about the young person's neck, and said: 'You be your mother, Pollie; and love him with all your heart and soul. Father'll like that just as well.'

'Father'll like it better!' observed Mr. Merrett, standing at the door.

Mother and children started. They turned to see who it was had spoken. The woman, dropping the photograph she held, ran towards the door, uttering an exclamation that was like a long-drawn sigh.

'James!'

She threw her arms about his neck, he put his about her waist, and they were still-until the children claimed their share of notice.

'To think that you should come home to-day!'

She spoke as if the day were sanctified by his coming. She was a woman whose beauty was rare both in type and in degree. Small, there was that about her which caused the defect, if defect it was, to go unnoticed. She moved with a grace and freedom which dignified her every gesture. The eye followed her with continual joy. Every change of attitude was a fresh delight. Whether in movement or repose she suggested the physical side of life at its highest and its best; she seemed charged, to the finger-tips, with so delicious a vitality. The thing about her face which struck one most was its expression of perfect innocence. One wondered if such a being ever could grow old. One felt sure that she would face whatever fortune fate might send her with the same quaint illuminating smile, and that nothing would ever shake her faith in the good that was to be.

Mr. Merrett had a child on either knee. His wife was kneeling beside his chair, regarding him with a rapturous affection which it was curious to contemplate. A man's capacity to win and retain a woman's love is by no means necessarily dependent on his moral qualities. Which is fortunate for some of us.

'James,' she whispered, from the post of vantage her head occupied upon his shoulder, 'when you come home the whole world seems somehow different.'

Her tongue betrayed her. Her speech was hardly that of an educated woman, and yet her voice was such a sweet one, and her manner so naturally refined, that one could not doubt that it needed but little to make her command over the King's English greater than it was.

'Seems different, doesn't it? Now that's strange. Do you think, having come, if I stayed it would keep on seeming different?'

'O James, if you would stay-a week.'

One could not but perceive that her sentence had changed between its beginning and its end. He chose to construe the alteration in a fashion of his own.

'A week! You don't think it would keep on seeming different if I stayed longer than that?'

'If you-if you'd only try.'

Her voice dropped; as if alarmed at her own daring. This was one of those foolish women who are fearful of saying anything which may be contrary to the wishes of the man they love.

'I'm going to try; if try's the word which adequately expresses the situation. I'm going to stay more than a week. I'm going to stay for ever.'

She looked up at him with an expression of singular amazement.

'James, do you mean-that you've come-to stay with us-for good?'

'That's it; for good. I like your word better than mine. Then we'll see how long the world will keep on seeming different.'

'It will keep on seeming different for ever. Stay with us always? James, you-you don't know what that means.'

Back went her head upon his shoulder, and she was still. He put up his hand to stroke her hair.

'It's in this way. After prolonged and arduous toil-'

He cleared his throat; as if the words stuck a little. She mistook the cause of his hesitation.

'I'm sure you've worked too much.'

'I have worked hard-at times.' There was a grimness in his tone which it is to be hoped she did not detect. 'As a result of my-labours, I have amassed a small fortune which will relieve me, in the future, from the necessity of making more money, and will enable me to devote the whole of my attention to the claims of my wife and family.'

'Do you mean that you are rich?'

'Rich is a relative term, I hope that I have enough to provide us all with bread and cheese for the remainder of our days.'

'Without working any more?'

'Without working any more.'

'James, shan't we be happy?'

I think we shall. It's about my idea of happiness to have you always close at hand.'

'James!'

'My idea is to leave this part of the world behind us; and-what do you say to a little travel?'

'Travel? I've always wanted to travel, – and with you! But it costs so much.'

'I'll see that it doesn't cost more than I can afford, Then, when we've had enough of travelling, we'll decide which of the places we have seen we like best, and there we'll take up our abode.'

'James, how good God is to us!'

Mr. Merrett said nothing, His lips were wrinkled by a peculiar smile, which it was perhaps as well for her peace of mind that she did not see; and he smoothed the lady's lovely hair.

While the silence still remained unbroken the door opened-manners in Little Olive Street are primitive-and Mr. Augustus FitzHoward stood looking in.