The duplicate death

Old Lord Madeley had taken unto himself a wife--one of the beautiful Sisters Alvarez of the Pavilion Theatre of Varieties and the other West-end halls. Whereat the world of Society wondered for ten days. His relatives never ceased to wonder.

He was always called “Old Lord Madeley,” but as a matter of fact he had but turned the half-century some four or five years previously. The man and his history were curious. The twenty-fifth holder of the ancient Barony of Madeley, he was a legitimate scion of the Plantagenets and an illegitimate one of the Stuarts; and he had been born the youngest child of his parents’ marriage.

In these later times the ancient and historic houses of Norman England have fallen upon impoverished days, and a younger son succeeds to but a pittance. The land is there for the eldest, but each generation leaves it more burdened than did its predecessor, and there is little if any margin realisable in hard cash.

Such a pittance had been the fortune to which Charles de Bohun Fitz Aylwyn had succeeded at the death of his father. Hoarding his few poor hundreds per annum, he had turned his back upon the society into which he had been born, settled himself in dingy lodgings in Bloomsbury, and lapsed into an eccentric recluse, with not a single thought beyond the study of the science in which his soul delighted.

His eldest brother died childless after a brief but brilliant reign, bequeathing the whole of his personalty to his widow in an attempt to increase the meagre jointure which was her portion. In the realisation of that personalty every stick of furniture and each single spoon in the old Manor House, save the portraits on the walls, were passed under the hammer of the auctioneer. The second brother was an absentee landlord, never going near his property, and draining it to the last penny. Strangers hired his house from him until he died.

At his death the title and estates passed to Charles de Bohun, then and thereafter twenty-fifth Baron Madeley in the peerage of England.

With a mild curiosity his relatives and the world at large wondered what on earth he would do with the inheritance. For months he never went near the place.

Then, without a word or hint of warning, he left London, and travelled down into Shropshire by the evening train. He had never heard of slip coaches, he had forgotten where an obsequious porter had told him he would have to change, and at nine o’clock at night he had been turned out of the train at Shrewsbury, twenty miles beyond his destination.

By the time the lumbering cab he engaged at the railway station deposited him at the Manor House, it was long past midnight. After continuous knocking a sleepy caretaker descended, only to open the door, tell the visitor to be gone, and slam it in his face. It had needed the thunderous assistance of the cabman applied both to bell and knocker and with boots upon the door panels to recall the caretaker. Lord Madeley had discharged him and his wife there and then, and neither knew, cared, nor ever inquired whether the couple left the house in the darkness or waited until the following day. Such had been the home-coming of Lord Madeley.

Instructing his lawyers to refurnish the house, engage servants, and appoint a properly qualified agent to manage the estate, Lord Madeley reorganised and required in his household a reversion and rigid adherence to the studied solemnity of state which he remembered from the dignified days of his father and grandfather. That he regarded as a duty attaching to his rank, his caste, and his family.

Personally he remained wedded to his pursuit of science, and continued his experiments and investigations. A recluse he had been in London--a recluse he remained at Madeley, and for the first five years of his enjoyment of the family heritage he never once set foot outside the doors of the Manor House. Absorbed in science, his mind deep and recondite in those directions, simple, straightforward, and lovable in all the matters of a more worldly nature, the old peer had probably never given a thought to either any woman in particular or to the female sex as a general proposition. It is quite probable that it had never crossed Lord Madeley’s mind that there really were two sexes, save as a scientific proposition, of which scientific proposition he, as a man of science, was naturally cognisant. As a social problem he had never thought of it, knew nothing of it, and cared less.

But peers have obligations thrust upon them, from which lesser mortals are exempt. The exact circumstances which had produced it are immaterial to the story, but a royal command had left Lord Madeley no alternative, and he had in obedience thereto betaken himself to town. That it was the first time he had recrossed the threshold of the Manor House since he had entered it was a thought which probably never presented itself to his mind; and that he was returning to the scenes in which the greater part of his life had been spent quickened his pulse not at all. He was irked by the command, bored by the anticipated absence of his scientific interests, and, in the hope of avoiding ennui, he cast about in his mind for a companion to share with him the suite of apartments he had engaged in the hotel at which his father and grandfather before him had been accustomed to sojourn whilst in town. Probably for the first time in his life his utter loneliness in the world made itself manifest. He had one relative, and one only, a young unmarried cousin, the son of a distant cousin, and from the point of pedigree the future head of the house of Fitz Aylwyn.

Lord Madeley wrote and invited him. The invitation was accepted.

Young Billy Fitz Aylwyn was one of those men--there are such men--whom to see was to like. Lord Madeley liked him wholeheartedly, and, in the courteous attempt to give pleasure to the younger man, the old peer had consented to a tentative suggestion of his relative that they should spend the evening by going to the Pavilion Theatre. It was the first time Lord Madeley had ever been inside a theatre. The meretriciousness of things theatrical was not laid bare to the old peer by reason of experience and knowledge, and he was fascinated by the beauty of the Alvarez girls.

A passing comment on their beauty--for they were beautiful, judged by any standard--had provoked in the younger of the men a confession of a personal acquaintance with the sisters.

Absolutely in ignorance of the manner of man Lord Madeley was, and thinking the pure artistic admiration of classic beauty was an interest of a totally different kind, Fitz Aylwyn had suggested asking the sisters to supper.

Lord Madeley, unsophisticated in the ways of the world, and merely desiring to give pleasure to his relative and guest, whom he supposed was putting himself out to relieve the ennui of an old man, made no objection, and the supper party had taken place.

The Sisters Alvarez--Eulalie was the elder and Dolores the younger--of pure Spanish descent, but of entirely English birth and domicile, were stars of the music-hall world, but stars of no great or exceeding magnitude. Calling themselves comediennes, their turn was the usual song and dance of no particular or more than average merit. On the other hand, it was useless to attempt to deny the fact that the sisters were unquestionably the most beautiful women upon the stage at that time. Descended in a left-handed way from some of the bluest blood of Andalusia, their beauty had nothing in common with the thick-lipped, teeth-displaying, plebeian prettiness, which, by reason of picture postcard advertisement, one is now asked to believe represents a type of the beauty of this country.

Alike in feature, the two sisters were as wide apart as the poles in character and temperament. Eulalie, strong, compelling, masterful, and passionate, controlled the lives of both; Dolores, gentle, trusting, and submissive, intensely admired her sister, worshipped her ability, and did whatsoever she was told.

The girls themselves--the outspoken frankness of their world--the utter novelty of the whole thing--the novelty of young female society--the awe-struck deference of the music-hall singer for a real peer of England, who accorded to them the courtesy and deference to women which he vaguely recollected from the world of his distant youth--interested Lord Madeley.

With charming but unsophisticated hospitality he invited the sisters to visit the Manor House, thinking it an obligation of hospitality owing by him to Fitz Aylwyn. The invitation was accepted.

Eulalie, with a keen eye to opportunity, made up her mind that the position of Lady Madeley, mistress of the rent roll of the great Manor of Madeley and of Madeley Manor House, was within the possibilities. She played for that position for all she was worth, with every atom of knowledge she possessed or could acquire, played her game without the opposition of tangible rivals, played her game as a clever and beautiful woman of the world, knowing every wile and every blandishment that was permissible, played her game against an old man to whom had been given no weapon of defence and from whom had been withheld the worldly knowledge out of which such weapons could have been fashioned and which would have indicated their necessity. The result was never in doubt. Lord Madeley married, or was married, as Eulalie had intended should happen.

Let it here be said, for Lord Madeley soon passes out of the story, that never for one single instant did he ever regret his marriage. Save that his house was better ordered, his wishes more carefully respected, his comfort more scrupulously provided for, Lady Madeley was wise enough to recognise that the ingrained ways and habits of a lonely man of fifty-five are fixed, and are altered only at the cost of much discomfort. She contented herself with the rank and position, the wealth, and the house which the marriage had brought her, and left Lord Madeley to pursue his life as he inclined and much as he had done theretofore. Two years after their marriage their only child--a daughter, Consuelo--was born, and a few years later Lord Madeley died. Inertia, even if productive of a contented mind, is not especially conducive to length of years.

His widow raised a costly marble monument over his grave, mourned for a decently prolonged interval, and re-emerged in the world; whilst Consuelo, in her own right Baroness Madeley, figured in her father’s place in the peerage books.

But there had been an incident shortly after the marriage which for some time had thrown a blight upon the new-found happiness of Lord and Lady Madeley.

Passing through London on their return from a honey-moon spent upon the Continent, Lady Madeley had visited on two occasions her unmarried sister at the small flat in Kensington which had been taken for her and furnished by Lord Madeley.

The second visit was the last time the sisters met. Two hours afterwards the maid found the dead body of her mistress stretched upon the bed in her room, stark nude, and on the table by the bedside an opened half-bottle of champagne and a glass from which some of the wine had been drunk.