“People change a good deal in a matter of thirty years or so,” said the prelate. “And you had no doubt as to this man’s identity?”
“Unfortunately, none. I didn’t let him know that, though. I treated him politely, and as if I thought him a fraud of the first water, but it didn’t seem to disconcert him. He has a trump card to throw down, for it is not merely a case of Wagram going out but—of who do you think coming in? Everard!”
“What?”
“Everard. He professes to know his whereabouts, declares that he has gone utterly to the bad. The fellow even dwelt upon the utter wreck that wretched boy would make of everything here in the event of establishing his claim.”
To listen to the old man telling his tale in his easy, light, cynical tones you would have thought it concerned him not at all. But his friend saw deeper down than that; he knew that if this thing were to befall Grantley Wagram’s days were numbered. Heavens! it was too awful! And Wagram, whose love for his heritage was an obsession, and who was such a perfect steward of the great wealth entrusted to him—what would be the effect on him when he learnt that such heritage was reft from him at one blow—that he had no right even to the name he bore, nor his son after him? The prelate’s face wore as gloomy a look as that of his friend.
“Of course, you must insist on this man furnishing you with every proof of his identity,” he said. “He can do that, of course?”
“The worst of it is I’m convinced in my heart of hearts as to his identity. There was something out of the way about the fellow that even the lapse of time hasn’t affected. I don’t know quite what it is. Perhaps it’s his way of talking. Anyway, I’m sure of him.”
“You can be sure of nothing in this world, Grantley—nothing that isn’t a matter of faith, which, of course, sounds paradoxical. But in mundane matters such as this it isn’t a question of faith but of hard, dry evidence, which for present purposes may be taken to mean: Can this man prove that he was validly and legally married to your first wife before you went through what we will, provisionally, and for the sake of argument, call the form of marriage with her?”
“And supposing he can’t?”
“Then there’s an end of the whole affair.”