XXIX
At four punctually arrived my friend the famous lawyer. He was not a handsome man, but possessed a certain distinction, which he owed to a strong face, well-modelled head, and a neatly powdered wig, the hair being tied back, after the fashion of the bar, in a black queue-bag with, at the end, a broad black ribbon. He took the snuff my aunt offered, carefully dusting the excess off the collar of his brown velvet coat, and sat down, saying, as he took some papers from a silk bag, that it was altogether an interesting and curious question, this we had set before him. And why had we held this deed so long and said nothing?
I told him of my father’s and my grandfather’s disinclination to open the matter, and why and how the estate had seemed of little worth, but was now, as I believed, more valuable.
Hearing this he began to question my aunt and me. He learned from our replies that at the time I got the deed from my father none but my parent had any clear idea of what this old family compact meant, but that now we were in possession of such facts as enabled us to understand it. I then went on to make plain that my aunt was full of the matter, and eager, but that I had no inclination at any time to enter on a long and doubtful litigation in another country.
To myself I confessed that I desired no immediate settlement until I saw what Arthur meant to be at. It was one more hold on a scamp still able to do me mischief. If it was clearly his father’s estate and not ours, he should soon or late be relieved of any possible doubt this deed might still make as to questions of title.
When Mr. Wilson turned to my aunt he found a more warlike witness. She delighted in the prospect of a legal contest.
“When a child,” she said, “I used to hear of my father’s having consented to make over or give away to his brother William an embarrassed estate, and that the crown officers were in some way consenting parties to the agreement, my father engaging himself to go to America when let out of jail.
“There is no doubt,” she went on, “that Wyncote was under this arrangement legally transferred by my father to his next brother. Our Welsh cousins must have this conveyance. It seems, from the deed you have examined, that privately a retransfer was made, so as, after all, to leave my father possessed of his ancestral estate. If ever he chose to reclaim it he was free to do so. The affair seems to have become more or less known to the squires in that part of Merionethshire. William was, we presume, unwilling to take an unfair advantage of his brother’s misfortune, and hence the arrangement thus made between them.”
“You state the case admirably,” said the lawyer. “And what else is there?”