Chapter IX.
A Ghost from the Past
Coming from the theatre after a matinee, along the Strand, Roy was making his way to an obscure restaurant where food was comparatively cheap, when he nearly collided with two men hastening round the corner. The wind was bitter, and rain was falling, so that all the men had coats closely buttoned and collars turned up.
Roy muttered an apology, and would have passed on, but one of the two seeing his face in the light, suddenly drew back, and exclaimed “By God, Reckavile, by all that’s unholy. I did not know that you were in England again. How are you, old thing?” and he held out his hand. A wild fantasy whirled before Roy’s mind, and for a moment he was without sense or speech, then he said coldly.
“I am afraid you have made a mistake, sir; my name is not Reckavile.”
The other scrutinised him closely.
“No, by Jove, you’re not. I am sorry, but look, Raymond, what a likeness!”
Roy’s anger was rising, he was not a waxwork to be inspected, and he turned to go his way, but the first speaker caught his coat.
“No, sir, you must not go like that, I have been rude enough to address you by mistake, but I will make amends if I may. Will you come to my Club, if you will do us the honour, and let me apologise in suitable manner for having taken you for one of the worst blackguards, but the most charming of men.”
Roy could not well refuse a request so politely put, and curiosity goaded him on, so he went with his chance companions, Sir Raymond Halliday, and Captain John Wynter, son of the Late Brig. General Wynter V.C. who had perished at Loos.
In the smoking room of the Club, Roy unthawed. The atmosphere was more to his liking than the dressing room of a travelling company, and he felt at home with these men.
They were soon discussing old days at the war, and exchanging yarns of people and places where they had met for a brief moment, and then gone down the long trail. To Roy it all came back; the nights he had come back from a little frolic at Etaire, where real oysters could be had, and Veuve Cliquot 1904, a change from trench fare, and then a ride back to the trenches with the ominous line of Verey lights marking the enemy lines, and the sudden whirl of a “heavy” coming over, mingled with the flickering rat-tat of the machine guns.
How real it all seemed and how desirable in the warm firelight of the smoking room.
Presently Raymond broke silence.
“You are not a relation of the Reckaviles, Mr. Halley, are you? Excuse the rudeness of the question but you are extraordinarily like him.”
“None whatever,” said Roy firmly.
“I am glad to hear it, eh Wynter?” said Raymond.
“Well, it’s not a pleasant family, so Mr. Halley is well out of it. You know my father was mixed up with that affair, the Reckavile Divorce they called it, though it was really the Wheatland Divorce.”
“Oh, I was too young to remember,” said Raymond carelessly, but Roy was all attention.
“What was that?” he asked, steadying his voice.
“Old Reckavile, the father of this Johnny, got mixed up with a draper’s wife, and the worthy man didn’t like it and got a divorce. The joke was that Reckavile offered to fight for the girl, and properly put the wind up the draper. Well, he did what’s called the right thing, and married her, my father was at the wedding, and a pretty thick time it was from all accounts but he never settled down with the lady, he buzzed off somewhere and got killed or something, I forget how.”
Roy was now on wires, but he showed nothing, his training on the stage served him in good stead.
“When was that?” he asked, lighting a cigar with studied care.
“I can never remember dates,” said the other “about thirty years ago I should say at a guess, but you’ll find it all in the old papers, if it interests you. We keep them upstairs, but no one ever looks at them. Here, I am sorry we are going dry, touch that bell will you?”
The rest of the evening passed like a dream till Roy rose to get back to the theatre for the evening performance, but though he sang and played his part, his mind was disturbed with thoughts which would intrude on him, and the old memories he had stifled rose to mock him. He knew he would have no peace till he had read that long dead story. His friends had asked him to come again, and he took them at their word at the risk of being a bore.
In the musty reading room, seldom visited by the members of this joyous Club, he found the old copies, with the help of a spectacled librarian, who seemed detached from the world without and only en rapport with his yellowing tomes.
He showed Roy the files in which the sordid story was told, but only one line stood out in letters of burning fire, the date at the head of the paper. That was damning and convincing. Nothing could alter that, and while his eyes were reading the account of the affair, his mind saw only one deadly fact, that the date was after the marriage of Reckavile with his mother. This overwhelmed him so utterly that he could hardly thank the old man, and hurry from the place. His mind was in a whirl. There must be some mistake, the marriage, must have been illegal or something; he could not grasp a deliberate cold blooded bigamy; he would dismiss it from his mind. Why had this spectre from the past come to torment him? It would be quite simple. To settle the matter he would go to Somerset House, and pay the fee for inspection, and lay the ghost.
As he expected after a long search he failed to find any reference to the marriage. He little knew the reason, or the sudden death of the parson, before he had been able to send the record for registration. But it was sufficient, and he plunged back into his work determined to dismiss the whole thing from his mind.
But the maggot was gnawing at his brain, and the old restlessness came on him. He would go abroad, but something drew him to the home of his ancestors; he must see Portham, and Reckavile Castle, before he finally turned his back on England.
Wynter and Raymond were now fast friends, caught with his charm which never failed to captivate.
“After all you have told me about Reckavile, I am going to have a look at the place,” he said one night at dinner.
Wynter’s usually jolly face became grave. “I shouldn’t if I were you,” he said “you know half the people there will take you for Reckavile, and there may be unpleasant things said.”
“What do you mean?” asked the other sharply.
“Well, you know old man, when a commoner bears a striking resemblance to a peer of the Realm, especially to one with such a reputation, unpleasant things are said, which I know you would resent. Do you get me?”
“Quite,” said Roy, swallowing his anger with difficulty, and he said no more.
When the run of the series of revivals was over, and he was free, Roy refused to re-engage, to the disappointment of the manager, and the company.
“I was hoping, Mr. Halley, to give you the leading tenor in our Number I Touring Company,” he said.
“Thank you, I am most grateful, but I am going abroad,” Halley replied.
And so he came at last to Portham, and fate drove him to the Black Horse, kept by Southgate, grizzled and seaworn, who alone knew the truth, though not the whole truth.