ROUSING THE LION.
But, notwithstanding John Wilkinson's opinion to the contrary, there
was not a man in all London so sure of the endurance of his rage as
Charles Augustus Cheyne. That letter of the Marquis of Southwold had
hit him on two of his sore points, namely, his doubtful parentage and
personal honour. It used to be his boast that he never lost his
temper, never once in all his life; and even still he might say the
same thing. He had not lost his temper; his reason had fled him. He
was not in a legal sense insane, but morally he could scarcely be held
responsible for his acts.
Ever since he had been old enough to be capable of appreciating
feelings of the kind, his most anxious thoughts had been devoted to
reducing as much as possible all inquiry respecting his parentage. And
here now was the wretched, drivelling, imbecile Marquis not only
directing attention to his early history, but putting forth in as many
words the horrible suspicion that he, Charles Cheyne, had no right or
title to the name he bore! The one great fear of his life had been
realised. He had been called an impostor of the most shameful class,
and in addition to this, his own honour had been impugned. He had in
effect been called a knave, a liar, a cheat, a low-minded bully, who
wanted to levy blackmail on unoffending people. It was intolerable,
monstrous, unendurable.
Nothing but a personal encounter with the man who had dared to say or
insinuate such things would appease him.
He would go to this wretched Marquis of Southwold; he would give
the man his name; he would confess his authorship of the book, and
then----
Suppose, when he had done all this, the Marquis said nothing; what
farther should he do? For had he not promised the man who told him
that he would not speak of the nature of that letter? What should he
do? How could he bring that wretched man to book? Yet the thing must
be done somehow, anyhow.
Then he suffered a revulsion. All his life he had been boasting of his
acquaintance with lords, and yet he had never, to his knowledge,
spoken to one. Now he was quite resolved to meet and to speak with
one, no matter what the risk, no matter what the consequences. He
would never allude to the aristocracy in the old way again. He was
conscious there was a kind of poetic justice in the fact that a fatal
stab to the reputation of his mother and his own honour had been dealt
by one of the class with which he claimed intercourse. Henceforth and
for ever let that class be to him accursed. Henceforth and for ever he
would be a Radical, a Socialist.
But how should he manage to keep his word with Freemantle, and yet be
able to taunt Southwold with his calumnies? He could think of only one
way. He would go to the Marquis, declare who he was, state he was the
author of "The Duke of Fenwick," and await the course events might
then take. It was more than likely that the Marquis would say
something offensive to him. He would then challenge the heir; and if
the latter would not fight him with pistol or sword, if the Marquis
declined such a combat, Cheyne would, after warning him, attack him
with such weapons as Nature had given him--his hands and his vast
strength. He would take the neck of that man in his hands, and
strangle him with his thumbs; then they might hang him upon the
nearest tree.
He knew the Marquis was a man of delicate health, of poor physique.
He, Cheyne, would first offer him an equal combat, that the matter
might be settled with pistols. If the heir refused, Cheyne would then
offer him swords, in which skill would compensate for strength. If
swords were refused, then he should tell the Marquis to defend himself
as best he could, as he, Cheyne, meant to kill him as they stood.
No doubt in a stand-up man-to-man fight for life without artificial
weapons, the Marquis would have no chance. Still, was it in essence an
unequal fight? Who had struck the first blow? Who had given the
affront? This man had slandered his mother and himself. Suppose what
had been published to the few had been published to the many; suppose,
instead of writing to his lawyers, he had written to the newspapers,
and he, Cheyne, had taken an action against him, and recovered, say a
thousand, say ten thousand pounds damages, what injury would that be
to the heir to one of the richest dukedoms in England? But the stain
could never be washed out of his own or his mother's character. Give a
dog a bad name, and hang him. Give the lie twenty-four hours' start of
the truth, and the truth will never overtake the lie. In any conflict
whatever, a rich nobleman must have enormous advantages over a poor
commoner--except in one. There is no law or rule for giving the rich
noble as fine a physique as the poor commoner. When, therefore, the
rich noble has a physique inferior to the poor commoner, all the
noble's other advantages must be put into the scale with him before
the two are weighed for a physical encounter. Therefore he, Cheyne,
would be perfectly justified in using every resource of his muscles,
and, by Heaven, he would; and he would strangle that libellous ruffian
as he would strangle a venomous snake!
Cheyne found himself in Hyde Park before he had any consciousness of
surrounding objects. In every man, it is a common saying, there is a
chained-down madman. We are all capable of being driven insane by
something or other--we may not know what. Men have gone mad for joy,
for sorrow, for success, for reverse, for love, for hate, for faith,
for unfaith, for gold, for lack of gold. All Cheyne's life he had been
devoted to the nobility and the concealment of his own early history.
This blow therefore fell with a double weight. It was, dealt by a
member of the nobility at his early history. So that his own mind,
never very well rooted in firm ground, was torn up and scattered, and
he could not now recognise any of the old landmarks, or see anything
in the old way. All mental objects were obscured by one--the figure of
the man who, he believed, had done him irreparable wrong. He did not
wait to see whether the Marquis had merely made a random guess, or had
spoken from ascertained facts. To Cheyne it was as bad as bad could be
even to hint at the chance of his having no right to the name he bore,
or the title of an honourable man. If he had known anything, no matter
how small, of his parents, his birth, his early history, he should not
have minded it so much. But here was his titled namesake, the head of
all the Cheynes in the empire, plainly asserting that he, Charles
Augustus Cheyne, had no right or title to the name.
Then, out of the depths of his own mind--depths which he did not dare
to explore--came the question: Was the Marquis's shot a chance one, or
did he, the Marquis, absolutely _know_ that he, Cheyne, had no right
to carry the name?
Horrible! Horrible question! Most horrible question because it was
unanswerable--because he had no more clue to it than he had to the
mysteries that would be solved by man a thousand years hence. The
Marquis and he were of the one name. Could it be the Marquis knew his
history? Could it be the Marquis knew the history of Charles Cheyne;
and into that book, at no particular leaf, at no single paragraph,
should he ever be permitted to look, save with the sanction of the
Shropshire family?
After thinking over this for awhile, he dismissed the supposition with
a contemptuous gesture. The idea of the great Shropshire house knowing
anything of his humble history was absurd. The Marquis had shot a
random shaft, which hit an old sore and rankled. But the very fact
that it had been shot at random made the offence the more grievous.
Why should the titled scoundrel be privileged to blast the name of a
woman whom he had never seen, never heard of--that of a man of whose
existence he had not known of until the publication of that novel?
It never occurred to Cheyne for a moment to think that, when the
Marquis spoke of his possibly having no title to the name, the writer
might have meant that the name Cheyne had merely been assumed for
literary purposes, and that the man's real name was Brown, or Jones,
or Robinson, or Smith, and that the Marquis did not intend the
slightest imputation on the character of any woman who ever lived.
Long brooding on the subject of his birth and parentage had made
Cheyne's mind morbidly sensitive to any allusion of the kind; and one
might as well try to talk down a storm, or to obtain practical results
by expostulation with an earthquake, as to make him see the matter in
any other than its very worst and most offensive light. Hence his wild
homicidal fury.
When he became conscious, he was in Hyde Park. He never noticed the
warm sweet sunshine, the bright-green, well-kept grass, the wholesome
looking well-dressed people, the fair, slight, blue-eyed children, the
brilliant equipages and stately footmen and coachmen, the trees in the
pride of their full primal leafiness. He took no heed of all these;
and yet they all contributed in an obscure way, in a way he could not
trace, to bring his mind suddenly back to the one object which
constituted the shining brightness of his own life. He thought of his
bright and sprightly May.
Under the circumstances, the vision of her was anything but quieting.
It was all very well for him who had no relative in the world to talk
of killing this man, and being himself hanged to the nearest tree; but
if he had no relatives in the world, there was a being with whom he
purposed forming the closest of human ties. To the world it would not
matter a fig whether he were hanged or died quietly in his bed. He was
no cynic. There was not a flaw of cynicism in his large generous
nature. Yes, he knew the boys would be sorry if he died in his bed or
were hanged; but then May? How would it be with his little May, his
bright, gay, winsome little sweetheart, who was to be his wife?
It was easy to ask that question, and easy to answer it. May would be
heart-broken. What heart he ever had to give woman he had given her.
He knew that what heart she had to give man she had given him. On
neither heart had there been a previous mortgage. Each heart was
perfectly unencumbered. Yes; it would break May's heart, as the saying
went. That is, it would take all the brightness and hope out of her
life; it would crush her for ever. She would never again be the same
gay, animated, cheering darling she was now.
Then for a long time he walked about the Park, with eyes cast down,
brooding over the image and the memories of May.
The question arose in his mind, whether he owed more to the name of
his dead mother than to the happiness of his affianced wife? To him
there could not be a moment's pause in answering this question. A man,
whether married or single, engaged or free, was bound, if occasion
demanded, to die in defence of his country, of his home, of the honour
of his name--the last part of the code was growing a little obsolete
now; but the man who could sit still while they blackened the memory
of a dead mother must be that worst of all reptiles--a cowardly cad.
No; he had resolved not to go near May. Seeing her might jeopardise
his revenge; and revenge his mother he would at any peril. How could a
man who was not ready and able to defend his mother's name be
considered capable of defending a sweetheart or a wife? It would be a
poor rascally world for us, if men learned to sit still while evil
tongues wagged over the fame of their womankind, mothers or sisters or
wives.
So he set his back towards Knightsbridge and walked in the direction
of Long Acre. When he arrived at his own place, he gathered up the
papers which had been scattered on the floor, kicked the broken
glasses into one corner, and then, taking some notepaper, wrote three
notes, two of these being to editors, and one to Marion Durrant. The
last was as follows:
"My darling May,
"News which I heard quite by accident this morning obliges me to leave
town very suddenly. I am unable to say good-bye. In fact, I haven't
time to write even a reasonably long letter; for the train I go by to
the east leaves very soon, and I have to pack a portmanteau and get to
the station in a very short time. I am not sure how long I shall be
away; a few days, anyway. I hope my darling girl will take great care
of herself until I get back, for her own ever fond
"Charlie."
Three days passed, and she heard no more of him than of the dead. What
had happened to him--to her darling, darling Charlie? She knew him too
well to think he could write and would not. She knew him too well to
think he had deserted her for some other woman. What had happened to
her darling Charlie? When, hour after hour, she heard the postman
knock in the street, and yet no tidings came to her of him, she began
to think the postman must have been bribed to suppress his letters.
Only two men suspected whither Cheyne had gone, and they waited in
fear and trembling of some terrible catastrophe; and at last news was
at hand, filling the whole country with his name.
From the day Charles Augustus Cheyne set out for the east coast of
England his name never appeared to another story or on the title page
of another book.