‘I noticed, as I told my uncle, that you had something on your mind,’ said Margaret; ‘but that has been for some days. No doubt it was this making acquaintance with your new friend, and the possibilities that might arise from it.’
‘No doubt. I confess I allowed myself to indulge in certain hopes,’ returned the young man with a smile, but keeping his eyes fixed on the ground. ‘What has happened, however—always supposing that the document is genuine—has been far beyond my expectations. When I met my patron and told him what I had found he was surprised enough, but by no means in that state of elation which we have just seen in Mr. Erin; the reason of which was, I am convinced, that he at once made up his mind to give me the thing.
‘“It is very curious,” he said. “My cousin always set great store by those old manuscripts, but I did not know there was anything among them so interesting as this. Perhaps you may find some more; at all events, since but for you this discovery would certainly not have been made, or at least not in my lifetime, it is but fair that you should reap the benefit of it. This note of hand is yours.”’
‘What a gracious gentleman!’ exclaimed Margaret enthusiastically. ‘It was not as if he did not know the value of what he was giving away.’
‘Just so. I am afraid, though I begged him to reconsider the matter, that I was not very urgent that he should do so. I could not help picturing to myself how Mr. Erin would receive such a treasure, and how it might be the means’—here he hesitated a moment—‘of—making myself more acceptable to him.’
Dennis patted the lad on the shoulder approvingly. He understood that in his presence it was painful to the young fellow to allude to his father’s habitually cold and unpaternal behaviour. What he did not understand was that William Henry should resent this friendly encouragement as being the manner of a mature man to a junior.
Margaret for her part attributed her cousin’s hesitation to another cause. She felt that if they had been alone together he would have ended that last sentence—‘how it might be the means of’—in a different way.
‘In the end, of course,’ continued William Henry, smiling, ‘I took what the gods had given me without much scruple, but even if nothing more should come of it, I hope I shall never forget the old gentleman’s kindness.’
Nothing under the circumstances could be more moderate, or in better taste, than the speaker’s manner. Not only was there no exultation, such as might easily have been excused in a man so young, and moreover, so unaccustomed to good fortune, but he seemed to have resolutely determined not to encourage himself in expectation; and yet there was a confidence in his tone which to one at least of those who listened to him was very significant. If it is too much to say that pretty Margaret had repented of that promise given to her cousin at Anne Hathaway’s cottage, she had certainly thought it very unhopeful; or rather it would be more correct to say she had abstained from thinking of its possible results at all; but that night she could not shut them out from her dreams.
Mr. Samuel Erin would probably have also had his dreams—not less agreeable, though of quite another kind—but unfortunately he never went to sleep. Like Belshazzar, he beheld all night a writing on the wall, which, albeit it was not in modern characters, needed in his case no interpreter. It was Shakespeare’s autograph. It seemed to him to be inscribed everywhere, and, as though the secret of luminous paint had already been discovered, to shine miraculously out of the darkness.