“That is what the old lady said,” exclaimed Charlie; “she asked me who I thought would believe him against her? But that’s not the question. I don’t want to pit one man against another. My father’s worth twenty of Lord Winterbourne! But that’s no matter. The law cares nothing at all for his principles. What title has he got, and what title have you?—that’s what the law’s got to say. Now, I’ll either have something to put in against him or I’ll not plead. It’s no use taking a step in the matter without proof.”
“And won’t that do, Charlie?” asked Mrs Atheling, looking wistfully at the piece of parchment, signed and sealed, which was in Charlie’s hands.
“That! why, it’s two hundred and fifty years old!” said Charlie. “I don’t see what it refers to yet, but it’s very clear it can’t be to Miss Bridget. No, mother, that won’t do.”
“Then, my dear,” said Mrs Atheling, “I am very sorry to think of it; but, after all, we have not been very long here, and we might have laid out more money, and formed more attachments to the place, if we had gone on much longer; and I think I shall be very glad to get back to Bellevue. Marian, my love, don’t cry; this need not make any difference with anything; but I think it is far better just to make up our minds to it, and give up the Old Wood Lodge.”
“Mother! do you think I mean that?” cried Charlie; “we must find the papers, that’s what we must do. My father’s as good an Englishman as the first lord in the kingdom; I’d not give in to the king unless he was in the right.”
“And not even then, unless you could not help it,” said Agnes, laughing; “but I am not half done yet; there is still a great quantity of letters—and I should not be at all surprised if this romantic old cabinet, like an old bureau in a novel, had a secret drawer.”
Animated by this idea, Marian ran to the antique little piece of furniture, pressing every projection with her pretty fingers, and examining into every creak. But there was no secret drawer—a fact which became all the more apparent when a drawer was discovered, which once had closed with a spring. The spring was broken, and the once-secret place was open, desolate, and empty. Miss Bridget, good old lady, had no secrets, or at least she had not made any provision for them here.
Agnes went on with her examination the whole afternoon, drawn aside and deluded to pursue the history of old Aunt Bridget’s life through scores of yellow old letters, under the pretence that something might be found in some of them to throw light upon this matter; for a great many letters of Miss Bridget’s own—careful “studies” for the production itself—were tied up among the others; and it would have been amusing, if it had not been sad, to sit on this little eminence of time, looking over that strange faithful self-record of the little weaknesses, the ladylike pretences, the grand Johnsonian diction of the old lady who was dead. Poor old lady! Agnes became quite abashed and ashamed of herself when she felt a smile stealing over her lip. It seemed something like profanity to ransack the old cabinet, and smile at it. In its way, this, as truly as the grass-mound, in Winterbourne churchyard, was Aunt Bridget’s grave.
But still nothing could be found. Charlie occupied himself during the remainder of the day in giving a necessary notice to Mr Lewis the solicitor, that they had made up their minds to resist Lord Winterbourne’s claim; and when the evening closed in, and the candles were lighted, Louis made his first public appearance since the arrival of the stranger, somewhat cloudy, and full of all his old haughtiness. This cloud vanished in an instant at the first glance. Whatever Charlie’s qualities were, criticism was not one of them; it was clear that though his “No” might be formidable enough of itself, Charlie had not been a member of any solemn committee, sitting upon the pretensions of Louis. He gave no particular regard to Louis even now, but sat poring over the old deed, deciphering it with the most patient laboriousness, with his head very close over the paper, and a pair of spectacles assisting his eyes. The spectacles were lent by Mamma, who kept them, not secretly, but with a little reserve, in her work-basket, for special occasions when she had some very fine stitching to do, or was busy with delicate needlework by candle-light; and nothing could have been more oddly inappropriate to the face of Charlie, with all the furrows of his brow rolled down over his eyebrows, and his indomitable upper-lip pressed hard upon its fellow, than these same spectacles. Then they made him short-sighted, and were only of use when he leaned closely over the paper—Charlie did not mind, though his shoulders ached and his eyes filled with water. He was making it out!
And Agnes, for her part, sat absorbed with her lapful of old letters, reading them all over with passing smiles and gravities, growing into acquaintance with ever so many extinct affairs,—old stories long ago come to the one conclusion which unites all men. Though she felt herself virtuously reading for a purpose, she had forgotten all about the purpose long ago, and was only wandering on and on by a strange attraction, as if through a city of the dead. But it was quite impossible to think of the dead among these yellow old papers—the littlest trivial things of life were so quite living in them, in these unconscious natural inferences and implications. And Louis and Marian, sometimes speaking and often silent, were going through their own present romance and story; and Mamma, in her sympathetic middle age, with her work-basket, was tenderly overlooking all. In the little dim country parlour, lighted with the two candles, what a strange epitome there was of a whole world and a universal life.