The Twickenham Peerage. Marsh Richard
perceived by my demeanour that something unusual had happened.
'What is it?' she asked.
'Bartlett, you can go. Tell the messenger to wait.'
The man went. I could not have attempted an explanation while he was in the room. When he was gone my tongue still faltered. I re-read the words which, while they convinced me utterly, set me doubting all the more. Vi, watching me, repeated her inquiry.
'What is wrong, Douglas? Why do you look so strange?'
I handed her the note. Rapid consideration seemed to show that was the shortest and the safest way. She read it with an obvious want of comprehension.
'What an extraordinary communication. What does it mean? From whom has it come?'
'It's from Twickenham.'
'Douglas!'
She dropped her hands, note and all, on to her knee.
'To me it's like a voice from the grave. The words with which he bade me farewell are almost the identical ones with which he bids me come to him again.'
'Then it was he you saw?'
'Apparently.'
'And what does this mean?'
'It seems that he is ill.'
'Ill?' She referred to the note. 'He says that the Devil's got him by the throat. I shouldn't wonder. I believe, for my part, that there always is a time when that person comes to claim his own. You can't go on being wicked with impunity for ever. And that-he'll be dead to-morrow. Douglas, he says that he'll be dead before this time to-morrow.'
'So he says.'
'But-if he should be?'
I knew the thought which was in her mind; though I kept my eyes from off her face. I was conscious of an unusual contraction of the muscles about the region of the heart. What was this evil with which I was trafficking? She turned herself inside out, with a sublime unconsciousness of the troubled waters which I felt that I was entering.
'I'll be able to marry Reggie; and you may marry Edith. So that I needn't write to him. Why, Douglas, this bad man's death will usher in a peal of wedding bells. It ought to ease his final moments to know that he'll do so much good by dying.'
It galled me to hear her talk in such a strain. True, she had learnt it from me; but, just then, that made it none the better.
'Don't you think you're a trifle premature in marrying, and giving in marriage? He's not dead yet.'
'No, but he will be. I feel that he will be soon. You'll find that for once he's told the truth.'
'However that may be, I wish you wouldn't speak like that. It sounds a little inhuman. As if you anxiously anticipated his entering the fires of hell to enable you to enjoy the bliss of heaven.'
She looked up at me with a naïve surprise.
'Douglas, what ever do you mean by that? Haven't you always counted on his death? And isn't he a wicked man?'
'Decency suggests that we should feign some sorrow even if we feel it not.'
'It suggests to me nothing of the kind. The moment the Marquis of Twickenham's death is announced I shall rejoice-for Reggie's sake, and yours.'
'I see. And not at all for your own?'
'Also a little for my own. And Edith. For all our sakes, indeed.' I had taken up my position before the fireplace: she planted herself in front of me. 'Douglas, what has come to you upon a sudden? Here's the news for which you have been waiting arrived at last, and you look as black as black can be, and speak so crossly that I hardly know you for yourself.'
'You arrive too rapidly at your conclusions. I have grown so weary of expecting what never comes that my sense of anticipation's dulled. The man's not died these fifteen years; why should he die now?'
'Because he says he's going to: and I tell you that, this time, what he says he means.'
Turning aside, I looked down at the flaming coals. Her words and manner jarred on me alike.
'I don't like to think, and I don't like to know you think that, for us, the only hope of life is-death.'
'Douglas, what is the mood that's on you? Don't you want the man to die?'
Asked thus bluntly, I found myself hard put to it for an answer. After all, it was doubtful if I was not sorry that I had set out on this adventure. Never before had I felt myself so out of harmony with what was in my sister's heart. Obviously the riddle of my mood was beyond her finding out. She gave a little twirl of her skirts, as if dismissing from her mind all efforts to understand me.
'My dear Douglas, you are so mysterious, and so unexpectedly-shall I say, didactic! You do intend to be didactic, don't you, dear? – that you must excuse my calling your attention to the fact that the person who brought this note still waits.'
I rang the bell. Bartlett appeared.
'Tell the person who brought this letter that the answer is: "I am coming at once."'
When the servant had vanished, Violet eyed me with a quizzical smile.
'So you are going. I hope that the Marquis of Twickenham has exaggerated the gravity of his condition, and that on your arrival you will find him in the enjoyment of perfect health. Is that the kind of observation you think I ought to make?'
'It's quite possible,' I retorted, 'that I shan't find the Marquis of Twickenham at all.'
With that I left her. As I journeyed Strandwards I discussed within myself the possibility. Such was the conflict of my emotions that when the cab was about to turn off the Embankment into Norfolk Street I bade the driver go a little farther on before taking me to my destination. I knew that from the moment in which I set foot in the building, which Mr. Babbacombe had chosen for the exhibition of his uncanny gifts, I was committed to a course of action which, I was beginning to realise more clearly every moment, might lead I knew not whither. I might have been the first to pull the strings, but the figure once set in motion, if I was not careful, might have me at its mercy for ever and a day.
'I'll put a stop to the gruesome farce at its very opening. I'll tell the fellow that I'll have nothing to do with his hideous deception. If I become the accomplice of such a fiend as he is, my latter state will be worse than my first.'
With the determination strong upon me to be quit of the man and his misdeeds, I alighted at the door of Cortin's Hotel.
'Is the Marquis of Twickenham here?'
I put the question to a female who advanced towards me as I crossed the threshold. Apparently the establishment had not attained to the dignity of a hall porter.
'The Honourable Douglas Howarth?' I admitted that I was known by that name. 'His lordship expected to see you before, sir?'
The woman's tone conveyed a reproach which I resented. Evidently to her the Marquis of Twickenham was a person in authority before whom all men should bow. Besides, I could hardly have come more quickly than I had done. As I was being conducted to his apartment I told myself that I would address his lordship in a fashion for which he probably was unprepared.
The surprise, however, was on my side. I had expected to find the man alone. No one had breathed so much as a hint that any one was with him. When I entered the room, however, I found a person bending over the bed, whom it did not require much discernment to infer was a doctor. A voice, which I did not recognise as Mr. Montagu Babbacombe's, issued from beneath the sheets.
'Who's that? – Who's that come in?'
The waiter announced my name and style, as if introducing me to an assembled company.
'The Honourable Douglas Howarth.'
'Doug-! Is that you, Doug? D-n you! I thought you'd come!'
I advanced towards the bed. The doctor bowed. He was a young man, probably not much over thirty, with a frank, open face, which suggested rather a pleasant disposition than commanding talents. In the bed was Babbacombe-or Twickenham-whichever he chose to call himself. But what a change had taken