The Twickenham Peerage.
by Richard Marsh.
CHAPTER I
A SIDE SHOW
"You and I can never marry."
Edith"s words had been in my thoughts ever since she had uttered them.
All night; all the morning; now that in the afternoon I had come out to take the air. I was strolling from the club to George Douglas"s rooms in Ashley Gardens. More for the sake of the exercise than in the desire of seeing him. As I was pa.s.sing the Abbey I glanced at the Aquarium on my right. My eye was caught by the words on a board which ran right across the front of the building, "At No Place In The World Can So Many Sights Be Seen." I hesitated. It was years since I had been in the place. One might as well spend half an hour beneath its roof as with George Douglas. I crossed the road and entered.
The first thing which struck me was the general grimness of everything. A winter garden it was called. Anything less garden-like one could hardly fancy. Coming from the clear sunshine of the autumn afternoon, the effect was curious. There was a larger audience than I had expected. The people were gathered, for the most part, round the central stage, on which a performance was taking place. Three girls in tights were displaying themselves on a trapeze. A moment"s glance was enough. It was the sort of thing one has seen a thousand times. I pa.s.sed on.
There were numerous side shows. There was a Harem; a Giant Lady; a Miraculous Dwarf; a Working Gold Mine; a Palace of Mirrors; the old familiar things. On the extreme left a huge placard was displayed:
THE MARVELLOUS SLEEPING MAN.
THIS IS THE TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY OF MONTAGU BABBACOMBE"S THIRTY-DAYS" SLEEP, WITHOUT EATING OR DRINKING.
COME AND SEE THE MOST WONDERFUL SIGHT IN THE WORLD.
I am not consciously attracted by such spectacles, even granting their genuineness--which is to grant a good deal. But, at the moment, I had nothing to do, and the idea of a man being able to forget, at will, for thirty consecutive days, the worries and troubles of life appealed to me with singular force. I went to see the sleeping man.
In the centre of a good-sized apartment stood a table. It was entirely covered by a large gla.s.s case. Under the case was a mattress. On the mattress lay a man. He had no pillows or bolster; no bedclothes with which to cover himself; and the fact that he was clad, so far as one could see, only in a suit of white linen pyjamas lent him, as one first caught sight of him on coming in, an appearance of peculiar uncanniness. One"s first impression was that under the gla.s.s case was an effigy, not a man.
If it was a trick, it was certainly well done. He lay on his back, his legs stretched out, his arms gathered to his sides. In his att.i.tude there was a starkness, a rigidity, which suggested death. It seemed incredible that a man could lie like that for twenty-eight days and be alive. This was borne in upon me so soon as I saw the peculiar position of his body. Then I saw his face.
It was Twickenham!
The shock was so overwhelming, that in a moment my whole physical organisation seemed at a standstill. I lost my balance. The whole place swam before me. I felt myself swaying to and fro. If I had not leaned against the gla.s.s case, I believe I should have fallen. In my whole life I had never before behaved so stupidly. A voice recalled me to myself.
"Take care there, sir! Do you want to break the gla.s.s?--or to knock the whole thing over?"
A person who seemed to have charge of the place addressed to me this, under the circ.u.mstances, not unnatural inquiry. I steadied myself as best I could. After a second or two I began to see things with something approaching to clearness. By degrees I got the man inside the case, as it were, in focus.
Was it Twickenham? I could not decide. It was fifteen years since I had seen him. As regards certain details my memory had possibly become a trifle blurred. Yet it was absurd to suppose that I could by any possibility fail to recognise him if we met. If it was not he, then it was his double. His very self, reproduced in another form.
Fifteen years make a difference in a man"s appearance--especially fifteen such years as it might be taken for granted that Twickenham had lived. Allowing, in my mind"s eye, for that difference, I became more and more at a loss to determine whether this was or was not the absentee. Never before had I been conscious of such a condition of mental bewilderment. I lost my presence of mind; was unable to arrange my thoughts; became incapable of deciding what to say or do. The situation was the very last I had expected. Coming at such a moment it found me wholly unprepared.
If this was Twickenham, this uncanny-looking mountebank in the guise of death, then the entire edifice we had been laboriously constructing for fifteen years crumbled at a touch. Edith"s words, "You and I can never marry," would be indeed proved true. And Reggie and Vi--what of them? Where would Reggie be if his brother turned up at this hour of the day? And I? Reggie was my debtor to the extent of nearly every penny I had ever had. If he was not the Marquis, because Leonard still was in the flesh, then he and Vi, and I, were ruined. And Edith could never marry a pauper.
Down toppled our whole card edifice, never again to be rebuilt by us.
But the question was--was the man under the gla.s.s case, lying on the mattress, in the white pyjamas, Leonard Sherrington, third Marquis of Twickenham? The Twickenham peerage carried with it rather over than under a hundred thousand pounds a year. It might, therefore, on the face of it, seem absurd to suppose that its present holder could be found posing as the Marvellous Sleeping Man in a side show at the Westminster Aquarium. But that was only seeming. To those who had the honour of the present peer"s acquaintance, such a state of affairs seemed about as likely as any other. Twickenham was born mad, and continued as he was born. His father was, if anything, madder than he was. They consistently, and persistently quarrelled. Some of the capers Leonard cut were a trifle high. The old man resented any one"s cutting higher capers than he did. As Leonard spent money like water, his sire let him have as little to spend as he could help. The result was disastrous. Leonard got money in ways which suggested congenital insanity. Then there came the crash. When Leonard was thirty-one, it became known that Morris Acrodato held a bill for five and twenty thousand pounds to which he had forged his father"s name. Leonard vanished. The old man declined to pay. Six months after he was dead.
His wife had predeceased him. He left two sons--Leonard, and a second son, born seventeen years later, Reginald. Oddly enough, considering the terms on which he had lived with him, a will was found in which he left everything to his firstborn. Under these circ.u.mstances one wondered why he had not handed over that five and twenty thousand without a fuss. But both father and son were men who were, in all things, superior to the ordinary rules of common sense. The thing which every reasonable creature did, was the one thing they never did.
Nothing had been seen of Leonard since the day of his flight. Although it was not generally known, something had, however, been heard. On seven different occasions his lawyers, Foster, Charter, and Baynes, had received intimations that he was alive. He had dropped these hints, it would seem, in a spirit of pure "cussedness." They had come at varying intervals, from different parts of the world. They all took the form of holograph notes, in which the writer curtly observed that he was alive and in good health, and trusted that the firm was giving to his interests all the attention they required. They bore no address, and it proved impossible to trace by whom they had been posted; but that they were bona-fide emanations from Twickenham himself seemed undoubted.
The last of these notes had come to hand more than seven years back.
Since then he had given no sign. As, previously, no two years had elapsed without advice being received of his existence, the continued silence seemed to suggest that, at last, he might be dead. That he was so, I, for one, devoutly hoped. All that I required was proof of his decease.
When the old man died, all that his second son, Reginald, had he inherited from his mother. It was barely enough to keep him alive. He was fourteen years of age. Soon after he was in the twenties he was as good as penniless. By this time I had become mixed up with his fortunes in rather a curious fashion. I had a sister, Violet, who was a year younger than he was. He had a cousin, Edith Desmond, who was four younger than myself. Violet and he, and Edith and I, belonged, as it were, to two different generations. I had a tiny place on the borders of Hants, which adjoined his aunt"s. He lived with her when his father died; she was Lady Desmond, the baronet"s widow. Edith and I always had a liking for one another. If my father had left me a little better off, or if Violet had been older, we should have been married years ago. But she was an only child; the most beautiful I ever saw. Her mother hoped, by her help, to restore the faded glories of the Desmonds. That meant that she was to marry money.
I was hardly in a position to marry at all, with Vi on my hands, regarding me as a sort of father. When Reggie came to live at the Moat House Vi and he became acquainted. In course of time I was informed that they were engaged. Almost in the same breath he told me that he was practically without a penny piece. I lent him something to go on with. Later I lent him more. Then again. And again. I did not like the business, but, partly for Edith"s sake, partly for Vi"s, partly for his own, by degrees I was practically financing him. Until it came to this--that I had invested in him, on the strength of Twickenham"s death, nearly everything I had. As time went on he became convinced that his brother was dead. The brothers were practically strangers; Reggie had scarcely seen his senior a dozen times. There were enormous acc.u.mulations, amounting to over a million. If Reggie succeeded I should do well. Edith and I could be married to-morrow. If, on the other hand, Reggie did not succeed, and that soon, so far as I could see, he and I were ruined together.
And here, at the crucial moment, if I could trust my eyes, ruin was.
It was not surprising that, momentarily, I became a trifle giddy.
Had the man stepped into a room in which I was, I should unhesitatingly have recognised him as Leonard, Marquis of Twickenham.
There would have been no necessity for him to announce his name and t.i.tle. I should have known him then and there. But, as matters stood, the case was altered. There was room for doubt. Or I tried to persuade myself there was. To begin with, a man with practically unlimited resources at his command, would hardly be likely to masquerade in such a fashion. That was what I told myself. At the bottom of my heart I was aware that it would be quite in keeping with what I myself knew of Leonard"s character. He had never lost an opportunity of making an exhibition of himself, but always had an insane leaning in the direction of the esoteric and the bizarre.
I was on safer ground when I came to the questions of the likeness.
There were points of difference between the two. This man looked a little shorter and thinner; smaller altogether; too old for Twickenham. Twickenham was only forty-six; his double looked sixty.
Then he had a scar on his right cheek, which Twickenham had never had.
Still these things, I had perforce to admit, were quite reconcilable with the fact that the man was Twickenham. What alterations might not have taken place in such a fifteen years!
The exhibition was not liberally patronised. There had been two or three other spectators when I came in, but they had gone, and no others had taken their place. The duration of my visit, and the unmistakable interest which I took in the figure on the mattress, probably, also, the peculiar quality of my interest, attracted the attention of the individual in charge. This was the gentleman who had requested me not to lean against the gla.s.s case. He was a short, slight person, with red hair and moustache. He wore a frock coat and a hat which had seen better days, and had a trick of stroking his moustache with one of the dirtiest right hands I had ever seen; which, however, matched the voluminous shirt-cuff which protruded from the sleeve of his coat. I was conscious that for some seconds he had been eyeing me askance. Now he came sidling up--his dirty hand on his moustache.
"Wonderful man, sir."
He alluded to the figure on the mattress.
"I suppose he really is asleep?"
"What do you think he is--dead?"
"He looks to me as if he were dead."
"That"s not surprising, considering that for eight-and-twenty days he"s tasted neither bite nor sup."
"Is that really the case?"
"Certainly. He hasn"t had so much as a drop of water. The case is locked; the key is in possession of the manager of the Aquarium.
Doctors are constantly in and out to see there"s no collusion. You"ll find their reports outside. It"s will-power does it. He wills that he shall go to sleep for thirty days, and he goes to sleep for thirty days. To try to wake him up before the end of the thirty days, to give him, say, a gla.s.s of water, would probably cause his death."
"That"s very curious."
"It"s more than curious; it"s the greatest marvel of the age."
"And when does he wake?"
"At ten o"clock on Sat.u.r.day evening next--in the presence of the manager and staff of the Aquarium, and a large representative body of distinguished medical gentlemen. It will be the sensation of the hour.
Though we shall charge double prices for admission, the room won"t hold the people."