“In order fully to realise the interest created by this extraordinary
news, you must be acquainted with the various details of that
remarkable case, popularly known as the ‘Tremarn Peerage Case,’”
continued the man in the corner, as he placidly munched his
cheese-cake. “I do not know if you followed it in its earlier stages,
when its many details—which read like a romance—were first made
public.”
I looked so interested and so eager that he did not wait for my reply.
“I must try and put it all clearly before you,” he said; “I was
interested in it all from the beginning, and from the numerous wild
stories afloat I have sifted only what was undeniably true. Some
points of the case are still in dispute, and will, perhaps, now for
ever remain a mystery. But I must take you back some five-and-twenty
years. The Hon. Arthur Le Cheminant, second son of the late Earl of
Tremarn, was then travelling round the world for health and pleasure.
“In the course of his wanderings he touched at Martinique, one of the
French West Indian islands, which was devastated by volcanic eruptions
about two years ago. There he met and fell in love with a beautiful
half-caste girl named Lucie Legrand, who had French blood in her
veins, and was a Christian, but who, otherwise, was only partially
civilised, and not at all educated.
“How it all came about it is difficult to conjecture, but one thing is
absolutely certain, and that is that the Hon. Arthur le Cheminant the
son of one of our English Peers, married this half-caste girl at the
parish church of St. Pierre, in Martinique, according to the forms
prescribed by French laws, both parties being of the same religion.
“I suppose now no one will ever know whether that marriage was
absolutely and undisputably a legal one—but, in view of subsequent
events, we must presume that it was. The Hon. Arthur, however, in any
case, behaved like a young scoundrel. He only spent a very little time
with his wife, quickly tired of her, and within two years of his
marriage callously abandoned her and his child, then a boy about a
year old.
“He lodged a sum of £2,000 in the local bank in the name of Mme. Le
Cheminant, the interest of which was to be paid to her regularly for
the maintenance of herself and child, then he calmly sailed for
England, with the intention never to return. This intention fate
itself helped him to carry out, for he died very shortly afterwards,
taking the secret of his incongruous marriage with him to his grave.
“Mme. Le Cheminant, as she was called out there, seems to have
accepted her own fate with perfect equanimity. She had never known
anything about her husband’s social position in his own country, and
he had left her what, in Martinique amongst the coloured population,
was considered a very fair competence for herself and child.
“The grandson of an English earl was taught to read and write by the
worthy _curé_ of St. Pierre, and during the whole of her life, Lucie
never once tried to find out who her husband was, and what had become
of him.
“But here the dramatic scene comes in this strange story,” continued
the man in the corner, with growing excitement; “two years ago St.
Pierre, if you remember, was completely destroyed by volcanic
eruptions. Nearly the entire population perished, and every house and
building was in ruins. Among those who fell a victim to the awful
catastrophe was Mme. Le Cheminant, otherwise the Hon. Mrs. Arthur Le
Cheminant, whilst amongst those who managed to escape and ultimately
found refuge in the English colony of St. Vincent, was her son,
Philip.
“Well, you can easily guess what happened, can’t you? In that
English-speaking colony the name of Le Cheminant was, of course, well
known, and Philip had not been in St. Vincent many weeks, before he
learned that his father was none other than a younger brother of the
present Earl of Tremarn, and that he himself—seeing that the present
peer was over fifty and still unmarried—was heir-presumptive to the
title and estates.
“You know the rest. Within two or three months of the memorable St.
Pierre catastrophe Philip Le Cheminant had written to his uncle, Lord
Tremarn, demanding his rights. Then he took passage on board a French
liner, and crossed over to Havre _en route_ for Paris and London.
“He and his mother—both brought up as French subjects—had, mind you,
all the respect which French people have for their papers of
identification; and when the house in which they had lived for twenty
years was tumbling about the young man’s ears, when his mother had
already perished in the flames, he made a final and successful effort
to rescue the papers which proved him to be a French citizen, the son
of Lucie Legrand by her lawful marriage with Arthur Le Cheminant at
the church of the Immaculate Conception of St. Pierre.
“What happened immediately afterwards it is difficult to conjecture.
Certain it is, however, that over here the newspapers soon were full
of vague allusions about the newly-found heir to the Earldom of
Tremarn, and within a few weeks the whole of the story of the secret
marriage at St. Pierre was in everybody’s mouth.
“It created an immense sensation; the Hon. Arthur Le Cheminant had
lived a few years in England after his return from abroad and no one,
not even his brother, seemed to have had the slightest inkling of his
marriage.
“The late Lord Tremarn, you must remember, had three sons, the eldest
of whom is the present peer, the second was the romantic Arthur, and
the third, the Hon. Reginald, who also died some years ago, leaving
four sons, the eldest of whom, Harold, was just twenty-three, and had
always been styled heir-presumptive to the earldom.
“Lord Tremarn had brought up these four nephews of his, who had lost
both father and mother, just as if they had been his own children, and
his affection for them, and notably for the eldest boy, was a very
beautiful trait in his otherwise unattractive character.
“The news of the existence and claim of this unknown nephew must have
come upon Lord Tremarn as a thunderbolt. His attitude, however, was
one of uncompromising incredulity. He refused to believe the story of
the marriage, called the whole tale a tissue of falsehoods, and
denounced the claimant as a barefaced and impudent impostor.
“Two or three months more went by; the public were eagerly awaiting
the arrival of this semi-exotic claimant to an English peerage, and
sensations, surpassing those of the Tichborne case, were looked
forward to with palpitating interest.
“But in the romances of real life, it is always the unexpected that
happens. The claimant did arrive in London about a year ago. He was
alone, friendless, and moneyless, since the £2,000 lay buried
somewhere beneath the ruins of the St. Pierre bank. However, he called
upon a well-known London solicitor, who advanced him some money and
took charge of all the papers relating to his claim.
“Philip Le Cheminant then seems to have made up his mind to make a
personal appeal to his uncle, trusting apparently in the old adage
that ‘blood is thicker than water.’
“As was only to be expected, Lord Tremarn flatly refused to see the
claimant, whom he was still denouncing as an impostor. It was by
stealth, and by bribing the servants at the Grosvenor Square mansion
that the young man at last obtained an interview with his uncle.
“Last New Year’s Day he gave James Tovey, Lord Tremarn’s butler, a
five-pound note, to introduce him, surreptitiously, into his master’s
study. There uncle and nephew at last met face to face.
“What happened at that interview nobody knows; was the cry of blood
and of justice so convincing that Lord Tremarn dare not resist it?
Perhaps.
“Anyway, from that moment the new heir-presumptive was installed
within his rights. After a single interview with Philip Le Cheminant’s
solicitor, Lord Tremarn openly acknowledged the claimant to be his
brother Arthur’s only son, and therefore his own nephew and heir.
“Nay, more, every one noticed that the proud, bad-tempered old man was
as wax in the hands of this newly-found nephew. He seemed even to have
withdrawn his affection from the four other young nephews, whom
hitherto he had brought up as his own children, and bestowed it all
upon his brother Arthur’s son—some people said in compensation for all
the wrong that had been done to the boy in the past.
“But the scandal around his dead brother’s name had wounded the old
man’s pride very deeply, and from this he never recovered. He shut
himself away from all his friends, living alone with his newly-found
nephew in his gloomy house in Grosvenor Square. The other boys, the
eldest of whom, Harold, was just twenty-three, decided very soon to
leave a house where they were no longer welcome. They had a small
private fortune of their own, from their father and mother; the
youngest boy was still at college, two others had made a start in
their respective professions.
“Harold had been brought up as an idle young man about town, and on
him the sudden change of fortune fell most heavily. He was undecided
what to do in the future, but, in the meanwhile, partly from a spirit
of independence, and partly from a desire to keep a home for his
younger brothers, he took and furnished a small flat, which, it is
interesting to note, is just off Exhibition Road, not far from the
Natural History Museum in Kensington.
“This was less than a year ago. Ten months later the newly-found heir
to the peerage of Tremarn was found murdered in a hansom cab, and
Harold Le Cheminant is once more the future Earl.”