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 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS
 
 THE 
 
 MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 B Stor^ ot xro:^^a^ 
 
 AARON WATSON 
 
 LILLIAS WASSERMANN 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. L 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1892
 
 &Z5 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAITER 
 
 I. THE OLD MA.RQUIS RECEIVES A SHOCK - 1 
 
 II. THE EFFECT OF A PICTURE - - 10 
 
 III. WHAT HAPPENED IN^ CHURCH - - 29 
 
 IV. THE NEW MARQUIS TAKES HIS SEAT - 47 
 
 V. RELICS OF A DEAD MAX - - - ()7 
 VI. A COMMONPLACE LOVE-STORY - - 86 
 
 VII. A POET 'UP TO DATE' - - - 104 
 
 VIII. IN A LAND OF DREAMS - - - 125 
 
 IX. AN ADVENTURE IN THE PARK - - 148 
 
 X. JACOB DEAN SUSPECTS A MYSTERY - 164 
 
 XI. A FAMILY HIGHLY CONNECTED - - 181 
 
 ^<XII. BESSIE PUTS ON MOURNING - - 198
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEK PACK 
 
 XIII. SURPRISING FAILURES OF MEMORY - 216 
 
 XIV. A duke's daughters - - - 236 
 
 XV. LORD CRANBERY MAKES AN ACQUAINT- 
 
 ANCE- .... 257
 
 THE 
 
 MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE OLD MARQUIS RECEIVES A SHOCK. 
 
 Solitary, in the great breakfkst-room of 
 Bexley House, his head thrown back on the 
 high cushions of his chair, his eyes staring 
 vacantly at the oak panelling of the walls, 
 his hands limply clasped on his shrivelled 
 knees, sat the Most Honourable the Marquis 
 of Carabas, Knight of the Garter, Hereditary 
 Grand Naperer of the Royal Household, 
 LiOrd-Lieutenant of his county, and owner of 
 .splendid estates in each of the countries of 
 the British Isles. 
 
 Xo pedigree more ancient or more sound 
 I'OI^ I. 1
 
 T THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 than that of the Marquis of Carabas was to» 
 be found in the pages of Sir Bernard Burke. 
 He was respected for his character and! 
 envied for his wealth ; he was constantly 
 referred to as one of the best types of the 
 old nobility, and quoted on public platfoumS' 
 as a living argument in favour of the House 
 of Lords. Only a few days ago, when he- 
 had spoken on some question of foreign 
 policy then exciting the public mind, one of 
 the newspapers of his party had observed : 
 * In public and in private life the Marquis 
 of Carabas is equally calculated to command 
 respect and to conciliate affection. High- 
 minded, open, dignified, generous, he clothes 
 the sentiments of a patriot in the language 
 of a gentleman. If his abilities are not so 
 conspicuous as those of one or two other 
 peers we could name, his understanding rs 
 sound, his motives are above suspicion, and 
 he combines a real love of his country with 
 pride in its institutions and its greatness. 
 If we were asked to indicate one of the
 
 THE OLD MARQUIS RECEIVES A SHOCK 3 
 
 most perfect models of an aristocratic patriot, 
 we should point to the Marquis of Carabas/ 
 
 But in spite of his rank, his wealth, his 
 distinction, his long pedigree, and his public 
 reputation, the Marquis of Carabas was, in 
 that moment in which we first beheld him, 
 no more than a poor, lonely, broken-hearted 
 old man, with his pride humbled, his hopes 
 destroyed, his great name ineffaceably soiled, 
 with no affectionate heart to rest himself 
 upon, with none to attend to him save hire- 
 lings, and unknowing of any who really 
 cared, except in respect of some selfish 
 interest, whether he lived or died. The 
 pictured semblances of his ancestors, staring 
 at him from the walls, were as near to and as 
 much in touch with him as he was in touch 
 with all the living and breathing world. 
 
 The Marquis of Carabas always wore a 
 stiff and rigid expression, partly the conse- 
 quence of reserve, and partly of an ingrained 
 consciousness of rank and importance. 
 Generally, also, he was alone, as he was
 
 4 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 now ; for Bexley House had lost the habit 
 of entertainment. The Marchioness of 
 Carabas had been laid in the family vault 
 for twenty years or more. There were no 
 daughters of the distinguished house, and 
 the only son visited his father but rarely, 
 and was not welcome when he came. 
 
 This special morning, however, there was 
 something striking and peculiar, and even 
 awful, in the Marquis's loneliness. One who 
 had then entered this room must have been 
 drawn to him by the pathos and the pain of 
 his face, even if he had been also repelled 
 by the pride, haughtiness, and amazement 
 of its semi-conscious stare. Yet such a one 
 Avould, it is probable, have failed to arouse 
 the least attention on the part of that lonely 
 figure. 
 
 There are some men whose minds are 
 wrecked and shattered by a single blow. 
 They" become inert, helpless, imperceptive, 
 almost incapable of movement either of 
 body or of brain. Theirs is that awful
 
 THE OLD MARQUIS RECEIVES A SHOCK 5 
 
 * Death in Life ' on whose flxce the Ancient 
 Mariner gazed appalled. But the Marquis 
 of Carabas had survived many a stroke of 
 fate, which had bent neither his shoulders 
 nor his will — which, indeed, had merely 
 made him more dignified, more reserved, and 
 more severe. Now, however, the greatest 
 blow of all had fallen. In this dismaying 
 moment the mind had no more energy to 
 reassert itself It was huddled up, as it 
 were, tossed into billows, and frozen by the 
 power of astonishment. 
 
 The white, keen, proud, and delicate face 
 was drawn and rigid ; the gray shadow of 
 approaching death seemed to have settled 
 upon it ; the curving lines on either side of 
 the nostrils had grown long and deep, like 
 the seams of old wounds. The Marquis 
 stared vacantly before him, without seeing, 
 without power of movement, without capa- 
 city for thought. Yet an experienced eye 
 would have discerned at once that it was 
 not paralysis which had produced these
 
 6 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 singular appearances, this mental ineptitude ; 
 but a great horror and bewilderment, such 
 as must have fallen on that French lady 
 who believed that God would not damn a 
 person of her quality, had she, when it 
 came to the trial, found herself shut out of 
 Paradise. 
 
 If one had asked what was the meaning 
 of this strange and terrible look on the face 
 of the Marquis of Carabas, it would not 
 have been necessary to search very assidu- 
 ously for the determining cause. That 
 morning's Times had fallen from his nerve- 
 less fingers. It lay so folded on the floor 
 that a single headline stood out plainly 
 visible, with a smaller headline beneath. 
 That there should be two headlines to any 
 item of news in the Times is in itself an in- 
 dication of the unusual importance of the 
 intelligence which is thus set forth, and in 
 this instance the lines were these : 
 
 GREAT TURF SCANDAL. 
 
 LORD B2:XL:i:Y AND THE JOCKEY CLUB.
 
 THE OLD MARQUIS RECEIVES 2i SHOCK 7 
 
 It was a bare enough statement which fol- 
 lowed. The reporter said : 
 
 * An extraordinary meeting of the Jockey 
 Club was held at Newmarket yesterday. 
 The sitting was in camera, but we are in- 
 formed on the best authority that the Hon. 
 John Logwood was asked to take the chair, 
 and that the special matter for consideration 
 was the in-and-out running of certain horses 
 from the Donisthorpe stables. Charles 
 Selvidge, the well-known jockey, was in 
 attendance, and an invitation to be present 
 had been despatched to Lord Bexley, but 
 was not responded to. At the close of the 
 (meeting we were informed by Mr. Logwood 
 that Selvidge's license had been suspended 
 for two years, and that the steward-s had 
 resolved to warn Lord Bexley off New- 
 ■market Heath. This,' it w^as remarked in 
 'Conclusion, ^ is no doubt an extreme step, 
 .such as has not previously been taken in the 
 tcase of a man of Lord Bexley 's rank and
 
 8 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 position ; but the curious running of this 
 nobleman's horses has been for a long time 
 past matter of public comment, and it may 
 be assumed that in a case of so much im- 
 portance the Stewards of the Jockey Club 
 had before them all the evidence which 
 could assist them in coming to a just con- 
 clusion/ 
 
 This, then, it was which, coming with 
 TSEnjexpected force upon an already enfeebled 
 feme, had shocked the Marquis of Carabas- 
 into a condition much more resembling 
 death than life. Lord Bexley was the last 
 of his race, the successor to his estates and 
 titles, the heir to an unstained name ; and 
 Lord Bexley was — his son ! 
 
 A younger man than the Marquis might 
 have stormed and raged and threatened, and 
 have broken the force of so terrible a blow 
 by the energy of his w^rath ; but Lord 
 Carabas was old and worn, and rather 
 weary, and the event shocked and froze his.
 
 THE OLD MARQUIS RECEIVES A SHOCK 9 
 
 belnof, so that he had neither words nor 
 tears nor cries, but was conscious only of a 
 half-numb feeling of some great calamity ; 
 of a sudden, confused, deadening fall ; of 
 grief that should have found some expres- 
 sion, but was stricken and dumb. 
 
 And over all there hovered a dim sense 
 of amazement, as if the thing which had 
 taken place were something quite beyond 
 apprehension and belief
 
 CHAPTER IT. 
 
 THE EFFECT OF A PICTURE. 
 
 The Marquis of Carabas sat long in this 
 stupor into which he had fallen. It was 
 the custom of the house to leave him 
 entirely undisturbed during these morning 
 hours. The great house was swarming with 
 servants, but its owner could not have 
 seemed more alone if it had been a cabin 
 in the middle of a moor. Gradually and 
 slowly his perceptions returned to him. He 
 drew a long breath, shivered, drew himself 
 erect, and by-and-by looked down at the news- 
 paper which had fallen from his nerveless 
 hand. The sight seemed in some measure 
 to revive his energy. He stooped down
 
 THE EFFECT OF A PICTURE 1 1 
 
 hastily, gatliered up the crumpled sheets, 
 folded them with quick, nervous fingers, 
 and stood for an instant as if he would 
 thrust into the fire what had brought him 
 the news of his son's disgrace. 
 
 * M' lud, did your lordship ring ?' 
 
 It was his man, Farnley, middle-aged, 
 scrupulously dressed, with a cMerential 
 bend in his shoulders, and an unusual 
 appearance of curiosity and interest in his 
 face. 
 
 ' I shall go to the library, Farnley. 
 Bring up anything that you think I may 
 need. Let me see ; it is the day before 
 Christmas, is it not ? Leave the lights in 
 readiness, and I shall not want you further 
 to-day. Xo — I think — not to-day.' 
 
 As he spoke he was conscious of com- 
 pressing the newspaper in his hand, as if he 
 would hide it from the eyes of his 
 attendant. He felt guilty, somehow^, before 
 this man, and it seemed to him that his 
 voice had almost a supplicating tone. The
 
 12 THE MARQUIS OF CARADAS 
 
 idea helped to shock hiin back into his 
 former self. 
 
 ' That will do, Farnley,' he said, with 
 more sharpness of manner. ^ I shall have 
 no further orders to-day.' 
 
 As the valet retired, the Marquis turned 
 to the fire once more, took the massive 
 poker in one of his trembling hands, and 
 prepared to thrust the obnoxious newspaper 
 into the now expiring ashes. His attitude 
 was that of some frightened criminal, who 
 is about to destroy the evidences of his 
 crime. But suddenly he drew himself erect, 
 and the poker fell from his hands. 
 
 * Not now, and not here,' he said ; ^ the 
 ashes will remain.' 
 
 This proud nobleman had actually become 
 afraid of his own servants. They might find 
 the charred remnants of paper in the grate, 
 and guess how he had been employed. The 
 newspaper was thrust hastily into the pocket 
 of his dressing-gown, and then he leaned on 
 the table for a moment, gave a weary look
 
 THE EFFECT OF A PICTURE 13 
 
 all ai'oimd him, and finally went off with 
 slow and measured steps to the Ubrary. 
 
 It was a long, large room, nobly fur- 
 nished. The tall windows looked far away 
 over the snowy landscape. There was 
 already a flush of oranofe liofht on the 
 horizon. The Marquis rose late — the days 
 were the shortest of the year ; and his 
 period of stupor before the breakfast-room 
 fire had lasted from the morning to the 
 early afternoon. As the shadows crej^t 
 nearer over the snow he paced from end to 
 end of the spacious library, now with a 
 quick and angry step, and now with the 
 slow feebleness of age. Occasionally he 
 would pause before some book, as if to read 
 the lettering of its cover ; but his eyes saw 
 nothing at these times, and his mind was 
 all confused tumult, with no impression 
 clear and plain. At length he sank down 
 into a vast easy-chair, placed his head in 
 his hands, and thenceforward for awhile 
 moved no more than a stone.
 
 14 THE MARQUIS OF CARADAS 
 
 The diffused orange light in the western 
 sky had died down into a single gleam of 
 red, the room had become full of shadows, 
 and the Marquis seemed asleep. Mean- 
 time there was much stir throughout all 
 that enormous house, except in this portion,, 
 where he who owned it nursed his grief and 
 shame. It was but a poor and futile ex- 
 pedient to hide the journal which contained 
 the dreadful news. Evil intelligence has 
 many and swift channels, and, from stable- 
 boy to housekeeper, all who ate the 
 Marquis's bread knew that Lord Bexley 
 had been warned off Newmarket Heath, 
 and knew also the full significance of that 
 proceeding. 
 
 Farnley had watched his master upstairs^ 
 not without anxiety and misgiving. Then 
 he betook himself to the housekeeper's room 
 to talk matters over with Mrs. Dobson,, 
 who, notwithstanding a certain overdone 
 stateliness, had a high regard for Mr. 
 Farnley as a source of exclusive information.
 
 THE EFFECT OF A PICTURE 15 
 
 ' He's took it very bad, Mrs. Dobson/ 
 the gentleman's gentleman observed, by way 
 of introducing the great subject. * T don't 
 know as I ever see such a look on any 
 human bein's face before, I give you my 
 word for it. When he went along the 'all, 
 tryin' to walk very stiff an' stately, his poor 
 old legs was shakin' and tremblin' under 
 him so that it was quite pitiful to see 
 him. It was all I could do, I do declare, 
 to keep from rushing after him to beg him 
 to take a hold of my arm. But 3^ou know 
 his ludship, Mrs. Dobson ; and you know 
 what he would have said had he seen me 
 spyin' on him there.' 
 
 ' It is a very sad business !' Mrs. Dobson 
 remarked, with a long-drawn sigh — ' a very 
 sad business indeed 1' 
 
 ' You may well say so, Mrs. Dobson ; and 
 a business as will shorten the Marquis's life, 
 too, I make bold to think. But I always, 
 predicted, as you know, that something very 
 bad would come of Bexley's goin's on.'
 
 i6 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 ' That has been too clear to all of us, 
 Mr. Farnley ; but could you have supposed 
 that it would be so bad as this V 
 
 ' Why, you see, ma'am, you may expect 
 anything from some men. When a man as 
 has come to years of discretion shows a 
 disinclination to enter the holy bonds of 
 matrimony, and shows it all the more the 
 longer he lives, as Bexley has done, Mrs. 
 Dobson, what but the very w^orst is to be 
 expected of him, I should like to know V 
 
 Here Mr. Farnley paused, partly with a 
 view of giving Mrs. Dobson leisure in which 
 to reflect on the probable soundness of his 
 own matrimonial intentions, and partly with 
 a view of being pressed to speak on matters 
 concerning which he had, in fact, no certain 
 information. 
 
 Mrs. Dobson tried to look unconscious 
 and indifferent, but feminine curiosity soon 
 got the better of genteel reserve. 
 
 ' Certainly, if anyone is acquainted with 
 family matters, it is you, Mr. Farnley,' she
 
 THE EFFECr OF A PICTURE 17 
 
 said. ' Xow, I have heard — everyone must 
 have heard : for you know how these 
 rumours are blown about, Mr. Farnley ? — 
 I have heard whispers of some entangle- 
 ment, some scandal, you know ' 
 
 * Entanglement there may have been — 
 entanglement there ivas, Mrs. Dobson : for, 
 between you and me, I have seen one or 
 two of Bexley's letters ; but scandal there 
 never has been about that matter, though 
 about so many others. And for why ? 
 Because Bexley is very 'cute, you see ; and 
 if he has got himself entangled, as I do 
 know that he has, it is noways in his own 
 class of society, but most likely among the 
 lower borders — for Bexley is low, Mrs. 
 Dobson, Bexley is low.' 
 
 * And what do you know, then, about this 
 entanglement, Mr. Farnley?' the housekeeper 
 inquired. 
 
 ' What I know is less than what I susj^ect, 
 ma'am ; but what I am sure of is as them 
 letters come from a woman, and a woman 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 i8 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 as wasn't well eddicated — and a woman as 
 wasn't well treated either, Mrs. Dobson. 
 He is fastened somehow, I do assure you ; 
 but how he is fastened I cannot tell. Why- 
 has he declined to rahnger himself, as the 
 French have it ? A man at his age, too, 
 with the duty of providing an heir to a family 
 like this, and such a title as that of the 
 Marquis of Carabas ! Why, I should like to 
 know, has he declined to rahnger himself ?' 
 
 ' That is what we should all like to know, 
 Mr. Farnley,' the housekeeper ventured to 
 observe. 
 
 But Mr. Farnley dimly felt that if he 
 was to keep up his credit for knowing more 
 than anyone else about the family affairs it 
 would be necessary to balance the deficiency 
 of his information by the profusion of his 
 talk, and so he went on as if she had not 
 spoken. He had a certain pride in his 
 eloquence, and in the accuracy of his pro- 
 nunciation of a few familiar but effective 
 words of the French tongue.
 
 THE EFFECT OF A PICTURE 'I9 
 
 * So long as Bexley ke])t gentlemanly in 
 'his vices one couldn't find much fault with 
 liim, eh, ma'am ? Not as I means to be 
 an adv^icate of immorality, Mrs. Dobson. I 
 see what you would say, ma'am. No, I am 
 not an advicate of immorality ; but we have 
 liad our vices in this family before, as 3^ou 
 know. Harrystocratic vices they were, such 
 ■as are proper to the Itoo-tong ; but Bexley 
 has the vices of the can-ilc, ma'am, the vices 
 of the can-ile. Now, if he had rahngered 
 himself when he was vouno^, how different 
 •evervthinof miofht have been !' And with a 
 sigh ^Ir. Farnley abandoned his mind to 
 the contemplation of the vices that become 
 the heirs to great titles and the bluest 
 English blood. 
 
 Neither the housekeeper nor Mr. Farnley 
 interfered with the preparations for festivity 
 which were o-oinof forward in the servants' 
 hall. They contented themselves with a 
 quiet tea together, in the course of which 
 Mr. Farnley still further accentuated his
 
 20 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 opinions on the dangerous tendencies of 
 those persons who exhibit a disincHnatioD 
 to matrimonj, but without ehciting that 
 response which would have encouraged him 
 to more directness of speech. 
 
 * I w^onder what his ludshi]) is doing of/ 
 he said at length. ' I've got my borders^ 
 Mrs. Dobson, or I tell you that I wouldn't 
 leave him alone for anything, except it 
 was this nice chat as I have had witL 
 you.' 
 
 '■ All the same, I would venture before 
 long to go and see what his lordship is, 
 about, Mr. Farnley.' 
 
 * Ay, and so I will, ma'am ; but I am 
 mot the man, Mrs. Dobson, to leave you all 
 alone on Christmas Eve without so much 
 as drinking your 'ealth ' — a speech whick 
 Mrs. Dobson very properly regarded as an 
 invitation to produce a little of that com- 
 forting liquid, skilfully compounded of best. 
 Scotch whisky, lemons, and hot water,, 
 sweetened to a nicety, which Mr. Farnley^
 
 THE EFFECT OF A PICTURE 21 
 
 xnade a point of tasting whenever he visited 
 the housekeeper's room. 
 
 Meantime the Marquis had roused him-> 
 self from his stupor. The darkness was al 
 around him now, and, as he recalled his 
 scattered senses, he groped about for the 
 means of procuring a light. There seemed 
 to be a fixed yet halting purpose in his 
 mind. With a richly-chased candlestick in 
 his hand, and with a vague desire to escape 
 observation in a house that he felt, with a 
 painful consciousness, to be full of eyes, he 
 <3rept, a shrivelled and shivering atom of 
 humanity, with scarcely a trace of his usual 
 solemn dignity left, by stairways and cor- 
 ridors, until he came to the room in which 
 hung the chief family portraits. The light 
 which he bore glinted as he went on marble 
 pillars, on suits of armour that had been 
 dinted in bygone wars, on portraits of states- 
 men and kinofs. 
 
 Bexley House was celebrated among 
 English ancestral homes as the splendid
 
 22 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 residence of a distinguished race. To-night 
 the Marquis felt like a timid stranger in his. 
 own halLs. For the first time the place 
 seemed vast, and there appeared to be a. 
 reproach in every dim suggestion of grandeuir 
 which the light revealed.. 
 
 It was a relief to find himself at length 
 enclosed in the one room he had been seek- 
 ing. He leaned on the back of a big arm- 
 chair for a moment, for he felt weak, and 
 was unwontedly troubled with a catching- 
 of the breath. 
 
 The quaint presentment of an old warrior- 
 looked down upon him. This picture was- 
 believed to be the 2^<^>i'trait of an ancestor- 
 slain at Crecy. The Marquis held up the- 
 light and looked at the grizzled face, crowned 
 Avith an upright shock of hair. Then, one- 
 by one, he inspected the faces of those who 
 had borne his name. They were a hand- 
 some race, but, with all their beauty, they^ 
 had a look of sturdy honesty and courage in 
 their features. Their faults, at any ratcj.
 
 THE EFFECT OF A PICTURE 23 
 
 had been of a manly type. Not especially 
 fiimous for their virtues, they had left no 
 very evil names behind them. Such vices 
 as they had were not, as Mr. Farnley said, 
 beneath their rank. They had all done 
 their part in the world, too. Some had 
 lived nobly ; more had died heroically. This 
 one had fallen at Bannockburn, and that at 
 Naseby fight, and the other at Waterloo. 
 Not a coward or a cheat had there been 
 amonofst them all. 
 
 * It was left for me to brinof into the 
 world one who should dishonour that noble 
 line,' the Marquis groaned, with sudden 
 bitterness. 
 
 The numbing effects of his first shock 
 w^ere being displaced by gnawing pangs of 
 agony, and he staggered under these as from 
 the blows of some physical assailant. He 
 was ashamed of the violence of the emotion 
 that possessed him. There was something 
 almost plebeian, he thought, in the w^ay that 
 it was permitted to shake him to the centre
 
 24 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 of his being. He was unaccustomed to the 
 tyranny of great passions. There had only 
 been one period of exaltation in his life, and 
 now it seemed like a dream of some previous 
 existence. A picture in front of which he 
 had come brought it now before him with 
 such force that he reeled, and would have 
 fallen, but that, with an instinctive move- 
 ment, he rested his hand on some object 
 that stood near. 
 
 The picture represented a gentle-looking 
 w^oman, young and beautiful, whose right 
 hand rested lovingly on the sunny curls of 
 a boy who might be six years old. 
 
 ' Algitha and Greville,' he said. ' How 
 beautiful they both seem !' 
 
 He forgot for the time being that this 
 lovely boy was the son whom he had hardly 
 kept from cursing. The proud, reserved, 
 undemonstrative old man went back in 
 memory to the one sweet, untroubled, quite 
 idyllic period of his life. His wife had not 
 been a woman of strong character, or of a
 
 THE EFFECT OF A PICTUKE 25 
 
 pride and dignity corresponding to his own ; 
 but he had loved her. And the boy was 
 a most beautiful boy — of that there could 
 be no manner of doubt ; and the Marquis 
 had loved him, too. 
 
 ' Ah, God in heaven !' he exclaimed, as 
 the pain of his new wound again made itself 
 felt ; ' why did he not die when he looked 
 like that ?' 
 
 He could gaze upon the picture of his 
 wife and child no longer. The power of 
 seeing seemed to be leaving his eyes. He 
 reeled and staggered as he turned towards 
 the door of the room. Just then Farnley 
 entered, and caught him by the arm. 
 
 The contact recalled him to himself, but he 
 was unaware of the extent of the feebleness 
 he had displayed. In a moment, and only 
 half consciously, he w^as again acting a part. 
 
 ' Is that you, Farnley ?' he said. * You 
 came at the proper instant. I must have 
 stumbled against one of the chairs, eh, 
 Farnley ?'
 
 26 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 ' Yes, m'lud.' 
 
 ' My eyes are not what they used to be, 
 Farnley.' 
 
 ' No, m'lud; 
 
 ' You may see me to my room. It is 
 Christmas Eve, I think. The waits will 
 come to-might. Well, I shall not be awake 
 to hear them. I am tired, Farnley — sorely 
 tired — and must sleep.' 
 
 '• He spoke like a hangel,' Mr. Farnley 
 observed to the housekeeper somewhat 
 later ; ' nobody would have expected it of 
 him — nobody in the world.' 
 
 But the Marquis did not sleep, for all his 
 w^eariness. His son had murdered sleep. 
 Those ancestral portraits haunted him 
 through the long hours. He was half 
 delirious from exhaustion and agony of 
 mind. He tossed from side to side, every 
 nerve of his body asserting itself in turn as 
 a centre of pain. 
 
 He heard the boughs of the old yew-tree 
 creaking beneath his window, and the per-
 
 THE EFFECT OF A PICTURE 27 
 
 sistent monotony of the sound seemed to 
 become a further burden to his brain. But 
 suddenly a noise of men's voices, rudely 
 harmonized, and obviously engaged in sing- 
 inor, rose above the torturino- monotone. 
 Ah, the carol-singers ! He had entirel}^ 
 forofotten them in this welter of vasfue and 
 tormenting thoughts. He felt grateful, 
 almost, for they did him the service of 
 tearing his mind away from his grief, and 
 he sat up eract and listened, as if he felt 
 actual interest in these proceedings. Only 
 one voice was sino-in^r now, and the words 
 of the carol came clear and distinct on 
 the midnight air : 
 
 * Lording?, in these realms of pleasure 
 
 Father Christmas yearly dwells, 
 Deals out joy with liberal measure, 
 
 Gloomy sorrow soon dispels ; 
 Numerous guests and viands dainty 
 
 Fill the hall and grace the board ; 
 Mirth and beauty, peace and plenty, 
 
 Solid pleasures here afford.' 
 
 ' Now for th' chorus, lads,' said a deep 
 voice out in the snow ; ' happen his lord-
 
 28 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 ship's listenin ;' and then, swelling out on 
 the cold air, from half a dozen pairs of 
 powerful lungs, the chorus rose : 
 
 ' Far away, in Bethlehem's manger. 
 He was born of whom we tell, 
 Bringing to a world of evil 
 Peace and joy unspeakable.' 
 
 There was a movement and a stamping 
 of feet as the last note died away. The 
 carol-singers were thinking of good things 
 edible and quaffable, now awaiting them in 
 the servants' hall. The Marquis's thoughts 
 turned to his own ineffaceable grief. 
 
 Gladness unspeakable because of the 
 birth of a Child eighteen hundred years 
 ago! 
 
 Sorrow unspeakable because of the birth 
 of a child no further back than forty years !
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHURCH. 
 
 This serenading of the Marquis was a 
 customary tribute to his rank. To the 
 carol-singers themselves it was more im- 
 portant that they should gain the good-will 
 of the servants' hall. Thitherward, then, 
 did they now carry their voices and their 
 instruments. 
 
 It was only a few years since an organ 
 had been introduced into the parish church. 
 Previous to that time the musical portion 
 of the services had been dependent on cer- 
 tain accomplished villagers, who were 
 accommodated with seats in a loft behind 
 the pulpit, Avhere they interfered seriously 
 with the solemnity of the proceedings by
 
 30 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 frequently tuning up their instruments in a 
 distracting way. 
 
 Their old position and dignity had been 
 sacrificed to the new-fangled notions of 
 those to whom an organ had become an 
 indispensable adjunct of worship ; but they 
 were still ' the band ' of the village, and it 
 would have been a grave invasion of their 
 privileges if any others had gone round 
 carol-singing on Christmas Eve. 
 
 Lately, however, they had sustained a 
 loss. Their performer on the violoncello 
 had died, and for this night they had been. 
 obliged to ask a man who played in the 
 little Primitive Methodist chapel to join 
 them. They were glad enough of his help, 
 but were to a man determined to express no 
 such obligation, for, from their point of 
 view, ' a Primitive ' belonged to an order 
 of beings distinctly inferior to their own. 
 
 * I hope, Abr'am Nettlefold,' said the 
 leader of the band, as they were skirting 
 the great house in order to arrive at the
 
 1 1 'HA T II A I 'PEN ED IX CI I UR CI I 3 1 
 
 servants' quarters, ' as yoe didn't think as 
 yoe was kaping time in that chorus V 
 
 ' Ay was I,' rephed Abraham, who was 
 a small, lively, shrill man, with what he 
 called an ' independent stomach.' * Better 
 time than some o' yoe, I doubt.' 
 
 ' Yoe Primitives are just as conceited as 
 voe are o-ood for nauo-ht,' said the leader, 
 with some asperity. ' As long as yoe mak' 
 a row of some sort, yoe care nayther for 
 time nor tune. Yoe dunner, for sure ! For 
 a bar or two yoe are as slow as if yoe were 
 winding up watter from a well, and th' next 
 bar yoe tak' as if yoe were emptying th' 
 bucket into a ditch.' 
 
 ' If that's what yoe think, Isaac Welford/ 
 Abraham queried, * why did yoe exe me to 
 bring my 'cello here ?' 
 
 ' Because,' &aid Isaac, ' we had a notion 
 as yoe would be better than nub'dy ; but it 
 sames as if that was a big mistake, Abr'am, 
 that it does.' 
 
 ' Happen yoe'd like me to goo back again,
 
 32 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 an' leave yoe to dow without th' 'cello at 
 all V 
 
 ^ I dunno quite say as yoe should goo 
 back, Abr'am/ said Isaac Welford ; ^ but 
 yoe arena much use here, and that's th' fact. 
 But I should be sorry to stand i' th' wee of 
 yoe gettin' yore bite an' yore sup.' 
 
 * An' I shouldna goo back if yoe did exe 
 nie, ayther. I'm nobbut a little un, but 
 I'm as hungry an' dry as th' biggest on you.- 
 Yoe'll see as my teeth can keep time if my 
 'cello doesn't, Isaac Welford.' 
 
 * If thy teeth are as sharp as thy tongue,' 
 said another of the carol-singers, * thate 
 soon be th' leader o' this cump'ny. There's 
 nub'dy as can doubt that.' 
 
 ' Come neaw, lads, let's strike up,' said 
 another of the singers, whose deep voice 
 sounded like something rumbling under- 
 ground. ' We're in th' front of th' kitchen 
 windows, and it's here as we mun do our 
 best ; for it's here as there's grub and grog, 
 and many a jolly maid as well.'
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IX CHURCH 33 
 
 * Ay, lads, strike up tli' same carol again, 
 and let 'em know as how we are here,' said 
 Welford. ' There'll be some ale posset, I 
 doubtna, and I should be woefully sorry to 
 think as how it was gettin' cowd.' 
 
 An hour later these same musicians were 
 trudging their way over the snow to the 
 village, in melancholy mood ; for something 
 had occurred to shorten the enjoyment they 
 had anticipated, and, still more sad to think 
 of, to curtail their supply of the best liquor 
 they had tasted for a year past. 
 
 * Well, if that doesn't beat aw as ever I 
 heerd on !' said Isaac Welford, with tragedy 
 in his voice. 
 
 * It mun be many a year, Isaac, since yoe 
 went whome sober from Bexley House on 
 Christmas Day in the morning,' remarked 
 Abraham Nettlefold, intending his words as 
 an expression of friendly sympathy. 
 
 * Ay, that it is, lad. But did yoe ever 
 see the likes of that ? Drunk as a lord, ses 
 yoe ! Drunker than any lord as ever I 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 clapped eyes on, and I've sane a few on 'em 
 come to Bexley House before now.' 
 
 * And he wanted to kiss all the maids/ 
 said the man with the rumbling voice ; ' ay, 
 and he wanted to dance with th' cook ; and 
 he wanted to put us all out of doors, saying 
 as how he'd have no leathery-lunged carol- 
 sinofers theer.' 
 
 ' And out we are, Jabez Percival, and 
 just as we was beginning to be at whome 
 with our liquor ; and on a mornin' like this, 
 tew, when the wind comes keen enough to 
 cut one into ribbins ! Well, well ; dang my 
 raofs if that doesn't beat aw as ever I heerd 
 on !' 
 
 From which somewhat incoherent conver- 
 sation it may perhaps be inferred that Lord 
 Bexley had come home in a frame of mind 
 intolerant of musicians and overkindly to 
 housemaids. 
 
 The Marquis of Carabas had just fallen 
 into an uneasy slumber, when he was aroused 
 by the noise of wheels and of a hasty and
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHURCH 35 
 
 careless entry. He needed only a moment 
 in which to guess what this must portend. 
 AYhilst he was vet reelino- from the stroke, 
 
 I/O ' 
 
 the shameless son who had at once dis- 
 graced him and an honourable line had 
 come homo to brave that outrageous con- 
 duct out. 
 
 A paroxysm of rage seized upon him. 
 He was now almost too weak to move, or 
 he felt that he must at once have faced the 
 insensible, bullying, audacious wretch who 
 was the cause of his great misery. 
 
 What must he have felt, then, had he 
 known that this irreclaimable son had at 
 ■once made his way to the servants' hall, 
 reeled in among the keepers of Christmas 
 Eve, insisted on sharing in their festivity, 
 and had finally fcillen down helpless in the 
 middle of a country dance ! 
 
 When the cold, gray sunshine of Christ- 
 mas morning peered into the entrance -hall 
 of Bexley House, it disclosed Lord Bexley 
 prone on a couch, the armoured semblances
 
 36 THE miRQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 of certain of his ancestors a^Dpearing ta 
 watch over him. 
 
 He had decHned to go to bed on any 
 conditions. There was an emj)ty decanter 
 beside him, and a detachment of soda-water 
 bottles. Beside him also wa-s Mason, his 
 man, a person of shrewd intelligence and in- 
 different morals. 
 
 * My lord,' he was saying, ' you must 
 really wake up, you really must ! His lord- 
 ship, your father, would not like to find you 
 here, my lord.' 
 
 ^ Go to the — the devil, you canting old 
 humbug !' Lord Bexley replied in halting 
 speech. * Let him see me as I am. He 
 knows me well enough, Mason. Why 
 should I attempt to deceive him ? Eh 1 
 did plenty of that when I was a lad. Gre- 
 ville Adelbert Shelburne, Lord Bexley, 
 sails under no false colours. Mason, my 
 boy.' 
 
 ^ But, my lord, the Marquis is ill ; not 
 himself at all, they say,' Mason whispered
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHURCH 37 
 
 •confidentially. ' Saw the Times yesterday, 
 iny lord.' 
 
 Lord Bexley started up on his elbow, 
 •stared about him with a flushed face for a 
 moment, and then brought his mighty fist 
 down among the bottles and glasses that 
 ^tood beside him. 
 
 * Damn the Times /' he exclaimed hoarsely, 
 ' and all the confounded treacherous crew T 
 A torrent of fui'ious, passionate, blasphemous 
 lanofuao^e burst from him. He cursed alike 
 those who had been his confederates in 
 vicious practices and those who had punished 
 him for them. 
 
 ' Well, I have heard you talk before, my 
 /lord,' said Mason, 'but you are a-going it 
 jiow, and no mistake !' , 
 
 The interruption was followed by a further 
 .flood of evil language, but suddenly the 
 words died on Lord Bexley's lips, and a 
 •ghastly pallor shot over his face, as the 
 pallid lightning sometimes flashes across .a 
 ^thunderstorm.
 
 58 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 What, then, had occasioned the change?' 
 
 This, merely. A door had opened a few- 
 yards from him, and in the open doorway 
 appeared the figure of his father, perfectly 
 and carefully apparelled. Prayer-book in 
 hand, on the w^ay to church. 
 
 Since th^ agonies of last night the 
 Marquis had made up his mind as to his 
 demeanour to his son and to the w^orld. 
 He would fall back upon his pride and upon 
 the greatness of his name. The son should 
 not be acknow^ledged by word, or deed, or 
 thought ; the w^orld should see what a. 
 British peer could endure without flinching. 
 
 Here, in a most desperate form, the first 
 trial to his resolution presented itself The 
 son lay there before -him, an embodiment of 
 evil passions and of evil living, surrounded 
 by the tokens of a debauch, and fresh from 
 the field of his infamy. 
 
 The Marquis staggered for a moment ; 
 he felt his limbs again grow feeble, but with 
 an almost superhuman effort kept down the
 
 W//A T HAPPENED IN CHURCH 39 
 
 risino- flood of his anofer and shame, and 
 conquered his physical weakness. 
 
 Slowlv and with o-reat statehness of 
 demeanour the old man crossed the hall as 
 if he had perceived nothing, and, passing 
 out of the door and down the snow-covered 
 steps, took his way across the park, his feet 
 sinking at each tread into the thin covering 
 of crisp and glittering snow. 
 
 His son looked after him with astonished 
 e^'es. The sound of the Christmas bells 
 smote upon his awakening consciousness. 
 The * music nearest heaven ' was like a 
 memory and a reproach to his dulled yet 
 livino^ conscience. 
 
 * Mason,' he said, ' I think I will go to 
 bed now.' 
 
 ' Yes, my lord ;' and Mason offered his 
 arm to the reeling man. 
 
 • * I say, Mason, rather queer of the old 
 boy, wasn't it ? Wouldn't speak a word, 
 either good or bad.' 
 
 ' I should say it was very queer, my lord.'
 
 40 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 ' Doocid queer ! I don't like it, Mason. 
 Wish I had gone to bed when you asked 
 me.' 
 
 ' I wish you had, my lord.' 
 
 * I wouldn't have minded a row, you know, 
 not a bit of it ; should rather have liked a 
 row, I fancy. But I don't like that con- 
 founded silence and that look as if he didn't 
 know who I was. Didn't he seem pale, 
 too. Mason ?' 
 
 * He seemed very pale and very ill, my 
 lord.' 
 
 ^ Ah ! it has hit him hard, this has — it 
 has hit him very hard. And, Mason, I'm a 
 confounded scoundrel 1' 
 
 The man discreetly made no response to 
 this self-condemnation. For the first time 
 he beheld his master in a fit of contrition, 
 and though it may have been a holy, it was 
 not a cheerful sight. Mason, therefore, 
 after guiding Lord Bexley to his room, 
 rapidly performed the necessary ofifices and 
 slipped off to his own bed.
 
 WI/A T II A PPEXED IX CHURCH 4 1 
 
 Meantime the ]\Iarqiiis, walking feebly, 
 but with a certain resolute stateliness, 
 reached the gate of Bexley churchyard. 
 The villagers who had arrived to take part 
 in the service of Christmas morninof waited 
 with doffed hats and bowed heads for his 
 lordship to pass. There was an ingrained 
 awe of nobility in their nature, for they had 
 inherited reverence for the sfreat house and 
 its occupants along with their peculiarities 
 of speech. 
 
 It appeared to these folk a thing in 
 nowise strange or to be complained of that 
 in the house of God, in the gray little church 
 of their village, a gilded and painted railing, 
 behind whicli the great people from Bexley 
 House worshipped, should give emphasis to 
 the inequalities of our earthly state. There 
 was not a rebel in the vilWe, even amono- 
 the despised ' Primitives.' The Marquis, 
 the Marquis's appropriation of almost one- 
 half of the church to himself, the Marquis's 
 grandeur and greatness, were all loyally
 
 42 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 accepted as a necessary and inevitable part 
 of the order of nature. 
 
 On this Christmas morning the Marquis 
 of Carabas entered his great railed-ofF 
 enclosure alone. Whence he sat he might 
 behold part of the little side-chapel where 
 many of his ancestors slept in their 
 marble tombs. Nearest of all was the 
 recumbent ^^'gY ^^ ^ knight, his hands 
 folded before him, a hound crouching at his 
 feet. 
 
 This tomb fascinated him. He could not 
 turn his eyes from it. The prayers, the 
 hymns, passed over unheeded. He kept 
 counting the bosses in the ornamental work 
 of the lonof-familiar tomb. 
 
 It was an odd thing, but every time he 
 counted them they seemed to differ in 
 number. Eight, was it ? No, only seven. 
 Nine this time. How very singular and 
 unaccountable! He must have known the 
 number exactly, too, and from of old, yet 
 — most astoundinof circumstance ! — he could
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IX CHURCH 43 
 
 not bringr it to his mind. He counted the 
 bosses again and again. 
 
 ' The parson droned from the pulpit, 
 Like the murmur of many bees ;' 
 
 but the Marquis of Carabas heard nothing 
 of what he said. Those ehisive bosses were 
 troubhng him greatly. They seemed as if 
 they were receding into a misty distance, 
 too. Could it be that he was becoming 
 drowsy ? He had never yet gone to sleep 
 in church. It was the duty of so great 
 a man to keep awake, as an example to his 
 inferiors. 
 
 Now, however, a sensation of numbness 
 was creeping over him. There could be no 
 doubt of that. All his trouble seemed to 
 be lifted, or to grow trivial and unimportant, 
 all his sense of humiliation to pass away. 
 He felt happy almost, but so drowsy, 
 drowsy, drowsy. What could it mean ? 
 
 The Marquis of Carabas sat stiff and 
 upright, as he had sat while yet a man in 
 his prime. Gazing still on the ever-receding
 
 44 THE MARQUIS OF CAR AD AS 
 
 effigy of his ancestor, it appeared to him 
 as if he fell asleep and dreamed a dream. 
 
 A dream it was, indeed, and vet a dream 
 that was grimly real. 
 
 His own hands seemed to be falling into 
 the rigid pallor and cold stiffness of those of 
 the recumbent knight ; he felt as if he also 
 were turninof into stone. An enormous and 
 ever-accumulating weight oppressed him. It 
 bore him downwards, always downwards ; 
 and that seemed natural enough, for the 
 figures on tombs — are they not all recum- 
 bent, and with eyes eternally closed ? And 
 in this strange dream of his he was aware 
 that he was himself turnino^ into a fissure on 
 a tomb — a fcure of marble, senseless and cold. 
 
 Slowly, gently, without power of resistance 
 on his part, and yet with as much quietude 
 as though his motion were guided by his 
 will, he slid dowm from the seat, on which 
 his arms rested without clinging ; and then 
 he lay, still as that stone ancestor, on the 
 floor of the church.
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHURCH 45 
 
 The Yicar had left the pulpit before this 
 time, or he would certainly have noted the 
 uncommon spectacle of the scrupulously 
 decorous Marquis lying down upon the floor 
 of his pew like one intoxicated. 
 
 From the organ-loft the voluntary went 
 pealing on, and the church was all but 
 emptied of its congregation. 
 
 The Marquis was usually among the first 
 to leave, the people reverently waiting for 
 him to pass, as if he had been the real object 
 of their worship. As he did not come now, 
 one of the two footmen who had followed 
 him, without instructions, from Bexley 
 House, crept timidly up to the great square 
 pew, put aside a portion of the heavy 
 crimson curtain, and })eered within. 
 
 This man's immediate cry of astonishment 
 brouofht the conofreofation crowdinof back. 
 The villaofe doctor was amono^ the folk. 
 Could there be at last an opportunity for 
 him ? He had only been called in hitherto 
 to the servants of the Great house. If the
 
 46 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 Marquis were himself to become a patient 
 his fortune was made. 
 
 The doctor gently but eagerly raised the 
 hand of the prostrate man and felt his pulse. 
 No movement there. He turned the face 
 up towards the light, lifted the lids, and 
 looked into the pupils of the eyes. No light 
 beamed thence. 
 
 As the first notes of the voluntary pealed 
 forth the soul of the Marquis of Carabas 
 had passed away. No marble Crusader 
 could more than rival now the stillness and 
 the impassibility of what remained.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE NEW MARQUIS TAKES HIS SEAT. 
 
 * By Jove !' exclaimed Lord Ronald Tun- 
 bridge, leaping to his feet and throwing 
 down his newspaper on the floor of the 
 Grafton Club, ' if that frightful scamp 
 Bexley hasn't succeeded to the peerage 1' 
 
 It was early in the day, and there were 
 only three or four members present. They 
 formed themselves into a group at once. 
 
 * You don't mean to say that Carabas is 
 dead V said Mr. Halliwell Romaine. ^ I 
 remember ' 
 
 Mr. Romaine was a distinguished Q.C., 
 and an interminable story-teller. His repu- 
 tation outside the law depended uj^on certain
 
 48 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 gossiping articles in the Quarterlies, made 
 up of reminiscences, anecdotes, and old 
 scandal. His interest in events was exactly 
 proportioned to the opportunities ihej 
 offered for tale-bearing. The death of the 
 Marquis of Carabas was quite a windfall to- 
 a man so far gone in his anecdotage. But 
 on this occasion Mr. Halliwell Romaine w^as. 
 not permitted to proceed. 
 
 ^ But Carabas ?' said Lord Ravensbourne, 
 who represented one of the departments in 
 the House of Lords. ' When and how did 
 he die V 
 
 ^ Bless me, I didn't look at the particulars, 
 I was so startled by the news !' observed 
 Lord Bonald Tunbridge, snatching up his. 
 newspaper and hastil}^ glancing over the 
 account of the Marquis's death. 
 
 ' Died in church yesterday morning, quite 
 suddenly,' he added. ' Killed by a Christmas, 
 sermon, by Jove I' 
 
 * A fate that will overtake none of us,, 
 probably,' Lord Ravensbourne gravely re-
 
 THE NEW MARQUIS TAKES HIS SEAT 49 
 
 marked. ' Bat it is a sad event, every thing- 
 considered ; really, as sad as it can be. I 
 suppose Bexley will vote all right ?' 
 
 ' I don't care how he is likely to vote,' 
 csaid Lord Ronald Tunbridge. ' If I were 
 in the House of Lords I should much ,prefer 
 to see him on the opposite side to having 
 Jiim seated anywhere in my vicinity. He is 
 a cad, and a vulgar cad, too ! His suc- 
 cession to the title is nothing less than a 
 public misfortune.' 
 
 ' And it is in particular a misfortune io 
 Mandeville Shelburne,' said Mr. Halliwell 
 Romaine. ' I remember Shelburne's father 
 — he was Lord Algernon Shelburne, you 
 know — marrying Lady Ellinor Gybert. It 
 wasn't much of a marriage ; but she was a 
 fine woman — a very fine w^oman indeed. Her 
 father ' 
 
 But here Mr. Romaine was once more 
 subject to interruption. 
 
 ' For the present, I fancy, Shelburne 
 ^vould prefer to remain in the House of 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 Commons,' said Lord Ronald Tunbridge. 
 ^ He is a rising man, and he has talents and 
 ambition/ 
 
 * He is one of your party, too. It would 
 be a grievous loss to you if he went to the 
 Lords.' 
 
 ' Was of my party, you mean. I happen 
 to know that he has been offered the Under- 
 Secretaryship for the Colonies, and that he 
 has accepted it.' 
 
 ' Take one from two,' said Mr. Halliwell 
 Komaine, revenging himself for the cutting 
 short of his reminiscences, ' and how man}r 
 are left?' 
 
 ' Enough to form a Government, as you: 
 shall see,' said Lord Ronald, with a gesture 
 half of petulance and half of burlesque. 
 *- But from one point of view,' he added 
 more seriously, ^ it would have been im- 
 measurably better if Shelburne were now to* 
 become the Marquis of Carabas.' 
 
 Very much to the same effect were the 
 comments made in the newspapers, though
 
 THE NEW MARQUIS TAKES HIS SEAT 51 
 
 they were not expressed in a manner 
 similarly frank. All the eulogies of the 
 late Marquis concluded with a reference to 
 the succession, and with a scarcely concealed 
 regret that a peer of such worth and 
 character should be succeeded by one of 
 whom it was possible to sa}^ so little that 
 was good. 
 
 Some of the weekly journals, and more 
 particularly those which professed Radical 
 opinions, were more frank. Rahagas Neivs, 
 notorious for its Republican proclivities, and 
 believed to have an enormous circulation 
 among the working class, openly rejoiced 
 over the injury that must be inflicted on 
 the peerage by the succession of Lord 
 Bexley. 
 
 ' He has just been warned off the turf,' it 
 observed, ' and now he will go into the House 
 of Lords to assist in making laws for a loyal 
 people.' 
 
 To do the new Marquis justice, he de- 
 served almost all the evil that was said of
 
 52 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 him. He was unquestionably, as Rabagas 
 News took the trouble of observing, * a bad 
 
 lot; 
 
 His characteristics were such as were by 
 no means to be accounted for on any theory 
 of heredity. His qualities, such as they 
 were, gave no signs of having come to him 
 by descent. If his character had been de- 
 termined by hereditary peculiarities he 
 should have derived a certain stiffness of 
 morals and a haughty pride of race and of 
 bearing from the paternal side, and much 
 gentleness and refinement from his mother 
 and her kin. But he seemed to be without 
 pride altogether. He was obstreperously 
 defiant of conventionalities ; his tastes were 
 beyond doubt vulgar ; he had scarcely 
 mingled with his own class except on the 
 turf, and he had been seen driving to the 
 Derby in a coster's barrow. 
 
 A man of this nobleman's rank does not 
 arrive at the great height of being warned 
 off the turf at a single bound. He climbs
 
 THE NEW MARQUIS TAKES HIS SEAT 53 
 
 up by gradual steps, as to any other emi- 
 nence. Lord Bexley's life, so much of it as 
 was known, had seemed to be a deliberately 
 calculated outrage against his order. 
 
 And not all of it was known. He had a 
 habit of disappearing for long intervals. 
 
 Sometimes he travelled. Travel was, 
 apparently, his only intellectual passion. 
 When he had been away for months to- 
 gether he might be heard of from India, or 
 from the Cape, or from Japan. It was 
 equally probable, however, that he would 
 reappear in a London police-court. It was 
 almost invariably a police-court in the East 
 End or in the Borough that was favoured 
 by such reappearances. He could not have 
 replied, as another young man about town 
 had done, when he was asked the direction 
 to Worship Street, that he was unable to 
 say, because he was usually taken to Marl- 
 borough Street himself The statement 
 would not have been true. He had been to 
 Worship Street many times, and to Marl-
 
 54 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 borough Street not at all. From which 
 fact, coupled with his singular appearance on 
 the road to Epsom, it was inferred that he 
 had formed connections among the lower 
 orders of which those of his own rank who 
 knew most of him had no sort of knowledge. 
 
 There was a Cabinet Council on the day 
 that followed the burial of the old Marquis 
 of Carabas. 
 
 ' It is very serious, the succession of that 
 fellow Bexley to the peerage,' said the Prime 
 Minister, Lord Sawbridgeworth, when the 
 business had been concluded. ' I should 
 have been prepared to sacrifice a great deal 
 if such a lamentable event could have been 
 prevented.' 
 
 ^ It will be a capital argument in favour 
 of Rossmine's schemes for reforming the 
 Upper Chamber,' observed the Secretary for 
 War. 
 
 ^ That is just it. By just so much as 
 Rossmine's case is strengthened our own will 
 suffer.'
 
 THE NEW JLlROr/S TAKES HIS SEAT 55 
 
 ^ He will never, I suppose, have the 
 <?ffrontery to come down to the House,' said 
 the Duke of St^ Ives, who was President of 
 the Board of Trade and a much-respected 
 member of the Government 
 
 ' I know nothing of the fellow personally,^ 
 Lord Sawbrido'e worth remarked. * But 
 nothincr that I have heard about him 
 would dispose me to think that he will be 
 kept away by any right feeling or natural 
 shame.' 
 
 ' The d d blackleg !' exclaimed the 
 
 Secretary' for War. 
 
 This was probably the first occasion on 
 which such language had been employed at 
 a Cabinet Council ; but though it created 
 a momentary astonishment, it was generally 
 felt that it did only feeble justice to the 
 character of the new Marquis of Carabas. 
 
 ' If that young man had broken his 
 neck on some fortunate occasion,' Lord Saw- 
 bridgeworth remarked, ^ we might now 
 have been conofratulatins" ourselves on the
 
 S6. THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 succession of a peer who unites fine abilities-. 
 to an estimable character and just prin- 
 ciples. ' 
 
 ^ I think your lordship has judged ex- 
 cellently in calling young Shelburne to* 
 office/ said the Duke of St. Ives. 
 
 ^ I think so, too/ admitted the Prime- 
 Minister. ' I have associated high expecta- 
 tions with Mandeville Shelburne, and I 
 have not the least doubt that they will be- 
 justified.' 
 
 If the words spoken in Downing Street 
 could have reached a set of rather sumptuous.' 
 chambers in No. 1, New Court, Temple, 
 they would have gratified Mandeville Shel« 
 burne almost as much as if a recent family- 
 bereavement had made him Marquis of 
 Carabas. 
 
 His windows looked out past the Temple 
 library, across the slow, dreaming Thames, 
 to the tall, misty line of buildings on the- 
 Surrey side ; and in intervals of marching,, 
 in an absorbed way, about the floor of his?
 
 THE NEW MARQUIS TAKES HIS SEAT 57 
 
 room, he paused to gaze at this 2^1'ospect, 
 but really without seeing it. 
 
 That he would one day succeed to the 
 niarquisate and the estates was one of Mau- 
 de ville Shelburne's fixed ideas. He was now 
 the next heir, but he was in no hurry. His 
 spurs were yet to win. For the present 
 the House of Commons ^vas the field of his 
 ambition. There w^as nothino^ that he so 
 much coveted as a great success in that dis- 
 tinguished assembly ; and he was succeeding. 
 At little more than thirty years of age he 
 was an Under-Secretary of State. A career 
 begun so ausjiiciously — and at a time when, 
 he admitted to himself, there were excep- 
 tionally few men of promise on that side of 
 the House to w^hich he belonged — might 
 lead to anything. 
 
 Oh yes ; he could well afford to wait for 
 the marquisate. On the death of his father 
 he had not come into possession of great 
 wealth, but he had nevertheless a suflficiency 
 for all his present purposes. Considerations
 
 58 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 of money counted for little with him just 
 now, and the enchantments of title and high 
 position were greatly qualified by his intense 
 eagerness for Parliamentary success. 
 
 Mandeville Shelburne had been trained 
 to believe that the political career is the 
 highest that a well-born Englishman can 
 follow, and he had thoroughly absorbed the 
 spirit of his training. He had practised 
 oratory from his boyhood. At Oxford, for 
 two years at least, he had been the best 
 speaker in the Union, and he had even for 
 awhile been chairman of that society. He 
 had no really distinguished talents, it may 
 be, but he had all those qualities which dis- 
 guise the absence of great talents. Genius, 
 he had convinced himself, is a capacity for 
 taking pains. He had high authority for 
 this explanation of the inexplicable, and it 
 satisfied him altogether, fitting exactly into 
 the constitution of his mind. 
 
 To say that he was insensible to the 
 greatness of his prospects as next heir to
 
 THE XEW MARQUIS TAKES IIIS SEAT 59 
 
 the estates and title of the Marquis of 
 Carabas Avould have been entirely to mis- 
 understand him. He was fully and keenly 
 alive to all the advantages of his situation, 
 but he was more than willing that such 
 honours should be delayed until they would 
 crown instead of impeding his Parliamentary 
 success. 
 
 Indeed, they might not come at all. 
 Suppose the new Marquis should marry ? 
 There would be an end to everything in 
 that direction. And marriage was by no 
 means improbable in one who had not long 
 passed his fortieth year. This, too, could 
 be borne by a man who could win his own 
 peerage, who might some day be the First 
 Minister of the Crown. 
 
 Mandeville Shelburne looked from the 
 bottom of the ladder to its very top. What 
 troubled him more at the present time than 
 the possibility of the succession dropping 
 from him was the more immediate possibility 
 that his cousin might disgrace him by taking
 
 Co THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 his seat in the House of Lords. That would 
 be very bad indeed. Why should not the 
 new Marquis go abroad — at least, until the 
 public memory of his escapades had begun 
 to grow dim ? 
 
 But it was precisely this matter of taking 
 his seat that the Marquis of Carabas was 
 just at that moment thinking of. There 
 was to be a division on the Deceased Wife's 
 Sister Bill — a hardy Parliamentary annual. 
 It is defeated in the House of Lords every 
 year, partly by the efforts of the Bishops^ 
 and partly by a sudden sense of duty in 
 those peers who never by any chance attend 
 to their duties on other occasions. 
 
 It would have made Lord Sawbridgewortli 
 wild with rage if he had known that among 
 the peers whipped up for the critical divi- 
 sion was the notorious Marquis of Carabas. 
 So, however, it fell out. The whip had, of 
 course, been intended for the late Marquis,, 
 whose name, by some inadvertence, had not 
 yet been removed from the list of the sup-
 
 THE XE\V MARQUIS TAKES HIS SEAT 6i 
 
 porters of the Ministry. It suggested to 
 the new Marquis a previously unanticipated 
 line of conduct. Why should he not go 
 down to the House ? He had as much 
 right to be there as any other member. He 
 had been cut dead at his father's funeral by 
 almost every man of his own order there 
 present. They would pay all due res2:)ect 
 to the old lord, but they would not recog- 
 nise the existence of his successor. Well, 
 they could not keep him out of his rights 
 and out of the chamber in which they sat. 
 There, as he said to himself, he had de- 
 cidedly the whip-hand of them. 
 
 ' Mason,' he said, on the morning of the 
 day on which the Bill was to be thrown out, 
 '■ we are sroinof to London.' 
 
 ' When, my lord ?' 
 
 * Now.' 
 
 And that very afternoon the Marquis of 
 Carabas, whose town house was in no condi- 
 tion to receive him, was installed at Morley's 
 Hotel.
 
 62 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 It was not merely in a spirit of bravado 
 that he had resolved to take the position to 
 which he was entitled by his rank. The 
 deplorable extravagances which he had com- 
 mitted, to apply to them their mildest 
 description, w^ere in no sense the consequence 
 of intellectual weakness. His mind might 
 even have been called powerful, and he had 
 thought much on many things since his 
 father's sudden death. The old life had 
 seemed to roll away into the distance, and 
 he would have been deeply glad and grate- 
 ful if other men's recollections of it could as 
 readily have perished. For himself, he felt 
 that he would be able to forget soon enough. 
 A new sense of power and responsibility had 
 come upon him, and in going down to the 
 House of Lords he had an odd feeling that 
 he was for the first time doing something 
 which was becoming to the rank to which 
 he was born. 
 
 "When he presented himself at the door
 
 THE NEW MARQUIS TAKES HIS SEAT 63 
 
 of that magnificent chamber he was stopped 
 by the attendant. 
 
 * Only peers are allowed to pass through 
 here,' the man said, barring the wa}^ 
 
 * Do you think I should be such a d — d 
 fool as to come down to this place if I were 
 not a peer ?' was the reply. 
 
 ' Beg pardon, my lord,' said the man 
 hastily ; ' what name ?' 
 
 ' The Marquis of Carabas.' 
 
 The announcement produced profuse 
 ajDologies, and the Marquis, almost un- 
 observed, for Lord Saw brido^e worth was 
 speaking, walked in and took a seat. 
 
 It was a crowded House, for the members 
 had answered well to the Ministerial sum- 
 mons; but the Marquis of Carabas observed, 
 with some chagrin, that the seats in close 
 proximity to his own speedily emptied of 
 their occupants. He saw quite clearly 
 what this meant. He was to be left care- 
 fully to himself, or, as he chose to put it, 
 boycotted.
 
 64 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 The debate would have been called lively 
 by persons accustomed to Parliamentary 
 proceedings, but to him it was uninteresting, 
 and therefore dull. Also he saw many dis- 
 dainful glances directed towards him, and 
 he did not feel as defiant or as indifferent 
 to them as he tried to believe. He felt very 
 uncomfortable, instead. Quite a strange 
 set of thoughts and feelings was crowding 
 upon him, and it struck him as a new 
 revelation that possibly the noble lords 
 occupying the benches behind and before 
 him might have good reasons for preferring 
 his room to his company. Some of them 
 might be as bad as himself ; some of them 
 were certainly not much better, as he had 
 reason to know ; but none of them had been 
 found out to just the same extent. 
 
 The atmosphere of the chamber grew 
 oppressive, and he seized his hat and went 
 along the Lobby to the central hall. There 
 he encountered Lord Ronald Tunbridge, 
 coming from the House of Commons.
 
 THE NEW MARQUIS TAKES HIS SEAT 65 
 
 Lord Ronald never cut anybody. Those 
 whom he did not Hke he preferred to lash 
 with his tongue, or pierce with the stiletto 
 of his wit. 
 
 ' Hallo, Carabas !' he said, ' who would 
 have expected to see you here V 
 
 ' I don't think you will see me here again.' 
 
 * Don't like it, eh ? Shouldn't have ex 
 pected you would.' 
 
 The two walked down the steps, int 
 Westminster Hall, across the yard, and so 
 on into Whitehall, talking of indifferent 
 things. Lord Ronald Tunbridge was pro- 
 ceeding to his club, but he could not, or 
 rather would not, ask the Marquis of 
 Carabas to go with hini there. He sum- 
 moned a cab. 
 
 * By the way, Carabas,' he asked, as he 
 stood with his foot on the step, ^ haven't 
 you travelled a good deal V 
 
 The question had no relation to anytliing 
 
 previously said. It appeared to be a sudden 
 thought. 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 * A good bit, I dare say,' was the reply. 
 
 * Well, you take my advice, and travel 
 again. Take a long spell of it. Try Texas, 
 my boy. G. T. T., you know ;' and with 
 this parting advice Lord Ronald drove 
 away, leaving the Marquis of Carabas in a 
 condition of tremendous wrath.
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 RELICS OF A DEAD MAN. 
 
 If the Marquis of Carabas had been in the 
 habit of reading the journals of the day he 
 miofht have found in them much which had 
 a personal interest. More especially did 
 •^ the new journalism ' concern itself with his 
 affairs. 
 
 ' Lord Sawbridgeworth/ said a ^^aragraph 
 in Veracity, ' has introduced into the House 
 of Lords what I suppose must be regarded 
 as a Black Sheep Bill. It seems intended 
 to weed the House of its more disreputable 
 members, a process which, if it were at all 
 thorough, might go very near to the ex- 
 tinction of the hereditary principle in legis-
 
 68 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 lation. T cannot say that I wish well tO' 
 the Bill. If we are to have a House of 
 Lords, I prefer that we should preserve all 
 its absurdities along with it. It may then^ 
 as the Duke of Wellington predicted, go- 
 bodily some day, in a storm. Everybody 
 will guess, of course, at whom the new 
 measure is especially aimed.' 
 
 ^ By the way,' said the paragraph which 
 succeeded this, ' the new Marquis of Carabas 
 is more than forty, and unmarried. Should 
 he die without issue the estates and title 
 will go to his cousin, Mr. Mandeville Shel- 
 burne, who has just been appointed Under- 
 Secretary for the Colonies in Lord Saw- 
 bridge worth's Government. Mr. Shelburne 
 is a very reputable man indeed, and is not 
 without a certain capacity for political life. 
 He is, however, weak on the side of 
 Tory Democracy, and believes that he caa 
 bring about an alliance between the work- 
 ing-class leaders and the Primrose League.' 
 
 Wherever the Marquis of Carabas was.
 
 RIiLICS OF A DEAD MAN 69 
 
 mentioned, it was hinted with uncomfortable 
 plainness that if he were only out of the 
 •way a much better man would come into 
 possession of his title. But of all this the 
 Marquis w^as himself both ignorant and 'care- 
 less. His reading of newspapers was strictly 
 limited to the sporting prints. His mind 
 was like a house with the blinds down. Of 
 the Black Sheep Bill he knew nothing, or 
 he might have expedited the passage of that 
 measure by placing himself inconveniently 
 in evidence among his brother peers. In a 
 iight of that sort he would certainly — to 
 use his own characteristic phraseology — have 
 .shown game. 
 
 His accession, and the unpleasant event 
 by which it was preceded, had placed him 
 face to face with an apparently insoluble 
 problem. What was he to do with himself? 
 
 His new^ position had brought with it an 
 altogether unaccustomed feeling of responsi- 
 bility, but it was of a vague and bewildering 
 tsort. Then, too, he was cut off on one side
 
 TO THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS' 
 
 from the indulgence of his favourite tastes> 
 and on the other, as he perceived clearly 
 enouofh, from association with his class. If 
 a man of such a character, so situated, doe» 
 not take a wise resolution, he becomes a 
 greater blackguard than ever. The weight 
 of his self-contempt crushes him down. 
 
 The resolution taken by the Marquis of 
 Carabas was that he would leave the country^ 
 
 He had been wdldly angry when Lord 
 Ronald Tunbridg;e rather maliciously sug- 
 gested this course, but the more he thought 
 of it the more sensible the suggestion 
 seemed. 
 
 Lord Tuflington, the heir to an ancient 
 earldom, had recently crossed Greenland 
 with a party of explorers. He had gone 
 away because he had got mixed wp in a 
 scandal with a lady at a minor theatre, and 
 he had come back in the character of hero. 
 He had even read a paper before a learned 
 society, and w^as said to be engaged in 
 writing a still fuller record of his experiences
 
 /^/■L/CS OF A DEAD MAX 71 
 
 for publication as a book. Society had 
 taken him up with enthusiasm, and the 
 old scandal was so far foro-otten or ignored 
 that he was being constantly stalked by 
 matchmaking mothers. Here, then, was 
 an illustration of what time and distance 
 and adventure might effect. 
 
 No sooner had he made this resolve than 
 he proceeded to carry it out. The Marquis 
 of Carabas, with marvellously few cere- 
 monies of preparation, crossed the Atlantic, 
 with an ill-defined intention of going some- 
 where * out west.' Mason was heard, on 
 the landing-stage at Liver230ol, to call him 
 * my lord,' and the news that a British peer 
 was on board the steamer then about to set 
 out was at once cabled to New York. 
 
 This procured him the honour of an 
 interview before his feet touched land, aiid 
 though the interviewer contrived to draw 
 nothinor from him but stron<>' lans^uacye, he 
 tracked his victim to a hotel, ascertained his 
 name, was thereby put on the track of some
 
 72 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 very savoury particulars, and on the follow- 
 ing morning published three columns of the 
 spiciest ' copy ' that he had supplied to his 
 newspaper since he became connected with 
 the press. 
 
 It thus happened that within a few hours 
 of his landing all New York was made 
 acquainted with the history of the Marquis 
 of Carabas, as well as with certain apocry- 
 phal embellishments. It was especially set 
 forth that he could swear like a lord. 
 
 When, a few hours later, the ingenious 
 interviewer discovered that his lordship had 
 left his hotel, and then that he had left 
 New York, he at once attributed this result 
 to the scathing vigour of his pen. As 
 a matter of fact, the Marquis had no more 
 read this account of himself than he had 
 read those other accounts which had 
 appeared in England. He was simply 
 restless, and therefore he had moved on. 
 
 When inquiries were set on foot, it was 
 f jund that he had visited several American
 
 RELICS OF A DEAD ^fAN 7^ 
 
 cities, always with Mason in his company. 
 At length, however, all traces of him were 
 lost. He had made a heavy draft on his 
 bankers whilst at Chicaofo, and then he had 
 disappeared from sight. 
 
 The men who sailed with Columbus were 
 grievously afraid that they might come to 
 the edge of the world, and fall over. If the 
 planet had been constructed as these mariners 
 believed, and if the Marquis of Carabas had 
 reached its utmost verge, and then fallen 
 into the illimitable abyss, he could not have 
 sunk more completely and mysteriously from 
 human ken. 
 
 There was no member of the British 
 peerage less likely to be missed than the 
 Marquis of Carabas. But at length the 
 continued absence of news began to be the 
 subject of public comment, even in his case. 
 It was thought — and in some quarters even 
 hoped — that he would never return. 
 
 ' I seem to have done you an uninten- 
 tional good turn,' Lord Bonald Tunbridge
 
 74 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 observed to Mandeville Shelburne. ' I think 
 you owe me one, don't you know.' 
 
 * In what respect ?' 
 
 * For sending Bexley away. You are 
 not aware, perhaps, but that was my 
 brilhant achievement. Alone I did it, as 
 the fellow says in the play. A little advice 
 that I gave to him in Whitehall one night 
 seems to have made you the Marquis of 
 Carabas. It does, upon my soul !' 
 
 ^ I am sure I am much obliged to you ; 
 but my ow^n detestation of my cousin was 
 possibly not so strong as yours, and I have 
 certainly never brought myself to desire his 
 death.' 
 
 * What does it matter whether you desire 
 his death or not ? There's no doubt to my 
 mind that the fellow's dead, and as I am 
 only a cousin at about the fortieth remove, 
 I don't mind saying that it's a jolly good 
 job too.' 
 
 It would be placing Mandeville Shelburne 
 on too high a pinnacle of moral elevation ta
 
 RELICS OF A DEAD MAN 75 
 
 suppose that he was insensible or indifferent 
 to the advantage that his cousin's death 
 must bring him. Four years had passed 
 over since he became an Under-Secretary 
 of State. They had been years of more 
 than average success, but also of more than 
 averaore disillusion. He had thouo-ht little 
 of the peerage then ; he almost desired it 
 now. 
 
 ' Whv shouldn't Carabas come back ?' he 
 
 «/ 
 
 said, in reply to Lord Ronald's last remark. 
 * A four years' absence is not so very 
 wondcrfid, after all, especially in a man of 
 his character, with no one of his own order 
 with whom he would especially care to 
 communicate.' 
 
 ' Wherever Carabas went he would want 
 money ; and he would want a pot of monc}^, 
 too. Xow, his bankers have not heard of 
 him for nearly four years past. That 
 means that he is not again likely to be 
 heard of If he were alive, he would be 
 having his fling somewhere.'
 
 76 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 ^ The fact is,' Lord Ronald continued, * I 
 should regard his death as a merciful dis- 
 pensation of Providence. It may seem 
 brutal to say so, but I should. I want you 
 in the House of Lords, Shelburne ! That 
 will suit my book exactly. There is just 
 one too many of us in the House of Com- 
 mons when you and I are seated on the 
 same benches.' 
 
 There was nothing ill-natured in the re- 
 mark, and Shelburne was amused at its 
 frankness, for he knew exactly what it 
 meant. 
 
 Under the light and airy manner of Lord 
 Ronald Tunbridge there dwelt as ambitious 
 a spirit as needs to accompany even the 
 most fiery of souls. During the last four 
 years he had risen to an astonishing 
 eminence. He had not only arrived at a 
 most important position in the Ministry, 
 but had been the virtual leader of the House 
 of Commons. Then he had taken a bold 
 and adventurous step. A moment came in
 
 R I- Lies OF A DEAD MAX -jj 
 
 Avhicli lie had to consider Avhether he could 
 serve his future best by a great act of 
 loyalty to his colleagues or by resignation ; 
 and he resigned. 
 
 His idea was that Lord Sawbridi^eworth 
 would ask him to come back ; that he 
 would be able to extort some evident but 
 not very solid concession ; and that he would 
 thus by one stroke obtain greater power in 
 the Ministry and additional influence with 
 the people. 
 
 But the coup was, on one side at least, a 
 failure and a disap^^ointment. For once 
 Lord Ronald had misconstrued his man. 
 So far from asking him to come back. Lord 
 Sawbridgeworth was furious. Of all quali- 
 ties that a Minister could possess he valued 
 loyalty the most. That any man should 
 seek to improve his own position by placing 
 his colleagues in a difficulty seemed to him 
 to be monstrous. It was the one unpardon- 
 able sin. He had made Lord Ronald 
 Tunbridge, he told himself He had given
 
 78 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 him an office which scarcely anybody in the 
 country thought him competent to fill ; and 
 this was his reward ! on the first oppor- 
 tunity, the creature that he had warmed at 
 his hearth turned round and stung him. 
 Ask him to come back ? Not if the 
 Ministry must fall to-morrow ; not if the 
 whole country cried aloud for him ; not if 
 the consequence of obstinacy were to be 
 his own permanent exclusion from power. 
 
 Lord Sawbridgeworth's views as to what 
 he called ' this base desertion ' were reflected 
 in the chief organs of his party. Lord 
 Konald Tunbridge was alternately abused 
 and lectured. He was reminded of his years, 
 and of how becoming modesty is to youth. 
 It all amused him very much. Tt was 
 certainly disappointing not to be asked to 
 again resume his place in the Government, 
 but it was his future more than his present 
 that he had staked on the throw, and, every- 
 thing considered, he had won. 
 
 For the condition of affairs was this : that
 
 J^ELICS OF A DEAD MAN yg 
 
 whilst he scarcely dared to show himself 
 among his old friends in Pall Mall he was 
 unquestionably the most popular member of 
 his ])arty in the country at large. He had 
 only to show himself on a platform anywhere, 
 and the enthusiasm Avas unbounded. 
 
 But there was no demonstration ao^ainst 
 the Ministry at these gatherings. Lord 
 Ronald was much too ingenious and calcu- 
 lating a politician to be led into the mistake 
 of supposing that he could serve his interests 
 by organizing opinion against Lord Saw- 
 brido'eworth. So ffxr from desirino- to create 
 a split in the party, he was anxious to hold 
 his party together. But, at the same time, 
 he desired all the glory of independence, and 
 all the im2)ortance that anxiety about his 
 action must confer upon him. When critical 
 debates were in progress it was invariably 
 whispered about that he intended to make a 
 strong speech against the Government ; but 
 just before the division there went round a 
 confidential rumour that he did not j^ropose
 
 So THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 to embarrass his party, either by speaking- 
 on the subject before the House or by going- 
 into the wrong lobby. 
 
 In his own phrase, a survival from his 
 salad days, Lord Ronald was ^ playing the 
 waiting game.' Not, however, without a 
 growing feeling of alarm. There was one 
 rising politician whose popularity might 
 some day come into competition with his 
 own. This was Mandeville Shelburne. 
 Lord Ronald had the knack of estimating 
 himself pretty correctly, and he knew that 
 Shelburne had some qualities more solid than 
 hi 3 own. Besides, the former had stuck to 
 the Ministry, and he might be the first to 
 get to the top. There was a chance for one 
 man to make a great success on their side 
 of the House, but scarcely for two. He 
 was therefore particularly desirous that 
 Mandeville Shelburne should go to the 
 House of Lords. All this Shelburne 
 easily understood, being a man of more than 
 ordinary discernment.
 
 R FLICS OF A DEAD MAN 8r 
 
 * But even if it should be the case that 
 luy cousin is dead/ he remarked, * it does 
 •not seem clear how my own succession is 
 .to be brought about. How are we to obtain 
 2)roofs of death V 
 
 'That's the devil of it,' Lord Ronald 
 admitted. ' Really, a fellow ought to die at 
 home, where his friends would have the 
 chance of soothing his last moments, and all 
 that, you know.' 
 
 * No doubt ; but for the present you must 
 admit that your scheme of kicking me up- 
 stairs does not look very hopeful.' And with 
 ihis remark the two friends parted. 
 
 The scheme, however, was ever so much 
 more hoj^eful than it seemed, for on that 
 verv (lav a younof American crentleman 
 called on the British Minister at Washing- 
 ton and made a momentous communication. 
 
 ' Can you tell me,' he asked, ' if they 
 happen to have lost a peer of the realm out 
 in your country ?' 
 
 * Lost a peer of the realm ? That is an 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 8i THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS- 
 
 odd question. Will you kindly tell me just 
 what you mean V 
 
 ' Well, you see, I guess that I have found 
 one — all that remains of him, that is to say ^ 
 and it isn't much, that's a fact.' 
 
 ^ I must still ask you to make yourself 
 more clear.' 
 
 * Well, you see, I've been out in Alaska. 
 Pretty cold out there. I v/ent in a sealing 
 ship, and was landed for a spell. Thought I 
 might not have the same chance again, so I 
 let the shij) go home Avithout me, and came 
 back over the Rockies.' 
 
 ^ A very interesting adventure, I have no 
 doubt ; but how does this bear on the loss of 
 a British peer V 
 
 ' That's just what I am coming to. I came- 
 across some fellows who had had a fight witL 
 Indians. It was a case of scalping on one 
 side or the other, so they took the Indiaa 
 scalps. That was nearly four years ago. 
 The Indians had been committing a murder,. 
 I should say. Had got a lot of things they
 
 J^ELICS OF A DEAD MAX 83 
 
 didn't know what to do with, and the other 
 fellows took 'em. Other fellows didn't know 
 what to do with 'em, either, so I bought 'em, 
 and brought 'em back witli me.' 
 
 * And may I ask what these things are ?' 
 
 * Impedimenta, I should call them. Seem 
 to have belonged to somebody very well off 
 — of the name of Carabas or Bexley, I should 
 say.' 
 
 ' Bexley — Carabas ! Why, you do indeed 
 bring important news ! And do you think that 
 Lord Carabas is dead ?' 
 
 ' I guess there's not much doubt of that. 
 I've got his scalp in my ^portmanteau, and 
 a good many other things of his. I've got 
 a written statement from those fellows in 
 Alaska, too. Gives the Indian story of the 
 murder. Thought it might be important, so 
 got them to put it down and witness it, 
 and all the rest.' 
 
 ' You seem to have acted with great dis- 
 cretion, Mr. ' 
 
 * Marc. A. Tidd is my name.'
 
 84 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 * Well, Mr. Tidd, you have acted with 
 great discretion, as I have said. This is most 
 important news. The Marquis of Carabas 
 has been missing for these four years past. 
 It will indeed be a Providential thing if you 
 have really discovered how^ he died, and have 
 brought the necessary proofs.' 
 
 '■ There's not much doubt about my doing 
 that, I think.* 
 
 * Well, Mr. Tidd, the family, I am sure, 
 will be willing to reimburse you for any 
 outlay to which you may have been put, and, 
 T do not doubt, to show their gratitude in 
 any other manner you may think fit.' 
 
 * That's not what I want at all. They 
 can have the things, and welcome. They 
 can have them free, gratis, for nothing. I 
 don't want either money or gratitude ; but 
 I thought I would bring the things along. 
 You shall have them dow^n here to-morrow, 
 without fail ;' and with this assurance Mr. 
 Tidd bade the British Minister 'Good- 
 day.'
 
 RELICS OF A DEAD MAN 85 
 
 When the * thinors ' canio alonof on the 
 morrow they left no doubt either of the 
 fate of their owner or of the flict that this 
 owner had been the Marquis of Carabas. 
 They were transmitted to England at once, 
 and within a short time of their arrival 
 Mandeville Shelburne was called to the 
 House of Lords under the ancestral title.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A COMMONPLACE LOVE-STORY. 
 
 At 10, Magnolia Street, Peppermint Hill, 
 Clapham, dwelt Mrs. Elizabeth Shelburne, 
 called by the neighbours Bessie Shelburne, 
 and by her two brothers simply Bessie. 
 
 She was a small woman, with a fine, 
 strapping son, and no husband that any of 
 the neighbours had seen or heard of. An 
 apple-cheeked, roundabout little body, this 
 Bessie. She must have been rather pretty 
 when she was young. She was still some- 
 thing under her fortieth year, but anxiety 
 and hard work had told upon her, had 
 robbed her of her bloom, and had streaked 
 her fair tresses with gray.
 
 A COMMOXPLACJ: LOVE-STORY. 87 
 
 Yet withal no lapse of time had been 
 able to change the expression of wondering 
 innocence which had been characteristic of 
 her youth. Her round blue eyes and sweet, 
 undecided mouth seemed rather to belong 
 to the seraphically charming countenance of 
 one of Rajjhael's cherubs than to a middle- 
 aged, hard-working woman of Peppermin't 
 Hill. There was, too, occasionally an ex^ 
 pression of bewilderment on her face, as if 
 something had happened to her that she 
 was too simple to comprehend, and a hint of 
 expectation, as if the mystery w^ere certain 
 some day to be explained 
 
 How any woman could retain a mind so 
 simple and so pure as looked out of Bessie's 
 eyes in days like these, w^hen wickedness 
 flaunts itself, is proclaimed from the house- 
 tops, is published in all detail in every news- 
 paper, w^as a puzzle to all Bessie's friends, 
 and an especial source of wonder to her son. 
 
 But never did son and mother suit each 
 other so well. The gay, buoyant self-
 
 88 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS^ 
 
 oonfidence of the one exactly fitted itself 
 to the thnid reserve of the other. The- 
 relations of nature seemed almost to be- 
 reversed. Bertie Shelburne took a constant^ 
 fond delight in his mother's smallness, a» 
 contrasted with his own lithe, vigorous; 
 frame, and pretended that she was a person 
 to be coddled and protected and made mucb 
 of, after the manner in which a parent makes 
 much of a favourite child. 
 
 What would she do, he asked, if sho 
 had not a son to look after her ? Just wait 
 till he was out of his time, and was earning 
 journeyman's wages, and the world should 
 see what a home they would have. Then it 
 would no longer be necessary for her to taka 
 in work, either. 
 
 And to Bessie Shelburne protection came 
 naturally enough. She had always been 
 used to it. Her brother, Jacob Dean, was 
 a year younger than herself; but he might 
 have been twice her age, considering how 
 he had ruled her from childhoodi He would!
 
 A COMMOXPLACE LOVE-STORY 89 
 
 have saved her from what he considered to 
 be the one o-reat mistake of lier hfe if she 
 had only treated him with that confidence 
 which, he contended, he had a right to 
 expect. 
 
 * If you had done as I wanted you to do, 
 Bessie !' was the prehide of many of his 
 speeches to her ; but on those occasions he 
 somehow always had to change the subject. 
 Ruled in almost every detail of her life by 
 her stronof masculine belonofin^fs, there was 
 one point on which Mrs. Shelburne would 
 listen to no criticism, no advice, no reproach. 
 Jacob w^as invariably warned off the ground 
 when he apj^roached her affairs matrimonial. 
 
 There was an impression afloat in the 
 Peppermint Hill neighbourhood that there 
 had been something very wrong with her 
 marriage, even if she had been married at 
 all ; but as for herself, she made no con- 
 fidences on the subject. There was all the 
 more conjecture because of her reticence. 
 The gossips, indeed, deplored her ill-advised
 
 90 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 secrecy. The}^ were sorry to be obliged to 
 doubt whether she had ever really had a 
 husband ; but they had never seen her in 
 mourning, and no husband had ever come to 
 Peppermint Hill. And there was the boy, 
 
 and — and But the head-shaking and 
 
 the insinuation may very readily be left to 
 the reader's imaofination. 
 
 Whatever conjectures might be indulged 
 in as to Bessie's past — and there was ample 
 room for conjecture, seeing that the enigma 
 already existed when she went to reside at 
 Peppermint Hill — it was powerfully in- 
 dicative of the character of the shy little 
 woman, and of the restraining influence of 
 her gentle spirit, that nobody ever ventured 
 to hint a doubt to her of her own irre- 
 proachability. 
 
 The story that the neighbours would 
 have been glad to know was simple enough 
 in its main outlines. Bessie had married a 
 -man of whom she knew no more than that 
 he had a handsome face and figure, that he
 
 .•I COMMOXPLACE LOVE-STORY 91 
 
 professed at one time to worship tlie ground 
 she trod on, and that he seemed to belong 
 to some order of mankind tliat was quite 
 outside the hues of her narrow experience. 
 He had stipulated that the marriage should 
 take place without the knowledge of her 
 brother, Jacob Dean, otherwise the ceremony 
 was all rio^ht and resfular enouofh. Bessie 
 had a copy of the marriage-lines among her 
 treasures. It was a comfort to look at them 
 now and then. An armful of railway scrip 
 would not have been so precious as the now 
 soiled sheet of blue j^^P^^' which bore 
 testimony to the fact that Adelbert Shel- 
 burne and Bessie Dean were man and wife. 
 
 It was almost twenty years ago now that 
 Bessie had met her sweetheart for the first 
 time. They had encountered each other at 
 the Crystal Palace, whither Bessie had gone 
 in the company of Jane Ann Sayers, and 
 much against the will of her brother Jacob, 
 who since the death of their parents had stood 
 in the paternal relation, the elder brother,
 
 92 . THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 Joshua, being rather in need of guidance 
 than capable of extending any protection to 
 others. 
 
 Jane Ann Sayers was a romantic girl. 
 Her imagination had been fed on the London 
 Journal and the WeeMy Budget. Her daily 
 expectation and hope was to become the 
 heroine of some romance. Nothing in the 
 way of adventure could have surprised her, 
 for in stories that are to be * continued in 
 our next ' the most astonishing things occur 
 in every page. To Jane Ann, therefore, it 
 seemed at once natural and delightful that, 
 when they found themselves persecuted by 
 unpleasant attentions, a young man of quite 
 distinguished appearance should turn up in 
 the nick of time, send their persecutor 
 sprawling on the grass, and offer his pro- 
 tection for the rest of the evening. 
 
 Jane Ann decided that their timely 
 rescuer must be a baronet at least. She 
 confided as much in a whisper to Bessie. 
 * He's either a baron or a baron ite, I'm sure,*
 
 A COMMOXPLA CI-: LOVE- S TOR ) ' 93 
 
 she declared, ^vlicii he had left them for a 
 moment in order to obtain some refreshment. 
 * This is quite a roemance, Bessie — ^just as it 
 happens in the stories. In one that I once 
 told you about the baron is in a penny 
 steamboat a-o:oinQ: down to Kosherville, and 
 there he meets a young lady in the retail 
 'aberdashery line. What does it lead to, 
 my dear ? Why, a coronet — nothing less : 
 all of sparkling jewels, such as you never 
 see. Then there is a presentation at Court, 
 and di'monds, and kissing of her Majesty's 
 hand. It's too beautiful for anythink ! 
 Oh, Bessie, do look at the proud an' 'orty 
 curl of his nostril !' 
 
 This last observation was made as the 
 young man of the proud and haughty nostril 
 returned with a waiter by his side, bearing 
 the refreshments he had gone to procure. 
 
 Bessie did not much like the adventure. 
 She could not help wondering what Jacob 
 would think. Yet her imagination went 
 a-woolgathering, too, especially as she
 
 94 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 noticed more and more that whilst their 
 companion seemed amused by Jane Ann, 
 laughing at her most serious observations, 
 he was altogether deferential to herself. 
 This, indeed, led to a quarrel between the 
 girls before the night was over. Miss Sayers 
 discovering that if there was to be any ' roe- 
 mance ' it was not for her, and declaring, 
 much to Bessie's dismay, that she would go 
 home at once, and alone. 
 
 It was a not unnatural consequence of this 
 unexpected little tiff that Bessie should 
 permit herself to be '■ seen home ' by her 
 new and romantic acquaintance. In reality 
 there was very little that was romantic about 
 him. He was rather horsey in appearance. 
 Persons of larger worldly experience than 
 Bessie might have been unable to classify 
 him quite accurately in other respects, but 
 would have been pretty unanimous in sur- 
 mising that he was some variety of blackleg. 
 
 Yet he behaved himself very well — like 
 a perfect gentleman, Bessie thought — and
 
 A COMMOXPLACE LOVE-STORy 95 
 
 he really was handsome, though his dress 
 was eccentric, and there was a look of early 
 dissipation on his face. Bessie attempted to 
 be critical, but failed in the attempt. Before 
 her companion parted from her that evening 
 she was desperately in love. 
 
 There was many a meeting and parting 
 after that. These were secret always. 
 Bessie had no desire to tell Jacob ; he 
 would have been interfering, and would 
 have wished to know too much. Joshua 
 was a poet, and might be expected to sym- 
 pathize with lovers, but he was also a help- 
 less kind of person, and there could be no 
 use in telling him. Yet a confidante was 
 necessary, and who was there handy for this 
 useful office but Jane Ann Sayers ? 
 
 The two girls had made it uj) again, with 
 many expressions of contrition on the part 
 of Bessie, and many avowals that she never, 
 never could feel the same again on the part 
 of Miss Sayers. 
 
 It was, however, Jane Ann Avho officiated
 
 96 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 as bridesmaid on the morning when, just after 
 Jacob had gone to his work, Bessie Dean 
 crept quietly out of the house, and, in a dull 
 little church at Limehouse, was married by 
 special license to the man to whom she had 
 given her heart. 
 
 Jane Ann had been all the more ready 
 for reconciliation because she had abandoned 
 her belief in the exalted condition of Bessie's 
 lover. He made no pretence to be of 
 higher rank than Bessie's own, and the 
 special license was the first indication that 
 he possessed expensive tastes. Bessie, in 
 her innocent way, had neglected to ask for 
 any of those particulars which any prudent 
 woman would have taken care to know. She 
 had trusted everything to a man of whom 
 she knew nothing at all ; and, to do him 
 justice, Shelburne had never attempted to 
 take advantage of her innocence. What 
 may have been in his mind who can pretend 
 to say ? What happened was this : 
 
 The husband, much to the simple little
 
 A COMMOXPLACE LOVE-STORY 97 
 
 Avife's amazement, spent money freely after 
 the marriaore. Thev even went abroad. When 
 they returned, Bessie found herself installed 
 in a pretty little house at Walthamstow. 
 Jacob called to see her now and then. But 
 he would never sit down, and would, indeed, 
 scarcely enter the door. Bessie had posted 
 a j)enitent little letter to him on the day of 
 her marriage, but Jacob remained ill at ease 
 on the subject; and, to a certain extent, un- 
 forgiving. He thought there was some- 
 thing not quite right, for one thing. 
 Somehow, he was never able to see the 
 husband, his new brother-in-law, or to learn 
 anything certain about him. He was almost 
 brutal with his sister until she showed him 
 the marriage-lines, and even then he was 
 only relieved, not contented. 
 
 Jacob made a vow, therefore, never to sit 
 down in his brother-in-law's house until 
 asked by that brother-in-law himself to 
 listen to an explanation of his circumstances. 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 From Bessie he could really learn nothing 
 definite. She knew little, but would not 
 tell all that she knew — that her husband 
 remained away from home for long intervals, 
 for example ; that he seemed to have no 
 work to do ; that sometimes when he visited 
 her he came on horseback ; that these visits 
 were much less frequent than of old ; and 
 that she was becoming grievously apprehen- 
 sive lest some day she should find herself 
 deserted. 
 
 On the birth of the little boy these fears 
 vanished for awhile. Her husband visited 
 her more frequently, and remained for longer 
 periods. The child appeared to amuse him 
 in an odd way. It seemed to be a joke to 
 him, but a joke which puzzled and bothered 
 him strangely. One day the mother heard 
 him muttering to himself, as he sat looking 
 at the little thing asleep in his cot. She 
 caught disjointed sentences only. ^ He's a 
 pretty enough little chap, confound him ! 
 , . . Poor little beggar ! . . . There will
 
 A COJn/OXPLACI- LOri^-STOA'V 99 
 
 be trouble some day if tliis beeouies kno^Yll. 
 ^ . . What a row, by Jove !' 
 
 The httle woman could make nothing of 
 iill this, and did not dare to question him. 
 There had never been any quarrelling or 
 harsh words between her husband and her- 
 •self, but she felt that there might be if she 
 j^ressed him in order to learn what she so 
 much longed to know. She loved and w^or- 
 rshipped him still, but was afraid of him in 
 ^ome way that she could not define ; and so 
 she bore with mystery and misery and un- 
 ■eertainty, fearing that if she exhibited any 
 impatience something much worse might 
 <?ome to her. 
 
 And in th3 end come it did. One day, 
 Avhen the boy was about two years old, 
 Bessie's husband kissed her much as usual, 
 left her, and never returned. The little 
 woman suspected nothing till she went to 
 the child's cot and found a roll of bank-notes 
 •under the coverlet, and then, with the rapid 
 intuitian of a devoted affection, it flashed
 
 ido THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 upon her that she had seen her husband for 
 the last time, and this was to pay her foi» 
 his desertion. 
 
 What grief and agony then rent the timid 
 Httle heart only Bessie herself knew. But 
 she bore her trouble all alone. She did 
 not send for her brother. It was not for 
 three months or more that she confided to 
 Jacob what she then felt to be too surely 
 true. 
 
 'The d d scoundrel!' he exclaimed; 
 
 and then a little scream, followed by a sob, 
 from Bessie, warned him that he could just 
 then only^ make more misery by venting 
 his natural indignation. 
 
 He took a resolution to find the man, if he 
 was above ground, to hammer him well, as 
 he phrased it, and to drag him home to his 
 wife and child. 
 
 But Jacob had very little experience of 
 the world. He followed up one clue after 
 another, but without eflfect. A policeman 
 of his acquaintance had seen such a mai^
 
 A COMMOXPL ACE LOVE-STORY lor 
 
 •drivino- a cab. ' It was one of the new 
 cabs,' he said. ' One of Weevill's/ he 
 (thought — ' yes, one of Weevill's it was. 
 Rather a swell for a cabman, that chap was, 
 ^but a good hand, make no mistake !' 
 
 Jacob Dean went to Weevill's to inquire 
 after the missing brother-in-law. 
 
 * A driver named Shelburne,' said Mr. 
 Weevill. * Xever had no driver of that 
 name ; certainly not.' 
 
 A certain furtive look in his eyes made 
 Jacob inclined to doubt his veracity, and 
 when ^[r. Weevill had turned his back he 
 inquired of some of the men. 
 
 ' Xo, there had been no Shelburne there, 
 as they knowed on. Chaps changed their 
 names sometimes, but none of their men had 
 left for ever so long. But if he wanted to 
 find a cabman named Shelburne let him go 
 and ask at Scotland Yard. They were all 
 Jbooked up there, safe enough.' 
 
 Jacob had got this cabman idea settled 
 ifirmlv in his mind, for of the bank-notes his
 
 I02 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 sister had told him nothing ; so to Scotland 
 Yard he went. 
 
 'There are more than fifteen thousand 
 cabmen in London,' he was told. * Was 
 there a Shelburne among them ? Lots of 
 Shelburnes, probably. Shelburne wasn t- 
 such an uncommon name as all that, surely V 
 
 Oddly enough, however, when the index 
 was explored, there was not a Shelburne in 
 the list. ' Shouldn't have believed it,' the- 
 inspector said ; ^ but there it was^ — not a 
 single Shelburne in the whole lot/ 
 
 It never occurred to Jacob that the- 
 police might assist him in any other way- 
 He went away greatly disappointed, very 
 sorry for Bessie, and frightfully angry with 
 her husband. 
 
 Then he took the worst resolution that 
 was possible in such a case. He was on the 
 point of getting married himself; Bessie and 
 her child could not live with him ; but they 
 would live together as nearly as could be. 
 He took a couple of the little houses in
 
 A CO.VMOXPLACE LOVE-STORY 103 
 
 Magnolia Street, Peppermint Hill, much 
 to the wonder of the agent, who had never 
 before let two houses to one man, and Bessie 
 went to live beside him, never dreaming 
 that she was thus cuttino- herself off from 
 her husband, if he should ever chance to 
 return.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A POET ' UP TO date/ 
 
 Sixteen years had passed away since 
 Bessie Shelburne's husband had deserted 
 his wife and child, with never a word of 
 good-bye. The httle woman had made a 
 brave fight in the interval. She had left 
 untouched the roll of bank-notes that she 
 had found in the baby's cot — had never 
 revealed its existence, even. 
 
 At first it was pride and indignation that 
 forbade her to make use of the money of 
 the man who had deserted her ; but as time 
 rolled by the idea of the husband who had 
 treated her so ill became surrounded by a 
 mist of kindly memories, and then she
 
 A POET ' rr TO DATE' 105 
 
 secretly hoarded the notes as a fortune for her 
 son wlicn he came of age. With so much 
 money as that, he might become a master 
 instead of a journeyman, and all the Deans 
 had been no more than journeymen for as 
 long a time as the family history went back. 
 The notes would have been in danger 
 many a time if Bessie had been a less 
 unselfish woman, for the problem of living 
 had occasionally presented itself in almost 
 insoluble forms. Jacob regarded her as a 
 weak and helpless creature, and such, in- 
 deed, she seemed ; but this idea was rather 
 gratifying than otherwise to Jacob, for it 
 enabled him to realize the more keenly the 
 contrasted strength of his own masterful 
 nature. He had come to Bessie's assistance 
 in more ways than one. Then, too, Joshua, 
 the family poet, had been useful, and of late 
 years he had come to live with her in the 
 character of lodger, so that, with occasional 
 jobs of dressmaking, she was now getting on 
 very well.
 
 io6 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 Her greatest difficulty had been to repel 
 the curiosity of her son as to his father's 
 history. She had nothing to tell him, 
 indeed, knowing so little herself; but this 
 fact only made the situation more delicate. 
 
 One night the lad came home with a 
 quite unfamiliar gloom on his face. When 
 his uncle Joshua had gone to the little back 
 room to write more of those poems that 
 were aWays being * returned with thanks,' 
 he took his j^lace by his mother's side, 
 seized her small worn hand in his own large 
 palm, and held it in silence whilst he gazed 
 at the fire in a troubled, anxious way. 
 
 Bessie remained silent, full of ' ill-defined 
 fears.' 
 
 ' Mother,' he said at length, * I want to 
 ask you a question.' 
 
 She pressed his hand merely, and he 
 went on : ^ It was about something I heard. 
 I wasn't listening, but I couldn't help 
 hearing it. Mother, I hope it isn't true V 
 
 Bessie waited, puzzled and sorrowful ; but
 
 A POET * UP TO DATE' 107 
 
 lier head sank lower, and her ftice coloured 
 to the roots of her hair. Tlie lad's heart 
 drooped within him as he beheld what he 
 took to be a confirmation of his fears. But 
 with the thought of how hard the truth 
 must be for himself to bear, there mingled 
 the idea that it must be still harder for her 
 to tell, now that he had come to guess it. 
 He put his arm around her, as he had been 
 wont to do on happier occasions. 
 
 'Bat if it is true, mother,' he said, ' it 
 shall make no difference to us — no more 
 difference than I can help, at least. I wish 
 I hadn't known; but 1 couldn't help hearing 
 when they said you had never been 
 married ' 
 
 Bessie gave a little scream, leapt to her 
 feet, and ran upstairs in breathless haste. 
 She had been prepared for questions about 
 the lad's father, but she had not expected 
 this. A minute later she hurried down 
 with the marriage-lines in her hand, threw 
 the well-thumbed document on the table,
 
 io8 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 and then fell down at her son's feet, crying 
 as if her heart would break. 
 
 The lad endeavoured to lift and to soothe 
 her before he had given even a glance at 
 the paper, but * No, no,' she sobbed ; ' look 
 at that first.' 
 
 He did look at it, and his first sensation 
 was one of violent anger against those by 
 whom his mother had been maligned. Then 
 he was full of rage at himself for the wrong 
 he had done in his thought to one who only 
 valued her own life in so far as it could 
 promote the happiness of his. He took 
 her in his strong young arms, and fondled 
 her with mute pity and contrition, till the 
 cherubic little face that had so lately been 
 full of horror-stricken grief beamed again 
 with love and admiration and delight. 
 
 It was a long time before the lad could 
 bring himself to speak, so great was his 
 consternation at the cruel mistake he had 
 made, and his joy at finding that it ivas a 
 mistake, after all.
 
 A POET ' UP TO DA TE ' lo^ 
 
 ' I am SO Sony, mother,' lie began at 
 leno'tli. 
 
 ' And I am so glad,' she said, interrupting 
 him ; ^ we shall know each other better 
 now, Bertie, shan't we, my dear ? Oh, 
 ever so much better ! You know all now ; 
 and you will never, never think bad things 
 of your mother again, shall you, dear?' 
 
 ' I don't know quite all, mother,' Bertie 
 said ; ' but you must tell it jne. You know, 
 I am nearly a man now.' 
 
 ' And so you are,' said Bessie, proudly 
 glancing over his handsome and muscular 
 frame. 
 
 * Well, you will tell me all about it, 
 won't vou?' he went on, determined not to 
 be driven from the subject this time. 
 
 Then Bessie had to confess how little she 
 herself knew. But everything about her 
 married life she told him, embellishing the 
 account with glowing eulogies of his father, 
 for which, in truth, the lad seemed to have 
 little taste.
 
 no THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 ' And he left you like that V he asked. 
 
 ' Just like that, Bertie.' 
 
 ^ And you call him a good husband ? 
 Why, I call him a scoundrel. Just that^ 
 and ' 
 
 The little woman was again in tears. To 
 hear her son thus describing the man she 
 had loved was like a rending of the heart. 
 
 ' Don't say that, Bertie ; you will kill me 
 if you say that.' 
 
 ' Well, perhaps he was better than he 
 appears, if you were so fond of him,' the lad 
 reluctantly admitted. ' But did you never 
 try to find him ? Didn't you hunt for him 
 everywhere ?' 
 
 ' Your uncle Jacob did, and he says he 
 has been huntino^ ever since.' 
 
 ' Then there will be two of us now, for 
 I shall hunt for him, too. And 1 shall find 
 him if he is alive — you can trust me for that.' 
 
 ' And what shall you do then, Bertie V 
 
 ' Why, I shall say to him things that I 
 cannot say to you ; and I shall bring him
 
 .1 POET ' UP TO DATE' ni 
 
 here ; and I shall make him beg your 
 pardon on his knees. But there, mother, 
 I must go out and think it over. I shan't 
 be very long ; but I nmst go on the 
 common and walk off my excitement.' 
 
 When Bertie Shelburne returned, his 
 mother was sitting up for him, full of 
 trembling anxiety. 
 
 ' A little woman like you should have 
 been in bed lono- ao^o,' he said. ' I have 
 been a lono- time — ever so much lonsfer 
 than I meant to be. There ! go to bed now, 
 like the good little w^oman you are. I 
 mean to have a chat with Uncle Joshua.' 
 
 He kissed her fondly, and even joyously, 
 for his walk had done him good. What he 
 had heard early in the day had proved to 
 be untrue, and the knowledge of its un- 
 truthfulness was so pleasant a sort of 
 knowledge to have that it quite banished 
 the dismal story of his father's desertion. 
 
 Uncle Joshua's room was scarcely an
 
 112 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 ideal domicile for a poet. It looked out 
 upon a back-yard, where a forest of clothes- 
 props budded into branches of ropes, whose 
 fluttering foliage resembled evergreens in 
 the fact that it never seemed to be shed. 
 
 But, as Joshua said, the Muse is superior 
 to her surroundings. She visited Bloom- 
 field at a cobbler's stall, and John Clare 
 when he sought to procure a w^arm bed by 
 sleeping on a lime-kiln. Why shouldn't 
 this same kindly Muse visit Magnolia 
 Street, Peppermint Hill, Clapham ? There 
 was one verse of an American poet that 
 Joshua was fond of quoting. It ran some- 
 thing after this fashion : 
 
 ' A man should live in a garret, aloof, 
 
 And have few friends, and go poorly clad, 
 With an old hat stopping the chink in the roof, 
 To keep the goddess constant and glad.' 
 
 ' Ah, so he should,' Joshua would remark 
 to himself, which, it will be admitted, was a 
 comfortable doctrine for a half-destitute 
 poet to hold. 
 
 The thin blind was down, and the back-
 
 A POET 'UP TO DATE' 113 
 
 yard was shut out, and a tallow-candle was 
 ^burning, when Bertie Shelburne entered hie 
 uncle's room. There was nothing whatever 
 that he desired to say, but he had just 
 looked in for company. When he found 
 "^ the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling,' and 
 the poet himself spluttering with a pen over 
 a sheet of foolscap, he rummaged about 
 amongst the books for a few minutes, then 
 pulled a chair to the fire, and sat down to 
 wait until his uncle Joshua should be more 
 at liberty. 
 
 ' Thank God that's done !' said the poet, 
 at length, throwing down his pen. ' Hullo, 
 Bertie, my lad, are you here ? I never 
 iieard you come in ; upon my word I didn't ! 
 You see what it is to have the divine 
 afflatus upon you.' 
 
 ' The divine afflatus seems to lead to 
 the waste of a great deal of good paper,' 
 Bertie observed. ^ Look here. Uncle Josh, 
 why not get some paper from the grocer ? 
 It would be ever so much cheaper than what 
 
 VOL. T. 8
 
 rii4 THE MARQUIS OF CARADAS 
 
 you get now, and it would do just as well 
 to come back through the post, wouldn't it ? 
 It needn't be a bit heavier, you know.' 
 
 ' Do you think the editors of such maga- 
 zines as the Cornhill and Temple Bar would 
 look at poems written on tea-paper, Bertie, 
 my lad ?' 
 
 ^ Do they look at your poems now ? Tell 
 me that. Uncle Josh 1' 
 
 ^ Oh, they must look at them, I suppose.. 
 It is only courtesy to look at them, you 
 know.' 
 
 ^ But they come back, all the same;' 
 
 'That is because I am not what can be- 
 called a popular poet, Bertie. Just let me- 
 explain. It is a matter that I have- 
 thought over many a time. Every poet 
 has to create the taste by which he is 
 appreciated. Now, I have never had an 
 opportunity of creating a taste for my 
 works, my boy.' 
 
 ' Because they never get into print, eh„ 
 uncle V.
 
 A POET 'UP TO DATE' 115 
 
 ' That's just it. Let me explain another 
 branch of my theory. The poet must 
 devote his whole life to the creation of 
 poetry. Plain living and high thinking, as 
 Wordsworth said.' 
 
 * Well, Uncle Josh, you've had plain 
 living enough, haven't you ?' Bertie in- 
 rupted. 
 
 ' Plenty, my lad — j^lenty. Oh, abund- 
 ance, I assure you ! and I think I may say, 
 without flattering myself, that I have done 
 a good deal of high thinking, too.' 
 
 ' Well, then, there are the two conditions 
 of success, and no success after all !' 
 
 ' Because, as I said, the poet must create 
 the taste by which he is appreciated. 
 Besides that, he must have means to live 
 a life of ease and contemjolation. Besides 
 that, again, he must have means to put 
 himself into print.' 
 
 ' That seems to be the difficulty with you, 
 at any rate. Uncle Josh.' 
 
 ' Oh, I acknowledge it, my lad — I
 
 ii6 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 acknowledge it with sorrow. For me the 
 lack of means has resulted in a wasted life 
 — not all wasted, though,' he added quickly, 
 with a gleam of joy on his face ; ' they are 
 all here, the poems are — in this box — 
 flowers that are wasting their sweetness on 
 some pieces of deal board.' 
 
 ^ That's a very poetical idea, Uncle Josh !* 
 
 * So it is — so it is ; but, though I say it 
 myself, I think that most of my ideas are 
 poetical.' 
 
 * It's a great pity that you can't turn 
 them to account.' 
 
 * But steady, Bertie, my lad, steady ! 
 What do you think I am doing now V 
 
 ' I give it up.' 
 
 ' Why, turning my ideas to account. 
 Turning them into coin of the realm ! You 
 know old Smith, the chemist ?' 
 
 ^Yes.' 
 
 ' Well, he's invented something, and 
 patented it ; and he's going to advertise, 
 and he's engaged me for his special poet.*
 
 A FOE T ' UP TO D. iTir 117 
 
 * The dickens lie has !' 
 
 ' That is just what lie has clone. It 
 opens out bright vistas for the future, my 
 lad. Just look at it in this light : I make 
 money by working for old Smith ; I save, 
 of course ; with my savings I publish a 
 collection of my poems ; then I leap at once 
 into fame !' 
 
 ' Without creating the taste that can 
 appreciate you V 
 
 ' Oh, that must grow rapidly when once 
 my poems are before the world.' 
 
 ' And is this work of Smith's easy to do ?' 
 
 ' Easy ? good gracious, no ! Didn't you 
 see how it w^as torturing me when you came 
 in ? You know^ a little about poetry your- 
 self, Bertie. You have read a good deal, 
 for your age — quite a wonderful lot for an 
 engineer's apprentice. Well, what I ask 
 you is this : just think wdiat poetry is, and 
 then tell me how you are to work in such 
 a twister of a word as " aurora-vine "!'
 
 ii8 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 ' It does seem rather a clincher, I admit/ 
 said Bertie. 
 
 '''To what base uses may we come at last ": 
 to be rhyming to " aurora- vine "; to be poet 
 to a chemist ; to put Pegasus in harness, as 
 Longfellow said I It is cruel, it is infamous, 
 it is too fearful a degradation of the Muse !' 
 
 ' Why don't you drop it then ?' Bertie 
 bluntly inquired. 
 
 He looked at his uncle with a quizzical 
 aspect. There seemed nothing ludicrous to 
 him in the figure, for he was accustomed to 
 it ; but to a stranger Uncle Josh would 
 have appeared a very odd creature indeed. 
 His hair was long, of course, as much, 
 perhaps, because hair-cutting costs money 
 as because long hair is believed to be in- 
 separable from the vision and the faculty 
 divine. He had large eyes, rather wild- 
 looking, but also with a sort of kindly 
 shrewdness in them ; his face was as long 
 and thin as that of Don Quixote ; he was 
 tall, loose-jointed, stoop-shouldered, and his
 
 A POET ' CP TO DATE' 119 
 
 Iviiees liad a kind of giving- way appearance, 
 as if they were much occupied in acts of 
 iidoration to his deity. During his fits of 
 a aspiration ho increased the oddity of his 
 iippearance by the habihinents with which 
 he clothed the outer man. His coat was 
 of an indescribable colour. It naio-lit once 
 have been olive-green, but had now as- 
 sumed different shades in different places ; 
 it must also have once belonged to a man 
 of shorter stature and wilder build than 
 his own, for it huno- in bao-s from the 
 shoulders, but was nevertheless short both 
 as regarded the sleeves and the tails. His 
 aiether garments were of a large plaid 
 pattern, such as every Frenchman believes 
 that every Briton must needs wear. A 
 pale-blue necktie with loose ends completed 
 a costume that had at any rate the merit of 
 originality. 
 
 However, it was not his uncle's costume, 
 but his uncle's habits of mind, that Bertie 
 Shelburne was inclined to quiz.
 
 120 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 *Why don't you drop it?' he repeated'. 
 
 * Because, as I hinted to you, Bertie, sac? 
 as it is, infamous as it is, I mean to turn 
 it to account. '^ Aurora-vine " is certainly 
 a difficult word, but it is not going to prove- 
 too much for me.' 
 
 ^ Have you been rhyming on it, then ?' 
 
 ' Oh yes ; and with such results that I 
 have been struck with an idea. If I can' 
 write poetical advertisements for Smith, 
 why shouldn't I write them for other 
 tradesmen, eh ?' 
 
 ^ Why, not, indeed, and blow the Muse V 
 
 ^ Bertie, my dear lad, I must ask you 
 always to speak of the Muse with respect ii^ 
 this room: This is one of her residences,, 
 as we may say. I trust she will not desert 
 me, though I do descend to write for Smith. 
 But I will confide in you, Bertie. What 
 do you think of this ?' 
 
 He timidly produced a card from his. 
 pocket, on which Bertie read this announca- 
 ment :
 
 A POET ' UP TO DATE' 121 
 
 JOSHl'A DEAN, 
 rOET AND VERSE IMPROVISE R, 
 
 Present Aihlre,<s: 
 
 10, Maijnoi.ia Sti!Fi:t, 
 
 Pkitkumint Hill. 
 
 Tradesmen and others in the Grocery, Drapery, and Boot and 
 
 Shoe Trades, treated with for original verse composition for 
 
 f.hop handbills, etc. Copyright and guarantees when desired. 
 
 No language used that would injure or shock the feelings 
 
 of the young, or the most fastidious. 
 
 TEinLS VEnV MODERATE. 
 
 This ingenuous intimation was printed on 
 cardboard of a flaring ])ink colour. The 
 marofins were ornamented with several more 
 or less chaste and elegant designs, such as 
 weeping willows, wedding bells, cherubs, and 
 ornamental lamps, presumably for the pur- 
 pose of burning midnight oil. 
 
 ' I think that will fetch 'em,' remarked 
 Uncle Josh. 
 
 * I should think it will,' said Bertie, burst- 
 ing into a hearty roar. 
 
 * Why, what is the matter with it ? Isn't 
 it all rif^ht ? I thoufi"ht it was rather — 
 rather nice, you know ? It is the sort 
 of thing that will impress people, if anything 
 can.'
 
 122 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 ' So it will,' replied Bertie, half choking 
 at every word. ' I am ready to lay money 
 that it will knock 'em fast enough. Why, 
 Uncle Josh, it's delicious ! I wouldn't alter 
 a word of it.' 
 
 ' I don't think I will,' said Uncle Josh. 
 
 ' Not a single word. I never saw anything 
 better. That about not shocking the feelings 
 of the young is quite a hit — as nearly perfect 
 as anything can be. And '' terms moderate " 
 — why, you know, they can scarcely have 
 come across a poet of moderate terms 
 before.' 
 
 ' I have heard of Tennyson getting ever 
 so many guineas a line,' solemnly remarked 
 Uncle Josh. 
 
 ' Certainly ; and you would take less than 
 half that — or, say, less than a quarter.' 
 
 ' I hope you are not chaffing me, Bertie. 
 I didn't mean this to be comic' 
 
 ' Certainly not. I shouldn't think you did. 
 But come now. Uncle Josh, let me see some 
 of the rhymes you have done for Smith.'
 
 A rOET ' UP TO DATE' 123 
 
 • I Avill, since you like the card so much. 
 Smith, you know, is the inventor of a new- 
 medicine. He has patented it. He insisted 
 that I should try a sample. It is a beastly 
 concoction of hops, gentian, and other 
 abominations. That's what he calls '' aurora- 
 vine." If he would have permitted me to 
 give a name to the stuff, I would have let 
 you see what can be done when the Muse 
 bends her soul to commerce.' 
 
 ' But you have done pretty well, you say, 
 even with " aurora-vine " V 
 
 ' Well, it does take a deal to floor me,' 
 the poet proudly observed. ' Just listen to 
 this : 
 
 ' " Whene'er the heart within is sad, 
 And life is duller than it's been, 
 A potent charm can make one glad, 
 And that is Smith's ' Aurora-Vine.' " 
 
 Xot bad, that, for a beginning, eh ?' re- 
 marked Uncle Josh, running his fingers 
 through his hair, and causing it to fly 
 about as in a gale of wind. ' That is the 
 ideal side of the new physic. Now for its
 
 124 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 other aspect, its practical one, you know. 
 Listen : 
 
 ' " It ill becomes a man of sense 
 
 To pine from sadness or from spleen, 
 When the small sum of thirteen-pence 
 Will purchase Smith's ' Aurora- Yine.''" 
 
 ' Bravo, Uncle Josh !' shouted Bertie. 
 ' You'll make a fortune. You are a genius.' 
 
 * Well,' said Uncle Josh, ' I'm almost be- 
 ginning to think so.'
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IN A LAND OF DREAMS. 
 
 Out of the eccentricities of his uncle Joshua, 
 of whom he was very fond — as who could 
 fail to be ? — Bertie Shelburne contrived to 
 get a great amount of harmless fun, now that 
 he was cominor to a time of life when he felt 
 his young manhood, and the stirrings of a 
 bright, ardent, and cheerful mind within his 
 breast. His uncle Jacol), as he sometimes 
 observed to himself, was ' a horse of another 
 colour.' 
 
 Jacob Dean was one of the men who make 
 a kind of history which is seldom written, 
 and which is still more seldom written w^ith 
 an understandinof of its meanino\s and of its
 
 126 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 possible results. He was a leader of the 
 working class, but of a new and, perhaps, on 
 the whole, of a rather dangerous type. He 
 belonged to no trade union, for he condemned 
 such organizations with hardly less bitterness 
 than he condemned the capitalists. In his 
 opinion they existed mainly for the purpose 
 of keeping ' the wage-slaves ' in subjection. 
 
 ' We don't want the unions, with their 
 smug secretaries,' he said. * We are told 
 that they have done a great deal for the 
 working class. I am not going to deny but 
 what they may have done so. All I say is 
 that they have prevented a great deal more. 
 Why, look here. You see this big stone 
 pillar that stands behind me ?' He was 
 speaking to a crowd of miserable and 
 hungry people on the Thames Embankment, 
 and Cleopatra's Needle reared itself far 
 above his head. ' They tell me it is ever so 
 much more than two thousand years old. I 
 dare say it is ; but who made it, do you 
 suppose ? It was a big job of work, I can
 
 IX A LAXD OF DREAMS 127 
 
 tell you. A block of granite like that wasn't 
 easily quarried ; and in such times it must 
 have been a mighty hard thing to drag it to 
 where it had to stand ; and it must have 
 been harder still to rear it upright in front 
 of some Egyptian temple. And who do you 
 think did all that ? Just such fellows as 
 3'ou, with hungry bellies, and w4th misery in 
 their hearts, and with the capitalist's slave- 
 wliip behind them. What has happened in 
 two thousand years to make your lot better 
 than theirs ? The world has been getting 
 on ever so fast, ha.sn't it ? And how have 
 you been getting on i You are as hungry 
 as ever they were, aren't you ? And you 
 are just as miserable ; and you suffer, as 
 they didn't, from rain and cold. How 
 much, then, have the trade unions done for 
 you? 
 
 ' You are pretty soundl}^ discontented, 
 aren't vou ?' Jacob went on to sav, and there 
 was a groaning response. ^ I like to hear 
 that. I want to make you more discontented
 
 128 THE MARQUIS OF CARABA S 
 
 than ever. I told you I wasn't a trade 
 unionist. I'll tell you what I am. T am a 
 preacher of discontent. I want to make 
 you feel what wretched creatures you are. 
 I want to make you say that you won't 
 stand it. Trade unions are too slow for me * 
 and they'll have nothing to do with such as 
 most of you. The only hope for you is in 
 shaking the classes with the mighty voice of 
 your complaining.' 
 
 Jacob Dean was no doubt an unreasonable 
 man. He wanted to solve the old problems 
 of existence by some tour deforce. He w^as 
 a reformer in a hurry, who had not suffi- 
 ciently considered the means of reform. He 
 talked vaguely of ' the revolution.' His 
 leading idea was that society must speedily 
 pass through some topsy-turvy process. 
 
 Yet he was not a mere demagogue, for he 
 was sincere. His ideas were crude, form- 
 less, the result rather of feeling than of 
 thought, but there was no man living who 
 was less of a sham. He worked hard at his
 
 IN A LAXD OF DREAMS 129 
 
 trade of house-carpenter, and he never took 
 a penny from those among whom, in his own 
 phrase, he desired to organize discontent 
 into a Uving force. Pity had in his mind 
 taken the direction of a fierce hatred to the 
 prosperous classes, that was all. 
 
 Yet nobody ^vho looked at Jacob Dean 
 would have taken him to be the author of 
 those speeches some strong portions of 
 which were occasionally quoted in hostile 
 newspapers. There was certainly no misery 
 in his face. On the contrary, he seemed to 
 be the embodiment of good health, good 
 temper, and high spirits. He had a fresh, 
 briofht-lookinof countenance, set in a frame 
 of black hair and whiskers. His voice had 
 as cheerful a ring as that of a prosperous 
 farmer on market-day. He w^as altogether 
 a manly sort of man, with a splendid 
 physique, a rough, hearty, bustling way, 
 and, withal, an intelligence more than usually 
 cultivated and alert. 
 
 Jacob Dean was unlikely to do anything 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 I30 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 that would bring him within reach of the 
 law, yet he was probably as dangerous a 
 man as was then in London. He was ter- 
 ribly in earnest, for one thing. He had 
 convinced himself that all the evil of the 
 world arose from the unequal distribution of 
 wealth. If one man had got what other 
 needy men w^anted, then, according to Jacob 
 Dean, his plain duty was to share his posses- 
 sions with ^ the workers.' 
 
 Of what are called constitutional methods 
 of reform Jacob was angrily disdainful. The 
 processes were too slow for his impetuous 
 mind. What he wanted to see was a change 
 in the whole social condition in his own life- 
 time, and in as small as possible a portion 
 of that. He believed that there would 
 some day soon be a great uprising of the 
 working classes against those who, as he 
 put it in his speeches, exploited the labourer ; 
 and that was what he was openly working 
 for, but without having clearly defined to 
 himself what amount of violence it might be
 
 IX A LA. YD or DREAMS 131 
 
 necessary to employ. He was in favour of 
 iill strikes of workmen, for whatever cause 
 — not because he beheved that strikes were 
 good in themselves, but because each one 
 miofht brinof somewhat nearer that momen- 
 tous conflict of which he dreamed. 
 
 A man of this kind, if he have command 
 of such a rough, powerful eloquence as that 
 of Jacob Dean, is a great force for good or 
 for evil ; and the influence of this man, who 
 worked hard at his trade, and who never 
 took a penny for his addresses or lectures, 
 was growing every day. 
 
 The public — by which phrase is meant in 
 this instance that section of the public which 
 Jacob was in the habit of describing as the 
 indolent classes — has two ways of account- 
 ing for men like this. They are mere dema- 
 gogues, greedy of power, and in love with 
 their own voices ; or they are men who 
 have brooded too bitterly over what they 
 have fancied to be their own wron^fs. Jacob 
 Dean belonged to neither category. He
 
 132 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 cared for power only for the sake of what it 
 might achieve, and he had never had any 
 wrongs that it was worth while to speak of 
 
 His had been a very humdrum sort 
 of life until the last few years. The most 
 exciting episode had been the mysterious 
 marriage of his sister, and the subsequent 
 disappearance of her husband. Next in 
 interest came his own marriage and the 
 death of his wife — an event which, it must 
 be admitted, he did not very deeply regret. 
 
 Jacob Dean had led to the altar that very 
 Jane Ann Sayers who had been his sister's 
 companion in her Crystal Palace adventure. 
 He had not fallen in love, but had been en- 
 trapped by one whom he had first detested, 
 then tolerated, and then begun to like 
 because he had been able to do her a kind- 
 ness. 
 
 Had he known what part Jane Ann had 
 played in his sister's love affair he would 
 have kept himself out of the reach of en- 
 tanglement ; but that was not revealed to.
 
 IN A LAND OF DREAMS 133 
 
 lilm until after marriage, when the story 
 was employed as one of a great variety of 
 means for making him angry and miser- 
 able. 
 
 eTane Ann Sayers had set her cap at 
 Jacob Dean when no other hope was left. 
 He, poor fellow, was easily caught. He 
 was a busy workman and a hard student. 
 He had sought no female company. Wedded 
 life had not presented itself to him in any 
 •other aspect than as a possible convenience, 
 and it seemed natural enough to him that 
 he should drift into marriage with Jane Ann 
 Sayers. 
 
 She had expected to marry well, not to 
 say splendidly, as do the heroines of all the 
 penny serials ; but her personal attractions 
 had not proved equal to her ambition, and 
 .she was glad to get even a workman at last. 
 However, it was no part of her plan to make 
 •such a husband happy. She exasperated 
 Jacob with airs of superiority, made it appear 
 that she had rejected wonderfully prosperous
 
 1-34 THE MARQUrS OF CARABAS 
 
 matches solely on his account, was slatternly 
 of habit, and shrewish of tongue. 
 
 * There never was a woman,' said Jacob,. 
 ' who had so many ways of tormenting a 
 man.' But, as was remarked previously, his^ 
 experience of women had been limited. 
 
 When Jane Ann died the event was. 
 rather a relief than an occasion of deep and 
 permanent sorrow. There was matter for 
 more real grief in the fact that the one child 
 she had left behind her w^as crippled and 
 deformed.. 
 
 To Jacob's energetic and practical mind a 
 q,ue&tion often presented itself as to whether 
 the child's mental peculiarities were not more 
 to be deplored than her bodily defects. 
 
 ' Nelly has the poetic temperament,'" 
 Brother Joshua would explain. ' The divine- 
 afflaytus runs in the family, my dear Jacob. 
 You must see that for yourself Of course,, 
 we don't all possess it alike. It falls upon 
 me, for instance, and it skips over you, and 
 then it falls upon little Nelly again.'
 
 IN A LAND OF DREAMS 135 
 
 * The divine afflaytus be hanged !' said 
 Jacob. ' A nice helpless fool it has made of 
 you ! If you want my opinion, it is tliat 
 one poet in a family is just one too many, 
 Brother Joshua.' 
 
 ^ Your words are harder than you mean 
 to make 'em, I am sure they are, Jacob ; so 
 I won't resent 'em as I might. As for little 
 Nelly, she's a poet, I tell you, which is 
 something that you must make your mind 
 up to, and that you cannot alter.' 
 
 Whether her uncle Joshua's explanation 
 of Nelly's peculiarities was sound or not, it 
 is certain that she was something quite in- 
 comprehensible to her father, who loved her 
 none the less, however, because of the anxiety 
 and mental perturbation of which she w^as 
 the unconscious cause. 
 
 It was a fortunate thing for the child 
 that, having lost her mother, such a good 
 little woman as her aunt Bessie lived next 
 door. During her father's long absences she 
 spent most of her time in her aunt Bessie's
 
 136 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 house. There she made an idol of Bertie, 
 and, as she dreamed much in the waking 
 state, he became the central figure of her 
 dreams. 
 
 ' And the prince,' she would say, * rode 
 up to the castle, and blew a great blast on 
 his horn ; and then the castle gates flew 
 open. After that the horse bounded into 
 the courtyard, and when he raised his visor 
 I saw that the prince was you.' 
 
 * I wish you would make-believe in other 
 things than castles and princes,' Bertie more 
 than once remarked. ' How you came to be 
 such a little aristocrat I can't tell.' 
 
 * Princes are so nice, you know,' Nelly 
 would respond. * I wish you were a real 
 prince, instead of being only a prince in my 
 dreams. I am sure you would make a very 
 good one, you great big Bertie.' 
 
 Then the lad would break out into de- 
 nunciation of princes and great people 
 generally ; for Bertie Shelburne admired his 
 uncle Jacob to the point of sharing all his
 
 IN A LAND 02' DREAMS 137 
 
 opinions, and his ideas of the upper classes 
 Avere, it must be admitted, shockingly de- 
 praved. 
 
 Day after day Nelly Dean sat in the big 
 armchair by her aunt Bessie's window, and 
 walked into dreamland with her eyes open. 
 
 What amazing romances she contrived to 
 weave out of her bewildered imaginings ! 
 There was an uncommonly large brain 
 behind her passionate dark eyes — a brain 
 morbid and confused, but with a certain 
 magical quality, which transformed whatever 
 was poor and common into something great 
 and splendid. Nelly's imagination was 
 moulded upon the large scale, indeed. 
 
 Through the little back window at 
 Peppermint Hill a branch of laburnum could 
 be seen blossoming in its due season. It 
 told of some hidden garden enclosed within 
 jealous walls. Nelly would count the weeks 
 and the months until this branch miofht be 
 expected to burst into flower. This great 
 event was her annually recurring miracle.
 
 138 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 The sight of the yellow blossoms carried her 
 straight into fairyland ; and this was one of 
 the dreams that the golden curls of the 
 laburnum awakened : She beheld a garden, 
 luxuriant and well-ordered, with flowers 
 blossoming everywhere, and fountains flash- 
 ing in a rosy light. Gorgeous butterflies 
 flitted to and fro, themselves like living 
 flowers. In a sunny part of this enchanted 
 garden, half hidden by blossoms of wondrous 
 perfume, a beautiful maiden lay asleep. 
 That this was a princess Nelly knew at 
 once, and then it dawned upon her more 
 slowly that this princess was herself, in the 
 likeness that she would wear in the world to 
 which she really belonged, so different to 
 the one in which she found herself when her 
 dreams were over. Birds sang marvellously. 
 There was a flutter of wings in the air, and 
 by-and-by a trumpet was blown ; then the 
 princess moved on her arm, her eyes slowly 
 opened, and as she became more fully awake 
 she perceived a great company of knights
 
 IX A LAND OF DREAMS 139 
 
 winding down one of the pathways among 
 the trees, and at their liead there rode one 
 wlio was splendidly attired ; and he it was 
 who, bidding the others pause, dismounted 
 from his steed, doffed his plumed hat, and 
 then bounded forward to fall at the ])rincess's 
 feet. 
 
 It was Bertie again — always Bertie. 
 However magnificent the prince might be, 
 he had always the same form and features, 
 and was but a transformed image of one 
 who would come home a few hours hence 
 dressed in his coarse workman's clothes, with 
 the grime of a day's labour on his face. 
 
 In little Nelly Dean the woman's nature 
 was developing too early, forced into pre- 
 mature growtli through suffering, and 
 warmed in the hot-house of her wayward 
 fancies. That sentimentalism which in the 
 case of her mother had made one of the 
 miseries of her father's brief married life 
 had been inherited by the child in finer 
 form, and was accompanied by a more
 
 J40 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 passionate temperament and a vastly wider 
 sweep of the imagination. 
 
 All which was a trouble to Jacob Dean. 
 He persuaded himself that he might change 
 the temper of her mind by a wise choice of 
 books. He was particularly careful that 
 she should remain a stranger to that class 
 of literature in which his wife had sought 
 for intellectual nourishment ; but he was 
 himself a reader of Scott and of Shake- 
 speare, and so it happened that these had 
 become her familiars at an age when Jacob 
 Dean would have deemed them to be 
 entirely beyond her comprehension. 
 
 What a wide field for her adventurous 
 spirit to explore ! She was each one of 
 Shakespeare's heroines in turn. She lived, 
 and loved, and suffered and made merry 
 with them all. Now and again, too, they 
 all trooped with her into her ideal world, 
 and her fancy was luxuriantly fed by what 
 practical Jacob Dean would have con- 
 sidered safe readino".
 
 LV A LAXD OF DREAMS 141 
 
 There were some of Nelly's day-dreams 
 the nature of which nobody, not even Bertie 
 Shelburne, guessed. Nelly would have died 
 of shame if they had done so. Her aunt 
 Bessie, who had a sweet, innocent meaning 
 for everything, had convinced herself, on no 
 grounds which could have been clearly stated, 
 that the mind of the poor child dwelt chiefly 
 on heavenly things. She must be thinking, 
 said Bessie to herself, of the crown which 
 the angels were keeping for her against the 
 time when her cross should be laid down. 
 
 And all the while it was earthly and not 
 heavenly love for which the woman-soul in 
 the child-body was longing ; and from love 
 of that kind her affliction had shut her out 
 for ever. 
 
 Never, surely, was so strange a nature 
 dropped into such inapt surroundings ! 
 Uncle Joshua had such an explanation of 
 the case as became a poet. 
 
 * Sometimes the fairies steal away little 
 folks like you,' he observed to Nelly one
 
 142 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 day. ' But you were a fairy to begin with, 
 you know ; and you were left behind once, 
 when there was a sudden flight, because you 
 had fallen down and hurt yourself, and you 
 couldn't run. That's how I account for 
 things. Oh ! by the way,' Uncle Joshua 
 went on, ^ I've been writing some poetry 
 about you, I'm always writing poetry, you 
 know. There's good sense in this, too. 
 Listen : 
 
 ' " When visions strange and fancies deep 
 Distract the head of Nelly Dean, 
 She should, before she goes to sleep, 
 Take some of Smith's? Aurora-vine." 
 
 Now, what do you think of that for poetry, 
 Nelly ?' 
 
 And Nelly, disturbed by the sound of 
 words to which she had not consciously 
 listened, slowly withdrew herself from the 
 bright world of her imagination.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN THE PARK. 
 
 The parks were looking their best. The 
 spring sunshine poured through the young 
 leafage, and grass and gravel walks were 
 alike dappled with intricate shadows. The 
 earlier blossoming shrubs had burgeoned 
 out into masses of bloom. There was the 
 carol of birds in the air ; innumerable quick- 
 darting finches were twittering to each other, 
 and the deep-throated thrush sent its voice 
 out of many a leafy covert. 
 
 Surely, London is the greenest, the most 
 rural of all the cities of the world. ' O 
 wuse and prudent John Bull !' some in- 
 telligent foreigner has observed, ' to ennoble
 
 144 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 thy metropolis with such spacious country 
 walks, and to sweeten it with so much 
 country air 1' There are days when you 
 may lie down on the grass and fancy that 
 the city in which you slept last night has 
 strangely cast you forth into some rural 
 solitude, remote from men. The livino- 
 stream of Piccadilly pours tumultuously 
 along not far away, but its sounds are as 
 the noise of a torrent pouring through moss- 
 grown crevices in the bosom of a wood. 
 How artificial is life just beyond the railings 
 there, above the brow of the Marble Arch t 
 How aboriginal it is here among the trees, 
 on the grass, with the long, sweeping 
 shadows of the clouds playing hide-and-seek 
 over the wide green spaces ! 
 
 Not all Londoners are aware of what 
 glorious possessions they have in the parks. 
 There are thousands who ^ have never been 
 so far.' They live no further away than 
 the Borough, it may be ; and there the 
 Walworth Koad offers itself, and the Sunday
 
 A.y ADVENTURE IN THE PARK .145 
 
 tram. Or they crowd contentedly into the 
 slums of Spitalfields, where there are no fields 
 left, not so much as a foot of grass-covered 
 «oil. Or they herd together down Stepney 
 way, where they have forests of their own in 
 the crowded masts of the India Docks. Man 
 the Exj^lorer is not born in the slums. His 
 <?hildhood must have been disturbed by the 
 mystery of country lanes, leading who knows 
 where, ere there awakens a thirst for travel 
 within his breast. 
 
 Bertie Shelburne was a Londoner of 
 another sort. He was gravely curious 
 about the mighty city in which he lived. 
 For one so young he had concerned himself 
 much with its problems. He loved its 
 pleasantness also. The parks he had only 
 visited on Sundays or holiday seasons, when 
 they did not wear their customary aspect, 
 and were given over to the pojmlace. How- 
 ever, for once in a way, there had befallen a 
 holiday in which all the world did not share. 
 Some important piece of machiner}^ had 
 
 VOL. 1. 10
 
 146 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 broken down at the works, and for a day, or 
 it might be two, Bertie was at liberty to- 
 enjoy himself as he pleased. 
 
 It was a piece of unexpected good for- 
 tune, and, after making Nelly Dean very 
 hjappy for awhile, and keeping her from her 
 dreams, he took a tramcar from Clapham to 
 Vauxhall Bridge. Thence he crossed the 
 river on foot, wandered through a dismal 
 street in Westminster, lingered round the- 
 Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and 
 eventually found himself in St. James's Park. 
 Thenceforth he was led by accident and 
 curiosity, rather than by design. He 
 ■watched the children and the nursemaids 
 feeding the water - fowl ; he gazed with 
 interest, but without admiration, at the 
 sentry in front of Buckingham Palace ; he 
 wandered through the Green Park, where 
 there was an unexpected flock of sheep,. 
 ^ feeding like one '; he crossed Piccadilly, 
 entered Hyde Park, and, without knowing 
 what gay sight it was that he beheld, found
 
 A\ AD VEX TURK IX THE PARK 147 
 
 himself leaning over the railing and gazing 
 at the splendours of Rotten Row at the full 
 height of the season. 
 
 What a strange, brilliant scene it ap- 
 peared to be to this youth, whose life was 
 spent between the workshop in Pinilico and 
 the cottage afc Peppermint Hill ! A tall, 
 proud-looking, heavily-bearded man of full 
 habit rode by, and there was a general lifting 
 of hats. 
 
 ^ You didn't salute his lordship,' said a 
 small, well-brushed, keen-eyed man, who was 
 standing beside Bertie. ' P'raps ye didn't 
 know 'm C he added, transfixing the youth 
 with his eye-glass. 
 
 ^ Know whom ?' inquired Bertie. 
 
 ' I thought you couldn't know 'm. Lord 
 Sawbridgeworth, man alive ! That's him 
 wid the broad shoulders, riding ahead 
 yander. See all the people ducking their 
 hats to him, by way of respectful divarsion ?' 
 
 The little man spoke with a terrible 
 brogue, yet with the air of one who wa.s
 
 148 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 neither ignorant nor ill-bred, and who had a 
 decided inclination to be affable. 
 
 * And so that's Lord Sawbridgeworth ?' 
 Bertie observed. ' Thank you for telling 
 me ; but I shouldn't have lifted my hat even 
 if I had known. ' 
 
 ' Not one of his party, eh, my young 
 cockolorum ? Well, small blame to ye, then ! 
 I'm not one of that sort myself, ayther ; but 
 when I meet a jintleman of his lordship's 
 aisy manners, sorry I'd be not to do him 
 the honour of liftin' my hat. It's not 
 much of society ye'll be after seeing,' the 
 little Irish gentleman added, after per- 
 forming a few more salutes to persons in 
 the Row. 
 
 ' I see none at all,' replied Bertie. ' I am 
 a workman ; and if I were not a workman 
 I should have nothing friendly to say to 
 society, for I am a Socialist.' 
 
 ' The divil y' are ! It'll be a quare long 
 time before that will do you anny good, let 
 me tell ye ! Do ye know what place this is,
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN THE PARK 149 
 
 now — this very piece of gravel that ye'rc 
 lookin' on V 
 
 Bertie had to admit his ignorance. 
 
 * It's Rotten Row, bedad ! And all these 
 that are ridin' along it are them, and such 
 as them, as the likes of you are thinkin' to 
 upset. There's the Duke of Downshire, 
 now — him wud the hat that's too big for 
 him. He'll be a quare one to deal wud ; 
 
 and there's the Marquis of Flamingay' 
 
 another doff of the hat — ' who'll give some 
 trouble before he shares out aquil with you 
 and me, I'm thinkin'.' 
 
 Bertie Shelburne would have argued the 
 question of Socialism readily enough at 
 another time. But the suggestion that the 
 privileged world, w^ith which his own dim 
 under-world had to contend, was now parad- 
 ing before his eyes sent him off into long 
 trains of thought, with the consequence 
 that he lost many of the bright, but per- 
 haps not strictly veracious, observations of 
 his lively Milesian acquaintance.
 
 ISO THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 And these were * the classes '? What a 
 bhthe and dehonnaire Hfe they led ! It was 
 to all aj^pearance very beautiful. The sight 
 of it awakened all manner of new thoughts 
 and longings. How easy, how pleasant, 
 how sunny an existence was this, contrasted 
 Avith the oil and grime of the machine-shop, 
 contrasted with the small, cramped-up com- 
 forts of Peppermint Hill, contrasted with 
 the inferno of acre on acre of London 
 slums ! 
 
 * How lucky it is,' Bertie almost uncon- 
 sciously observed to himself, ^ that the poor 
 so seldom crowd to witness the recreations 
 of the rich !' 
 
 He was thinking what might happen if a 
 great mob of starving people should surge into 
 the Park on a day like this, to witness such a 
 display of triumphant and contented wealth. 
 His rapid fancy pictured a wild uprising, 
 howls, dismay, slaughter ; and, oddly 
 enough, he saw himself in front of the 
 mob, not as a leader in the attack, but a&
 
 .'LV ADVEXrrRE L\ THE PARK 151 
 
 an excited, energetic, half-maddened oppo- 
 nent of violence. 
 
 Saturated throuo-hout with Jacob Dean's 
 teaching, Bertie Shelburne never doubted 
 that the scene before him owed all its 
 brilliancy to the unjust sharing of the 
 profits of labour. The lion's share had gone 
 to the idle and the useless, and here, he 
 concluded, the idle and the useless were all 
 gathered together, contending with each 
 other in ostentation. 
 
 Which was not just. In Lancashire the 
 single brief phrase ^ Awe inaks ' has a great 
 power of expression ; it signifies a con- 
 glomeration of everything. A Lancashire 
 man would say that he had seen ' awe 
 maks ' of people in Rotten Row, and to a 
 great extent he would be right. Noblemen, 
 Cabinet Ministers, philanthropists, financiers, 
 soldiers, popular divines, mere clubmen and 
 Piccadilly loungers were all here together, 
 and to a careless observation were all pretty
 
 152 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 much alike. Here and there a figure stood! 
 out from the rest. 
 
 There, for instance, was a great statesman^ 
 who was daily anathematized by his enemies,, 
 much as if he combined the qualities of" 
 Richard III. and of that diabolical hero of 
 modern fiction, Edward Hyde. Bertie- 
 Shelburne took him to be a very harmless- 
 looking, interesting old man, who Avould 
 have shone the better in such company for- 
 a new coat. 
 
 There was the too pronouncedly beautiful 
 respondent in a celebrated divorce case. 
 Bertie's new Irish acquaintance insisted 
 that he should take note of this lady. 
 
 ' Bedad, an' there she goes,' he said',, 
 nudging the young man and recalling him* 
 from his reverie. ^ There's a fine womani 
 for you, annyhow !' 
 
 And a fine woman she was, undoubtedly,, 
 in the large, affluent sense. Her riant,, 
 sensuous face had been alike her ruin and 
 her fortune, for she had won a coronet by
 
 AN ADVEXTUKE IX THE PARK 155 
 
 losing her reputation. She played for high 
 stakes, and won them. 
 
 * That,' said the small Irishman, pointing* 
 to a stately figure on horseback, ' is the 
 Marquis of Carabas. He's had a dale of 
 luck ; the Lord help us ! a power of luck 
 indade.' 
 
 Bertie's eyes, following the Irishman's 
 finger, fell upon a trio of equestrians. 
 What a contrast two of them j^i'esented to 
 the woman who had just passed ! Here, 
 at least, was purit}^ white and unsullied. 
 
 There was a hiHi-bred look about the 
 
 o 
 
 group, in the gentleman no less than in 
 the ladies by whom he was accompanied. 
 
 ' Them's the daughters of the Juke of 
 Dundridofe,' the oblii^finof Irishman observed. 
 ■ Fine gyurls they are too ; divilish fine 
 gyurls, upon my worrud 1' And he took 
 ofif his hat as if he were an old acquaint- 
 ance. 
 
 Other voices rose in comment. 
 
 * That is the Marquis of Carabas. Lucky
 
 154 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS ■ 
 
 young beggar, eh ? Made his mark in the' 
 House of Commons, taken into the Ministry, 
 succeeded to his cousin quite unexpectedly, 
 and now is going to marry Lady Ermyn- 
 trude Challoner, a last season's beauty, and 
 the proudest woman in England.' 
 
 ' Rather too proud for my taste,' said 
 another voice in reply. ' I prefer more 
 life, more go, more chic, more human nature, 
 in short. A fellow doesn't want to marry 
 a marble woman, however faultless the 
 statue may be.' 
 
 All this as the little group passed ambling 
 by. The other, younger lady, who appeared 
 to Bertie Shelburne to be a mere child, was 
 riding a tall raw-boned chestnut, an ugly- 
 looking brute, which neither answered well 
 to the curb nor seemed to enjoy the snail's 
 pace of progress necessary in the Kow. 
 Now and again the rider stooped to caress 
 the great creature, and to soothe it into 
 quietude, but with very indifferent success. 
 
 ' Why will you bring that ill-conditioned
 
 J.V AI)]'i:XTrRE L\ THE PARK 155 
 
 Irish brate liore, Xora '■ Bertie heard the 
 gentleman ask, and the reply eanie with the 
 merriest lauo'h that had ever fallen on the 
 young man's ears. 
 
 ^ Because I'm fond of him, to be sure. 
 Poor dear old Thady! You and I have had 
 many a happy time together, haven't we, 
 although naughty people do call you ugly ?' 
 
 They moved out of hearing almost at 
 once, but the words, and the looks, and 
 above all the glad youthful laugh, of Lady 
 Xora Challoner had made an impression 
 on Bertie Shelburne that he did not as yet 
 understand. He leaned forward, and fol- 
 lowed the group with his eyes until it was 
 lost in the confused panorama of the Row. 
 
 Would such a bright creature as this, he 
 wondered, ever be tamed down to the 
 style of fashionable woman that seemed to 
 be chiefly represented in the Park ? 
 
 He turned the question over in his mind 
 so earnestly that he was quite unconscious 
 of the further comments of his Irish friend.
 
 156 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 Suddenly there was a rush of people in his 
 direction, and such a stir of excitement as 
 showed that somethinof unusual had occurred. 
 
 What was it ? 
 
 The carriages had all moved on, and 
 there was a comparatively open space of 
 roadway in front of where Bertie stood. 
 A salvo of shouts of consternation came 
 towards him, and in an instant more a big 
 horse came tearing along at a terrific pace. 
 
 The rider was a lady, and was evidently 
 a magnificent horsewoman, as was seen by 
 the way she kept her seat. Yet it was 
 clear that something dreadful must occur ere 
 long. It was impossible for her long to 
 retain her seat. 
 
 Without takinof a second for thouo-ht, 
 Bertie Shelburne had vaulted over the rail- 
 ings. It was a critical moment. As the 
 excited creature flew past he leapt at it with 
 the spring of a young athlete, caught hold of 
 the bridle, as it happened, and, after a tre- 
 mendous shock, felt that he was being dragged
 
 J.V ADVF.XTURE IN Till- PARK 157 
 
 along ; felt also as if something had given 
 Avav in his strons: yonnof wrist. It was but 
 a brief strusrsfle. The horse, more friofht- 
 ened than really vicious, came to a dead 
 standstill, snorted, and then looked down 
 as if reflectinof on its own foolishness. 
 
 A number of men had clustered round, 
 and one of these had assisted the rider to 
 dismount. 
 
 ' Oh, Tha ]y,' she exclaimed, ' how could 
 you treat me so !' And then Bertie saw 
 that it was the youngest of the two ladies 
 who had been accompanied by the Marquis 
 of Carabas. 
 
 What had happened was this : The big 
 Irish horse had been impatient of the pace 
 of the Row, had fretted and chafed, and 
 almost pulled Lady Nora's wrist off as she 
 held it in. Then a dog ran across the 
 gravel, and Thady, with his ears laid back 
 mischievously, was off in a moment, tearing 
 alonof like a whirlwind, and scatterinof all 
 before him.
 
 158 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 Lady Ermyntrude Challoner and the 
 Marqnis of Carabas rode up to the tremb- 
 ling heroine of the disaster almost as soon 
 as that yomig lady had dismounted. Lady 
 Nora had not fainted, and did not mean to 
 faint. On the contrary, her cheeks were 
 already recovering their normal hue. 
 
 ^ I am not hurt — not a bit — so don't 
 bother, Ermy,' she said, in response to 
 anxious inquiries. ' But that brave young 
 man ! Oh, Ermy, where is he ? Will 
 nobody thank him for me ? He risked his 
 life to save mine, you know.' 
 
 Lady Ermyntrude turned to where 
 Bertie Shelburne was standing, back from 
 the crowd, looking very white and stern. 
 
 ^ We are indeed greatly indebted to you 
 for your splendid and ready courage,' she 
 said, in her most gracious tones. ' It was 
 a most heroic act, and probably you have 
 saved my sister's life.' 
 
 It was not in human nature to be any- 
 thing but pleased with such a speech, if it
 
 AX ADVEyTrRI-: IX THE PARK 159 
 
 had only be. 11 delivered with a httle less 
 stiffness ; but Lady Ermyntrude seemed to 
 be consciously stooping from lier high estate 
 to acknowledge a favour from an inferior. 
 
 Bertie felt confused and a little vexed. 
 He had no experience to guide him as to 
 his behaviour in such circumstances as 
 these, and in consequence he appeared at 
 his very w^orst, awkward and ungracious. 
 
 ' It w^as nothing,' he said, in a quick, 
 abrupt sort of way. ' Somebody else would 
 have done it if I hadn't.' 
 
 * That is not so certain as you seem to 
 think, my brave young fellow,' said the 
 Marquis of Carabas, coming to the side of 
 Lady Ermyntrude, now that her sister was 
 found to be so evidently uninjured. 
 
 ^ A w^orking youth,' he said to himself. 
 ' One may certainly offer him something, 
 and put an end to further obligations.' 
 
 His hand went to his breast-pocket, and 
 Bertie guessed for what reason. The look 
 that mounted to his face was so eminently
 
 i6o THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 threateniDg and disdainful that on glancing 
 at him again the Marquis of Carabas 
 changed his intentions, and, instead of taking 
 bank-notes from his pocket-book, he produced 
 a card. 
 
 ' It will be impossible to thank you now 
 as you deserve,' he said. ^ I am the 
 Marquis of Carabas, as this card will tell 
 you. If you will call upon me there is no 
 reasonable service that you may not ask 
 me to perform.' 
 
 Bertie was growing unreasonably angry. 
 
 ^ I want nothing,' he said. * What I did 
 was for the sake of common humanity, and 
 I don't wish to be paid for it. I don't even 
 want so much as thanks. I only want to 
 be left alone.' 
 
 This ungracious speech was concluded 
 with a spasm of wounded pride. The young 
 fellow was in truth suffering both in mind 
 and body, for his wrist w^as exquisitely 
 painful. How he wished they would all go 
 away and leave him !
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN THE PARK i6i 
 
 That wish had chano^ed an instant later. 
 For the Lady Nora came u}) and looked at 
 him gratefully and pityingly. 
 
 ' Oh,' she said, ' you are hurt !' And 
 Bertie thouo-ht that he saw tears in her 
 eyes. ' We are all worrying you when we 
 ouo'ht to be doinof somethinof for you ! Oh, 
 you are hurt very much, I am sure !' and 
 she save a little scream, as Bertie suddenly 
 grasped the seat by which he was standing, 
 as if he must otherwise have fallen. 
 
 ' It is only my wrist,' he said, with a 
 quick look of thanks for her thoughtful- 
 ness. ^ I have sprained it, I think ; that is 
 all.' 
 
 She looked round anxiously, and suddenly 
 her face lightened. An elderly gentleman 
 stepped forward and raised his hat. 
 
 * Can I be of any service. Lady Nora V 
 he asked. 
 
 ' Oh, I am sure you can. Dr. Poinsett. 
 You are the very person we want. How 
 fortunate it is that you are here !' 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 i62 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 The doctor saw what was the matter at 
 once. He took hold of Bertie's wrist, and 
 the young fellow, feeling very sick and 
 queer, was not sufficiently wrong-headed to 
 refuse the examination. 
 
 ^ This is a case that I must take home 
 with me,' said Dr. Poinsett. * It is not 
 serious, I assure you,' he said, in response 
 to Lady Nora's anxious look ; ' but it re- 
 quires immediate attention. My carriage 
 is quite near.' 
 
 ^ I'd not be doing my juty if I didn't see 
 my young friend through his trouble ; so 
 I'll make bowld to ask you for a seat in 
 your carriage, me dear doctor,' exclaimed 
 the small Irishman, leaping in without 
 further invitation. ' Me name's Delaney — 
 Lawrence Octavius Delaney.' 
 
 Bertie Shelburne was too near fainting to 
 explain that Mr. Delaney was no friend of 
 his ; and besides, it did not seem worth 
 while. As they left the fashionable doctor's 
 house shortly afterwards, the younger man
 
 AX AD] 7:\yn 7u: rx the pa rk i 63 
 
 M'itli lii>^ hand bound u[) in splinters, the 
 litth^ Irishman observed : 
 
 ' It's your fortune that's made, my young 
 haro ! it's " ask, and ye shall resave " with 
 you, my chicken/ 
 
 ' I shall ask nothing,' said Bertie. 
 "" Those people don't even know my name, 
 ;and they never shall know it. I want 
 nothing. I want nobody's charit}^' 
 
 ' A mighty proud stomach ye've got, 
 any way,' Mr. Delaney observed ; and then 
 to himself, ^ He'll ask for nothing, won't he ;? 
 Then, bedad, I'll ask for a orood dale on hk 
 behalf — and my own. It isn't often Dame 
 Forchune puts such a chance in 3^our way, 
 Delaney, me bhoy ! Ye'd be mighty to 
 blame if ye didn't make the best of it this 
 toime.'
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 JACOB DEAN SUSPECTS A MYSTERY. 
 
 The daily miracle of the sunset transacts' 
 itself for all the world. The same liery 
 globe which buries itself in the western 
 ocean, and flames behind Skiddaw, and 
 empurples the summit of Ben Yenue, on 
 many a night makes the skies glorious 
 above Peppermint Hill. There was a soft 
 and quiet and gracious sunset on the night 
 of Bertie Shelburne's adventure, Avith a sky 
 compounded of indescribable gradations of 
 pale pi*imrose and green tints. Nelly Dean 
 watched the colours flushing and fading, as 
 she sat at the little window at 10, Magnolia 
 Street; and out of the thin wisps of cloud
 
 yACOB DEAX SUSPFXTS A MYSTERY 165 
 
 liere and there she formed landscapes for 
 the scenery of her dreams. 
 
 Meantime, Bessie Shelburne was busily 
 ■engaged in ironing her son's shirts — those 
 snowy white shirts which were sacred to 
 Sundays and to his indifferently-fitting suit 
 of broadcloth. 
 
 Xo words passed between the woman who 
 was so much of a child and the child who 
 was so much of a woman. What were two 
 such queerly contrasted creatures to talk 
 about ? As a matter of fact they seldom 
 ■did talk ; yet the same unromantic being 
 whom each, according to her character, 
 had clothed in romance, occupied their 
 thoughts. 
 
 It was getting late for Bertie Shelburne 
 to return home, but his mother felt no 
 uneasiness about him. He had probably 
 made a long walking excursion iiito the 
 country, to put to its best use an unexpected 
 holiday. He would come home tired, no 
 doubt, but full of health and mirth and high
 
 i66 THE MARQUIS OF CARAB AS' 
 
 spirits, as his wont was. So at least 
 thought Bessie Shelburne, his mother. 
 
 Nelly Dean, when the sunlight had gone 
 out of the sky, and the brightness had faded 
 from her fancies, sighed to herself, ^ Oh 
 dear I w^hat a long time that great Bertie 
 is in coming.' 
 
 lb was his custom to carry her home at 
 night. With her, walking was almost an 
 unknown exercise. She tried it sometimes, 
 but only w^ith the consequence of discover- 
 ing afresh how really weak and ailing she 
 was. But even if she had been twice as 
 strong as she could ever hope to become 
 she would still have wanted Bertie to 
 carry her home, so accustomed a part 
 of her life had that daily experience be- 
 come. 
 
 And here he was at last. Nelly was the- 
 first to perceive his arrival as he opened the 
 door at 10, Magnolia Street. But what 
 had happened ? Something dreadful, surely I 
 Nelly gave a little scream when she saw
 
 JACOB DEAX SCSPIXTS A MYSTERY 167 
 
 the pallor of his face, and noticed that his 
 rioht arm was in a slino-. 
 
 * Oh, Bertie 1' she cried, her small being 
 pal})itating with apprehension ; ' what has 
 happened to you, my darling little Bertie V 
 
 She loved to call this strapping six-foot 
 fellow bv these lovino- diminutives. 
 
 And, of course, before Bertie could reply 
 his mother had thrown herself upon him in 
 a state of consternation, ready for tears. 
 
 * It is nothing,' he said — ' only a little 
 accident. There is nothing that requires to 
 be done,' he continued, as he saw his mother 
 instinctively preparing for some active line 
 of conduct. ' I am splintered up and made 
 all right, and there's an end of it.' 
 
 He sank down on a chair beside the hard 
 horse-hair sofa on which Nelly sat. The 
 little creature laid a soft hand upon his 
 hair, and turned her great dark eyes upon 
 him. She saw at once that somethinof 
 unusual and momentous had happened to 
 her Bertie, in addition to any injury that he
 
 r68 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 might have suffered. There was a new- 
 look on his face — a look not of mere bodily 
 pain and weariness, but of some deep trouble 
 of the soul. 
 
 * What has happened to you, my darling 
 little Bertie ?' she repeated ; and meantime 
 the mother's questions came in a flood. 
 
 It all seemed to poor Bertie but as a 
 continuation of the annoyance that he had 
 lately been undergoing. 
 
 What was there to tell ? What was 
 there to say ? For almost the first time in 
 his life he felt really cross with those who 
 loved him. He wished now that he had 
 stayed in some hospital until his fracture 
 grew well. Among the causes of his vexa- 
 tion there was a half-savage, half-comic 
 feeling that he must now be appearing in a 
 rather melodramatic light. What he had 
 done was so exactly the sort of thing that 
 is done by the hero of a cheap novelette. 
 
 He answered questions with an unac- 
 customed surliness, but by dint of persistent
 
 JACOB DEAN SUSPECTS A MYSTERY 169 
 
 questioning Bessie did at length succeed in 
 obtaining some bare outline of the facts of 
 the case. It follows as a matter of course 
 that she at once elevated her son to the 
 regulation heroic platform — a rickety and 
 uncomfortable position for one whose dislike 
 -of any manner of * showing off' was a 
 matter both of personal modesty and of 
 set determination. 
 
 There was nothing to make a fuss about, 
 he vainly protested ; why should anybody go 
 on so about a trifle ? The serious part of 
 the affair was that he must be laid off work 
 for a month or two, and that would be a 
 costly business, as he did not belong to a 
 union. There was more to say for the 
 unions in such cases than Uncle Jacob 
 appeared to have thought of 
 
 Nelly had been stroking the injured arm 
 as if it were a favourite cat. Here a sug- 
 gestion of mischief presented itself to her. 
 
 * Perhaps,' she said, ^ the young lady's 
 friends will help you ?'
 
 I70 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 Nothing more was needed to put to 
 flight all that remained of Bertie Shel- 
 burne's moderate stock of patience. 
 
 ' Who talks of help ? who wants help ?' 
 he inquired, and he rose up and paced the 
 little room angrily. ^ Help is charity, and 
 no charity shall ever enter this door while I 
 am alive, at any rate !' 
 
 Nelly's unguarded suggestion had put a 
 spark to a powder-magazine. He stormed 
 and raged, to his mother's great amazement, 
 and Bessie immediately turned her own 
 feeble anger on Nelly Dean. 
 
 But Nelly cared nothing for any scolding 
 just now. She had formed a little plan of 
 her own : she proposed to test the extent 
 of her power over this strong young cousin 
 of hers ; and also she meant to know more 
 of the accident than had yet been told. 
 
 * Bertie,' she said, as the lad's mother left 
 the room intent on some household cares, 
 ' you are not good to me. How you do go 
 on so at just a word or two ! Come and sit
 
 yjCO/i DEAN SUSPECTS A MYSrERY 171 
 
 down hero, you great big cross boy. Now, 
 tell 1110 how it all was.' 
 
 Bertie's brief fury was ]mst, and he felt 
 repentant. She was so small and weak. 
 
 * Well,' ho replied, for he had done just as 
 she told him, being repaid by sundry caresses, 
 * it was just as it is in your fairy tales : 
 the princess's horse ran away, and the dis- 
 guised prince leaped over the Park railings 
 and colLu'od the bridle- roiii, and then there 
 was a rush and a scuffle, and, to finish all, a 
 fairy doctor appeared on the scene and 
 fastened up a wrist in s})linters.' 
 
 It was easier, he found, to make fun of 
 the affair than to put up with sympathy and 
 condolence. 
 
 Xelly's great eyes were fixed upon his 
 face in an eager, questioning fashion. Her 
 ideal world had all faded away, and Bertie's 
 new style of narration did not serve to 
 recall it. 
 
 * Was she very beautiful — the princess 
 —the — lady you rescued V she asked, with
 
 172 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 a feeling as if some hand was gripping her 
 heart. 
 
 Bertie coloured up at the question, but 
 replied to it with what he meant to be 
 raillery. 
 
 * Beautiful ? I should think she was ! 
 Fairy princesses are always beautiful, aren't 
 they V 
 
 * Tell me about her face.' 
 
 ^ Oh, her face ! you don't see much of the 
 face of a princess when her horse is running 
 away with her.' 
 
 * But she thanked you — you know she 
 thanked you ! and you saw more of her 
 then.' 
 
 ' Well, let me see ; her face ? Now, how 
 would Uncle Josh describe it ? We shall 
 have Uncle Josh writing poetry on the 
 subject, I suppose.' 
 
 ' And what would Uncle Josh say about 
 her face V persisted Nelly. ' Bertie, you 
 are afraid to tell me. You think what you 
 will not say. What would Uncle Josh say V
 
 JACOB DEAX SUSPECTS A MYSTERY 173 
 
 * He would say that it was like a spring 
 morning, fresh and bright.' 
 
 Xelly asked no more questions ; she fell 
 back on the sofa wearily. A spring morn- 
 ing, fresh and bright. Her vivid imagina- 
 tion immediately realized the full force of 
 the description, and she thought of herself 
 with a dreary feeling of contrast — herself, a 
 dreary, November-like existence, shadowy 
 and indistinct. 
 
 Mrs. Shelburne was busy in making all 
 manner of arranij^ements for her son's 
 comfort. What a splendid boy he was I 
 no mother ever had such a son ! and the 
 maternal bosom swelled with gratified pride. 
 The idea had, however, presented itself to 
 her that Bertie had been slighted by the 
 object of his heroism. What else could 
 account for his unwonted and caj)ricious 
 ancrer ? When she came as^ain into the 
 little front room she talked aloud as she 
 made work for lier restlessly busy hands. 
 But her words, which were of an enigmatic
 
 174 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 and puzzling description, seemed to be in- 
 tended more for her own solace than for the 
 hearing of Nelly and her son. 
 
 ' And one as might be as good as them, 
 after all,' said Bessie. ' Those as could 
 speak might tell things if they cared ! and 
 he might hold up his head with the best of 
 them, horses and carriages and all. Who 
 knows V 
 
 ' What in the world are you running on 
 about, mother V Bertie inquired. 
 
 ' I'm running on about you, to be sure, 
 and about people as is too proud to be civil ; 
 and about ' But what else she was run- 
 ning on about was not then explained, for 
 Jacob Dean entered, with a vigour about 
 him, in spite of the toils of the day, like 
 that of the north-east wind. 
 
 ^ Hollo ! w^hat's up V he cried, noticing 
 immediately Bertie's splintered and bandaged 
 wrist. 
 
 Bertie explained matters briefly, and his 
 mother elucidated — or at least expatiated
 
 JACOB DEAX SUSPIiCTS A MYSTERY 175 
 
 — with more fulness of detail. But 
 Jacob had a talent for not listening to his 
 sister's talk. It went in at one ear and out 
 at the other, he said. To a man perfectly 
 accustomed to accidents in the workshops 
 and in house-building, Bertie's injured wrist 
 did not present itself as a serious affair, and 
 Jacob Dean's mind was just then full of 
 other things. Leaving that subject alto- 
 gether, therefore, he said to Bertie : 
 
 ' I've been to the house of one of those 
 vouno' swells who have been fussino- about 
 our meetings lately. Says he's a Socialist. 
 Bum sort of Socialist he seems to be. Calls 
 his place '' chambers," and has It furnished up 
 to the knocker — pictures, pottery, goodness 
 knows w^hat !' 
 
 ' And what could take you there V Bertie 
 inquired. 
 
 ' Went on invitation, my lad. Important 
 business, the young swell said. It seems 
 that he wants to teach us what Socialism 
 really is. Says we have got hold of the
 
 176 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 wrong end of the stick — only says it more 
 grandly. You should just hear his jaw I 
 Talked of ^^ the mixed and inseparable ele- 
 ments of modern humanity," and so on. It 
 was like a book, and probably it was a book 
 — one of those that you can make nothing of 
 
 Then Jacob Dean burst into a hearty 
 roar of laughter. He told how this dilet- 
 tante Socialist had taken him into some 
 special room where there was a light burn- 
 ing on a sort of altar, with a picture hung 
 near to it as if it were an altar-piece. 
 
 ^ Didn't know what to make of the light 
 at first,' said Jacob Dean. ' Came to the 
 conclusion that it must be for the use of 
 smokers. That seemed considerate. A man 
 with a pipe can stand a good deal more jaw 
 than a man who's only just listening. So I 
 lighted up cheerfully enough, and you should 
 have heard the shriek that the fellow gave ! 
 He threw himself on me as if he meant to 
 fight, but he didn't make much of that. It 
 seems that he is a Buddhist or somethings
 
 JACOB DEAX SUSPECTS A MYSTERY 177 
 
 ^nd that tlie lio-lit is the thino' to which he 
 ;says his prayers. Rum idea, isn't it ? 
 There's no danger that I shall be invited to 
 those chambers again. But here I am jaw- 
 ung away myself,' said Jacob, ' and it's past 
 the little girl's bedtime. Must carry her in 
 myself now, I suppose. By the way, what 
 was the name of those people you were 
 lalkino' about V 
 
 ' The Marquis of Carabas, and Lady This 
 •and Lady That,' said Nelly, before the youth 
 had time to speak. ' Just think of Bertie 
 making the acquaintance of such folk !' 
 
 ' The Marquis of Carabas ? I know 
 something about him. Pretends to be a 
 friend of the working man : wants their 
 votes for his party. Just wait a minute, 
 and I'll look him up.' 
 
 Jacob Dean hurried into his own house, 
 and returned a minute afterwards with a 
 thick, dumpy-looking book in his hands. 
 
 * Just \oi)k at that,' he said to Bertie. 
 •* That's a book, if you like ! — Carpenter's 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 '' Peerage for the People." They're very 
 scarce now. The peers bought 'em all up, I 
 suppose. Tells too much truth about 'em. 
 Look at this picture — a crown tilted so 
 as to make a rat-trap, and baited with 
 titles.' 
 
 ^Hadn't we better go home, father T 
 Nelly inquired.. 
 
 * Just wait a minute, lass. I want to* 
 look up this Marquis of Carabas ; it will 
 tell all about him here. You may find hi» 
 whole pedigree in this ; it's given here, and 
 it will be given in Burke. You'd find a 
 wonderful difference between 'em, I've no. 
 doubt.' 
 
 ' That's curious,' Jacob went on, as he- 
 referred to the book : ^ '^ Marquis of Carabas 
 — family name, Shelburne ; motto in Latin 
 — free translation, ' Look after yourself " 
 Nothing curious in that. But I say, Bessie,. 
 family name, Shelburne — what do you make- 
 out of that ?' 
 
 ^What do you expect me to make of it„
 
 JACOB DEAX SUSPECTS A MYSTERY 179 
 
 Jacob ?' asked Bessie. ' There must be 
 plenty of Slielburnes in the world.' 
 
 ' There was no findino- one when we 
 wanted him,' said Jacob Dean. ' But the 
 names are what they call a coincidence, I 
 suppose. Let us see wdiat else Carpenter 
 says. " Title of eldest son, Lord Bexley." ' 
 
 Bessie gave a little gasp, and turned away 
 to dust the cheap mahogany sideboard with 
 her apron. 
 
 ' Something in it, is there ?' said Jacob to 
 himself He thrust the book into his pocket. 
 * We'll be going, Xelly,' he said, and took 
 the ailing girl u]) in his arms. She cast a 
 sad, longing, and 3'et angry look at Bertie,, 
 and resigned herself unw^illingly to his sub- 
 stitute. 
 
 ' It is for the sake of the lady who is like 
 a spring day that he cannot carry me to- 
 night,' she murmured to herself ' Oh, I 
 shall never, never forget that !' 
 
 When Jacob Dean reached the door he 
 paused, with his light burden in his arms.
 
 i8o THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 * I have somewhat to say to you, Bessie/ 
 he observed. ^ I'll come back in half an 
 hour or so, when you get that youngster 
 comfortably settled in bed.' 
 
 Bessie started as if she had been shot. 
 Her mind flew to some letters that had been 
 hidden upstairs for many years past. And 
 now there was an explanation to come ! 
 Well, it had to come some time. It might 
 be best to put things straight — for Bertie's 
 sake.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A FAMILY HIGHLY CONNECTED. 
 
 Alas, poor Nelly Dean ! She was lying 
 awake with tear-bestrewn cheeks and a 
 throbbing brain. Her clay-dreams would 
 never again be as pleasant as they had 
 been. An unexpected hand had inter- 
 posed itself, and torn up the web of her 
 fancies, which now seemed to hanof in 
 ragged fragments all around her, with the 
 . hard face of her everyday life lookino- 
 through. 
 
 ' A little, ugly, lame thing ! that is what 
 I am,' said Xelly, ' and not a princess 
 at all.' 
 
 Her quick imagination had woven all
 
 i82 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 manner of possibilities out of Bertie's bare 
 narrative of the incident in the Park. 
 Even her mother's novel-fed fancy could 
 not have bounded along at a swifter pace. 
 
 ' A little, lame, ugly girl, whom no one 
 cares about, who can win pity only, and 
 must never hope for love.' So she moaned 
 on, the dismal truth never having pre- 
 sented itself until now. 
 
 * Oh Bertie, Bertie, Bertie ! And you 
 are lost to me — you whom I fondly 
 reckoned on as my very own ; and there 
 is nothing pleasant left for me in all the 
 Avorld.' 
 
 Such a mind as Nelly Dean's is an 
 instrument of self-torture. Nelly was 
 spared no single pang that a genius for 
 believing in the improbable could in- 
 flict. Her cousin Bertie, in whose manly 
 strength and comeliness she had delighted, 
 had turned away from her, and fallen in 
 love with a lad}^ who rode in the Park — 
 a lady who w^as the daughter of a Duke.
 
 .1 FAMILY HIGHLY COXNECTED 1S3 
 
 It was all very well for him to declare that 
 he had scarcely seen her, but he must have 
 noticed her very closely indeed, or how did 
 he come to describe her as a vouiiq^ o-irl who 
 looked like a sprino- dav ? 
 
 The careless phrase rankled in the little 
 •creature's too susceptible heart until it 
 became poisonous. She attached a thou- 
 sand significations to it that Bertie, when 
 he employed it, never dreamed of. She 
 •conjured up visions of beauty and grace, 
 €xquisite features and symmetrical propor- 
 tions, which were certainly as entirely oppo- 
 site to Lady Xora's m^z retrousm and short, 
 strong: fiQfure as could well be imaofined. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, the morbid mind of 
 Nelly found a certain satisfaction in the 
 misery these visions caused her. At every 
 fresh beauty added by her luxuriant fancy 
 to her unconscious rival, a new pang shot 
 through her heart ; yet such agonies as 
 these, she felt, were better than quiet, dull, 
 tearless silence.
 
 i84 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 ' But she is the daughter of a Duke — a 
 real Hve Duke, and Bertie is only a working- 
 enofineer. that is one consolation !' mused 
 the little creature, in an effort to console 
 herself. Then she broke into sobs and 
 cried herself to sleep. 
 
 In the meantime, and quite unconscious, 
 of the tragedy upstairs, Jacob Dean had 
 returned to. the house of his sister, where 
 he sat down in the arm-chair by the fire 
 and took out his pipe. 
 
 ' How is the young un now?' he inquired^ 
 in what seemed a voice of unconcern. It 
 was part of his plan of life to seem much 
 more stoical than he really was. As a 
 matter of fact, he was as fond of Bertie as- 
 if the lad had been a son of his own.. 
 
 And now he was proud of him, too. Tha 
 youngster had shown pluck, which, to 
 Jacob Dean's mind, was almost the highest 
 virtue, ' But the mother can be silly 
 enough without any help of mine,' he 
 reflected.. ^There's no chance that this.
 
 A FAMILY HIGHLY CONyECTEI) 185 
 
 feat Avill be made too little of, any- 
 how !' 
 
 Bessie replied to his question very dole- 
 fully. 
 
 ' He's not able to sleep yet,' she said. 
 * I'm feared his wrist pains him sadly, 
 though he won't let on to it a bit, he's so 
 brave.' 
 
 ' Oh, he'll be all right soon enough,' said 
 Jacob. ' He doesn't want to be moll}^- 
 coddled and made a fuss over, you take my 
 word for it. Not him ! You women beat 
 everything for making a fuss about trifles.' 
 
 ' Oh, how can you speak like that, 
 Jacob ? A trifle, indeed ! He saved a 
 lady's life, anyhow ; I'm sure he did. And 
 there, his poor wrist is broken ! and I'd 
 .sooner every bone in my body had been 
 broke ;' and here Bessie resorted to the 
 comfort of tears. 
 
 * You've no heart for your own kin, 
 Jacob,' she sobbed out; 'and brave lad as he 
 is, too, such as any uncle miglit Ije proud of '/
 
 1 86 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 * Brave fiddlesticks !' said Jacob ; * why, 
 such things as that are being done every 
 day, woman. What does stopping a run- 
 away horse amount to ? If he'd been that 
 fireman, now, that saved the poor woman in 
 the next street the other day, one would 
 have had reason to brag of him. But to 
 stop a runaway horse — why, Bessie, you 
 might have done it yourself almost !' 
 
 ' If he'd been your lad 'stead of mine you 
 would have looked at it differently,' said 
 Bessie, with a shade of offence in her tone. 
 
 Jacob leaned forward and patted his 
 sister on the shoulder. ' Now, now, lass, 
 you know you're saying what you don't 
 belie v^e ! But let that pass. If needs be 
 I'll stick to the lad through thick and thin ; 
 first, because he is yours, and second, be- 
 cause he's a fine and a whole - hearted 
 youngster, and I love him.' 
 
 ' Ah, now you speak like yourself, Jacob 
 Dean, and as if you had a hearts in your 
 body,' said the mother, drying her tears.
 
 A FAMILY IIICJILY CONXKCTED 187 
 
 ' By the way, Bessie,' observed Jacob, 
 coiiiino- to the subject which had brought 
 lilui in again to-night, ' here's that book that 
 I was tell in o- you about — that which tells all 
 about the Marquis of Carabas, you know.' 
 
 ^ Well, Jacob ?' 
 
 Bessie's face assumed a look of pain and 
 apprehension. 
 
 ' Xow, Bessie, isn't it a bit odd that the 
 name of the Marquis of Carabas should be 
 the same as yours ?' 
 
 * There are lots of Shelburnes in the 
 world. You once said that yourself, Jacob. 
 You know you did !' 
 
 * I dare say ! But here's another odd 
 thing. The last Marquis of Carabas — he 
 was only the Marquis for a month or two 
 ; — left England just about the time when 
 that husband of yours cut away.' 
 
 ^ And what can he have to do with me, 
 or with Bertie?' the mother inquired. ' What 
 had we to do with Marquises until yester- 
 day V
 
 J 88 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 ' That's just what I'm trying to find out,' 
 Jacob said. ' Things come about in a curious 
 way sometimes.' 
 
 He smoked his pipe in silence for a- 
 while, casting his dark piercing eyes upon 
 his sister now and then. 
 
 ^ I'll tell you what I've begun to think, 
 Bessie,' he said at length : ' you haven't 
 told me all you know about that blackguard, 
 confound him ! I mean that husband of yours. 
 What is it that you are keeping back ?' 
 
 Bessie's face grew pale and red by turns. 
 She hung down her head as if she had done 
 something shameful. It was in little, 
 half-angry, half- timid gasps that she said 
 at length : 
 
 ' I don't know as I kept anything back as 
 concerns you, Jacob. What if I have a few 
 letters ? They are my own. They are 
 all I have belonging to him. And I never 
 thought of them till years after he had gone 
 — indeed I didn't.' 
 
 * Letters, eh ? Just bring those letters
 
 A FAMIL Y IIICIIL Y CONNECTED i Z) 
 
 hero. A nice woman for trustino- those near 
 
 o 
 
 to you, you are ! Hides things from her own 
 brother, it seems.' 
 
 ' Why do you speak to me hke that V 
 Bessie whimpered — ' as if 1 liad done some- 
 thing ever so wrong,' she cried. ' If I have 
 kept anything back, it was because they 
 might have taken the boy from me. Oh, 
 I felt sure they would. And I huw 
 nothing at all, whatever I might have sus- 
 pected. You ought not to look at me and 
 talk to me like that, Jacob.' 
 
 Jacob laughed rather grimly. 
 
 * Common - sense and women-folk are 
 always far apart, it seems. So you kept 
 your lad out of the way of claiming his 
 birthright lest you might lose him alto- 
 gether. And yet they say mothers are 
 unselfish.' 
 
 ' How dare you F.ay as I am selfish T 
 broke out the mother with a sudden flame 
 of anger. ' If it could do him good, you know 
 I would willingly be cut into little pieces.'
 
 I90 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 ' I dare say ! But that is not the point. 
 You have deceived me, Bessie. I shall find 
 it hard to believe you again. Let us have 
 no more nonsense now. You have some 
 papers — letters, eh V 
 
 ^ It is only a bundle of letters as once fell 
 out of his pocket when I was brushing his 
 coat, and that I forgot to give back to him 
 until it was too late — until I had lost 
 him for good.' 
 
 ^ Well, bring them to me. Your husband 
 has left you to get on as you liked, or as 
 you could. We have a right to all the 
 information those letters can give us.' 
 
 ^ I never read them, Jacob, never ! I did 
 not think it honourable. I always meant to 
 give them back ; and, indeed, I forgot them 
 altogether till years afterward, when they 
 turned up in a drawer I was clearing out. 
 And they are his, you know. I don't know 
 as I ought to let you have them. If he came 
 back and wanted them, what should I say 
 to him, Jacob ?'
 
 A I\ \ MIL y IIICIIL } ' ( 'OXXECTKn 1 9 1 
 
 * Say \ Say you gave them to nie,' re- 
 turned Jacob innnediately. 
 
 He could have laughed at the trusting- 
 folly and undying hopefulness of his sister ; 
 but there was a touch of pathos about it 
 that restrained him, hard and ])ractieal as 
 he was. 
 
 Bessie went to her little workbox, and, 
 unlocking it, produced the bundle of letters, 
 rapidly yellowing with age. Her own hand 
 trembled as she placed them in his. It was 
 a moment fraught with destiny. What reve- 
 lation was awaiting her ? What influence 
 upon her life, and upon the life of her boy, 
 would such revelation have ? 
 
 * Why, these are addressed to ^' Lord 
 Bexley " !' remarked Jacob, with a look of 
 eager inquiry. 
 
 Then he took up his book again, and 
 examined still more closely the entry relating 
 to the Marquis of Carabas. 
 
 He had half-forofotten the formal-lookino- 
 lines which preceded the family history, and
 
 192 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 one of these was the most important just 
 now. 
 
 ' Eldest son, Lord Bexley !' he exclaimed 
 under his breath. Then aloud : ' Why, it's 
 as plain as mud in a wineglass, Bessie, my 
 lass ! Your husband was the man who disap- 
 peared, and who was murdered in Alaska. 
 Your husband was, in very truth, the last 
 Marquis of Carabas 1' 
 
 Bessie looked up, her eyes growing round 
 and big like those of a frightened child. And 
 so this was what was meant by the name on 
 the letters, which had puzzled her hereto- 
 fore. Her husband was the Lord Bexley 
 to whom they were addressed ! 
 
 ' Then Jane Ann was right, after all !' she 
 said with a tremulous sort of laugh. ^ I 
 always thought she made those romances of 
 hers up, and that such things couldn't take 
 place in real life. A real live Marquis 
 married to me — me, poor little Bessie Dean, 
 whom nobody set much store by ! Why, 
 Jacob, it's — it's really too ridic'lous !'
 
 A FAMILY HIGHLY CONM'XTED 193 
 
 * Good Lord ! what fools women are T 
 said Jacob. * And that's how it strikes 
 her ' 
 
 He rose up and paced the floor, uncertain 
 whether to be angry or to laugh outright, 
 for he had caught Bessie in the act of 
 looking at herself in the mirror over the 
 mantelpiece. 
 
 It was a pleasant and comely face that 
 was reflected back to her, in spite of its 
 crow's-feet and growing wrinkles, but, as seen 
 with its shabby setting of cap and linen 
 collar, was certainly very inappropriate con- 
 sidered as the face of one who misfht belonsf 
 to the British aristocracy. 
 
 It was, indeed, emphatically the face of a 
 woman of the working classes — homely, 
 respectable, conmionplace, hourgeoise to a 
 degree. 
 
 What a Marchioness of Carabas ouofht to 
 have resembled was shadowed forth very 
 faintly in the imagination of Bessie Shel- 
 burne ; but of this at least she was certain, 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 no characteristic of her own visao^e ouo^ht 
 to be found in the looks of so great a lady. 
 
 Bessie was a childish, ignorant, rudi- 
 mentary creature at the best, and her moods 
 were wont to be uncertain and capricious. 
 The mingled pride and mirth evoked by the 
 ludicrous nature of the situation passed 
 quickly away, and was followed by a queer, 
 wistful contraction of the muscles of her face, 
 which became like the face of a child just 
 before it cries. The burden of an honour to 
 which she was not born began to press heavily 
 upon her moral consciousness. 
 
 To Jacob's further amazement, she sat 
 down suddenly and, throwing her apron 
 over her face, burst into heartrending sobs. 
 
 ' What on earth — why, Bessie, lass, is 
 there anything to take on about in what I 
 have said? You women beat everything for 
 queerness ! We've just found out that you 
 are a Marchioness or something, and, bless 
 me, if here you are not crying as though 
 your heart would break !'
 
 A FAMILY HIGHLY COXNECTED 195 
 
 ' Oh, Jacob, it's too ridic'lous !' was all 
 the explanation vouchsafed through this 
 hurricane of weeping. 
 
 There was a great deal more taking place 
 in Bessie's mind just then than Jacob would 
 have given her credit for thinking and 
 feeling. First, there was the humiliating 
 thouo'ht that the man she had loved should 
 have so sedulously deceived her. Then 
 there was the relief at perils past — said 
 perils taking the form of society and its 
 demands upon a poor, timid, untutored 
 mind. Last of all, a peculiar sort of 
 pathetic pride in the fact that he, so great 
 \)j birth, should have stooped to love her 
 at all — a consideration sufficient to draw 
 tears from feminine eyes at any time. 
 . Besides — and this last was the most power- 
 ful factor in the tears, after all — she had at 
 length grasped the one great feature of the 
 «ase which had at first escaped her. The 
 man she had loved so unselfishly was dead. 
 
 Never until that moment had she realized
 
 195 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 how strong was still within her breast the 
 hope of seeing him again. Always she had 
 dreamed that he w^ould return some day and 
 tell her of his sorrow for deserting her ; 
 that he would beg for her forgiveness, and 
 that they might still grow old together, as 
 true lovers ought. She would then show 
 him the boy — their boy — and ask with 
 trembling pride if she had not done her 
 duty by him; if he had not grown up 
 straight, manly, honest, and handsome. 
 
 And now it could never be ! That dream 
 was over. 
 
 ^ Oh, and he is dead — dead ! I shall 
 never see him more !' sobbed Bessie ; * and 
 I have never put on so much as a bit of 
 crepe !' 
 
 ^ Look here, Bessie,' exclaimed Jacob, 
 utterly bewildered by this feminine behaviour^ 
 ' don't you say a word of this to anybody, 
 most of all not to the lad ! And now good- 
 night 1 
 
 ' Well, I'm jiggered !' he muttered to him-
 
 .1 FA .VIL y IIIGHL Y CONNECTED \ 97 
 
 •self as lie opened his own door ; ' if it 
 Kioesn't beat creation for strano-eness ! The 
 Dean family connected by marriage with the 
 .-aristocracy ! That won't help the cause if 
 fit's ever known .!'
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 BESSIE PUTS ON MOURNING. 
 
 In the quiet of his own house Jacob Dean 
 sat down to think of the course of events. 
 But first of all, ^ to pull his mind together, 
 as he said to himself, he took up his 
 * Peerage for the People,' and read all over 
 again the two or three pages which were 
 devoted to the ancestors of the Marquis of 
 Carabas. The writer had set himself the 
 task of bringing together all the ugly facts 
 of the family history. There was nothing 
 particularly black or revolting. One of the 
 Shelburnes had been involved a century 
 ago in a scandal with a woman ; several 
 hmJI held profitable sinecure offices under the
 
 BESSIE PUTS ON MOURNING 199. 
 
 Cro^yn, and all had been tolerably successful 
 in providing for the younger members of the 
 family through the various departments. 
 
 * Tax-eaters, every man of them !' re- 
 flected Jacob Dean. 
 
 He had a really genuine detestation of 
 aristocracy. It was not the mere hatred of 
 the poor man to the rich — he wanted for 
 himself nothing that anybody else possessed ; 
 but he had seen terrible misery — had been 
 accustomed to see little else, in fact — and he 
 believed that the rich and idle were devour- 
 ing the patrimony of the poor. 
 
 As he sat staring into the dying fire, the 
 * Peerage for the People ' — it was but a 
 shabby volume — fell from his knees to the 
 floor, and these things shaped themselves in 
 his mind: 
 
 There could be no doubt that Bessie's son 
 was the true Marquis of Carabas. The 
 identity between that Marquis who, accord- 
 ing to the newspapers, had ])erished in 
 Alaska, and the man who had married and
 
 200 THE MARilUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 then deserted his sister, was conclusively 
 established by the letters that Bessie had 
 for so many 3^ears been hiding away. Bexley 
 was the title of the eldest son of the Marquis 
 of Carabas — so the ' Peerage for the People ' 
 stated — and when that unfortunate marriage 
 took place the old Marquis was still alive, so 
 that his son could be no more than Lord 
 Bexley. Then the present Marquis had 
 succeeded in default of direct heirs ; yet 
 there was a true heir alive, a workman, the 
 nephew of Jacob Dean the Socialist, Bertie 
 Shelburne, Adelbert — for he bore a favourite 
 family name, the name of his father, as it 
 would appear — and he was lying upstairs, 
 next door, suffering from an injury that he 
 had received in doing service to some female 
 acquaintance of the so-called Marquis of 
 Carabas. 
 
 It was clear enough to Jacob Dean that 
 by a very easy manner of proceeding he 
 could create an extraordinary flutter in 
 aristocratic circles. To proclaim a workman
 
 B/:SS//- PUTS OX MOURXING 201 
 
 as the Marquis of Carabas — to reduce a 
 great nobleman to the position of a 
 commoner — to seat a young Socialist in the 
 House of Lords ! In the way of sensations 
 nothino- could g:o much bevond that. 
 
 But as he recounted these possibilities 
 Jacob Dean became aware that there was 
 that in him which would forbid a single step 
 towards their realization, at least on his own 
 part. When he asked Bessie to be silent 
 on the subject, he was scarcely aware of 
 why he made the request ; but the more he 
 thought the matter over, the more he felt it 
 would be a violation of all his own theories 
 to try to alter what seemed to have been 
 satisfactorily settled by accident. 
 
 The idea of self-interest never entered his 
 mind. He did not consider for a moment 
 that if Bertie Shelburne became the Marquis 
 of Carabas Jacob Dean, the workman, 
 would probably be made very prosjoerous. 
 
 ' All one has to think of,' he observed to 
 himself, * is what is best for the lad. He's
 
 202 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 comfortable enough as he is, and he's con- 
 tented enough. It cannot be best to un- 
 settle him. To make him into a lord would 
 be likely enough to make him what other 
 lords are. The best thing, decidedly, is to 
 make a man of him, and there's plenty of 
 good stuff to work on there, I think.' 
 
 Why not altogether ignore this surprising 
 discovery ? Why not leave the lad to 
 mature into a noble, hard-working manhood, 
 to dignify a class to which he believed him- 
 self to belong, rather than to alarm and 
 scandalize a class to which he really belonged 
 by right of descent ? 
 
 Jacob asked himself questions of this 
 kind in all manner of forms ; and, though 
 he felt that Bertie himself should have the 
 right to choose, he finally determined to 
 withhold that right of choice, at least for 
 a time, if Bessie could be persuaded to 
 keep her mouth closed upon the same sub- 
 ject. 
 
 But there was much danger in regard to
 
 BESSIE PUTS ON MOURNING 203 
 
 Bessie, as speedily appeared. She was 
 determined to induli^e herself in all outward 
 and visible signs of widowhood. It appeared 
 to her simple comprehension that in wearing 
 colours through all those years of loneliness 
 and desertion she had defrauded the man 
 whom she had loved of what was his just 
 due. There was something positively re- 
 volting in the thought. The decencies and 
 solemnities of mournino- are sacred thinofs in 
 the class to which Bessie belonged. There 
 is a genuine solace for these wounded and 
 bereaved souls in tucks of crepe and 
 voluminous black veils. 
 
 Jacob was made fully aware of this dis- 
 turbing fact on the very next occasion on 
 which he visited the house next door. 
 Bessie was dressed in black merino, with 
 folds of crepe, and had a white cap on her 
 head, that unmistakable widow's badge, with 
 flying streamers to the rear. For a moment 
 Jacob wondered who it could be that she 
 was in mourning for.
 
 204 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 * Bless my soul, woman !' he said, * what 
 does this mean ?' 
 
 * Why, what should it mean, Jacob,' asked 
 Bessie, whimpering, ^ except that I have 
 put on the proper mourning for my husband, 
 as is dead ?' 
 
 ' Mourning be hanged ! He never de- 
 served that any woman should mourn for 
 him, least of all after he has been dead so 
 long. Look here, Bessie ' 
 
 Jacob Dean crossed the little room to 
 make sure that the door leading to the 
 stairs was tightly closed. 
 
 * Has the lad seen you in these things V 
 he resumed. 
 
 * No,' said Bessie ; ^ they have only just 
 come from the dressmaker's. I hadn't time 
 to make them myself, so I got a young girl 
 I know to do them for me. And the cap I 
 bought dowm Lambeth way, and cheap it 
 was at ^^Q shillings !' 
 
 * Or Joshua ?' 
 
 * No, nor Joshua either.'
 
 BESSIE PUTS ON MOURNING 205 
 
 * Then just go and take them oft* at once, 
 and I'll be back in half an hour's time. 
 Xow, no nonsense, mind ! I have reasons 
 for what I ask you to do.' 
 
 As he closed the door behind him Bessie 
 whimpered more, but was half inclined to 
 revolt against his authority. 
 
 ' Our Jacob takes too much upon him,' 
 she said to herself, ' and I don't know as it's 
 proper for me to give in to him as much as 
 I have done. I'm sure I don't.' 
 
 But it was only a little flicker of re- 
 bellion ; and she did, in fact, just as she had 
 been told to do. 
 
 The truth was that this adoption of 
 mourning had been a very serious matter 
 indeed with Bessie. She had never thouofht 
 so long and so seriously about anything as 
 about this, with the one exception of that 
 husband who had made her life what it was. 
 Not that there was nuich substance in her 
 thoughts. How could there be, seeing what 
 sort of creature she had been made ?
 
 2o6 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 The predominant idea in her mind when 
 Jacob had unfolded the tale which he had 
 based on his ' Peerage for the People ' was 
 that she had done a great wrong to her hus- 
 band's memory. She had not mourned for 
 him as a respectable woman should. Why, 
 if this was true she was a widow — had been 
 a widow for years, and knew it not. Where 
 were her weeds, her insignia of woe ? What 
 disrespect had she not unwittingly shown to 
 his dear memory by this lapse of etiquette, 
 this disregard for the decencies of widow- 
 hood ! Her tears fell fast as all these 
 questions arose to trouble her peace of mind. 
 All she had borne from the man was for- 
 gotten. He w^as dead, and she had not 
 mourned him. This was all she could 
 realize. To a woman like Bessie there was 
 something almost indecent in the fact that 
 she had flaunted abroad in colours while her 
 husband lay in a grave in alien soil. Depth 
 of crepe means depth of respect to such as 
 she.
 
 BESSIE PUTS ON MOURNING 207 
 
 Ay, it was hard of Jacob to deprive her 
 of a solace Avhicli was also an atonement ; 
 yet when he entered the little parlour again 
 she was dressed in her usual homely garb. 
 
 ' I have been thinking all this matter 
 over,' he said, as he sat down in a chair, at 
 the same time motioning to her to sit down 
 beside him. ^ I must smoke as I talk about 
 it to you, or I shall lose my patience, I 
 know. Can you keep a secret, Bessie ?' 
 
 ' What secret, Jacob V 
 
 * Whv, this secret — about that blackofuard 
 husband of yours ; about what we believe 
 the lad to be ; about the folk in this house 
 being in any way different to the neigh- 
 bours.' 
 
 Bessie waited a few moments before she 
 spoke. Her mind was partly suspicious and 
 partly bewildered. The revolt against Jacob 
 was rising fast. 
 
 ' Why should we keep it secret, Jacob V 
 she asked. 
 
 ^ That's just what I want to make you
 
 2o8 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 understand. I've thought it all over from 
 top to bottom, Bessie.' 
 
 ^ But that isn't thinking it over for me.' 
 
 ' Yes it is. It is thinking it over for all 
 of us. We are all bound up together. 
 What is for the good of one is for the good 
 of all. Look here, Bessie ' — and he laid 
 his hand on her plump little arm — ' Bertie 
 is more to us than he can be to anybody 
 else.' 
 
 * He is more to me. He is more to me 
 than all the world beside. If I were to 
 
 lose him — if that accident were to ^ 
 
 She broke out into a passion of sobbing, as 
 if she were apprehensive of some immediate 
 calamity. 
 
 Jacob waited very patiently, with his hand 
 laid comfortingly on her arm. He was con- 
 scious of unusual tenderness and pity ; but 
 also he was aware that if his point was to- 
 be gained he must soothe and mollify her, 
 coaxing rather than bending her to his wilL 
 ' There's nothino' of that kind to fear,' he
 
 Bjiss/E rrrs on mourning 209 
 
 •said, as the sobs quieted down a little. 
 * It is not of losing him in that way that 
 you should be thinking. The accident is 
 nothing. He will be out to-morrow ; he 
 Avill be at work ao*ain after his arm has had 
 a week or two of rest. But look here, 
 Bessie. Suppose I am right — suppose that 
 your husband was the man I take him to 
 'have been ; don't you see that Bertie 
 •doesn't belong to us — doesn't belong to you, 
 even — but to rank and fortune and great 
 people ?' 
 
 ' How could it ever happen that he doesn't 
 belong to me, Jacob ? I bore him, I nursed 
 diim, I have slaved for him ; he has been 
 more than ni}^ life to me all these years. I 
 •am his mother, Jacob — oli yes, I am his 
 mother ; and w^hatever his father may have 
 been, he is my own lad — he is my -son !' 
 
 It was a difficult matter to argue, Jacob 
 Dean felt ; and he had a settled conviction, 
 too, that women are not amenable to ariru- 
 ment. It was necessary to get Bessie's 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 Tio THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 feelings and her motherly doubts and fears 
 ©n his side. 
 
 * I want to put it to you this way, Bessie/ 
 he proceeded to say. ^ If Bertie's father 
 was Lord Bexley, who should have become 
 Marquis of Carabas — and I haven't the least 
 doubt on that subject, for those letters of 
 yours seem to make it quite clear — then 
 what have we to look forward to ? If his 
 relatives claim him, they are certain to 
 object to you. They will place barriers be* 
 tween you ; they will take care that youi 
 shall come together as little as may be. 
 They will ' 
 
 But here Jacob was interrupted by a 
 half-stifled scream. His sister's eyes glanced 
 up at him in terror, round as the eyes of a 
 startled owl. The battle for secrecy was 
 half won. 
 
 / You couldn't bear separation — that is 
 plain to see,' Jacob went on. ' And what 
 have we to look at on the other side ? If 
 these great folks don't own him — as verj
 
 BESSIE PUTS OX MOURNING 211 
 
 likely they won't, being rascals mostl}^ — and 
 he should set up a claim of his own, we shall 
 either be ruined by lawsuits, the lot of us, 
 or he will be set down by everybody as an 
 impostor should he make such a j^i'etension 
 without going to law.' 
 
 It was evident from the look of Bessie's 
 face that she was not following her brother 
 any longer ; he had gone beyond her depth. 
 Even the impression previously made was 
 weakened. Jacob saw that he must adopt 
 a simpler and more direct style. 
 
 * Look at the case of the Tichborne 
 Claimant,' he said. ' You remember all about 
 that, don't you ?' 
 
 ' Not very well now, Jacob. Tell me how 
 it was.' 
 
 * Well, the Tichborne Claimant went away 
 when he was a young man, and was drowned 
 at sea, folks said. But ever so many years 
 afterwards he turned up again and claimed 
 his estates. There was no end of law, first 
 in this court and then in that, and the end
 
 212 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 of it all was that the Tichborne Claimant 
 found himself in gaol. That's what comes 
 of claiming titles and estates.' 
 
 ' Oh, oh, oh r sobbed Bessie, * was there 
 ever such trouble in the world ? Why didn t 
 I burn those letters years and years ago V 
 
 * There need be no trouble at all,' said 
 Jacob. ' Trouble meets those that go to 
 fetch it, Bessie. Keep a quiet tongue in 
 your head, and it will never come to 
 you.' 
 
 ^ What is it as you want me to do, 
 Jacob ?' 
 
 ^ Just to behave as you have always 
 done; just to be yourself; just to think 
 nothing about who Bertie's father was, or 
 who Bertie may be. That's all.' 
 
 ' And mustn't I let even Bertie know ?' 
 
 ' Why should you unsettle the lad ? He 
 is a brave, manly chap. He is content 
 enough to be what he has always been. 
 We shall all come to be proud of him some 
 day, I can tell you — far prouder than we
 
 BESS//- PC'TS ON MO UR XING 213 
 
 should ever be if you turned his mind from 
 us to think of these other things.' 
 
 The mother's heart was soothed greatly 
 by this praise of her son. 
 
 ' You were always wiser than me, Jacob,' 
 she said. ' You have thought and fended 
 for all of us. I will do just what you tell 
 me, dear.' 
 
 'Well, then, tliat's settled. All I ask 
 you is to say nothing to anybody about 
 what w^e have been talking about, or what 
 we believe to be true.' 
 
 ' And if Bertie should come to know 
 some day, and should blame me for what 
 I have done — oh, it would break my heart, 
 Jacob !' 
 
 * He is too good a lad to blame you, 
 Bessie, for doing what you believe to be 
 for his good. Trust it all to me. If it is 
 ever best for him to know, he shall be told. 
 And now good-night ; and, be sure, never 
 a word 1' 
 
 Jacob felt the victory to be complete ;
 
 214 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 and as he turned to leave he put his arm 
 round his sister's waist and kissed her on 
 the forehead. He had not performed so 
 tender an act for years past. 
 
 * And may I wear my mourning, Jacob ?' 
 she asked, as he placed his hand on the 
 latch of the door. 
 
 ^ Why, bless the woman 1' he said, turning 
 round again, ^ that would spoil everything ! 
 We should have all the fat in the fire at once.* 
 
 Bessie began to whimper again. The 
 new mourning weeds lay close at her heart. 
 She wanted to experience the luxury of real 
 widowhood. Jacob saw that the point was 
 serious, and he sat down again. It struck 
 him that she might desire to wear the 
 mourning rather for her own satisfaction 
 than for the sake of making a show before 
 the neighbours. 
 
 * Let's see what can be done,' he said, 
 taking her hand in his. * You want to feel 
 that you are doing right to that black — 
 well, to your husband's memory.'
 
 BESSIE PUTS ON MOURNIXG 213 
 
 ' That's just it, Jacob.' 
 
 ' Well, you needn't always wear the 
 anourning, you know. You might wear it 
 a bit sometimes ; I don't see why you 
 shouldn't. Only don't let anybody see it, 
 that's all. Wear it upstairs, you know, 
 when there's nobody with you to look on.' 
 
 The simple idea captivated Bessie's child- 
 like fancy. She saw herself seated before 
 her glass, arranging the material of her 
 black dress and the crepe folds of her 
 bonnet. The luxury of mourning might 
 be all the greater if it were enjoyed in 
 .-secret. 
 
 ^ Very well, Jacob,' she said ; * I will'
 
 CHAPTER Xin. 
 
 SURPRISING FAILURES OF MEMORY. 
 
 Bertie Shelburne had much reason to be- 
 grateful for the accident which had, for the- 
 time being, disabled his arm, and he knew 
 iti The two or three weeks during which, 
 he remained away from work became the: 
 most fruitful period of his life. He had 
 worked hard in a vast w^orkshop, among^ 
 rough men, from his fourteenth year. He 
 liked his work well enough, but also he 
 had a love of reading and a thirst for in- 
 formation that were altogether incapable of 
 being satisfied by such opportunities of 
 study as presented themselves when eaclii 
 day's. work was done..
 
 SC/A'miS/XG FAILURES OF MEMORY 217 
 
 A curious phenomenon is frequently to 
 be observed in workinof-nien who read, and 
 who pass among their mates as ^ very 
 larned chaps, mind you.' They really do 
 get to know a great deal, in a rough and 
 tumble sort of way. They read serious 
 books generally, but without a definite 
 purpose. They have to find their way 
 among books by rule of thumb. One 
 author makes favourable mention of another, 
 and they go to the free library, if there be 
 one in their neighbourhood, to make 
 acquaintance with the writer who has just 
 been brought before their notice. If there 
 is no free library, they go to some second- 
 hand shop and hunt for what they want in 
 the fourpenny box ; or they will save up 
 small sums for week after week in order 
 to buy some edition that they have seen 
 in a bookseller's window. 
 
 They wander into the dark lanes and cids' 
 de-sac of literature for lack of guidance. 
 A workman who desired to study natural
 
 2i8 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS 
 
 history !?aved up his pocket-money for many 
 months on end, and then purchased Gold- 
 smith's ' Animated Nature ' secondhand, in 
 four large volumes, and he read that work 
 with absorbed interest, never becoming 
 aware, till years afterwards, that he had, in 
 the main, thrown his time and money away. 
 
 The result of such reading is not cultiva- 
 tion. The old, solid ignorance remains, 
 though here and there a patch of learned 
 veneer may be visible. It is very pitiable. 
 There are thousands of eager readers who 
 take no polish from reading : they never 
 acquire the power of speaking correctly ; 
 they develop self-conceit, but are incapable 
 of culture. 
 
 Here and there may be found a workman 
 who, seeking a way for himself, hits upon 
 the right one. He becomes genuinely 
 cultivated without being helped by any of 
 the ordinary means of cultivation ; he adds 
 taste and discrimination to the mere thirst 
 for knowledge, and he is therefore one of
 
 Sr/^PJ^/S/XG FAILURES OF MEMORY 219 
 
 those who make their way in the world. 
 It was to this small and seleet class that 
 Bertie Shelburne belonged. His reading 
 not merely informed, but refined him ; he 
 was as incapable of resisting the influences 
 of culture as most of his fellow-workers 
 were of absorbing them. And now the 
 injury to his arm positively did him a good 
 turn, in keeping him at home awhile, and 
 thus supplying him with wider oppor- 
 tunities of readinof than he had ever had in 
 his life before. It was, after all, a blessed 
 thing — this slight accident that he had 
 himself encountered in averting injury from 
 another. 
 
 His intervals of recreation were spent with 
 Xelly or Uncle Josh. He had never ob- 
 served either of them so minutely before. 
 He had accepted them as a natural part of 
 his surroundings, heartily liking them both 
 — loving little Nelly in a brotherly way, 
 even — but never greatly noticing their pecu- 
 liarities. The discovery that they were
 
 220 THE MARQUIS OF CAR AD AS 
 
 both phenomenal, both out of the common, 
 followed quickly enough on a closer observ- 
 ance of their ways. 
 
 ' Uncle Josh, you should be doing some- 
 thing better than writing quack advertise- 
 ments in rhyme,' he said one day when his 
 uncle looked up from his work, as haggard 
 as if he had been labouring on an epic. 
 
 ' Eh, what's that you say, lad ?' 
 
 * You should do something better than 
 this puffing of quack medicines.' 
 
 ^ And so I am doing something better, 
 Bertie : I have been engaged to make 
 verses for a hatter in the Borough and an 
 umbrella-maker in the City.' 
 
 * Oh, nonsense ! that's not what I mean, 
 Uncle Josh. If you are really a poet, it is 
 absolutely shameful in you to do these 
 things.' 
 
 * I know it is, Bertie, my lad ; I know it is/ 
 He flicked his handkerchief across his 
 
 face. There were actually tears in his eyes. 
 Then Bertie, with a sudden pang of
 
 5 i ^J^P/^/S/XC FA IL I 'RES OF MEM OR Y 221 
 
 remorse, remembered that Joshua had been 
 helping his mother very considerably out of 
 the pitiful earnings gained as rhymester to 
 tradesmen and vendors of quack medicines. 
 What a cruel injustice that he should have 
 forgotten this ! And he had just twitted 
 Uncle Josh about his sordid devotion to 
 filthy lucre. His face flamed with honest 
 shame. 
 
 ^ Uncle Josh,' he said with genuine 
 emotion, ' you ought to pound me for my 
 stupidity and cheek. But, indeed, it was 
 more stupidity than impudence. I forgot 
 how good you had been to mother since I 
 was laid by. By God ! I ought to have 
 said it was a grand and heroic thing of you 
 to write those trumpery versicles, instead of 
 lautrhinof at vou for it. Forsfive me, Uncle 
 
 Josh :' 
 
 * Don't say another word, lad,' returned 
 the poet, the tears now distinctly per- 
 ceptible in his watery blue eyes ; '■ you 
 couldn't guess what a pleasure it has been
 
 222 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 to be able to help somebody — at last ; me, 
 that everyone has looked down upon and 
 jeered at for a wastrel and a dreamer. 
 Why, Bertie, it — it has made me feel like 
 a man, not an incumbrance, as I felt before.' 
 Even then Bertie did not know the ex- 
 tent of his obligation to Uncle Josh. The 
 poet had given up to the family need the 
 dream of his life. These silent heroisms 
 are going on around us every day, but 
 nobody guesses them. The money for 
 which he had — as he fancied — prostituted 
 his genius, was meant in time to earn him 
 recognition and fame. He intended, in 
 short, to save a sufficient sum from what he 
 had made in this mean fashion to publish 
 at his own expense a selection of his poetry 
 — a modest volume bound in cloth, with gilt 
 lettering, and perhaps a flower sprawling 
 across the cover. That little book had 
 formed the principal item in all his visions, 
 day and night, for long past, and now it 
 had had to be banished for ever.
 
 SCr/^PRISLVG FAILURES OF MEMORY 223 
 
 But all this he carefully kept buried in 
 his own breast, and demanded no recogni- 
 tion of the sacrifice. 
 
 * I have taken farewell of poetry,' he said. 
 * " She found me poor, and kept me so," as 
 a greater poet has remarked. I can live 
 by writing these rhymes ; and I must live, 
 even if I am a poet, you know.' 
 • ' You are getting quite practical-minded, 
 Uncle Josh,' Bertie observed. ^ The in- 
 fluence of the new sort of work, I suppose ? 
 But T fancy it is for our sakes, not your 
 own. And so you have taken farewell of 
 poetry for good. That had to be done in 
 rhyme too, I expect ?' 
 
 ' Oh yes ; in verse. One must take 
 farewell of the Muse in verse. See, here 
 are some of the lines. Tell me what you 
 think of them : 
 
 * " Oh, Poesy, thou spirit fair and free, 
 
 Whom I have followed for these many years, 
 Not to be worshipped but on bended knee, 
 
 Not to be won save by long prayers and tears." ' 
 
 * But you do usually worship on bended
 
 224 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 knee, don't you, Uncle Josh V He had not 
 even yet brought himself to regard his 
 uncle's gift quite seriously. 
 
 Uncle Josh proceeded without noticing 
 the interruption : 
 
 ' " The world is hard and eager, bears no Nay, 
 The meagre body's frail, and must be fed ; 
 O Poesy, thou art not for to-day. 
 
 And none behold the nimbus round thine head.' " 
 
 ' That's first-rate. Uncle Josh. At least, 
 it's ever so much better than that ^' Aurora- 
 vine " stuff that you have been hammering 
 away at. But why bid farewell to poetry 
 at all ? Why not start on a new line, and 
 become the poet of the people ?' 
 
 A light shot into Joshua Dean's eyes for 
 a moment, but then the old hopeless look 
 came back again. 
 
 ^ The people don't w^ant any poets,' he 
 said. ^ They don't understand them.' 
 
 ^ Oh yes, they do, if the poets can make 
 themselves understood. But the best of 
 them won't, and those who do make them- 
 selves intelligible produce poetry and water.
 
 SURPRISING FAILURES OF MEMORY 225 
 
 There's chance enough for you, Uncle Josh, 
 if vou can sinof the sono^s of the new 
 democracy.' 
 
 ' Put Jacob's ideas in verse, you mean ?' 
 
 * Well, something like that.' 
 
 * It's a good notion, lad. It would be a 
 grand thing to write a new ''Marseillaise" — 
 something that a whole populace would 
 sing, that would fire men's hearts in the 
 struo^o-le for freedom.' 
 
 ' That is just the idea. Uncle Josh. It 
 is a poet like that who is really wanted in 
 these days.' 
 
 ' But how are the people to be reached ? 
 There's the old difficulty of publishing, you 
 see.' 
 
 ' Publish on sheets, and sell the sheets at 
 a penny each. Let whatever you do be 
 written to some well-known air. It is in 
 that way that the people are to be reached. 
 Publish your twopenny-halfpenny books, 
 and they will never hear of them. Give 
 them a sheet, with something to sing upcn 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 226 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 it, set to a tune, and there you are. There's 
 both money and fame in it, Uncle Josh, 
 and there's great possibihty of usefulness, 
 too.' 
 
 Joshua Dean was becoming excited under 
 the influence of the new suggestion. He 
 passed his hands quickly through his ragged 
 hair ; his wits went wool-gathering ; his 
 eyes assumed that vacant stare which is 
 an indication of looking inwards ; and so 
 Bertie left him, perceiving that no more 
 could be profitably said. 
 
 It was afternoon, and Bertie had decided 
 to give himself a rest, after days of hard 
 labour at his books, but as to what to do 
 with himself he was not quite clear in his 
 mind. An unintentional suggestion came 
 from Nelly Dean, whom he found curled up 
 in the armchair of his mother's parlour, 
 looking very lost and sad. The character 
 of her dreams had changed ; she did not sit 
 at the window any more ; she did not look 
 out into fairyland. How beautiful was one
 
 SUI^PJ^/S/NC FA IL I ^RES OF ME Ml )/v' }' 227 
 
 •N\ho was as beaiiitiful a>; a spring day ? Such 
 >vas the question that troubled her. No day 
 was so wondrously fair — spring, or summer, 
 <5r autumn — at Pep23ermint Hill. But there 
 must be beautiful days where the flowers 
 Hf-ame from ; and the flowers began to come 
 in spring. How perfect must have been 
 the lady whom Bertie had rescued ; and 
 -surely he w^ould not have spoken like that 
 if she had not won his heart ? 
 
 It was impossible for tliis small creature 
 to live in any but a self-created world. She 
 had previously lived in a world of happiness ; 
 now she lived in a world of desj^air. But 
 the first keen pangs of jealousy had given 
 way to a drear hopelessness, in which she 
 longed for Bertie's ])resence as much as 
 ^ver, though he seemed to stick pins into 
 her forlorn being when they w^ere together. 
 He sat dow^n by her now on the stool at 
 her feet. 
 
 ' Well,' he said, * where has my little 
 lady's imagination been careering to .this
 
 228 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 time ? Among fairies or griffins or mighty 
 enchanters ?' • 
 
 ' Oh, I don't dream of those things now. 
 All my dreams have gone out, just as one 
 blows out a candle.' 
 
 * Why, that seems very odd ! Are you 
 not unhappy without them ?' 
 
 * Something does make me unhappy. 
 But don't let us talk of such things now. 
 Let us talk about you, Bertie.' 
 
 * With all my heart, little woman I But 
 what is there to be said about me ?' 
 
 * I have thought so very much about 
 that lady whom you saved.' 
 
 ' Have you indeed ? Why, I had almost 
 forgotten all about her !' 
 
 A gleam, of pleased surprise shot over 
 Nelly's face. 
 
 ' Don't you think that when you were- 
 hurt in, saving her she ought to have conij© 
 to ask how you were ?' 
 
 ^ How could she come, you silly thing ? 
 She does not evea know who I am. Besides^
 
 SURPRISING FAILURES OF MEMORY 225 
 
 euch people don't come ; they send. Gene- 
 rally they send a creature in plush, I believe. 
 If such a fellow were to come asking about 
 ine, I think I should kick him.' 
 
 If Bertie had never said who he was 
 ^nd where he lived, if he had almost for- 
 gotten the lady who was as fair as a spring 
 ■day, what had Nelly Dean to fear ? Her 
 heart revived as she asked these questions 
 •of herself She began to look and to talk 
 as of old, and she and Bertie said many 
 foolish things to each other, all about the 
 •world of make-believe, the gate of which 
 seemed to be opening once more to that 
 restless and fervid imagination. 
 
 But Nelly's talk had decided Bertie as 
 to what he should do with the remainder of 
 the long summer's day. He would go to 
 Hyde Park. He knew nothing of the 
 ^habits of the aristocracy. He had an idea 
 that they drove about Rotten Row all 
 <lay when the weather was fine. Perhaps 
 ihe might be able to see the girl to whom
 
 230 THE MARQUIS OF €ARABAS 
 
 he had done a service, and in whose behalf 
 he had sustained his hurt. 
 
 It was a great way to Hyde Park, but he 
 arrived there long before the Row was de- 
 serted — while the loungers on seats and 
 railings were still numerous, indeed. And! 
 what he had anticipated happened much in 
 the order of his expectations, for before 
 much time had i:)assed there rode by the 
 Marquis of Carabas, with Lady Nora and 
 Lady Ermyntrude Challoner at his side. 
 
 Bertie, however, lost his opportunity for 
 that time. He was like the poor man who 
 watched for a thousand years before the 
 gate of Paradise, and who succumbed at 
 last to the power of sleep. Whilst he 
 snatched that brief slumber, the gate opened 
 and shut again, and he was outside for ever. 
 Bertie, after gazing vainly and longingly 
 down the drive, turned to look at an extra- 
 ordinarily dressed woman, whose ultra- 
 fashionable attire struck him with amaze- 
 ment ; and during this short interval thosid
 
 Sr/^/'AVSLVc; FAILTRKS of memory :>3T 
 
 for wlioni lie had been watching passed on, 
 by him unnoticed. 
 
 But directly afterwards he recognised 
 them, and, craning his neck, watched them 
 down the Row. Ah, well, they >vere there ; 
 that was something, at least. And perhaps 
 they would return, after the manner of the 
 rest of the folks who keep going round and 
 round this fashionable inferno. 
 
 Yes ; after a little longer time of patient 
 watching he saw them again advancing to- 
 wards him, and, pushing his way to the 
 front, he waited his time. Would they — 
 would she recognise him ? 
 
 He told himself that he was an idiot to 
 imagine such a thing as probable, but he 
 hoped for it all the same. When he tried 
 to convince himself that she would behave 
 as his j^^^^^o'^c^i^'^^ notions of the aris- 
 tocracy led him to expect, the remembrance 
 of her honest eyes and frank manner gave 
 the lie to his old ideas. Nevertheless, when 
 they got close to him Lady Nora, who was
 
 232 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 riding on the nearer side, could not help 
 but see him, and yet it appeared as though 
 she would have fain been blind. 
 
 A gleam of recognition shot into those 
 honest eyes of which he had been dreaming, 
 and she started violently. Then all at once 
 a great rush of colour swept over her face, 
 and she turned away and said something to 
 the Marquis of Carabas. 
 
 He, for his part, glanced at once in 
 Bertie's direction ; but there was no kindli- 
 ness in the glance — nothing but a cold, hard, 
 haughty indifference that froze the young 
 blood in the lad's veins for a moment, and 
 then made it surge rebelliously to his fore- 
 head. 
 
 He clenched his fist involuntarily. 
 
 * I hate that fellow T he muttered. ' I 
 think I hated him from the first moment I 
 saw him almost. If I believed in fate and 
 all that sort of rubbish, as mother does, I 
 should begin to fancy we were born to do 
 each other a mortal injury. But I don't
 
 SURPRISIXG FAILURES OF MEMORY 233 
 
 ihink it's that. It's just that we hate each 
 other instinctively, Hke a rat and a terrier. 
 But I did think she was different. I'll 
 never believe in a face again — nor a voice, 
 either, for that matter.' 
 
 The whole thing stunned him for a 
 moment. He had come there expecting 
 nothing — at the most led by a hope that he 
 might see, as it passed, a face that had in- 
 fluenced him more powerfully than any face 
 which he had yet beheld. He had not him- 
 self wished to be seen or known ; but surely, 
 since without doubt he had been seen, he 
 deserved some recognition other than what 
 seemed like an expression of contempt. 
 
 ^ But it is what I might have expected, 
 after all,' he said to himself ' They are 
 aristocrats, and I am a workman. If they 
 had behaved differently, w^hat right should 
 I have to think as I do of their class ? It 
 is a good thing that this has happened. It 
 is a good thing for me. It saves me. It 
 proves that Uncle Jacob's teaching is all
 
 234 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 right. I did a service at the peril of my 
 life, but I belong to an inferior order of 
 men, and must not expect gratitude from 
 such as they. I should be a fool to expect 
 it. And yet half an hour ago I would 
 have done anything almost for a smile from 
 that lovely face. Which shows that I am 
 a fool, without question.' 
 
 In this unpleasant mood, without distinct 
 purpose, and almost without volition, Bertie 
 pursued the route taken by the Marquis of 
 Carabas and his companions. He saw them 
 alight from their horses. A man stood 
 waiting by the gate, as if he had been 
 expecting their appearance. Between him 
 and the Marquis a few words passed. The 
 latter took something from his pocket and 
 handed it to the man, who then walked 
 away. 
 
 * I seem to know that fellow,' said Bertie ; 
 and he stepped forward a little more quickly 
 to overtake him. ^ Whj^,' he went on, as 
 he got nearer, ' it's the Irishman that I was
 
 SURPRISING FAILURES OF MEMORY 235 
 
 speaking to at the time of the accident. I 
 owe him some thanks. He went with me 
 to the doctor's, I remember. Hi !' 
 
 The Irishman looked round, glanced at 
 Bertie, and then quickened his pace. 
 
 ' Win', the fellow seems to be running 
 away. Hi, there !' He hastened forward 
 and placed his hand on the man's shoulder. 
 ' JJon't you remember me ?' he asked. 
 
 ' Xever saw you before, faith. And hwhat 
 do ye njane by calling out after a gintleman 
 like that, wow ? Is it beggin' ye are, or 
 hwhat ? Sure, and ye'U get nothing from 
 me It's moinded to give ye in eharrage I 
 am.' 
 
 And witli these words the Irishman 
 resumed his rapid pace, leaving Bertie 
 astounded at so surprising a lack of memory.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A duke's daughters. 
 
 And concerning the young lady whom Bertie 
 Shelburne had saved from a shocking acci- 
 dent, or possibly a frightful death, and 
 who had apparently made so complete a 
 recovery from the sense of obligation ? 
 
 Well, Lady Nora had been peremptorily 
 forbidden to ride Thady again during her 
 stay in town. Her mother, the Duchess of 
 Dundridge, was quite firm on that subject, 
 as on most other matters. The fact was, 
 Lady Nora should have been still in the 
 schoolroom, for she had not long entered 
 on her seventeenth year. But she was a 
 girl with a will of her own, and she had so
 
 A DUKE'S DAUGHTERS 237 
 
 pleaded, and so contrived, for a season in 
 town and a taste of its gaieties, that she 
 had eventually obtained what she longed 
 for, precedent being waived for once in a 
 way, as much the easiest manner of quieting 
 a plague. The regulation debut, the pre- 
 sentation, and all the rest, were to come in 
 the following season. These were great 
 events, to be anticipated with as much 
 eagerness and disturbance of mind as if they 
 involved, not the fortune of one young lady 
 only, but that of the world. Meantime, 
 there were quiet dances here and there, and 
 pleasant little social functions that even one 
 who was not a debutante might attend. 
 Up to the time of that exciting incident in 
 the Park, Lady Nora had shared in almost 
 as much fun and enjoyment as she had 
 ventured to look forward to. 
 
 There was one high matter concerning 
 which it was not requisite that she should 
 pass through any disturbance of mind, and 
 it was one about which most girls, arrived
 
 238 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 at her time of life, would have been disturbed 
 exceedingly. 
 
 The tender budding soul of a maid is apt 
 to get excited about thoughts and affairs of 
 love — to grow in love with loving, even 
 before there has presented itself a fitting 
 object of affection. 
 
 But on such subjects Lady Nora had 
 neither dreams nor longings. That matter 
 had been decided for her by her stern and 
 unbending mamma, long ago. The Duchess 
 of Dundridge had settled the fate of both of 
 her daughters, equally to her satisfaction 
 and, as it seemed for the present, to theirs. 
 
 Whether she was seen by ^ anybody ' or 
 not Lady Nora did not care. It was a 
 matter of no importance. She desired 
 neither to catch nor to be caught, and on 
 the subject by which young minds are most 
 troubled and excited when they come to the 
 point where womanhood and girlhood meet 
 she was absolutely at ease. 
 
 Her sister, Lady Ermyntrude, was to
 
 , i Dl KE 'S DA U OUTERS 239 
 
 make a niarriacye of the splendid sort. That 
 Avas no more than natural, seeing that she 
 was a fashionable beauty, the eldest daughter 
 of an ancient family, the feminine imperson- 
 ation of the pride and hauteur of a duke- 
 dom. 
 
 As for ' little ugly Xora,' as she was wont 
 to be called, it was arranged that she also 
 should do passing well. So far back as in 
 the days of short petticoats she had been 
 contracted to her cousin, Lord Cranbery, 
 and they had grown up together from 
 childhood with an apparently clear under- 
 standing of their future relationship. Their 
 courtship had, indeed, been ])retty to see, 
 chiefly because there was so little courtship 
 in it, both parties taking it for granted that 
 the arrangement made in their interest was 
 a part of the special ordering of Providence, 
 and acting accordingly. 
 
 Lord Cranbery was not rieli, but it was 
 also a libel on Lady Nora to sa}^ that she 
 was ugly, as even the Duchess, who disap-
 
 240 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 proved of her younger daughter's style, was 
 fain to confess, with a certain wondering 
 candour, now and again. 
 
 She was short and rather stoutly built ;. 
 she was even inelegant, it may be ; but she 
 was the very incarnation of intense life. 
 Her being throbbed with vitality, and she 
 had the charm of all eager, observant, easily 
 interested, bright and full natures. 
 
 As to her defects, what were they ? 
 Certainly her form was not classical ; her 
 pretty little nose had an unmistakable 
 upward turn ; her mouth was well shaped, 
 but wide. Nevertheless, there were the 
 prettiest and most bewitching dimples at 
 the corner of this mouth when she laughed, 
 as she was almost always doing. Her gray 
 eyes were lively with fun and mischief; her 
 complexion was of that adorable sort which 
 the sun cannot spoil or the wind roughen, 
 and her reddish-brown hair was touzled in 
 short, merry curls. 
 
 Her accomplishments, it must be ad-
 
 A DUKE'S DAUGHTERS 241 
 
 iiiitted, were of such a character as her 
 stately mother abhorred. She could ride 
 any horse bare-backed, and groom and 
 saddle him if need be ; she delighted in 
 «very sort of athletic exercise and outdoor 
 a-ecreation. For the rest, she was wild, 
 impulsive, outspoken, and absolutely honest 
 and truthful. 
 
 What the Duchess disapproved of in her 
 character seemed to commend her all the 
 more to her father's liking. From 'him 
 she had inherited her love of animals and 
 outdoor life. He made a pet and a con- 
 fidante of her, and she was immeasurably 
 tender and affectionate towards him. 
 
 The Duke of Dundridge was a plain man, 
 of ruddy complexion, good-natured, easy of 
 temper, careless of the distinctions of rank. 
 He would have made an admirable gentle- 
 man-farmer had he been born to that 
 position in life. As things were, he was 
 strongly devoted to agricultural pursuits, 
 was practically the steward of his own 
 
 VOL. 1. 16
 
 242 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 estates, and was proud (i>f nothing so mucb 
 as being president of the Agricultural 
 Society of his count j. 
 
 ^ The Duke would have made an excellent 
 clodhopper/ said the Duchess, in one of her 
 impatient moments; 'and I really think that 
 Nora would be in a position ideally suited 
 to her tastes if she were servant-girl on a 
 farm. Thank God that Ermyntrude is so 
 different !' 
 
 And certainly Lady Ermyntrude was in 
 all respects the opposite of Lady Nora in 
 tastes and character. 
 
 It was a subject of great regret to the* 
 energetic Duchess that fate had denied her 
 the pleasure of giving to the world a son,, 
 an heir to the Dundridge estates and posi- 
 tion. 
 
 And if only Lady Ermyntrude had 
 been a boy, what a perfect successor to 
 these she would have proved ! Ambitious,, 
 clever, intellectual, with great social abilities, 
 it appeared hard indeed that she should
 
 .1 DUKirS DAUGHTERS 243 
 
 have to accept a subordinate position because 
 of her sex. 
 
 Two or three mornings after the exciting 
 event in the Park, Lady Ermyntrude Chal- 
 loner was seated near one of the windows 
 in her father's house in Park Lane. Her 
 fingers were busy with a piece of elaborate 
 embroidery, designed for the decoration of 
 her favourite RituaHstic church, and mean- 
 time her mind revolved many things. 
 
 Before lonof she would become the 
 Marchioness of Carabas. The position 
 was one which she meant to fill with 
 distinction. Her husband, already an 
 eminent figure in the political world, 
 should be urged forward until he filled 
 the highest oflftce in the State, and no 
 inconsiderable part of his advancement he 
 should owe to her, for she meant to be 
 powerful with those who wielded power, 
 and to influence Cabinets by means of 
 evening parties. 
 
 The future lay before her clear and fair;
 
 244 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 and for her lover she felt something almost 
 approaching to real affection as she con- 
 templated the possibilities of his position 
 and career. 
 
 Lady Nora would have been puzzled and 
 astonished had she known what thoughts 
 were passing through her sisters mind. 
 No serious thought as to the future had 
 ever intruded itself on her own understand- 
 ing. Why should it ? Everything was 
 decided for her beforehand, on a basis 
 clearly satisfactory to all parties, even to 
 her inconsiderate self. There was some- 
 what in her nature that had not yet begun 
 to bud. Upon the physical side she was 
 perfectly and splendidly developed, but the 
 true soul slumbered as yet, its radiant 
 wings still rudimentary and closely folded 
 up. 
 
 Her restless vitality asserted itself to 
 an uncomfortable extent when, as upon 
 this particular morning, she was obliged 
 to remain within doors.
 
 A DUKE'S DAUGHTERS 245 
 
 Even the charming morning-room, with 
 its artistic decorations, and pale sahnon and 
 gold judiciously blended, its dainty water- 
 colours, graceful statuettes, and masses of 
 spring flowers in bloom, felt to her like a 
 prison, and she pined for fresher air, and 
 teased Bonbon, her sister's toy spaniel, from 
 mere impatience of monotony, and hailed 
 with deliofht the arrival of her cousin and 
 betrothed. Lord Cranbery, chiefly because 
 he was such an admirable victim for raillery. 
 ' Oh, I am so glad you are come, Cran- 
 bery !' she exclaimed, as she saluted him. 
 * I'm tired of town already. There are so 
 many nuisances and restrictions in it. One 
 mustn't go anywhere by one's self One 
 mustn't do this because other people don't, 
 and one mustn't do that because everybody 
 who isn't anybody does it, and — and one 
 mustn't ride poor old Thady because the 
 dear thing doesn't like walking like a mute 
 at a funeral.' 
 
 ' I should think not, indeed,' replied Lord
 
 246 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 Cranbery, laughing. ' Surely you had 
 sufficient of Thady on that last memorable 
 occasion ?' 
 
 ' It wasn't his fault, the dear ! It was 
 all because of that stupid dog. And then 
 people will be so disagreeable.' 
 
 * Who is disagreeable, Nora ?' 
 
 ' I know who is disturbing, at least,' mur- 
 mured Lady Ermyntrude, stooping to untie 
 her skein of floss-silk from the neck of 
 Bonbon, where Nora had fastened it. 
 
 * He is. I mean the young man who 
 stopped Thady from running away with me 
 — at least, from running away too far,' 
 amended Lady Nora ; ^ he refused to give 
 Dr. Poinsett his address, and his poor wrist 
 was broken, you know, and he would not be 
 able to work, and — and we saw him the 
 other day, and he looked so offended.' 
 
 Under all the girl's laughing pettishness 
 there was a tone of genuine regret, that 
 quite touched Lord Cranbery. 
 
 ' Never mind, Nora,' he said gently ; ^ I
 
 A 7)rA'/rS DAUGHTERS 2^7 
 
 think Carabas lias now done all that can be 
 done. It* the vounof fellow feels sore we 
 cannot help it.' 
 
 ' It is ^'e^y annoying, certainly,' remarked 
 Lady Ermyntrude, ' but we cannot accuse 
 ourselves of ingratitude. The young man 
 was — well, you understand, Cran, how 
 stand-offish and rude those common people 
 can be when they choose to think that ouo 
 is patronizing V 
 
 ' I don't like the phrase common people, 
 Ermy,' said the young nobleman gravely. 
 ^ It ahvays brings to my mind St. Peter 
 and his moral lesson : '' What I have made, 
 call not thou conunon or unclean." ' 
 
 ' Besides, he was not common — not a bit,' 
 broke in Lady Xora indignantly ; * you look 
 at a man's coat, Ermy, and that is stupid. 
 The tailor makes that.' 
 
 * I cannot congratulate your hero on his 
 tailor, certainly, nor his bootmaker either, 
 for that matter !' 
 
 ' There ! Didn't I say so ? Just as
 
 248 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 though it mattered ! Badly -fitting coat of 
 no, he looked simply splendid when he was. 
 telling Carabas that he was not a beggar,, 
 and did not" require payment for what he 
 had done. He looked, indeed — ah,- yes>, 
 you saw it too, Ermy,. though you are not 
 likely to admit it !' 
 
 The girl's voice had sunk a little towards 
 the end of the sentence, and she looked 
 rather doubtfully at her beautiful sister. 
 Lady Ermyntrude's face flushed slightly,, 
 but she kept her eyes fixed on her work. 
 
 ^ What was it that struck you as sc> 
 curious V asked Lord Cranbery, rather 
 astonished at their significant expressions.. 
 
 ^ Why this, Cran. Wheix he raised' his? 
 head and flashed that defiant glance at th^ 
 Marquis, their two faces were so exceedingly 
 alike. No, it was not only my excited 
 imagination, I tell you, because Ermy saw 
 it too. I read it in her eyes.' 
 
 ' You read anything rather than youir 
 books, Nora,' remarked Lady Ermyntrude;
 
 A DUKE'S DAUGHTERS 249 
 
 quietly. Then, with a sort of forced rehict- 
 ance, she added : ' But Nora is right for 
 once, Cran. There really was a sort of 
 likeness ; which is very humiliating.' 
 
 In Lady Ermyntrude's tone was such an 
 unmistakable annoyance that neither her 
 sister nor Lord Cranbery pursued the 
 subject further. 
 
 Of all men, Cranbery seemed the least 
 likely to win the love of a girl of Lady 
 Nora's type. 
 
 He was a serious young man, who studied 
 theology, and — his digestion ; took serious 
 views of life — and dinner-pills. He w^as 
 rather fond of what his cousin had called 
 common people, prided himself upon his 
 breadth of view, though in reality Nature 
 had unfitted him for breadth of any sort. 
 He had frequently presided at meetings in 
 Exeter Hall, and had even been known to 
 preach to ballet girls and costermongers. 
 In appearance he was thin, yellow, and 
 bihous-looking.
 
 250 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 Lady Nora reverted to her love for 
 country pursuits upon leaving the theme 
 obnoxious to her sister. 
 
 ' Yet you were eager enough to come to 
 town !' said Lady Ermyntrude. 
 
 ' Yes, of course. One wants to do every- 
 thing — everything ! I love it all. Dancing, 
 singing, riding, flirting. Well, you needn't 
 frown, Cran; I give you leave to flirt in 
 turn, if it amuses you ! One wants to live, 
 in short. But, after all, the country for me. 
 I am like daddy. And daddy should have 
 been born a farmer, if all things in this 
 topsy-turvy world came right. Then I 
 should have been a farmer's daughter, and 
 what a jolly one I should have made ! What 
 prizes we'd have carried oif between us for 
 horthorns and for butter T 
 
 ' And what j^art should I have played in 
 life ?' asked Lord Cranbery, with condescend- 
 ing gravity. Listening to his cousin's chatter 
 was to him very like watching a kitten at 
 play.
 
 A DTKE'S DACCIITERS 251 
 
 * Oh, you ? Let me see. Had you been 
 born a Methodist you'd have made a capital 
 l(X^al preacher. Or perliaps you might have 
 rivalled '* Koofah " if you'd given your mind 
 to it !' 
 
 * Xora, how dreadfully reckless you are in 
 your way of speaking 1' said Lady Ermyn- 
 trude ; 'and who is " Koofah," in the name 
 of all that is marvellous ?' 
 
 ' Marvellous enough, if you only knew, 
 Ermy ! '' Koofah " is a very celebrated 
 man — he is really ! He makes the lame to 
 walk and the blind to see. He pulls out 
 teeth by magic. He has a grand gilded car, 
 and Indian servants, and a brass band that 
 never plays any other tune than *' See the 
 Conquering Hero comes." How very, very 
 sick he must oret of that tune ! But never 
 mind ! It drowns the cries of the victims 
 if they make any. He has invented a patent 
 pill which, if taken in sufficient quantities 
 (and there is a considerable reduction for 
 quantities), is warranted to make old people
 
 252 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 young again. That is what I am always 
 hoping will happen to Cranbery, because I 
 bought him a box when we were down at 
 Allerby, and he took them — all ! Now, you 
 needn't blush, Cran, you know you did T 
 
 If there was one thing more seductive 
 than another to Lord Cranbery, it was 
 patent medicine. 
 
 Had he chosen, indeed, to lend the pres- 
 tige of his name to the various compounds 
 swallowed by him during the course of a 
 year he could by this simple process have 
 quadrupled his income. 
 
 It was quite true that he had been 
 tempted by the flaming advertisement at- 
 tached by the vendor to each box of pills, 
 and had fallen a victim to the lure set for 
 him by his merry cousin. They had made 
 him exceedingly ill, and he had cursed the 
 name of * Koofah ' — or, at least, had come as 
 near to that unholy process as a truly pious 
 young man could. 
 
 Alas that this experience taught him
 
 A DUKE'S DAUGHTERS 253 
 
 nothing ! He was quite as eager and ready 
 now as then to become the subject of fresh 
 experiments. 
 
 * I don't think you ought to laugh, Nora/ 
 he said, with piteous indignation. * You 
 would not, if you knew what it was to 
 suffer. Why, the whole of one's useful- 
 ness and happiness in life — nay, I will go 
 further, and declare that the tone of one's 
 moral philosophy is ruled by the state of 
 one's digestion. You do not realize how 
 completely the physical dominates the 
 spiritual. It is indeed very, very difficult 
 to take correct views when pain reigns 
 supreme or the liver is out of order.' 
 
 ' I thank goodness I never had an ache 
 or a pain in my life. Not even the heart- 
 ache, Cran — imagine that !' 
 
 * I don't believe you,' retorted the young 
 nobleman stoutly. ' No one who is not 
 entirely heartless could go through life, 
 even so far as to arrive at the mature 
 age of — seventeen is it, Nora? — without
 
 254 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 having an ache there. I don't mean love 
 troubles, and that sort of imaginary thing/ 
 went on Lord Cranbery with the sublime 
 contempt of ignorance, ' but genuine heart- 
 ache over the sins and the sufferings of 
 this miserable world.' 
 
 A cloud passed over the bright face of 
 the girl, and with an impatient exclamation 
 she jumped up from her seat. 
 
 ^ It isn't a miserable world at all, Cran !' 
 she cried ; ' it's only the way you choose to 
 look at it. I dare say your liver is wrong 
 again, which accounts for your correct views. 
 I don't believe in universal misery, and the 
 world is very beautiful. If I see people 
 sad I try to make them laugh, and that 
 does them good. They find, perhaps, 
 things are not so bad as they seem, after 
 all. If they are poor I've always a 
 shilling to give them.' 
 
 * Some people will not have your shillings/ 
 said Lady Ermyntrude, with cold severity, 
 ' however they need them. It is very
 
 .1 DUKE'S DArCIITIlRS 255 
 
 amusing to hear you talk of life — you who 
 have never known it — and of misery to be 
 grinned into happiness. You are a mere 
 child, Xora, and a very foolish and heedless 
 one sometimes.' 
 
 * I'm sure I get lectures enough to make 
 me wise/ pouted the girl. 
 
 But nothing could induce her to be 
 serious. She danced round the room hke 
 an embodied sunbeam, and presently stopped 
 before the mirror. It was a charmino^ re- 
 flection that she saw there, and she smiled 
 at it even while chiding it. 
 
 * Why, oh ! why did nature not give me a 
 grand presence hke you, Ermy ? You were 
 the eldest, so you took all the good things. 
 Am I not a strange little changeling to 
 belong to a ducal house ? Such a nose, 
 too !' and she stroked the pretty little nasal 
 organ with considerable tenderness. ' Never 
 mind ! It's not so bad when one gets used 
 to it, and I shouldn't have liked to live in 
 meek subjection to my nose — like the lady to
 
 256 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 her blue tea-pot — as I might have done had 
 nature adorned me with a superb classic 
 such as yours, Ermy. Cran dear, will 
 you forgive me my nose and other infirmities 
 if I allow you to swallow as many pills as 
 your soul inclines to ?' 
 
 ' You are very vain, Nora, and I will not 
 administer any food to your vanity,' was the 
 calm response. 
 
 ^ Am I vain ? Well, perhaps I am. At 
 least, I am glad I've got a decent com- 
 plexion and pretty eyes. But I'm wasted 
 on you, Cran — clean and entirely wasted. 
 Heigh-ho ! what a mistake it all is ! Why 
 weren't we left alone to choose whom we 
 liked, or to remain single had we been so 
 minded ? I have an idea that we shall be 
 a^wfuUy miserable together, you and I. But 
 let us laugh and make merry, and not meet 
 trouble half-way.'
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 LORD CRANBERY MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 Lord Cranbery had called Lady Nora vain ; 
 but he also had his own special vanity. 
 
 He prided himself upon having developed 
 his character in a thoroughly all - round 
 manner. Every side of his nature, he 
 heartily believed, had been carefully tended 
 and cultivated after the methods inculcated 
 by Cobbett and Smiles, until his faculties 
 were as evenly balanced as a jmir of scales. 
 The rational, the emotional, the religious, 
 the social, the physical, the spiritual, the 
 imaginative, the artistic — each was in its 
 due proportion to the other. 
 
 On the whole, the result was a trifle 
 
 VOL. L 17
 
 258 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 disappointing to his friends, though he 
 himself had for the present no misgivings. 
 The limitations of his powers caused him no 
 pang. He by no means yearned after larger 
 powers. 
 
 But to other people it was an enigma 
 as to wherein lay the benefit of culture so 
 diffusive, especially when applied to talents 
 of an essentially mediocre description. The 
 tiny brook, which, confined within its narrow 
 bed, runs along bright and rippling in the 
 sunlight, is in nowise improved by being 
 allowed to spread itself over a level tract 
 and become a stagnant marsh. 
 
 But Cran was contented with small 
 attainments and feeble triumphs. Good, 
 conscientious, small-minded, he was perfectly 
 happy in himself, and was consequently the 
 envy of all the crowd of restless, unsatisfied 
 folk who sneered at him openly, and 
 secretly coveted his peace of mind. 
 
 He attended lectures, classes, reading 
 circles, philanthropical meetings, art schools,
 
 CRANBER y MAKES AN A CQUAINTANCE 259 
 
 science demonstrations, and musical * at 
 homes.' 
 
 Small wonder was it that his poor brain 
 got somewhat muddled during the process 
 of self-culture. It was while the artistic 
 and imaginative side was under treatment 
 that fate brought the young nobleman into 
 contact with Mr. Zachary Luxmore. 
 
 This gentleman was the apostle of 
 realistic devotional painting, a new and 
 startling development in the world of art. 
 Mr. Luxmore had certainly not ' awakened 
 to find himself famous,' because he had taken 
 care to keep very wide-awake indeed during 
 the years of his pursuit of the fickle goddess 
 Fortune. Like a successful stockbroker, he 
 studied the markets, and eventually made a 
 hit. 
 
 ' I shall knock 'em some day,' he said to 
 himself; and as he knew himself very well, 
 the confident prediction was amply realized. 
 
 Who has not heard of Luxmore's ' Jael 
 and Sisera,' of his 'Judith slaying Holofernes,'
 
 26o THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 of his ' Herodias dancing before Herod '? 
 Each of these great works was the picture 
 of its year. 
 
 The success of Zachary Luxmore was 
 founded on a careful study of the outrageous 
 and the bizarre. The pubHc had become 
 tired of most things in art, most things 
 having become tiresome, indeed. Reahsm — 
 bare, hard, unsentimental, but very pre- 
 tentious realism — was being done to death ; 
 and was becoming a bore, which was worse. 
 
 ' We are living in a period of decadence,' 
 moaned one of the great art teachers of the 
 day. ' What is ugly is loved for its own 
 sake. The sense of beauty has left us ; we 
 appreciate only the fetid, the ghastly, the 
 corrupt. The true feelings of devotion to 
 art and of devotion to God have perished 
 together. There is no longer either great- 
 ness of subject or sincerity of treatment. 
 A frightful unreality is dominating us under 
 the name of the real. One searches our 
 exhibitions in vain for a mind and a soul.'
 
 CRANBERY MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE 261 
 
 Zachary Luxmore spoke contemptuously 
 enough of the lecture in which these phrases 
 appeared ; but he went home full of a new 
 idea. The sacred and the realistic ! Why 
 should they not be combined ? A judicious 
 blend meant a hit. All the devotional 
 subjects had been painted ; but not as he 
 could paint them. 
 
 The Bible had been ransacked for these 
 centuries past in the interests of the 
 exhibition and the studio ; but it might still 
 be possible to ransack it to some new purpose. 
 
 ' Hallo, Luxmore ! have you turned 
 recluse ?' one of his friends inquired about a 
 fortnight after the lecture. ^ It seems to 
 be weeks since I saw you at the club.' 
 
 * I have been working rather close/ was 
 the reply. 
 
 ' Got something big on hand V 
 
 ' I am just going to knock 'em next May, 
 that's all.' 
 
 The acquaintance laughed as he told the 
 story of this meeting to a group of the
 
 262 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 members of the Wampum Club. Luxmore 
 was not a general favourite there, his self- 
 confidence having hitherto been so vastly in 
 excess of his achievement. 
 
 But the Biblical picture that should have 
 nothing devotional in it, that should seem 
 as real as a shop window in the Strand, that 
 should at once appeal to the prevalent passion 
 and to what the public would mistake for 
 religious sentiment — that was the idea. 
 
 He would be realistic, without doubt, but 
 not in the pre-Raphaelite style, exploded 
 years ago. He would work in a much more 
 modern and distinctly Parisian method. 
 
 And in May his ' Jael and Sisera ' 
 appeared on the Academy walls. It occa- 
 sioned a perfect furore of enthusiasm 
 amongst many who ought to have known 
 better. His drawing was splendid indeed, 
 and his technique unimpeachable, or he 
 would never have dared what he had 
 attempted. 
 
 It was astonishing how beautiful his work
 
 CRANBERY MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE 263 
 
 appeared in the eyes of connoisseurs who 
 had condemned the nude when considered 
 simply as the nude ; but here they had 
 something of the sacred sort, and under 
 such circumstances scanty raiment did not 
 appear so immodest as in a work which was 
 merely unpretentious and pure. 
 
 Luxmore was himself a small man, but 
 the canvases upon w^hich he worked were of 
 Titanic dimensions. His Judiths, Susannas, 
 and Deborahs, were scarce of lower altitude 
 than the gigantic creations of Michael 
 Angelo. He painted mountains of flesh as 
 firm and ripe as Rubens' goddesses, and he 
 succeeded amazingly. He was abused by 
 some of the critics, no doubt, but all this 
 helped his fame. His natural impudence, 
 combined as it was with daring, and exceed- 
 ing cleverness and mastery of technique, did 
 wonders for him. 
 
 It was a strange sight to witness the 
 little man at work, truly. A pigmy manu- 
 facturing giants.
 
 364 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 Lord Cranbery was an intensely proper 
 young man, and on his first acquaintance 
 with it the fashionable artist's work shocked 
 him considerably. But then he was told, by 
 those who ought to know, that Luxmore 
 had created an entirely new school of de- 
 votional art — one which, in real feeling, was 
 to eclipse the Old Masters altogether. It 
 was impressed upon him that, in fact, he 
 was a sort of nineteenth-century Fra Lippo 
 Lippi. 
 
 Numbers of people were ready to say 
 these things, and if there were any who 
 hesitated, Luxmore helped them out. 
 
 ' I am bold to say 
 I can do with my pencil what I know, 
 What I see, what at the bottom of my heart 
 I wish for, if I ever wish so deep — 
 Do easily, too ; when I say perfectly, 
 I do not boast, perhaps. Yourself are judge.' 
 
 And so Cranbery was persuaded that the 
 new painter of Biblical subjects had been 
 born to revolutionize art, and to set it utterly 
 free from conventions and puerilities. 
 
 The artist had — for an artist — a keen eye
 
 CRANBERY MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE 265 
 
 to the main chance ; and although Lord 
 Cranbery was too poor to buy pictures, he 
 was always made welcome at the studio, 
 because he had a great deal of social in- 
 fluence, and knew^ intimately many persons 
 of wealth and culture, who would possibly 
 value his ojDinion upon a painter's merits at 
 a high figure. 
 
 Mr. Luxmore, in short, was a man of the 
 world, and weighed and measured his 
 friendships accordingly. 
 
 Personally he might have been taken for 
 a stockbroker of Hebraic origin, and would 
 probably have been rather flattered than 
 otherwise at the comparison. With such 
 men art is a trade, not an inspiration, and 
 they aim at looking like business men rather 
 than Bohemians. 
 
 On the occasion of one of his frequent 
 visits to Mr. Luxmore's studio Lord Cran- 
 bery came across an unusual specimen of 
 humanity, and one which greatly amused 
 and interested him. This was an American
 
 266 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS 
 
 whom the artist had known during his 
 Parisian days, and to whom he was in- 
 debted for several important patrons in the 
 States — before his new departure in art, 
 that is to say. 
 
 At the moment of Lord Cranbery's 
 entrance this gentleman had turned his 
 back upon Luxmore's latest canvas, and, 
 with his chair tilted back and his long lean 
 legs stretching in an upward direction, the 
 feet reposing on the mantelshelf — in perilous 
 proximity to an exquisite little French 
 statuette of a dancing nymph in gray 
 plaster — looked comfortably uncomfortable. 
 Luxmore was busily engaged in painting, 
 but now and again he cast uneasy glances 
 in the direction of the American, to assure 
 himself of the safety of his nymph. 
 
 The studio of the successful artist was — 
 like his pictures— upon a very large scale. 
 Luxmore had too keen a perception of the 
 artistic fitness of things to place his magni- 
 ficent Titans in a place that might serve to
 
 CRAXBER y MAKES AN A CQUA INTANCE 267 
 
 display the minute and delicate creations of 
 a Meissonier or a Taderaa. 
 
 Rents were high, and good studios rare, 
 in that quarter of Kensington ; but Luxmore 
 knew that it would be a fatal mistake in 
 him to study economy in that respect, and 
 therefore installed himself in one of the 
 biggest and handsomest rooms attainable. 
 
 Also, he knew exactly how, by the skilful 
 management of accessories, to enhance the 
 etfectiveness of his designs. Nothing that 
 taste and money could suggest was wanting 
 to make the beauty and grandeur of his 
 works more apparent. The decorations 
 were in exquisite taste, and of broad and 
 simple hues ; the draperies and curtains fell 
 in severe and massive folds. Here and there 
 the severity of the general effect was skil- 
 fully broken by the introduction of some 
 subtle touch of colour in a jar or bowl of 
 Oriental china, or the light glanced upon 
 some quaint piece of armour or trophy of 
 savage weapons.
 
 268 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 The studio was, in fact, a carefully 
 arranged and thought out sale-room. Yet 
 Zachary Luxmore was a humbug. He 
 worked hard, and loved his profession also. 
 One deep feeling, however, was pre-eminent 
 above his love of art. This was his care for 
 a certain little man called Zachary Luxmore, 
 and that little man's success in life. 
 
 Mr. Luxmore was essentially modern. 
 He had made a study of success, and 
 won it. 
 
 As he laid down his palette and brushes, 
 and came forward to greet Lord Cranbery, 
 he was a representative type of our popular 
 man — quick, eager, -volatile, self-assured, 
 self-asserting. He introduced the lounging 
 gentleman as Mr. Tidd of New York. Mr. 
 Tidd acknowledged the introduction by with- 
 drawing the cigarette from his mouth for an 
 instant, and bowing as gravely and majes- 
 tically as his position — which he made no 
 attempt to alter — would allow. 
 
 Then he carefully scanned from head to
 
 CRANBERY MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE 26^ 
 
 foot, with a pair of large, mournful brown 
 eyes, the young nobleman. Cranbery found 
 this scrutiny decidedly embarrassing. Mr. 
 Tidd — or Marc Aurelius Tidd, as he pre- 
 ferred to hear himself called — was a man 
 whose age it would have been difficult to 
 surmise, but who was as yet probably some- 
 where in his thirties. 
 
 In figure he was spare and loosely -jointed, 
 with an elongated, thin, and yet not un- 
 pleasing face, whose most striking character- 
 istic was its expression of resigned sadness. 
 Eyelids, nose, mouth, and moustache alike 
 appeared to droop under some indefinite 
 touch of sorrow, and the eyes never showed 
 a spark of gaiety or of humour, even whilst 
 their owner might be giving utterance to 
 the quaintest speeches, telling the most 
 humorous stories, or indulging in the 
 wildest flights of imagination. His tones 
 were habitually quiet and slow, and with 
 very little of the nasal twang about them. 
 But he was nevertheless unmistakably
 
 270 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 Transatlantic. His idioms were more pro- 
 nounced than his accent. 
 
 ' Seen the St. Dorothea V he asked Lord 
 Cranbery, with a backward gesture of the 
 head in the direction of Luxm ore's colossal 
 canvas. ' Good-looking young woman, don't 
 you think ? Way ahead of all those musty 
 old saints in the Louvre or the Vatican. 
 Tell Luxmore he might as well have called 
 -her Dolly, though. Not much of the saint 
 about her, to my way of thinking.' 
 
 * Come, come, Tidd, I can't allow you to 
 depreciate my picture,' protested the artist, 
 threatening the speaker with his mahl-stick. 
 The latter waved him aside with careless dis- 
 dain. 
 
 * Say, now, does it depreciate a picture 
 to state that it's like flesh and blood rather 
 than the stuff that dreams are made of? 
 Besides, it doesn't matter. You told me 
 once that Lord Cranbery wasn't a buyer.' 
 
 Lord Cranbery and Luxmore both laughed 
 outright at Mr. Tidd's blunt frankness.
 
 CRANBERY MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE 271 
 
 The conversation soon drifted away from 
 the pictures, fond as Mr. Luxmore usually 
 was of expatiating upon the merits of his 
 work. Lord Cranbery grew intensely inter- 
 ested and amused with his new acquaintance. 
 
 It was marvellous, the variety of expe- 
 riences that Mr. Tidd had encountered 
 during the course of his life. He had 
 evidently been a great traveller, had hunted 
 buffaloes and grizzlies in the Far West, been 
 through the Dark Continent after ivory and 
 lions, gone in heavily for pig-sticking and 
 tiger-hunting in India. He was a devotee 
 of perpetual motion. 
 
 And yet the first impression he conveyed 
 to strangers was one of an entirely opposite 
 character. He appeared as the most indo- 
 lent and lackadaisical of mortals, too lazy 
 even to grow excited over the recital of his 
 own adventures. To be sure, this impression 
 never lasted long. When it passed away it 
 left behind a conviction of intense restless- 
 ness and a dominating vitality.
 
 272 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 Even when Mr. Marc A. Tidd was 
 sleepily drawling out one of his wild, im- 
 probable, laughable stories, he made people 
 feel the presence of a brain intensely and 
 uncomfortably alive. The peculiarity of the 
 thing was that the personal magnetism of 
 the man was so potent that this restlessness 
 of his proved excessively contagious. A 
 spirit of adventure suddenly seized upon the 
 quietest and most home-loving people if he 
 long played the first part in any society. 
 
 Lord Cranbery wondered what could have 
 brought such a man to London. 
 
 ' Cities will have little attraction for you,' 
 he remarked curiously. ' You will want to 
 be off to the wilds again after a week or two 
 of London life, eh ?' 
 
 Mr. Tidd nodded. 
 
 ' I don't cotton to them much, I confess,' 
 he said, ' but I have a reason for staying in 
 town at present. Besides, there is my sister. 
 She told me to bring her to Europe, and I 
 obeyed. She's a good girl, is Celia, and
 
 CRANBERY MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE 273 
 
 stuck to the old folks as long as they lived. 
 I didn't ! Sometimes sorry for it now. 
 Selfish, like the rest of men, I reckon. 
 Thought they'd live for ever. They didn't.' 
 
 He stopped to flick the ash from his 
 cigarette, and then proceeded : 
 
 ' Celia says she wants to see the world. 
 I tell her it's all pretty much the same as 
 New York, but she declines to take my word 
 for it, and wants to see for herself. Toler- 
 ably good - looking girl, and clever, too. 
 Fancies she would like to marry into the 
 aristocracy. I advise her to be content 
 with a less expensive ambition, but she 
 doesn't take advice generally. Wanted 
 some gowns in Paris. I bought her the 
 gowns — six boxes full ; had to j^ay no end 
 
 for excess luggage — and now ' Here he 
 
 hesitated. 
 
 * Now you are going to indulge her other 
 fancy !' exclaimed the artist, with a queer 
 and unmirthful laugh. * By Jove ! how I 
 wish I had been born an aristocrat instead 
 
 VOL. I. 18 -
 
 274 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 of a poor dauber ! I would lay my title at 
 her feet without one moment's hesitation ! 
 Miss Tidd is an exceedingly charming girl, 
 I can assure you, Lord Cranbery, although 
 our friend's description would not lead you 
 to suppose so.' 
 
 * Yes ; she's a tolerably good-looking 
 girl,' reiterated Mr. Tidd slowly ; ^ but 
 I'm not going to buy her a husband, and 
 that's a fact. I think she'll manage to 
 please herself in that way if she chooses. 
 I don't lay much store on the aristocracy 
 myself — no offence to you. Lord Cranbery 
 — but if Celia sets her heart upon any mem- 
 ber of the British upper circles she'll manage 
 it somthow. That's Celia !' 
 
 Lord Cranbery did not approve of the 
 way in which the American spoke of his 
 sister's ambitions. There appeared to the 
 English gentleman some lack of delicacy in 
 this blunt avowal of the absent Celia's wishes, 
 especially as the remarks were addressed to 
 him. It is true that girls are bought and
 
 CRABBERY MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE 275 
 
 sold every day in the Babylonian slave-mart, 
 and, indeed, that men do not scorn to sell 
 their own good looks and social standing 
 to the highest bidder of the opposite sex. 
 But humbug is a great convenience, and 
 even a social necessity. Some superficial 
 glamour is generally thrown over these 
 transactions. Their baseness is not the 
 subject of such candid talk. 
 
 Lord Cranbery took his leave presently, 
 asking permission as he did so to come 
 again upon an early da}^, and to bring with 
 him his friend, the Marquis of Carabas, to 
 view the picture Luxmore w^as engaged 
 upon, which was to be sent abroad shortly, 
 as being a commission from a Russian prince. 
 
 A.S he spoke, the American started 
 slightly, seemed as though he would have 
 spoken, then, catching Luxmore's eye, re- 
 lapsed into a reverie from which the artist's 
 sharp tongue could scarcely rouse him. 
 
 The latter began ironically bewailing the 
 well-known fact that the visitor who had
 
 276 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS 
 
 just departed was engaged to his cousin, the 
 Lady Nora Challoner, daughter of the Duke 
 of Dundridge, because had this not been the 
 case he might possibly have suited Miss Tidd 
 in the capacity of husband. He was clever, 
 intellectual, and moral also. To be sure, he 
 was not very rich, but then Miss Celia's for- 
 tune would have been all the more welcome. 
 
 Beneath all this current of raillery a 
 tinge of bitterness could be detected. A 
 disinterested observer could not have failed 
 to surmise that some personal feeling 
 animated the artist, and that for some 
 reason not immediately apparent he resented 
 the lady's avowed ambition. But the 
 American did not choose to notice this. 
 
 ' Well, yes. Think he might have done 
 for Celia ? Seems harmless enough. 
 Looks bilious, though. Might pass for a 
 New Yorker in that respect,' drawled Mr. 
 Tidd unconcernedly. 
 
 Then all at once he seemed to become 
 awake.
 
 CRA NBER Y MAKES AN A COUAINTANCE 277 
 
 * Say, now, Luxmore, who was it he 
 asked leave to brino- here aloiisf with him ? 
 Not sure I caught the name correctly.' 
 
 ' The Marquis of Carabas. The Marquis 
 is one of our most promising young 
 politicians — one who would have made his 
 mark in the House of Commons had he not 
 been fortunate enough to become heir to a 
 marquisate. One of Cran's cousins — Lady 
 Ermyntrude — is to be married to the 
 Marquis at the close of the season. It is a 
 marriage that satisfies even the Duchess of 
 Dundridge's ambition, and it takes a good 
 deal to do that, I can assure you. You 
 appear familiar with the name. Do you 
 know the Marquis V 
 
 ' Well — yes ; I am tolerably familiar 
 with the name.' 
 
 ' And the man ?' asked Luxmore eagerly, 
 for with him curiosity was a ruling 
 passion. • 
 
 Mr. Marc A. Tidd looked at him in a 
 quiet and reflective manner before answering,
 
 278 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS 
 
 and a significant look dawned in his dark, 
 melancholy eyes. 
 
 * You think you scent a mystery or a 
 scandal, my friend/ he said coolly, yawning. 
 Then, rising and lifting his long lean arms 
 above his head in order to free them from 
 the effects of their constrained immovable- 
 ness : ^ Sorry that I can't oblige you with a 
 pretty little bit of something for the club. 
 Yes, I'm tolerably familiar with the name 
 of the Marquis of Carabas. Our journals 
 keep us up in all the doings of your peerage. 
 But the man — the man I know nothing of, 
 that's a fact.' 
 
 And with a brief adieu Mr. Tidd lounged 
 out of the studio to avoid further question- 
 ing. 
 
 While he lighted his cigar in the hall he 
 nodded his head emphatically once or twice. 
 * Well, yes,' he muttered, as though some 
 doubt were solved, ^ if things are as I 
 expect, I shall have to disturb the 
 equanimity of that noble Marquis, although
 
 CRANBERY MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE 279 
 
 I don't bear him any malice, seeing that I 
 don't know him even by sight. All the 
 same, I've come to England to find him, 
 and I guess I'll have to make him pretty 
 uncomfortable before I say adieu. But 
 there's no need to spoil matters by pre- 
 cipitation, and Friend Luxmore chatters like 
 a magpie and a blue jay rolled into one. 
 Things get into the society jDapers quickly 
 enough without my assistance, I surmise.' 
 
 END OF VOL. 1. 
 
 BU.I.INr; AND SONS, I'RINTKRS, GUILDFORD.
 
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