VISIONS OF WEALTH.
Cyril Waring, thus dismissed, and as in honour bound, hurried
up to London with a mind preoccupied by many pressing doubts and
misgivings. He thought much of Elma, but he thought much, too, of
sundry strange events that had happened of late to his own private
fortunes. For one thing he had sold, and sold mysteriously, at a very
good price, the picture of Sardanapalus in the glade at Chetwood.
A well-known London dealer had written down to him at Tilgate making
an excellent offer for the unfinished work, as soon as it should
be ready, on behalf of a customer whose name he didn't happen to
mention. And who could that customer be, Cyril thought to himself,
but Colonel Kelmscott? But that wasn't all. The dealer who had
offered him a round sum down for "The Rajah's Rest" had also at
the same time commissioned him to go over to the Belgian Ardennes
to paint a picture or two, at a specified price, of certain selected
scenes upon the Meuse and its tributaries. The price offered for
the work was a very respectable one, and yet--he had some internal
misgivings, somehow, about this mysterious commission. Could it be
to get rid of him? He had an uncomfortable suspicion in the back
chambers of his mind, that whoever had commissioned the pictures
might be more anxious to send him well away from Tilgate than
to possess a series of picturesque sketches on the Meuse and its
tributaries.
And who could have an interest in keeping him far from Tilgate?
That was the question. Was there anybody whom his presence there
could in any way incommode? Could it be Elma's father who wanted
to send him so quickly away from England?
And what was the meaning of Elma's profound resolution, so strangely
and strongly expressed, never, never to marry him?
A painful idea flitted across the young man's puzzled brain. Had
the Cliffords alone discovered the secret of his birth? and was
that secret of such a disgraceful sort that Elma's father shrank
from owning him as a prospective son-in-law, while even Elma herself
could not bring herself to accept him as her future husband? If so,
what could that ghastly secret be? Were he and Guy the inheritors
of some deadly crime? Had their origin been concealed from them,
more in mercy than in cruelty, only lest some hideous taint of
murder or of madness might mar their future and make their whole
lives miserable?
When he reached Staple Inn, he found Guy and Montague Nevitt already
in their joint rooms, and arrears of three days' correspondence
awaiting him.
A close observer--like Elma Clifford--might perhaps have noted in
Montague Nevitt's eye certain well-restrained symptoms of suppressed
curiosity. But Cyril Waring, in his straightforward, simple English
manliness, was not sharp enough to perceive that Nevitt watched
him close while he broke the envelopes and glanced over his letters;
or that Nevitt's keen anxiety grew at once far deeper and more
carefully concealed as Cyril turned to one big missive with an
official-looking seal and a distinctly important legal aspect. On
the contrary, to the outer eye or ear all that could be observed in
Montague Nevitt's manner was the nervous way he went on tightening
his violin strings with a tremulous hand and whistling low to
himself a few soft and tender bars of some melancholy scrap from
Miss Ewes's refectory.
As Cyril read through that letter, however, his breath came and went
in short little gasps, and his cheek flushed hotly with a sudden
and overpowering flood of emotion.
"What's the matter?" Guy asked, looking over his shoulder curiously.
And Cyril, almost faint with the innumerable ideas and suspicions
that the tidings conjured up in his brain at once, said with an
evident effort, "Read it, Guy; read it."
Guy took the letter and read, Montague Nevitt gazing at it by his
side meanwhile with profound interest.
As soon as they had glanced through its carefully-worded sentences,
each drew a long breath and stared hard at the other. Then Cyril
added in a whirl, "And here's a letter from my own bankers saying
they've duly received the six thousand pounds and put it to my
credit."
Guy's face was pale, but he faltered out none the less with ashy
lips, staring hard at the words all the time, "It isn't only the
money, of course, one thinks about, Cyril; but the clue it seems
to promise us to our father and mother."
"Exactly," Cyril answered, with a responsive nod. "The money I
won't take. I don't know what it means. But the clue I'll follow
up till I've run to earth the whole truth about who we are and
where we come from."
Montague Nevitt glanced quickly from one to the other with an
incredulous air. "Not take the money," he exclaimed, in cynical
surprise. "Why, of course you'll take it. Twelve thousand pounds
isn't to be sneezed at in these days, I can tell you. And as for
the clue, why, there isn't any clue. Not a jot or a tittle, a ghost
or a shadow of it. The unnatural parent, whoever he may be--for I
take it for granted the unnatural parent's the person at the bottom
of the offer--takes jolly good care not to let you know who on
earth he is. He wraps himself up in a double cloak of mystery.
Drummonds pay in the money to your account at your own bank, you
see, and while they're authorized to receive your acknowledgment
of the sum remitted, they are clearly NOT authorized to receive
to the sender's credit any return cheque for the amount or cash in
repayment. The unnatural parent evidently intends to remain, for
the present at least, strictly anonymous.
"Couldn't you find out for us at Drummond, Coutts and Barclay's
who the sender is?" Guy asked, with some hesitation, still turning
over in his hand the mysterious letter.
Nevitt shook his head with prompt decision. "No, certainly not,"
he answered, assuming an air of the severest probity. "It would
be absolutely impossible. The secrets in a bank are secrets of
honour. We are the depositaries of tales that might ruin thousands,
and we never say a word about one of them to anybody."
As for Cyril, he felt himself almost too astonished for words. It
was long before he could even discuss the matter quietly. The whole
episode seemed so strange, so mysterious, so uncanny. And no wonder
he hesitated. For the unknown writer of the letter with the legal
seal had proposed a most curious and unsatisfactory arrangement.
Six thousand pounds down on the nail to Cyril, six thousand more
in a few weeks to Guy. But not for nothing. As in all law business,
"valuable consideration" loomed large in the background. They
were both to repair, on a given day, at a given hour, to a given
office, in a given street, where they were to sign without inquiry,
and even without perusal, whatever documents might then and there
be presented to them. This course, the writer pointed out, with
perspicuous plainness, was all in the end to their own greater
advantage.
For unless they signed, they would get nothing more, and it would
be useless for them at attempt the unravelling of the mystery. But
if they consented to sign, then, the writer declared, the anonymous
benefactor at whose instigation he wrote would leave them by his
will a further substantial sum, not one penny of which would ever
otherwise come to them.
And Montague Nevitt, as a man of business, looking the facts in
the face, without sentiment or nonsense, advised them to sign, and
make the best of a good bargain.
For Montague Nevitt saw at once in his own mind that this course
would prove the most useful in the end for his own interests, both
as regards the Warings and Colonel Kelmscott.
The two persons most concerned, however, viewed the matter in a very
different light. To them, this letter, with its obscure half-hints,
opened up a chance of solving at last the mystery of their position
which had so long oppressed them. They might now perhaps find out
who they really were, if only they could follow up this pregnant
clue; and the clue itself suggested so many things.
"Whatever else it shows," Guy said emphatically, "it shows we must
be the lawful sons of some person of property, or else why should
he want us to sign away our rights like this, all blindfold? And
whatever the rights themselves may be, they must be very considerable,
or else why should he bribe us so heavily to sign ourselves out
of them? Depend upon it, Nevitt, it's an entailed estate, and the
man who dictated that letter is in possession of the property,
which ought to belong to Cyril and me. For my part, I'm opposed to
all bargaining in the dark. I'll sign nothing, and I'll give away
nothing, without knowing what it is. And that's what I advise Cyril
to write back and tell him."
Cyril, however, was revolving in his own mind meanwhile a still
more painful question. Could it be any blood-relationship between
himself and Elma, unknown to him, but just made known to her, that
gave rise to her firm and obviously recent determination never to
marry him? A week or two since, he was sure, Elma knew of no cause
or just impediment why they should not be joined together in holy
matrimony. Could she have learned it meanwhile, before she met him
in the wood? and could the fact of her so learning it have thus
pricked the slumbering conscience of their unknown kinsman or
their supposed supplanter?
They sat there long and late, discussing the question from all
possible standpoints--save the one thus silently started in his
own mind by Cyril. But, in the end, Cyril's resolution remained
unshaken. He would leave the six thousand pounds in the bank,
untouched; but he would write back at once to the unknown sender,
declining plainly, once for all, to have anything to do with it
or with the proposed transactions. If anything was his by right,
he would take it as of right, but he would be no party to such
hole-and-corner renunciations of unknown contingencies as the
writer suggested. If the writer was willing to state at once all
the facts of the case, in clear and succinct language, and to come
to terms thus openly with himself and his brother, why then, Cyril
averred, he was ready to promise they would deal with his claims in
a spirit of the utmost generosity and consideration. But if this
was an attempt to do them out of their rights by a fraudulent bribe,
he for one would have nothing to say to it. He would therefore
hold the six thousand pounds paid in to his account entirely at
his anonymous correspondent's disposition.
"And as there isn't any use in my wasting the summer, Guy," he
said, in conclusion, "I won't let this red-herring, trailed across
my path, prevent me from going over at once, as I originally intended,
to Dinant and Spa, and fulfilling the commission for those pictures
of Dale and Norton's; You and Nevitt can see meanwhile what it's
possible for us to do in the matter of hunting up this family
mystery. You can telegraph if you want me, and I'll come back at
once. But more than ever now I feel the need of redeeming the time
and working as hard as I can go at my profession."
"Well, yes," Guy answered, as if both their thoughts ran naturally
in the self-same channel. "I agree with you there. She's been
accustomed to luxury. No man has a right to marry any girl if he
can't provide for her in the comfort and style she's always been
used to. And from that point of view, when one looks it in the
face, Cyril, six thousand pounds would come in handy."