THE HEIR
BY
SYDNEY C. GRIER
AUTHOR OF
‘AN UNCROWNED KING,’ ‘THE WARDEN OF THE MARCHES,’
ETC.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE PERCY JACOMB-HOOD_
(_First in the Balkan Series II._)
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MCMVI
[IMAGE: images/img_000.jpg
Caption:
_Maurice, his arm gripped by one of the brigands, ... trudged silently
beside her horse._]
CONTENTS.
I. DE JURE
II. OF THE STOCK OF THE EMPERORS
III. THE ORIENT EXPRESS
IV. A FULL STOP
V. THE JEWEL-CASE
VI. A TRAP
VII. A NIGHT’S LODGING
VIII. THE HISTORY OF A DAY
IX. ONE TOO MANY
X. THE OTHER SIDE
XI. TOO MUCH ZEAL
XII. THE DIVINE FIGURE OF THE NORTH
XIII. THE FALLING-OUT OF FAITHFUL FRIENDS
XIV. AN EMISSARY
XV. THE GIRDLE OF ISIDORA
XVI. HAGIOS ANTONIOS
XVII. UNMASKED
XVIII. “SPLENDIDE MENDAX”
XIX. ART WITH A PURPOSE
XX. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION
XXI. “THERE’S MANY A SLIP----”
XXII. UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS
XXIII. A FUSION OF INTERESTS
XXIV. THROUGH ANOTHER MAN’S EYES
XXV. “POUR MIEUX SAUTER”
ILLUSTRATIONS.
MAURICE, HIS ARM GRIPPED BY ONE OF THE BRIGANDS, ... TRUDGED SILENTLY
BESIDE HER HORSE
“THIS IS WHAT WILL INTEREST YOU MOST, I EXPECT,” SAID MAURICE, ...
UNROLLING A LONG PARCHMENT SCROLL AS HE SPOKE
“TAKE YOUR DIRTY HANDS OFF HER, YOU BRUTE!” GROWLED MAURICE
“WELL, I SHALL SIT OUTSIDE AS LONG AS I CAN,” SAID EIRENE OBSTINATELY
“WHY, THERE IS A LITTLE HOUSE AT THE VERY TOP! HOW DO THEY GET UP?”
TOUCHED EIRENE’S HAND WITH A HIGHLY WAXED MOUSTACHE
“I CAN’T BEAR YOU TO GO.” “BUT I MUST,” SHE MURMURED
THE HEIR.
CHAPTER I.
DE JURE.
“I really feel quite guilty,” said the Master of St Saviour’s
College to the distinguished foreigner whom he was escorting to the
Senate House. “Your time in Cambridge is so short that every moment
must be needed for your work.”
“Pray do not reproach yourself, sir,” replied Professor Panagiotis,
with the deliberate precision of one who has learned English from
books. “What greater honour could be afforded me than permission to
observe the contests of your youthful heroes for the rewards of poetry
and oratory?”
“You mustn’t expect too much,” said the Master, with some anxiety;
“though if it had been merely the usual recitation of prize exercises,
I should have left you in peace in the Library. But the subject of the
English Poem has such a close connection with that of your great
book--not, of course, that it was intentionally chosen; merely a
coincidence,” he added conscientiously--“that I felt you ought to be
present.”
“I am entirely agreed with you,” responded the author of the famous
German work on the fall of the Eastern Empire, wondering why his host
was so determined not to let him see a compliment where none was
meant. “The subject, then, is historical?”
“The Fall of Czarigrad,” replied the Master, “and the medal has come
to a St Saviour’s man, which has not happened for many years. I
understand that he studied your book very carefully before writing his
poem, and that is my reason for dragging you here.”
It was in the Professor’s mind to wish that his book had not been
studied, as he sat in the Senate House and heard various agitated
young men, their faces vying sometimes with the white of the M.A.
hoods and sometimes with the Doctors’ scarlet, declaim compositions in
various languages, with all the grace and dignity to be expected from
extreme nervousness subject to the perpetual encouragement of
well-meaning friends. Latin the Professor despised, and the Cambridge
Greek, from the difference of pronunciation, he scarcely recognised as
his own language, but the English Poem roused in him a certain amount
of interest, though he felt a mighty longing to relieve the author of
the task of reciting it. The medallist was fortunate in being pale,
and not red, for Professor Panagiotis considered blushing a purely
feminine exercise, but he shared with his fellows the English
incapacity for letting himself go. In his most thrilling passages the
note of shamed self-consciousness was clearly audible, and he endured
the applause accorded him with a stolid resignation that seemed to
inquire why he could not be allowed to perform a distasteful duty in
peace. This was the more irritating to Professor Panagiotis because
the poem, whenever he could catch the words, struck him as remarkable.
The author had chosen as his theme the final day in the long struggle
of the Cross against the Crescent, when the Moslem tide overflowed at
last the grand bulwark of Christendom, and the Emperor John Theophanis
fell fighting as a common soldier in the breach. The recital was
placed in the mouth of the Emperor, and the description of the night’s
vigil, the dawn of the fatal day, the fanatic fury of the assault, the
desertion of the Christian cause by its allies, and the last desperate
fight, into which Theophanis was to hurl himself, determined to
perish, impressed the listener with a curious sense of realism. He had
lived for months and years among the records of these scenes, but he
could not have described them with the sure hand of this
undergraduate. The tale was plain and unvarnished, the telling crude
and bald, but as the fragmentary lines, unassisted by any rhetorical
graces in the reciter, reached the hearer, he felt such a thrill as
the unadorned narrative of an eyewitness might produce. The young man
must be a poet of quite unusual power, and Professor Panagiotis forgot
the manuscripts awaiting him at the Library in the determination to
cultivate his acquaintance.
“But, my dear friend, you have a genius there!” he cried, when the
Master rejoined him at the close of the ceremony. “Who is this poet of
yours, whose name I could not hear on account of the noise of the
envious relatives of his fellow-students?”
An irrepressible smile crossed the Master’s face, but he answered with
all gravity. “Teffany--Maurice Teffany--a third-year man. He goes down
next week, after he has taken his degree.”
“Teffany! _Himmel und Erde_, is it possible?” cried the Professor.
“And yet I might have known. The thing is the most extraordinary
coincidence! Pardon me,” as his host looked at him in surprise, “but I
have associations with the name. I am all interest. He is the pride of
the college, this young man?”
“Not at all,” said the Master, laughing. “In fact, it’s a curious
case. Teffany has always been rather a puzzle to me. He is not what
you would call a popular man, but he has exercised a good deal of
influence in a quiet way. I must confess I found him a little
disappointing, especially in comparison with his sister, a very clever
girl. She used to attend my lectures with other Girtham students, and
did extremely good work for me, showing a distinct capacity for
original research. Teffany worked well, but in a plodding, uninspired
sort of way. I was always irritated by the feeling that we had never
yet hit on his special line.”
“But now--since this poem--you can have no doubt?” asked Professor
Panagiotis quickly.
The Master shook his head. “I am still doubtful,” he said. “I asked
his tutor to find out whether he had done anything else in the
poetical line--one would expect reams of amateur verse, you know--but
there was not a scrap. He had never written verses before, and he
seems to have no wish to do it again.”
“The young man interests me,” said the Professor. “His name alone----”
he stopped abruptly, as though he had changed his mind. “Quite
independently of his name, I mean.”
“Ah, of course, his subject would appeal to you,” said the Master
unsuspiciously. “You would like to meet him, perhaps? I will invite
him to dine with us to-night. He has reflected honour on the college,
and I shall be glad to mark my sense of it.”
At dinner that evening Professor Panagiotis scanned his neighbour
narrowly whenever he found an opportunity. To him, as to the Master,
the young man was a disappointment. He was extraordinarily ordinary.
Neither tall nor short, neither dark nor fair, neither foppish nor
careless, neither talkative nor silent, he seemed in no way
distinguished or distinguishable. It was only on comparing him with
the other guests that the Professor arrived at a conclusion which gave
him something of a shock. There was a strength and decision about the
jaw and chin which did not amount to obstinacy, but suggested that the
owner might be difficult to turn aside, and a steady calmness about
the eyes which bespoke an indisposition to be hurried.
“The worst type in the world to manage!” was the Professor’s inward
groan. “I must do what I can to gain his confidence, but I foresee it
will be necessary to approach him through the brilliant sister.”
Presently Maurice Teffany found himself addressed by the distinguished
guest, the great Greek man of letters who had made his German
university famous all over the world. His previous silence, coupled
with his keen glances, had made him appear somewhat formidable, but he
now talked pleasantly enough, and the young man became confidential on
the subject of the prize poem, which he seemed to his questioner to
regard as a huge joke.
“It’s an utter fraud, my getting the medal,” he said. “It ought to
have gone to my sister--or perhaps to you, sir. My sister was awfully
keen on my trying for it, because there were a lot of old books about
Czarigrad which we were very fond of as children, but I hadn’t the
slightest idea of it. Then this last winter I sprained my ankle badly
at the very beginning of the vac.--only about six weeks before the
poems had to be sent in--and couldn’t get out, and she gave me no
peace. She had your book, and she translated all the most thrilling
bits and read them to me, and then--well, it got hold of me somehow,
and I seemed to know all about it. So I just wrote it down, and she
criticised it, and copied it out for me, and it got the medal! The
Master says it’s brutal and rugged and everything that a poem ought
not to be, but that there’s _vision_ in it--whatever he may mean by
that.”
“And you agree with him?”
“Oh, I suppose so. Anyhow, he’s sure to know the right thing to say.
You see, sir, I don’t feel that I wrote it. It just came--as if I had
been there and seen it. My sister and I always call it ‘The Finest
Story in the World’ between ourselves--but perhaps you don’t know
Kipling?”
“I fear not, if you allude to some English writer on the subject of
reincarnation. But I am going to ask you a rude question on a point of
psychology. Is it possible that the poem was actually your sister’s
composition, but that she impressed it upon your mind, so that you
accepted and wrote it as your own?”
Young Teffany considered the matter gravely, and then laughed. “Rather
not!” he said. “Zoe’s an awfully clever girl, and writes a good bit,
but she has never dabbled in poetry any more than me. She was just as
much surprised at the way the thing turned out as I was. And as to
making her poem pass into my mind without my knowing it--why, she
couldn’t do it. I’m as certain of that as I am of anything, though I
think a lot of her--but of course I don’t tell her so.”
“My dear sir, you have already grasped one of the main secrets of the
management of the female sex,” said the Professor sententiously. “But
may I suggest a variation of your reincarnation theory? I am at
present engaged in following up my larger work by tracing the
dispersal of the Greeks who survived the fall of Czarigrad, and it
occurs to me that your family may be descended from one of them.”
He scanned his companion’s face closely, as though to discover whether
the idea was new to him, but the young man only laughed. “A case of
inherited memory? I’m afraid it’s no go, sir. There’s nothing in the
least Greek about us.”
“Four centuries of English marriages would go far to obliterate racial
traits,” was the dry reply. “Your Christian name is Greek, at any
rate.”
“All our names are. It’s a kind of tradition in the family. My father
was Theodore, and his father and grandfather were both Constantine.
However far back you go, it’s always Basil and Gregory and so on for
the men, and Dorothea and Katharine and names of that sort for the
women.”
“That is very curious,” with repressed eagerness. “And you are sure
there is no tradition of a Greek ancestry?”
“None that I know of. But my sister would be a better person to ask.
She’s had flu., you know, with a touch of bronchitis, or else she’d
have been here to-day, and she said she was going to forget her
sorrows in rummaging among the family papers. There are a few at home,
and some at the lawyer’s. But really, I’m afraid there’s not much to
find out. We have only been settled at our present place for sixty or
seventy years--horribly new, you see.”
“Then where was your family established before that?” The Professor
leaned forward anxiously.
“Oh, somewhere in the wilds of Cornwall. My grandfather could just
remember the old place. My sister and I talk sometimes of making a
pilgrimage down there--seeking the cradle of our race, you know--but I
believe it’s only a farmhouse now.”
“The cradle of your race!” with measureless contempt. “My dear Mr
Teffany”--the Professor modified the eagerness of his tone as his
hearer looked at him in astonishment--“I must see those papers--any
family relics you may possess. What this identification, if it is
established, may mean to me--to you--I hardly dare think. I--I had
traced the family of which I am in search as far as Penteffan on the
Cornish coast, and there all sign of them was lost. This is like new
life to me. You will not refuse your help?”
“Of course, we shall be glad to do anything we can,” was the reply,
given without effusion. “Penteffan was the name of my
great-grandfather’s place, certainly. We have a picture of it--‘The
Seat of Constantine Teffany, Esq.’ Will you come down with me next
week, and look over the papers with my sister--if you are not afraid
of the flu.?”
“No, no; I have paid toll to the devil,” replied the Professor
hurriedly. His hearer interpreted the somewhat startling assertion
correctly as referring to the influenza-fiend, and they proceeded to
discuss ways and means. It was settled at last that Maurice should go
home the next week, as he had intended, and obtain the papers of which
his lawyer had charge, and that the Professor, who was to receive an
honorary degree from the University, should follow as soon as
possible, when they would go through the documents together.
* * * * * * *
“Maurice, an awful blow!” Zoe Teffany sprang up to meet her brother as
he put his head in at the door of the library where she was at work.
“I believe our name is really Smith!”
“That’s cheerful. What makes you think so?”
“Why, I was tidying the top shelves of the bookcases, and I found a
lot of grandpapa’s old schoolbooks, and every one of them had ‘C.
Smith’ or ‘Constantine Smith’ inside. Then I remembered those old
letters of great-grandmamma’s--about buying this place, you know--and
when I looked at them they were all addressed to ‘Mrs Smith.’ The
address was written in the middle of one side of the paper, in the old
way--there were no envelopes--and I had not noticed it when I saw them
before.”
“What a frightful sell for Professor Panagiotis!” chuckled Maurice.
“Shall we wire, and put the old fellow out of his misery?”
“Oh no, no! Why, it mayn’t be true; we’ll hope it isn’t. I have been
looking at everything else I can think of, to try and be certain one
way or the other, and I can only find the name Smith just when
grandpapa was a boy. His parents were Teffany before he was born, and
we know he was Teffany when we knew him. What can it mean?”
“Well, since he was a small boy at school when he called himself
Smith, it can hardly mean that he had done something and was in
hiding. There’s one piece of comfort for you, at any rate. But I tell
you what, I’ll ask old Lake, when I ride over to-morrow to get the
papers. He ought to know, if any one does.”
“Oh, do; and be sure and hurry back. I shall be dying to know. I hope
there’s some romantic reason, at any rate. Smith is such a terribly
unromantic name. Couldn’t you go to-day?”
“Scarcely, since my appointment with Lake is for to-morrow.”
“Oh, how prosaic you are--talking of appointments, when you ought to
saddle your fleetest steed and spur him headlong over hill and dale to
discover the truth!”
“Ah, I’m not a budding novelist, you know.”
“No, only a full-blown tragic poet.” Zoe raised her voice as Maurice
beat a hasty retreat. The varying literary fortunes of the two
afforded endless opportunity for mutual chaff, but whereas Zoe gloried
in her abortive efforts at fiction, on the ground that they were too
good for any publisher to accept, Maurice was inclined to be ashamed
of his success. The romantic was Zoe’s province, not his, and the only
excitement he felt over her momentous discovery was due to the
possible disappointment in store for Professor Panagiotis, for whom he
had conceived a certain distrust, due to his mysterious hints and
half-revelations. There was no enthusiasm, therefore, in his tone when
he entered the library on the following afternoon.
“Well,” he said, “our name is Teffany all right. I have interviewed
old Lake, and you may sleep in peace. There was a reason for the Smith
business, and I suppose you would call it romantic. I call it
cracked.”
“Oh, do tell me!” cried Zoe. “Was it a feud?”
“Nobody knows. Lake could only tell me what his father told him, and
what they guessed. His father had just gone into the office when our
great-grandmother and her little boy arrived in the neighbourhood
about seventy years ago. She had excellent bankers’ references, and
began to negotiate for the purchase of this place. She told them that
she was left sole guardian of her son, and that she had been obliged
to remove from her former part of the country on account of grave
dangers threatening his life. For safety’s sake, they would be known
for the present by the name of Smith. She was a handsome woman, and
the Lakes thought there must be some revengeful discarded lover in the
case. She bought this place and lived here unmolested, and when her
son was twenty-one, he resumed the name of Teffany, which the lawyers
heard then for the first time. At the same time, he sold Penteffan,
which had been managed by a London firm. He would have liked to go
back there, but his mother objected so vehemently that he humoured
her, especially since the old house had been allowed to fall into
decay. The Lakes could never discover anything to account for her
horror of the place, except that the people remembered two foreigners
coming and making inquiries about the family soon after she left.
That’s absolutely all they know.”
“Oh, Maurice, how thrilling!” cried Zoe, drawing a long breath. “Do
you think the house was haunted? or--no, I am sure it was smugglers.
Perhaps she had betrayed them to the revenue officers, and they meant
to kidnap her child in revenge. I wonder if there’s anything about it
in the papers you have brought. Shall we look at them now?”
“No, nonsense! Leave them till the Professor comes. Let’s go and see
how the new croquet-lawn is getting on.”
The Professor arrived the next day, casting keen, curious glances
about him. The sober stateliness of the house, the old family
servants, the unobtrusive perfection of every detail indoors and out,
and the easy kindliness of the young master and mistress--all were, so
to speak, noted in his memory and labelled for reference. He remarked
also Zoe’s unconcealed eagerness for the hour when the family papers
were to be examined, and the tolerant resignation with which Maurice
awaited it. He would find the motive force in the sister, the staying
power in the brother, he assured himself again.
“This is what will interest you most, I expect,” said Maurice, when
they had retired to the library after dinner, unrolling a long
parchment scroll as he spoke. “It is our family tree, properly drawn
out.”
Professor Panagiotis peered at the document with a hungry look. “You
are right,” he said; “it is priceless. Your family has dwindled
strangely, Mr Teffany. I cannot tell you how many collateral branches
I have followed up, only to find that they died out, while the direct
line was in existence unknown to me.”
“Yes, my sister and I are the sole representatives of the name, as far
as this pedigree shows,” said Maurice.
“Exactly--so far as this pedigree shows,” agreed the guest, comparing
the document with the entries in a note-book which he had brought with
him.
“Oh, Maurice, look!” cried Zoe. “Isn’t it funny? Do you see that the
beginning of the parchment is sealed down? There must be some secret
charge, or something of that sort, inside.”
“Lake said that our grandfather sealed it in his presence,” returned
Maurice. “But it must have been sealed a good many times before, to
judge by all the old seals.”
“Oh dear, I hoped it would reveal the mystery!” sighed Zoe. The
Professor looked up sharply.
“My sister gave us a great fright two days ago,” explained Maurice.
“It appears that my grandfather and his mother adopted the name of
Smith for about fifteen years after they moved here from Penteffan.”
[Image: images/img_012.jpg
Caption:
“_This is what will interest you most, I expect_,” _said Maurice, ...
unrolling a long parchment scroll as he spoke._]
“Indeed?” with growing excitement. “This gives me my last link,
explains the one fact for which I could not account--the sudden and
absolute disappearance of the Teffanys from Penteffan seventy-two
years ago. I could find no record of the death of the widow of the
last proprietor and her infant son, and yet I could not succeed in
tracing them.”
“Then you know who the foreigners were who made inquiries?” “Then you
can explain why she called herself Smith?” burst from Maurice and Zoe
simultaneously.
“I can explain it now. The foreigners were delegates from the Greek
National Assembly, seeking a leader whose very name would rally round
him the contentious factions that disgraced the cause of liberty, each
fighting for its own hand. The widowed Mrs Teffany, herself the
daughter of an Englishman who had fallen in the cause of Greece, had
too little faith in that cause to devote her son to it, and removed
him effectually out of sight.”
“But why should they want a little boy of five, who couldn’t even
fight?” cried Zoe. “It wasn’t as if he was a king.”
“He would have been proclaimed king, doubtless. It was not the person,
so much as the name, that was of importance.”
“But why the name? Is there something we don’t know? Is it here, under
these seals?”
“Possibly.” The Professor cast a side glance at Maurice. “Mr Teffany
desires me to continue?”
“Yes, yes!” cried Zoe, as Maurice nodded. “Tell us, quick!”
She seized the parchment, but the Professor removed it from her hands.
“It is your brother’s right,” he said. “He is the head of the house.
You observe that the pedigree goes back to Alexius Teffany, who
settled in Cornwall in the sixteenth century. Now break the seals,
sir, if you please. You observe that Alexius was the son of John, who
was the son of Manuel, who was the son of Basil----”
“Who was the son of John Theophanis, Roman Emperor, who died
gloriously on the walls of Czarigrad!” shrieked Zoe. “Oh, Maurice,
isn’t it splendid?”
“That is not all,” said Professor Panagiotis. “You, Maurice Teffany,
are at this moment the rightful Emperor of the East.”