Читать книгу The Twickenham Peerage - Marsh Richard - Страница 7

All was still. The figure in the bed continued motionless. I walked up to the bed. Whether conscious or not of my presence, he gave no sign of movement.

'Mr. Babbacombe,' I spoke a little louder. 'Mr. Babbacombe.' No answer. 'Don't you think this acting is a little overdone? Your friend Dr. White has gone. I'm all alone.'

Still not an indication to show that the man yet lived. Against my better judgment I began to feel uneasy. He lay so very motionless.

'Mr. Babbacombe! – Twickenham! – What are you afraid of? Don't you hear me, man?'

I touched him with my hand. He made no movement in response. For a second I was in danger of making an ass of myself. Could the man have carried the farce too far, and was he really dead? I all but rushed from the room, or to the bell, or somewhere, to give the alarm. Then I felt him shiver beneath my touch. I do not think that I was ever more conscious of relief than when I felt his quivering flesh. For the moment I actually imagined that I had murdered him.

The movement was but a quiver, dying away as soon as it came. I expected him, at the very least, to turn and open his eyes. But he did nothing of the kind. My impatience returned.

'Twickenham!' I thought it safer to address him by that name. Walls have ears; especially, I fancy, in hotels. 'Twickenham! Confound it, man, are you playing the fool with me again?'

No response. Concluding that this was a game which the gentleman before me intended to play in his own fashion, I awaited the issue of events. If he thought it necessary to keep up his character of dying man, and practise the lights and shadows of the rôle with me as audience, it was out of my power to prevent him. Yet as I watched how, bit by bit, he seemed to return to life; how long the process lasted; and how small the amount of vitality which he returned to seemed to be; I found myself in the curious position of being unable to decide where the sham began and the reality ended. Turning on to his back, apparently with difficulty, he gazed up with what was an astonishingly good imitation of an unseeing gaze.

'Well? As the street boys have it, I hope you'll know me when you see me again. You do it uncommonly well. The only comment I have to make, if you'll excuse my making it, is that you do it too well.'

What seemed a glimmer of consciousness stole over his skeleton countenance. It lighted up.

'Doug!' he said.

Mr. Babbacombe had not struck me as being corpulent, but it mystified me to think what he had done with the balance of his flesh within the twenty-four hours since I had seen him last. He looked as if he had lost stones; suggesting the possession of a secret for which certain jockeys of my acquaintance would give him all they possess. The voice was excellent: cracked and broken, like that of a man whose physical force is nearly spent.

'Would you mind calling me Mr. Howarth when we are alone?'

'Call you-what? See you-. Might as well ask you-call me-Marquis of Twickenham.'

'I am quite willing, when we are in private, to call you Mr. Babbacombe.'

'Call me-what? Mr. – Doug, you're drunk.'

'As usual, you credit me with a condition of mental imbecility for which no degree of drunkenness of which I ever heard could adequately account.'

'What-you talking about? Doug, I'm pretty bad.'

'You seem to be. I've brought the five hundred pounds which you stipulated I should bring if you were not to recover.'

'Five hundred pounds? Doug, I haven't seen that amount of money-Lord knows when.'

'No? Then you shall see it now. Here it is-fifty tens. I thought you would prefer to have the notes all small.'

I placed them between the wasted fingers, which still remained outside the coverlet. They just closed on them, but that was all. His eyes closed too.

'Too late.'

'Too late? What do you mean?'

'What's the use-money to me now.'

'You can have it buried with you.'

'Yes-I can. Doug, why do you speak like that?'

'Mr. Babbacombe, might I ask you not to be so thorough?'

An expression of surprise lighted up his features.

'He's wandering.'

'I did not gather, from our conversation yesterday, that it was part of your scheme to pretend to be dying even when we were alone.'

The expression of surprise had grown in intensity.

'Doug!'

'My good man, please don't look at me like that. And do not call me "Doug." Even if you were the person, and in the condition, you pretend to be, I should resent hearing the word come from your lips each second.'

'He's mad!'

It was said with a little gasp, in the most natural way in the world. Reclosing his eyes, if I could believe the evidence of my senses-which, in his case, I doubted if I was entitled to-he dozed.

I began to understand that Mr. Montagu Babbacombe was even more of an artist than I had given him credit for. As I stood watching, with curious interest, the perfection with which he simulated a sick man's slumber, I asked myself if, after all, he might not be right, and I wrong. If he chose to continue the performance even when the necessity for acting was removed, why should he not? It might tend to simplify the situation. At least, it would do no harm. If he declined to allow even me to see the mask slipped a little from his face, I had certainly no reason to complain. Later on I could say, with perfect truth, that, so far as I was able to see, he never rallied from the moment I saw him first. Situated as I was likely to be, it would be a comfort to be able to say something that was true.

The misfortune was, that I was not, myself, by any means such an artist as Mr. Babbacombe. I might be able, when in the public eye, to deceive with an air of passable candour, but in private I fell short. I had heard of men who lied with such consistency that, in the end, they deceived themselves. I had not got so far as that. Mr. Babbacombe, it seemed, could play a part so well that he actually was, for the time, the character he feigned to be. With me it was otherwise. I had not yet grown to love deception for deception's sake, as the man in front of me-whether he was Babbacombe or Twickenham-seemed to do. It filled me with an illogical sense of rage to perceive how, in this matter, he took it for granted that his point of view would-or should-necessarily be mine. He liked to keep on stealing all the time; I preferred, in private, to pretend that I was an honest man.

However, it certainly was true that the strain of the impersonation lay on him. If he did not choose to allow himself a moment's relaxation, I had no cause to grumble. I had agreed with him that he should carry out a certain piece of deception. I could hardly complain if he carried out his part of the bargain so well that he was actually in danger of deceiving me.

Only I did wish that he would own up, for a moment, what a rogue he was. Such was my state of nervous tension that, to me, such an admission would have come as a positive relief. I was willing to admit that I was a humbug-between ourselves. Why should he not be willing to do the same? It would have come as a sort of salve to my sense of self-esteem.

Instead, he persisted in that doze-which I was convinced was make-believe. As one might watch a conjuror perform his tricks in the privacy of one's own apartment, with a feeling of resentment that he should allow no hint to escape him as to how they're done, so I observed the man in the bed pretend-even to me! – to do the things which I had the best of reasons for knowing he was not really doing. I should like to have constrained him to confession, to have taken him by the shoulders and treated him to a good shaking, so that both the sleep and sickness might have been shaken clean out of him, and he would have had to admit his mummery.

I believe that if I had remained alone with him much longer I should have done it. My fingers itched to handle him. Just, however, as I was about to take him in my grip, the door opened and some one else came in. It was perhaps just as well, if the game was to be played out, that I was not detected in the act of committing an apparently brutal and unprovoked assault upon the seeming sufferer. Some sort of explanation would have had to be made: I should have had to compel the patient to admit his fraud to save my character. Otherwise my action might have been construed as an attempt to murder at the very least.

The new comer was Reggie. His appearance on the scene I had not expected so soon: nor desired. It had been my intention to coach the patient in certain details of his family history-supposing such coaching to be necessary. It would hardly do for him to be visited by relatives of whom he had never heard. This he had prevented my doing by his determination to act the rôle of dying man up to the hilt.

Reggie explained what had brought him. He held out the note which had brought me; which I now remembered I had left with Violet.

'Vi has sent me this? what does it mean?'

I moved towards him, glancing towards the sick man, who still feigned slumber. I had hoped to give him a warning look; but the persistence with which he kept his eyes closed rendered my effort futile.

'It means what it says.' I spoke in a tolerably loud tone of voice, hoping that the sleeper would have sense enough to pick up such cues as I might give him. 'Your brother, my dear Reggie, is here-ill in bed.'

'Good gracious!' Reggie's face expressed a variety of emotions. He glanced from me to the bed; from the bed to me. He dropped his voice. 'Is he-is he really bad?'

'About as bad as he can be. The doctor is of opinion that he may expire at any moment.'

The tone in which I said this-for Mr. Babbacombe's instruction-seemed to strike Reggie as peculiar.

'Is he-asleep?'

'He seems to have just dropped off.' Reggie moved closer to the bed. I went with him. He regarded the sleeper with looks of curiosity.

'He looks frightfully queer.'

'He can hardly look queerer, and live.'

'I suppose it is Twickenham?'

'Don't you recognise him?'

He shook his head.

'I was only a kid when he went. I've told you lots of times that I don't seem to have the least recollection of what he was like. I didn't think he was so old.'

'He's crowded threescore years and ten into the life he's lived, and more. Besides, sickness has aged him.'

'Is he conscious?'

'Now? He's asleep.'

'I mean when he's awake.

'He was conscious when I saw him first; that is, after a fashion of his own.'

'Is he-' He stopped. I saw that a thought was passing through his mind to which he hesitated to give utterance. Presently it came. 'Is he conscious enough to make a will?'

The question took me aback. It suggested an eventuality for which I had made no sort of preparation. If Mr. Montagu Babbacombe took it into his head to let himself go in a 'last will and testament,' I should be in a fix. I arrived at an instant determination.

'I should say not. Any will he might make in his present condition would not be worth the paper it was written on. Of that I am sure.'

I meant Mr. Babbacombe to take the hint. I hoped he would, though I had rather Reggie had not put the question. The young gentleman startled me with another remark which was equally unexpected and undesired.

'I sent in word to old Foster as I came along.'

'You did what?'

My tone expressed not only unmitigated surprise, but also something so closely approaching to dismay, that in turn I startled him.

'What's wrong? Didn't you want me to tell him? He'll have to know.'

'That's true.' A moment's consideration showed me that it was. 'At the same time, I would rather you had consulted me before communicating with him. What did you say?'

'That Twickenham was dying at Cortin's Hotel, and that I was hurrying to him.'

'Then if you told him that, it won't be long before he's here too.'

'I don't suppose it will.'

I did not relish the prospect at all. Things were moving more rapidly than I had intended. I perceived, too late, that there were complications ahead which I ought to have foreseen, but which, owing to my having my vision fixed on one thing, and one thing only, had escaped my notice. It was of the first importance that I should say a few words in private to Mr. Montagu Babbacombe before Mr. Foster appeared, or the bubble might be pricked in a second.

Mr. Stephen Foster was the senior partner of Foster, Charter, and Baynes; who had been lawyers, agents, and doers-of-all-work for the Sherringtons even before they had been peers. He was an old man now, but keen as the youngest. I had more than a suspicion that he did not like me. He had certainly treated the various applications I had made to him on Reggie's behalf with a curtness I did not relish. It was he who had shut the family purse against the lad. Left by the terms of the late Marquis's will, in default of the appearance of the heir-at-law, in practically absolute control of the entire estate, he had administered it with a zeal and judgment which did him the greatest credit. Its value had, in all respects, immensely increased while in his charge. If only he had shown even some slight consideration for Reggie's position there would have been nothing in his conduct of which to complain. But he had persistently refused to let him have so much as a five-pound note out of the family revenues, although he well knew the straits he was in, and how he was living at my expense. For this neither Reggie nor I bore him any love. It would not be our fault if one day he was not made to smart for his pedantic adherence to what he held to be the letter of the law.

'My position,' as he stated it, 'is this. The Marquis of Twickenham is alive, until you prove him dead. I am responsible to him for every farthing of his income; just as your banker is responsible to you for every penny which stands to the credit of your account. And just as your banker is powerless, without your express authorisation, to use your money, say, to save your mother from starvation, so I am powerless to apply his lordship's money to the assistance of his impecunious brother. Besides, you know what kind of man he is. You know, as well as I know, that, unless his disposition has wholly changed-which, from my knowledge of the family character, I deem in the highest degree improbable-he would not present a single sixpence to Lord Reginald. Whether I do or do not admire what I know would be his wishes, I am bound to observe them, or throw up my charge. I prefer to observe his wishes. Show me that My Lord Marquis is dead, and my charge is at an end. Or produce his instructions, authorising me to make his brother an allowance, or to hand him over a certain sum, and those instructions shall be duly carried out. In their absence, I can do nothing. To me, so far as the Twickenham estate is concerned, Lord Reginald Sherrington does not exist.'

And this was the man who, in all probability, was hastening to Mr. Montagu Babbacombe's bedside! If he caught him unprepared he would turn the dying man inside out before the sufferer even guessed at the process to which he was being subjected. At all hazards I must get Reggie out of the room, and prepare, as best I could in the few moments at my disposal, the too conscientious Mr. Babbacombe for the legal onslaught. I hit on a device.

'My dear Reggie, although I don't wish to suggest for a moment that the doctor who is already in attendance is not perfectly competent, I do think we ought to have another man-don't you?'

'Certainly; if you consider it necessary, we'll have a dozen.'

'I don't think we need go so far as that, but we might have one. What do you say to Hancock? He saw Twickenham into the world; so it seems only fitting that he should usher him out.' My opinion of Sir Gregory Hancock's medical attainments is perhaps not so high as his popularity might seem to warrant; but that is by the way. Reggie signified his approval of my suggestion. 'Then, my dear chap, would you mind running round to fetch him, while I stay here, to watch? If you ask him personally he'll come without a moment's delay.'

Reggie, swallowing the bait, hied in search of Sir Gregory Hancock. I turned my attention to the bed. The rogue still slumbered. The time for ceremony, however, had passed. He would have to cease pretending.

'Babbacombe!' He paid not the slightest heed. 'Confound you! Will you put a stop to this tomfoolery? A man is coming who'll see through you in less than no time if you don't let me put you up to a thing or two. Babbacombe!'

No, he would not reply. My patience was becoming exhausted. I did not propose that my whole ingenious scheme should be wrecked because he chose to play the game in his own fashion instead of mine.

'Babbacombe! If you won't wake up, upon my honour I'll make you. I tell you I want to speak to you about something which is of vital importance to both of us; something which you must hear and understand. Will you attend?'

Apparently he would not. If he was really so opinionated I was prepared, forced by the exigencies of my position, to try another method. I did. I took him by the shoulder and I shook him. At first gently, then, as no result ensued, with greater violence. Then I treated him to a really vigorous shaking, only stopping because, in my heat, I began to fear that I might be going farther than I intended. He evinced not the slightest symptom of any intention to comply with my request and listen to what I had to say. Instead, when I looked at him again, a very curious something seemed to have happened to his face. His jaw had dropped open; and, if I may so express it, all his features seemed to have twisted out of the straight. His appearance, now that I realised its peculiarity, gave me quite a shock.

'What on earth is the matter with you, man?'

'You seem, Mr. Howarth, to have rather drastic methods of attaining to the information which you seek.'

The voice was Mr. Foster's. He had entered-when? When I had been shaking Mr. Babbacombe? What a fool I had been not to turn the key. I might have expected him to sneak in without warning me of his approach. How much had he heard-and seen? I should have to find out, soon.