Chapter VI A Matter of Title
As Peggie, veiled and muffled up, with the curtains of her sedan-chair drawn—but not closely enough to interfere with her outlook—was borne toward the city, she passed a handsome chariot, driven rapidly in the opposite direction.
The glimpse she caught of the occupants caused her great amusement. Sir Geoffrey Beaudesert was seated beside a young man, richly dressed and handsome, but sallow and hollow-cheeked. This was Lord Beachcombe, whose marriage with Lady Prudence Brooke had been abruptly broken off about a year ago, in consequence of a scandal raised by a certain Captain O’Keefe, who considered himself ill-used by the lady, and whose insulting strictures upon her conduct led to a fatal duel with Sir Geoffrey, and resulted in the promise of her hand to the champion of her honor. The sight of Prue’s former and present lovers together, struck Peggie as particularly funny, in connection with her own queer errand. If she could have overheard their conversation, it would have given additional zest to the situation.
“Faith,” Lord Beachcombe was saying, “if you are really bent on marrying the lovely widow, I wish you better luck than I had.”
“I am bent on it, with my whole heart and soul,” Sir Geoffrey replied, doggedly rather than enthusiastically. “I am not a man to be turned from my purpose by an idle word.”
The other laughed carelessly. “No man in your condition takes warning by other men’s misfortunes,” he remarked. “But there’s still hope for you; you are not her husband yet.”
“No, but I swear I will be, and soon, too!” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey. “I won her at the sword’s point, and by the God above us, I’ll wear her!”
“Will you bet?” demanded the other, with a sneer. Gambling was the most fashionable vice of that day, and few subjects were too great or too small to hang a wager upon.
“Aye, Lord Beachcombe, if you want to lose money, I’ll not deny you the opportunity,” laughed Sir Geoffrey, recovering his good humor. “What do you want to wager? Fifty guineas? a hundred?”
“Fifty or a hundred guineas is all too small a wager for so important a matter,” said Lord Beachcombe slowly, as though considering the exact sum demanded by the occasion. “Let us say a thousand—or five thousand.”
Sir Geoffrey was staggered by the amount, but he was as ardent a gambler as his companion, and reputed a much luckier one. “As your lordship pleases,” he replied, with well-assumed indifference. “But I warn you that the higher the stake, the more certain I shall be to win it, even if I have to carry the lady off by force.”
“Oh! if you have to resort to force—”
“If I have to resort to force, the stake should be doubled!” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey, “but I have no fear of that. Did your lordship say a thousand? or was it five?”
“Let it be five thousand,” returned Beachcombe. “I’ll wager five thousand guineas that you do not marry the Viscountess Brooke within—shall we say a month?”
Sir Geoffrey signified his satisfaction; each gentleman made a memorandum of the bet, and as the carriage had already been standing some minutes at Prue’s door, her betrothed alighted, thanked his friend for his courtesy in giving him a lift, and hastened in to press his suit with renewed ardor.
As the carriage was driven off Lord Beachcombe pulled the check-string and ordered the coachman to drive with all speed to Newgate Prison.
Newgate Prison, in the reign of Queen Anne, was a festering sink of iniquity and horror. Almost every crime under the sun was punishable by death—from stealing a penny loaf to robbing a church, and from snaring a pheasant to slaughtering a family. In fact the laws in relation to property were far more strictly enforced than those for the protection of human life, unless the value of the life was enhanced by the rights of property. There, in noisome pens, criminals of every degree herded together—men, women and children—all brought to an equality under the shadow of the gallows. But money was just as powerful there as anywhere else, and the prisoner who could pay might have privacy, company, the best of food and wine—everything except cleanliness—that no power could bring into Newgate Prison, and it needed the cleansing fires of destruction to purge it off the face of the earth.
Robin Freemantle, the condemned highwayman, had money enough to secure him a cell to himself. One of the poorer prisoners, for a consideration, had swept it out, and he had hired a table and chair from the jailer at about twice the price for which they had been bought ten years ago.
At his table he sat writing, with a bottle of wine at his elbow, and the debris of a substantial meal on a tray. Through a barred window above his head enough light slunk reluctantly in to show the fine athletic form and bronzed, manly face, on which the pallor of imprisonment was already toning down the ruddy glow of health. On the page before him he had inscribed but four words, at which he sat gazing irresolutely while he nibbled the feather of his pen. The key turned in the lock and a hoarse voice outside announced, “A visitor for you, Robin Highwayman.”
Lord Beachcombe walked in, and the door closed behind him.
Robin rose. “Welcome, my Lord,” he said, with an unmistakable ring of relief in his tone. “Your promptitude will do us both a good turn.”
“I received your letter, fellow,” said the other haughtily, “and I confess I was curious to learn how a man of education had fallen to your condition.” His eye glanced upon Robin’s left arm, which he wore in a sling, as though he marveled why it had been thought worth while to mend a collar-bone upon which the neck was set so insecurely.
“Take this chair, my Lord. I have but one in my spacious apartment. I’ll sit here.” He moved to the cot and his visitor sat down, not without some show of reluctance.
“And now, be brief,” said Lord Beachcombe, watching him narrowly, “and let me know the service you wish to render me”—with a sneer—“and the price you expect for it. I do not remember ever having been waylaid by you, so you can not have stolen jewels to restore.”
“Yet your lordship has some idea of what I have to offer—not to restore, for you never possessed it—and if I die on Monday, will never know the full worth of it until too late. Your lordship has a lawsuit pending involving your title and estate—”
“Every one knows that,” said Beachcombe irritably. “Some mysterious person has claimed to be my elder brother. The thing is manifestly impossible, but he appears to have interested a lawyer of sorts.”
“The thing is not impossible, Lord Beachcombe. It is true. It is also true that this claimant can deprive you not only of your title and estates, but of your very name.”
“You are mad! If such a thing were possible, what is it to you, and how can you know anything about it?”
“Because all the papers are in my possession. Oh! not here—in perfectly safe keeping; where they will remain until I die, or claim them back.”
“How came they in your possession?” demanded Beachcombe. “In robbing a coach, I suppose you took them for something valuable.”
“They came into my possession by the action of Providence, to afford your lordship the chance of giving me my life and keeping your own honorable name.”
“Your life, my good fellow! You overrate my power and your own value. If your papers are worth anything, I’ll give you all the money you ask for your own spending, and the provision of those you leave behind—”
“We’ll come to that presently,” said Robin. “First, I’ll tell you what I have to offer. Some thirty years ago—while His Majesty King Charles was on the throne—a certain lieutenant of the Guards, younger son of a great earl’s younger brother, fell in love with a poor schoolmaster’s pretty daughter. Passing himself off as a stage-player, under the name of Gregory Vincent, he won the young woman’s affection, though not, apparently, her complete confidence; for she went to the pains of investigating the gentleman’s private life, and discovered his real name. Then she consented to a secret marriage, at which she substituted a real priest and legal papers for the sham ones with which her honorable lover had intended to cozen her.”
“This story has already been communicated to my attorneys,” interrupted Lord Beachcombe impatiently. “How are you acquainted with it, and why do you expect it to interest me in you?”
“I know it because a vast number of letters, written by this gentleman, first to his sweetheart and afterward to his wife, have fallen into my hands. They tell the whole history, with many entertaining details, and would prove racy reading in the News sheet for your lordship’s friends and foes, especially the latter.”
The visitor winced. “No man likes his family affairs held up to ridicule,” he said. “I would willingly buy the letters, if genuine.”
“Oh! they are genuine; also the marriage certificate, whereof one of the witnesses is still living, and the certificates of the birth and baptism of the son, now twenty-eight years old. I believe your lordship is twenty-six?”
“And why has this matter been allowed to sleep for thirty years?”
“Because Mrs. Vincent—as she temporarily allowed herself to be called—although clever enough to find out that her stage-player lover was really a lieutenant of the King’s Guards, masquerading under a false name, was unable to trace him when he disappeared, a year after their marriage, and never knew that in consequence of several deaths, he had become Lord Beachcombe, of whom she probably never heard, and certainly never connected with Lieutenant Gregory de Cliffe. The last of this series of documents is the certificate of the death of the deserted wife, when her son was about five years old, to whom she bequeathed only her wedding-ring and a casket, which was to be opened when he came to man’s estate.”
Lord Beachcombe’s sallow face crimsoned with such a rush of blood, that his eyes were suffused, and he seemed in danger of suffocating.
“Five years,” he gasped. “Scoundrel, do you know what you are saying?”
Robin bent his head, without speaking.
“Where are these forgeries? These—these—” Beachcombe stopped, apparently unable to utter another word.
“As I told you before, they are quite safe,” said Robin quietly. “But an hour after my death, they will be in the hands of the person whom they most concern.”
“And do you—does this impostor imagine that he can oust a peer of the realm with a few old letters and musty documents, forsooth?” cried the earl, recovering himself a little. “We nobles hang together, Sir Highwayman, and are chary of disturbing one of our order for a trifle.”
“I do not know whether he can oust you, Lord Beachcombe,” said Robin, looking him steadily in the eye, “but he can prove you a bastard.”
Beachcombe sprang to his feet, with hand on sword, as though he would have drawn it on the defenseless prisoner, and stood, breathing heavily, unable to utter a word.
“We are alone, my Lord, and not one word that passes between us need ever be repeated outside this cell,” said Robin; “that is, if you agree to my terms. Otherwise, I may feel compelled to make terms with your cousin, who would be the inheritor if you were—illegitimate, and your elder brother were—could be induced to waive his claim.”
Lord Beachcombe bent a furtive but piercing regard upon the prisoner. “And how can you answer for him?” he asked, slowly weighing his words. “If I buy you off, I may have to fight him in the law courts afterward. Oh! ’tis intolerable—it’s a conspiracy—it must be a lie—my father a bigamist!—my mother—! Villain, you shall hang for calling me bastard, if for nothing else.”
“I think not,” said Robin. “Your unborn child may be a son, whose fate hangs upon your word. The rightful heir values my life so highly, that he himself has instigated this offer. He is willing to give all his documents in exchange for my life and liberty. Furthermore, for a sum of money sufficient to carry him abroad and start him in life, he will sign a deed, if you will have one drawn up, resigning all claims on the title or estates of Beachcombe. Is that explicit enough?”
During this speech, Lord Beachcombe had quieted down, and was now seated opposite the prisoner, whom he regarded with fixed attention.
“What does your claimant call himself? Under what name is he known?” he demanded abruptly.
“You can not know it without perusing the documents,” said Robin, “and you can not do that until I am free to bring them to you myself.”
“I tell you,” exclaimed the earl pettishly, “that you overestimate my influence. How can I obtain the pardon of a highwayman who attacked the Lord Archbishop?”
“I took nothing from his grace but his wig!” cried Robin, with a boisterous laugh, “and so that he might not catch cold in his venerable head, I gave him in exchange a comfortable cotton nightcap, that had once been the property of the Mayor of York! ’Twas a fair exchange, and methinks the archbishop would scarcely wish me hanged for a joke, when I might have stripped him of a coachful of treasure.”
Lord Beachcombe rose. “There are yet three days,” he said grudgingly. “I’ll see what can be done.”
“Three days for me, my Lord, but not for you,” said Robin significantly. “I must know by this time to-morrow what my chances are with you, for the letter I was inditing to your cousin Francis can not be delayed longer than that.”
“Francis!” sneered Lord Beachcombe. “What do you imagine he can do for you? A man whose name is hardly known at court! An indolent recluse; a mere bumpkin!”
“For me? Probably nothing,” Robin replied, in a stern, threatening tone. “But what can he do for you, with those papers in his possession? I may be dead before they reach him, but my revenge will be sure, in his hands.”
“Do you suppose he will put himself out for you—your claimant? You evidently don’t know Francis.”
“I do not know him, but I know human nature,” retorted Robin. “What heir does not live in hopes of some day inheriting? I shall make no conditions with him, but place the proof of your father’s first marriage in his hands. Can you doubt that he will use that weapon to put himself in your place? Oh! don’t flatter yourself that my death will clear the worst danger out of your path. Alive, you have a dozen ways of silencing me; dead, I have one way to ruin you—utterly.”
The two men regarded each other for a few seconds intently. Robin’s face expressed cold, implacable determination, the other, deadly hostility. Lord Beachcombe turned suddenly and rapped sharply on the door. It was instantly opened by the jailer, and he strode out without another word or glance.
Robin flung himself into the chair, and gave way to a deep and gloomy reverie. From time to time, broken sentences escaped him. “What is the use, after all?”—“It makes little difference whether I die now, or live to be hanged some other time”—and other remarks of a pessimistic and dismal nature. Then he fell to writing, but after a while, tore the paper into shreds, and sat moodily watching the sallow reflection of daylight fading slowly behind the bars.