The Family Honour

by Guy Boothby

THE FAMILY HONOUR.

By GUY BOOTHBY.

 

Oh! Wisdom, which we ought to win,
Oh! Strength in which we trusted,
Oh! Glory, which we gloried in,
Uh! Puppets we adjusted.

Oh! barren land, our seed is sand,
And torn the web we weave is,
The bruised reed hath pierced the hand,
"Ars longa vita brevis."

—Adam Lindsay Gordon.

 

WHOEVER affirmed that a man's happiness is more the result of environment than the outcome of any deliberate action on his own part, was not so very far wrong, after all. He would, however, have been nearer the mark, and he might have built up a cheap reputation for himself as a sayer of sharp things, had he affirmed that "Man's happiness is the pin in the Thermometer of Existence, which is raised or depressed by the mercury of Circumstance."

The following story will serve to illustrate my theory.

To begin with, you must understand that the township of Barrabong lies near the South Australian border of Queensland. Her population averages a hundred souls, any one of whom will tell you with pride that he lives in the hottest and driest rat-hole on the face of the continent, and that the Tropic of Capricorn runs down his main street. There is a story of a man who, of his own free will, spent a week in Barrabong, and was found on the seventh day heading for the Great Desert, attired like Adam before the Fall, reciting the penitential psalms, and—but as he has nothing to do with this story, and his relations have done all that is needful to insure his safety, there is no necessity for me to tell you any more about him. Let me, therefore, proceed with my narrative.

One moderately warm forenoon, with the temperature as rigidly fixed at one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade as if it were nailed there, I was sitting in the verandah of the one and only hotel—which was constructed of galvanised iron, by the way—when one of the most dilapidated-looking loafers I have ever seen emerged from the house. He was not more than forty years of age, but was so pulled to pieces by bad liquor and the ramifications of his disease—he was in the last flicker of consumption—that he might very well have been set down as ten years older. Staggering to the stretcher beside me, he started a conversation by inquiring what I thought of Barrabong as a place for the eldest son of the Duke of —— to die in? I was about to remark that when it came to dying I did not see that it mattered very much whether it was Barrabong or Piccadilly. He stopped me, however, with a scowl and continued—

"I know what you're going to say, and I don't want to hear it. I've come to ask your advice. I should be obliged, therefore, if——" Here he was interrupted by a violent fit of coughing, which lasted for more than a minute. Recovering his breath, he went on—

"Of course, you have observed that I am dying. Believe me, I am quite aware of the fact, and I know also that in this dust-heap I am popularly supposed to be mad, and my title a creation of fancy. I have paid you the compliment, however, of taking you for a rational being, and I should, for my own sake, be sorry if I were deceived."

When I asked him in what way I could be of service to him, he drew from his ragged shirt a greasy, filthy, Southern paper, nearly three months old, and having opened it and folded it at the English cablegrams, handed it to me.

The first item of news referred to the serious illness of the well-known Duke of ——, and if I remember aright there was an account of his distinguished career in another column; also a remark to the effect that his death would prove a serious loss to the Empire. When I had finished reading, he returned it to his bosom, saying—

"From my appearance at the present moment you may find it difficult to believe that that old scoundrel is my father. It is true, nevertheless; I am his eldest son, and if he dies before me the title is mine. For aught we know to the contrary, I may be His Grace of —— at the present moment. I should be glad to feel certain on that point, for my credit in this kennel is exhausted, and without liquor of some description I shall not, in all probability, last another week."

The man talked rationally enough, with the tone of an English public-school boy, a trick which, once learnt, is never forgotten. To all intents and purposes he was perfectly sane. While I was wondering as to the truth of his story, a second lit of coughing seized him, and after it had passed I ventured to offer him a small sum as a loan. At first he was tempted to refuse it, but at the critical moment a glass clinked in the bar behind, and his fingers immediately closed upon the coins. At last, after we had waded through oceans of hopeless drivel, he arrived at his reason for honouring me with his company. It appeared that he was desirous of making a will.

This was the second time in my life I had been called upon to assist in such a capacity. I accordingly secured a sheet of notepaper and writing materials and sat down to my task. So great was the heat in the verandah that the very ink was blood-warm. When it was completed it was a glorious document, bristling with legal phrases and gorgeous with high-sounding titles. The stranger thanked me for my courtesy, pocketed his papers, staggered across the verandah, and disappeared into the bar. All things considered, it was one of the strangest interviews I had ever known, and, until the mosquitoes arrived and distracted my attention, it monopolised my thoughts. By that time the Looney Duke, as he was called, was as intoxicated as even he could desire to be.

Next morning I saw nothing of him, so I settled it in my own mind that I had done with him for good and for all; but I was destined to be deceived, however. That afternoon the weekly coach brought to Barrabong a most unusual visitor, in the person of a well-dressed, portly gentleman, perhaps a little on the wrong side of fifty. From unmistakable signs I settled it in my own mind that he had but lately left the Mother Country, and I found that I was not mistaken. He was vastly disappointed with the Bush, and complained bitterly of the heat and the hardships of coach travelling. The mere fact that we shared a bedroom was a bond in common, and before the evening meal—it could not with overstrained courtesy be called dinner—was over, we might have known each other all our lives. During a stroll, later, he told me the reason of his being in the country at all, and of his venturing so far West. The coincidence was certainly a curious one.

He was an English solicitor, practising in a small country town in the Midlands. For many generations his firm had been the confidential advisers of the Dukes of ——, and it was business connected with their house that brought him to Australia. The old peer was dead, and the estates were lying fallow until the heir should appear from the unknown to take possession. He did not mention the circumstances under which the young man had left his home, but from his careful avoidance of the point I conjectured that it must have been something serious.

The upshot of our conversation was that my drunken friend proved, after all, to be what he professed, a duke.

It was like the dénouement of a French novel.

As I was riveting the last links of my companion's chain of evidence, a half-caste boy came out of the darkness and stood before us. He brought a message from my loafer friend, imploring me to come to him at once. He was dying and had something to say to me.

The solicitor accompanying me, we followed the boy down the main street, across the open bit of ground where the Afghan camel men were camped, and finally approached the creek, where we drew up before a small humpy, constructed of bark, kerosene tins, and old gunny bags. The ducal residence was illuminated by one solitary candle, stuck in an empty whisky bottle, and was filthily dirty. Half-caste children littered the floor, and a murderous-looking black gin was cooking at the fire. The sick man must have heard our approach, for he called to us in a faint voice to enter. We found him lying upon a heap of sheepskins and flour-sacks in a corner, feebly coughing his life away. After he had welcomed me, he glanced at my companion, and without betraying any surprise, said—

"So, my trusty Denton, you have found me out at last? Well, what do you think of me, now that you are here?"

The solicitor's face was a piteous sight. He was trying to recognise, in the disgusting, dilapidated scarecrow before him, the happy, bright-faced boy he remembered of old. When he did speak, his voice was choked with emotion.

"Your Grace, how can I say——?"

Assuming a new air, that for a moment made one forget the gunny bags and the candle guttering in the bottle, the peer broke in—

"So the unnatural old scoundrel is dead, is he? Bien! Le roi ed mort! Vive le roi! But, Denton, it has come too late. It's just my cursed luck all over! All through my life I never scored except when it was too late!"

There was a pause, and then he continued with a Satanic sneer—

"But he couldn't touch the entail, Denton, and he couldn't take away the title. I had him there. Ha! ha! How he must have hated me!"

He laughed as the idea struck him, and then waved his hand round the room.

"What do you think of this as a place for a duke to die in? What a chance for the Radical press, eh? By the way, Denton, move into the light, that I may look at you. Ah! you haven't changed much since the old days; you're just the same sanctimonious hound as of yore, I'll be bound!"

The old man winced at the insult, but it was impossible to resent it. He moved to the bedside.

"Can I do anything to make your end happier, my lord ——?"

"'Your Grace,' Denton. Don't rob me of that. Yes, you can help me. Where's my will?"

After fumbling among his rags he eventually pulled out the document we had unitedly put together.

"Overhaul that, and see whether it is legally correct."

As he read it, a look of consternation spread over the old man's face.

"Can it be that you are married?" he questioned huskily.

The dying man nodded his head, and called up the loathsome gin and the half-caste boy who had come to fetch us that evening.

"Let Hie present you to her Grace the Duchess ——, and to my son and heir. As a dying man, Denton, I charge you to do your duty to them. I charge—you—to see—that—that their—interests are—conserved. I charge——"

He could get no further. It was plain that the end was near.

Fully five minutes elapsed before he spoke again, and during all that time—it seemed an eternity—the lawyer stood looking down at him, but never seeing him. Suddenly, raising himself to a sitting posture, the dying man said very slowly—

"Denton—I give you my word I was innocent—innocent, I swear it! Do you believe me? No, curse you! I can see you don't. Curse you! and—them—and——"

When he fell back on his rags we saw that it was all over. What was before us was all that remained of the late Duke of ——.

The solicitor took off his hat and bent his head in silent prayer.

•••••

The funeral was a very commonplace affair, in spite of the many facetious jests elaborated by the townfolk on the subject of a monument to the memory of the "Looney Duke."

I wonder what they would have said had they known the truth?

•••••

The "British Peerage" informs me that the present Duke of —— was educated at Eton and Oxford, and is thirty-six years of age—a statement I can hardly reconcile with my knowledge of the facts.

Copyright, 1901, by Ward, Lock and Co., in the United States of America.