Read Ebook: The Duke's Sweetheart: A Romance by Dowling Richard

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Ebook has 1963 lines and 103298 words, and 40 pages

Marion Durrant, the orphan of Captain Durrant of the Fusiliers, was three-and-twenty years of age, and lived with an invalid maiden aunt in a very quiet street in Knightsbridge. There Miss Traynor, Marion Durrant's aunt, had a neat little house, possessing all reasonable comforts, and even modest luxuries. She and her dead sister had each settled upon her by their father two hundred a year, and as May had inherited her mother's two hundred a year, their joint income was four hundred pounds. Although Miss Traynor was an invalid she was an excellent housekeeper, and, with the aid of a bright handy little maid-of-all-work, the small house in Knightsbridge was as well managed, as well kept, and as comfortable as any other in London.

To this home Charles Cheyne was free as the acknowledged lover of Marion Durrant. Miss Traynor was one of those good, genial, generous old souls who, while keeping a dignified reserve upon her feelings, thought nothing on earth too good for those whom she loved. At the threshold of the snug little home at Knightsbridge Cheyne laid aside all his grand airs. He never carried into that home the oppressive atmosphere of dukes and earls. Here he was simply the lively and kindly gentleman who loved his love with all his loyal heart, and did all in his power to enliven and amuse the guardian angel of his sweetheart.

Towards that quiet comfortable home he was conducting Miss Durrant when they encountered the crowd and the injured brougham. As they arrived at the door she said: "Won't you come in, Charlie?"

"I really can't," he answered. "I am already very late with my copy, and I must go home and attend to my duke. Otherwise I shall get into awful trouble with the proprietor of my duke. You cannot be hasty with your duke. You must treat him as if he was fat and scant of breath. You may have noticed that in my present duke I make him say 'hem,' 'hum,' very often. This is just to spread out the ducal speech. You can't expect to get as many articulate words out of a duke as out of an ordinary mortal, and the hem-hums are wonderfully efficacious."

Having taken leave of Marion, he turned his face east, and began walking back at a rapid rate towards his lodgings in Long Acre.

In the meantime the brougham, through which the pole of the omnibus had gone, had been driven along Piccadilly through Leicester Square to Long Acre. "Take the number of that omnibus," the occupant of the injured vehicle had said to the coachman as he stepped to the ground, "and then drive to Whiteshaw's in Long Acre, and tell him to repair that door."

The coachman had done as he was told, and by the time Cheyne got back to Long Acre the brougham had arrived, the horses had been unharnessed, and the coachman had got a man to lead the horses home.

When Cheyne arrived at the place he lived in he found Mr. Whiteshaw, with whom he was friendly, examining the injured brougham.

"That was an ugly smash," said the carriage-builder. "Nearly killed the Duke."

"What Duke?" asked Cheyne, with great interest.

"The Duke of Shropshire. See the arms on the other panel. He had a very narrow escape. The pole went slap through the door, and when the 'bus-driver threw his horses on their haunches the pole made a plunge up, and just barely missed the chin of the Duke."

"Who's Regi? the 'bus-driver? Is the 'bus-driver a friend of yours?"

"I daresay it does. But I thought the Duke of Shropshire was a queer kind of moody man, who never had anyone at his house?" said the carriage-builder maliciously.

"You are quite right. He lives the life of a recluse. But he now and then will see an old friend. You must know he has rather a fancy for the stories I write--no accounting for tastes, you know--and when I go to him he always insists on my reading my manuscripts to him before they go to the printer. Very flattering, you know."

"But he never lives ashore. He is nearly always in his yacht with his son the Marquis of Southwold."

"Of course. It is aboard ship I always read to Regi and Southwold. Reading is all very well in the day, but I tell you it is no little difficulty to read by the light of a swinging lamp when a ship is lying at anchor and rolling. Where did this accident happen, Whiteshaw?"

"In Piccadilly, at noon."

"It has never struck me before, Cheyne, that your name is the same as that of the Shropshire family. Can it be that you are related to it?"

"No, no. It is merely a coincidence. The name is not uncommon. My father was a poor gentleman, with no pretensions to blood-connection with a ducal house. Good-day, Whiteshaw."

"Good-day, Cheyne," cried out the carriage-builder; adding mentally: "There goes the greatest and the most harmless liar in London."

A VILLAGE STORY.

Anerly is one of the smallest villages in Devonshire. It, in fact, does not rise to the dignity of a village, but is called one, rather out of objection to use the more unfamiliar word hamlet than its own particular claims. Such as it is, it stands at cross-roads, and although the resident population is small, many wayfarers of all degrees pass through it by day, not a few of whom draw up at the Beagle Inn--the only one in the place--to taste the cider, for which that house is famous all through the district. In Anerly there is a theory that a good-sized lump of bread and a good-sized piece of cheese and a pint of The Beagle cider form a repast at which the Emperor of China's nose would cease to turn up.

In dwelling thus on the cider, it must not be supposed other things at The Beagle were not of good quality. As a matter of fact, The Beagle prided itself on keeping nothing which was not of the very first quality. But the cider was what capped the climax, and gave a tone to the whole. In addition to the excellence of the cider, The Beagle had another great attraction: it was very favourably situated, and there was no window or door of it from which you could not see a quiet, soothing little landscape.

Whoever built the inn, in the time of the Stuarts, knew what he was about, and set the face of the house towards the prettiest landscape of all. As the men of Anerly sat smoking their long pipes and drinking their incomparable cider in front of The Beagle on summer evenings, they had before them a long stretch of winding and descending road, bordered at irregular intervals with fine elms and beeches. To the left lay a quiet valley, the lowest line of which was marked by a broad stream. To the right a hill thinly wooded, sloped upward to where the gaunt naked trunks of the pines stood out sharply against the darkening sky. Halfway down the winding road lay the small village church. Nothing could be more peaceful or soothing than the view from the front of The Beagle on a warm June night.

Half-a-dozen of the better-off men of the village met every evening at The Beagle. When the weather was wet they had their pipes and their cider in the front parlour, where the flash of the great fire on the ruddy sand strewn on the floor made one feel warm on entering. On warm nights, the men sat outside under a roof supported by pillars and trellis, up which climbed clematis and jasmine.

"The greatest general of this or of any other age was Napoleon Bonaparte. I tell you what it is, sir: if Napoleon put his foot on this country, with an army at his heels, there wouldn't be a man of us alive now, and English would be as much a dead language as Latin or Greek or double Dutch."

Upon a suggestion from someone that the Corsican met his match at Waterloo, Stephen Goolby would cry out:

"His match, sir, his match! Why, sir, answer me this, if you can: Weren't the Allies beaten when the Prussians came up? Answer me that, if you can; but I think you'll find it a stiff one. Look here, sir, if the battle was won by the Allies when the Prussians came up, what made old Wellington go about the camp all the day, thumping his chest, and saying, 'For the love of Heaven, send me night or the Prussians'? Tell me, what did he mean by that? I tell you, sir, only them Prussians came up then, every man Jack of us would be a Frenchman now, and instead of answering the service down there in good English 'Amens,' they'd be parleyvooing, so that neither you, sir, nor I would have comfort or peace."

It so happened on the June night referred to, there was exceptional reason for the exercise of the gifts which it had pleased Providence to bestow on Stephen Goolby. Edward Graham, a young landscape painter, on a walking and sketching tour through Devonshire, had arrived at Anerly that night, put up at The Beagle, and now made one of the party under the verandah.

Upon an occasion such as the present--that is, when there was company--Goolby having made the allusion to Anerly church, it became the duty of one of the regular company to suggest that Stephen Goolby had a story to tell in connection with that church and a great temptation which befell him. This having been done, Stephen Goolby refilled his pipe, put his head carefully on one side, so as to open the valves of his memory, and spoke:

"I won't do myself or anyone else hurt if I say I am close up to sixty-five years of age. I am strong and hearty still, I thank God, and can do a fair day's work, though I'm not so brisk as I was once.

"For seven-and-thirty years I have been clerk and sexton to Anerly Church; and the thing that lies in my memory now took place when I was about thirty years old, and when, as I was just then trying to set up a home for myself and my poor wife, who is dead and gone, a little ready money would have been more useful than any time before or since.

"A few months before the great temptation came in my way--I am now speaking of five-and-thirty years ago--a gentleman drove into the village one day. He had a young girl with him. I did not see him when he drove into the village; but I saw him and her often afterwards. He took the best room in The Beagle for her, and having given great instructions to the landlady, old Mrs. Timmons, dead and gone long ago, he drove away again; and we did not see him any more for a few days.

"As I said before, I have often seen both him and her since. I've been in London in my time, and seen as handsome faces as any man alive, I'll bet my life; but never did I see anywhere such a lovely creature as that young girl the gentleman left here at The Beagle five-and-thirty years ago. He was a fine tall man, with an open free manner as you'd please to meet. Soon we got word there was going to be a marriage, and that there was some secret at the bottom of all of it. What that secret was we never found out from that day to this.

"Mrs. Timmons noticed that the young girl often wept and cried when he was away; but when he came back she seemed ready to die of joy. I've never seen a prettier picture in all my life than when he took her on his arm and walked down the village with her. The people all came out of doors to look at her and him; for he was a fine man too, well made and shapely.

"Well, after a little while, we heard that the wedding was to be soon, and that it wasn't to be by banns, but by license. In time it came. There was no bridesmaid or best man. They walked down to the church together, went in, were married. I gave away the bride and signed the register. Old Billy Newton, long since dead and gone, he that led the choir then, was the other witness.

"The two left the church, and got in a chaise standing by, and drove away towards Moorfield.

"Although I did not forget the marriage, I had other things on my mind, and I gave no thought to it. I had been married a couple of years myself, and, between my trade, and my duties at the church, and shifting to my new house and the birth of a daughter, I had my hands and my head full of my own affairs.

"About six months after the marriage, who must ride up to the door of this very same Beagle but the gentleman who had married the lovely young girl in the church down there. They took his horse round. Those that saw him when he came said he looked excited and wild-like. He ordered them to keep a room for him, and to get him some supper, no matter what; and then he came straight on to me.

"'Goolby,' says he as free as if he had known me all his life, 'I want to have a few words with you in private.'

"It was to the old house he came, and we were just leaving it for good, my wife and myself, taking a last look round to see we had forgotten nothing. I beckoned to my wife to go on, and, shutting the door, I asked him to step back into one of the empty rooms.

"'Goolby,' says he, 'I see you are house-shifting. Five hundred pounds would be very useful to you now.'

"'Goolby,' says he, putting one hand on my shoulder, and putting the other into my pocket, 'I've put five one-hundred-pound Bank of England notes in your pocket now.'

"I felt all of a tremble. I put my hand in my pocket and took out what he had put in. I felt that weak then you could have knocked me down with a little push. The sweat came out on my forehead and my throat felt twisted up. Here was more money than I could hope to lay by in a lifetime in my hand--my own, he said.

"'If you please, sir,' I says, 'I'd rather not take the money. Put it away, sir, and let me go.'

"I felt getting weaker and weaker every minute.

"'Nonsense!' says he. 'Put the money in your pocket, and don't be a fool.'

"'I can't take it, sir. You're not giving it to me for nothing; and I know I cannot do for any money what you want,' says I; for I guessed at once what he wanted.

"'What do I want?' says he, getting white and red all by turns.

"'It's something about the register, sir; and I can't think of it any longer. I must go now,' says I, 'There's your money.' And with these words I stuffed the notes into the pocket of his riding-coat, and opened the door and ran home.

"I did not tell the rector. I was too much afraid. But that night, and every night for a fortnight after, I slept in the vestry, with an axe and a crowbar handy, but no one ever came. I never saw the gentleman since; and the leaf is still in the book.

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