Ричард Марш
The Twickenham Peerage

Children have a pleasant habit of bawling. But I don't think I was ever so struck by it as I was then. I was after him like a shot.

'Here, I say. You mustn't make that noise!'

I might as well have talked to the wall. When he'd got a thing to mention he was bound to mention it-at the top of his voice.

'I'm playing hide-and-seek with Pollie, and she won't know where I am. Pollie! Pollie! Here's dad!'

I had to throw him up in the air before he'd stop. By then it was too late. Tearing down the stairs came Pollie, my heart in my mouth for fear she'd tumble, and if I'd shut the door in her face she'd have dashed herself against it. I had to let her in, and shut the door behind her when she was in, and hope that there was nobody about with long ears and sharp wits.

'Allow me to ask what you young persons mean by behaving in this extraordinary manner; for whom do you take me?'

'You're dad! dad! dad!'

There they were, bouncing about me like two indiarubber balls. They still thought I was playing the game. The worst of it was, I almost felt as if I was, myself. I could hardly keep my countenance, in spite of the stake which was dependent on it.

'Pray may I inquire why you call me dad?'

'Tause you are!' cried Pollie. 'Give me a tiss!'

I picked up the small bundle of girl and kissed her; till her laughter might have been heard on the other side of the square. While I was still engaged in this operation the door was opened again. When I turned to see who might be this fresh disturber of my privacy, there was Mary.

Then I knew the fat was in the fire. This was quite a different kettle of fish. Playing the fool with those two children was one thing. Admitting myself to be Mr. James Merrett, after my repudiation of Mr. Montagu Babbacombe, was altogether another. I hadn't time to consider; to ask myself what was the meaning of her presence there. It was a case of act first and think afterwards. That was what I did.

A smile lit up her face when she saw me standing there with Pollie in my arms. With the prettiest cry she came towards me, holding out both her hands. There never was a lovelier woman in this world than my Mary; nor a better shaped. And her movements are in keeping. I'm keen on grace in a woman. If there's anything more graceful than she is, whether she sits, or stands, or moves, it's in a picture. I'll swear it isn't flesh and blood. As she came, with her arms stretched towards me, I thought that I'd never seen her looking better.

'James!'

I'd have given a trifle to have been able to take her in my arms. But I didn't dare. I drew back-civility itself.

'I beg your pardon?'

She came closer.

'James!'

'I think there must be some mistake.'

When I said that, her arms dropped to her sides; the smile vanished; her face went white. It hurt me to see how she changed. I asked myself if there was any game going in which the stakes were worth all this.

'Don't you-don't you know me, James? I'm-I'm Mary.'

'Mary?' How the very name rang in my heart as I repeated it. 'I'm afraid I'm hardly entitled to address a stranger by her Christian name.'

'A stranger? I'm-I'm your wife.'

'My wife?' Lord! how glad I was to know it. Never man had one so good. 'I'm afraid that, unlike many men who are more fortunate, that's an article I don't possess.'

I could see that she pressed her finger-tips into her palms. I had never seen her look more lovely than she did then, in her bewilderment and distress. My heart cried out to me to take her and to hold her fast. But I didn't dare.

'What does it mean? You know my children, and you don't know me?'

'Your children?' I was still holding Pollie. On this I put her down. 'This young lady and gentlemen address me as dad, but I fear that that is an honourable appellation to which I have no title. There would seem to be a singular confusion. It appears that there must be some one in existence who has an uncomfortable resemblance to myself. Already this morning my identity has been mistaken. I was addressed as Mr. – really at the moment I forget the name, it was rather an uncommon one, something like-Babbincombe.'

'Do you deny me, James?'

'I don't see, madam, how I can be said to deny you when this is the first time I have had the pleasure of encountering your charming personality. Nor is my name James. I am the Marquis of Twickenham.'

'Daddy, I want to have a game with you.'

This was that rascal, Jimmy. I'm sure I was quite as ready for a game as he was. Only at that particular second I didn't altogether see my way. Mary caught at his words, with a sort of sob, which brought a lump into my throat.

'He knows his father!'

'They say it's a wise child which knows its own father. It would seem, madam, that your little boy is not overstocked with the quality which King Solomon so ardently desired. You seem to take this matter somewhat to heart. It is the humorous side of it which appeals to me. Suppose I had taken advantage of your innocent misapprehension, what a vista of tragedy suggests itself! I think that when you return home you will probably find that your husband is awaiting you. And it is then that the humorous side of the situation will appeal to you.'

'I don't understand! I don't understand!'

'Nor I. I have been away from home for something like fifteen years, and have returned to find there are two or three things which I don't understand. I am taken for a ghost by some; for a Mr. Babbington, or some such person, by some one else; for their father by those two dear little children; and for her husband by the most charming lady I have had the honour of meeting. You will allow, madam, that these circumstances present a concatenation of misunderstandings which are not unlikely to confuse the rather befogged brains of a wayfarer who has so recently returned to the purlieus of civilisation.'

I was beginning to believe that I had brought off the greatest feat which I had ever yet essayed-I had almost persuaded Mary that I wasn't me. She certainly couldn't depose on oath that either voice, manner, or language was her husband's. It was, of course, impossible to convince her altogether; at least, as she stood before me there and then. That I recognised. Complete conviction would require time and-well, we'll say other circumstances. But I had managed to shake her faith-to instil a doubt in her mind as to whether she mightn't, in some altogether incomprehensible way, be wrong. I knew my Mary. She was one of those not infrequent persons who are bewildered by an appearance of calm assurance. You had only to tell her, with an air which suggested that you were stating the merest commonplace, that two and two make five, and if you persisted long enough she'd begin to wonder if the thing could possibly be. When she began to wonder she was lost; at least while the wonder continued. Her mental processes were never clear ones. And the simple explanation of her credulity was that she preferred to distrust her own senses, rather than believe that there was such a liar in existence.

It was a failing on virtue's side, and I loved her for it. I protest it cut me to the quick to play the scoundrel with her on such lines. I'd never done it before, I'd not have done it then had not the situation developed in such unexpected directions that I saw no other way. While her white face, quivering hands, and trembling form were almost tearing me in two-and-hurting me the more because I dare not show it-the situation was fortunately relieved by the advent of Miss Desmond.

All at once she stood in the open doorway, observing the picture we presented.

CHAPTER XXIV
AN IDYLL

I went to her upon the instant.

'Surely it is Cousin Edith?'

'Twickenham? Leonard. What does it all mean?'

'That, cousin, is the question which I asked myself. I return, after, it is true, a somewhat lengthy absence, to find all sorts of things. For instance, a lady whom I have never seen before claims me as her husband.'

'Then she is not your wife?'

'Cousin! I have no wife!'

'Then you are not Montagu Babbacombe?'

'Who on earth is Montagu Babbacombe? Is that this lady's husband's name? Have I had the pleasure of addressing Mrs. Babbacombe?'

'Come!'

Miss Desmond put her arm round Mary's shoulders, and with Pollie attached to her disengaged hand, and Jimmy hanging on to her skirts, escorted my family out of the room. Which was nice for me. I might have succeeded in throwing dust into Mary's lovely eyes, but the knowledge that, for the time at least, I'd possibly gained my ends, didn't puff me up unduly. If it were not for the fact that I'd made it a rule of my life never to quit a position I've once taken up till driven from it at the bayonet's point, the Marquis of Twickenham would have been sent flying, and James Merrett would have gone hopping up those stairs to make love to his wife.

That first day as a marquis didn't come up to my expectations. I know that first impressions are not to be trusted. That which begins in a fog ends, occasionally, in a blaze of sunlight. But I didn't feel as if there was going to be much shine about this little racket.

I went down to the library, sent for Miss Desmond, and caught her just as she was going to shake the dust of Twickenham House from off her trotter cases. We had a tête-à-tête. Talk about the glacial period! It was warm compared to her. I said one or two nice things, or tried to, but the cold she radiated was altogether too much for their vitality. I made one or two friendly inquiries about how the family had got on, and she in particular; but for all I could scrape out of her it didn't seem as if there had been any family to get on. She'd kind of brought into that apartment a wall about twenty feet thick and a hundred high; she'd set it between us, and kept me on the other side of it. It was no manner of use my trying to jump up so as to get a peep at her over the top, because I couldn't do it. When I showed a mild curiosity as to the personality of the lady who'd mistaken me for her husband, the way in which she received my fugitive observations I didn't like one little bit. I'd a dreadful notion that right inside of her she'd a suspicion that I'd been treating Mary as no man ought to, and that I now proposed to add desertion to the rest of my offences. It did make me feel funny, the idea that she should think a thing like that. Of my Mary, too! That quiet-speaking female had such a way of making me understand that whether I was or wasn't the Marquis of Twickenham she didn't set much account on me anyhow, that I was glad to see the last of her. If the other members of the House of Twickenham were going to model their behaviour on hers, we should still continue to be a divided family.

Old Foster came up to dine with me, as per invitation. He wasn't what you'd call exciting, but he was amusing. He'd got some interesting things to talk about, and assisted me in cramming up family details at a rate of which he had no notion. The style in which he took it for granted that there was no deception this time was to me a cause of perpetual surprise. He was a long-headed man, and, in a general way, if you'd wanted to get on his blind side, you'd have had to get up early. But Reggie and Howarth had put his nose out of joint. They'd given him to understand that he was to have the kick because his conduct during my fifteen years of absence hadn't suited their convenience. No man likes to have the Order of the Boot as a reward for his fidelity. My re-appearance meant his triumph over his enemies. His appreciation of that fact I rather think tended to blunt his faculties of observation. In the first flush of his joy he was perhaps naturally unwilling to spoil the situation by any show of impertinent curiosity.

At the same time let me hasten to add that his opinion of the Marquis of Twickenham didn't seem to be much higher than Miss Desmond's. He didn't say so in so many words, but it was easy to see that morally and mentally he didn't rate his lordship very high. It was painful to me to reflect that I'd come back to a family whose good opinion of me I should have to level up; if there was any of it to level. Because, so far as I could gather, there wasn't any one anywhere who thought anything of the Marquis of Twickenham at all.

For instance, when I asked in a casual sort of way, as the conversation seemed to lag: 'And how are all my old friends?' Foster looked at me curiously out of the corners of his eyes; then down at his glass. There was a dryness in his tone as he answered,

'I didn't know your lordship had any.'

Now that wasn't a pleasant answer to receive. The Marquis of Twickenham ought to have some friends. What made it worse was the way in which he said it. However I dissembled my emotions.

'Not one?'

'Whom would your lordship have called a friend of yours?'

Although there was the suggestion of a sneer, which I resented, it was an inquiry which I was quite unable to answer. I wanted all the information to come from him. I endeavoured to cap his sneer with another.

'Well, if it comes to that, I don't know that there was any one who owed me money.'

'I should imagine that there was not.' Directly he said that, I knew that I had blundered-that, in fact, it had been only too notorious that the owing was all the other way. Presently he added something which did not tend to sweeten my temper.

'By the way, my lord, it is only right that I should tell you-since I should not be doing my duty were I to withhold the information-that there are certain matters in which your lordship was concerned which have not been forgotten-one in particular which your lordship will probably bear in mind.'

When a man hits me, I hit him back. When the discussion's over I ask him to explain his reasons; not before. Business first, pleasure after. If a man makes it his business to decorate my features, I make it mine to endeavour to induce him to wish he hadn't. It had been growing on me that the Marquis of Twickenham was a blackguard on lines which weren't just mine, and that I'd no intention of bearing the burden of sins I was not inclined to. I leaned my elbows on the table, and I eyed my man of affairs.

'Foster!'

'My lord?'

'Look at me!'

'I am looking, my lord.'

He was, with, I fancied, a certain surprise.

'You remember the sort of man I was?'

'I do.'

'I'll tell you the sort of man that I've become. Are you listening?'

'Your lordship sees I am.'

'I've become a man who resents any attempt on the part of any other man to take a liberty. You understand?'

'I trust, and believe, that your lordship will not find a trace of such a disposition in me.'

'You have taken more than one liberty since you've been inside this room.'

'My lord!'

'Do you remember what a nauseous little brat you were when you were two?'

'I! – My lord, I don't understand!'

'No? – Perhaps your memory doesn't carry you so far back. Mine doesn't carry me back fifteen years. In my presence don't let yours. Do you understand that? Another point. I don't quite know why I've come back. I may go away next week for another fifteen years.'

'I cordially hope that your lordship won't.'

'I hope, Foster, that you're not getting old. Old men are apt to dodder. – How do you like the expression of that hope? Sounds personal, doesn't it? In the same sense, yours did to me. – We're apt to hope that other people won't do what they want to, but we resent that hope when it's applied to us. I hope you're not getting old. But as the relations which exist between us hardly justify me in attempting to interfere with the tribute which you pay to the passing years, I trust that I retain a remnant of courtesy sufficient to induce me not to meddle with matters with which I have no personal concern. I feel sure that, in that sense, you have almost as much courtesy as I have. Oblige me, Foster, by keeping a small stock of it on hand. – I was saying that I may go away again next week for another period of fifteen years; or I may not. It may amuse me to take up what is called my proper position in the country. If I choose to do so, I assure you that, with my money, and my rank, and the way I shall set about doing things, fifteen years ago won't count. Don't let them count with you.'

All the same I could see that there was something which had happened in the days of auld lang syne which was slithering about on the end of his tongue; and, to be frank, I was a trifle curious to know what it was. But after the sesquipedalian sentence I'd discharged at his head, for very shame's sake I couldn't ask, nor let him say. So I got rid of him instead.

The next day we journeyed together down to Cressland, to see how things had gone since the last time I was there. What a place for a man to have all his own! Twenty thousand acres in the heart of England, with a mediæval castle in which to sleep o' nights. There was another great property in Scotland, something in Ireland, and a villa at Cannes; besides oddments here and there. When I remembered that the principal part of my income came from London ground rents I thanked my stars that I hadn't to keep all the land I owned clean and wholesome with just my own pair of hands.

When I'd made an end of spying out some of the wonderful things which I possessed, back I came to town with Foster. When we parted at the station I dare say he thought I was going straight back home-that is, to the family mansion in St. James's Square. But I wasn't: I didn't. My objective was Mary. But I had to cover my tracks on the road to her. It wouldn't do to have it discovered that directly the Marquis of Twickenham disappeared at one end Mr. James Merrett came out at the other. That night I spent in Brighton. In the morning up to town. Dropped into a little crib where I store a few trifles which I'm not peculiarly anxious that other people should know about, and changed into the garments of James Merrett. Got on to the top of an omnibus. Then outside another. Landed finally in the neighbourhood of Little Olive Street.

I was well aware that, use whatever precautions I might, I was still taking on a pretty considerable risk. But then I'd got to be a kind of a dealer in hazards. Been gambling in them my whole life long. And since I'd turned myself into a family man some of them had assumed rather curious shapes. They say that the pitcher which goes often to the well gets broken at last. Maybe. Perhaps I'd had a chip or two already. But that's part of the game.

I sailed along the pavement as if I hadn't a thing in the world to fear. I'm sure that no one who'd taken stock of me would have supposed my conscience wasn't as clear as the average. Reached No. 32. Turned the handle of the front door, and walked right in. There was Mary in the sitting-room, with a pile of sewing on a table in front of her, just as I expected.

'Well, my girl,' I said, 'how's things?'

I put my hat down on a chair; up she jumped, over went the sewing, and into my arms she flew.

'James! James!'

I got my arms right round her, and I held her tight; you bet I did. I didn't say much, but I supplied the deficiency in another way. Presently I did make a remark.

'Why, my girl, you look-well, I really think you're getting pretty.'

'James!'

She turned the colour of a strawberry that's just getting ripe-the cream showing through the red. Every time I pay her a compliment she seems to tingle right to the roots of her hair. It's an old joke, my pretending to discover that she's getting pretty-as though she hadn't always been that vision of all that's fair in woman, of which, until I met her, I had only dreamed! – but every time I make it she looks that sweet she reminds me of a meadow on the slope of a hill, in which the spring flowers are tipped with dew.

I gave the youngsters a turn.

'Hollo! I do believe you're that little boy of mine whose name was Jimmy.'

'Dad! dad! I knew you'd come home soon, 'cause I did ask God so hard last night to sent you.'

'And-isn't that girl named Pollie?'

'Tourse it is! tourse it is! Ooo know it is.'

There they were, dancing about me, as fine a pair of youngsters as you'd meet in a long day's journey.

'It's a most extraordinary thing; what does make these pockets of mine stick out? I wonder what it is inside.'

Then there was the business of turning those pockets of mine inside out, and discovering that there was something in every one of them. Amazing how such things could have got there. Ah, there's nothing like these family reunions. There wasn't a happier home than ours in the whole of that great city. Mary on my knee-how glad I was to have her there again-the children divided between their delight at their new possessions, and their joy at seeing father-it's only in such moments that we really live.

And such a tale as that wife of mine had to tell. Dear! dear! it's a strange world, and the most incredible things do happen.

It seemed that she had been anxious about me.

'Now, Mary, haven't I told you not to be anxious? Can't you understand that the very thought of your anxiety increases mine?'

Down came her pretty head.

'Sometimes I-I can't help it, James.'

This time she hadn't been able to help it to a very considerable extent. She'd actually thought that I was dead. That was, FitzHoward had been putting ideas into her head. And there was something about a man named Smith. But the tale got pretty considerably mixed; she never was much of a hand at telling a tale, my Mary. I couldn't make sense of it at all. My saying so, and laughing at her, didn't make it any plainer. Somebody-a Miss Something-or-other-had actually made her think that I was a nobleman. That idea did tickle me so, and I put it in such a way, that I started her laughing at it herself. And then when she'd once started she wouldn't stop; she's a keen sense of humour, Mary has. And she does look so pretty when she's laughing. It does me good to see her. Then the children joined. Oh, what a laugh we had at the idea of my being a British nobleman!

But the most surprising part of the story was that she'd actually been to some great house, and there fancied that she'd seen me. I couldn't follow all the ins and outs of the business as she told it, but what I did understand fairly took my breath away.

'Do you mean to tell me,' I said, 'that you mistook another man for your own husband?' She was ashamed. No wonder. 'What would you think if I mistook another woman for you?'

'James!'

Down came her face against mine. Was there anything I wouldn't forgive her when the touch of her cheek filled me with so sweet a rapture?

'Do you know, Mary, I don't understand all you've been talking about-though I know I ought to, considering what a gift for narrative you have.'

'James!'

'But what I do understand makes me think of something that happened to me-ah, years and years ago. Have you ever heard of a place called San Francisco?' She nodded. ''Pon my word, I don't think there's anything you haven't heard of. You're a much greater scholar, wife of mine, than you care to own.' She laughed, and snuggled closer. 'Once upon a time I was in San Francisco.'

'James, I do believe that you've been everywhere.'

'There's only one place where I've ever wanted to be, and that's in your heart.'

'You know you're there.'

'Mary!'

Then there was an interval. There were a good many intervals before I'd finished my remarks. Nothing like an interruption now and then to give you what I call zest.

She listened with the prettiest interest. Just as she'd have listened if I'd recited one of Euclid's propositions. She cared nothing for my story. All she wanted was to know, and to feel, that I was there. The consciousness that her evil dreams had vanished was sufficient. When she pressed herself against me, and felt how my heart kept time with hers, and how her tremors set me trembling, that was all the explanation she required. A woman's love has nothing to equal it in its power of forgetting. If she loves you you needn't ask her to forgive you; she forgets that she has anything to forgive.

We had tea, and Pollie and Jimmy and I made toast, and she superintended the proceedings. She considered that we weren't so good at it as we ought to have been; so she showed us how to improve. When I said that the chief thing she'd toasted was her cheeks, she whispered that I wasn't to say such things; so I kissed them instead. Whereupon she asserted that that piece of toast was spoilt; but we ate it all the same. And I declared, as I was eating it, that I could detect, from the taste, the exact spot on which she was engaged when the accident occurred. Which statement she positively asserted that she didn't believe.

I dare say it's a funny thing to be in love with your wife. I don't know. It's not too common a form of humour. And perhaps I'm not a judge of what is comical. But I'm glad that I'm in love with mine. I'm glad that she's my sweetheart-although she is my wife. The exigencies of a life which is not entirely commonplace prevent my devoting so much time as I could wish to my domestic duties, but this I may safely say, that however far away from each other we may be, the consciousness that my wife is my wife is ever with me; and the knowledge fills me with that complete content which makes me equal to any fortune.

After tea we had a romp with the children. I helped to bathe and put them to bed. And when they'd gone, and we'd told each other love tales by the fire, we, too, went up to rest. On the way we went into the youngsters' room, and stood side by side, looking down upon them as they slept.

'Don't you think,' asked Mary, 'that Pollie's pretty?'

'Well,' I said,' she's a little bit like you.'

She pressed my arm.

'Jimmy's just your image.'

'Poor lad!'

'James! How can you talk like that? Can anything be better for him than to be like his father?'

'There are better men.'

'I don't know where. Nor any a hundredth part as good. I can't imagine why you don't think more of yourself-when you're the most wonderful man in the world.'

This assertion caused me furiously to think.

'Mary, I shouldn't be surprised but what you're right.'

'I'm sure I'm right.'

'I also have an inclination to be sure. I must be the most wonderful man in the world, because I've you.'

'James!'

The rest is silence … What does that writing fellow say about 'Sweet music, long drawn out'? Is there any music like the silent pressure of a woman's lips?

After all, there's something in being in love with your wife.