Marjorie Bowen

Philip Wharton, Duke of Wharton

“The scorn and wonder of his age.”–Alexander Pope.

A young man sat at a wooden table in a small, mean room.

His hands were in his pockets and his head sunk on his breast, his legs outstretched before him.

A miserable bed, covered with a dirty blanket, occupied one corner of the room, above it being a gaunt and poorly carved crucifix.

The floor, walls and ceiling were lath, plaster and worn wood, all soiled, smoked and crumbling.

The one small window was covered with a thick pane of discoloured glass that could not open; some portmanteaux stood beneath and a broken chair.

On the table was a coarse glass stained with lees of wine, a loaf of bread, an hour-glass and a knife.

The flies turned in and out of the glass, clustered round the loaf and hung in clouds about the window.

Outside the sun, at its full height and strength, blazed at white heat, and a bar of vivid light streamed through the smeared glass and fell in a pool of gold on the dirty floor near to the young man, who appeared to be dozing, so still did he sit and so level was his breathing.

He was humbly dressed in a travelling coat that was much worn, though of a good cloth and fashionable cut, a frayed blue silk waistcoat, black breeches, boots to his knees, and a coat of grey tabinet, all much used and soiled.

At his side was a light sword, and round his throat a neckcloth of fine Venetian lace, carelessly folded.

His hair hung untidily down his back and forward over his face; it was a charming chestnut-brown colour and very thick. Presently he stretched himself and raised his head without removing his hands from his breeches pockets.

He glanced round the room, and it would have been impossible to discover from his expression whether the squalor of his surroundings moved him to disgust or no.

His face was unusually handsome, of a high-born and rakish type, but ravaged in a ghastly fashion by want and illness. The contour and pose of youth remained, but all bloom, freshness and colour had gone; his person seemed to have seen as much hard service as his clothes and to have suffered more.

From the lines on his brow and at the corners of his remarkably beautiful mouth it might have been supposed that he was in pain, but his expression was calm and his large hazel eyes serene. The flies circled the room and beat at the window with a monotonous persistency; the sun burnt up the already foul air and heated the room almost unbearably. The young man rose, displaying a figure no more than the middle height, but of a graceful, well-trained manliness, and walked unsteadily to the window.

As he moved he felt his own weakness and caught his breath with a quick exclamation.

For years he had been warned that he was killing himself as he had been warned that he was ruining himself. The last had occurred; he had been ruined in fame and fortune, and it seemed as if the first prophecy would be justified also. Two nights ago he had ridden from one town to another; six hours in the rain and the chill that had followed had greatly increased the vague illness that had been for the last two years threatening his life.

He had always been as reckless of his health as of all the other great gifts he had once been blessed with, and he was paying toll now, a penniless exile, bankrupt in everything.

He could see nothing from the window, the blaze of the sun was too strong on the white Spanish street.

The flies droned in his ears, and they were the only sound.

He closed his eyes, for the dazzle of sunshine made him feel giddy.

“Gad,” he murmured, “one could do with a few drops of rain–a cloud at least.”

He began to be conscious of a great thirst; there was no water in the brown earthenware jug standing in the corner, he knew. Languidly, but with the well-schooled and now unconscious grace of the man of fashion who is used to move with a thousand eyes watching every detail of his dress and deportment, the young Englishman crossed the room, unlatched the door and went slowly down the dark, steep and dirty stairs.

He came directly into a large picturesque room that gave by a tall open door on to the street.

It was a kind of general hall or kitchen, the smooth black beams of the ceiling hung with rows of onions and herbs, all manner of pots and pans about the huge open hearth, a window at the back looking on to the garden, and in a dusky corner an empty cradle and a spinning wheel.

The young man went to the shelf where the thick green glasses stood, took one down and dipped it into the red-glazed pitcher that stood beneath. The bubble of the water sounded pleasantly; he raised the dripping glass and drank with a grateful air.

He was glad of the cool shadows and of the intense quiet; every one seemed abroad; it was autumn and he supposed they were at work in the vineyards.

There was an old rush-bottomed chair near the black-carved supports of the door; he seated himself with his back to the sunlight in the deserted street, and his eyes on the window the other side of the room that gave an exquisite glimpse of a fig-tree drooping in the shadowed garden, and beyond a glossy myrtle, glittering in distant sunbeams. The young man knew that he had not long to live, both from ordinary signs and fore-warnings and the sure inner instinct his keen intelligence was quick to notice and regard.

He was absolutely without fear; he had never had any credence in any religion or any belief, even vague, in a future state of existence, nor had, like many, tried to invent these feelings for himself or supply their place with superstitions and conventions.

He had never needed these lures to gild his life with promise, always he had found the moment sufficient, and whatever the moment demanded, in wealth, honour, talent, charm or health, he had given lavishly, not unthinkingly, for he had always known that a price would be demanded, as he had seen it demanded from others of his kind.

And he was prepared to pay.

A long life did not attract him; all the pleasures he valued were pleasures that could not with dignity be enjoyed when youth was past; his own sparkling wit had often made a butt of an old rake, or an elderly prodigal; he had never intended to join the ranks of those people who had outworn their enjoyments.

A poet whom he had patronised had called him “The scorn and wonder of the age;” but from his own point of view his life had been the very steady following of a very simple philosophy.

Caring for nothing but the world, that he regarded as the golden apple hung above the head of every youth to ignore or gain, he had bought the world, with money, with charm, with honour, with talent, with beauty and strength and exulted in it and sated himself–and he did not complain of the bargain. He never complained of anything; his sweet, good humour was held by many to condone his villainies as the grace with which he took his final fall almost justified the acts which had led to that fall. When his political levity, his social extravagances, his dissipations had finally left him without health or money, he had taken the verdict of the doctors, the curses of his creditors and the flight of his friends with the same gentle smile, and, urged by his ardent love of the world to make life an adventure to the last, had disappeared from London, where he was so dazzling and infamous a figure, to die abroad, in the sun and among scenes that by their freshness and simplicity disguised, at least to a stranger’s eyes, the sharpness of their poverty. So he, by birth an English Marquis, by patent of the Pretender a Duke, son of a famous man and himself the most renowned rake in London, even among a set that included Viscount Bolingbroke, stayed his obscure wanderings at a poor inn in an unknown Spanish village and prepared himself for death among the peasants of a strange land.

He regretted nothing, not the splendid chances he had thrown away, not the fine name he had tarnished, not the great talents he had wasted, not the life he had sapped and used up before its time. He admitted no sins, he claimed no virtues and he believed in no judgment.

God he considered a polite myth, invented to frighten human weaknesses, the devil a fable to excuse man’s breakage of his own laws; he had never paid the least regard to either; never, in any moment of disappointment or sickness, had he felt any touch of remorse, of regret or fear.

If he had been given his life over again he would have again used it for the same extravagances, the same follies, the same short brilliant flare.

As he sat now, looking at the distant fig-tree and myrtle, he was thinking of his past life without compunction, though every incident that rose to his memory was connected with some broken promise, some shameless deception, some ruined heart, some wanton, dishonourable action.

The one thing he had been faithful to (beyond his own Epicurean creed) was the code of a gentleman, as interpreted by the society in which he moved. It was a curious code, inherited, not learnt, an instinct more than a quality only remotely connected with the chivalry from which it had sprung.

The Duke would have found this code difficult to define; he called it honour, but it was only a kind of flourishing likeness of honour.

Its laws were simple, mainly these: never be afraid; never chaffer with money nor earn it in any way, nor mingle in trade; never play false in your games or your bets; always be courteous to your inferiors and to women; never take insolence from any one, even the King; seek out danger and the company of your equals; never take up money once you have put it down; smile when you win and laugh when you lose; never speak of your loves nor toast an actress at your club.

My lord had never broken these laws: he did not put this to his credit; he took them as naturally as clean linen and neat table manners, but perhaps in the casting up of his worthless life they might be set against the black length of his wicked record, as some poor palliative. There was something else my lord could claim, a personal quality this and peculiar to himself: he was tender to animals and anything weak that came his way.

He could not have turned a step aside to seek out the poor or miserable, but when they crossed his path he was lavish.

And no bird or beast had ever suffered through him; he had never lent the brilliance of his presence to any baiting or cock-fighting or bull-fight.

This, too, might be set to my lord’s account, but there was little else.

Yet he was lovable; he had always been lovable.

People who knew him and scorned him still cared for him; he had been caressed by Charles Edward in genuine affection and liked by King George. Perhaps because he was so utterly soulless and made no pretence of being other than he was, because he was so entirely frank in his passionate capacity for happiness, in his beautiful gaiety he attracted those who were themselves divided in their aims and too timid to crown their own vices as he crowned his, for his fascination was more than merely physical and the attraction of exquisite manners.

He was lovable now; even after his long exile from the splendours of St. James, even in his worn clothes, even marred by illness and weariness, he carried with him something that was wholly pleasing, not in the least suggestive of the shameful, unlovely things with which his name was branded.

He was reviewing the final adventure of his life with no changed sense of values, no blurred outlook.

The near presence of death did not alter his opinion in one jot on any particular nor confuse his estimate nor awaken new feeling; he must have satisfied, in some way, the purposes for which he had been born, to be so serene, so content on the eve of the complete end.

All his senses were absolutely clear, even more exquisite than usual; even more perhaps than ever did he appreciate the beauties of light and colour and scent, the delicacies of sound, of touch, yet his mean and unbeautiful surroundings did not trouble him; compared to what they might have been they were well enough. It was better to die in a poor Spanish lodging than in the Fleet, or a garret in Whitefriars, or some kinsman’s back room; nay, better this than the Tower and the panoply of death some chill morning on the scaffold.

He would perhaps have preferred an active death in some duel, but he made no complaint that this had not been the end ordained for him.

He was grateful that he was going to die in the sun.

Leaning back easily in the old willow-wand chair, he began to compose some verses–some of those witty cynical lines for which he had been famous in London and which amused him to fashion.

Presently his sensitive ears detected a light sound, a sweet and familiar sound, the play of a woman’s skirt against her ankles and the floor.

He broke off his mental composition and turned his head towards the shadowy depths of the room that lay between him and the window at which he had been gazing.

From out these darknesses a figure emerged from a mysterious door that opened and shut on farther recesses of blackness, moved into the clearer shadows and finally into the full light.

It was a woman, young and notable, who appeared not to notice that there was any one in the room, for she stood in a watchful, motionless pose, gazing up the dark staircase from which the Duke had descended.

Her dress was fantastic and charming, a tight blue satin bodice gleamed round her slender waist, and beneath it panniers of pink gauze billowed over her hips and were looped away from a white petticoat trimmed with blue jet that glimmered even when she stood still.

Round the bottom of this petticoat was a garland of pink roses, her stockings, that showed well above her ankles, were blue, her shoes white, heelless and fastened in with embroidered pink ribbons.

On one arm she carried a pale yellow cloak and a black velvet mask; over her wide shoulders was flung, carelessly, but gracefully, a white silk scarf with a deep fringe border.

Her dusky brown hair was slightly powdered and gathered on the top of her small head by a huge tortoiseshell comb set with red coral, long blue jet earrings quivered in her ears, and she wore a necklace of fine pearls.

The Duke noticed these things and the delicacy and grace of the woman herself, the poise of her head, the straight lines of her profile, the fineness of her hands and ankles, the richness of her locks, the dark sweep of her eyebrows and the dusky bloom on her round cheek.

He also knew her dress to be that of a dancer or ballerina, despite the blue brocade train that dragged a couple of yards behind her.

What or who she was he did not care, nor how she came to be in this poor inn dressed in this festal fashion.

He was pleased to see again one of the pretty creatures who had always been to him the most entrancing and beautiful objects in an entrancing and beautiful world.

He watched the gentle vision with interest and tenderness, making no movement or sound.

Suddenly she turned full on him her dark face that, although it was too broad for perfect beauty, was piquant and glowing with fine colour.

The Duke rose and bowed.

“I am Philip Wharton, SeÑora,” he said in Spanish.

She advanced towards him.

“I thought you were upstairs,” she said gravely.

Her voice was delicate, but her speech had the peasant accent of Andalusia.

“Were you watching for me?” he asked curiously.

“Yes,” she said. “For who else? Why should I come back after this long time save to see you? Yesterday I was here,” she added, “but you would not see me.”

“Pardon me, I was ill yesterday and did not come downstairs.”

She gazed at him with soft, luminous and unfathomable eyes.

“Have I seen you before?” asked the Duke, endeavouring to place her among the many women who had flitted across his life.

“I used to dance,” she answered, “at the opera in Venice.”

He did not remember her. How could he recall one face from out the whirl of joy and gaiety he had known in Venice?

“You are Spanish?” he asked.

“From Andalusia. And you are English?”

“Yes.”

“And dying?”

“Ah, you know as much as that, do you?” he smiled.

“I know many things now.”

“Ah, wisdom!” he mocked. “I could wager your knowledge begins and ends with the list of your victims and triumphs. How did you come here?” he asked abruptly.

“I ran away.”

“To this place?”

“It was but a stage on the road.”

“You know me?” he asked.

“Yes; I have met you at Paris, at Vienna, at Rome and Naples.”

“By gad,” he said, “you flatter me by your memory.”

He began to notice that she never smiled, and it displeased him; he disliked a grave woman.

“What is your name?” he asked in the tone of a master, and sank back into the chair, for indeed he felt very weak.

She shook her head.

“I have so many.”

“Give me one.”

She bent her eyes on him earnestly.

“What was the name of your first love?” she asked.

He started.

“I have forgotten.”

“What was the name of the woman you loved the most?”

Fair faces rose before him, tearful faces, pleading faces, angry faces–he could not choose between them.

“I do not know,” he said faintly.

She glanced round the room as if she, too, saw the faces that had risen so clearly before his mental eyes.

“You were not kind or loyal to one of them,” she said.

Philip Wharton laughed.

“Tell me your name,” he insisted.

“You have forgotten it, and you do not know it,” she returned quickly. “Once I was called Helen, but that was a long time ago.”

He looked at her curiously.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said, “and how you come to be here alone.”

She put her hands behind her back; the mantle trailed over her train and her fragile dress glimmered in the shade.

“It was after the opera at Versailles,” she began. “I was dressed for the ballet and was leaving my dressing-room, when they put a cloak over my head and carried me out to a coach–we drove all night to the house of an English lord in the Rue de Vaugirard—”

She stepped suddenly and noiselessly behind the Duke.

“—as I was descending from the coach they put a handkerchief over my eyes, so—”

Philip Wharton felt a scrap of muslin flung over his head and drawn tight over his eyes, leaving him in pleasant darkness.

“—and one led me by the hand, thus—”

Her fingers touched his; he smiled passively beneath the bandage.

“—and took me into the presence of my lord, who had betted a thousand guineas that I should ride in his cabriolet through Paris. But it was not very long before he was tired of me.”

She loosened the handkerchief and withdrew it gently.

Philip Wharton opened his eyes on cool shade, a room hung with raised crimson and white velvet and furnished in a very stately style.

An arched marble window looked on to a blue canal on which the rays of the setting sun sparkled, and in the seat of this window, that was piled with cushions, a lady sat; she wore a great hooped skirt, fluttering with sarcenet ribbons, and in her red-gold locks drooped a red rose.

“As I was saying,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “you very soon got tired of me.”

“Carina, no,” answered the Duke. “I have always been in love with you and Venice.”

“You went away. It was the day of the Carnival. I was then wearing an orange cloak with a fringe. It was exactly five days since I had met you. But you cared for me more than for any woman you met in Venice.”

“I love you now,” said Philip Wharton, “for I have come back to you when I am dying.”

She looked at him gravely and stepped out of the window on to the balcony.

“Will you come once more in my gondola?” she asked.

He followed her.

Light steps led from the balcony to the Canal, where a gay gondola cushioned in sapphire blue floated.

The lady stepped in and the Duke after her; the gondolier sped the light boat forward between the palaces.

“This has always been a pleasant memory to me,” he said.

She sat erect with a fan of curled white ostrich to lips and looked at him over the feather tips.

“The night you went away,” she said, “my husband hired three bravos. I was crossing the bridge when I met them–this bridge—”

Suddenly the Rialto was over them; the gondola had shot from blue and gold into darkness.

“They thought I was coming to meet you. My husband—”

The boat stopped in the blackness; he felt, though he could not see, the lady rise and step out.

Her hand touched his, and blindly following the guidance of it, he stepped ashore, and felt a step beneath his feet; the firm clasp on his wrist drew him through a doorway.

“My husband is coming back to-morrow,” the voice continued. “Oh, Philip, I am afraid!”

He put his free hand to his sword.

“That is foolish of you,” he said. “I am here.”

“But you have begun to cease to care,” her voice wailed, “and you will go away.”

As she spoke a door opened to her right, and she released his wrist; he followed her into a little boudoir charmingly hung with straw-coloured silk.

The Duke remembered it very well; he turned to the woman.

She was now a pale blonde wrapped in an embroidered mob and wearing dazzling little silver slippers.

Her face was tear-stained and her eyes pleading.

“Paris was terrible after you left,” she said. “Why did you go? You tired so soon.”

“You have remarked that,” he returned, “twice, I think, before.”

She began to cry.

“Do not you love me any more, Philip?”

“I have come back to you,” he answered; “but my head is rather confused. And, Madame, you are spoiling your complexion with these tears.”

“Hush!” she cried.

She ran to the dainty hangings that concealed the door, raised them, and listened.

“Some one is coming!”

She hastened back to him and half dragged, half pushed him to a secret door; as she touched a spring it flew open, and he stepped with a laugh into the concealment of a dark secret room that was filled with a bitter, pungent perfume. He closed his eyes; there was a heaviness in his head; he could not tell how long he had been closed in when the sliding panel was drawn.

“It was a false alarm after all,” said the woman.

Her black hair hung dishevelled on her brocade gown, her hollow face was pale and her eyes stormy.

“Did you say that you must leave Bois-le-Duc to-morrow?” she demanded hoarsely.

She held a candle in a pewter stick in her right hand and her left clasped her dress together over her palpitating bosom.

“The Prince gave me leave to return to England,” he answered.

He stepped from his concealment into a room with polished walls, furnished heavily and well.

“You would not betray him after he has given you a Dukedom–you would not forsake me?” she asked anxiously.

“Do you not trust me?” he asked lightly.

“Oh yes, I trusted you. But you went away.”

“Always the same!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Have I not been faithful to return to you now?”

She began to laugh.

“Faithful!” she cried. “Faithful!”

He laughed too, and the echo was long and loud.

He went to the door and opened it on dark stairs; without looking back he descended.

The first landing blazed with the light of a thousand candles; a magnificent doorway with portals flung wide invited him into a gorgeous ballroom, where splendidly dressed people moved to and fro to the melody of violin and harp.

Philip Wharton entered; in a little alcove to his right he found the woman waiting for him.

The diamonds sparkled red and blue as if her flesh was on fire; her powdered locks were piled high, and the billows of her violet dress spread wide on the settee where she sat.

She laughed.

“Faithful!” she cried. “Faithful! And you are leaving Vienna to-morrow!”

He seated himself on the small portion of the brocade her spreading skirts had left uncovered.

His nostrils distended to drink in the perfumed air, and his eyes sparkled; his whole spirit became animated in the congenial atmosphere of a court–a luxurious court.

“And I must really die and leave all this,” he complained.

He looked at the lady and smiled; but her face was very grave.

“Let us walk once more in the garden,” she said, and rose and opened a glass door in the alcove that led into a garden that was very prettily lit by coloured lanterns. She took the Duke’s arm, and they passed along the prim paths between avenues of clipped limes and box bushes.

For some while she did not speak; then she whispered–

“It is strange to see you at Kensington again, my lord.” Her voice sounded as if it was full of tears. “Strange to think that you must leave again so soon.”

She pressed close to his side now, for she no longer wore a hoop; a quilted hood and cloak concealed her head and figure, and he thought that she must wear jasmine somewhere on her person, so strong was the scent of that blossom on the air.

“I wonder,” she continued, “if, when you come to die, you will ever think of these moments–the broken promises, the broken hearts?”

“When I come to die,” repeated the Duke musingly, “I shall no doubt think of you and your sweetness.”

“Not of me and my sadness?”

Philip Wharton did not answer; he smiled into the darkness, which he perceived was beginning to be lightened by the first delicate sparkle of dawn.

“Have you ever done one good action?” continued the voice at his side.

“Oh, Madame!”

“Or shed one tear–one tear for another? One tear to heal all the wickedness you have committed–all the grief you have caused?”

“Never!” he answered. “Never!”

“Is there no memory you can recall that would soften you to tears now?”

He answered “None.”

Her hand slackened on his arm and was withdrawn; in the confusion of the lifting shadows and the spreading milky whiteness of the new day he lost her.

He was alone in the garden. No, not a garden; it was soon light enough to see, and he then noticed that he was walking in an English field in early spring-time.

Before him a meadow sloped to a fence that enclosed a little wood; bluebells, daffodils, and primroses grew under the branches of the trees; the meadow was starred all over with buttercups and daisies.

To one side of the fence was a small thatched cottage behind which the sun was rising, and where the distance merged into the early blue vapour the sharp spire of a church rose.

A slight, very slight, feeling of apprehension came over Philip Wharton.

“I do not wish to come back here,” he said. “This has all been a dream, and I will wake up now.”

Yet he walked on.

It was absolutely still; though the sun had now risen clear of the mists and was glittering in a clear heaven, there was no one abroad.

The Duke approached the cottage, saying to himself–

“I know this place, and I do not wish to see it again.”

Before the wooden gate of the tiny garden he paused.

A few modest flowers were growing in neat beds–pinks, wallflowers, and sweet williams; beside the closed door was a lavender bush.

The Duke’s sensation of dread deepened. He noticed that a white blind hung behind each of the four windows. He felt that he was there against his will. Peaceful and lovely as the scene was, it was one from which he would willingly have fled.

He left the garden and wandered away into the little wood and seated himself under a pine tree and took his head in his hands.

And as he sat there he heard the church bell tolling.

“I am not going,” he said to himself, and for a while he was resolute and would not move; yet presently he rose and went back to the cottage.

The door was half open now.

He pushed wide the garden gate and entered; he was acutely conscious of the scent of the simple flowers and the tolling of the bell.

Without knocking he entered.

Two men were in the narrow passage carrying before them a coffin.

Philip Wharton found himself face to face with it; it was held upright, and the name-plate was near his eyes. He read, “Aged nineteen.”

He heard a woman sobbing in the room into which the coffin was being taken, and he peered through the crack of the door.

On a humble bed lay the wasted form of a young girl from which the soul had recently departed.

Philip Wharton passed out of the house, out of the garden, and down the meadow.

“I am sorry,” he said; he had never sincerely spoken those words before.

He walked till he came to the church, and then he entered the graveyard, and seated himself on an old sunken tomb and watched the poor funeral procession that presently wound through the lych-gate.

When they had all left and he was again alone, he walked down the sloping churchyard path and looked at the new-made grave.

A simple headstone was already in place; it bore no name, but only the date and the words–

“A broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, Thou wilt not despise.”

Philip Wharton put his hand before his eyes; he felt sorry and afraid.

All the women who had ever loved him seemed to lie buried in that humble grave. Love itself, compact of a thousand graces, a thousand transports, which had been made manifest to him under so many different shapes, in so many climes, seemed to have fallen and died at last and to lie buried here with Lucy.…

He took his hand from his eyes and saw about him the poor Spanish lodging, the distant window with the fig and myrtle from which the sun had now departed. He sat up shivering.

“What dreams!” he muttered. “What dreams!”

He found his eyes wet with tears; he rose and held on to the back of the chair. For one awful moment he believed in God. Then he shook off the oppression.

“She died as I must die,” he said. “Why not?”

A chill had fallen with the setting of the sun. He shivered again, and found that his limbs were stiff beneath him; he pushed the dark hair back from his face and gazed before him, trying to conjure the figure of the dancer in the pink gauze and blue jet out of the encroaching shadows.

But he knew that it was useless, that she was dead and buried with all those other women.

And death had him by the throat, was struggling with him even now, and he must prepare himself to go down into the darkness that enveloped them.

He went upstairs to the room he called his own; as he opened the door of it he heard steps below, and leaning over the rails saw the old woman who owned the inn enter with a basket of grapes on her grey head.

The young Duke blew her a kiss; she was the last woman whom he would ever see. He entered his room; the flies still buzzed round the stale bread and dirty glass, but the golden pool of sunlight had gone from the floor.

“Not one of those women,” reflected Philip Wharton, “ever thought that I should die–like this!”

So saying the young rake seated himself heavily and wearily in his former seat by the table and stretched out his hand for his pipe which lay next the glass.

But before he touched it, he felt a slight cold touch on his shoulder, and thought he heard some one behind him.

As he turned to look he drew a long breath.

“Why, Lucy—” he said, and on that word–died.