CHAPTER II.
[A DUCAL CARRIAGE.]
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.
The father was not popular, the son was partly pitied and partly despised. His delicacy, and the fact that he could not live on land, separated him still more effectually from the people than his father. The people looked forward with no pleasure to the fact that this man was heir, and would be duke some day. Another thing, too, that the tenants did not like was the way father and son kept together. They knew the marquis was not strong, but still he might have a little will of his own. Why hadn't he a yacht of his own? not go about always with his father, as though he was only twelve years of age instead of thirty-eight. Surely one of the richest peers in the world could afford an allowance to his only son which would enable that son to keep a yacht! Men like men for masters. They do not care to work under invalids and recluses.
Personally the Duke spent little or nothing of his large income. On Sundays his head-gardener was much better dressed than his master. The only luxury the Duke demanded was solitude, and for this solitude he was willing to give up nine-tenths of his fortune. He kept servants at all his seats, and any of his friends of thirty-five years ago was welcome to a loan of one, servants, shooting, fishing included. But no friend was to drive up to Silverview Castle and claim hospitality.
For upwards of thirty years the Duke had not gone into society, nor had he received any guest at Silverview Castle. His wife died soon after his heir was born, and he had gone very little into society since. When not on board his yacht Seabird, she lay moored under the windows of the Castle, and nothing was easier than, upon receiving a notice from So-and-so saying he would call upon the Duke on a certain day, for the Duke to write, saying he was very sorry that he intended leaving on a cruise that very day.