THE MARQUIS OF SOUTHWOLD'S LETTER.
"Oh, what a way it is up! My wind isn't now what it used to be, when
first I met you warm and young, Cheyne, is it? Such confounded
stairs!" said Mr. John Wilkinson, a very stout puffy-looking man for
thirty-six years of age, and editor and staff of _The Coal-Vase
Reporter_, one of the most prosperous of the minor trade papers in
London.
"My wind is as sound as ever," said the Duke of Long Acre, rising; for
Wilkinson was not alone.
"Going up and down these breakneck flights once a day would keep a man
in training. Cheyne, allow me to introduce my friend Freemantle. He
has a great taste for poetry, writes very beautiful poetry indeed, and
is most anxious to make your acquaintance. He has just read your book,
'The Duke of Fenwick,' and is delighted with it. I haven't had time to
read it yet! but I shall read it this week, and review it in next
week's _Reporter_."
Cheyne shook hands with Freemantle, set a chair for him, and pushed
his new acquaintance down on it in his jovial freehanded manner.
"And how are you, Freemantle?" asked Cheyne, as though they had known
one another for many years. Turning to Wilkinson, he said: "Look up a
chair for yourself."
"I am quite well, thank you, Mr. Cheyne."
"For Heaven's sake don't Mister me. I am never Mistered by anyone but
duns."
"I beg your grace's pardon," said Wilkinson. "May I have the honour of
presenting to your grace Mr. Harry Freemantle? Mr. Harry Freemantle,
his Grace the Duke of Long Acre."
The two men rose and bowed profoundly to one another. Then Cheyne,
again bowing profoundly and causing his head to describe a semicircle
parallel to the horizon, said:
"The interesting preliminaries of introduction having been
disposed of, his grace left the room to draw the beer out of his
four-and-a-half-gallon cask, kept on the landing outside his grace's
bedroom."
He returned in a few minutes with a jug and three glasses. When the
three men had settled themselves and lighted their pipes, Wilkinson
said:
"I hope we are not disturbing you now, Cheyne? You are not busy?"
"No, not a bit. I have just written a reply to a letter I had this
morning from the Earl of Sark. He is an old chum of mine, and has
read my book. He wants me to go and stay with him for awhile. But I
can't--not just now, anyway."
"Well, you see," said Wilkinson, "Freemantle here is very anxious to
do something in the way of verse--publishing it, I mean. He has
several poems ready for publication. Poetry isn't in my way, Cheyne,
so I thought I'd bring him to you."
"May I ask if you expect it to pay?"
"Well, no," said Freemantle, with a candid smile.
"You are independent of it?"
"In a certain sense I am. I am an attorney, and am employed in the
office of Baker and Tranter, Bedford Street."
"Oh, that is all right. Is your purpose to publish a volume?"
"No, I do not aim so high as that."
"I am glad to hear it. There aren't more than six men whose volumes
pay the mere expenses of printing and publication. Poetry is the most
beggarly of all arts now. Living poets of fame and exquisite merit do
not make as much by their trade as the humblest Italian artisan
employed in casting plaster-of-Paris in Leather Lane. Writing and
publishing poetry is an expensive luxury, and the readers of poetry
are now a lost tribe."
"I thought of a much more modest attempt than a book. I thought I
might be able to get a few little bits of verse into a magazine or
two. I have brought a few little bits with me; I should feel very much
obliged to you if you will look at them, and tell me what you think of
them, and if there is any chance of their getting in anywhere; and if
there is, when?"
"Oh, I'll be glad to do you more than that, if they are all right.
I'll give you an introduction to an editor or two, whom I think likely
to take them. In fact, if they are all right, I think there can be no
question of our planting them somewhere."
"I am sure I am very much obliged to you. You were speaking a moment
ago of having had a letter from a nobleman who has read your novel."
"Yes, my old friend, my kind old chum, the Earl of Sark."
"Well, if both of you will promise me to keep a secret anything I may
say about another nobleman who has read your book, I can tell you
something which will interest you a good deal."
The promise asked was given.
"I know I may depend on you both."
"Entirely."
Wilkinson answered for the two.
"Now, you know of the Duke of Shropshire and his son, the Marquis of
Southwold? And you know they happen to bear the same name as you,
Cheyne?"
"Yes," said the Duke of Long Acre guardedly. If Freemantle had not
thus early mentioned the identity of names between the two, no doubt
Cheyne would have claimed acquaintance with both; but here was the
wretched name springing up again. Should he never get rid of this
odious name?
"Well, Baker and Tranter have had a letter from the Marquis of
Southwold, saying he has read your novel (Baker and Tranter are the
Duke of Shropshire's lawyers), and that he thinks it a most impudent
and barefaced outrage upon his father and his house----"
"What!" exclaimed the Duke of Long Acre, in the profoundest
astonishment.
"It is a fact. He says the book is all about a dukedom which is on the
point of becoming extinct, as in the case of the dukedom of
Shropshire. That you have no claim or title to the name of Cheyne----"
"He lies!" cried Cheyne, all the more vehemently because he was not
certain.
"And he wants to know if criminal proceedings cannot be taken against
you for slander, malicious injury, and assuming a great name, with a
view to annoy or----"
"Go on."
"Or possibly extract money."
"Great heavens! What next?"
"Of course, Cheyne, you do not confound mine with any of the opinions
expressed in this letter. Indeed, I now think it would have been
better if I had not mentioned it at all. And, for more reasons than
one, I should not have done so, only that, of course, the whole thing
is utterly absurd. Baker and Tranter have written back that, having
had the book and the case placed before counsel, counsel and they
agree no action of a criminal or civil nature can be taken in the
matter. You will, of course, make no use of anything I have told you?"
"What, sir! Do you, too, doubt my word, question my honour?"
He struck the leaf of the table a mighty blow of his right fist. The
leaf of the table flew to the ground, torn from the table; the table
tilted up; and all the glasses, pipes, books, and papers went flying
in wild confusion around the room. Cheyne sprang to his feet with an
oath, and stood, pale as death, except his eyes, which were blazing.
He looked like a wild beast ready to spring.
The other two men were also standing now.
"No, no, no, old man," said Wilkinson, in a soothing voice; "nothing
is farther from the thoughts of anyone here. Why, we _know_ you--old
man!"
Wilkinson did not like to call the furious man either your grace or
Cheyne now. Mortal offence might be in either.
"For if any man asperses my mother's name or impugns my honour, I
shall take him by the hips and pitch him head downward through that
window."
He meant what he said; and they both felt sure he could do it.
"Do be quiet, old man!" said Wilkinson. "I am sure either Freemantle
or myself would be one of the very first to defend your mother's name
or your honour, if anyone here had dared to call either in question.
But no one here has dreamed of any such absurdity."
"Then where is this leprous Marquis, who has dared to do both? By----,
I'll choke him with the tongue that said these things, as sure as my
name is----" His whole frame was convulsed, the muscles of his throat
and his face flushed, deepened into purple. He could not speak. The
conflict was too terrible. At last he got breath. "Oh God, is it not
horrible that a wretch whom Thou has marked with the sign of Thine own
displeasure should try to sully spotless names, and spit its unclean
venom on wholesome men with wholesome honours? As sure as the same
Great Power made you and me, you shall answer to me for this, foot to
foot, eye to eye, life to life!"
Without saying another word, he took up his hat, crushed it down on
his head, and dashed out of the room, leaving the two men mute,
incapable of speech.
Freemantle was the first to recover.
"Don't you think we ought to follow him? He'll do mischief to himself
or somebody else, I am afraid. He's a raving maniac at this moment."
"I do not think he will do any mischief."
"I never saw a man look so like as if he meant what he said."
"No doubt. But I have known Cheyne many years, and you have met him
for the first time today. All the time I have known him he has been
the most peaceful of men."
"Yes; but these peaceful men, when they break out, are always the
worst. How infernally unlucky I was to say anything about that
letter!"
"But no one could have foreseen the consequences. Ninety-nine out of a
hundred would have laughed at the whole thing. But you did not know
Cheyne is sensitive about his name being the same as that of the Duke
of Shropshire."
"I hadn't the slightest idea of anything of the kind."
"Of course not, or you would not have spoken. Cheyne is the very soul
of honour, and a very excellent fellow, although he tells lies about
knowing peers and big pots of all kinds. He said to you he had just
had a letter from the Earl of Sark. Now 111 lay you a level shilling
that there is----"
"No such title."
"Oh no! Cheyne isn't such a fool as that. But I'll lay you a level
shilling that if you look in a morning paper you'll find the Earl of
Sark has been doing or saying something. He has either spoken in the
House, or written a letter to the secretary of a club, or laid the
foundation-stone of a church, or bought a racer of some note, or done
something else that has for the moment lifted him out of the ruck of
the peers."
"Then you don't attach any importance to what he said?"
"I think he is very angry now, but that before he has got half a mile
he will cool down. How far is it from here to where this Marquis
lives?"
"Oh, a long way! A couple of hundred miles or more: two-fifty."
"It would be sheer nonsense to suppose his anger could last half the
way. And I believe this Marquis spends most of his life at sea?"
"A good deal of it. He was so knocked up by reading this book that he
put out to sea almost at once, he and the Duke."
"Then we may dismiss the matter altogether from our minds. I'll lay
you another level shilling he draws no blood over this affair. What a
horrible mess he has made of the place! He has spilt all the beer and
tobacco. There's no cure for spilt beer, but there is for spilt
'baccy. Let us pick up a fill each and have another pipe before we
go."