His grace

Chapter I. The Sacked Solicitor

In the month of May, 1887, at which time, as will be remembered, preparations were being made for the fit celebrating of the jubilee of our most gracious Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria, I, Philip Martyn, was in a frame of mind very far removed from being jubilant. I don’t mean to say that I am, or was, one whit less loyal than other people — on the contrary, I am one of those quiet, law-abiding persons who are bound to be loyal to the form of government under which they live, and, notwithstanding my devotion to the House of Hanover, everything leads me to believe that, had a British Republic been proclaimed before the date of my birth, I should have been unreservedly loyal to that — but I suppose that with the generality of us our personal affairs and interests occupy a somewhat larger share of our attention than those of the nation at large, and the truth is that, on the particular afternoon to which I allude, I had clean forgotten the circumstance of her Majesty’s having reigned over us with honor and distinction for half a century. My per-

HIS GRACE.

sonal affairs and interests were just then in a parlous state ; neither honor nor distinction had I achieved ; nor, so far as I could foresee, was there the slightest prospect that, in my case, diligence and conscientious effort would ever be crowned by those rewards.

“ The long and the short of it, Philip,” my Uncle John said to me, as I helped him to struggle into his overcoat before he left the office, “ is that you are not fitted to take a leading part in a business like ours. Understand me, I am not blaming you ; I am merely stating a fact. There are men who are born to be lawyers, and there are other men who, I presume, were born to be something else ; though, if you’ll excuse my saying so, I’ll be hanged if I can lay my finger upon the especial purpose for which you were created. What I do know, and what it is better and kinder to tell you at once, is that you were not created to be a solicitor. I have had some experience of you by this time, and I think it only fair to warn you that you may stay here until your hair is gray without much hope of being taken into partnership. I am sorry for it ; but necessity has no law, and the law knows no necessities, except those imposed by Act of Parliament or by contracts duly signed and attested. Not being an idiot, I never contracted to make you a member of my firm ; although I am, of course, aware that that was what you and your mother looked forward to when I advised that you should pass your examinations and promised to find employment for you in the office. Personally, I should have been only too pleased to give you every encouragement : it is no fault of mine, and I daresay it is no fault of yours either, that I am unable to do so. You lack the requisite abilities,

HIS GRACE .

that’s all. I am not making any complaint, mind you ; only, if I were in your place, I should drop the law and try to discover my real mission in life. As I said before, I am not clever enough to assist you in your researches ; still, the odds are that you have a mission of one kind or another, because it seems scarcely reasonable to conclude that you can have been sent into an overcrowded world without any individual capacity for usefulness whatsoever.”

It was not often that my uncle treated me to so prolonged a harangue ; nor, I am sure, would he have done so then, had he not been very much in earnest and rather angry into the bargain. He had some excuses for being angry with which it is needless to trouble the reader ; he was perfectly justified in intimating that I was not cut out to adorn a profession which I have always abhorred ; his advice that I should abandon it and seek some other field of enterprise would have been admirable, if I had possessed ever so small a private income upon which to subsist while awaiting better things. But, unhappily, I had nothing beyond what my mother was able to spare me out of her own straitened means ; and that was why I was a sorrowful man as I wended my way westwards after office hours.

When I sat down to write this narrative, I made up my mind that I would say as little as possible about myself ; because in the course of it I shall only appear as what I actually am — a practical nonentity, whose disappearance at any moment from these earthly scenes would cause no appreciable inconvenience to anybody. But the difficulty of speaking in the first person when one is neither a hero nor anything resembling one is somewhat greater than I thought it was going to be ;

HIS GRACE.

and it seems almost necessary, for purposes of clearness, that I should start by being a little egotistical. I must just mention that my father had been a wealthy merchant who had failed in business late in life and had died shortly afterwards, leaving his widow and his two children with only a few hundreds a year wherewith to engage upon the struggle for existence ; I must add that I, who had been originally intended for the Guards, was compelled by force of circumstances to accept Uncle John’s suggestions with gratitude ; and I suppose I had better also confess without more ado that I had a certain facility for the composition of poetry. Nobody, I am sure, will be so unkind as to grudge me the privilege of calling my compositions poetry, because nobody who reads these lines is in the very least likely to have ever perused my poems. They have been published ; but my publisher assures me — and I can well believe him — that they have at no time had a wide circulation. At that time, however, it did not seem to me an impossible thing that the public might eventually recognize some merit in my attempts at versification and even go so far as to pay me for the same ; so that, on my way from the City to St. James’s Street I asked myself quite seriously whether it was not my probable mission in life to be a poet in a humble fashion. I have since discovered that my mission in life is essentially prosaic. One makes these discoveries in the course of a year or two, and they are doubtless salutary, if they are not precisely agreeable.

The first thing that I saw, after reaching my club and picking up one of the evening papers, was that the Duke of Hurstbourne was dead. The announcement interested me and served to divert my thoughts

HIS GRACE.

for the moment from personal perplexities; because, although I had never seen the deceased nobleman, and although, as the newspaper obligingly informed its readers, he had not been in any sense a prominent personage, I remembered that my old schoolfellow Arthur Gascoigne had been his nephew and his heir-presumptive. The presumption had now been converted into a reality ; the small boy who had been my fag not so very long before, who had basked in my smiles and trembled at my frown, v/as a full-blown duke, while I was but a budding solicitor, not to say a solicitor who had been frostily nipped in the bud. Such are the revenges of time, and such the inequalities of human existence ! However, I was not so shabby as to grudge Gascoigne his promotion. We can’t all of us be dukes, and he had always been such a good little fellow that I had no doubt as to his eventually proving quite as presentable a duke as the rest of his compeers. I had not seen much of him since old Eton days, our paths in life having naturally been so divergent ; still, we had come across one another every now and again, and he had always seemed glad to see me and chat over bygone times. I was glad to think that all this honor and wealth had come to him, because I suspected from what I had heard that he had become a somewhat extravagant young gentleman, and I knew that he was not rich.

While I was holding the unread newspaper in my hand and meditating philosophically over the tremendous issues involved in a system of hereditary succession, I was accosted by another member of the club who was also a former schoolfellow of mine, and who said —

“ So old Hurstbourne has been gathered to his fathers

IO

HIS GRACE.

at last, I see. Luck for little Gascoigne, isn’t it ? Though I suppose he’ll get nothing except the title and the entailed estates ; and what they’re worth nobody seems to know.”

“ Why won’t he get anything more ? ” I inquired.

“ Oh, because his uncle wouldn’t have anything to do with him — never saw him, in fact, I believe. There was a deadly feud between his father, Lord Charles, and the head of the family. What it was about I can’t say ; but they didn’t speak, and when Lord Charles died, the Duke, who, as you know lived and died a bachelor, rather ostentatiously took up Paul Gascoigne, Arthur’s cousin. I expect he has left the whole of the London property, which is worth any amount of money, to Paul. Still, Arthur ought to do middling well with the estates which are bound to be his, and most likely his mother will manage to pick up an heiress for him to marry. Ever meet Lady Charles ? ”

I had not had that advantage, and I said so.

“ Queer old girl,” resumed my well-informed friend, with an amused smile. “ Not a bad old sort, in her way, though she isn’t exactly the sort of mother whom I should covet personally. As she isn’t one’s mother, one only laughs, don’t you know ; but if she were one’s mother, I daresay one might writhe occasionally. Arthur doesn’t writhe. He’s such a good-hearted little beggar that he couldn’t for the life of him see a fault in anybody whom he was fond of ; and, after all, he’s quite right to be fond of her, for she adores him and thinks nothing good enough for him. She was an heiress herself once upon a time ; but that old rip Lord Charles made ducks and drakes of her fortune, they say. Anyhow, she has been pretty hard up of

HIS GRACE.

II late years. It’s rather a joke — only, of course, as you don’t know her, you can’t see the joke — that in a few months’ time Lady Charles will be doing the honors at Hurstbourne Castle.”

He had a good deal more to say about the late Duke of Hurstbourne, who, it appeared, had been an individual of eccentric and retiring disposition, as well as about the quarrels and peculiarities of the Gascoigne family in general ; but I did not listen very attentively to his prattle. I had family affairs of my own to think about which, if less interesting to him and the world at large than those of a duke, were far more so to me, and it did not seem likely that I should have any further personal relations with the newly-elevated member of the highest rank in the peerage. I remember that, while he was talking, I felt vaguely sorry that circumstances should have rendered me such a complete outcast from high society — not because I cared for high society, of which I had little knowledge or experience, but because I cared a good deal for Arthur Gascoigne. Nowadays I sometimes wonder what can have made me care for him at a time when, after all, I was but slightly acquainted with him. He himself declares that it must have been my immense superiority to him in the matter of physical size and strength ; for indeed I am a big, muscular man, whereas he is a diminutive and' not very powerful one, though, heaven knows, he has the pluck of a whole regiment !

“ My dear Martyn,” says he — I don’t mind repeating this, because there isn’t a word of truth in it — “ it is your nature to think of anybody and everybody in the world before you think of yourself ; and as nothing would induce you to admit that you have twice the

HIS GRACE.

brains of other people, you are driven to place your biceps at their service. It stands to reason that a poor, unprotected pigmy must have irresistible claims upon you, and that, you may depend upon it, is what made you resolve to be my friend and champion.”

All that is very great nonsense. I do not quote it in order to make the reader think me modest and unselfish, but only to convey some idea of the simplicity of Hurstbourne’s character. It does not occur to him that he possesses any individual attraction — and in truth the attraction which he unquestionably does possess would be a little difficult to define — if anyone tries to be a friend to him, he at once assumes that that person must be abnormally noble and generous. Perhaps that is one reason why he continues to the present day

to love and admire his mother, who However, if I

have to say anything disparaging about her, I will say it later on.

At the time of which I speak I naturally took it for granted that the Duke of Hurstbourne must henceforth move in a sphere as remote from my own as that of any duke must of necessity be ; yet dukes and beggars do come across one another in the street, and it was in the street that I found myself face to face with my former fag a few days later. The street was muddy, too, after a recent shower, and he came running across it in his patent-leather boots to shake hands with me ; which seems to show that some people may be dukes without realizing that it behooves them to beckon their friends through the mud when they wish to speak to them.

“ Well, old chap,” said he, “ how has the world been treating you this last ever so long ? ”

HIS GRACE.

1 3

“ Not with the same liberality,” I replied somewhat gloomily, “ as it has treated you. I have not lost a wealthy and noble uncle, for the sufficient reason that I have no wealthy or noble uncle to lose. At least, I believe Uncle John is pretty well off ; but he is not dead or going to die ; and when he does die, nothing can be more certain than that he won’t leave me a penny. At present he is anxious to make it clear to me that I shall not get many pence out of him even while he lives. All the same, I am glad to think that you are more fortunate.”

“ Oh, well,” he answered, with a laugh, “ I don’t expect my old uncle meant me to be any more fortunate than he could help. I haven’t an idea at this moment whether I am a rich man or a pauper ; but I shall hear all about it after the funeral to-morrow, I suppose. What’s up between you and your old man ? Not a row, I hope ? It’s awful cheek for me to offer you advice ; but really, my dear old Martyn, I wouldn’t quarrel with him if I were you. When all’s said and done, he has it in his power to make you or mar you — hasn’t he now ? ”

That was Hurstbourne all over. People who think that they know him, but who are in reality far too stupid to be even remotely conscious of their own stupidity, are wont to describe him as an excitable, scatterbrained, pleasure-loving sort of fellow, and to assume as a matter of course that, because he likes amusing himself, his personal amusement must invariably oc cupy the foremost place in his thoughts. How many of them, I wonder, if they had just succeeded to a dukedom and were absolutely in the dark as to whether their strawberry-leaves had brought them, immense

HIS GRACE.

wealth or comparative poverty would deem the fortunes or misfortunes of a humble lawyer worthy of their attention ? Yet I verily believe that Hurstbourne, after I had told him something of the troubles and perplexities to which I was a prey, was a good deal more anxious about my prospects than he was about his own.

“Well, we must get you out of that beastly office somehow,” he said at length ; “ there’s no good in sticking to work that you hate — especially after the old boy has given you such a broad hint to retire. I wonder whether I couldn’t get some sort of appointment for you — a county-court judgeship, don’t you know, or something. I’m afraid I’m not going to be a very big man; still, the title ought to carry a certain amount of influence with it. Anyhow, Lord Chancellors and people of that kind would be pretty sure to receive me civilly if I went and looked them up, eh ? ”

I thought it quite likely that the Lord Chancellor would be civil to the Duke of Hurstbourne, and it seemed hardly worth while to explain that I was not eligible for a county-court judgeship. Few indeed are the appointments which in these democratic days can be bestowed, without questions asked, upon the nominee of a duke, even though that duke should be, as Hurstbourne was, the head of one of the old and formerly powerful Whig families, and I had commonsense enough to be aware that, if I was ever to earn my own bread and butter, I should have to do so by my own exertions. However, I did not wish to distress my kind-hearted little would-be benefactor by throwing doubts upon his ability to help me, and when we parted, he clapped me on the shoulder (he had to stand on tip* toe to do it), saying cheerily — ms GRACE.

“ Don’t you be down on your luck, old man ; it will be all right. Just wait a bit until I’ve had time to get into the saddle, and you’ll see that I sha’n’t forget you. *

As I afterwards found out, he really did not forget me during the three or four ensuing weeks, although I’am afraid I must confess that I forgot him : at all events, I did not think of him much or often. I did chance to hear, through the newspapers and from private sources, what his inheritance amounted to, and a very fine inheritance it sounded, notwithstanding the somewhat ungenerous will of the late duke, who, as had been anticipated, was found to have bequeathed the entire London property as well as a goodly portion of his northern estates to Mr. Paul Gascoigne. However, my young friend got Hurstbourne Castle, together with the lands appertaining thereto, which were estimated to bring in an income sufficient (as it appeared to me) for the maintenance of a magnate of the first water. I saw no reason to pity him ; and as I had at the moment many and great reasons for pitying myself, I relerated him to one of those back shelves in my memory which I do not generally examine except when I can’t sleep at night.

I suppose Uncle John must have wanted very much indeed to get rid of me, and, all things considered, I can’t say that I wonder at it ; but I still think that he might have attained his object without being so emphatically disagreeable and so disagreeably emphatic. Perhaps it is easier to forgiv^great injuries than small ones ; perhaps it would not be true to say that my uncle ever inflicted any real injury, great or small, upon me ; yet even now when I am independent of him and i6

HIS GRACE.

cherish no grudge against him, I cannot recall the sharp speeches which he used to address to me in those days without feeling the blood mount into my cheeks and my eyes. I only remained on at the office day after day because it was necessary and because I could not, for the sake of asserting my personal dignity, throw the weight of supporting my great, useless body upon my poor old mother’s already overburdened hands. I suppose Uncle John knew that, and it may be that he allowed a more free rein to his tongue in consequence. Well, it is all over, and it doesn’t matter, and I admit that he is a very decent sort of man, as men go ; only of course my forbearance was exercised to little purpose,- for when once that kind of thing begins the sooner the inevitable end comes the better.

In my case it came one afternoon when my uncle told me before all his clerks that I understood rather less of my business than the first crossing-sweeper whom he could pick up in the street. He had said worse things than that to me before ; but he had not said them in so public a manner, and it seemed to me that, under the circumstances, the only possible course open to me was that which I made haste to adopt. Shortly afterwards I walked away from the City a free man and a practically penniless one.

I was making for the club and was walking moodily along Piccadilly when a little man in beautifully-fitting black clothes — never in his life has Hurstbourne had a wrinkle about his person from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot — caught me by the arm, exclaiming, “ Here’s luck ! You’re the very man I wanted to meet. Come and dine with me at the Clarence at eight o’clock, like a good fellow, will you ? I’m in a

HIS GRACE.

1 7

deuce of a hurry now; but I’ve got something to say to you, and I’ll say it this evening, if you’ll come. Are you disengaged ? ”

I was disengaged and perhaps not disinclined to confide my woes to a sympathetic listener; so when — about twenty minutes after the appointed hour — he arrived at the very smart and modern club which he had named, he found me waiting for him there. He did not apologize for being late ; but he apologized presently for the dinner and the wine, neither of which stood in need of any apology, and then he proceeded to apologize also for a proposal which he wished to make to me.

“ I daresay,” he began, in deprecating accents, “ it isn’t exactly what you would choose ; but it’s better than nothing, and it needn’t be permanent, unless you like. The fact is that I have been talking to some of these big-wigs, and they all assure me that they can’t do anything for a solicitor. Barristers, they say, they might be able to help ; but I expect that’s only because I wasn’t asking them to help a barrister. Well, to cut a long story short, what I want you to do, if you will, is to manage my establishment and my expenditure for me. It’s very evident to me that somebody must do it, or I shall soon get things into a rare mess. There’s a land-steward and a house-steward and a lot of other rascals; but unless they have a gentleman over them, to keep them up to their bearings, they’ll rob me right and left ; and as soon as I realized this I made so bold as to think of you, Martyn. I really don’t believe you would find it such a bad berth. You would live at Hurstbourne and have your own rooms — as many of ’em as you wanted 2

H/S GRACE.

l8

— and there would be horses for you to ride, and of course the shooting. I can’t help thinking that a country-life would suit an athletic fellow like you better than office-work in this filthy town; besides which, you would have the comfort, which I know would be a very real comfort to you, of thinking that you were doing me the greatest possible service. I ’ve no head for figures, you see, and my only chance of averting an appalling financial disaster is to commit my affairs to someone whom I can thoroughly trust.”

He went into a few details, which certainly seemed to bear out his assertion that he was not very well qualified to take care of himself in a financial sense ; he explained what my duties would be, and I did not think them beyond the range of my capacities ; finally he named a salary so preposterously high that I could not in common honesty accept it. But I did, after some hesitation, accept the post offered to me. I knew very well that it was offered to me out of the kindness and generosity of his heart, and that, if I did not take it, the appointment would probably not be filled by anybody else ; still, I hope I was not absolutely and entirely selfish in the matter. Looking back upon it, I am able to say with a clear conscience that I have been of some service to him and have earijd my pay : even at the moment I might, perhaps, have resisted the temptation, powerful as it was, had I not foreseen that he would at least not be a loser by employing me.

He was so pleased by my consent to let him relieve me of the cares which had almost broken my heart that he jumped up from his chair to shake hands with me, knocking over a decanter and scandalizing the prim

HIS GRACE.

1 9

waiter, who.no doubt thought that he had drunk more wine than was good for him.

“ My dear old chap,” he exclaimed, “ this is awfully good of you, and I don’t know how to thank you enough. My mother will be delighted when she hears of it ; for she knows, if anybody does, that I am the worst hand in the world at keeping accounts. We really ought to have another bottle of fizz to celebrate this joyful occasion. Waiter, bring another bottle of that stuff which they have the cheek to call ’74 Giessler.”

As I am a Christian man, I left that club perfectly sober, yet perfectly convinced that I had behaved like a friend in need. And, indeed, I believe that such is the impression which my poor dear Hurstboume invariably manages to convey to those whom he has befriended.

Mp GRACE .

Chapter II. Nora

The next morning I had a second interview with Hurstbourne, in the course of which my duties and responsibilities were somewhat more clearly defined for me than they had been on the previous evening. I was, it appeared, to be invested with plenary powers as regarded the management of the Hurstbourne Castle estate and establishment; I was to “get things straight,” if I could ; I was to effect any reductions which might have to be effected ; above all, I was entreated not to let my young friend spend more money than he possessed.

“ Because,” said he ingenuously, “ I know very well that that’s what I shall do, unless you ride me in a rather sharp bit. I never could see such an awful lot of difference between a sovereign and a shilling, and I don’t suppose I ever shall. But if you’ll have the kindness just to take a good, strong pull at me when you think I’m getting my head up too much, it’ll be all right. I don’t want to be bothered about five-pound notes, you understand ; but at the same time I don’t want to come a cropper.”

What he precisely did want was not easy to ascertain, nor, I suppose, were his own ideas particularly distinct as yet ; only he had a very decided and not very un-

HIS GRACE.

natural desire to get all the fun that he could for his money, and I gathered that, what with yachting, deerstalking, and the claims of London society, he would not spend more than three or four months of the year at his ancestral castle.

“ When I am at Hurstbourne, though, I shall make it lively for you,” he added encouragingly, “ and when you’re alone — well, you’ll have the neighbors, and I daresay there will be work enough to keep you busy for a few hours every day, and in the winter you ought to get plenty of sport. Anyhow, you can but give the plan a trial and drop it if it doesn’t suit you.”

The plan was quite certain to suit me better than any other that could have been devised on my behalf, and I am sure he knew that, or he would never have asked me to undertake it. I said as much to him when we parted ; but he scouted the idea of my having anything to thank him for, protesting loudly that the obligation was all the other way. So, as there was not much more to be said, and as he apparently had a great many engagements, I left him, promising to let him hear from me as soon as I should have taken up my abode at Hurstbourne Castle, and the same afternoon I journeyed down to Essex, in order to inform my mother of the change which had occurred in my fortunes.