"Dare say! But there"s no dare say about it. It"s a question of fact.
And, by George, that Jimmy of yours, he"s a Marquis too."
"So Miss Desmond says."
"She does, does she? And Pollie, she"s the Lady Pollie. Why, you"ve got a room full of t.i.tles, and I"m the only common person in it. I"m not accustomed to having intimate relations with the upper circles, so you"ll have to excuse me if my manners fall short of what they ought to be. Talk of the romance of the stage. Nothing I ever heard of in that line comes within shouting distance of this. To think of you having been a Marchioness all these years and never knowing it! And such a Marchioness too! None of your pauper peeresses who have to introduce American young women to the Queen in order to make two ends meet, but the real, gilt-edged, rolling-in-riches, house-in-Grosvenor Square kind. Why, I have heard that the income of the Marquis of Twickenham is over a hundred thousand pounds a year, all profit--besides plenty of perquisites. That"s better than being a Star of the Halls."
He was silent; I expect because he was turning things over in his mind.
"I remember now reading about the Marquis of Twickenham"s being rather a funny lot, and I"ve a sort of notion that I did hear that no one knew where he was. So Babbacombe was he! Well, tastes do differ. And without wanting to know too much about what caused him to turn up, being a Marquis, I can only say that it would have wanted a lot to have made me take to the game of Wonderful Sleeping Man instead.
Between a real live Marquis and even a Marvel of the Age there is a difference."
Another pause. I seemed to hear him talking to me like a person in a dream.
"Well, Marchioness--I don"t know if that"s the proper way in which to address a lady in your position, but if it isn"t you"ll have to excuse me till I do know--you are now one of the greatest ladies in the land, and I shall have to behave to you as such. As for my lord the Marquis, I shall have to mind my p"s and q"s with a vengeance when I"m talking to him. I suppose he"ll give up his taste for hardbake, and won"t look at anything under chocolate creams. Which is a pity--because I happen to have some hardbake in my pocket at this very moment--My Lord Marquis!" Spoken to like that, Jimmy wouldn"t go. "Pardon me if I"m over familiar just this once, but--Jimmy!"
Jimmy went. Mr. FitzHoward was mistaken if he really did think hardbake wasn"t good enough; because Pollie and the boy began to get rid of what he gave them in a style which I knew meant sticky fingers and dirty faces.
"There is only one remark, my dear Marchioness--if you"ll allow me to make so bold as to call you so--which I wish to make, and that is that it"s a pretty sure thing that you"ll do honour to the high position to which you have so suddenly been called. You"ll look the part just as well as you will act it, And if there"s any woman who"s more worthy of being the great lady than you are, I"ve yet to come across her. In a man who"s had such a varied experience of the profession as I have had, that"s saying something, as you know."
"Mr. FitzHoward, you forget one thing."
"What"s that?"
"James is dead."
"I don"t forget it. I remember it all the time. But there are visitations of Providence, Marchioness, which we must all put up with; the lowly like me, as well as the great like you."
"He was killed."
"Killed! Mrs. Merrett! I mean, Marchioness!"
"Mr. Howarth killed him."
"I say! My dear lady--if you"ll pardon my dropping the t.i.tle for just this once--don"t you go taking foolish words of mine as if they"d been meant. As I explained to you yesterday, I"ve a professional way of talking and an unprofessional; and when I"m talking professionally, I"m not, between you and me, to be taken as meaning just exactly what I say. Now this is an unprofessional moment, in which we"re dealing with the cold, dry truth; so let me take this opportunity to tell you that what I was saying about Mr. Howarth, in my professional manner, was just tommy rot, and nothing more. A man in Mr. Howarth"s position is no more likely to kill your husband, or any one else, than he is to ride on a broomstick to the moon."
"But he did kill him."
"Now, my dear, my esteemed Marchioness, what grounds have you for saying that? What t.i.ttle of evidence--outside my balderdash, which, mind, was balderdash, and nothing else--have you which points that way?"
"I haven"t told you how they say he died."
"Well, let"s hear."
"They say he died of heart disease."
"Of what?"
"Of heart disease--on the day after he left home."
"That he certainly never did. There"s some mistake there. His heart was sound as a bell. He had it examined by three doctors before the Aquarium people would let him start upon that sleep of his. They were unanimously of opinion that its condition was perfect. They gave their certificate to that effect--I have it at home now. And the night he woke he was overhauled by at least half-a-dozen. Every man Jack of them said that his heart and lungs were flawless, and that his general condition was altogether beyond their expectation."
"Miss Desmond says he has suffered from a weak heart his whole life long."
"A mistake altogether. The truth is, your husband was as hard as nails, and had a const.i.tution like iron. I shouldn"t have been mixed up with him in a game like that if I hadn"t known that was the case. I remember his saying to the doctors that he"d never had a day"s illness in his life, and their replying that they rather fancied it would be a good long time before he did have."
"And yet his heart collapsed so that he was dead upon the Monday."
"It does seem odd. I should like to have a look at that medical certificate. I suppose there was one."
"I can"t tell."
"There must have been. Where"s he buried?"
"I don"t know."
"Don"t know where your own husband"s buried?"
"I didn"t ask. All I wanted to do was to get them out of the house, because I knew that his blood was on their hands."
"Without going so far as that--and if I were you I shouldn"t be quite so, what I may call, virulent--I do think that there are circ.u.mstances about the case which it would be as well to look into. The position, so far as I understand, is this. Your husband"s been away from his family for--how long?"
"They said fifteen years."
Fifteen years; we"ll say, for reasons of his own. All that time he never went near them, though he must have known exactly where they were, and all about them; so that his reasons for keeping away must have been tolerably strong. Suddenly a friend--who seems to have taken an uncommon interest in him--sees him, we"ll say, engaged in a remarkable line of business. He"s so conscious that your husband, if he knows who he is, won"t see him, that he bribes me to slip him in as plain John Smith. On the Sunday there"s an interview between them, at which we don"t know what took place; and on the Monday he returns to his family. By the way, did he return to his family."
"I don"t know."
"If he did, it seems--queer; his arriving at such a sudden resolution after knowing for fifteen years just where they could be found. He must have had strong reasons; it"s only right that Mr. Howarth should tell you clearly what those reasons were. On the day of his return, he dies; of a disease he never had. His health seems to have had a quick change for the worse directly he got back to the bosom of his family.
However you look at it, it"s a queer start all the way along. I should like to see that medical certificate. I"ve heard of some funny ones, but that must have been an oddity worth looking at. I should also like to have a peep at the man who gave it. Where did your husband die?"
"I never asked."
"Then I"ll tell you what we"ll do. You and I will go together, and we"ll pay another call on Mr. Howarth, and we"ll put to him, or to some one else, one or two of those questions which you didn"t ask.
This time I rather fancy that the Marchioness of Twickenham won"t be refused the information she requires. And if she is refused, her humble friend and servant--meaning me--will soon show her how to get it in one way if not in another. We"re in a position to command; and if Howarth and Co. don"t see it, it won"t take us long to compel due and proper recognition. As we"ll show them."
I didn"t altogether like the way he spoke. There was too much of the Marchioness and not enough of James. It was ridiculous to speak to me as if I was any one, or ever should be. But he meant well. And, after all, he was a man. And he had known James. And I felt that in the trouble which might be coming I should want to have a man upon my side--one, too, who"d stand by me through thick and thin. And that I believed Mr. FitzHoward would do. If he wouldn"t, no one else would; because, besides my James, he was the only man in the world I knew.
And in spite of the nonsensical way he had of talking he had got some sense in his head, besides knowing as much of the world and its ways in his little finger as I did in my whole body. I never knew how silly I really was till I wanted to be wise.
So I decided that I"d go with him to pay another call, as he put it, on Mr. Howarth; though I shrank, in a way I can"t describe, from seeing that smooth-voiced, false-tongued man again. But just as I was going to send Mr. FitzHoward to ask Mrs. Ordish if she"d look after the children, a hansom cab came rattling along the street, and pulled up before the house.
"Hollo," cried FitzHoward in that absurd way of his, "here"s another member of the Upper Ten. All the British aristocracy are paying calls in Little Olive Street to-day."
There came a hammering at the knocker.
"You go and see who it is," I said. "And if it"s Mr. Howarth----"
"I"ll show him in; and, also, I"ll show him up."