Lang Andrew
The Disentanglers
XI. ADVENTURE OF THE MISERLY MARQUIS
I. The Marquis consults Gray and Graham
Few men were, and perhaps no marquis was so unpopular as the Marquis of Restalrig, Logan’s maternal Scotch cousin, widely removed. He was the last of his family, in the direct line, and on his death almost all his vast wealth would go to nobody knew where. To be sure Logan himself would succeed to the title of Fastcastle, which descends to heirs general, but nothing worth having went with the title. Logan had only the most distant memory of seeing the marquis when he himself was a little boy, and the marquis gave him two sixpences. His relationship to his opulent though remote kinsman had been of no service to him in the struggle for social existence. It carried no ‘expectations,’ and did not afford the most shadowy basis for a post obit. There was no entail, the marquis could do as he liked with his own.
‘The Jews may have been credulous in the time of Horace,’ Logan said, ‘but now they insist on the most drastic evidence of prospective wealth. No, they won’t lend me a shekel.’
Events were to prove that other financial operators were better informed than the chosen people, though to be sure their belief was displayed in a manner at once grotesque and painfully embarrassing.
Why the marquis was generally disliked we might explain, historically, if we were acquainted with the tale of his infancy, early youth, and adolescence. Perhaps he had been betrayed in his affections, and was ‘taking it out’ of mankind in general. But this notion implies that the marquis once had some affections, a point not hitherto substantiated by any evidence. Perhaps heredity was to blame, some unhappy blend of parentage. An ancestor at an unknown period may have bequeathed to the marquis the elements of his unalluring character. But the only ancestor of marked temperament was the festive Logan of Restalrig, who conspired over his cups to kidnap a king, laid out his plot on the lines of an Italian novel, and died without being detected. This heroic ancestor admitted that he hated ‘arguments derived from religion,’ and, so far, the Marquis of Restalrig was quite with him, if the arguments bore on giving to the poor, or, indeed, to any one.
In fact the marquis was that unpopular character, a miser. Your miser may be looked up to, in a way, as an ideal votary of Mammon, but he is never loved. On his vast possessions, mainly in coal-fields, he was even more detested than the ordinary run of capitalists. The cottages and farmhouses on his estates were dilapidated and insanitary beyond what is endurable. Of his many mansions, some were kept in decent repair, because he drew many shillings from tourists admitted to view them. But his favourite abode was almost as ruinous as his cottages, and an artist in search of a model for the domestic interior of the Master of Ravenswood might have found what he wanted at Kirkburn, the usual lair of this avaricious nobleman. It was a keep of the sixteenth century, and looked as if it had never been papered or painted since Queen Mary’s time. But it was near the collieries; and within its blackened walls, and among its bleak fields and grimy trees, Lord Restalrig chose to live alone, with an old man and an old woman for his attendants. The woman had been his nurse; it was whispered in the district that she was also his illegal-aunt, or perhaps even, so to speak, his illegal stepmother. At all events, she endured more than anybody but a Scotch woman who had been his nurse in childhood would have tolerated. To keep her in his service saved him the cost of a pension, which even the marquis, people thought, could hardly refuse to allow her. The other old servitor was her husband, and entirely under her domination. Both might be reckoned staunch, in the old fashion, ‘to the name,’ which Logan only bore by accident, his grandmother having wedded a kinless Logan who had no demonstrable connection with the house of Restalrig. Any mortal but the marquis would probably have brought Logan up as his heir, for the churlish peer had no nearer connection. But the marquis did more than sympathise with the Roman emperor who quoted ‘after me the Last Day.’ The emperor only meant that, after his time, he did not care how soon earth and fire were mingled. The marquis, on the other hand, gave the impression that, he once out of the way, he ardently desired the destruction of the whole human race. He was not known ever to have consciously benefited man or woman. He screwed out what he might from everybody in his power, and made no returns which the law did not exact; even these, as far as the income tax went, he kept at the lowest figure possible.
Such was the distinguished personage whose card was handed to Merton one morning at the office. There had been no previous exchange of letters, according to the rules of the Society, and yet Merton could not suppose that the marquis wished to see him on any but business matters. ‘He wants to put a spoke in somebody’s wheel,’ thought Merton, ‘but whose?’
He hastily scrawled a note for Logan, who, as usual, was late, put it in an envelope, and sealed it. He wrote: ‘On no account come in. Explanation later! Then he gave the note to the office boy, impressed on him the necessity of placing it in Logan’s hands when he arrived, and told the boy to admit the visitor.
The marquis entered, clad in rusty black not unlike a Scotch peasant’s best raiment as worn at funerals. He held a dripping umbrella; his boots were muddy, his trousers had their frayed ends turned up. He wore a hard, cruel red face, with keen grey eyes beneath penthouses where age had touched the original tawny red with snow. Merton, bowing, took the umbrella and placed it in a stand.
‘You’ll not have any snuff?’ asked the marquis.
Trevor had placed a few enamelled snuff-boxes of the eighteenth century among the other costly bibelots in the rooms, and, by an unusual chance, one of them actually did contain what the marquis wanted. Merton opened it and handed it to the peer, who, after trying a pinch on his nostrils, poured a quantity into his hand and thence into a little black mull made of horn, which he took from his breast pocket. ‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘Better than I get at Kirkburn. You’ll know who I am?’ His accent was nearly as broad as that of one of his own hinds, and he sometimes used Scottish words, to Merton’s perplexity.
‘Every one has heard of the Marquis of Restalrig,’ said Merton.
‘Ay, and little to his good, I’ll be bound?’
‘I do not listen to gossip,’ said Merton. ‘I presume, though you have not addressed me by letter, that your visit is not unconnected with business?’
‘No, no, no letters! I never was wasteful in postage stamps. But as I was in London, to see the doctor, for the Edinburgh ones can make nothing of the case – a kind of dwawming – I looked in at auld Nicky Maxwell’s. She gave me a good character of you, and she is one to lippen to. And you make no charge for a first interview.’
Merton vaguely conjectured that to ‘lippen’ implied some sort of caress; however, he only said that he was obliged to Miss Maxwell for her kind estimate of his firm.
‘Gray and Graham, good Scots names. You’ll not be one of the Grahams of Netherby, though?’
‘The name of the firm is merely conventional, a trading title,’ said Merton; ‘if you want to know my name, there it is,’ and he handed his card to the marquis, who stared at it, and (apparently from motiveless acquisitiveness) put it into his pocket.
‘I don’t like an alias,’ he said. ‘But it seems you are to lippen to.’
From the context Merton now understood that the marquis probably wished to signify that he was to be trusted. So he bowed, and expressed a hope that he was ‘all that could be desired in the lippening way.’
‘You’re laughing at my Doric?’ asked the nobleman. ‘Well, in the only important way, it’s not at my expense. Ha! Ha!’ He shook a lumbering laugh out of himself.
Merton smiled – and was bored.
‘I’m come about stopping a marriage,’ said the marquis, at last arriving at business.
‘My experience is at your service,’ said Merton.
‘Well,’ went on the marquis, ‘ours is an old name.’
Merton remarked that, in the course of historical study, he had made himself acquainted with the achievements of the house.
‘Auld warld tales! But I wish I could tell where the treasure is that wily auld Logan quarrelled over with the wizard Laird of Merchistoun. Logan would not implement the contract – half profits. But my wits are wool gathering.’
He began to wander round the room, looking at the mezzotints. He stopped in front of one portrait, and said ‘My Aunt!’ Merton took this for an exclamation of astonishment, but later found that the lady (after Lawrence) really had been the great aunt of the marquis.
Merton conceived that the wits of his visitor were worse than ‘wool gathering,’ that he had ‘softening of the brain.’ But circumstances presently indicated that Lord Restalrig was actually suffering from a much less common disorder – softening of the heart.
He returned to his seat, and helped himself to snuff out of the enamelled gold box, on which Merton deemed it politic to keep a watchful eye.
‘Man, I’m sweir’ (reluctant) ‘to come to the point,’ said Lord Restalrig.
Merton erroneously understood him to mean that he was under oath or vow to come to the point, and showed a face of attention.
‘I’m not the man I was. The doctors don’t understand my case – they take awful fees – but I see they think ill of it. And that sets a body thinking. Have you a taste of brandy in the house?’
As the visitor’s weather-beaten ruddiness had changed to a ghastly ashen hue, rather bordering on the azure, Merton set forth the liqueur case, and drew a bottle of soda water.
‘No water,’ said the peer; ‘it’s just ma twal’ ours, an auld Scotch fashion,’ and he took without winking an orthodox dram of brandy. Then he looked at the silver tops of the flasks.
‘A good coat!’ he said. ‘Yours?’
Merton nodded.
‘Ye quarter the Douglas Heart. A good coat. Dod, I’ll speak plain. The name, Mr. Merton, when ye come to the end o’ the furrow, the name is all ye have left. We brought nothing into the world but the name, we take out nothing else. A sore dispensation. I’m not the man I was, not this two years. I must dispone, I know it well. Now the name, that I thought that I cared not an empty whistle for, is worn to a rag, but I cannot leave it in the mire. There’s just one that bears it, one Logan by name, and true Logan by the mother’s blood. The mother’s mother, my cousin, was a bonny lass.’
He paused; his enfeebled memory was wandering, no doubt, in scenes more vivid to him than those of yesterday.
Merton was now attentive indeed. The miserly marquis had become, to him, something other than a curious survival of times past. There was a chance for Logan, his friend, the last of the name, but Logan was firmly affianced to Miss Markham, of the cloak department at Madame Claudine’s. And the marquis, as he said, ‘had come about stopping a marriage,’ and Merton was to help him in stopping it, in disentangling Logan!
The old man aroused himself. ‘I have never seen the lad but once, when he was a bairn. But I’ve kept eyes on him. He has nothing, and since I came to London I hear that he has gone gyte, I mean – ye’ll not understand me – he is plighted to a long-legged shop-lass, the daughter of a ne’er-do-well Australian land-louper, a doctor. This must not be. Now I’ll speak plain to you, plainer than to Tod and Brock, my doers – ye call them lawyers. They did not make my will.’
Merton prevented himself, by an effort, from gasping. He kept a countenance of cold attention. But the marquis was coming to the point.
‘I have left all to the name, lands and rents, and mines, and money. But, unless the lad marries in his own rank, I’ll change my will. It’s in the hidie hole at Kirkburn, that Logan built to keep King Jamie in, when he caught him. But the fool Ruthvens marred that job, and got their kail through the reek. I’m wandering.’ He helped himself to another dram, and went on, ‘Ye see what I want, ye must stop that marriage.’
‘But,’ said Merton, ‘as you are so kindly disposed towards your kinsman, this Mr. Logan, may I ask whether it would not be wise to address him yourself, as the head of his house? He may, surely he will, listen to your objections.’
‘Ye do not know the Logans.’
Merton concealed his smile.
‘Camstairy deevils! It’s in the blood. Never once has he asked me for a pound, never noticed me by word or letter. Faith, I wish all the world had been as considerate to auld Restalrig! For me to say a word, let be to make an offer, would just tie him faster to the lass. “Tyne troth, tyne a’,” that is the old bye-word.’
Merton recognised his friend in this description, but he merely shook a sympathetic head. ‘Very unusual,’ he remarked. ‘You really have no hope by this method?’
‘None at all, or I would not be here on this daft ploy. There’s no fool like an auld fool, and, faith, I hardly know the man I was. But they cannot dispute the will. I drew doctors to witness that I was of sound and disponing mind, and I’ve since been thrice to kirk and market. Lord, how they stared to see auld Restalrig in his pew, that had not smelt appleringie these forty years.’
Merton noted these words, which he thought curious and obscure. ‘Your case interests me deeply,’ he said, ‘and shall receive my very best attention. You perceive, of course, that it is a difficult case, Mr. Logan’s character and tenacity being what you describe. I must make careful inquiries, and shall inform you of progress. You wish to see this engagement ended?’
‘And the lad on with a lass of his rank,’ said the marquis.
‘Probably that will follow quickly on the close of his present affection. It usually does in our experience,’ said Merton, adding, ‘Am I to write to you at your London address?’
‘No, sir; these London hotels would ruin the cunzie’ (the Mint).
Merton wondered whether the Cunzie was the title of some wealthy Scotch peer.
‘And I’m off for Kirkburn by the night express. Here’s wishing luck,’ and the old sinner finished the brandy.
‘May I call a cab for you – it still rains?’
‘No, no, I’ll travel,’ by which the economical peer meant that he would walk.
He then shook Merton by the hand, and hobbled downstairs attended by his adviser.
‘Did Mr. Logan call?’ Merton asked the office boy when the marquis had trotted off.
‘Yes, sir; he said you would find him at the club.’
‘Call a hansom,’ said Merton, ‘and put up the notice, “out.”’ He drove to the club, where he found Logan ordering luncheon.
‘Hullo, shall we lunch together?’ Logan asked.
‘Not yet: I want to speak to you.’
‘Nothing gone wrong? Why did you shut me out of the office?’
‘Where can we talk without being disturbed?’
‘Try the smoking-room on the top storey,’ said Logan, ‘Nobody will have climbed so high so early.’
They made the ascent, and found the room vacant: the windows looked out over swirling smoke and trees tossing in a wind of early spring.
‘Quiet enough,’ said Logan, taking an arm-chair. ‘Now out with it! You make me quite nervous.’
‘A client has come with what looks a promising piece of business. We are to disentangle – ’
‘A royal duke?’
‘No. You!’
‘A practical joke,’ said Logan. ‘Somebody pulling your leg, as people say, a most idiotic way of speaking. What sort of client was he, or she? We’ll be even with them.’
‘The client’s card is here,’ said Merton, and he handed to Logan that of the Marquis of Restalrig.
‘You never saw him before; are you sure it was the man?’ asked Logan, staggered in his scepticism.
‘A very good imitation. Dressed like a farmer at a funeral. Talked like all the kailyards. Snuffed, and asked for brandy, and went and came, walking, in this weather.’
‘By Jove, it is my venerated cousin. And he had heard about me and Miss – ’
‘He was quite well informed.’
Logan looked very grave. He rose and stared out of the window into the mist. Then he came back, and stood beside Merton’s chair. He spoke in a low voice:
‘This can only mean one thing.’
‘Only that one thing,’ said Merton, dropping his own voice.
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him that his best plan, as the head of the house, was to approach you himself.’
‘And he said?’
‘That it was of no use, and that I do not know the Logans.’
‘But you do?’
‘I think so.’
‘You think right. No, not for all his lands and mines I won’t.’
‘Not for the name?’
‘Not for the kingdoms of the earth,’ said Logan.
‘It is a great refusal.’
‘I have really no temptation to accept,’ said Logan. ‘I am not built that way. So what next? If the old boy could only see her – ’
‘I doubt if that would do any good, though, of course, if I were you I should think so. He goes north to-night. You can’t take the lady to Kirkburn. And you can’t write to him.’
‘Of course not,’ said Logan; ‘of course it would be all up if he knew that I know.’
‘There is this to be said – it is not a very pleasant view to take – he can’t live long. He came to see some London specialist – it is his heart, I think – ’
‘His heart!
How Fortune aristophanises
And how severe the fun of Fate!’
quoted Logan.
‘The odd thing is,’ said Merton, ‘that I do believe he has a heart. I rather like him. At all events, I think, from what I saw, that a sudden start might set him off at any moment, or an unusual exertion. And he may go off before I tell him that I can do nothing with you – ’
‘Oh, hang that,’ said Logan, ‘you make me feel like a beastly assassin!’
‘I only want you to understand how the land lies.’ Merton dropped his voice again, ‘He has made a will leaving you everything.’
‘Poor old cock! Look here, I believe I had better write, and say that I’m awfully touched and obliged, but that I can’t come into his views, or break my word, and then, you know, he can just make another will. It would be a swindle to let him die, and come into his property, and then go dead against his wishes.’
‘But it would be all right to give me away, I suppose, and let him understand that I had violated professional confidence?’
‘Only with a member of the firm. That is no violation.’
‘But then I should have told him that you were a member of the firm.’
‘I’m afraid you should.’
‘Logan, you have the ideas of a schoolboy. I had to be certain as to how you would take it, though, of course, I had a very good guess. And as to what you say about the chances of his dying and leaving everything where he would not have left it if he had been sure you would act against his wishes – I believe you are wrong. What he really cares about is “the name.” His ghost will put up with your disobedience if the name keeps its old place. Do you see?’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Logan.
‘Anyhow, there is no such pressing hurry. One may bring him round with time. A curious old survival! I did not understand all that he said. There was something about having been thrice at kirk and market since he made his will; and something about not having smelled appleringie for forty years. What is appleringie?’
Logan laughed.
‘It is a sacred Presbyterian herb. The people keep it in their Bibles and it perfumes the churches. But look here – ’
He was interrupted by the entrance of a page, who handed to him a letter. Logan read it and laughed. ‘I knew it; they are sharp!’ he said, and handed the letter to Merton. It was from a famous, or infamous, money-lender, offering princely accommodation on terms which Mr. Logan would find easy and reasonable.
‘They have nosed the appleringie, you see,’ he said.
‘But I don’t see,’ said Merton.
‘Why the hounds have heard that the old nobleman has been thrice to kirk lately. And as he had not been there for forty years, they have guessed that he has been making his will. Scots law has, or used to have, something in it about going thrice to kirk and market after making a will – disponing they call it – as a proof of bodily and mental soundness. So they have spotted the marquis’s pious motives for kirk-going, and guessed that I am his heir. I say – ’ Logan began to laugh wildly.
‘What do you say?’ asked Merton, but Logan went on hooting.
‘I say,’ he repeated, ‘it must never be known that the old lord came to consult us,’ and here he was again convulsed.
‘Of course not,’ said Merton. ‘But where is the joke?’
‘Why, don’t you see – oh, it is too good – he has taken every kind of precaution to establish his sanity when he made his will.’
‘He told me that he had got expert evidence,’ said Merton.
‘And then he comes and consults US!’ said Logan, with a crow of laughter. ‘If any fellow wants to break the will on the score of insanity, and knows, knows he came to us, a jury, when they find he consulted us, will jolly well upset the cart.’ Merton was hurt.
‘Logan,’ he said, ‘it is you who ought to be in an asylum, an Asylum for Incurable Children. Don’t you see that he made the will long before he took the very natural and proper step of consulting Messrs. Gray and Graham?’
‘Let us pray that, if there is a suit, it won’t come before a Scotch jury,’ said Logan. ‘Anyhow, nobody knows that he came except you and me.’
‘And the office boy,’ said Merton.
‘Oh, we’ll square the office boy,’ said Logan. ‘Let’s lunch!’
They lunched, and Logan, as was natural, though Merton urged him to abstain, hung about the doors of Madame Claudine’s emporium at the hour when the young ladies returned to their homes. He walked home with Miss Markham. He told her about his chances, and his views, and no doubt she did not think him a person of schoolboy ideas, but a Bayard.
Two days passed, and in the afternoon of the third a telegram arrived for Logan from Kirkburn.
‘Come at once, Marquis very ill. Dr. Douglas, Kirkburn.’
There was no express train North till 8.45 in the evening. Merton dined with Logan at King’s Cross, and saw him off. He would reach his cousin’s house at about six in the morning if the train kept time.
About nine o’clock on the morning following Logan’s arrival at Kirkburn Merton was awakened: the servant handed to him a telegram.
‘Come instantly. Highly important. Logan, Kirkburn.’
Merton dressed himself more rapidly than he had ever done, and caught the train leaving King’s Cross at 10 a.m.
