A Queen's Error Part 35

"Dear little Dolores is a right good sort, and if I were a man I think I should fall in love with her myself. I am sure she will make you happy; mind you take care of her!

"There is one thing I am sure you will be glad to hear.

"Give her a season or two over an easy country to begin with, and I a.s.sure you she will ride to hounds as well as any girl born and bred in the s.h.i.+res. Believe me, dear Bill, I am speaking seriously, and you know me too well to think I would deceive you on such a matter.

"I leave you to teach her to shoot; I think every girl should be able to handle a gun; it gives her something to talk about to other girls'

brothers."

This was the gist of the letter, and I put it aside with a sigh, wondering whether dear old Ethel would ever marry herself. In that mood, I regretted that I had ever lingered in those dear old corridors at Bannington when the moonbeams slanted through the mullions of the narrow old Tudor windows, and Ethel came down the broad oaken staircase with a look of well simulated surprise in her eyes at finding me there, dressed early for dinner and waiting for her to surrender those red lips of hers in a cousinly kiss.

_Cousinly?_

Well, regrets were unavailing; I could not call the kisses back again, and how was I to know I was going to meet Dolores and of course fall straightway in love with her?

That is the way a man argues himself into a comfortable state of mind when his half forgotten peccadilloes of meanness spring up and p.r.i.c.k him!

St. Nivel came round daily with his sister, and, to use his own expression, "took me in hand." This taking in hand meant princ.i.p.ally marching me off to the tailors and hosiers to order new clothes.

"A man when he is going to be married," he said sententiously, "must make a clean sweep of all his old clothes and start afresh. It's a duty he owes to his future wife--and his tailor!"

He of course elected himself my best man, and only regretted that I was not in the "Brigade" that a dash of colour might be added to the ceremony by lining the church with his dear "Coldstreamers."

He was, however, getting tired of the Army. He confided to me his intention to "chuck it" at an early date, and devote himself to a country life entirely.

"In fact," he added, summing up the whole situation, "I mean to buy pigs and live pretty," whatever that expression might mean. His ideas of matrimony were, however, almost entirely of a pessimistic order, as he was for ever slapping me on the back and urging me to buck up, mistaking those delicious love musings which, I suppose, every bridegroom indulges in for fits of depression.

"My dear children," said the old Don to us one day, when we were all together, he, Dolores, and I; "my dear children, I want you to make me a promise."

"Of course we will, Padre," we both answered. "What is it?"

The "Padre" and the "dear children" were now well established forms of address, and I think the old man delighted in them.

"I want you to promise me," he replied, "that you will spend _some_ part of the year with me in Valoro."

"Of course we will," we chorused.

Dolores whispered a few words in my ear to which I readily nodded a.s.sent.

"Padre," she continued aloud, "we will come and spend Christmas and the New Year with you, and we will bring Lord St. Nivel and Ethel with us.

I am sure they will come. Then," she added, turning to me, "we will have all our courts.h.i.+p over again."

In such happy thoughts the time sped away. Don Juan, as an act of grat.i.tude for what he called "a dutiful acquiescence" to his wishes, purchased a town house for us in Grosvenor Square.

"During the season," he added meditatively, "perhaps you will find a little room for me"--most of the best bedrooms measured about 25 by 40--"that is all I need. After consideration, I have decided that it would be too much to ask you to have any of my dear snakes. If I bring any with me, I shall board them out at the Zoo."

The tenant of my manor house by the Solent, when he heard I was going to be married, called upon me at my club.

"My dear fellow," he said, "I'm a sportsman; I couldn't think of keepin' on your house when I know you'll want it to settle down in.

I've seen another across the water that'll suit me just as well, and you shall have your own again before the weddin'."

He was a kind-hearted man and sent me a wedding present--a silver bootjack to take off my hunting boots with. He said it might be useful to both of us, which was a distinct libel on Dolores' dear little feet.

At last the eve of our wedding came and Claridge's Hotel was filled from bas.e.m.e.nt to roof, princ.i.p.ally with the relatives of both families.

For a bevy of Dons with their wives and daughters, all kindred of my little Dolores, had crossed the Atlantic, glad of the excuse to visit London, and a contingent from France of the old _n.o.blesse_, her mother's relatives, had arrived to do honour to the nuptials of the little heiress. And because she was already a large possessor of the goods of this world they brought more to swell it; gold, silver, and precious stones in such quant.i.ties that it took two big rooms at Claridge's to contain them, and four detectives to watch them, two by day and two by night.

But among these presents were two which puzzled me greatly--they came anonymously--a _riviere_ of splendid diamonds for Dolores, a splendid motor car for me.

Had she been but a poor relation I fear her display of wedding gifts would have been but a meagre one. As it was, perhaps St. Nivel's terse comment on the "show," as he called it, was nearest to the truth.

"Bill," he said confidentially, "all this splendour is simply _barbaric_."

But n.o.body grudged little Dolores her grand wedding, nor the magnificent gifts, for every one loved her.

I was sitting calmly at breakfast on the morning of the day preceding our wedding, with my mind filled to overflowing with the happiness before me, when St. Nivel burst in upon me.

"Look here, Bill," he cried, flouris.h.i.+ng a newspaper before my eyes.

"Look here, _some one_ has got his deserts at last!"

I took the paper from him and read the paragraph he pointed to; it was headed--

"Tragic Death of the Duke of Rittersheim."

I paused, put down the newspaper, and looked at St. Nivel.

"Yes," he said, interpreting my look; "you will be troubled with him no more in this world; he's dead. Read it and see."

I took up the paper and read on--

"MUNICH, _Tuesday_.

"Considerable consternation was caused this morning in the Castle of Rittersheim and its neighbourhood upon the fact becoming known that His Serene Highness the Duke had pa.s.sed away during the night. It appears that the Duke has been in bad health ever since his return from England two months ago, where he had the misfortune to break his arm; he suffered also the loss of a very dear friend, in Mr. Summers, an American gentleman who, for some time, had been acting as his secretary, and whose body, it will be remembered, was found under very mysterious circ.u.mstances, at the time the Duke left England, in a tunnel on the Great Western Railway, just after the Bath express had pa.s.sed through, in which train it is known Mr. Summers had been travelling with an elderly gentleman. A rumour concerning the connection of Mr. Summers with a murder which had taken place in the Bath train seems to have preyed on the Duke's mind, and he has been unable to sleep for some weeks past.

"It is presumed that for this reason he had commenced the habit of injecting morphia, as a large hypodermic syringe, with an empty morphia bottle, were found beside his dead body. The general opinion is, that he succ.u.mbed to an overdose."

"Well, what do _you_ think," asked St. Nivel, as I laid down the paper, "accident or suicide?"

"It is impossible to say," I replied. "n.o.body can tell, and I should think that will be one of the problems which will go down to posterity unsolved."

"As unsolved, I suppose," he answered, "as the mystery of your old lady of Bath?"

That was a subject I had barred since my pledge to Don Juan. "Who can tell?" I answered with a shrug of the shoulders, "I have given it up.

I never think of it."

"_I_ do, though," replied my cousin, "and I also recollect, very often with mingled feelings, the way in which the finding of that man Summers' body in the tunnel was hushed up, and no further efforts made to connect him with the murder of poor Brooks."