“Under ordinary circumstances, I am sure he would resent such interference: but here, in the present critical emergency, he might feel, and not without reason, perhaps, more displeased at your want of decision.”
“But when I tell you, Mr. Sedley, that I know nothing of business, that I know no more of the share list than I do of Sanscrit, that I never followed the rise and fall of the funds, and am as ignorant of what influences the exchanges as I am of what affects the tides,—when I have told you all this, you will, I am sure, see that any opinion of mine must be utterly valueless.”
“I don't exactly know, Mr. Bramleigh, that I'd have selected you if I wanted a guide to a great speculation or a large investment; but the business which has brought me down here is not of this nature. It is, besides, a question as to which, in the common course of events, you might be obliged to determine what line you would adopt. After your father, you are the head of this family, and I think it is time you should learn that you may be called upon tomorrow, or next day, to defend your right, not only to your property, but to your name.”
“For Heaven's sake, what do you mean?”
“Be calm, sir, and grant me a patient hearing, and you shall hear the subject on which I have come to obtain your father's opinion; and failing that, yours—for, as I have said, Mr. Bramleigh, a day or two more may make the case one for your own decision. And now, without entering into the history of the affair, I will simply say that an old claim against your father's entailed estates has been recently revived, and under circumstances of increased importance; that I have been, for some time back, in negotiation to arrange this matter by a compromise, and with every hope of success; but that the negotiations have been unexpectedly broken off by the demands of the claimant,—demands so far above all calculation, and, indeed, I may say above all fairness,—that I have come over to ask whether your father will accede to them or accept the issue of the law as to his right.”
Augustus sat like one stunned by a heavy blow, not utterly unconscious, but so much overcome and so confused that he could not venture to utter a word.
“I see I have shocked you by my news, Mr. Bramleigh; but these are things not to be told by halves.”
“I know nothing of all this; I never so much as heard of it,” gasped out Augustus. “Tell me all that you know about it.”
“That would be a somewhat long story,” said the other, smiling; “but I can, in a short space, tell you enough to put the main facts before you, and enable you to see that the case is, with all its difficulties of proof, a very weighty and serious one, and not to be dismissed, as your father once opined, as the mere menace of a needy adventurer.”
With as much brevity as the narrative permitted, Sedley told the story of Pracontal's claim. It was, he said, an old demand revived; but under circumstances that showed that the claimant had won over adherents to his cause, and that some men with means to bring the case to trial had espoused his side. Pracontal's father, added he, was easily dealt with; he was a vulgar fellow, of dissipated habits, and wasteful ways; but his taste for plot and intrigue—very serious conspiracies, too, at times—had so much involved him that he was seldom able to show himself, and could only resort to letter-writing to press his demands. In fact, it was always his lot to be in hiding on this charge or that; and the police of half Europe were eager in pursuit of him. With a man so deeply compromised, almost outlawed over the whole Continent, it was not difficult to treat, and it happened more than once that he was for years without anything being heard of him; and, in fact, it was clear that he only preferred his claim as a means of raising a little money, when all other means of obtaining supplies had failed him. At last, news of his death arrived. He died at Monte Video; and it was at first believed that he had never married, and consequently, that his claim, if it deserved such a name, died with him. It was only three years ago that the demand was revived, and this man, M. Anatole Pracontal, as he called himself, using his maternal name, appeared in the field as the rightful owner of the Bramleigh estates.