The Duke's Sweetheart: A Romance. Dowling Richard
and I am sure you want a run away and a little fresh air."
"Yes; I could write, no doubt. But then you see, May, I should not be able to come and read my MS. to you, and I should not get on very well. While I am at work at Long Acre I am in a hurry to be done, in order that I may get back to you, and I am too anxious to please you to do slovenly work; so the result is that I work longer and yet have more leisure, which is a paradox, and a paradox is particularly unsuited to the understanding of women."
"You are always saying nice and disagreeable things in the one breath; and I don't know whether to like you or to hate you."
"To cases of this kind an infrangible rule applies. It is, when I say nice things, hate me; when I say disagreeable things, love me. This is another paradox. Paradoxes, although they are not intelligible to women, are all the more dear to them on that very account. You never yet knew a woman who thoroughly understood a man care for him. I never did."
"But, Charlie, I think I understand you very well."
"Rank presumption. The rankest presumption I ever heard in all my life. Know me, May! Why, you don't even know who my father and mother were."
"You told me they were dead."
"Yes, they are dead. But you know nothing of them. You do not know if they were felons, or shopkeepers, or gentlefolk."
"I am sure, Charlie, they were gentlefolk."
"Ah, you do not know. And now, May," said he, taking her hand very tenderly and softly patting the back of it with the palm of his own, "I must tell you a secret I ought perhaps to have told you long ago, as it might influence you in your decision of accepting or not accepting me."
"Nothing you could have told me would have made the slightest difference in my decision, Charlie," she said, in a very faint voice.
He ceased patting her hand, and pressed it softly between his two palms. He spoke in a low voice:
"Well, May, the fact of it is I do not know who my father and mother were. It could do no good, dear, if this fact were made public, and I count on you for keeping it secret."
"You may," she whispered back, returning the pressure of his hands, and laying her disengaged hand upon the upper one of his. The action was slight and made without thought, yet he felt its import. He knew by that gesture she meant to convey to him that not only was the hand his own, but that all the faculties of her nature owed allegiance to him alone.
"Thank you, darling; I know how good you are. Every day I see you I am more and more convinced of your goodness. But you see. May, that is my only great trouble, and day by day I am afraid I may find out something very, unpleasant, something disgraceful about my father and mother."
"But nothing you can find out will be disgraceful to you, Charlie."
"No, logically and morally not. But then you know the sins of the parent are visited on the children, not merely by Heaven, but by the world. You know very well that if a man's father had been a hangman, or a murderer, or a forger, his son would be looked on with suspicion and dislike by the majority of the world. A man in my position is of course more alive to the discomfort of any such discovery than a man who knows about his parents. He is continually fancying all manner of horrible surprises, until the mind becomes morbidly sensitive on the subject. I confess I am morbidly sensitive on the subject; and of one thing I am certain, that if I made any discovery of the kind I have been speaking of, I could not stand England-London. I'd emigrate. I'd go to the United States or Australia; some place where the English language is spoken, and where I might have a chance of making a living by my pen. I am telling you all this for a purpose, May. It is all only a preface to a question. And the question: In case anything of the kind arose, and I was about to leave for the United States or a colony, would you marry me and come with me?"
"Oh, how can you ask such a question? I'd go anywhere with you. What does it matter where I am so long as I am with you, Charlie?"
He thanked her and kissed her, and soon after took his leave; for he had work to do that evening.
As he walked home in the fresh bright air his step was elastic, and he carried his head thrown back. His happiness was now complete. The two great points he had reserved had been cleared up. May cared only for himself. Whatever time might unearth about his father and mother, she would not be altered by it; and if anything obliging him to leave the country did transpire, she would marry him and go with him all the same as if nothing had come to light. This was the most peaceful, contented and joyous day of his life.
When Cheyne arrived at the house in Long Acre, he found Mr. Whiteshaw, the carriage-builder, standing in his wareroom.
"Good afternoon, Cheyne," cried the builder cheerily.
"Good afternoon," said Cheyne, pausing and drawing near.
"What news?" asked the carriage-builder, rubbing his hands, as though news ever so dismal would be preferable to none.
"Not a word," said Cheyne, stepping into the wareroom.
"Heard anything of the Duke of Shropshire since?"
"No, no. Nothing particular. Except that the Duke of Dorsetshire, in a note I got from him a day or two ago, says his grace is awfully cut up by the way these rascally Radicals are behaving."
"If I were at the head of affairs now, I'd pass a law treating all Radicals as working-men out of situations, and I'd clap every man Jack of them into jail. That's what I'd do."
"You'd never get a bill like that through the Commons, although you might through the Lords."
"Ah, I suppose not; I suppose not, Cheyne. We live in a degenerate age. But you, if you were in the House, would you vote for such a measure?"
"I am afraid it is extreme," said Cheyne, with a good-humoured smile.
"But you, you ought to be dead against Radicals and demagogues. Your name alone-why, sir, your name alone shows you come of a great stock, the great house of Shropshire. (By-the-way, we weren't long putting that brougham right for his grace. There it is, you see; and a pretty job too.) But, as I was saying, you must be a member of that family. Why, look at how few there are of the name."
"No, no. I assure you, most sincerely, I am in no way connected with any great house. The name is common enough in England-common enough. Well, I must be off to work. I have a whole lot of stuff to get away by to-night's mail for the morning."
With these words Cheyne walked out of the wareroom and got to the hall-door, and mounted the stairs.
"I never can understand," thought the carriage-maker, "why this Cheyne, who lies right and left about noblemen, should have such a strong objection to thinking he was descended from a big swell."
When Cheyne reached his own room he sat down and thought a moment. Then he said to himself very gravely:
"I wish Whiteshaw would give up this connecting my name with that of the Duke of Shropshire. Supposing a person found a poor deserted child, would it be kinder to name it Fitzalan Howard or plain William Brown?"
And when he had put the question to himself, he fell to wondering very unpleasantly whether or not he had at one time been a poor deserted child, picked up by some passer-by, to whom had been given the high-sounding name of Charles Augustus Cheyne.
So the afternoon which had been the happiest of his life ended under a sombre cloud.
CHAPTER VII.
A STORY OF A CITY
Wyechester is a small city in the Midlands. It does not contain more than thirty thousand people, so that it is possible for every man and woman of the middle class to know everyone of the same class, or, at all events, to know everything about everybody, which is almost as good, if not better.
Wyechester is not a place of any importance now, save what it draws from its cathedral and its bishop, and the other great dignitaries around the cathedral. If the city disappeared wholly one night the world of England would hardly miss it, provided the cathedral and church dignitaries were spared. It does not manufacture anything; it has no mines near it. No one ever thought of hunting or shooting in the neighbourhood but those who lived