‘I think he would, sir,’ returned Talbot, and as he spoke he put his hand up to his mouth, to conceal a demoniacal grin such as one sees on a gargoyle carved by the piety of some monkish architect. ‘I’ll bring him to-morrow.’
During all this time William Henry and Margaret, in the opposite corner of the arbour, had carried on a smothered conversation with one another on quite a different subject, or rather, as the manner of young people is under similar circumstances, on no subject at all. It was enough to them that their hands met under the table and their hearts met under the rose. The scene they looked upon was not more bright than their hopes, nor the music they listened to more in tune than their tender fancies. When Mr. Erin pulled out his watch and pronounced it time to set out for home, it seemed to them that they had only just arrived. As for Mr. Reginald Talbot, for the last hour or so they had been totally unconscious of his presence; but when he took his leave of them, which he did with much politeness, there was something of suppressed triumph in his voice that aroused William Henry’s suspicions. A shudder involuntarily seized him; he felt like a merrymaker at a festival who suddenly looks up into the sky, and perceives, instead of sunshine, ‘the ragged rims of thunder brooding low.’
CHAPTER XVI.
A BOMBSHELL.
It was significant of the sensitiveness of Mr. Erin’s feelings in regard to his new-found treasures, though it by no means indicated any want of soundness in his faith, that he ignored as much as possible all attacks upon their authenticity. This by no means involved his shutting his eyes to them; indeed he had privately procured and read all that had been written about the MSS., even to that terrible letter of Lord Charlemont to Malone, in which he had said, ‘I am only sorry that Steevens (the rival commentator) is not the proprietor of them,’ in order (as he meant) that they might have had the additional pleasure, derived from private enmity, of exposing them. The sensations the antiquary endured from these things were something like those of Regulus rolling down a hill in his barrel stuck full of nails and knives, but he could not resist the temptation of reading them any more than a patient with hay-fever in his eyes can resist rubbing them.
I have known young authors afflicted with the same mad desire of perusing all the disagreeable criticisms they can lay their hands on; but these things were much more than criticisms, they were personal imputations of the vilest kind, which at the same time no law of libel could touch. They ate into the poor antiquary’s heart, but he never talked about them. If he had, perhaps they would have been made more tolerable by the sympathy of his friends and the arguments of his partisans; but, except to himself, he ignored them. He did not even mention to William Henry that one Mr. Albany Wallis, whom he had reason to believe was little better than an infidel, was coming to Norfolk Street, by permission, to examine the Shakespeare papers. It weighed upon his own mind nevertheless, and he actually regretted that Frank Dennis chanced to drop in that afternoon—loyal though he knew him to be in all other matters—lest in his lukewarm faith, if faith it could be called at all, he should let fall anything to encourage the sceptic.
Thus it came to pass that when the servant announced Mr. Reginald Talbot and Mr. Albany Wallis it was only Mr. Erin himself who felt no astonishment. William Henry was amazed, for though he had parted from his quondam friend on the previous evening on what were outwardly good terms, there had been no pretence of a renewal of friendship between them; their meeting at Vauxhall had, as we know, been accidental, and Talbot had not dropped a hint of renewing his visits to Norfolk Street. The young man had a smiling but scarcely a genial air; his manner was constrained, a thing which, being contrary to his habit, sat very ill upon him; and he addressed himself solely to his host, for which indeed his errand was a sufficient excuse.