ON BOARD THE YACHT "SEABIRD."
The bodily and mental conditions of the Marquis of Southwold, which
forbade him living ashore any length of time, were many and almost
insurmountable. The greatest doctors had of course been consulted, but
without being able to afford any relief. They had called his
lordship's symptoms by a number of very learned names, seldom heard in
the medical profession. They could go no further than that. They had
tried every resource of their art, and had failed. Men at the top of
the profession can afford to confess failure much better than their
brethren of a less degree. When the greatest doctors declare a patient
must die soon, the sooner that patient dies the better for
conventional decency.
The doctors had not said that Lord Southwold must die soon; but they
had declared him incurable, and advised him to try the sea. He tried
the sea, and the remedy was most successful. On shore his eyes were
tender and dim, his limbs dumb and nerveless, his appetite failed, and
his spirits sank almost to melancholia. But no sooner did he go on
board a ship than all these symptoms began to abate. His eyes grew
stronger, his sight improved, the lassitude lessened, he could eat
with relish, and his spirits gradually returned.
The Marquis of Southwold was now a man of thirty-eight years of age,
tall, lank, long-cheeked, and without the hereditary bow-legs. His
features were vague and expressionless. He had a remarkably large
mouth, and dull faded grey eyes. There was upon his face always the
look of pain past rather than pain present. His face was that of one
who was fading out, rather than of one who suffered any violent
assault. He was more languid and subdued than his father; but, like
him too, he was very taciturn.
His health was good while on board the yacht, although she only lay at
anchor in Silver Bay, beneath the ducal castle. Thus, for a large
portion of the year, his grace's schooner-yacht, the _Seabird_ lay at
anchor in Silver Bay. The bay was excellently suited to the
requirements of the ailing nobleman: for it was protected from the
wind by high lands on three sides, and from the rolling sea of the
German Ocean by a barrier of rocks, extending more than halfway across
the bay from the northern side. The best anchorage was just under the
shelter of this jagged barrier of rocks. Here, even in the most severe
gales from the east, the water was always smooth. The holding ground
was also excellent; and the rocks, as they rose twenty, thirty, forty
feet high, protected the hull of the schooner from the force of the
wind.
The entrance to this bay was safe and easy. It was about a quarter of
a mile wide, and quite free from rocks. The largest vessel afloat
would have water enough in any part of that opening, from a point
twenty fathoms from the end of the bar to a point twenty fathoms from
the opposite shore of the bay. The only great danger was if, in
tacking in or out in heavy weather, anything should give way; for it
was necessary to reach in or out on the one tack, there being no room
for tacking in the passage itself in a strong wind and high sea.
Of course, if Lord Southwold wished for a steam-yacht, he might have
the finest that could be designed. But he could not endure a steamer.
It was almost worse for him than being on shore. The air is never
brisk aboard a steamboat, and then the vibration jarred upon him
horribly.
He was not an enterprising sailor, and did not court adventure. He did
not love the sea for its perils, or for the chance it affords of
enjoying the sense of struggling successfully against an enemy. He
looked on dwelling afloat as a birthright, or birthwrong, against
which there was no good in growling. His father allowed him twenty
thousand a year pocket-money. He would have given up his twenty
thousand a year and his right of succession to the title and vast
estates, if he might have a thousand a year and the constitution of a
navvy. It is not utterly impossible that a navvy may become a duke,
but it is utterly impossible that a man with such a constitution as
his could enjoy the health of a navvy.
He found it impossible to spend his pocket-money, and he hated the
notion of it accumulating at his banker's. When he had a large
balance, it always seemed as if it were placed there as the wages of
his bodily infirmities. He hated money as honourable men hate debt.
When he found a balance of ten or twelve thousand at his banker's, he
could, he knew, draw it out and drop it over the side of the yacht.
But that would be wilful waste. He might have given it in charity; but
he had so little contact with the world that he had hardly any sense
of the necessity for charity, except through reading, which is a cold
and formal way of kindling one's sympathy. He might have gambled; but
he had hardly ever attended a race or coursing match. They very rarely
had a guest at the Castle or on board the yacht; and he did not care
for cards, even if guests were more numerous. He led an isolated and
dreary life; but he had experience of hardly any other. He could not
with comfort, live more than a few days ashore, or with safety more
than a couple of weeks.
He was now no longer what may be called a young man, and he intended
not to marry. His feeling was, that when such as he chanced to be the
only representative of his race his race ought to die out. On this
point his father had expostulated with him in vain. He never would
marry. The vital power of his race was expiring in him--let it die.
When his father died he should be Duke of Shropshire, with three to
four hundred thousand a year. What better off should he be then than
he now was. No better. He should, in fact, be worse, for he would have
lost the only friend and companion he had, his father. He should have
to draw more cheques, to see more people, to transact more business.
But he should eat nor drink nor lie no better, nor should his health
be improved. His capacity for enjoyment would be in no way increased,
and there would be a great addition to his labours. His father was
hale and hardy, and might live twenty-five years yet; and the heir
hoped with all his heart he might die before his father.
He marry! Why should he marry? What woman would care to share the
stupid life he was compelled to lead? No woman would be likely to love
him for himself, for he knew he was an uninteresting invalid.
Thousands of women would marry him because he was the Marquis of
Southwold and heir to the great dukedom of Shropshire. That went
without saying. But no woman would willingly share his life; and why
should he marry a woman who would unwillingly abide by him, or insist
upon keeping up fitting state in London and the country while he was a
frail despised rover of the sea? No! let the race go, and let the
lawyers pocket the spoil--the spoil would be enough to found fifty
families--and let the title die. What good would the title be to him?
Could he soothe the winds with it, or stop a leak with it, or claw off
a lee-shore with it?
Neither the Duke nor the Marquis was an intellectual man. But when one
is everlastingly on ship-board he must do something. Common sailors
who cannot read cultivate superstition, a knowledge of the weather,
and the use of abnormal quantities of tobacco.
A sailor carries away from a book he has read a more accurate notion
of what is in it than any other class of man of similar intellectual
lights and acquirements. As the sailor who has studied his chart by
day can see, when approaching an invisible shore through the trackless
darkness of water and night, in his mind's eye the shore and the
beacons of the shore that still lie hidden below the horizon, so the
sailor who has read a book can see that book by aid of the chart he
has made of it when the book has been closed up for ever.
As neither father nor son played the fiddle, or carved ivory, or cared
much for shooting at bottles in the water, or hunting the great
sea-serpent to earth, if the phrase may be allowed, or discovering the
North Pole, or exploring cannibal islands, or going in search of
novelty in foreign parts, a great deal of their time was spent in
reading and fishing. Fishing at sea is not a very high or exciting
art. Indeed, it is an art that is almost independent of the artist.
And it is almost necessary to have some other occupation at the same
time, so that reading goes hand-in-hand with fishing.
Thus it happened that both the Duke and his son read enormous piles of
newspapers and books. The Duke read newspapers chiefly, and political
books, and articles in the quarterlies. When a young man he had been
active in politics, but now he took only a reflected interest in them.
He hated Radicals with a complete and abiding hatred. He would root
them out of the country at any cost. They disturbed his cities and
boroughs. They were a low lot, and never washed their hands.
The Marquis of Southwold, on the contrary, took little or no interest
in politics. As far as he had any political feeling, it was against
his order and in favour of the Radicals. This feeling he kept to
himself, not because he was afraid to put forward anything opposed to
his father's views, but because he did not care to speak on a subject
he knew so little about. Personally he had a poor opinion of dukes,
but they might in reality be better than Radicals for all he knew to
the contrary, for he had met two dukes besides his father, but never a
Radical. He knew there was a wide gulf between dukes and Radicals. He
had an idea a Radical was a kind of political poet. He didn't think
much of poets; he knew little of Radicals; and he was perfectly sure
dukes were useless. He had a vague general conviction that politicians
who were not dukes were fools or rogues, but he was quite sure dukes
were supernumeraries without parts in the play of life.
But if he did not care anything about poetry and politics, he was much
interested in fiction. One of the few ways open to him, by which he
could now and then reduce by a few pounds the balance at his banker's,
was in ordering all the new novels which appeared, and ordering them,
not at a library, but from the publisher, through his bookseller. Thus
while this arrangement existed, every author who got out a novel was
sure of finding at least one buyer.
It so happened that in the same month of June Edward Graham set up his
easel to paint that landscape under Anerly Bridge, a novel was
published called "The Duke of Fenwick: a Romance. By Charles Augustus
Cheyne." According to the ordinary rule, the novel had been published
in three volumes before it had fully run through the paper in which it
appeared from week to week.
The same week the book was published it found its way down to
Silverview Castle, and from the Castle to the yacht _Seabird_, in the
hands of George Temple Cheyne, by courtesy called Marquis of
Southwold.
The title naturally attracted the nobleman, who had no faith in dukes.
He opened the book and found, by a curious coincidence, that the book
had been written by a namesake.
"A book by a namesake," thought he; "but by no relative! There never
yet was a Cheyne who could write anything more worthy of public notice
than 'Trespassers will be prosecuted. Dogs found in these preserves
will be shot.'"
But a book by a namesake dealing with a duke was of much more than
ordinary interest; so he immediately found the easiest of couches, and
lay down under the awning on deck to hear what his namesake had to say
about a duke.
Certainly he had never met a duke like his Grace of Fenwick; but then
he had met only his own father and two others. The two strange dukes
he had met were like the farmers who came to pay his father rent. But
then his father was very like a groom or jockey, and yet was not
particularly fond of riding or of horses; so that it was, perhaps, not
the nature of dukes to look like what they were. His namesake had no
thought of drawing any member of the Shropshire family, for his duke
was represented as being tall, well-made, and handsome. None of the
Shropshire family had been tall, well-made, and handsome. They had all
been short and bandy-legged until he had come. He was tall, it was
true, and not bandy-legged; but then he was not handsome or well-made.
Stop, there had been his uncle, Lord George Temple Cheyne, who had
been tall, well-made, and handsome; but he had died upwards of thirty
years ago.
What a strange thing that the two last representatives of the race
should have escaped the hereditary bow-legs! What a pity his uncle had
not lived! He would have married, no doubt, and then his sons would
have come into the title, and the property and the old name might have
been carried down generations by men of wholesome make.
"What a ridiculous way that story ended! A violoncello-player turned
out to be the real Duke of Fenwick. I wish to goodness he could turn
me from being Marquis of Southwold into a man who had only warts on
his fingers from the strings of the big fiddle. He wouldn't catch me
going back again to the Marquis or Duke of Anything or Anywhere. Not
I. I'd very soon pay off that landlord. But stop! How could I pay him
off if I had no money? If I was the poor violoncello-player, I
shouldn't have any money. But I am always wanting not to have any
money; and if I had none when he came, I'd tell him I couldn't pay him
then, but that I would the moment I got my next quarter's allowance
from the Duke----. But I should be the Duke of Fenwick then, and there
would be, as far as I was concerned, no Duke of Shropshire. Who really
should I be then? It is the most puzzling thing I ever thought of.
What's the good of writing a story that twists a man's head round and
round like that, until he doesn't know which is front or which is
back--I mean, which is his face or which is his poll? Before I had got
rid of tutors they had so twisted my head round and round that,
although I have been trying ever since, I have not been able to twist
it back again.
"I know why this fellow wrote this book. I know it all now. Cheyne is
an assumed name. He knows our name is Cheyne, and that the race dies
with me. He knows I am an invalid. He knows--someone told him--I get
all the novels which are published; and he has written this one to
spite me, and offend my father. Low cad! But I will take good care my
father does not see the filthy rubbish. Boy, bring me a marline-spike
and a piece of spun-yarn."
The Marquis of Southwold bound up the three volumes of Charles
Augustus Cheyne's "The Duke of Fenwick," and having looped to them the
marline-spike by way of a sinker, dropped them slowly over the side of
the _Seabird_ into the still blue waters of Silver Bay, under the Duke
of Shropshire's stately castle.