I
HIS Grace had had such a very bad night that he was only just able to reach his morning-room by the discreet hour of eleven. He was so exceedingly irritable that even the presence of the Times on the little table at his elbow was almost too much for him. And barely had he settled himself in his chair and put on his spectacles when an acute annoyance with the nature of things was further increased by the ill-timed appearance of his private secretary, Mr. Gilbert Twalmley.
Mr. Twalmley so well understood the art of being agreeable, that, of itself, his appearance was seldom if ever unwelcome; had the fact been otherwise it is reasonably certain that long ago he would have had to seek some other sphere of usefulness. And even on this sinister morning Mr. Twalmley was not the head and front of his own offending; the germ of unpopularity was in the message that he bore.
“Sir Dugald Maclean has rung up, sir. He would like to know if you can see him on a matter of urgent importance.”
“When?” said the Duke sourly.
“He will come round at once.”
The fact was clear that his Grace was not in a mood to receive anyone just then, least of all Sir Dugald Maclean, who at any time was far from being persona gratissima at Bridport House. But after a mental struggle, which if quite short was rather grim, he allowed public policy to override his private feelings.
“I suppose I’d better,” he said with something ominously like a groan of disgust.
II
Even when the decision was taken and Mr. Twalmley had gone to make it known, the Duke was not quite clear in his mind as to why he should submit to such an ordeal. Was it really necessary to see this man? Would any purpose be served by his so doing?
This morning the Duke was in a mood of vacillation, itself the sequel to a night of physical and mental torment. Men and events and Nature’s own self were conspiring against him; the future and the past were alike in their menace; he could see nothing ahead but a vista of anxiety.
Waiting for this man whom he disliked so intensely, he tried at first to fix his mind on the morning’s news, and failed lamentably. For one thing the paper itself was a sinister portent of the times. But there were others, and in the interval of waiting for an unwelcome visitor his Grace reviewed them gloomily.
Albert John had lived to see dark days. At heart a time-server and a cynic, his strongest wish had been to go to the grave in the faith of his fathers. In the beginning none had realized more clearly than he that dukes were not as other men. Born to that convenient dogma, or at least having imbibed it with the milk of infancy, it was in the very marrow of his bones. But now, it would seem, the Time Spirit had overtaken the order to which he belonged.
Twin portents of that fact had hovered all night round his pillow. First came the business of Jack and the lady of his choice, who at close quarters had proved to be so much more than his Grace had bargained for; then there was the minor yet entirely vexing complication of Muriel and her Berserker of a Radical.
Compared with the first gigantic issue, the second was a mere sideshow, which in a happier hour his Grace would have treated with sardonic contempt. After all, did it greatly matter if Muriel had the ill taste to prefer an obvious political thruster and arriviste to a state of single blessedness? The heavens were not likely to fall in either case. The man was a cad and there was no more to be said, yet even Albert John was not quite able to maintain the standpoint of High Olympus. Such a mountebank of a fellow ought not to count, yet when the best had been said there was something about the brute which rankled horribly.
Some years before, in a historic speech in the Gilded Chamber, the Duke had drawn a lurid picture of democracy knocking at the gate. His words were so nakedly obvious that in a single morning they awoke to fame throughout a flattered and delighted island. Everybody had known for a generation that democracy was knocking at the gate, but the true art of prophecy as a going concern is to predict the event the day after it happens.
His Grace of Bridport, in the course of an admired speech, left no doubt as to his own feeling in the matter. He conceived it to be his duty to hold the gate as long as possible against the mob. But his memorable remarks, a little touched, no doubt, with the crudity of one who spoke seldom, gave opportunity for a thruster in the person of a rising Scots publicist to convulse the Lower House with his fanciful portrait of the Great Panjandrum of Bridport House with little round button on top.
That had happened some years ago. But the alchemies of time had now prepared a charming comedy for the initiated. The temerarious Scotsman, moving from triumph to triumph, had determined to consolidate his fortunes by marrying the third daughter of the house of Dinneford.
When Sir Dugald’s decision became known to the Duke, his amazement took a very caustic turn. He had never forgiven the fellow for so savagely flaunting him as a trophy at the end of a pole. “Rien qui blesse comme la vérité.” It was therefore hard for his Grace to knuckle down to this adventurer. Besides, had Sir Dugald’s opinions been other than they were, one of his kidney must not look for a welcome at Bridport House.
Democracy was knocking at the gate with a vengeance. Muriel’s affair had shaken the Family to its base. For some little time past it was known that she was cultivating breadth. Her coquettings with that dangerous tendency had affected her diet, her clothes, her reading, as well as her social and mental outlook. She had formed quite a habit of emerging from the Times Book Club with all kinds of highbrows in a strap. She had made odd friendships, she had joined queer movements, and from time to time she regaled very remarkable people with tea and cake at Bridport House.
To all this there could only be one end. First she consulted her oculist and changed her glasses, and then she fell in love. She was the first of the Bridport ladies to enter that state; thus she was less a portent than a phenomenon. Sarah, Blanche, and Marjorie gave her the cold shoulder, and Aunt Charlotte frowned, but there was no getting over the sinister fact that Breadth had at last undone her. Sir Dugald had recently been seen for the first time in one of the smaller and less uncomfortable drawing-rooms of Bridport House. The Dinneford ladies seldom read the newspapers, at least the political part of them, being beyond all things “healthy-minded” women; therefore they knew little of the facts of his career. Moreover, they were in happy ignorance of the attack he had launched three years ago upon their sire. But it cannot be said of Muriel that she was equally innocent. Evil communications corrupt good manners; Breadth had made a recourse to politics inevitable. And the slight importance she attached to a certain incident was, to say the least, unfilial.
In the cool, appraising eyes of Sarah, Blanche, and Marjorie, the bold Sir Dugald was set down already as a freak of nature. They were not used to that sort of person at Bridport House. Unfortunately such an attitude forbade any just perception of the man himself. His career was still in the making, and in the view of keen but unsympathetic observers who had followed it from the start, the hapless Muriel had been marked down in order that she might advance him in it. Moreover, up till now, his ambition had never known defeat, particularly when inflamed by a worthy object.
According to biographies of the People’s Champion, portrait on cover, price one shilling net, which flooded the bookstalls of his adopted country, his life had been a fine expression of the deep spiritual truth, “God helps those who help themselves.” His career had been truly remarkable, yet in the opinion of qualified judges it was only just beginning. In the person of Sir Dugald Maclean, Democracy was knocking at the gate with a vengeance. Its keepers must be up and doing lest Demos ravish the citadel within and get clear away with the pictures, the heirlooms and the gold plate.
“She must be out of her mind,” declared the Duke at the first announcement of the grisly tidings. Lady Wargrave went further. “She is out of her mind,” trumpeted the sage of Hill Street.
There were alarums and excursions, there was a pretty todo. But Muriel had grown so Broad that she treated the matter very lightly. The ruthless Sir Dugald had tied her to the wheel of his car; he was now determined to lead her to the altar with or without the sanction of his Grace.
III
All too soon for the Duke’s liking in this hour of fate, Sir Dugald arrived for his interview. At any time he was a bitter pill for his Grace to swallow; just now, in the light of present circumstances, it called for the virtue of a stoic to receive him at all.
Now these adversaries met again certain ugly memories were in their minds. But the advantage was with the younger man who could afford to be secretly amused by the business in hand. A semblance of respect, to be sure, was in his bearing, but that was no more than homage paid by worldly wisdom to the spirit of place. Right at the back lay the mind of the cool calculator, which in certain aspects had an insight almost devilish into the heart of material man. Well he knew the hostility of this peevish, brooding invalid. He was in a position to flout it; yet, after all, the man who now received him would have been rather more than human had he not hated him like poison.
Sir Dugald could afford to smile at this figure of impotence; yet the Duke, in his way, was no mean adversary. Up to a point his mind was extremely vigorous. The will to prevail against encroachment on the privileges of his class was still strong. Besides physical suffering had not yet bereft him of a maliciously nice appreciation of the human comedy. It may even have been that which now enabled him to receive “the thruster.”
As Sir Dugald entered the room he was keenly aware that the eyes of a satyr were fixed upon him. And the picture of a rather fantastic helplessness, propped in its chair, was not without its pathos. The old lion, stricken sore, would have given much to rend the intruder, but he was in the grip of Fate.
The success of Sir Dugald had been magical, but luck had played no part in it, beyond the period of the world’s history and the particular corner of the globe in which he happened to be born. He had got as far as he had in a time comparatively short for the simple reason that he was a man of quite unusual powers.
No man could have had a truer perception of the conditions among which he had been cast than Dugald Maclean, no man could have had a stronger grasp of certain forces, or of the alchemy transmuting them into things undreamt of; no man could have had a bolder outlook upon the whole amazing phantasmagoria evolved by the cosmic dust out of the wonders within itself. The Duke had the cynicism of the materialist; the man who faced him now had the vision of him who sees too much.
The Duke, with a great air and a courtesy which was second nature, begged his visitor to forgive his being as he was.
Sir Dugald, with a mechanical formula and a mechanical smile, responded with a ready sympathy. But while their conventional phrases flowed, each marked the other narrowly, like a pair of strange brigands colloguing for the first time on the side of a mountain. It was as if each knew the other for a devil of a fellow, yet not quite such a devil of a fellow as he judges himself to be.
Efficiency was the watchword of Maclean. There was no beating about the bush. He knew what he wanted and had come to see that he got it. In a cool, aloof, rather detached way he lost no time in putting forward the demand he had made at a former meeting.
“But one has been led to infer from your speeches,” said the Duke, bluntly, “and the facts of your career, that you stand for an order of things very different from those obtaining here.”
“Up to a point, yes,” was the ready answer. “But only up to a point. In order to govern efficiently it is wise to aim at a centralization of power. The happiest communities are those in which power is in the hands of the few. Now there is much in the social hierarchy, even as at present constituted, which deserves to survive the shock of battle that will soon be upon us. It ought to survive, for it has proved its worth. And in identifying myself with it I shall be glad when the time comes to help your people here if only you will help me now.”
“In a word, you are ready to throw over your friends,” said the Duke with a narrowing eye.
“By no means! I have not the least intention of doing that.”
His Grace was hard to convince; besides the man’s nonchalance incensed him. “Well, as I have told you already, the only terms on which we can begin to think of having you here are that you quit your present stable.”
“Don’t you think you take a parochial view?” The considered coolness had the power to infuriate. “Whichever stable one happens to occupy at the moment is not very material. It is simply a means to an end.”
“To what end?”
“The better government of the country—of the Empire, if you prefer it.”
“You aim at the top?”
“Undoubtedly. And I think I shall get there.”
The note of self-confidence was a little too much for his Grace. He shot out an ugly lower lip and plucked savagely at the small tuft of hair upon it. “That remains to be seen, my friend.” And he added in a tone of ice, “When you have got there you can come and ask me again.”
“But it is going to take time,” Sir Dugald spoke lightly and readily, not deigning to accept the challenge. “Meanwhile Lady Muriel and I would like to get married.”
It seemed, however, that the Duke had made up his mind in the matter quite definitely. There must be a coat of political whitewash for a dirty dog before he could hope to receive any kind of official sanction as a son-in-law. Such in effect was the last word of his Grace; and it was delivered with a point that was meant to lacerate.
It did not fail of its effect. Somehow the ducal brand of cynicism was edged like a razor, and the underlying contempt poisoned the wounds it dealt. The man who had sprung from the people, who in accordance with the brutal innuendo of the man of privilege would be only too ready to throw them over as soon as they had served his turn, was powerless before it. At this moment, as he was ruefully discovering, place and power did not hesitate to use loaded dice.
Sir Dugald was savagely angry. In spite of an iron self-control, the cold insolence of one who made no secret of the fact that he regarded the man before him as other clay was hard to bear. A career of success, consistent and amazing, had given Sir Dugald a pretty arrogance of his own. And he was a very determined man playing for victory.
IV
It was clear from the Duke’s manner that as far as he was concerned the interview was at an end. But Sir Dugald had made up his mind to carry the matter a step farther. He was a bold man, his position was stronger than his Grace had reason to guess, moreover, a powerful will had been reënforced by a growing animosity.
“Before I go,” said Sir Dugald, “there is one last word, and to me it seems of great importance.”
The Duke sat silent, a stony eye fixed upon his visitor.
“First, let me say as one man of the world to another, that your objection to my marrying Lady Muriel is injudicious.”
“No doubt—from your point of view. But we won’t go into that.”
“On the contrary, I think we had better. As I say, it is injudicious. We have fully made up our minds to marry. You can’t hinder us, you know—so why make things uncomfortable?”
“Because I dislike it, sir—I dislike it intensely!” His Grace was suddenly overwhelmed by his feelings.
“Do you mind stating the grounds of your objection?”
“It would be tedious to enumerate them.”
“Well, I’d like you to realize the advantages of letting things go on as they are.”
“There are none so far as one can see at the moment.”
“We are coming to them now,” said Sir Dugald blandly. “In the first place, has it occurred to you that I may know the history of Mr. Dinneford’s fiancée?”
The Duke stared fixedly at the man before him. “What do you mean?” he said.
“Suppose one happens to know her secret?”
“Her secret!”
“Her origin and early history.”
“What do you mean?”
“Is there really any need to ask the question?”
The Duke shook his head perplexedly. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
“Well,” said Sir Dugald coolly, “it happens that you are the one man in the world who is in a position to answer the question I have ventured to ask.”
They looked at each other. A rather deadly silence followed.
“The question you have ventured to ask.” The Duke repeated the words slowly, but with a reluctance and a venom he could not conceal.
“You know perfectly well what I mean.” The tone, direct and cool, was exasperating.
“Are you trying to blackmail me?” There was an ugly light in the Duke’s eyes.
Sir Dugald laughed. “Why put the matter so crudely?” he said. “I am merely anxious that justice should be done. You ought to be grateful to Providence for giving you this opportunity.”
“Opportunity?”
“To right the wrong that has been committed.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I refer to Miss Lawrence’s parentage.”
“One fails to see that her parentage is any business of yours or mine.”
“It is certainly business of yours,” was the sardonic answer; “and it is going to be mine because I am determined that matters shall take their present course. Lady Muriel and I intend to marry, and Mr. Dinneford and Miss Lawrence ought to marry.”
The Duke gazed at him with an air of blank stupefaction.
“I invite you to give the matter very careful consideration.” Sir Dugald had constrained a harsh accent to the point of mellowness. “Let me say at once that if you don’t withdraw your opposition it is in my power to make myself rather unpleasant.”
“Nature has relieved you of any obligation in that matter. You are the most unpleasant man I have ever had to do with.”
“Let me outline the position.” The mellifluous note spurred his Grace to fury. “Mr. Dinneford and Miss Lawrence, Lady Muriel and I are determined to marry and we must have your consent.”
“And if I don’t give it?” The tone matched the truculent eyes.
“I may be tempted to use my knowledge in a way which will be much more disagreeable than the things you wish to prevent.”
“Do I understand this to be a threat?”
Sir Dugald smiled darkly.
“Very well!” Defiance and resentment rode the Duke very hard. “Use your knowledge as you like. You are a scoundrel.”
“A hard name.” Again the Duke was met by a saturnine Scottish smile. “But my motives are sound.”
“So are mine.” The Duke’s voice shook with fury. “If you are not careful I will have you put out of the house.”
“We are not living in the Middle Ages, you know.”
“More’s the pity. I’d have found a short way with you then, my friend. Your wanting to marry Muriel is bad enough, your interference with Dinneford is an outrage.”
“In the circumstances I feel it to be my duty to do what I can in an exceedingly delicate matter.”
“Self-interest, sir, that’s all your duty amounts to.” But the Duke was now thoroughly alarmed, and he saw that recrimination was not going to help him. “Tell me,” he said in a tone more conciliatory than he had yet used, “exactly on what ground you are standing?”
“In the first place, there is a very remarkable family likeness.”
“And you base your allegation upon a mere conjecture of that kind!” said the Duke scornfully.
“Upon far more than that, believe me. I have very strong and direct evidence which at the present moment I prefer not to disclose.”
The Duke paused at this bold statement. He turned a basilisk’s eye upon his adversary, but Sir Dugald offered a mask, behind which, as his Grace well knew, lurked unlimited depth and cunning. One thing was clear: a man of this kidney was not likely to venture such a coup without having carefully weighed his resources. In any case there cannot be smoke unless there is fire. A certain amount of knowledge must be in the possession of Maclean; the question was how much, and what use was he prepared to make of it?
“Do I understand,” said the Duke after a moment of deep thought, “that you have spoken of this matter to Mr. Dinneford?”
“I have not yet done so.”
“Or to Miss Lawrence?”
“No—nor to Mrs. Sanderson.”
The Duke’s look of concentration at the mention of that name was not lost upon Sir Dugald. It had the effect of hardening the ironical smile which for some little time now had hung round his lips.
“May I ask you,” said the Duke with the air of a man pretty badly hipped, “not to speak of this matter to anyone until there has been an opportunity for further discussion?”
The abrupt change in the tone confessed a moral weakness which Sir Dugald was quick to notice. But he fell in with the suggestion, with a show of ready magnanimity for which the Duke could have slain him. There was no wish to cause avoidable unpleasantness. Sir Dugald was good enough to say that it was in the interests of all parties that the skeleton should be kept in the cupboard. The matter was bound to give pain to a number of innocent people, and if the Duke, even at the eleventh hour, would be reasonable he might depend upon it that Sir Dugald Maclean would be only too happy to follow his example.
V
Upon the retirement of the unwelcome visitor, the Duke gave himself up to a state of irritation verging on fury. Unprepared for this new turn of the game, taken at a complete disadvantage by a man of few scruples and diabolical cleverness, he was now horribly smitten by a sense of having said things he ought not to have said. On one point he was clear. In the shock of the unforeseen he had yielded far too much to the impact of a scoundrel.
The position seen as a whole was one of very grave difficulty, and the instinct now dominating his mind was to seek a port against a storm which threatened at any moment to burst upon him. It was of vital importance that certain facts should be kept from certain people; otherwise there could be little doubt that the private cosmos of Albert John, fifth Duke of Bridport, would fall about his ears.
Alone with his fluttered thoughts, the Duke spent a bad half-hour trying to marshal them in battle array. Face to face with a situation dangerous, disagreeable, unforeseen, it would call for much tactical skill to fend off disaster. Never in his life had he found it so hard to choose a line of action. At last, the prey of doubt, he rang for Harriet Sanderson.
She came to him at once and he told her promptly of Sir Dugald’s visit. And then, his eyes on her face, he went on to tell her there was reason to fear that a secret had been penetrated which he had always been led to believe was known only to her and to himself.
Watching her narrowly while he spoke he saw his words go home. She stood a picture of dismay.
“I wonder if the man really can know all?” he said finally.
At first she made no attempt to answer the question; but after a while, in a low, rather frightened voice, she said, “I don’t think he can know possibly.”
He searched her troubled eyes, almost as if he doubted. “Perhaps you will tell me this.” He spoke in a tone of growing anxiety. “Would you say there is anything like a marked family resemblance?”
“A very strong one, I’m afraid.”
“It is confined, I hope, to the picture at the top of the stairs?”
“Oh, no—at least to my mind——”
“Yes?”
“She has her father’s eyes.”
“Very interesting to know that.” The Duke laughed, but it was a curious note in which there was not a grain of mirth. “Yet, even assuming that to be the case, it would take a bold man to jump to such a conclusion. Surely he would need better ground to go upon.”
“I am sorry to say he has much more than a mere likeness to help him.” As Harriet spoke the bright color ran from neck to brow. “He happened to be at my brother-in-law’s on the evening the child was first brought to the house.”
That simple fact was far more than the Duke had bargained for. A look of dismay came upon him, he shook an ominous head. “It throws a new light on the matter,” he said, after a pause, painful in its intensity. “Now tell me this—did he see the child?”
“Oh, yes!”
“That helps him to put two and two together at any rate.” A look of tragic concern came into his face. “What an amazing world!”
She agreed that the world was amazing. And in spite of the strange unhappiness in her eyes she could not help smiling a little as a surge of memories came upon her. She sighed softly, even tenderly as she made the confession. “To my mind, Sir Dugald Maclean is one of the most amazing men in it.”
“Have you any particular reason for saying that?”—The gaze was disconcerting in its keenness—“apart, I mean, from the mere obvious facts of his career?”
“It is simply that I have watched him rise,” said Harriet, between a smile and a sigh. “When I knew him first he was a London policeman.”
“How in the world did he persuade Scotland Yard to part with him?” scoffed his Grace. “One would have thought such a fellow would have been worth his weight in gold.”
She could not repress a laugh which to herself seemed to verge on irreverence. “My brother-in-law says he soon convinced them he was far too ambitious for the Metropolitan Police Force.”
“I should say so!”
“And then he studied the law and got into parliament.”
“And made his fortune by backing a downtrodden people against a vile aristocracy.” The Duke’s smile was so sour that it became a grimace. “In other words a self-made man.”
“Oh, yes—entirely!” The sudden generous warmth of admiration in Harriet’s tone surprised the Duke. “When one considers the enormous odds against him and what he has been able to do at the age of forty-two, it seems only right to think of him as wonderful.”
“Personally,” said his Grace, “I prefer to regard him as an unscrupulous scoundrel.”
Harriet dissented with a smile. “A great man,” she said softly.
“Let us leave it at a very dangerous man. He is a real menace, not only to us, but to the country. Anyhow, we have now to see that he doesn’t bring down the house about our ears.”
There was something in the tone that swept the color from Harriet’s face. “That I realize.” Her voice trembled painfully. “Oh, I do hope he has not mentioned the matter to Mary.” And she plucked at her dress in sudden alarm.
“Not yet, I think,” said the Duke venomously. “He is too sure a hand to spring his mine before the time is ripe. Meanwhile we are forearmed; let us take every precaution against him.”
“Oh, yes, we must!” Her eyes were tragic.
“A devilish mischance,” said the Duke slowly, “a devilish mischance that he, of all men, has been able to hit the trail.”
VI
When Harriet had gone from the room, the Duke surrendered again to his thoughts. By now they were almost intolerable. Pulled this way and that by a conflict of emotion that was cruel, he was brought more than once to the verge of a decision he had not the courage to make. The situation was forcing it upon him, yet so much was involved, so much was at stake that a weak man at bottom, he was ready to grasp at anything which held a slender hope of putting off the evil day. Two interests were vitally opposed; he sought to do justice to both, yet as far as he could see at the moment, any reconciliation between them was impossible.
He was in a state of bitter, ever-growing embarrassment, when Jack was unexpectedly announced.
His Grace was not able to detach himself sufficiently from the maelstrom within to observe the hue of resolution in the bearing of a rather unwelcome visitor.
“Good morning, sir,” said the young man coolly, with an aloofness that came near to sarcasm. And then in a tone of very simple matter of fact, he said, “I have merely called to ask if you will give a formal consent to my marrying Mary Lawrence.”
From the particular way in which the question was put it was easy to deduce an ultimatum. But it came at an unlucky moment. So delicately was the Duke poised between two contending forces, that a point-blank demand was quite enough to turn the scale. His Grace replied at once that he was not in a position to give consent.
Jack was prepared for a refusal. The nature of the case had made it seem inevitable. But there and then he issued a ukase. His kinsman should have a week in which to think over the matter. And if in that time the Duke did not change his mind he would return to Canada.
The threat was taken very coolly, but his Grace was far more concerned by it than he allowed Jack to see. In fact, he was very much annoyed. Here was an end to the plan which had been formed for the general welfare of Bridport House. Such conduct was inconsiderate, tiresome, irrational. But it was not merely the inconvenience it was bound to cause which was so troublesome. There was still the other aspect of the case. He could not rid himself of the feeling that a cruel injustice was being done to an innocent and defenseless person, and that the whole blame of it must lie at his own door.
He had been given a week in which to think the matter over, in which to examine it in all its bearings. Just now he was not in a mood to urge the least objection to Jack’s departure; all the same one frankly an autocrat resented it deeply. Let the fellow go and be damned to him! But in spite of the philosophic air with which he sent the young fool about his business, his Grace realized as soon as he was alone that it was quite impossible to shut his eyes to certain facts. Vital issues were involved and it was no use shirking them. Even if he had now made up his mind to steel his heart against gross and rather brutal injustice, so that the common weal might prosper, nothing could alter the human aspect of a matter that galled him bitterly.