"Certainly not, dear madam; nothing disturbs me. I allow nothing to disturb me now."
"No, nothing disturbs us; nothing short of an earthquake, Frau Prediger; it is against our principle, you know, and that is why we don't rise at your approach," chimed in the doctor of philosophy; and the eyes of the two gentlemen by common accord left Mrs. Dodd and returned to their meditative contemplation of the great landscape.
Mrs. Dodd was astonished but not abashed; she had never known what it was to be abashed in the whole course of her life. "Their conduct is very peculiar," she thought. "That German man, if he had the instincts of a gentleman, should at least rise and explain the pictures to me; as for the old lord, I suppose he's in his second childhood. I wonder what 'Frau Prediger' means?" "Ah, Lord Pit Town," she said, apostrophising the old nobleman and utterly ignoring the obnoxious Wolff, "I must confess to a feeling of sadness when I look at all these beautiful things, and when I think how much might have been done with the vast sums that they must have cost," and she put up her eye-glass and read the descriptive label affixed to the frame of the great Turner. "So that is the celebrated picture," she continued, "and did it really cost four thousand pounds? Oh, Lord Pit Town," she went on, in the tone she might have used to a little child detected red-handed in some act of juvenile depravity, "when we think how much might have been done with four thousand pounds, when we read in the statistics of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews that it costs little more than four thousand pounds to convert one of that proverbially stiff-necked race, one cannot look at that picture without emotion."
She waited for a moment for the old lord to excuse himself; she looked from the picture to the venerable nobleman; his eyes were tightly shut; he was evidently taking a deep draught of the recuperative elixir. Then she turned in search of sympathy to the man who had called her "Frau Prediger;" he too was employed in exactly the same manner. For the first time in her life Mrs. Dodd found herself absolutely and distinctly ignored; she was to these two dreadful men as if she did not exist; it was too much, she turned and fled. As the vicar's wife flung out of the gallery, the two enthusiasts reopened their eyes and resumed their contemplation of Turner's masterpiece. From this little incident it may be seen that the old lord and his companion were not easily disturbed in the even tenor of their tranquil lives.
Lord Spunyarn's feelings after the stormy interview with young Lucius Haggard were not to be envied. He hated to meddle and to make. It's quite true that he had been forced into his present position by Haggard's dying communication, and it was by no fault of his own that he suddenly found himself mixed up in the exceedingly intricate family affairs of other people. It was an unpleasant position; he had seen with his own eyes the links of evidence which completed the chain of proof that plainly demonstrated the truth of what his old friend had told him on his death-bed. How and by whom the contents of the little red box had been mysteriously spirited away he was unable to imagine; certainly not by his friend's widow, for Mrs. Haggard, he knew, was the soul of honour; certainly Lucius could have had no hand in the abstraction. It seemed to Spunyarn's mind imperative upon him to communicate the whole matter to the old earl, and so shift the entire responsibility upon the shoulders of the head of the family. Possibly the old lord, as the possessor of unbounded wealth, might be able to make arrangements satisfactory to himself and to the naturally conflicting interests of the two young men. In any case an open scandal must be avoided, and the Pit Town title and estates, whatever might become of the old lord's money, must not be diverted from the legitimate heir. How he wished that he had never accepted that autumn invitation to Pit Town Castle! He knew full well that young Lucius Haggard would not relinquish one tittle of what he considered his rights. It was difficult to escape from the horns of the dilemma. It was quite certain that Mrs. Haggard would not move in the matter, and to let Lucy Warrender's child rob George Haggard of his birthright seemed to him a crime. The only other alternative being a scandalous trial in open court and the dragging of the whole matter before the public. As a man of the world, Lord Spunyarn was quite aware that a secret ceases to be a secret when there are too many depositories of it; for this reason he could not even consult the legal advisers of the family. He felt that George Haggard must be told sooner or later: that was a plain duty. He felt, too, that it were better that the boy should learn the secret from him, but the communication of the matter to the old lord was still more imperative, and that communication must be made at once, for Spunyarn well knew that the life of the fragile old nobleman hung by a thread, and that there was no exaggeration in Lucius Haggard's statement that Lord Pit Town might go off at any moment. From what Spunyarn knew of George Haggard and his mother, he felt, in the event of the old earl's death, that it was more than probable that Lucius Haggard would be allowed to succeed to everything, contrary to all the dictates of human justice. At this thought all Spunyarn's class instincts violently revolted.
Since the very startling communication which had been made to him, Lucius Haggard had thought of nothing else. To be suddenly told that one is a bastard is bad enough even for an ordinary mortal, but to a youth who has considered himself porphyro-genitus to be informed that he is but of common clay after all, and, worse than that, base-born, is terrible indeed. Since he had heard the story, young Lucius had been unable to obtain even a sip of the doctor's recuperative elixir. He believed the tale—he couldn't doubt it—for he knew that the woman who had been a mother to him could not lie. So Lucius Haggard believed the story, and his only consolation was that the proofs were missing. Possession is nine points of the law he very well knew, and he thanked his stars that the onus probandi, fortunately for him, lay with those whom he already looked upon as "the other side." But he could not rest, for the mysterious contents of the box, whatever they had been, might be discovered at any moment, and, like Damocles, he trembled at the suspended sword.
"You're not looking well, sir," said Mr. Capt, as he appeared with the dressing materials in the morning. "Won't you lie a little while longer?" said the valet. "I can bring up your breakfast, sir."
"I'm all right, Capt. I've only had a bad night," and then the valet drew the curtains, and the young fellow looked once more upon the well-timbered landscape which till yesterday he had regarded as all his own. And then he gave a long sigh, which came from the very bottom of his heart.
"The light seems to hurt your eyes, sir," said the valet, as he shut out what had now become a hateful picture.
"I think you're right, Capt, I'll have an extra hour's sleep; you can leave me, and when I want my breakfast I'll ring for it," and Lucius Haggard turned his face to the wall as the valet left the room. But he didn't attempt to sleep; he began once more to turn over the matter in his mind and to meditate upon the best course of action to pursue. Should he have an interview with the possessor of his father's heritage, the heir to what he had once looked upon as his own birthright? He well knew young George Haggard's generosity. Should he make a clean breast of the whole matter to George, and propose that come what might, they two should share and share alike by mutual consent? Of course such a contract would not be legally binding, as he well knew, but he felt that should George consent to such an arrangement, he, the more astute, could break the contract whenever he saw fit. If he could only get hold of those papers, or whatever they were, and destroy them, his position would become almost impregnable; he would still remain practically Lord Pit Town's heir. Should the old man be talked over, even he, could not keep him out of the title and the entailed property. Could it be that in her love and affection for him, or in a horror of a scandal being attached to her name or to her dead husband's, that Mrs. Haggard had destroyed what the little red box had once contained? No, he couldn't hope that. To whose interest was it that the proofs, whatever they were, should disappear? To his, and to his alone. But surely no one would commit so stupendous an act of villainy merely to benefit him, or to wrong the man whom he still called his brother? Would Spunyarn lay the whole matter before the old lord? And if he did so would Lord Pit Town take the tale for gospel without proof—proof, the very existence of which was now problematical? Should he at once go to the earl and pose as the outraged victim of a base conspiracy, with the hope of enlisting the powerful support of the head of the family? The more he thought over all these things, the more was he overwhelmed with a sense of his own impotence. If he could only get hold of what the box had contained and destroy it, he would be comparatively safe; for he felt that even were he to peaceably come into the possession of what he had once considered his own, what a life of doubt and terror would be unquestionably his, so long as those proofs, those dreadful proofs, existed. If the whole strange story were but a fabrication after all—even that was possible. Reginald Haggard was his father; both Lord Spunyarn and Mrs. Haggard had agreed in this. He had always stood much in awe of his father, and had never given him cause of offence. It was strange that, knowing him to be a bastard, his father should have treated him in all things as his legitimate heir. Why had his father failed to provide for him in any way by will? For the apparently simple reason that he looked upon him as the old lord's natural successor. If it were true that he was but a base-born child, then his father must have been aware of the fact, and he and Mrs. Haggard must have been co-conspirators in an ignoble plot. What possible object could Reginald Haggard have had, and by what possible means could he have induced his wife to be his accomplice in so abominable a crime? As he looked back upon the long years of affection that the woman, who until to-day he had called his mother, had lavished upon him, he became the more bewildered. Could it be possible that the whole matter was but a hallucination of his mother's, caused by her recent bereavement? That supposition wouldn't hold water for a moment, for the philanthropic but notoriously hard-headed Spunyarn had actually seen the proofs, and Spunyarn was an honourable man; and he well remembered that Spunyarn himself had asserted his power of supplying the missing links in the chain. Was it possible after all that the mysterious contents of the little red box would never be discovered and that he might be still the old man's heir for want of legal proof to the contrary? Such a solution was the best that could be hoped for. He felt more than ever powerless, as he reflected that his future lot remained in the hands of Mrs. Haggard, the woman who in his rage and despair he had insulted by base suspicion and met by an open defiance. That was a mistake, he saw it now but too clearly. But the mistake was not irreparable. Gradually the policy he should pursue became more and more clearly marked out in his troubled mind. "I will not quarrel with them," he thought; "I will express my readiness to do what is right, and should the contents of the box be ever forthcoming, then I must trust to their generosity. That is the simplest and safest way, the only wise course and the only prudent one; she may after all be bound to secrecy," he thought.