CHAPTER VI
A MESSAGE FROM THE MARQUIS
The 'message' came on the Monday as I was at lunch. Violet and I were alone together. I had spent the morning in doing two things-getting the five hundred pounds which would keep Mr. Montagu Babbacombe from a premature recovery, and putting my papers in order. I hardly know which I found the more difficult.
I had to lie to get the money. I had reached such a stage in my resources that to have told the truth would have been a fatal bar. I could hardly say that I shortly expected to receive news of the Marquis of Twickenham's death. That would have been to occasion inquiries of, under the circumstances, a highly inconvenient nature. Besides, after all, Mr. Babbacombe might play me false. That was always more than possible. So I manufactured another tale instead. By dint of it, I succeeded, with great difficulty, and on the most outrageous terms, in extracting another five hundred out of Abrams. I wanted him to make it six; for this was likely to be an occasion on which a little spare cash might come in useful: but the brute declined.
There was not much time, when I returned from Abrams, to look into my papers. Yet it was essential that, at the earliest possible moment, I should have some notion of how I stood. To be frank, for some time past I had shirked inquiry; having only too good reason to feel convinced that if a statement of my financial position was made out it would be clearly shown that I had been insolvent for longer than I cared to think. In such a case it had seemed to me that at any rate partial ignorance was bliss. That this was cowardice, and, possibly, something worse, I was aware. In desperate positions one does curious things. I was just able to arrive at a glimmering of the fact that unless, in Mr. Micawber's phrase, something 'turned up' soon, worse than pecuniary ruin was in store for me, when lunch was served. At lunch the news that something was likely to 'turn up' came.
Violet was not in the best of spirits. I learned that Lady Desmond, on her part, had not been allowing the grass to grow under her feet. She had been paying the child a visit. Vi did not admit it at once, but when I taxed her with her obvious discomposure-having reasons of my own for wishing to know what was at the back of it-she let it out. It seemed that the old lady had said some very frank things-in the way old ladies can. Vi had suffered; was suffering still. She had arrived at a decision, with which she had sped the parting guest.
'I am quite resolved that-unless something happens which will not happen-all shall be over between Reggie and myself. I will not have such things said to me. I am going to write a formal note to say that I will not see him again: and you must take me away somewhere so that he cannot see me.'
'Take you away?'
I perceived that Lady Desmond had been very plain.
'Abroad; to some place as far off as you possibly can. She says that the Marquis of Twickenham is alive; and as you say so too-'
'Violet!'
'I say that the best thing you can do is to emigrate, at once. I'll keep house for you until you are in a position to offer Edith a home.'
'You march.'
'If you had heard Lady Desmond you would be of opinion that it is necessary I should. It seems to me that both Reggie and you are wasting your lives-not in pursuit of a chimera, but waiting till a chimera comes to you.'
'Is that Lady Desmond?'
'Lady Desmond said nothing half so civil; either of you or me. She is-she's a nice old lady.'
Vi pressed her lips together. There was a red spot on either cheek. Unless I err she had been crying. The reflection that that ancient female had been castigating the child with her vitriolic tongue made me tingle. While I was considering if it was advisable to say anything, and, if so, what, Bartlett entered with a note.
'The messenger doesn't know if there's an answer, sir.'
I knew from whom it came before I touched the envelope; though I had not expected that it would arrive so soon. It reached me when I was just in the mood for such an adventure.
It was addressed 'The Hon. Douglas Howarth. – If not at home please forward at once.' On the flap was stamped in red letters, 'Cortin's Hotel. Norfolk Street, Strand.' I opened it with fingers which were perhaps a little tremulous. The crisis in my life had come; the tide which might land me-where? The note was written in a hand which I did not recognise as Twickenham's, possibly because it straggled up and down in an erratic fashion, which was not out of keeping with the character of an invalid; but then, unfortunately for himself, Leonard had always been an adept with the pen. The wording was altogether dissimilar to anything which Mr. Babbacombe had suggested yesterday.
'Dear Doug. -
'The Devil's got me by the throat, and if you want to enjoy my struggles before he's dragged me down, you'll have to look in soon. I'll be dead before this time to-morrow. D- all the lot of you! This is a filthy pen. Twick.' I felt my heart stop beating. Because, although it was not the kind of intimation I had expected to receive, it was the man himself who spoke to me from off the sheet of paper. The last time I saw Twickenham, more than fifteen years ago, when it was known that he had done the thing for which the law could-and would-make him pay heavy toll, as he was about to fly from its pursuit, he had said to me, on my hazarding an inquiry as to when we might meet once more.
'You'll never see me again before the Devil has me by the throat, and you come to enjoy my struggles before he drags me down. D- all the lot of you!'
That was the very last thing he did-to curse his friends. Then he slammed out of the room, while his words were still ringing in my ears. I made a note of them before he had been gone ten minutes. I had offered to give him a helping hand, though he had deserved from me nothing of the kind; and I felt that it was only due to myself that I should set on record the fashion in which he had received my advances. I had that memorandum in my possession still. I had only referred to it on returning home after my first encounter with Mr. Babbacombe. And now here were almost the identical words staring up at me from the written sheet. It settled, once and for all, the question as to the identity of the person from whom that note had come, though it opened a still wider question as to what was the game which the man was playing, into whose toils I was being allured by labyrinthine yet seemingly inevitable ways.
Vi perceived by my demeanour that something unusual had happened.
'What is it?' she asked.
'Bartlett, you can go. Tell the messenger to wait.'
The man went. I could not have attempted an explanation while he was in the room. When he was gone my tongue still faltered. I re-read the words which, while they convinced me utterly, set me doubting all the more. Vi, watching me, repeated her inquiry.
'What is wrong, Douglas? Why do you look so strange?'
I handed her the note. Rapid consideration seemed to show that was the shortest and the safest way. She read it with an obvious want of comprehension.
'What an extraordinary communication. What does it mean? From whom has it come?'
'It's from Twickenham.'
'Douglas!'
She dropped her hands, note and all, on to her knee.
'To me it's like a voice from the grave. The words with which he bade me farewell are almost the identical ones with which he bids me come to him again.'
'Then it was he you saw?'
'Apparently.'
'And what does this mean?'
'It seems that he is ill.'
'Ill?' She referred to the note. 'He says that the Devil's got him by the throat. I shouldn't wonder. I believe, for my part, that there always is a time when that person comes to claim his own. You can't go on being wicked with impunity for ever. And that-he'll be dead to-morrow. Douglas, he says that he'll be dead before this time to-morrow.'
'So he says.'
'But-if he should be?'
I knew the thought which was in her mind; though I kept my eyes from off her face. I was conscious of an unusual contraction of the muscles about the region of the heart. What was this evil with which I was trafficking? She turned herself inside out, with a sublime unconsciousness of the troubled waters which I felt that I was entering.
'I'll be able to marry Reggie; and you may marry Edith. So that I needn't write to him. Why, Douglas, this bad man's death will usher in a peal of wedding bells. It ought to ease his final moments to know that he'll do so much good by dying.'
It galled me to hear her talk in such a strain. True, she had learnt it from me; but, just then, that made it none the better.
'Don't you think you're a trifle premature in marrying, and giving in marriage? He's not dead yet.'
'No, but he will be. I feel that he will be soon. You'll find that for once he's told the truth.'
'However that may be, I wish you wouldn't speak like that. It sounds a little inhuman. As if you anxiously anticipated his entering the fires of hell to enable you to enjoy the bliss of heaven.'
She looked up at me with a naïve surprise.
'Douglas, what ever do you mean by that? Haven't you always counted on his death? And isn't he a wicked man?'
'Decency suggests that we should feign some sorrow even if we feel it not.'
'It suggests to me nothing of the kind. The moment the Marquis of Twickenham's death is announced I shall rejoice-for Reggie's sake, and yours.'
'I see. And not at all for your own?'
'Also a little for my own. And Edith. For all our sakes, indeed.' I had taken up my position before the fireplace: she planted herself in front of me. 'Douglas, what has come to you upon a sudden? Here's the news for which you have been waiting arrived at last, and you look as black as black can be, and speak so crossly that I hardly know you for yourself.'
'You arrive too rapidly at your conclusions. I have grown so weary of expecting what never comes that my sense of anticipation's dulled. The man's not died these fifteen years; why should he die now?'
'Because he says he's going to: and I tell you that, this time, what he says he means.'
Turning aside, I looked down at the flaming coals. Her words and manner jarred on me alike.
'I don't like to think, and I don't like to know you think that, for us, the only hope of life is-death.'
'Douglas, what is the mood that's on you? Don't you want the man to die?'
Asked thus bluntly, I found myself hard put to it for an answer. After all, it was doubtful if I was not sorry that I had set out on this adventure. Never before had I felt myself so out of harmony with what was in my sister's heart. Obviously the riddle of my mood was beyond her finding out. She gave a little twirl of her skirts, as if dismissing from her mind all efforts to understand me.
'My dear Douglas, you are so mysterious, and so unexpectedly-shall I say, didactic! You do intend to be didactic, don't you, dear? – that you must excuse my calling your attention to the fact that the person who brought this note still waits.'
I rang the bell. Bartlett appeared.
'Tell the person who brought this letter that the answer is: "I am coming at once."'
When the servant had vanished, Violet eyed me with a quizzical smile.
'So you are going. I hope that the Marquis of Twickenham has exaggerated the gravity of his condition, and that on your arrival you will find him in the enjoyment of perfect health. Is that the kind of observation you think I ought to make?'
'It's quite possible,' I retorted, 'that I shan't find the Marquis of Twickenham at all.'
With that I left her. As I journeyed Strandwards I discussed within myself the possibility. Such was the conflict of my emotions that when the cab was about to turn off the Embankment into Norfolk Street I bade the driver go a little farther on before taking me to my destination. I knew that from the moment in which I set foot in the building, which Mr. Babbacombe had chosen for the exhibition of his uncanny gifts, I was committed to a course of action which, I was beginning to realise more clearly every moment, might lead I knew not whither. I might have been the first to pull the strings, but the figure once set in motion, if I was not careful, might have me at its mercy for ever and a day.
'I'll put a stop to the gruesome farce at its very opening. I'll tell the fellow that I'll have nothing to do with his hideous deception. If I become the accomplice of such a fiend as he is, my latter state will be worse than my first.'
With the determination strong upon me to be quit of the man and his misdeeds, I alighted at the door of Cortin's Hotel.
'Is the Marquis of Twickenham here?'
I put the question to a female who advanced towards me as I crossed the threshold. Apparently the establishment had not attained to the dignity of a hall porter.
'The Honourable Douglas Howarth?' I admitted that I was known by that name. 'His lordship expected to see you before, sir?'
The woman's tone conveyed a reproach which I resented. Evidently to her the Marquis of Twickenham was a person in authority before whom all men should bow. Besides, I could hardly have come more quickly than I had done. As I was being conducted to his apartment I told myself that I would address his lordship in a fashion for which he probably was unprepared.
The surprise, however, was on my side. I had expected to find the man alone. No one had breathed so much as a hint that any one was with him. When I entered the room, however, I found a person bending over the bed, whom it did not require much discernment to infer was a doctor. A voice, which I did not recognise as Mr. Montagu Babbacombe's, issued from beneath the sheets.
'Who's that? – Who's that come in?'
The waiter announced my name and style, as if introducing me to an assembled company.
'The Honourable Douglas Howarth.'
'Doug-! Is that you, Doug? D-n you! I thought you'd come!'
I advanced towards the bed. The doctor bowed. He was a young man, probably not much over thirty, with a frank, open face, which suggested rather a pleasant disposition than commanding talents. In the bed was Babbacombe-or Twickenham-whichever he chose to call himself. But what a change had taken place in his appearance since yesterday! So complete was the alteration that I was half inclined to suspect that a trick was being played on me, rather than on the rest of the world.
If this was not a sick man then surely I had never seen one. On his face there was the-I was about to write-unmistakable look of the being from whom the sands of life are slipping fast. This was a complete wreck; the husk of a man; a creature for whom, so far as this life was concerned, all things were at an end. The cheeks were hollow; the eyes dim; the jaw had an uncomfortable trick of gaping open, as if the mechanism which controlled it was a little out of order. One arm was out of bed. The hand was attenuated, so as to seem nothing but skin and bone. It had that clammy look, which one would suppose incapable of imitation, which suggests physical decay. If this man was not in the last stage of a mortal illness, then he was a master of arts which are not accounted holy. Entirely without intention I stood before him, oppressed by a feeling of half reverence, half awe, of which, I take it, most of us are conscious when we find ourselves in the presence of the coming king.
He spoke in a croaking, hoarse voice, which I certainly did not recognise as Mr. Montagu Babbacombe's.
'Doug, he's got me by the throat, and I'm fighting him; but he'll win, he'll win. The doctor'll tell you he'll win.'
I was at a loss what to say or do. The reality of the sham, if it was a sham, affected me in a way for which I was unprepared. The doctor, perceiving something of my dilemma, whispered in my ear:
'He's in a bad way. Are you a friend of his?'
The sick man's ears were keener than the speaker had supposed. He answered for me.
'A friend? Oh, yes, he's a friend of mine, Doug's a friend. Doctor, take yourself away. I want to speak to my friend.'
Whether he was influenced by the bluntness of the dismissal, I could not say; but the doctor prepared to go.
'I will send you some medicine which will ease those pains of which you speak.'
'Curse your medicine!'
'You mustn't talk too much. Rest and composure are what you principally need.'
'Confound your composure!' With a violent effort the man in the bed raised himself to a sitting posture. 'What do I want to be composed for when there's so little time to talk? There'll be all eternity to be silent in.'
As he gripped the coverlet with his cadaverous hands, blinking at us with his sightless eyes, he did not offer an agreeable spectacle. He trembled so from the exertion of the effort he had made that it was not surprising to see him, collapsing like a pack of cards, fall in a heap half in, half out of bed. With quick professional hands the doctor straightened him out. He eyed him when he had finished. The figure in the bed lay perfectly still.
'He's exhausted himself; but he'll be all right when he recovers. Can I speak to you outside before I go?' I went with him outside the bedroom door. 'Are you a relative of his?'
'I am not.'
'If he has any relatives they should be sent for at once, if they wish to see him alive. It is quite possible that he will not live over to-day.'
'What is the matter with him?'
'It's a case of general collapse; all the vital organs are weak. He seems to have lived a hard and irregular life on top of an originally poor constitution. I hope you don't mind my speaking frankly.'
'Not at all. I believe you are right. I have not seen him myself for fifteen years. We all thought he was dead.'
'He will be soon. He's consumed by fever; his lungs are affected; there's practically no pulse, and scarcely any motion of the heart. The whole machine's run down. As you see for yourself, he's nothing but skin and bone. But it's from the heart we have most to fear. If you allow him to excite himself there may be an instant stoppage.'
'Do you think we'd better have further advice?'
'That's as you please. I myself should welcome it. And it might be more satisfactory to every one concerned. But I don't think you'll find that anything can be done. Here's my card.' He handed me one; from which it appeared that he was Mr. Robert White, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., of 93 Craven Street, W.C. 'I'll look in again as soon as I can; and then, perhaps, a consultation may be arranged. But if any of his relatives wish to see him, if I were you I should lose no time in letting them know the state that he is in.'
He went. As I examined his card I said to myself.
'There seems no doubt that it will not be difficult to obtain a certificate of the Marquis of Twickenham's death from him. I wonder if Mr. Robert White is a friend of Mr. Montagu Babbacombe.'
Opening the door, I re-entered the room.
CHAPTER VII
MR. FOSTER INTERRUPTS
All was still. The figure in the bed continued motionless. I walked up to the bed. Whether conscious or not of my presence, he gave no sign of movement.
'Mr. Babbacombe,' I spoke a little louder. 'Mr. Babbacombe.' No answer. 'Don't you think this acting is a little overdone? Your friend Dr. White has gone. I'm all alone.'
Still not an indication to show that the man yet lived. Against my better judgment I began to feel uneasy. He lay so very motionless.
'Mr. Babbacombe! – Twickenham! – What are you afraid of? Don't you hear me, man?'
I touched him with my hand. He made no movement in response. For a second I was in danger of making an ass of myself. Could the man have carried the farce too far, and was he really dead? I all but rushed from the room, or to the bell, or somewhere, to give the alarm. Then I felt him shiver beneath my touch. I do not think that I was ever more conscious of relief than when I felt his quivering flesh. For the moment I actually imagined that I had murdered him.
The movement was but a quiver, dying away as soon as it came. I expected him, at the very least, to turn and open his eyes. But he did nothing of the kind. My impatience returned.
'Twickenham!' I thought it safer to address him by that name. Walls have ears; especially, I fancy, in hotels. 'Twickenham! Confound it, man, are you playing the fool with me again?'
No response. Concluding that this was a game which the gentleman before me intended to play in his own fashion, I awaited the issue of events. If he thought it necessary to keep up his character of dying man, and practise the lights and shadows of the rôle with me as audience, it was out of my power to prevent him. Yet as I watched how, bit by bit, he seemed to return to life; how long the process lasted; and how small the amount of vitality which he returned to seemed to be; I found myself in the curious position of being unable to decide where the sham began and the reality ended. Turning on to his back, apparently with difficulty, he gazed up with what was an astonishingly good imitation of an unseeing gaze.
'Well? As the street boys have it, I hope you'll know me when you see me again. You do it uncommonly well. The only comment I have to make, if you'll excuse my making it, is that you do it too well.'
What seemed a glimmer of consciousness stole over his skeleton countenance. It lighted up.
'Doug!' he said.
Mr. Babbacombe had not struck me as being corpulent, but it mystified me to think what he had done with the balance of his flesh within the twenty-four hours since I had seen him last. He looked as if he had lost stones; suggesting the possession of a secret for which certain jockeys of my acquaintance would give him all they possess. The voice was excellent: cracked and broken, like that of a man whose physical force is nearly spent.
'Would you mind calling me Mr. Howarth when we are alone?'
'Call you-what? See you-. Might as well ask you-call me-Marquis of Twickenham.'
'I am quite willing, when we are in private, to call you Mr. Babbacombe.'
'Call me-what? Mr. – Doug, you're drunk.'
'As usual, you credit me with a condition of mental imbecility for which no degree of drunkenness of which I ever heard could adequately account.'
'What-you talking about? Doug, I'm pretty bad.'
'You seem to be. I've brought the five hundred pounds which you stipulated I should bring if you were not to recover.'
'Five hundred pounds? Doug, I haven't seen that amount of money-Lord knows when.'
'No? Then you shall see it now. Here it is-fifty tens. I thought you would prefer to have the notes all small.'
I placed them between the wasted fingers, which still remained outside the coverlet. They just closed on them, but that was all. His eyes closed too.
'Too late.'
'Too late? What do you mean?'
'What's the use-money to me now.'
'You can have it buried with you.'
'Yes-I can. Doug, why do you speak like that?'
'Mr. Babbacombe, might I ask you not to be so thorough?'
An expression of surprise lighted up his features.
'He's wandering.'
'I did not gather, from our conversation yesterday, that it was part of your scheme to pretend to be dying even when we were alone.'
The expression of surprise had grown in intensity.
'Doug!'
'My good man, please don't look at me like that. And do not call me "Doug." Even if you were the person, and in the condition, you pretend to be, I should resent hearing the word come from your lips each second.'
'He's mad!'
It was said with a little gasp, in the most natural way in the world. Reclosing his eyes, if I could believe the evidence of my senses-which, in his case, I doubted if I was entitled to-he dozed.
I began to understand that Mr. Montagu Babbacombe was even more of an artist than I had given him credit for. As I stood watching, with curious interest, the perfection with which he simulated a sick man's slumber, I asked myself if, after all, he might not be right, and I wrong. If he chose to continue the performance even when the necessity for acting was removed, why should he not? It might tend to simplify the situation. At least, it would do no harm. If he declined to allow even me to see the mask slipped a little from his face, I had certainly no reason to complain. Later on I could say, with perfect truth, that, so far as I was able to see, he never rallied from the moment I saw him first. Situated as I was likely to be, it would be a comfort to be able to say something that was true.
The misfortune was, that I was not, myself, by any means such an artist as Mr. Babbacombe. I might be able, when in the public eye, to deceive with an air of passable candour, but in private I fell short. I had heard of men who lied with such consistency that, in the end, they deceived themselves. I had not got so far as that. Mr. Babbacombe, it seemed, could play a part so well that he actually was, for the time, the character he feigned to be. With me it was otherwise. I had not yet grown to love deception for deception's sake, as the man in front of me-whether he was Babbacombe or Twickenham-seemed to do. It filled me with an illogical sense of rage to perceive how, in this matter, he took it for granted that his point of view would-or should-necessarily be mine. He liked to keep on stealing all the time; I preferred, in private, to pretend that I was an honest man.
However, it certainly was true that the strain of the impersonation lay on him. If he did not choose to allow himself a moment's relaxation, I had no cause to grumble. I had agreed with him that he should carry out a certain piece of deception. I could hardly complain if he carried out his part of the bargain so well that he was actually in danger of deceiving me.
Only I did wish that he would own up, for a moment, what a rogue he was. Such was my state of nervous tension that, to me, such an admission would have come as a positive relief. I was willing to admit that I was a humbug-between ourselves. Why should he not be willing to do the same? It would have come as a sort of salve to my sense of self-esteem.
Instead, he persisted in that doze-which I was convinced was make-believe. As one might watch a conjuror perform his tricks in the privacy of one's own apartment, with a feeling of resentment that he should allow no hint to escape him as to how they're done, so I observed the man in the bed pretend-even to me! – to do the things which I had the best of reasons for knowing he was not really doing. I should like to have constrained him to confession, to have taken him by the shoulders and treated him to a good shaking, so that both the sleep and sickness might have been shaken clean out of him, and he would have had to admit his mummery.
I believe that if I had remained alone with him much longer I should have done it. My fingers itched to handle him. Just, however, as I was about to take him in my grip, the door opened and some one else came in. It was perhaps just as well, if the game was to be played out, that I was not detected in the act of committing an apparently brutal and unprovoked assault upon the seeming sufferer. Some sort of explanation would have had to be made: I should have had to compel the patient to admit his fraud to save my character. Otherwise my action might have been construed as an attempt to murder at the very least.
The new comer was Reggie. His appearance on the scene I had not expected so soon: nor desired. It had been my intention to coach the patient in certain details of his family history-supposing such coaching to be necessary. It would hardly do for him to be visited by relatives of whom he had never heard. This he had prevented my doing by his determination to act the rôle of dying man up to the hilt.
Reggie explained what had brought him. He held out the note which had brought me; which I now remembered I had left with Violet.
'Vi has sent me this? what does it mean?'
I moved towards him, glancing towards the sick man, who still feigned slumber. I had hoped to give him a warning look; but the persistence with which he kept his eyes closed rendered my effort futile.
'It means what it says.' I spoke in a tolerably loud tone of voice, hoping that the sleeper would have sense enough to pick up such cues as I might give him. 'Your brother, my dear Reggie, is here-ill in bed.'
'Good gracious!' Reggie's face expressed a variety of emotions. He glanced from me to the bed; from the bed to me. He dropped his voice. 'Is he-is he really bad?'
'About as bad as he can be. The doctor is of opinion that he may expire at any moment.'
The tone in which I said this-for Mr. Babbacombe's instruction-seemed to strike Reggie as peculiar.
'Is he-asleep?'
'He seems to have just dropped off.' Reggie moved closer to the bed. I went with him. He regarded the sleeper with looks of curiosity.
'He looks frightfully queer.'
'He can hardly look queerer, and live.'
'I suppose it is Twickenham?'
'Don't you recognise him?'
He shook his head.
'I was only a kid when he went. I've told you lots of times that I don't seem to have the least recollection of what he was like. I didn't think he was so old.'
'He's crowded threescore years and ten into the life he's lived, and more. Besides, sickness has aged him.'
'Is he conscious?'
'Now? He's asleep.'
'I mean when he's awake.
'He was conscious when I saw him first; that is, after a fashion of his own.'
'Is he-' He stopped. I saw that a thought was passing through his mind to which he hesitated to give utterance. Presently it came. 'Is he conscious enough to make a will?'
The question took me aback. It suggested an eventuality for which I had made no sort of preparation. If Mr. Montagu Babbacombe took it into his head to let himself go in a 'last will and testament,' I should be in a fix. I arrived at an instant determination.
'I should say not. Any will he might make in his present condition would not be worth the paper it was written on. Of that I am sure.'
I meant Mr. Babbacombe to take the hint. I hoped he would, though I had rather Reggie had not put the question. The young gentleman startled me with another remark which was equally unexpected and undesired.
'I sent in word to old Foster as I came along.'