in another week he also was carried out under the big yews and the chantrey and roubiliac statues, and laid beside the remains of his father and forefathers in a black-velvet covered coffin with silver handles and his ducal coronet upon it. but he had no sincere mourners, not one, although in the usual sickly tawdry habit of the time heaps of wreaths and garlands were piled up to his detested memory. his wife was again present, enveloped in the long crape veil of usage, with her two little sons beside her—a most touching and lovely figure. during the ceremony it would have been impossible for any observer to say whether she were profoundly touched or merely apathetic; but at one point in the service, when the village choir were singing a mendelssohn hymn, her head drooped lower and lower, and her veiled figure moved with what resembled a convulsive sob: a correspondent of a daily paper, indeed, scribbled in shorthand that only for one instant did her admirable fortitude give way to an irrepressible burst of natural anguish. jack knew better: he nudged gerry and whispered very low: “mammy’s laughin’. we mustn’t.”
amongst the floral decorations there, heaped on and about the coffin, there was a harp made of lilies with silver strings and one string broken. as an emblem of cocky’s life it was really too deliciously funny. it got the better of her nerves and she was forced to bury her face in her handkerchief.
for on the harp was a card, and on the card was written in a big sprawling handwriting, “from lily.”
lily larking, of the salamander music hall, of course.
it was too irresistibly droll. she laughed till she really cried.
happily all human emotions are so closely related that irrepressible laughter resembles irrepressible tears enough[254] to deceive a newspaper correspondent and a sympathetic crowd.
“isn’t it too comical?” she said to her sister carrie.
“very droll, yes,” said lady wisbeach. “awfully cheeky in the woman sending a wreath here.”
“how cocky would laugh if he knew,” said his widow; she could not divest herself of the feeling that cocky did know, and did enjoy, the farce of his own burial.
poor cocky! well, he was buried for good and all, with his crowns and crosses and harps and garlands all left to wither and rot above him, and he would never bore her and worry her and annoy her any more. she felt almost charitably toward him; he might have been worse, he might have been interfering and difficult and quarrelsome, and might have noticed, as his father had done, that the pretty children in his nursery had little resemblance to his family portraits. all was quite safe now, and he was silent for ever under his mass of decaying flowers.
she passed to her carriage on her brother’s arm, amidst a respectful murmur of deep admiration and of that genuine good feeling which is so often awakened in crowds, they know not why and hardly know for whom.
“poor dear pretty crittur, widdered in all her bloom!” said a good village dame to her husband, the water in her honest eyes as they followed the two little fair heads of the orphaned boys.
then they all returned to the castle, and the will was read, and the thing was over, and she ate a luncheon in her own rooms with a good appetite.
she was relieved that her sisters-in-law had taken their departure without going into, or making any remark about, their late mother’s morning-room. the fact was, that these ladies disliked her so extremely that they had hurried away after each funeral as quickly as they could, compatible with usage and decency.
her portrait by henner was one of the most beautiful pictures in the galleries of staghurst; but the old duke’s daughters would have preferred less loveliness and more scruples in the mother of the little boy with the soft black eyes, who was now the lawful head of their family.
[255]jack, meanwhile, was full of his own new position, which his mind only dimly grasped; and the whole thing puzzled him greatly. fifteen days before they had put his grandfather in a box, and shut down the slab of stone on him, and now they were doing the same with poor pappy, who would never any more come behind him on the staircases and painfully pinch his legs, or tap a hot cigarette unexpectedly against his cheek. why was not harry here to make it all clear to him? he did not know that harry, who really and profoundly mourned the dead man, had desired to come to the funeral, had entreated to be allowed to come, but had been peremptorily forbidden.
he noticed that all the people about staghurst regarded him with awe, and the women bobbed very low in the country lanes; and the young footman who waited on him at table was very solicitous to press on him jams and candied fruits. it was the first time in his life that he had ever had as much jam as he wished for; rank has its privileges still, despite the labor party.
“that’s the little duke, bless his pretty face!” he had heard the women say who were respectfully gathered about the churchyard entrance to see the great people come out from the gate. and very pretty jack did look, with his bright hair shining like new gold against his sable garments, and a look of pity and wistfulness and solemnity on his face which was touching.
“am i really duke and all that?” he asked later of the nurse who had accompanied them to staghurst.
she replied: “you really are, sir, yes.”
“am i what gran’pa’ was?”
“yes, your grace, yes.”
he pondered deeply on the fact, standing with his legs very wide apart and his brows knitted.
“then i’ll live with harry.”
the nurse, who was discretion itself, answered, “your grace will do just whatever your grace wishes.”
“that’ll be jolly,” said the new duke; and he stood on his golden head.
“but i suppose i shall always have to behave very well,” he thought, in a soberer moment. the obligation[256] was painful; jack’s natural man was naughty; not as naughty as boo wished him to be, but still naughty, naughty in a frank sportive merry way, as colts are skittish and pups destructive.
his mother enjoyed her luncheon, because that long service had given her renewed appetite, and she was infinitely diverted by lily larking’s wreath; but, all the same, she felt as she had never felt in her life, lonely, insecure, anxious, apprehensive. cocky had been more support to her than she had realized before his death; his connivance, his condonation, his ready resources in difficulty, his unlimited unscrupulousness, had all been more useful and more valuable than she had ever realized until they were all lost to her for ever. their association had not been much more creditable than that of two thieves or marauders, but mutual interest had bound them together as it binds those, and the link, when broken, left a blank.
moreover, had she not married him to be duchess of otterbourne? she was duchess of otterbourne now, but shorn of all the advantages appertaining to the title except the mere barren rank. anything more odious than the position of a widow living on her jointure and bullied by trustees, could not, she thought, be conceived. she had not been able to grasp the sense of cocky’s will as it had been read aloud in its barbarous legal jargon and bastard latin, but she had understood that it was “nasty,” very nasty in its provisions; and that as guardians of the children, there were appointed her brother and augustus orme, the churchman. she seemed, herself, to come in nowhere, and to have no power or privileges of any sort, and to be cut down as utterly in every way as the provisions of her marriage settlements allowed.
there had been so much solidarity between cocky and herself in their way of looking at life, in their enjoyment of ruse and expedient, in their mutual sense of the injustice and the nuisance of things, that this sympathy between them had prevented her from perceiving that the man she had married hated her very bitterly for having married him. she was not in the least prepared for the many forms of vengeance which were gathered together in that[257] neat and formal document which was the last will and testament of the companion of her life.
cocky had never expected to outlive his father; but he had always said to himself: “by god, if i do——!”
the law—that stiff, starched, unbending, and unpleasant thing which comes so often between us and our desires—had denied him the pleasure of doing much that he had wished to do, but all that it had let him do he had done to punish and torment the lady who had wedded him “with a card up her sleeve.”
when hurstmanceaux and alberic orme came to visit her, after the lawyers and the other members of the family had left the castle, they were both surprised to see how seriously depressed and how much worn she looked.
“did you see lily larking’s wreath? it was too droll,” were her first words.
lord alberic briefly replied that he had not.
“it was scandalous that it was allowed to pass the church doors,” said hurstmanceaux. “i suppose they did not know.”
“of course they did not know; who should have heard of lily larking in somersetshire? we can go up to town to-night, can’t we, ronnie?”
“do you wish it? there is a ten o’clock train. the children would be better in bed.”
“that does not matter. i want to be in town.”
she was anxious to get away from staghurst, which had grown hateful to her, and was very desirious to learn something which she could only learn in london, viva voce, from her own lawyer, mr. gregge, a gentleman who had not been invited to either of the funerals, though his existence, as her confidential adviser, had been known to both the families.
she and her brother and brother-in-law dined together at eight o’clock. she was silent and pre-occupied.
“who would ever have imagined that any woman would lament cocky’s loss?” thought alberic orme; and hurstmanceaux thought, “souvent femme varie, bien fol qui s’y fie. the idea of her mourning for cocky!” they could not see into her mind, which was gloomy and[258] troubled, like the dark old ponds which were lying black under a fitful moonlight in the melancholy park without.
both the men who accompanied her up to town were perplexed. the tears which rose to her eyes, the unmistakable trouble in her expression, the look of anxiety and sorrow were genuine; there was no doubt about it. lord alberic, who had always been very cold to her, wondered if he had done her injustice all these years, and hurstmanceaux, who knew her better, thought: “she counted on having a rattling good time on the succession, and she’s really sorry that little blackguard is dead.”
but it was a matter concealed from almost everyone, and of which neither family dreamed, which was racking her nerves like neuralgia. it was the destination of the big diamond, the roc’s egg, which had been her ostensible object in marrying cocky.
when she thought of that jewel, high-couraged and mettlesome and thoroughbred though she was, a sickly chill passed over her, and she shuddered, as she looked at her brother’s profile in the faint light of the railway-lamp, as the train sped through the night. for she had, in vulgar parlance, pawned the famous jewel.
that is to say, that being in great want of money, of a sum so large that no one she could appeal to would be likely or even able to give it to her, she had borrowed that sum, four years previously, on the roc’s egg, of a great jeweler, who had caused to be made for her such a precise counterfeit in paste that no detection was possible by the naked eye.
the famous jeweler was a pole by birth, a parisian by long residence and habit; he had dropped his own name, which had been politically compromised in his earliest manhood and for forty years had traded in the city of his adoption as a naturalized frenchman, known as m. boris beaumont. his riches were now great; his taste in and knowledge of gems were unerring; and he had that note of fashion without which a great tradesman in paris is an apollo without a bow or a lute. all the great ladies were his clients; without something of beaumont’s no bridal corbeille was well furnished; his exquisite trifles were the most distinguished of new year’s gifts. he was[259] deferential, good-natured, adroit; in his trade he was absolutely to be depended on; if beaumont told you a stone was good, you might buy it without further warranty, and you would never repent; the price of it was high, even very high; but if you made that objection he would say briefly with a little shrug: “que voulezvous? ça vient de moi!”
behind his very elegant shop was a conservatory, behind the conservatory was a little salon where his patronesses could have ices or tea according to the season, and read gyp’s last delightful persiflage. in that little salon many a secret has been confided to beaumont; many a dilemma been exposed to him.
“les honnêtes femmes! les honnêtes femmes!” he said once to a friend. “ah mon cher, il n’y qu’elles pour canaille!” but it was rarely he was so indiscreet as this, though he knew so many of the passions and pains which throbbed under the diamond tiaras and the sapphire rivières in the brains and in the breasts of his fair clients.
now and then beaumont went to the opera, or to the français on a tuesday, and from his modest stall looked up at his patrician patronesses in all the beauty of their semi-nudity, their admirable maquillage, their wondrous toilettes, and then he smiled as he lowered his glasses with a little malice but more indulgence.
to mouse, of course, beaumont was well known: when she had wanted this large sum he had taken it from his capital for her, but as security he would accept in return nothing less than the famous otterbourne jewel.
“you have it. bring it me,” he said as simply as if he had been speaking of a bit of cornelian or agate.
in vain she implored, protested, entreated, wept, tried all the armory of persuasion, represented that he was tempting her to a crime, actually to a crime!
“ah, no, madame,” said beaumont very gently, “i tempt you to nothing. i would rather keep my three hundred thousand francs in the bank of france. i do not wish for your diamond at all. only if there be any question of this loan, that is the only security i can take for it. whether you like these terms or not is nothing to[260] me; they are mine, and i cannot change them. the affair will oblige you, madame, not me.”
beaumont was not an unkind man; more than one young actress had owed her prosperity to him, more than one honorable family had been saved from ruin by his assistance; but to women like mouse he was inflexible, he had not a shred of compassion for their troubles, and never believed a word they spoke; he dealt with them harshly and obstinately; he despised them from the depths of his soul, the pretty creatures, who sipped his iced mocha, and broke off the buds of his malmaison roses.
the roc’s egg was brought to him one heavily raining day by a lady in a cab in whom he, well-used though he was to such secret visits, had difficulty in recognizing the blonde english beauty. it had been now in his possession for four years, and though it was a magnificent object such as could be fully appreciated only by trained eyes like his own, he began to get tired of keeping it locked up, and unseen by any eyes save his own. he would not have felt tired if she had paid him any interest on his loan; but she had never paid him a centième. she had not even paid anything for the imitation diamond which had cost him a good deal, for it was admirably and exquisitely made; it had been worn many times at courts at home and abroad, and she had nearly laughed outright more than once at the precautions with which it was surrounded when it was not worn, and the fire-proof iron safe screwed down to the floor in which it dwelt when it was not the envied occupant of her own white breast; not even the sharp suspicious eyes of cocky had ever discerned any difference in it from that of the great gem which it represented.
“c’est une ingrâte,” said beaumont to himself when he saw a person for whom he had done so much flash past him on the boulevards as she drove to chantilly or la marche; and he hated ingratitude.
for her own part, having given him the great jewel and worn the substitute successfully, she had of late dismissed the subject from her mind with her usual happy insouciance. but now, clauses in her husband’s will and in that of his father’s, had recalled it to her harshly, and[261] with insistence. she knew that the jewels, like most other things, were held in trust for the little rosy-cheeked man in the further corner of the carriage; and that sooner or later they would be subjected to examination, and in all probability taken out of her custody. she had no longer even the rights in them which are called rights of user. so much she had gathered as she had listened to the reading of the will; she was not sure, but she was afraid, and this glacial fear gripped her light and courageous heart, and almost made its pulses stand still.
she felt almost to hate the unconscious little duke, tucked up in a bear-skin with his legs crossed under him in a corner of the railway-carriage.
jack could not get out of his mind the idea of poor pappy being left all alone in that dark stone place underground; “and he can’t even smoke,” he thought, with a tender pity in his little heart for the man who had so often pinched his legs and tugged at his hair. his mother reclined in her compartment looking very white, grave, and angry, in her sombre clothes, and in her unwonted taciturnity; his uncles talked to each other of things that he could not understand. gerry was sound asleep; jack watched the steam fly past the window-pane.
“it’s a horrid thing to be deaded,” he thought. “oh, i hope,—i hope,—i do hope,—harry won’t ever be deaded.”
in his fervor he said the words unconsciously aloud.
“what nonsense are you talking to yourself?” said his mother angrily. “and people say dead—not deaded.”
jack shrank into his corner and watched the wreaths of steam fly on against the dark.
“what’s the use of being all grandpa’ was?” he thought. “mammy’ll always be bullying.”
jack had seen his grandfather omnipotent, deferred to by everybody, and independent in all actions; why did not these privileges descend with the dukedom to himself?
“you’re a minor, jack,” one of his aunts had said to him, but the word had only confused him. he thought it meant a man who worked underground with a pickaxe and a safety-lamp as he had seen them drawn in instructive books.
[262]“harry’ll tell me all i can do,” he thought; and comforted by that thought he fell asleep like his brother.
“i can see no one,” she said to her groom of the chambers the next morning in stanhope street.
“no exceptions, your grace?” asked that functionary, his mind reverting to brancepeth.
“none,” she answered curtly—“at least only gregge.”
this gentleman waited on her and bore himself with a manner that expressed his wounded feelings at not having been sent for into the country.
“never mind that,” she said impatiently. “they don’t like you, you know, because you give me good advice, and they think it bad; i want you to tell me what rights i have.”
“i was not at the reading of the will, your grace,” replied mr. gregge, still full of his own wrongs.
“but i am sure you know all about it.”
“i have heard something from messrs. wilton and somers,” he answered cautiously, naming the london solicitors of the late dukes.
“well, what rights have i?”
“your rights are limited, madam; exceedingly limited. at least i believe so. i have no positive information.”
her pretty teeth shut tightly together. he seemed to her less polite and deferential than usual.
“i do as i like with the children, don’t i?” she asked angrily.
“subject to their guardians’ approval.”
“that is to say, i don’t?”
he was silent.
she beat the carpet very feverishly with her foot.
“i keep the jewels, of course?”
“your own, madam, of course.”
“i mean the otterbourne jewels; the great indian diamond?”
“no, madam. i fear they will be removed from your keeping. you have no right of user over them.”
her eyes dilated with a strange expression.
“they are not mine? for my lifetime?”
then, alarmed at the terror and fury he read in her countenance, he hastened to add:
[263]“i speak as amicus curiæ; i have not read the will; if you wish me to confer with the late duke’s legal advisers i will do so, and inform you more exactly of your position.”
she assented and dismissed him with scant courtesy, being a prey to extreme anxiety. she had never entertained any doubt as to her jurisdiction over the children and the jewels, and she had never correctly comprehended the changed position in which the death of her husband places a woman of rank. she wrote to beaumont a harsh and imperious letter in the third person, ordering him to come to her at once and bring her property with him. in her eyes, whatever he might be in his own, he was only a tradesman.
beaumont knew very well that he had done an invalid thing, and that the signature of the lady locked up in his safe was in law worth nothing. but he was used to doing illegal things, he always found they answered best. the transaction was bonâ fide on his part, and the jewel was in his hands.
before the duke of otterbourne would lose it, and let the matter be brought before a tribunal, beaumont knew very well that he himself should be repaid. she could not repay him, her husband could not, but the family, the head of the family, would. so he had always reasoned. “la famille! c’est le magôt de ces gens là,” he said to himself.
the death of the duke of otterbourne had disagreeably surprised him, and made him take a trip across the channel, a fidgety, worrying little journey which he at all times disliked, for he was never comfortable out of the rue de la paix. he had scarcely reached london when the newspapers informed him of the illness, and in a few days of the demise, of the late duke’s successor. he was much too well-bred to intrude on the retreat of the widowed duchess. he knew that the retreat would not last very long. he amused himself by going to see the imitation jewelry of birmingham, and was lost in wonder that a nation which has the art of india under its eyes can outrage heaven and earth by gewgaws meet for savages. then, having taken precautions so as to be informed of[264] all which might be done with the otterbourne heirlooms, he returned to the home of his heart and awaited events. when some few days later he received her curt summons he was extremely astonished, but agreeably so; he concluded he was about to receive his money. no one, he thought, would write in that imperious tone who was not prepared to pay to the uttermost farthing. so he reluctantly again undertook that fidgeting little journey of calais-douvres which the wit and wisdom of two nations are content to leave in chaos whilst they ridicule the chinese for not making good roads.
he read her letter again on the steamer; it was so very uncivil that it could only mean payment, immediate and complete. why not? the otterbourne family was after all a very illustrious one.
