CHAPTER III
AND NOW ALMOST LIKE A DREAM
Everything went on just as convention--whose mouth-piece for themoment happened to be Lady Ryder--desired; just as Louisa surmisedthat everything would; the letters of congratulations; the statelyvisits from and to Lord Radclyffe, Luke's uncle; the magnificentdiamond tiara from the latter; the rope of pearls from Luke; thesilver salvers and inkstands and enamel parasol handles from everybodywho was anybody in London society.
Louisa's portrait and that of Luke hastily and cheaply reproduced inthe halfpenny dailies, so that she looked like a white negress with acast in her eye, and he like the mutilated hero of _L'Homme Qui Rit_;the more elegant half-tone blocks in the sixpenny weeklies under thepopular if somewhat hackneyed heading of "The Earl of Radclyffe's heirand his future bride, Miss Louisa Harris"; it was all there, just asit had been for hundreds of other girls and hundreds of other youngmen before Louisa had discovered that there was only one man in thewhole wide world, and that, beyond the land of diamond tiaras and ofsociety weddings, there was a fairy universe, immense and illimitable,whereon the sun of happiness never set and whither no one daredventure alone, only hand in hand with that other being, the futuremate, the pupil and teacher of love, the only one that mattered.
And the wedding was to be in four weeks from this day. The invitationswere not out yet, for Louisa, closely pressed by Luke, had only justmade up her mind half an hour ago about the date. Strangely enough shehad been in no hurry for the wedding day to come. Luke had been soanxious, so crestfallen when she put him off with vague promises, thatshe herself could not account for this strange reticence withinher--so unworthy a level-headed, conventional woman of the world.
But the outer lobby of the fairy universe was surpassingly beautiful,and though the golden gates to the inner halls beyond were ajar andwould yield to the slightest pressure of Louisa's slender fingers, yetshe was glad to tarry awhile longer. Were they not hand in hand? Whatmattered waiting since eternity called beyond those golden gates?
This morning, however, convention--still voiced by Lady Ryder--wasmore vigorous than was consistent with outward peace. Louisa, worriedby aunt, and with the memory of Luke's expression of misery anddisappointment when last night she had again refused to fix thewedding day, chided herself for her silly fancies, and at eleveno'clock set out for a stroll in Battersea Park, her mind made up, herunwonted fit of sentimentality smothered by the louder voice ofcommon-sense.
She and Luke always took their walks abroad in Battersea Park. In themorning hours they were free there from perpetual meetings withundesired company--all outside company being undesirable in the lobbyof the fairy universe. Louisa had promised to meet Luke in thetropical garden at half-past eleven. She was always punctual, and healways before his time; she smart and businesslike in her neat,tailor-made gown and close hat which defied wind and rain, he always alittle shamefaced when he took her neatly gloved hand in his, as mostEnglish young men are apt to be when sentiment for the first timehappens to overmaster them.
To-day she saw him coming toward her just the same as on other days.He walked just as briskly and held himself as erect as he always did,but the moment that he was near enough for her to see his face sheknew that there was something very wrong in the world and with him.Some one from the world of eternity beyond had seen fit to push thegolden gates closer together, so that now they would not yield quiteso easily to the soft pressure of a woman's hand.
"What is it, Luke?" she asked very quietly, as soon as her fingersrested safely between his.
"What is what?" he rejoined foolishly and speaking like a child, andwith a forced, almost inane-looking, smile on his lips.
"What has happened?" she reiterated more impatiently.
"Nothing," he replied, "that need worry you, I think. Shall we sitdown here? You won't catch cold?" and he indicated a seat wellsheltered against the cold breeze and the impertinent gaze of thepassers-by.
"I never catch cold," said Louisa, smiling in spite of herself atLuke's funny, awkward ways. "But we won't sit down. Let us stroll upand down, shall we? You can talk better then, and tell me all aboutit."
"There's not much to tell at present. And no occasion to worry."
"There's nothing that worries me so much as your shilly-shallying,Luke, or the thought that you are making futile endeavours to keepsomething from me," she retorted almost irritably this time, for,strangely enough, her nerves--she never knew before this that she hadany--were slightly on the jar this morning.
"I don't want to shilly-shally, little girl," he replied gently, "norto keep anything from you. There, will you put your hand on my arm?'Arry and 'Arriet, eh? Well! never mind. There's no one to see."
He took her hand--that neatly gloved, small hand of hers--and put itunder his arm. For one moment it seemed as if he would kiss that tinyand tantalizing place just below the thumb where the pink palm showsin the opening of the glove. Luke was not a demonstrative lover, hewas shy and English and abrupt; but this morning--was it the breath ofspring in the air, the scent of the Roman hyacinths in that bed overthere, or merely the shadow of a tiny cloud on the uniform blue of hislife's horizon that gave a certain rugged softness to his touch, ashis hand lingered over that neat glove which nestled securely in amongthe folds of his coat sleeve?
"Now," she said simply.
"Have you," he asked with abrupt irrelevance, "read your paper allthrough this morning?"
"Not all through. Only the important headlines."
"And you saw nothing about a claim to a peerage?"
"Nothing."
"Well! that's all about it. A man has sprung up from nowhere inparticular, who claims to be my uncle Arthur's son, and, therefore,heir presumptive to the title and all."
Luke heaved a deep sigh, as if with this brief if ungrammaticalstatement, his own heart had been unburdened of a tiresome load.
"Your uncle Arthur?" she repeated somewhat bewildered.
"Yes. You never knew him, did you?"
"No," she said, "I never knew him, though as a baby I must have seenhim. I was only three, I think, when he died. But I never heard thathe had been married. I am sure father never knew."
"Nor did I, nor did Uncle Rad, nor any of us. The whole thing iseither a thunderbolt or . . . an imposture."
"Tell me," she said, "a little more clearly, Luke dear, will you? I amfeeling quite muddled." And now it was she who led the way to theisolated seat beneath that group of silver birch, whose baby leavestrembled beneath the rough kiss of the cool April breeze.
They sat down together and on the gravelled path in front of them arobin hopped half shyly, half impertinently, about and gazed withtiny, inquisitive eyes on the doings of these big folk. All aroundthem the twitter of bird throats filled the air with its magic, itshymn to the reawakened earth, and drowned in this pleasing solitudethe distant sounds of the busy city that seemed so far away from thissecluded nook inhabited by birds and flowers, and by two dwellers inFata Morgana's land.
"Tell me first," said Louisa, in her most prosy, most matter of facttone of voice, "all that is known about your uncle Arthur."
"Well, up to now, I individually knew very little about him. He wasthe next eldest brother to Uncle Rad, and my father was the youngestof all. When Uncle Rad succeeded to the title, Arthur washeir-presumptive of course. But as you know he died--as was supposedunmarried--nineteen years ago, and my poor dear father was killed inthe hunting field the following year. I was a mere kid then and theothers were babies--orphans the lot of us. My mother died when Edithwas born. Uncle Rad was said to be a confirmed bachelor. He took usall to live with him and was father, mother, elder brother, eldersister to us all. Bless him!"
Luke paused abruptly, and Louisa too was silent. Only the song of athrush soaring upward to the skies called for that blessing whichneither of them at that moment could adequately evoke.
"Yes," said Louisa at last, "I knew all that."
Lord Radclyffe and his people were all of the same wo
rld as herself.She knew all about the present man's touching affection for thechildren of his youngest brother, but more especially for Luke on whomhe bestowed an amount of love and tender care which would have shamedmany a father by its unselfish intensity. That affection was abeautiful trait in an otherwise not very lovable character.
"I daresay," resumed Luke after a little while, "that I have beenbadly brought up. I mean in this way, that if--if the whole story istrue--if Uncle Arthur did marry and did have a son, then I should haveto go and shift for myself and for Jim and Frank and Edith. Of courseUncle Rad would do what he could for us, but I should no longer be hisheir--and we couldn't go on living at Grosvenor Square and----"
"Aren't you rambling on a little too fast, dear?" said Louisa gently,whilst she beamed with an almost motherly smile--the smile that awoman wears when she means to pacify and to comfort--on the troubledface of the young man.
"Of course I am," he replied more calmly, "but I can't help it. Forsome days now I've had a sort of feeling that something was going tohappen--that--well, that things weren't going to go right. And thismorning when I got up, I made up my mind that I would tell you."
"When did you hear first, and from whom?"
"The first thing we heard was last autumn. There came a letter fromabroad for Uncle Rad. It hadn't the private mark on it, so Mr. Warrenopened it along with the rest of the correspondence. He showed it tome. The letter was signed Philip de Mountford, and began, 'My dearuncle.' I couldn't make head or tail of it; I thought it all twaddle.You've no idea what sort of letters Uncle Rad gets sometimes fromevery kind of lunatic or scoundrel you can think of, who wants to getsomething out of him. Well, this letter at first looked to me the samesort of thing. I had never heard of any one who had the right to say'dear uncle' to Uncle Rad--but it had a lot in it about blood beingthicker than water and all the rest of it, with a kind of request forjustice and talk about the cruelty of Fate. The writer, however,asserted positively that he was the only legitimate son of Mr. Arthurde Mountford, who--this he professed to have only heard recently--wasown brother to the earl of Radclyffe. The story which he went on torelate at full length was queer enough in all conscience. I rememberevery word of it, for it seemed to get right away into my brain, thenand there, as if something was being hammered or screwed straightinto one of the cells of my memory never really to come out again."
"And yet when--when we were first engaged," rejoined Louisa quietly,"you never told me anything about it."
"I'll tell you directly how that was. I remembered and then forgot--ifyou know what I mean--and now it has all come back. At the time Ithought the letter of this man who called himself Philip de Mountfordnothing but humbug. So did Mr. Warren, and yet he and I talked it overand discussed it between us for ever so long. It all sounded sostrange. Uncle Arthur--so this man said who called himself Philip deMountford--had married in Martinique a half-caste girl named AdelinePetit, who was this same Philip's mother. He declares that he has allthe papers--marriage certificates or whatever they are called--toprove every word he says. He did not want to trouble his uncle much,only now that his mother was dead, he felt all alone in the world andlonged for the companionship and affection of his own kith and kin.All he wanted he said, was friendship. Then he went on to say that ofcourse he did not expect his lordship to take his word for all this,he only asked for an opportunity to show his dear uncle all the papersand other proofs which he held that he was in real and sober truth theonly legitimate son of Mr. Arthur de Mountford, own brother to hislordship."
"How old is this man--this Philip de Mountford--supposed to be?"
"Well, he said in that first letter that the marriage took place inthe parish church of St. Pierre in Martinique on the 28th of August,1881; that he himself was born the following year, and christened inthe same church under the name of Philip Arthur, and registered asthe son of Mr. Arthur Collingwood de Mountford of Ford's Mount in thecounty of Northampton, England, and of Adeline de Mountford, neePetit, his wife."
"Twenty-four years ago," said Louisa thoughtfully, "and he only claimskinship with Lord Radclyffe now?"
"That's just," rejoined Luke, "where the curious part of the storycomes in. This Philip de Mountford--I don't know how else to callhim--said in his first letter that his mother never knew that Mr.Arthur de Mountford was anything more than a private English gentlemantravelling either for profit or pleasure, but in any case notpossessed of either wealth or social position. Between you and me,dear, I suppose that this Adeline Petit was just a half-caste girl,without much knowledge of what goes on in the world, and why sheshould have married Uncle Arthur I can't think."
"If she did marry him, you mean."
"If she did marry him, as you say," said Luke with a singular want ofconviction, which Louisa was not slow to remark.
"You think that this young man's story is true then?"
"I don't know what to think, and that's the truth."
"Tell me more," added Louisa simply.
"Well, this Philip's story goes on to say that his father--UncleArthur--apparently soon tired of his exotic wife, for it seems thattwo years after the marriage he left Martinique and never returned toit to the day of his death."
"Pardon," said Louisa in her prim little way, "my interrupting you:but have any of you--Lord Radclyffe I mean, or any of yourfriends--any recollection of your uncle Arthur living at Martiniquefor awhile? Two years seems a long time----"
"As a matter of fact, Uncle Arthur was a bit of a wastrel you know. Henever would study for anything. He passed into the navy--very well,too, I believe--but he threw it all up almost as soon as he got hiscommission, and started roaming about the world. I do know for a factthat once his people had no news of him for about three or four years,and then he turned up one fine day as if he had only been absent for aweek's shooting."
"When was that?"
"I can't tell you exactly. I was only a tiny kid at the time, not morethan three years old I should say. Yes, I do remember, now I come tothink of it, that Uncle Arthur was home the Christmas after my thirdbirthday. I have a distinct recollection of my dad telling me thatUncle Arthur was one of my presents from Father Christmas, and of mythinking what a rotten present it was. Later on in the nursery all ofus children were rather frightened of him, and we used to have greatdiscussions as to where this uncle came from. The Christmas presenttheory was soon exploded, because of some difficulty about UncleArthur not having been actually found in a stocking, and his being toobig anyway to be hidden in one, so we fell back on Jim's suggestionthat he was the man in the moon come down for a holiday."
"You," she said, "had your third birthday in 1883."
"Yes."
"That was the year, then, that your uncle Arthur came home from hiswanderings about the world, during which he had never given any newsof himself or his doings to any member of his family."
"By Jove, Lou, what a splendid examining magistrate you'd make!" wasLuke's unsophisticated comment on Louisa's last remark.
But she frowned a little at this show of levity, and continuedquietly:
"And your uncle, according to this so-called Philip de Mountford, wasmarried in 1881 in Martinique, his son was born in 1882, and he leftMartinique in 1883 never to return."
"Hang it all, Lou!" exclaimed the young man almost roughly, "that isall surmise."
"I know it is, dear; I was only thinking."
"Thinking what?"
"That it all tallies so very exactly and that this--this Philip deMountford seems in any case to know a great deal about your UncleArthur, and his movements in the past."
"There's no doubt of that; and----"
Luke paused a moment and a curious blush spread over his face. TheEnglishman's inborn dislike to talk of certain subjects to his womenfolk had got hold of him, and he did not know how to proceed.
As usual in such cases the woman--unmoved and businesslike--put an endto his access of shyness.
"The matter is--or may be--too serious, dear, for you to keep any
ofyour thoughts back from me at this juncture."
"What I meant was," he said abruptly, "that this Philip might quitewell be Uncle Arthur's son you know; but it doesn't follow that he hasany right to call himself Philip de Mountford, or to think that he isUncle Rad's presumptive heir."
"That will of course depend on his proofs--his papers and so on," sheassented calmly. "Has any one seen them?"
"At the time--it was sometime last November--that he first wrote toUncle Rad, he had all his papers by him. He wrote from St. Vincent;have I told you that?"
"No."
"Well, it was from St. Vincent that he wrote. He had left Martinique,I understand, in 1902, when St. Pierre, if you remember, was totallydestroyed by volcanic eruption. It seems that when Uncle Arthur leftthe French colony for good, he lodged quite a comfortable sum in thelocal bank at St. Pierre in the name of Mrs. de Mountford. Of coursehe had no intention of ever going back there, and anyhow he never did,for he died about three years later. The lady went on living her ownlife quite happily. Apparently she did not hanker much after herfaithless husband. I suppose that she never imagined for a moment thathe meant to stick to her, and she certainly never bothered her head asto what his connections or friends over in England might be. Amongsther own kith and kin, the half-caste population of a Frenchsettlement, she was considered very well off, almost rich. After avery few years of grass-widowhood, she married again, without muchscruple or compunction, which proves that she never thought that herEnglish husband would come back to her. And then came thecatastrophe."
"What catastrophe?"
"The destruction of St. Pierre. You remember the awful accounts of it.The whole town was destroyed. Every building in the place--the localbank, the church, the presbytery, the post-office--was burned to theground; everything was devastated for miles around. And thousandsperished, of course."
"I remember."
"Mrs. de Mountford and her son Philip were amongst the very few whoescaped. Their cottage was burned to the ground, but she, with all aFrenchwoman's sense of respect for papers and marks of identification,fought her way back into the house, even when it was tottering aboveher head, in order to rescue those things which she valued more thanher life, the proofs that she was a respectable married woman and thatPhilip was her lawfully begotten son. Her second husband--I think fromreading between the lines that he was a native or at best ahalf-caste--was one of the many who perished. But Mrs. de Mountfordand Philip managed to reach the coast unhurt and to put out to sea inan open boat. They were picked up by a fishing smack from MarieGalante and landed there. It is a small island--French settlement, ofcourse--off Guadeloupe. They had little or no money, and how theylived I don't know, but they stayed in Marie Galante for some time.Then the mother died, and Philip made his way somehow or other toRoseau in Dominica and thence to St. Vincent."
"When was that?"
"Last year I suppose."
"And," she said, meditating on all that she had heard, "it was in St.Vincent that he first realized who he was--or might be?"
"Well, in a British colony it was bound to happen. Whether somebodyput him up to it out there, or whether he merely sucked theinformation in from nowhere in particular, I can't say: certain it isthat he did soon discover that the name he bore was one of the bestknown in England, and that his father must, as a matter of fact, havebeen own brother to the earl of Radclyffe. So he wrote to Uncle Rad."
Louisa was silent. She was absorbed in thought and for the moment Lukehad come to the end of what he had to say--or, rather, of what hemeant to say just now. That there was more to come, Louisa well knew.Commonplace women have a way of intuitively getting at the bottom ofthe thoughts of people for whom they care. Louisa guessed that beneathLuke's levity and his school-boyish slang--which grew more apparent asthe man drew to the end of his narrative--that beneath his outwardflippancy there lay a deep substratum of puzzlement and anxiety.
The story as told by Luke sounded crude enough, almost melodramatic,right out of the commonplace range of Louisa's usual every-day life.Whilst she sat listening to this exotic tale of secret and incongruousmarriage and of those earthquakes and volcanic eruptions which hadseemed so remote when she had read about them nine years ago in thenewspapers, she almost thought that she must be dreaming; that shewould wake up presently in her bed at the Langham Hotel where she wasstaying with aunt, and that she would then dress and have herbreakfast and go out to meet Luke, and tell him all about the idioticdream she had had about an unknown heir to the Earldom of Radclyffe,who was a negro--or almost so--and was born in a country where therewere volcanoes and earthquakes.
How far removed from her at this moment did aunt seem, and father, andthe twins! Surely they could not be of the same world as this exoticpretender to Uncle Radclyffe's affection, and to Luke's hithertoundisputed rights. And as father and aunt and Mabel and Chris werevery much alive and very real, then this so-called Philip de Mountfordmust be a creature of dreams.
"Or else an imposter."
She had said this aloud, thus breaking in on her own thoughts and his.A feeling of restlessness seized her now. She was cold, too, for theApril breeze was biting and had searched out the back of her neckunderneath the sable stole and caused her to shiver in the springsunshine.
"Let us walk," she said, "a little--shall we?"