Richard Dowling - The Duke's Sweetheart - A Romance

"I have been waiting a whole five minutes for you, sir."

"I envy those five minutes that were near you when I was away."

"A pretty speech," she said, with a dainty toss of her head; "but I am in a bad humour, and you will have to say all the civil things to-day."

"If we are not to part until I have said all the civil things I have in my heart, we shall not part till sundown."

"Oh goodness! fancy speaking to the one man from five minutes past eleven in June till sundown! It would kill any girl I know."

"Which simply means that you don't know anything at all about yourself."

"I think, Mr. Cheyne, you are the most conceited man I ever met in all my life."

"Then you must have been in a nunnery from your birth till now."

"Are you going to talk in this horrible way for the remainder of my hour and a half, or are you going to take me for a nice comfortable walk through the park and tell me things?"

Said he:

"Comfort? comfort, scorned of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."

"But, Mr. Cheyne, have the goodness to remember I am not of the class of persons the poet sings of."

"No. You are an angel."

"I declare you've wasted another five minutes in this foolish way. I'll go home."

"A proud spirit always rebels against a threat. I assure you, if you say anything more of that kind, I'll put my hat in the middle of the path and walk away from it, so as to attract the attention of everyone in the park to us."

"Don't be absurd."

"What I am is nothing compared to what we will be when I sigh for the hat I've left behind me."

"Charlie-"

"That's better. There is a tone of humanity in your voice now, May."

"Well, let us make it up, Charlie, and be friends, not comedians."

"With all my heart, May. Before we go any farther I must say I never saw you looking so-so nice. I know 'nice' isn't the right word; but if I say anything stronger you won't give me time to say something else I want to say. Something of the greatest importance."

"Can't you say it out instead of making a speech about it?"

"Well, I never was so happy in all my life before. I never was so much in love before. You know, May, I never told you anything but the simple truth."

She took the arm he had frequently unavailingly offered since they had met.

"You are a good old fellow, and I won't abuse you any more to-day. Have you any news to tell me?"

"Not a word. Except that Effingham has sold that novel at last. Sold it for a song; but then it is a beginning."

"Well then, tell me about Lady Clarinda. What has she done!"

"Run away with the German adventurer."

"Nonsense! I wont have it."

"Can't be helped now."

"Yes, but it must. I insist upon her marrying Sir Gabriel Fairfax."

"But, my dear May, what's done can't be undone."

"Yes; but, Charlie, I insist upon Lady Clarinda marrying Sir Gabriel."

"Oh, nonsense! The public would not have it."

"You must really change it. Why should a young girl like that run away with a red-headed foreigner? She would never have done it."

"That's the new plan, dear. You can't have your hero too wild or your heroine too ugly; for men as a rule are bad, and women are not all as lovely as you, and it flatters bad men and ugly women to find bad men and ugly women heroes and heroines."

"Well, but I don't care what the new plan is, I wont have that horrid German adventurer marry Lady Clarinda."

"Oh, very well; of course, if you insist upon her marrying Sir Gabriel, she shall; although it will compel me to tear up twelve manuscript sheets worth four shillings a sheet."

"And what is going to happen in the other one when the old Duke of Fenwick dies?"

"Oh, you'd be greatly surprised."

"What?"

"You remember the long, tall, thin man who played the violoncello in the theatre orchestra, early in the story?"

"Yes. With a red nose and warts on his fingers."

"That's he. But I must read that chapter to you the next time I am at Knightsbridge."

Reginald Francis Henry Cheyne, seventh Duke of Shropshire, lived most of the year at his splendid castle Silverview, on the German Ocean. The Duke was an undersized man with a dingy dull complexion and bandy legs. He looked more like an ostler than anything else; and yet he was not only a duke, but a duke of the bluest blood, owner of Silverview Castle, three other country seats, a palatial town-house, and an income of three to four hundred thousand a year. Fate paid him every day for waking upwards of five hundred pounds, and upwards of five hundred pounds on that same day for going to bed again.

He owned one whole city, four parliamentary boroughs, and sixty-four villages. He wasn't the richest peer in England, for he had neither a seventy-foot seam of coal nor a few hundred acres in the West End of London. But against the unpleasant feeling of not being the richest peer in England he had two things to cheer him. In the first place, his city and four parliamentary boroughs were docile, and elected men whom he suggested; and in the second place, beyond his son and heir, the Marquis of Southwold, he had no family, and therefore he had no one to provide for. Consequently he could live up to his income. This he did, but he went no farther; and in all England there was no property more free from encumbrance. He was sixty-three years of age, a widower, and extremely fond of yachting. Although he had a house or castle in each of the three kingdoms and in Wales, he rarely left Silverview, except in his yacht. He was passionately fond of the sea, and had spent as much of his time afloat as ashore. Another thing that wedded him to the sea was the delicacy of his son, who, although now eight-and-thirty years of age, had been from almost his birth obliged to live much at sea, owing to general weakness, and an affection of the eyes, which the doctors said would inevitably end in blindness if he lived permanently on shore.

The reason why the Duke preferred Silverview Castle to any of his other houses or castles was because it stood on a height at the top of a narrow bay. For miles on each side of this bay the land belonged to the Duke, and in his castle above his bay he was as far out of the world as if he had been in the Zaraha, and yet so close to his yacht riding at anchor that he could see from his bedroom-window when he got up if the brasses had been polished and the decks holystoned that morning.

The Duke and his son rode as every Englishman must, but he rode as little as any Englishman may. But neither the sea nor riding had bowed the Duke's legs. From generation to generation the house of Cheyne had been noted, with two exceptions, for its bowed legs. Of course, in the family portraits you saw no sign of this, for the family had taken care never to have any more extended counterfeit presentment than a kit-cat. Whenever, even while he was on land, the Duke encountered a gale he invariably threw out his sea-legs, and straddled, as though the road or field was, while rolling horribly, mounting a mighty swell.

There was nothing particularly interesting about the Duke of Shropshire. He was a commonplace-looking little man with very commonplace ideas. He was an excellent man of business, and every day, when he was at the Castle, gave two hours to his business folk. He was a model landlord. The tenants said it would be impossible to find better, but he was not popular among them. He was too dark and reserved and taciturn. Every sailor wants to have a garden and grow vegetables. Every farmer does not want to go a long sea-voyage. The land is no mystery to the sailor, but the sea is a mystery to the farmer. To people who have no dealings with the sea, those who frequent its plains seem aliens in race. This may, in some way, account for the fact that the Duke made no personal progress in the affections of his tenantry.