Читать книгу Lord Alistair's Rebellion - Upward Allen - Страница 6

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The Duke of Trent and Colonsay, after shaking hands with the Prime Minister, and receiving the congratulations of several colleagues on his first appearance as a Minister in charge of an important measure, was walking out of the House, when he felt himself tapped familiarly on the shoulder from behind.

He turned round in some annoyance, for he was careful of his dignity, but the look of rebuke was exchanged for one of respectful pleasure as he perceived that the hand which had touched him was the Duke of Gloucester’s.

“Are you going back to Colonsay House?” the Prince inquired.

“I was going,” the Minister returned, conveying by the change of tense that his movements were for the Prince to dispose of.

“That’s right; then I’ll walk round with you, if I shan’t put you out,” Prince Herbert said, linking his arm in friendly fashion in the Duke’s.

The two companions were old acquaintances; they might almost be called friends. They had been boys together, in so far as a Prince is allowed to be a boy. Their houses were in the same part of the country, and the cordial relations between the Duchess Caroline and her royal mistress had been renewed by their descendants.

At that time, indeed, Prince Herbert had been more intimate with Alistair Stuart than with James. The younger boy’s merry, versatile disposition had made him a favourite, while his brother was rather a dull companion. But the course of their later lives had tended to keep up the intercourse between the Prince and the Duke, while Alistair had gradually drifted away into paths in which it was impossible for his royal friend to keep him company.

The new Home Secretary expected to receive some compliment as they passed out under the vast vault of the Victoria Tower and turned eastward. His speech that night had been a marked success. The Bill he had just introduced was one to provide the punishment of flogging for the gangs of street-boys who infested the southern side of the river. He had denounced the enemies of order with conviction, and the House had cordially endorsed his righteous anger. No one had been weak enough to think, or bold enough to suggest, that there was any better way to deal with the hooligan than to flog him. There had been a time when England could export her savages to savage lands, but, by some wonderful political alchemy, no sooner did she cast her convict colonies on the shores of America and Australia than they rose up mighty states, and with the zeal of renegades refused to harbour the next criminal generation. Even the army, so long the last refuge of the blackguard, was become respectable. Science was already lifting a confident voice to preach extermination for the unfit, and society, puzzled between the old creed and the new, found itself too weak to crucify, but not too weak to scourge.

It was with a sense of disappointment that the young Minister found that their walk was to be a silent one. The Prince said nothing till they were in Colonsay House.

“I suppose the Duchess is not up so late as this?” the Prince asked, as they entered the hall.

“My mother generally goes on about this time, but I will ask. Stokes, go and see if her Grace is in her room, and if so tell her his Royal Highness has asked for her.”

The Duke led the way into a Japanese smoking lounge which opened off the stairs. A large bow-window revealed the panorama of the night-enchanted river, the reflections of the bridge lamps veining the tide with molten gold.

Prince Herbert walked to the window and gazed out speechless for several minutes, during which his host strewed a lacquered table with cigars of a rare brand, named after the Prince himself.

“The grandest view in Europe, I always think,” the Prince observed, as he turned reluctantly from the window. “And yet there is something dreadful in it. It is so utterly removed from Nature. It makes one think of the underground life which we are told the race will one day have to take to.”

“We have taken to it already, it seems to me,” Trent answered. “We travel underground, our light and water come to us underground, our food is cooked underground, and I am told there are underground stables in some parts of London.”

Prince Herbert closed his lips as he walked across to choose a cigar. It was not the first time that he had found James Stuart a heavy person to talk to. He could not help comparing this commonplace mind, with its prim grasp of daily life and its impotence to rise to any higher plane, with the brilliant and sensitive imagination of Alistair, like a soaring bubble, one moment glowing with the reflected radiance of a thousand stars, the next moment smashed against the coarse paling of the roadway.

Yet it was this man who enjoyed honour and favour, while the other was become an outcast. It was to this man that he himself was about to sue for some toleration of the other.

He had just struck a light when the door opened to admit Alistair’s mother. With the quick instinct of sympathy she had divined the object of the royal visit, and she pressed a warm kiss on the Prince’s forehead as he came forward to greet her.

“My dear aunt,” he exclaimed, using the title which he had given her in his boyish days, “I hope you haven’t come downstairs on my account. I ought to have gone up to you.”

“I would much rather sit here, and see you smoke,” she said, with an affectionate smile. “That is, if an old woman is not in the way of two young men.”

Prince Herbert hastened to draw forward a chair, but the Duchess refused to sit down till the visitor had lit his cigar. As soon as some servants who had brought in a tray of spirits had left the room, the Prince opened his appeal.

“I am very sorry about Alistair,” he said.

A frown passed quickly over the Duke’s face at this allusion to the family trouble, but his mother looked up gratefully.

“I was sure you would be,” she responded. “Poor foolish boy! If only I could find a way to save him!”

“Couldn’t this have been prevented?” inquired Prince Herbert, glancing at the elder brother.

James shook his head decisively.

“It was impossible. My mother will tell you I did everything I could. Twice I have got him to give me an account of his debts, and settled them, as I thought. But I don’t believe now that he ever let me know one half of what he really owed. It is like pouring water into a sieve to try and help Alistair.”

“Do you know what the amount is now?”

“Fifty or sixty thousand, I understand. I don’t suppose he knows within ten thousand or so himself. It is two years’ revenue of the property. Everything is entailed; I can only mortgage my life interest, and that means paying a heavy premium for life insurance. Ever since he came of age I have given him a thousand a year, and of course he could have his rooms here if he chose to lead a decent life. My mother knows that that is the very utmost I can do for him if I mean to keep up the estates as they ought to be kept up. I have to think of a jointure for my wife, if I should ever marry, and some provision for my own children.”

The Duke delivered his defence in an injured tone, as though he felt that the sympathy of his audience was against him. Prince Herbert, in his quiet way, returned to the attack.

“I have really no right to ask you, but I should have thought your properties brought you in a great deal more.”

“They are still heavily encumbered,” was the answer. “There are mortgages on nearly everything except the Scotch land, and that brings in nothing. I might let the moors, I suppose, but in my opinion that would be another disgrace. I am very strongly opposed to giving these Americans and stockbrokers the pick of all the historic places in Great Britain. I blame Cantire for letting Mull.”

This time the Duke spoke with undisguised warmth. It was a relief to him to silence the misgivings from which his own mind was not entirely free on the subject of Alistair.

“After all, I owe a duty to my people, as well as to Alistair,” he continued. “I am the head of the clan as well as the landlord. I regard myself as a constitutional monarch on my own estate, and I have no right to sacrifice my tenants in order to enrich Molly Finucane.”

Prince Herbert felt himself rebuked. He doubted no more than others that the house in Chelsea had been Alistair’s undoing.

“Is there no hope of rescuing him?” He looked hesitatingly at the Duchess.

“I have just seen Alistair,” she confessed, not without some fear of her elder son’s resentment. “He came here to see me to-night.”

“To ask for money, I suppose,” said the Duke.

The Duchess was wounded by the taunt.

“He did not ask for any, and I did not give him any,” she said with dignity. “I told him I was sure that you would help him if he would only leave that woman.”

“And what did he say?”

“I don’t think he meant what he said; I can’t think so. But he talked about her in such a way that for a moment I thought he wanted to marry her.”

A fierce exclamation broke from the Minister, a milder one from Prince Herbert.

“If he does that, he shall never have another farthing from me; I will never acknowledge him again!”

“His infatuation for her is terrible,” the mother went on. “He even defended her to me. He told me that she had made sacrifices for him—that she was paying for the house.”

The two men exchanged glances. This was a deeper depth than either of them had suspected. Perhaps the Duchess would have suppressed this part of her information if she had understood how it would strike a man.

“Is there no chance that the woman herself may give him up now?”

The Duchess shook her head doubtfully.

“I should think not, from what he says. I hardly know what it is best to do. I think perhaps he might be induced to give an undertaking not to marry her, in return for some assistance.”

The Home Secretary made a face of disgust.

“So I am to be blackmailed, am I? I have to bribe my brother not to make a street-girl the next Duchess of Colonsay.”

Prince Herbert looked distressed.

“Are you sure that is the right way to go to work with Alistair?” he asked gently. “I have always believed that there was good in him, you know. Perhaps if you tried to appeal to his generosity you might do more than you suppose.”

Alistair’s mother gave the speaker a grateful look.

“Thank you, Bertie. It is very good of you to plead for my poor boy. I think, James dear, you may have been a little harsh with him sometimes.”

“If you were to go to him now,” the Prince pursued, “not to scold him at all, but just to say, ‘Well, old fellow, you’re in a mess; let’s see if I can get you out,’ I think you would find him very different to deal with.”

The elder brother still frowned.

“You don’t know Alistair as well as I do. He would most likely insult me. The last time I wrote to him, nearly a year ago, enclosing his allowance, and pointing out to him how the life he was leading was bound to end, he wrote back to me—my mother saw the note: ‘Dear Jim, your cheques are better than your sermons. Affectionately, Alistair.’”

Prince Herbert by a severe effort checked the smile which rose to his lips.

“After all, he is your brother,” he reminded the aggrieved senior.

“I’m sure I don’t know why he should be,” the Duke muttered, but he let his voice drop at the sight of his mother’s sorrowful face.

“I would see him myself,” the Prince added, “only I have to leave for Birmingham to-morrow to lay the foundation stone of a cathedral, and I am under engagements which will keep me in the district for several days.”

The Duchess rose and walked across the room to where her son was seated, tapping a fretful foot upon the floor. She laid her hand on his arm, and looked him beseechingly in the face.

“My son, my eldest son!” she murmured softly. “You need not be jealous of the poor prodigal. Say that you will go?”

And James said that he would go.

That night Alistair’s mother did not sleep.

The bankrupt himself slept heavily after emptying a bottle of champagne, at whose expense he no longer hesitated. The new Minister tossed to and fro till the excitement of debate had evaporated, and then sank into a calm, health-giving slumber. Prince Herbert slept too; if he had passed a troubled night the wires would have flashed the news next day from Auckland to Vancouver.

But the Duchess of Trent could not sleep. She spent a night of fear and sorrow, her mind haunted by the terrible word that spelt the wreck of her darling—the word wife.

Rather than see her son married to Molly Finucane she could have prayed that he might be taken from the world. To her apprehension such a marriage meant ruin final and irretrievable, ruin social, moral and religious, ruin in this life and the next.

As the first streak of dawn slanted through the window the poor lady crept from her bed, and throwing a dressing-gown round her shoulders, sat down at a small writing-table to write a letter.

She began by addressing the envelope, with fingers that shook partly from cold and partly from anguish: Miss Finucane, Elm Side, Chelsea.

She had made up her mind to take the desperate step of writing to Molly Finucane to implore her not to marry Alistair.

She had first entertained the idea of going to Molly to make the appeal in person, but she had found herself unable to face the reception which she feared was possible. Molly Finucane’s reputation daunted her. The courage of this gentle, pious, pure-minded woman was not great enough to brave the scoffs of a girl whom common fame reported as more foul-mouthed than a bargeman.

The letter took a long time to write. The words came slowly, and more than once the writer felt inclined to drop the pen in despair. But at last it was finished.

The letter ran like this:

“Dear Madam:

“Will you pardon the liberty I take in addressing you? I write on behalf of my son Alistair. I hardly know how to express myself without seeming unkind, but you will understand what a shock it has been to his mother to see him in the Bankruptcy Court. He was here last night, and from what he has said to me I feel sure that you do not wish him ill. His only chance of salvation is an entire change of life, and that can only be brought about by your influence. The tremendous hold you have over him is my only excuse for appealing to you like this. I have no doubt you see as clearly as I do how his present life is likely to end—in misery and distress. Nothing I could do would be too much to show my gratitude if you would consent to let his friends extricate him from his present way of life, and give him a fresh start. He is still a young man, and unmarried, and therefore we hope it is not too late to save him. If you are really his friend you will yourself be anxious to do nothing that would drag him deeper down into the abyss. In his present state of mind I fear for him; he is hardly master of his actions, and might be led in a thoughtless moment to take some step which he could never recall. It is even possible that he might contemplate marrying you, which—forgive my saying so—would entail certain misery on you both. He would lose all his friends, and as soon as the awakening came he would regard you as his bitterest enemy, and the cause of his ruin. I hope you will not resent my speaking thus plainly; I need not say I do so solely out of the natural anxiety of a mother for her boy, and not out of any desire to say anything harsh or unkind toward you personally. Most earnestly I implore you, I appeal to you in the name of your own mother, to let me save my boy! With many apologies for thus addressing you, believe me,

“Yours very sincerely,

“Caroline Trent and Colonsay.”

The letter finished, the Duchess betook herself to her praying-closet, where she remained till her maid appeared.