The Talisman Ring Read online

  Downstairs Sir Tristram had just reached the same conclusion. Since, sooner or later, he would have to marry someone, and since he had determined never again to commit the folly of falling in love, his bride might as well be Eustacie as another. She seemed to be tiresomely volatile, but no sillier than any other young woman of his acquaintance. She was of good birth (though he thought her French blood to be deplored), and in spite of the fact that if he had a preference it was for fair women, he was bound to admit that she was very pretty. He could have wished she were older, but it was possible that Sylvester, whose experience was undoubtedly wide, knew what he was talking about when he said that her extreme youth was in her favour. In fact, one must resign oneself.

  Upon the following morning the betrothed couple met at the breakfast-table and took fresh stock of each other. Sir Tristram, whose mulberry evening-dress had not met with Eustacie’s approval, had had the unwitting tact to put on a riding-suit, in which severe garb he looked his best; and Eustacie, who had decided that, if she must marry her cousin, it was only proper that he should be stimulated to admiration of her charms, had arrayed herself in a bergère gown of charming colour and design. Each at first glance felt moderately pleased with the other, a complacent mood which lasted for perhaps ten minutes, at the end of which time Sir Tristram was contemplating with grim misgiving the prospect of encountering vivacity at the breakfast-table for the rest of his life, and Eustacie was wondering whether her betrothed was capable of uttering anything but the most damping of monosyllables.

  During the course of the morning, Sir Tristram was sent for to Sylvester’s bedroom. He found his great-uncle propped up very high in bed, and alarmingly brisk, and learned from him that his nuptials would be celebrated upon the following day. When he reminded Sylvester that marriages could not be performed thus out of hand, Sylvester flourished a special licence before his eyes, and said that he was not so moribund that he could not still manage his affairs. Sir Tristram, who liked being driven as little as most men, found this instance of his great-uncle’s forethought so annoying that he left him somewhat abruptly, and went away to cool his temper with a gallop over the Downs. When he returned it was some time later, and he found the doctor’s horse being walked up and down before the Court, and the household in a state of hushed expectancy. Sylvester, having managed his affairs to his own satisfaction, drunk two glasses of Madeira, and thrown his snuff-box at his valet for daring to remonstrate with him, had seemed suddenly to collapse. He had sunk into a deep swoon from which he had been with difficulty brought round, and the doctor, summoned post-haste, had announced that the end could not now be distant more than a few hours.

  Regaining consciousness, Sylvester had, in a painful but determined whisper, declined the offices of a clergyman, recommended the doctor to go to hell, forbidden the servants to open his doors to his nephew Basil, announced his intention of dying without a pack of women weeping over him, and demanded the instant attendance of his nephew Tristram.

  Sir Tristram, hearing these details from the butler, stayed only to cast his hat and coat on a chair, and went quickly up the stairs to the Great Chamber.

  Both the valet and the doctor were in the room, the valet looking genuinely grieved and the doctor very sour. Sylvester was lying flat in the huge bed with his eyes shut, but when Tristram stepped softly on to the dais, he opened them at once, and whispered: ‘Damn you, you have kept me waiting!’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir.’

  ‘I did not mean to die until to-morrow,’ said Sylvester, labouring for breath. ‘Damme, I’ve a mind to make a push to last the night if only to spite that snivelling leech!…Tristram!’

  ‘Sir?’

  Sylvester grasped his wrist with thin, enfeebled fingers. ‘You’ll marry that child?’

  ‘I will, Sylvester: don’t tease yourself !’

  ‘Always meant Ludovic to have her…damned young scoundrel! Often wondered. Do you think he was telling the truth – after all?’

  Shield was silent. Sylvester’s pale lips twisted. ‘Oh, you don’t, eh? Well, you can give him my ring if ever you see him again – and tell him not to pledge it! Take it: I’ve done with it.’ He slid the great ruby from his finger as he spoke, and dropped it into Shield’s hand. ‘That Madeira was a mistake. I ought to have kept to the Burgundy. You can go now. Don’t let there be any mawkish sentiment over my death!’

  ‘Very well, sir,’ said Shield. He bent, kissed Sylvester’s hand, and without more ado turned and went out of the room.

  Sylvester died an hour later. The doctor who brought the news to Shield, and to Beau Lavenham, both waiting in the library, said that he had only spoken once more before the end.

  ‘Indeed, and what did he say?’ inquired the Beau.

  ‘He made a remark, sir – I may say, a gross remark! – derogatory to my calling!’ said the doctor. ‘I shall not repeat it!’

  Both cousins burst out laughing. The doctor cast a look of shocked dislike at them and went away, disgusted but not surprised by their behaviour. A wild, godless family, he thought. They were not even profitable patients, these Lavenhams: he was glad to be rid of them.

  ‘I suppose we shall never know what it was that he said,’ remarked the Beau. ‘I am afraid it may have been a trifle lewd.’

  ‘I should think probably very lewd,’ agreed Shield.

  ‘But how right, how fitting that Sylvester should die with a lewd jest on his lips!’ said the Beau. He patted his ruffles. ‘Do you still mean to be married to-morrow?’

  ‘No, that must be postponed,’ Shield answered.

  ‘I expect you are wise. Yet one cannot help suspecting that Sylvester would enjoy the slightly macabre flavour of a bridal presided over by his mortal remains.’

  ‘Possibly, but I never shared Sylvester’s tastes,’ said Shield.

  The Beau laughed gently, and bent to pick up his hat and cane from the chair on which he had laid them. ‘Well, I do not think I envy you the next few days, Tristram,’ he said. ‘If I can be of assistance to you, do by all means call upon me! I shall remain at the Dower House for some little time yet.’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t anticipate the need. I rely on Pickering. The charge of the estate would be better borne by him than by me. God knows what is to be done, with the succession in this accursed muddle!’

  ‘There is one thing which ought to be done,’ said the Beau. ‘Some effort should be made to find Ludovic.’

  ‘A good deal easier said than done!’ replied Sir Tristram. ‘He could not set foot in England if he were found, either. If he stayed in France he may have lost his head for all we know. It would be extremely like him to embroil himself in a revolution which was no concern of his.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Beau softly, ‘I do not want to appear unfeeling, but if Ludovic has lost his head, it would be of some slight interest to me to hear of it.’

  ‘Naturally. Your position is most uncertain.’

  ‘Oh, I am not repining,’ smiled the Beau. ‘But I still think you ought – as trustee – to find Ludovic.’

  During the next few days, however, Sir Tristram had enough to occupy him without adding a search for the heir to his duties. Upon the arrival of the lawyer, Sylvester’s will was read, a document complicated enough to try the temper of a more patient man than Shield. A thousand and one things had to be done, and in addition to the duties attendant upon the death of Sylvester there was the problem of Eustacie to worry her betrothed.

  She accepted her bereavement and the postponement of her wedding-day with perfect fortitude, but when Sir Tristram asked her to name some lady living in the neighbourhood in whose charge she could for the present remain, she declared herself quite unable to do so. She had no acquaintance in Sussex, Sylvester having quarrelled with one half of the county and ignored the other half. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I do not wish to be put in charge