The Duke Decides/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
The Lady in the Landau
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Beaumanoir passed into the corridor with unsteady steps, dazed by the enormity of his entanglement. He had been caught so easily, yet he was held so firmly. His first impulse was to rush off to Scotland Yard, expose the white-bearded wire-puller in the invalid chair, and claim protection. But that course would entail confession of his engagement as a criminal instrument, to the everlasting disgrace of the great family of which he was now the head. The alternatives were foul treachery to the girl of his heart or almost certain death at the hands of Ziegler’s disciplined ruffians.
He had reached the top of the broad staircase when a step, almost inaudible on the thick pile carpet, sounded behind him and a hand fell on his shoulder.
“Charley, old boy! Or is it ‘your Grace’ I should be calling you? What the dickens are you doing here?” said the young man who had overtaken him.
Beaumanoir’s harassed brows cleared as he met Alec Forsyth’s honest gaze and he felt the grip of his honest hand. Their ways had lain apart for the last few years, but a very real friendship, begun in the Eton playing fields, had survived separation. Of all his acquaintances, Alec had been the only one to go down to Liverpool twelve months before to bid scapegrace Charles Hanbury farewell.
“I had a call to make, before going to Pattisons’ in Lincoln’s Inn,” said the Duke. And then with quick apprehension he added, pointing to the door he had just left: “Have you come from there? Have you business with Ziegler too?”
“Ziegler? Who’s Ziegler?” asked Forsyth, looking puzzled by his sudden confusion. “No, I haven’t been to those rooms, but to the suite beyond. A duty call on a certain Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, but, thank goodness, she wasn’t at home. Now about yourself, Charley. Fortune smiles again, eh?”
“It’s only a sickly grin at present,” Beaumanoir replied, dejectedly. “See here, Alec; I’ve got my bag on a cab outside. I landed at Southampton too early for lunch. Come and talk to me while I get a snack before going to the lawyers.”
A few minutes later they were seated in a Strand restaurant, and the young Scotsman heard all about his friend’s struggles with the demon of poverty in New York, but never a word of the trouble that was brooding. In his turn Forsyth was able to fill in the blanks of the family solicitor’s cablegram, and enlightened Beaumanoir as to the manner of his succession to the title. The late Duke was traveling to Newmarket in a racing “special,” accompanied by his nephew and heir, George Hanbury, when they had both met their deaths in a collision.
The double funeral had taken place at Prior’s Tarrant, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Beaumanoir in Hertfordshire, three days before, the arrangements having been made by the solicitors, in the absence of the next successor. The last Duke having been a childless widower, and both his brothers, the fathers respectively of George and Charles Hanbury, having predeceased him, there had been no near relatives to follow the late head of the house to his last resting-place.
“Let me see, my cousin George had a sister, Sybil, who used to live with my uncle,” Beaumanoir mused aloud. “I wonder what has become of her.”
“I believe that she is still at your town house in Piccadilly,” replied Forsyth with a constraint which the other did not notice in his self-absorption. But the next moment it struck Beaumanoir as odd that the information should have been so readily forthcoming, for he had been unaware that his friend knew his relatives.
“You have made Sybil Hanbury’s acquaintance, then?” he asked.
“Yes, since your departure for America,” was the reply. “I had the pleasure of meeting her first at my uncle’s in Grosvenor Gardens—General Sadgrove’s, you know. I dare say you remember him?”
“Oh, yes; I remember the General well—a shrewd old party with eyes like gimlets,” said Beaumanoir. “But what’s this about Grosvenor Gardens?” he added quickly. “The Sadgroves used to live in Bruton Street.”
“Quite so; but they moved to 140 Grosvenor Gardens, last Christmas.”
“140!” exclaimed the Duke. “Why, that’s where the Shermans are going to stay. Some friends of mine who—who came over in the same ship,” he went on to explain rather lamely.
Forsyth shot an amused glance at his old crony. “Yes, I know that Uncle Jem was expecting some Americans to put up with him, and he has been raving about the charms of the young lady of the party for the last fortnight. You are excited, Charley. Your manner has struck me as strange since we met at the hotel. Is it permitted to inquire if my uncle is entertaining unawares—a future Duchess?”
To the young Scotsman’s surprise, the Duke showed signs for a moment of taking the lightspoken banter amiss. Beaumanoir flushed, and muttered something inarticulate, but pulled himself together and diverted their talk into a fresh channel, clumsily enough.
“Don’t gas about me, old chap,” he said. “Tell me of yourself. Is the world using you better than formerly?”
“About the same,” Forsyth replied with a shrug. “They gave me a twenty-pound rise last year, so my pay as a third-grade clerk in the Foreign Office is now the princely sum of £230 per annum. Not a brilliant prospect. When I’m a worn-out old buffer of sixty I shall be able to retire on a pension about equal to my present pay.”
“Then look here, Alec; chuck the public service and come to me,” said the Duke, eagerly. “I’ll give you eight hundred a year to begin with, and rises up to two thousand; and you can have the dower-house at Prior’s Tarrant to live in. Call yourself private secretary, bailiff, anything you please—only come. The fact is—well, I’ve been a bit shaken by—by what I’ve gone through. I want someone near me who’s more than a mere hireling.”
It was Forsyth’s turn to flush now, but with pleasure at the offer made to him. He accepted it in a few simple words, and the Duke rose and paid his score.
“Come with me to Pattisons’,” he said. “Then we’ll go on to Piccadilly and take possession.”
The business at the lawyers’, which consisted of little more than arranging future meetings, was soon finished, and the Duke and his new secretary took a fresh cab to the West End. As they bowled along Beaumanoir inquired further about his cousin Sybil, whom, owing to his absence in India and more latterly to his estrangement from his relations, he had never met. Forsyth imparted the information that for the last six months, since she “came out,” she had virtually ruled the late Duke’s household.
“But she can be little more than a child,” Beaumanoir protested. “Anyhow, I can’t keep a cousin of eighteen on as my housekeeper without setting Mrs. Grundy’s tongue wagging. The question arises what to do with her. Old Pattison tells me she is well provided for, but I don’t like telling her to clear out if it does not occur to her to go. What sort is she, Alec?”
“That’s rather a stiff question to put to me,” Forsyth replied, as though to himself. “I had better make my confession first as last,” he went on hurriedly. “You are her nearest relative now, and the head of her family. Ever since I first saw Sybil Hanbury the dearest wish of my heart has been to make her my wife, but without prospects of any kind I couldn’t very well ask her. There you have it, my noble patron, in a nutshell.”
Beaumanoir patted his friend’s knee affectionately.
“My dear fellow, go in and win, so far as I am concerned,” he said. “While I am above ground your prospects need stand in your way no longer. But you haven’t answered my question, which I’ll put in another way. How is she likely to take my appearance on the scene?”
“I’m afraid she’s rather prejudiced. Her brother George didn’t love you much, you know, and she is greatly cut up by his loss,” Forsyth replied, with the dogged manner of the honest man who has to say a disagreeable thing. “I don’t think that you need be under any apprehension about her staying on at Beaumanoir House when you show up. To be candid, I saw her yesterday, and she said she should begin packing as soon as she was sure that you hadn’t been drowned on the voyage home.”
“Good girl!” ejaculated the Duke. “The unexpressed hope did her much honor, only it’s a pity it didn’t come off. Now, Alec, if you’ll see her first—she needn’t see me at all if she doesn’t wish to—and tell her from me that she’s not to hurry out of the house, because I’m going to oscillate between Prior’s Tarrant and a hotel for the present, I shall be immensely obliged to you.”
“But you said just now that you were going to take possession.”
“I have changed my mind. There are reasons which I cannot explain to you why my immediate neighborhood is likely to be dangerous for the present. I should be sorry to subject my fair cousin to any unpleasantness. Though not a word of this to her or anyone else, please.”
The cab was drawing up before the ducal mansion, and Forsyth forbore to put into words the astonishment which he looked. As the two men were about to ascend the steps to the entrance, a landau, which was being driven slowly by, drew to the curb, and a lady who, besides the servants, was the sole occupant, called out:
“Surely you’re not going to cut me, Mr. Forsyth. Too proud to know poor little me, eh, now that you’ve taken to calling on dukes?”
A murmur of annoyance escaped Forsyth, but perforce he went to the carriage and shook the daintily gloved hand held out to him.
“How do you do, Mrs. Talmage Eglinton?” he said, adding the reproving whisper, “That is the Duke.”
The lady in the landau raised her lorgnettes and calmly surveyed the waiting nobleman.
“How very interesting!” she purred, adding aloud so that the subject of her request could not fail to hear, “Why don’t you introduce him, instead of keeping him standing there? We Americans are death on dukes, you know.”
At a gesture from Forsyth, who tried to convey his disgust by a look, Beaumanoir limped forward, smiling. His misfortunes had made him something of a democrat, and he had always been ready to see the comic side of things till tragedy that morning had claimed him for its own. In meeting the advances of the agent Jevons in the Bowery saloon he had been largely influenced by the humor of the situation—of the scion of a ducal house consenting to “get a bit” by passing forged bonds.
Mrs. Talmage Eglinton, a handsome blonde with an elegant figure and a childish voice, received the Duke with effusion.
“I stopped my carriage to ask Mr. Forsyth to tea on Saturday,” she prattled. “I do hope your Grace will come too. I am staying at the Cecil, and shall be delighted to see you.”
The unblushing effrontery of the invitation failed to strike Beaumanoir in his sudden horror at the associations called up by it. This frivolous butterfly of a woman occupied the next suite of rooms to those in which Ziegler was spinning his villainous web—in which that terrible old man had unfolded to him the details of his treacherous task. Strange, too, that he should be bidden to the mild dissipation of an afternoon tea-table in that hotel, of all others, on the very day when he was due to go there on business so different, for Saturday was the day appointed by Ziegler for his call for “further instructions.”
Conscious that the mocking eyes of the lady in the landau were watching him with a curious inquiry, he mastered his emotion, and at the same time came to a decision on the vital issue before him. Probably he would have arrived at the same one without the incentive of avoiding an unpalatable engagement, but Mrs. Talmage Eglinton’s invitation to tea was undoubtedly the final influence in setting him on the straight path.
“I am very sorry,” he replied, and there was a new dignity in his tone, “but I must ask you to excuse me. I am going down to-morrow to Prior’s Tarrant, my place in Hertfordshire, and I shall not be in town on Saturday.”
For the fraction of a second the rebuffed hostess seemed taken aback by the refusal. She flushed slightly under her powder, and the taper fingers twitched on the handle of her sunshade. But without any appreciable pause she answered gaily:
“That’s most unkind of you. Well, what must be must be. Good-bye, your Grace. Good-bye, Mr. Forsyth; I shall expect you, anyhow. Drive on, Bennett.”
The carriage rolled away.
“I am glad you snubbed her,” Forsyth exclaimed. “She has been made a good deal of in certain circles during the last month or two, and presumes a lot on the strength of it.”
“Did I snub her?” said the Duke carelessly. “I am sure I didn’t mean to, for she deserves better things of me. You’d hardly believe it, Alec, but that little episode has jerked me into deciding a crucial point—no less than whether to be a man or a cur. At the same time it has put me quite outside the pale as a resident under the same roof as my cousin. On second thoughts, I will not go in at all, but I shall be obliged if you will see her and convey the message I gave you—that Beaumanoir House is at her disposal till she can quite conveniently leave it.”
“But what are you going to do yourself?” said Forsyth in sheer bewilderment.
“First I shall go to Bond Street, to gladden the hearts of some of my old creditors; then by an evening train to Prior’s Tarrant,” was the reply. “And, Alec,” proceeded the Duke earnestly, “if you can get leave from the Foreign Office, pending retirement, and join me there as soon as possible, you will place me under a very deep obligation.”