Tristram of Blent. Anthony Hope

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ me in the strictest confidence, and in violation, I fear, of the old lady's pledge of secrecy. (She was a sad gossip, a failing with which I have no sympathy.) Sir R. E. did not, in fact, die on the date reported. He fell into a collapse, mistaken for death by those about him, and even by his medical attendant; after lying in this state for twenty-four hours he revived and lived nearly a week longer. A second letter, apprising Mrs. F. of this fact, and announcing the correct date of his death as June 12th, reached her at Baden on the 28th. By this time she was married, but the validity of her new union (solemnized on the 23rd) did not appear to be affected. Nothing more was done, and the boy was born, as I have stated, early in July. Only after this event, which naturally engrossed the parents' attention, did the mistake into which they had fallen come to be discovered. As a matter of form, and to avoid doubts in the future, Captain F. wrote for the official certificate of Sir R.'s death. When it came, it came as a thunderbolt. Sir R. had been residing in a small Russian town near the frontier; he was interested, I understood, in some business there. The servant to whom I have referred was an uneducated man and could not write; he had picked up a little French but spoke no Russian. Wishing to inform Mrs. F. of what had occurred, he had recourse to a professional letter-writer, who perhaps knew as little French, or almost as little, as himself, and was entirely ignorant of English. The servant gave the dates I have set down—June 6th in the first letter, the 12th in the second. The letter-writer put them down; and Mrs. F. read and immediately accepted them. It did not cross her mind or Captain F.'s that the dates used were the ordinary Russian dates—were in fact 'Old Style,' and consequently twelve days behind the reckoning of Germany or of England. They might have been put on inquiry by the long interval between the date of the death as it was given and the receipt of the news; in their excitement they paid no heed to it, and it did not occur either to Madame de Kries or to myself to raise the question. Indeed who thinks of the 'Old Style' at this period of the world's history? Besides, I did not know at that time, and I do not think that Madame de Kries did, where the first letter came from; Mrs. F. said nothing about it. But when the certificate arrived—about the middle of July, as I understood—the mistake was clear; for a note in the official's hand translated the dates into New Style for the benefit of the foreigners to whom he was supplying the document. Sir R. E., first reported dead on June 6th Old Style, otherwise June 18th New Style, had actually died on the 12th Old Style, or 24th New Style.

      I have always thought this one of the most perverse little incidents which I have met with in the course of my life, and I think it such still, when I consider how easily it might have done no harm, and how serious, and indeed irreparable, its actual consequences were. The mistake as to the date of death was the first source of confusion, since it caused Mrs. F.'s wedding to take place while her husband, Sir R., had still a day to live. But this error would not in itself have proved fatal, since there would still have been time to repeat the ceremony and make a valid marriage of it before the birth of the child. Here the misapprehension about the Old Style came in. Led to believe that, although Sir R. lived six days longer than was originally reported, yet none the less he died on June 12th, the F.'s did not have the ceremony repeated. But he died, in fact, on the 24th as his wife reckoned time, and her wedding to Captain F. on the 23rd was an idle and useless form. When the discovery was made, the boy was born—and born out of lawful wedlock.

      What did they do then? I was pardonably interested in the matter, and inquired of Madame de Kries. She was reticent, but I extracted from her the information that they were hurriedly married again. One could laugh if the matter had not been so terribly serious to them and to their boy. For by now those events had actually happened, and Mrs. F. was not indeed in possession of but next in succession to a considerable estate and an ancient title. Marrying again could not mend the matter. What else they did to mend or try to mend it, Madame de Kries professed not to know. I myself do not know either. There is only one thing to say. They could not alter the date of the death; they could not alter the date of the wedding; perhaps it would seem rather more possible to alter the date of the birth. At any rate, that is no business of mine. I have set the story down because it seemed a curious and interesting episode, but it is nothing to me who succeeds or ought to succeed to this or that title or estate. For my own part, I am inclined to hope that the baby's prospects in life will not be wrecked by the absurd Russian habit of using the Old Style.

      To return to serious questions, the customs-barrier between——"

      Mr. Jenkinson Neeld laid down his friend's Journal and leant back in his chair.

      "Really!" he murmured to himself. "Really, really!"

      Frowning in a perplexed fashion, he pushed the manuscript aside and twiddled the blue pencil between his fingers. The customs-barrier of which Josiah Cholderton was about to speak had no power to interest him. The story which he had read interested him a good deal; it was an odd little bit of human history, a disastrous turn of human fortunes. Besides, Mr. Neeld knew his London. He shook his head at the Journal reprovingly, rose from his chair, went to his book-case, and took down a Peerage. A reminiscence was running in his head. He turned to the letter T (Ah, those hollowly discreet, painfully indiscreet initials of Josiah Cholderton's! Mysteries perhaps in Baxton, Yorks, but none in Pall Mall!) and searched the pages. This was the entry at which his finger stopped—or rather part of the entry, for the volume had more to say on the family than it is needful either to believe or to repeat:—

      "Tristram of Blent—Adelaide Louisa Aimée, in her own right Baroness—23rd in descent, the barony descending to heirs general. Born 17th December 1853. Married first Sir Randolph Edge, Bart.—no issue. Secondly, Captain Henry Vincent Fitzhubert (late Scots Guards), died 1877. Issue—one son (and heir) Hon. Henry Austen Fitzhubert Tristram, born 20th July 1875. The name of Tristram was assumed in lieu of Fitzhubert by Royal Licence 1884. Seat—Blent Hall, Devon——"

      Here Mr. Neeld laid down the book. He had seen what he wanted, and had no further concern with the ancestry, the ramifications, the abodes or possessions of the Tristrams of Blent. To him who knew, the entry itself was expressive in what it said and in what it omitted; read in conjunction with Josiah Cholderton's Journal it was yet more eloquent. By itself it hinted a scandal—else why no dates for the marriages? With the Journal it said something more. For the 20th is not "early in July." Yet Mr. Neeld had never heard—! He shut the book hastily and put it back on the shelf. Returning to his desk, he took up the blue pencil. But on second thoughts this instrument did not content him. Scissors were to his hand; with them he carefully cut out from the manuscript the whole account of Mr. Cholderton's visit to Heidelberg (he would run no risks, and there was nothing important in it), dated it, marked it with the page to which it belonged in the Journal, and locked it away in a drawer.

      He felt resentful toward his dead friend Josiah Cholderton. If there be a safe pastime, one warranted to lead a man into no trouble and to entangle him in no scandals, it would seem to lie in editing the Journal of a Member of Parliament, a Commercial Delegate, an Inventor of the Hygroxeric Method of Dressing Wool. Josiah Cholderton had—not quite for the first time—played him false. But never so badly as this before!

      "Good gracious me!" he muttered. "The thing is nothing more nor less than an imputation on the legitimacy of the son and heir!"

      That same afternoon he went over to the Imperium to vote at the election of members. It struck him as one of the small coincidences of life that among the candidates who faced the ballot was a Colonel Wilmot Edge, R.E.

      "Any relation, I wonder?" mused Mr. Neeld as he dropped in an affirmative ball. But it may be added, since not even the secrets of club ballots are to be held sacred, that he bestowed one of a different sort on a certain Mr. William Iver, who was described as a "Contractor," and whose name was familiar and conspicuous on the hoardings that screened new buildings in London, and was consequently objectionable to Mr. Neeld's fastidious mind.

      "I don't often blackball," he remarked to Lord Southend as they were sitting down to whist, "but, really, don't you think the Imperium should maintain—er—a certain level?"

      "Iver's СКАЧАТЬ