The Twickenham Peerage Part 46

'Don't--don't forbid me.' She put her hand on his arm. 'I promise you shall have no scene.'

She went; she and I alone together in a carriage. It turned out that the mausoleum wasn't very far away; half a mile, perhaps, or three-quarters; but she never would have walked it. All the way she sat holding my hand, sometimes squeezing it so tight that she hurt.

And such a look upon her face! Just before we stopped she spoke; I expect because she couldn't keep still any longer.

'What do you think he's afraid of?'

The question took me aback; because I had been wondering myself, and the more I wondered the less I could think.

'I don't know. But if I were you I wouldn't trouble, whatever it is.'

'You wouldn't trouble? And he's my man?'

I knew she was hinting at what I'd said about James. When she spoke like that I'd nothing else to say.

I never saw anything like that mausoleum. It was like a little church built of granite. We went through a door into a sort of tiny room. The two doctors met us. Sir Gregory spoke.

'Everything is ready. Now, my dear ladies, this young lady'--meaning me--'is the only one of you for whose presence there is the slightest necessity. Lady Violet, and you, Miss Desmond, if you take my urgent advice, will remain here till she returns.'

He spoke in a way which showed that he meant that his advice should be attended to; I dare say the young gentleman had been saying a word or two upon the road. Anyhow they did as he wished. They stayed behind, and I went with him and Dr. Clinton into a kind of room which was beyond. It was a dome-shaped place. The walls and floor were of bare granite. The only light came through some small painted windows which were high above the ground. There were narrow holes in the walls here and there to let the air come through. All round the place were shelves; on some of the shelves were coffins. One of them, which had been taken, I expect, from where it had stood upon a shelf, was raised above the ground on a black pall in the centre of the floor. Four men, who looked like mechanics, stood one at either corner, each with a screw-driver in his hand.

'This is my brother's coffin' said the young gentleman. 'As I have already informed you, I thought it better that it should not be touched except in our presence. I need not remark that it has not been opened since it came.'

'How do we know? How do we know?'

This was Mr. Howarth.

'You do know,' was all the young gentleman replied. He nodded to the four men. They began to remove the screws.

The young gentleman had made me take his arm. I was glad of it before they'd got those screws all out. I don't know how many there were, but I thought they never would come to the end of them. No one spoke a word. I don't believe I ever breathed. I know I had to lean upon the young gentleman's arm to help me to stand. When they made ready to remove the lid I gave a start.

'Not yet,' he whispered. 'There's a sh.e.l.l within.'

I'd forgotten that the gentry are buried in two coffins, and sometimes three. When my turn comes I know that one will be enough. I shouldn't like to be fastened up in all that quant.i.ty of wood. Sure enough, when the lid was taken off, there was another one beneath. There was another weary lot of screws, though I don't think quite so many as before. Then one of the men said,

'That's the last.'

We all drew closer. The young gentleman spoke, his voice seeming strange.

'Remove the lid.'

The four men lifted it. Then all was still. I think that each was reluctant to be the first to see what might be seen. Mr. Howarth, indeed, drew back. I felt that the arm on which I leaned was trembling. That made me tremble too. The two doctors advanced together. They leaned over the open coffin. Sir Gregory spoke first.

'That is the Marquis of Twickenham.'

Then Dr. Clinton:

'Then the Marquis of Twickenham and Mr. Montagu Babbacombe were one; for that certainly is Mr. Babbacombe.'

When he said that, if it had not been for the young gentleman I believe I should have fallen. I could neither move nor speak. Mr.

FitzHoward joined them.

'That's Babbacombe right enough; but he looks as if he were alive.'

'Alive? Alive?' gasped Mr. Howarth. 'Pray G.o.d--that he is alive.'

'He certainly is in a wonderful state of preservation,' murmured Dr.

Gregory. 'Altogether beyond anything I expected to find.'

My strength returning, I tried to go forward. But the young gentleman stopped me.

'Be careful! Haven't you heard enough?'

'I want to see! I want to see!'

I went and saw.

I saw something lying in a coffin; something so like my James that it wasn't strange they should think that it was he. But I was his wife; and I saw with different eyes; so that I knew better in an instant.

'That's not my James! That's not my James! Why--I don't believe--that--it's a man at all.'

Dr. Clinton, putting out his hand, touched the face which lay there staring up at us.

'She's right. It's some sort of a dummy.'

There was a curious cry, like none I'd heard before, and the sound of a heavy body falling. It was Mr. Howarth tumbling to the ground. Miss Desmond, hastening in, knelt on the floor at his side.

BOOK III.--THE GENTLEMAN WITH NINE LIVES

THE ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN IN SEARCH OF FORTUNE, AS TOLD BY HIMSELF

CHAPTER XXI

A PEER IN EMBRYO

Extraordinary how small the world Is. A remark which is not original.

Thus making the fact still more conspicuous. For a thing must be very obvious to force itself on the attention of the ordinary a.s.s.

Who would have thought that a lying scamp was telling the truth when I supposed him to be more than usually engaged in its perversion?

It was at a certain house of call in San Francisco that I first met him--M'Croskay's, where they knew a thing or two. There was a man standing before the fire when I went in. When he saw me he said, 'Hollo! You're me!' That was the first time I heard him speak the truth, and, until the other day, I believed it was the last. It was a fact. I was him; his _alter ego_; his brother Dromio. The joke was, he was a blackguard too. At a sale we might have been exploited as an interchangeable lot; and a bitter bargain. If there was anything he'd stick at, I never found it. He was as mad as I was. And as great a liar. There was only one point on which we differed; and that was tongue. How that man could talk! A hundred and twenty thousand words to my one.