THE DEPARTURE OF THE DUKE
As Dolores and I had both anticipated, the result of her interview with
her father on the subject of her affections was entirely satisfactory
to us both. The Don expressed himself satisfied, too, with the
consultation, and gave us his blessing in the good old-fashioned way
still in vogue in Aquazilia, or at any rate among the adherents of the
old monarchy. We knelt at his feet to receive it. The result was a
paragraph in the _Morning Post_, as follows:--
"A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between
William Frederick, only son of the late Sir Henry and Lady Mary
Anstruther, and Dolores, only daughter of Don Juan d'Alta, for some
years Prime Minister of the late Queen Inez of Aquazilia."
This announcement brought us a shower of congratulations and inquiries
as to the date of the wedding.
That query I naturally left to Dolores to answer, and at my earnest
solicitation she very considerately decided, having in view my intense
impatience in the matter, that the paternal assent--with
blessing---having been given in the month of February, we should be
married in April.
Yes, absolutely _married_! The idea took me greatly by surprise at
first. I used to wake in the morning, and the thought would in a
manner sweetly confront me. It was as if a little mischievous Cupid
sat on the end rail of my bed and revelled in his work.
"William Frederick," he seemed to say, "you're going to be married.
You're going to marry Dolores. What do you think of it?"
I _did_ think a great deal of it, and the thought to me was ecstasy.
I often used to wonder, as I contemplated in my mind's eye this little
wicked Cupid sitting on my bed, whether he went and sat in like manner
on Dolores', and if he did, what the little imp of mischief said to her.
But time flew, long as the interval seemed at first between February
and April.
I did not see half as much of my Dolores as I could have wished; Mrs.
Darbyshire and a host of other ladies absorbed her.
After a week or two my cousin Ethel joined her sage counsels to the
rest in the matter of the bridesmaids' dresses. She herself was to be
the chief of that important band, to which sundry male recruits in the
shape of small boys were to be added by way of pages.
I never could quite gather how Ethel took my engagement. Her
congratulation assumed the form of a short note.
"Dear Bill," it ran, "so you've done it!
"Well, dear old fellow, I saw it was a dead certainty at Valoro, and I
congratulate you both and wish you every happiness with all my heart.
"Dear little Dolores is a right good sort, and if I were a man I think
I should fall in love with her myself. I am sure she will make you
happy; mind you take care of her!
"There is one thing I am sure you will be glad to hear.
"Give her a season or two over an easy country to begin with, and I
assure you she will ride to hounds as well as any girl born and bred in
the Shires. Believe me, dear Bill, I am speaking seriously, and you
know me too well to think I would deceive you on such a matter.
"I leave you to teach her to shoot; I think every girl should be able
to handle a gun; it gives her something to talk about to other girls'
brothers."
This was the gist of the letter, and I put it aside with a sigh,
wondering whether dear old Ethel would ever marry herself. In that
mood, I regretted that I had ever lingered in those dear old corridors
at Bannington when the moonbeams slanted through the mullions of the
narrow old Tudor windows, and Ethel came down the broad oaken staircase
with a look of well simulated surprise in her eyes at finding me there,
dressed early for dinner and waiting for her to surrender those red
lips of hers in a cousinly kiss.
_Cousinly?_
Well, regrets were unavailing; I could not call the kisses back again,
and how was I to know I was going to meet Dolores and of course fall
straightway in love with her?
That is the way a man argues himself into a comfortable state of mind
when his half forgotten peccadilloes of meanness spring up and prick
him!
St. Nivel came round daily with his sister, and, to use his own
expression, "took me in hand." This taking in hand meant principally
marching me off to the tailors and hosiers to order new clothes.
"A man when he is going to be married," he said sententiously, "must
make a clean sweep of all his old clothes and start afresh. It's a
duty he owes to his future wife--and his tailor!"
He of course elected himself my best man, and only regretted that I was
not in the "Brigade" that a dash of colour might be added to the
ceremony by lining the church with his dear "Coldstreamers."
He was, however, getting tired of the Army. He confided to me his
intention to "chuck it" at an early date, and devote himself to a
country life entirely.
"In fact," he added, summing up the whole situation, "I mean to buy
pigs and live pretty," whatever that expression might mean. His ideas
of matrimony were, however, almost entirely of a pessimistic order, as
he was for ever slapping me on the back and urging me to buck up,
mistaking those delicious love musings which, I suppose, every
bridegroom indulges in for fits of depression.
"My dear children," said the old Don to us one day, when we were all
together, he, Dolores, and I; "my dear children, I want you to make me
a promise."
"Of course we will, Padré," we both answered. "What is it?"
The "Padré" and the "dear children" were now well established forms of
address, and I think the old man delighted in them.
"I want you to promise me," he replied, "that you will spend _some_
part of the year with me in Valoro."
"Of course we will," we chorused.
Dolores whispered a few words in my ear to which I readily nodded
assent.
"Padré," she continued aloud, "we will come and spend Christmas and the
New Year with you, and we will bring Lord St. Nivel and Ethel with us.
I am sure they will come. Then," she added, turning to me, "we will
have all our courtship over again."
In such happy thoughts the time sped away. Don Juan, as an act of
gratitude for what he called "a dutiful acquiescence" to his wishes,
purchased a town house for us in Grosvenor Square.
"During the season," he added meditatively, "perhaps you will find a
little room for me"--most of the best bedrooms measured about 25 by
40--"that is all I need. After consideration, I have decided that it
would be too much to ask you to have any of my dear snakes. If I bring
any with me, I shall board them out at the Zoo."
The tenant of my manor house by the Solent, when he heard I was going
to be married, called upon me at my club.
"My dear fellow," he said, "I'm a sportsman; I couldn't think of
keepin' on your house when I know you'll want it to settle down in.
I've seen another across the water that'll suit me just as well, and
you shall have your own again before the weddin'."
He was a kind-hearted man and sent me a wedding present--a silver
bootjack to take off my hunting boots with. He said it might be useful
to both of us, which was a distinct libel on Dolores' dear little feet.
At last the eve of our wedding came and Claridge's Hotel was filled
from basement to roof, principally with the relatives of both families.
For a bevy of Dons with their wives and daughters, all kindred of my
little Dolores, had crossed the Atlantic, glad of the excuse to visit
London, and a contingent from France of the old _noblesse_, her
mother's relatives, had arrived to do honour to the nuptials of the
little heiress. And because she was already a large possessor of the
goods of this world they brought more to swell it; gold, silver, and
precious stones in such quantities that it took two big rooms at
Claridge's to contain them, and four detectives to watch them, two by
day and two by night.
But among these presents were two which puzzled me greatly--they came
anonymously--a _rivière_ of splendid diamonds for Dolores, a splendid
motor car for me.
Had she been but a poor relation I fear her display of wedding gifts
would have been but a meagre one. As it was, perhaps St. Nivel's terse
comment on the "show," as he called it, was nearest to the truth.
"Bill," he said confidentially, "all this splendour is simply
_barbaric_."
But nobody grudged little Dolores her grand wedding, nor the
magnificent gifts, for every one loved her.
I was sitting calmly at breakfast on the morning of the day preceding
our wedding, with my mind filled to overflowing with the happiness
before me, when St. Nivel burst in upon me.
"Look here, Bill," he cried, flourishing a newspaper before my eyes.
"Look here, _some one_ has got his deserts at last!"
I took the paper from him and read the paragraph he pointed to; it was
headed--
"Tragic Death of the Duke of Rittersheim."
I paused, put down the newspaper, and looked at St. Nivel.
"Yes," he said, interpreting my look; "you will be troubled with him no
more in this world; he's dead. Read it and see."
I took up the paper and read on--
"MUNICH, _Tuesday_.
"Considerable consternation was caused this morning in the Castle of
Rittersheim and its neighbourhood upon the fact becoming known that His
Serene Highness the Duke had passed away during the night. It appears
that the Duke has been in bad health ever since his return from England
two months ago, where he had the misfortune to break his arm; he
suffered also the loss of a very dear friend, in Mr. Summers, an
American gentleman who, for some time, had been acting as his
secretary, and whose body, it will be remembered, was found under very
mysterious circumstances, at the time the Duke left England, in a
tunnel on the Great Western Railway, just after the Bath express had
passed through, in which train it is known Mr. Summers had been
travelling with an elderly gentleman. A rumour concerning the
connection of Mr. Summers with a murder which had taken place in the
Bath train seems to have preyed on the Duke's mind, and he has been
unable to sleep for some weeks past.
"It is presumed that for this reason he had commenced the habit of
injecting morphia, as a large hypodermic syringe, with an empty morphia
bottle, were found beside his dead body. The general opinion is, that
he succumbed to an overdose."
"Well, what do _you_ think," asked St. Nivel, as I laid down the paper,
"accident or suicide?"
"It is impossible to say," I replied. "Nobody can tell, and I should
think that will be one of the problems which will go down to posterity
unsolved."
"As unsolved, I suppose," he answered, "as the mystery of your old lady
of Bath?"
That was a subject I had barred since my pledge to Don Juan. "Who can
tell?" I answered with a shrug of the shoulders, "I have given it up.
I never think of it."
"_I_ do, though," replied my cousin, "and I also recollect, very often
with mingled feelings, the way in which the finding of that man
Summers' body in the tunnel was hushed up, and no further efforts made
to connect him with the murder of poor Brooks."
"I don't see that any good purpose would have been served," I answered,
"if they _had_ connected him with it. He could not have been tried and
hanged."
"No, certainly not, but there would have been the satisfaction in
_knowing_. But I believe your deceased friend the Duke of Rittersheim
worked that. In my opinion he threw a cloak of some sort over the Bath
case too, and I don't suppose you will ever discover the truth of it."
"No," I answered solemnly, "I don't suppose I ever shall."
And I don't suppose I ever should but for one of those little chances
which occur in a man's life, trifles in themselves, but leading on to
great discoveries.
The next day after that little talk, amid the pomp of a great wedding,
almost regal in its magnificence, I took Dolores to be my little wife,
to have and to hold from that day forth in sickness and in health, for
richer, for poorer, until death we two doth part.
And from that time I walked as on air, and forgot the murky clouds
which had darkened my horizon in the days before I found my happiness.