AT BANKLEIGH.
When Cheyne had packed his portmanteau he took it and a hatbox down
the steep staircase, carrying at the same time his letters in his
teeth. He wore a low-crowned soft hat, instead of his ordinary silk
one. He jumped into the street, and having thrust his letters into a
pillar-post, hailed the first empty hansom and drove away to the
railway-station.
Either his watch must have been slow or he must have looked at the
wrong line of figures in the time-table, for when he got to the
station they told him the train was on the point of starting, instead
of having, as he had calculated, a good ten minutes to spare.
He took a first-class single ticket to Bankleigh, the nearest
railway-station to Silver Bay. Then, with his portmanteau in one hand
and his hatbox in the other, he dashed along the way leading to the
platform from which the train for Bankleigh starts. The door was shut
against him. The train had not yet started, but the time was up. The
next train did not go till evening, which meant getting into a small
unknown town long past midnight, a thing no one cares to do,
particularly when he does not know even the name of a hotel or the
hotel in it.
The gate was closed against him. The man refused to open the gate. The
gate was five feet high, and Cheyne about six. Cheyne raised his
hatbox and portmanteau over the barrier and let them fall. The man
inside thought the traveller merely wished to get rid of the trouble
of carrying his luggage any longer. Instantly Cheyne stepped on the
lowest cross-rail of the gate, bent his chest over the top-rail of the
gate, seized the ticket-taker by the leather waist-belt, and lifted
him slowly over the gate. When he had deposited the ticket-taker
safely on the ground he thrust half-a-crown into the man's hand,
vaulted the gate, and taking up his portmanteau and hatbox, ran for a
seat, and succeeded in scrambling into a carriage just as the train
was in motion, and before the astonished but grateful ticket-taker
could climb over the gate and regain the platform. Two or three of the
porters had seen the feat, but it was not their duty to interfere. One
of the guards saw it also; but having been, when younger, something of
an athlete, and admiring the way in which the thing had been done,
affected not to have seen it, and absolutely held the carriage-door
open for Cheyne when he was getting in.
At the first station where the train stopped, the guard who had seen
Cheyne lift the man over the gate, thrust his head into Cheyne's
compartment, there being no one else in it, and said:
"That was a very neat trick sir, very. It isn't often we see a thing
like that nowadays, sir."
"Confound it!" thought Cheyne, "this fellow must have his tip too."
He put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket and drew out a coin.
The guard saw what the passenger was doing, drew back, and said:
"No, sir; nothing for me, sir, thank you. It's not often nowadays we
see a trick like that done, and I'd give a trifle myself to see it
done again. But 'tisn't everyone, or half everyone, could do it."
And he moved along the platform, shaking his head to himself with the
intelligent approval of one who knows a good deal of the difficulties
in the performance of the feat which he applauded.
The train took eight hours to get to Bankleigh, but at last it drew up
at that station, and Cheyne alighted.
It was then dusk, and the traveller having learned there was only one
place in the town or village which accommodated strangers, and that it
was only a few hundred yards away, gave his portmanteau to a porter,
and bade the man lead him to the Shropshire Arms.
Now on the local London lines of railway, where there was a chance of
meeting a friend or acquaintance, Cheyne always travelled first class,
the difference in the fares of the first and third being only a few
pence. But when he went farther into the open country, where there was
practically no chance of meeting anyone who would know him, and where
the difference came to many shillings, he always travelled third
class. This was the most important journey of his life. He, a
gentleman, was about to call upon another gentleman, and demand
satisfaction, and it would not do to travel in any way that did not
befit the station of men of their class.
All the way down in the train the deadliness of his design had not
been lessened. He would meet this man, he would tell this man who he
was, and then he would challenge him. There should be no seconds and
no doctor. If the Marquis declined pistols and swords, then Cheyne
would try to kill him with his hands, his fists, his thumbs dug into
his throat. It was not every man, it was not one in ten thousand,
could have lifted that burly ticket-collector over that gate with the
neat precision he had shown. He could have thrown that man
headforemost twenty feet, and broken his neck against a wall.
Cheyne engaged the best room at The Shropshire Arms, and ordered
supper. It was only meet that a man come upon such a mission should be
housed and fed as became a man of blood.
It would have been quite impossible for Cheyne to indulge in the
luxuries of first-class travelling and first-class hotel
accommodation, only he was one who always lived within his means, and
had by him, when starting from London, all the money he had got for
the right of re-publication in three volumes of his novel "The Duke of
Fenwick." The money would not last for ever, but it would keep him
going comfortably for a month or six weeks.
Cheyne was not in the least superstitious; but he did look on it as an
extraordinary coincidence that the money he had got for the book which
had exasperated Lord Southwold, now enabled him to come down from
London, and seek satisfaction for the affront which had been put upon
his mother and himself.
He asked the waiter who served the supper, if his Grace the Duke of
Southwold was at home.
"No, sir, I think not. His Grace the Duke and Lord Southwold--that is,
you know, sir, his lordship's only son and heir----"
"Yes, yes, I know."
"Well, sir, the two of them are gone to sea in his Grace's yacht, the
_Seabird_, a couple, ay, or maybe three, days ago."
"And where have they sailed for?"
"Nowhere, sir."
"Why, what do you mean?"
"They never sails for nowhere, sir, great folks like them; and they
never go nowhere, just as a man might walk out into the middle of a
grass field and come back whistling no tune, nor bringing no daisy nor
buttercup, nor as much as cutting a switch for himself in the hedge. I
have never been to sea, sir, never. Where's the good of going to sea?
But I've seen my share of salt water in my time, and all I ever saw of
it was as like as two pea's, ay, liker; for some of the green peas is
yellow, and some of the yellow peas is green. But all the sea-water I
ever saw was the same in colour and smell and beastliness of taste and
disposition, only fit for sharks and alligators and sorts like them.
And not a single useful fish would be in the sea but would be poisoned
by the beastly sea-water, only for the sweet waters of the rivers
running into the sea and cheering up the fishes, poor souls, like a
pint of cold bitter after a long walk of a hot day."
"And when do you think the yacht will come back?"
"There's no telling that, not unless you was a prophet. Even the
sporting prophets knows nothing about it; for his grace has no
dealings with dogs or horses, no more than the miller's wife that's
been dead this five year."
"Are they often long away--months?"
"No, sir, not often months. But they are often away a tidy bit. It's
like hanging a leg of mutton Christmas-time; it mostly depends on the
weather whether the leg will ripen by Christmas-day, or will ripen too
soon, or won't be ripe enough."
"And is it the bad or the good weather that brings them home?"
"Well, sir, seeing that this house is built on the Duke's property and
called after the Duke, and that the landlord, sir, holds it by lease
under the Duke, it wouldn't be becoming in me or anyone else of us to
call it bad weather that brings the Duke back to us; but I'm free to
say it isn't the kind of weather that everybody would order if he was
going on a desolate island and wanted to enjoy himself on the sly away
from the old woman. We call it the Duke's wind here; for if he's
afloat it brings him home, and that's the only good it ever brings,
but the doctors and the coffin-makers and grave-diggers. Most people
call it the nor'-east wind. You see his grace is over sixty now, and
has got all his joints pretty well blocked up with rheumatism; and the
minute the nor'-east sets in it screws him up, and they have to run
for home. His lordship stops aboard the _Seabird_ in the shelter of
the bay, and his grace goes up to the Castle, and never goes out of
his warm rooms at the back of the Castle, farthest away from the
nor'-east, until the wind changes."
"And how far is the castle from here?"
"About four mile, or maybe a trifle less. We like to think we're a
trifle nearer to it than four miles. Anyway, we're sure of one
thing--we're the nearest public-house or inn by a mile."
"There is no railway, I suppose, from here to Silverview?"
"Railway! Railway! Why, it's my belief his grace would rather have a
row of public-houses opposite the Castle gate, and the courtyard made
into a bowling-green with green wooden boxes all round for
refreshments, rather than see the snout of a railway-engine within a
mile of his place."
"Then I shall walk over to the place and have a look at to-morrow
morning," thought Cheyne, as he strolled out into the porch to smoke a
couple of cigars before going to bed.
But he did not smoke even half one of his cigars there. The air had
grown suddenly chilly, nay, downright cold. So he left the porch and
went into the cosy little bar, where there was a fire for boiling
water for those who liked a drop of something hot.
Here were half-a-dozen men smoking and chatting and drinking. As he
entered, all were silent.
"Turned quite cold, sir," said the host, who was sitting at a table
with the rest.
"Yes, indeed," said Cheyne, taking a chair. "I thought I would smoke
in the porch, but it was too cold to sit there."
"Ah," said the landlord, "I think we're in for a stinging
nor'-easter--the Duke's weather, as we call it hereabouts, sir."
"Do you think so?" said Cheyne.
"Ay, no doubt of it."
"Then," thought Cheyne, "I shall not have long to wait."