it was another wet and chilly easter in another year, and the town had just begun to fill after the recess, when one morning after luncheon the good duke of otterbourne, as his county called him, riding down the kensington high road, was thrown from his horse, between whose forelegs a bicycle had staggered and fallen. the boy on the bicycle was but scarcely bruised; the duke was carried insensible to the nearest pharmacy and never rallied. by four o’clock he was dead; and many persons, men and women, old and young, gentle and simple, felt their eyes wet as the news of his death circulated through the park and streets.
his daughter-in-law heard of it as she drove in at hyde park corner; a man she knew stopped her carriage and broke the intelligence to her as gently as he could. she was shocked for a moment; then she thought to herself: “we shall have otterbourne house now, and i suppose there’ll be money, at least for a time.” then, as she always studied appearances, she went home decorously and busied herself telegraphing to his family and her own.
the body of the old duke had been already taken to otterbourne house and laid on his bed in those modest rooms opening on the gardens, to which she had so often desired to limit him. his features were calm and wore a look of peace; his neck had been broken in the fall; it was thought probable that he had suffered nothing, not even a passing pang. whilst telegrams were being sent all over england, and it grew dusk, she came, clothed in black, and knelt by the low bed, weeping. she always did what was right in small things, and at any moment some member of her family or his might enter the room. meanwhile messengers of all degrees, servants, grooms, commissionaires, telegraph boys, were rushing to and fro over the metropolis and its environs in their vain search for the earl of kenilworth. no one had any idea where cocky was.
[239]no one had seen him for two days; his absence was of so slight an account that even his valet never took any heed of it; it was surmised that he was in congenial society.
she was thinking as she knelt of the alterations she would make in the house; the gardens were old-fashioned and would have to be laid out afresh; the circular entrance-hall should be made a patio like frederic leighton’s and have a glass dome; the picture gallery sadly wanted weeding, and the process of weeding might be made lucrative to the weeder, for dealers would buy anything out of otterbourne house with their eyes shut; the small oval room painted by angelica kauffman should be her boudoir. “i sha’n’t need to bore myself with billy,” she thought: the duke had not been a rich man and had been impoverished by his sacrifices to assist cocky; but still things would be very different to the hand-to-mouth life which they led, and which drove her to support the nuisance of harrenden house and vale royal, and similar expedients. the duchess of otterbourne would, she reckoned, have a free hand at least for a time; and they would probably be able to sell lots of things despite the entail.
alberic orme arrived that night from his country vicarage; he was white, haggard, inexpressibly grieved; he had loved his father dearly.
“where is my brother?” he asked her.
the two younger sons were away—the one with his ship, the other with his troop—in the indian ocean and at the cape.
“cocky?” said cocky’s wife. “oh, they are looking for him. they will find him—in some pot-house!”
and so they did on the following morning.
when messengers in hot haste went flying over london to find his son, and telegrams were being despatched to the lamented duke’s country seats and county towns, cocky was drinking gin and playing poker with half-a-dozen persons, more congenial than distinguished, at a little riverside inn near marlow, where he had been spending three days lost to the world, but dear at least to the hearts of radical journalists. when at last he was found, and the fatal accident to his father communicated to him,[240] cocky, who, however drunk he might be, never became a fool, pulled himself together, comprehended the position, and put all the money lying about in his pocket.
“damned if they’ll dare ask a duke for it!” he said to himself with a chuckle, and walked quite steadily to the carriage which had come for him, not casting even a look at his late companions, male or female, who were too awed and astonished, as well as too befumed with various drinks to stop him or even to speak to him.
“i’ll have a rattling good time now,” he thought, as he drove to the marlow station. “and i’ll divorce her; lord, what a joke it’ll be! perhaps they won’t give it me; i dare say they won’t give it me; there’s a marplot called the queen’s proctor; they’ll talk of collusion, and she’ll bring counter-charges, and all the rest of it; but we’ll have the fun all the same, and she won’t be able to show her face at court. they’re so damned particular at court about the people who are found out! so is society: she’ll be drummed out of society. lord, what fun it will be!”
better even than gin and poker and music-hall singers and shady bookmakers in a village on the thames.
whilst his father had lived that fun had been always peremptorily forbidden to him.
“whatever your wife may have done or shall do, you have forfeited all title to resent it,” the old duke had always said to him; “and i will not have my name bespattered with your filth in public.”
wholly unconscious of the dark designs he carried in his sodden but sharp little brains, his wife was almost civil to him when he came into her presence, sobered by the fresh air he had breathed on his return from marlow. she restrained the blenheims from attacks on his trousers, and did not make any inquiries as to why he had been missing for fifty-six hours.
he was cocky, he would always be cocky, the most wretched little scamp in creation; still he was indisputably seventh duke of otterbourne, and had considerable power to make himself disagreeable.
out of his presence she enjoyed rapturously the vituperation which society papers and the radical press[241] poured upon him now that he had really become an hereditary legislator.
“they are too funny for anything,” she said, tossing a handful of them to brancepeth. “they must have had detectives after him every hour of his life. how on earth do they know all they do?”
“it’s easy enough to know about a man who don’t pay his cabman and borrows sovereigns of his valet,” replied brancepeth with equanimity, picking up the scattered news sheets.
“well, he won’t want to borrow sovereigns now,” remarked his wife.
“won’t he?” said her friend, with worlds of significance in the simple words. “oh, lord, if he ever gets to heaven he’ll pawn st. peter’s key!”
“but there’ll be lots of money, won’t there? and the roc’s egg will be mine, won’t it?” she asked, for her knowledge of such matters was vague.
“ask your solicitor,” said brancepeth.
the remains of the late duke were taken down to staghurst, his principal place, a vast mansion and a vaster park in a southwest county, his sons and daughter accompanying the corpse; his daughter-in-law went also, taking with her jack and gerry; in small things she always did what looked well. if you pay in halfpence in that way the world pays you back in guineas.
the funeral took place on the following morning, on a very disagreeable day, with sleet and rain and wind; and the family vault and monuments were in a churchyard which lay fully exposed to the blasts from the east, with great yews overshadowing it and sepulchral figures by chantrey and nollekens and roubiliac, looking grim and grey in the foggy air.
the late duke had many sincere mourners, for he had inspired many warm friendships in his own world, and respect and regard in all classes. moreover, the large number of persons who in various ways were connected with, or dependent on, the duke of otterbourne could not but view with terror the advent to that title of the small, frail, hectic little man, who had so cynical a smile in his pale eyes and so shocking a reputation in the country.[242] gossip, too, had not spared that lovely lady in her graceful crape garments, and the beautiful little boys, whose rosy cheeks were a little less bright than usual, as she led them under the darkling yews and the sombre, weird sculptures of the tombs. the people assembled there, especially the tenantry, peasantry, and servants, all felt that the reign of kindness, straightforwardness, and dignity was over, and that the future before them was one clouded and threatening.
“his new grace do look a mighty poor chap,” said one old laborer to another. “and they do say as his blood’s all brandy, and none o’ the young ’uns is his own.”
“hold yer gab, garge, or they’ll hev ye in the lockup,” said his more prudent spouse.
but what the old man said audibly many there present thought.
the ceremony was dreary and tedious; jack and gerry were cold and frightened, and everyone else was bored; the clergy alone were, as usual, in all their swelling glory and fussy supremacy, headed by the late duke’s brother, augustus orme, who was bishop of dunwich and waton-on-the-naze.
after the funeral, and reading of the will, the local magnates of county and church dispersed, and everyone else returned to london by the four o’clock express except cocky and his wife. he was chilly, feverish, sleepy, and disinclined to leave the house, and she wanted to look over the collection of historial laces which had belonged to her mother-in-law, which had never seen the light for many years, otterbourne having always jealously guarded them as the most sacred heirloom. they could not be sold now, but they might be used, in various ways; at the least they would adorn drawing-room costumes; there was, she knew, a manteau de cour which had belonged to henriette d’angleterre. she was very fond of lace, and she was still more fond of little mauvais tours; she did not forget or forgive many words and acts of the late duke; it was one of those unkind small revenges which were to her pampered taste as cayenne pepper or chutney is to a jaded palate, to unlock the dead lady’s italian cabinets and indian boxes and sandal-wood[243] coffers, and to play havoc with the spanish point, the english point, the venetian point, the chantilly, the flemish, the dutch, kerchiefs and collars and aprons and flounces and edgings, all fine and rare, many marked with the arms or badges of famous houses or royal wearers of a vanished time.
the poetic interest of the collection was nothing at all to the present duchess; what mattered to her was the value of it in money, though she could not sell it, and the effect it would have if she wore any of it. she did not herself like old lace, it always looked yellow and dingy; but other people did and envied it, and it would all look very nice at some loan collection, and make her friends most agreeably jealous. she passed the afternoon hours over it, and in ransacking all the little drawers and boxes in the various cabinets of what had been the favorite sitting-room of the late duchess. otterbourne, though he had often given his wife cause for jealousy, had been profoundly attached to her and had kept this room untouched, even unentered, except to be swept, dusted, and aired.
mouse knew this well enough—she had often been irritated at this room being locked against her; but her knowledge did not prevent her pillaging it any more than the sanctity of a church or a mosque to its pious devotees prevents soldiers from sacking and firing it. she had nothing to do, this rainy, chilly, dull day, and the examination of her mother-in-law’s relics and treasures served to pass the time; her second maid aided her, a sagacious and discreet young woman, who knew when to use her eyes and when to close them.
the poor dead duchess’s room was the cosiest and cheeriest in the whole huge building of staghurst, which was an immense, uninteresting, last-century house built by bonnani, and with a fire burning on its long-cold hearth, and a dozen wax-candles lighted in its silver sconces, it was a warm, comfortable, pleasant place for a chilly evening. she had a nice succulent little dinner served there, and when she had done full justice to it returned to her examination of the japanese cabinets and the indian boxes and the sandal-wood coffers.
[244]what sentimental creatures men are, she thought, seeing a bouquet of flowers, which had been dead five-and-twenty years, still left untouched in their porcelain bowl in which the water had long been dry. if ever there was a male flirt, poor poodle had been one, and yet he had cherished such a solemn culte for his dead wife that he had kept her morning-room like a temple for a quarter of a century! it seemed to her very droll.
the little boys came to bid her good-night, and she gave them some marrons glacés and kissed them and sent them away. she was impatient to go on with her examination of her late mother-in-law’s possessions before anyone could interrupt her, for she did not know at all who had the legal right to them.
jack’s brilliant eyes under their long lashes roved over the room and espied the suggestive confusion of it.
“she’s been lootin’,” he thought; he knew what looting was; harry had told him.
“p’rhaps these was looted too,” he thought, gazing down on his handful of paris chestnuts.
he was a very honest little man; he was honest by nature, and harry had made him so on principle; he had never seen his friend “dedful angy” save once, when he, jack, had taken a large, sweet, crescent-shaped cake off a stall in the promenade des sept heures at spa.
his mother had no such qualms; she continued her investigations.
there were things which would have touched some women. there were the love letters of otterbourne, then lord kenilworth, ardent, tender, and graceful, tied up with faded ribbon. there were innocent little notes written by cocky in a big round hand between pencilled lines beginning “my darling mama.” there were baby shoes in pale-blue kid and pale-pink satin, of which the little wearers had died in infancy. there were diaries, very simple, very brief, not always perfectly well spelled, but always full of affectionate records and entreating prayers of which her husband and her children were the objects. but these things did not move the present occupier of the title and of the room; she pitched them all[245] into a heap with no very gentle touch and cast the heap upon the fire. old rubbish was best burned!
just as she had done so and was assailed by an unpleasant misgiving that somebody might make a row about the destruction of these things (for everybody was so foolish and sentimental), she heard the voice of cocky’s body-servant speaking at the door to her maid, and the maid approached her with a rather astonished face.
“if you please, your grace, his grace is unwell: could you go to his room a moment, madam?”
“go to his room?”
she was as astonished as her maid. cocky must be very ill indeed if she were summoned to him. his chronic maladies, due to brandies and sodas and insomnia, were never even named to her. he had certainly coughed and shivered at the funeral that forenoon, and in the train the day before, but then he so often did this no one attached any importance to a little more of it or a little less.
this time, however, poor cocky, over whom providence (or the powers of darkness) did not watch as they ought to have done, had caught something worse than a cold, standing without a hat so long in that biting march morning, in a damp and windy country churchyard, and without a drop of anything inside him, as he pathetically remarked.
in the evening he was so unwell with shivering, difficulty of breathing, and pains in his head and limbs, that he could not even drink liquors and enjoy the newspaper attacks upon himself in his own rooms, but had to go to bed at ten o’clock, which he had certainly never done since his early boyhood.
“most unlucky beast in all creation i am,” he muttered as he shivered between the sheets. “just got the ribbons between my fingers and ten to one the coach’ll land in a ditch; ditch we must all end in, eh? worms and winding sheet and all; even mouse’ll come to that some time. here, you, get me some brandy and don’t stand staring, you fool.”
but his valet was no fool, and instead of bringing the brandy went to another wing of the house for the doctor,[246] who had always lived in it for many years as attendant on the deceased duke.
the doctor found the new duke in a very sad state of health, with some fever and a hacking cough, which threatened to become pleuro-pneumonia and would try the slender amount of strength which the sick man possessed very dangerously; he advised that the duchess should be told.
so she was told, and came across the great house looking like a burne-jones in her long black robes, with the fairness of her skin and hair dazzling in their contrast to her garb of woe.
“is it anything serious?” she said, in an awed voice, for she was really shocked by his appearance, and did not want him to die at this moment of his succession.
“it’s skull and cross-bones business; that’s what it is,” said her husband with a groan. “rascally east wind did it. don’t come here; you can’t do me any good.”
a famous london physician, who had probably killed more people than any other doctor living, and was esteemed proportionately, was summoned by telegraph; and by the sick man’s own desire the chief solicitor of the county town, who had been legal adviser and agent to the late duke, was sent for, to return in all haste to staghurst and take down his instructions. left alone with this person on his arrival, by his own express desire, cocky, who had scarcely any voice left, whispered to him:
“would it keep ’em out of the succession if i declare they aren’t my children?”
the solicitor hesitated; he felt his own position a most delicate and embarrassing one.
“your grace must not entertain such suspicions,” he said, with some confusion. “the duchess enjoys the esteem and respect of every——”
“stow your gab!” hissed cocky. “all i want to know is—if i made a formal declaration, would it stand?”
“no, sir—it would not.”
the lawyer thought the dying man’s mind wandered, being himself a country person to whose ears the gossip of smart society did not come. “oh, your grace, you[247] must not think of such a thing,” he added, greatly embarrassed. “dear me, dear me, i do not know what to say, sir.”
“would it keep her brats out?” said cocky, as savagely as his failing breath allowed.
the lawyer shook his head. “no, your grace—it would not. whatever may have happened, sir, you have condoned, you see. of course, i am not for a moment supposing that there are any grounds——”
“stow that bosh!” said his client, as savagely as his weakness allowed. “if i could have divorced her all these years, and didn’t? if i said so now?”
the lawyer shook his head again. “it would not stand, sir.”
“why not?” asked cocky.
“children born in wedlock must be legitimate heirs, your grace,” the lawyer said, very decidedly, to pierce through the muddled senses of the dying client.
“wedlock, eh?—wedlock?” repeated cocky with a chuckle which ended in a convulsive cough. the word tickled his fancy mightily, though mr. curton could not imagine what he had said which was ludicrous. “wedlock!” echoed cocky; “you won’t beat that, curton, in a brace of years!”
“the word is good law and good english, sir,” said the solicitor, a little offended. “i repeat, after so many years of wedlock you could not leave a posthumous charge of the kind behind you. it might be mere pique and malice on your part. no court would ratify it. it would only make a dreadful scandal, sir, because, i presume, lord alberic would endeavor to uphold your declaration, since he is next in succession after your grace’s sons.”
an angry flash came into cocky’s sunken colorless eyes.
“beric? gad! i’d forgot that. so he would. i’d rather little jack came after me. he’s a good plucked one; bit his lips not to squeal when i pinched him. and i don’t dislike poor harry. he’s a good fellow, and she got over him.”
a fit of coughing stopped his revelations, to which the[248] discreet lawyer turned a deaf ear. he was an excellent person who lived in a large, square, white house, with shrubberies, and a carriage-drive, and a page in buttons; to him marriage was marriage, and a duke and duchess were one and indivisible; when such people got into law courts he was sincerely sorry that they did not respect themselves as greatly as he respected them; he knew that the gentleman, too, who now lay dying had been in many discreditable straits, for he had himself been frequently called in to assist in getting the delinquent out of them; but a duke was a duke, otterbourne was otterbourne, in the eyes of the good and conservative attorney, and he had a deaf ear which he could turn very usefully when needed.
to assist in making such a terrible hotch-potch of scandal, as would be made by any posthumous repudiation, might have tempted a london old bailey practitioner, but it did not tempt for an instant this respectable rural devotee of themis.
cocky was silent for some time, breathing hard and deliberating what he would do. almost more than his wife he hated his brother alberic, who had always been the beloved of his father.
he raised himself, at last, feebly on his pillows. “look here, curton,” he said, with gasping effort, “you make my will, and be quick about it, for i’m dead beat. i can’t touch much, i know, but where i can do anything, make it as deuced unpleasant for her as you can; and renew the—the—what d’ye call it—settlement for the jewels, so that she’ll have to give ’em up; renew it just as it stood in my father’s and grandfather’s wills, will you? and look here, curton: i appoint as guardians my brother-in-law and my uncle augustus.”
mr. curton inclined his head in approval.
“lord hurstmanceaux and the bishop of dunwich? your grace could not make a more admirable selection. the highest principle——”
cocky chuckled with a sound very like the death-rattle. “i choose ronnie ’cause he’s so damned conscientious, he can’t refuse, and he’ll hate it so; and i choose old augustus ’cause he came down once when i was a shaver[249] at eton and never tipped me, and gave me a beastly book called ‘the christian year.’ make it all as deuced annoyin’ to both of ’em as you can. lord, what a pother they’ll find all my affairs in—that’s a comfort.”
and it was a genuine tonic and cordial to him to think how, after his decease, all his sins and embarrassments would continue to circle like mosquitos around the heads of his trustees and executors.
“beric will hate being left out,” he murmured; on the whole he was getting considerable fun out of this ante-mortem duty. but it was a bore to die, an awful bore, just when he had come into things and could do what he liked; he moved restlessly and uneasily on his bed while the lawyer wrote out the clauses of the testament, hastening as much as he could, for he saw that every breath might be his client’s last. when the witnesses were called in, oxygen was given to the dying man, and he rallied enough to sit up in his servant’s arms and sign “otterbourne” legibly, in that clear handwriting which he had learned at eton, and which had signed so much “bad paper.”
“i couldn’t do much, but i’ve done what i could,” he said feebly, as the pen fell from his fingers. “to be damned disagreeable to ’em all round,” he concluded, as his cough permitted him to complete the phrase.
“what a christian spirit!” murmured the vicar of the village, who was present to witness the will, and had not heard the concluding sentence.
“shut up!” said cocky feebly but viciously. “you parsons are just like ravens, always comin’ and cawin’ where anybody’s bein’ snuffed out; birds of ill-omen, you are—marryin’ and buryin’—he, he!”
the scared vicar looked aghast at the polished london physician. “the mind wanders: the end is near,” murmured that bland person, with a professional sigh.
mr. curton shook his head as he folded up the document. it was all very painful to the excellent lawyer; it destroyed all his theories of the nobility; and to make a ducal will in a hurry seemed to him almost like leze-majesty.
“oh, my dear sir,” he murmured, in sad and useless regret,[250] “why, oh, why leave such a document as this to such a moment?”
“always thought the pater’d outlive me,” murmured cocky; “so he would—twenty years—if that byke hadn’t upset him.”
mouse, sweet, resigned, composed, regretful, came noiselessly into the chamber of death, leading jack by the hand, very sober and a little frightened, with his beautiful black eyes wide open and fixed in a vague terror on the bed.
“dear little angel!” murmured the vicar, at whom jack was wont to aim paper pellets in church.
mouse approached the bedside. “beric is here, dear,” she said gently. “he begs to see you. may he come in? ronald is here, too.”
“goody-goody and the miser?” said her husband, in a muffled faint voice. “no; tell ’em both to go to the devil.”
cocky closed his eyes, and lay to all outward semblance unconscious and indifferent to worldly things; the worn-out lungs drawing in desperately a few last breaths of air. who shall say what vain regrets for lost opportunities, for wasted talents, for foolish and fruitless hours, were in his thoughts? he looked already dead, save for the slight labored heaving of his chest beneath the bedclothes.
and there had been a time when in that very house he had been a pretty, innocent, beloved child; when he had been clasped in a mother’s arms, her idol and her hope; when he had run across those lawns without with fleet feet and flying hair; when old servants had watched his every step, repeated his every word, and a proud race had seen in him the security for its future continuance and honor!
the vicar by sheer force of habit folded his hands, composed a pious face, and began a prayer.
“o lord our god, let this thy good and faithful servant——”
“stop that,” said cocky, opening his eyes. “i won’t bluff the almighty just at the last out of funk.”
it was one feeble flicker of the honor of his race, which he had outraged and derided all the forty years of his life,[251] but which in the moment of death came to him for one second. the words shocked his hearers as a blasphemy, but in truth they expressed the only honorable scruple of a dishonorable life. he would not “bluff the almighty”; he would not at the end of all, and in the face of death, turn, out of fear, to what he had mocked and ridiculed through all his years of life.
“get on the bed and kiss your poor dear papa, my lord,” whispered the nurse, who had followed jack into the room lest he should worry her lady.
jack hung back, reluctant, but the slender white hands of his mother, which could hold so tightly, gripped him round the waist and lifted him on to the bed. he burst out crying from fright and a vague pity which stirred in his childish bosom. then his compassion made him conquer his fears. he put his fresh rosy mouth shrinkingly to the waxen sunken cheek of the dying man. but cocky by a supreme effort turned his head away with a glare of anger in his eyes, and the child’s warm lips kissed the pillow.
“damn you and your brats!” he said, with enfeebled voice but intensified venom, and his gaze, full of meaning, met hers, and said all which he had never spoken through all the years in which she had borne his name.
“it is so sad how often the dying take a hatred to what they love best in life,” she murmured to the london physician, a bland bald person who had buried patients in westminster abbey, and that second best valhalla, st. paul’s.
“damn you and all your brats!” cocky muttered feebly again as his gaze sought and found his wife’s face through the mist of unreality which was fast hiding all the facts and figures of existence from him for evermore.
“let us pray,” said the vicar in a hushed and awed voice, for he was indeed unspeakably shocked. she dropped on her knees and everyone else knelt also.
then the shrill short labored breathing ceased to whistle feebly through the silence: the bed-covering heaved no more.
cocky was dead.
[252]the child slipped down on to the floor. alberic orme and hurstmanceaux stood hesitating on the threshold of the chamber.
“oh, dear duchess!” sighed the fashionable esculapius, who was eminently pious. “these are the trials which are sent to us to detach us from earthly affections! the ways of god are inscrutable, but we must not question their merciful purpose.”
cocky lay on the bed between them, very straight, very waxen, very like an effigy in yellow stone; but looking down on him his wife shuddered, for it seemed to her that his left eye opened and winked and that his rigid jaw grinned. she had an uncomfortable feeling that, though she would soon comfortably forget all the rest of him, cocky’s grin and cocky’s wink would long rise up in her memory.
