‘A revelation,’ he said, ‘always needs an expounder, and in our friend Sir Frederick we have found one. Thanks to your keen intelligence, sir, the value of this deed has been placed beyond all question.’
‘I am very glad to have been of some slight service to the cause of literary discovery,’ returned Sir Frederick modestly. ‘Perhaps some other lights may strike me if you will allow me to take the document home with me.’
‘Indeed I will do nothing of the kind,’ put in Mr. Erin precipitately; ‘not, of course, my dear friend, that I have the least doubt of your good faith,’ he added in gentler tones, ‘but in justice to my son—unhappily absent, and to whom it belongs—I can hardly suffer the deed to leave my custody. Perhaps at another time’—for his friend was looking anything but pleased—‘your request shall be complied with, but at present it must be here for the satisfaction of doubters. Such a person, I have reason to believe, is among us even now.’
A murmur of indignation arose from all sides. They cast at one another such furious glances as the Thracian nymphs may have done before tearing Orpheus to pieces.
‘Yes, Mr. Dennis,’ continued the host sarcastically, addressing the unhappy Frank, who had hitherto remained unnoticed and quiescent, ‘I have reason to believe from the expression of your features, when I connect it with certain remarks that fell from you in Shottery Park the other day, that you are our only sceptic.’
If to an assembly of divines in Convocation ‘the Infidel,’ so often alluded to in the abstract in their discourses from the pulpit, had been suddenly presented to them in the concrete, they could not have looked at him with a greater horror than that with which the company regarded the young man thus thrust upon their attention.
‘Indeed, indeed, Mr. Erin,’ pleaded Dennis, ‘I have never uttered a syllable that could be construed, or even perverted, into doubt.’
‘One may look daggers and yet speak none,’ returned Mr. Erin with severity (and that he should thus venture to misquote his favourite bard showed even more than his tone the perturbation of his mind). ‘The document, however, will be left here—here,’ he repeated significantly, ‘for your private scrutiny and investigation; I only trust that you may find cause to withdraw your aspersions, groundless in themselves, as they are disparaging to my dear son William Henry, and offensive to this respectable and learned company, about, as I see with regret, to take their leave.’
If Mr. Erin had suddenly seized a hammer and smote him on the forehead, Mr Dennis could hardly have been more astonished than at this gratuitous onslaught. He resolved to wait till the company had dispersed, which, at that broad hint received from its host, it proceeded to do, and then demand an explanation.
Mr. Erin, however, anticipated him. ‘I was somewhat more vehement, Dennis,’ he said, ‘in the remarks that I addressed to you just now than the occasion demanded; but the fact is, some sort of diversion was imperatively demanded. My friends, I saw, were getting turbulent; the discovery of the quintin on the seal was too much for them, already excited as they were by the exhibition of this extraordinary document. Sir Frederick in particular, under circumstances of such extreme temptation, I knew to be capable of any outrage. I made you—I confess it—the scapegoat, by means of which the safety of the precious manuscript has been secured. In compensation, take it and look at it as long as you like. What I said about your incredulity, though somewhat justified by the past, you must admit, was in the main but a pious fraud. Like any man of intelligence, you cannot but revere the document. It is yours, say, for the next five minutes. Then it goes into my iron case, for “Who shall be true to us,” as he whose honoured name lies there before you, in his own handwriting, has observed, “if we be unsecret to ourselves?”’