The Twickenham Peerage Part 5

'I'll give you one.'

This was Edith. I took the cup she offered. Before I had a chance to sip it, Violet began at me again.

'Now, Douglas, perhaps you'll tell us.'

'Tell you what?'

'If the Marquis of Twickenham is alive.'

I turned to Reggie.

'I suppose I'm indebted to you for this. Next time I have a confidential remark to make, which I wish to have shouted in the market-place, I shall know whom to address.'

'You never told me not to tell. And I haven't shouted it in the market-place; whatever you mean by that. I only told Vi.'

'Only!'

Violet answered for him.

'It's no use your attacking Reggie; I made him tell. Situated as we are, there ought to be no secrets between us; between any of us. Do you mean to say that you consider that the knowledge that the Marquis of Twickenham is alive is knowledge which you are ent.i.tled to keep to yourself?'

'My dear Vi, there is no doubt that animation suits you; but I shouldn't on that account be always in a condition of explosiveness.'

Her cheeks flamed. Nothing annoys her so much as being told that she's excitable. Edith laid her hand upon my arm.

'Douglas, tell me; is it true?'

'I don't know.'

'Do you mean that you don't know, or that you won't say? Have you any reason to believe that he's alive; any tangible reason?'

'As I told Reggie, and as I presume he has told you, I shall be in a better position to answer that question next week.'

'But why not now? What is it you do know? Why keep us in suspense? Is it fair? Think of what it means to all of us; of what it means to me.

It has come to this--that to me it is almost a question of life or death.'

I understood the allusion; it cut me to the heart.

'I tell you that I know nothing.'

'Then why did you say that last night to Reggie?'

'Because I supposed him to be possessed of a few grains of common sense.'

'But you must have had some grounds to go upon. You surely wouldn't have said a thing like that without a cause--you, of all men. Miss Sandford has never doubted that he's alive; now mother seems equally convinced; now there's you, throwing out mysterious hints. Be fair to us; make us sharers even of your suspicions.'

'Very good; I'll tell you all there is to tell, though it will only unsettle you as it unsettled me.'

'We can't be more unsettled than we are already. Anything to get out of the darkness into the light.'

'You'll still be in the darkness when you've heard all I have to say; I promise you that. I know I'm fogged enough.'

I cast about in my mind how best to tell a part of the truth without revealing all. It was very far from my desire to send them all scampering off to the Aquarium, as they undoubtedly would do if they learned everything. Edith guessed what I was after.

'Are you thinking how much you can keep back? Be fair.'

'I will be fair; what's more, I'll be open too.' Always begin like that when you intend to be as much the other kind of thing as possible. 'I'll put you in possession of all the information I have in a single sentence. The other day I saw a man who was Twickenham's living image.'

They had gathered round me. I had a dim consciousness that their faces changed colour. With their eyes they seemed to be trying to search me through and through. My statement was followed by a perceptible pause.

Then Edith began to question me.

'The other day? When?'

'Yesterday.'

'Yesterday? Then you knew last evening. Mother was right.'

'I did not know. I don't know now. It seems incredible that two men could be so much alike, but, on the other hand, it seems equally incredible that, under the circ.u.mstances, it could have been he.'

'Under the circ.u.mstances? What were the circ.u.mstances?'

'That I decline to say. I must ask you to take my word for it that the circ.u.mstances under which I saw this man make it practically impossible that it could have been he.'

'Did he see you?'

'He did not.'

'Did you try to speak to him?'

'I had no chance.'

'Did you find out where he lives, or anything at all about him?'

'I did this: I found a man who knows him, and who, I have reason to believe, will bring me face to face with him at a very early date.'

'When?'

'I hope that the question of ident.i.ty will be settled by Tuesday morning.'

'Hope? Is that quite the appropriate word? Because I perceive that it is Twickenham. You see, Douglas, I know you so well.'

'It is because I expected you to take that point of view that I was reluctant to speak: because I'm more than doubtful if the man I saw was Twickenham.'

'I'm not. If it had been any one but you it would have been a different case. But, you know, Douglas, your royal gift of remembering faces. You never confuse one person with another, even if it is a person you only saw for five minutes twenty years ago. If you have seen a man who was so like Twickenham that you would not like to say it was not Twickenham, it was. Reggie won't be Marquis yet.'

She leant against the mantel, looking pale. There was something in her att.i.tude which seemed to me condemnatory. I felt ashamed. Reggie threw himself into an arm-chair.

'If it was Twickenham I shall be in a pretty tight fix.'