CONSPIRATORS THREE
When Captain Verinder enunciated the startling statement with which the
last chapter concludes, he had already conceived a certain scheme in
his brain, which, in the course of next day, he took the first steps
towards reducing to practice, but without saying a word to his niece of
his intentions.
Many years before, Giovanna’s only brother, Luigi Rispani, had come to
London by way of advancing his fortunes. He was energetic and
persevering, with a gift for languages, and after a time he obtained
the post of foreign correspondent in a city house of business. A little
later he married a country-woman of his own, and then, after a few
years, both he and his wife died, leaving one son behind them who was
named after his father. This son was now about twenty years old, a
dark-eyed, good-looking, quick-witted young fellow, but having within
him the germs of certain scampish propensities, which, up till now, had
only been able to develop themselves after a weak and tentative
fashion. Luigi earned his living in part as drawing-master to a number
of cheap suburban boarding-schools, and in part, when his other duties
were over for the day, by acting as check-taker at one of the West End
theatres.
The Captain and the elder Rispani had been on fairly intimate terms,
and after the latter’s death he had never altogether lost sight of the
lad. Sometimes, when he had been more than usually lucky at billiards,
he would look up young Luigi and treat him to a dinner of four or five
courses at some foreign restaurant in the neighbourhood of Leicester
Square, and at parting press a couple of half-crowns into his
unreluctant palm. Verinder, who by long habit had become a tolerably
shrewd reader of character, had long ago summed up in his mind the most
salient characteristics of Luigi Rispani, and he now said to himself,
with a pleasant sense of elation: “Here is the very tool I need ready
to my hand. If I were to search London round I could not find one that
would suit my purpose better.”
This evening he sought out Luigi at the theatre where the young man was
engaged, and after shaking hands with him, said: “I wish to see you
most particularly. Come to my den after you have finished here and I
will tell you what I want you for.”
Luigi went straight from the theatre to his uncle’s rooms. (As long as
he could remember he had been used to calling the Captain “uncle”). The
ghostly light of dawn was in the eastern sky before the two separated.
The nature of the business discussed by them will be made clear by a
conversation which took place next day between the Captain and his
niece.
“You have not forgotten our talk in the Park the day before yesterday?”
said the former.
“There was much in it which I am not likely readily to forget. All the
same, you said certain things which, the more I think of them, the more
extravagant and incapable of ever being realised they seem to me.”
“That is just what I am here to-day to endeavour to disprove,” remarked
the Captain in his dryest tones. “You don’t object to my smoking, I
know. Thanks.”
As soon as he had selected and lighted a cigar, he resumed:
“You already know my views as to the position which, in my opinion, you
ought to occupy as daughter-in-law to Sir Gilbert Clare of Withington
Chase. That you have an undoubted claim on the old baronet I think very
few people would be found to dispute, and the question we have now to
consider is the most desirable mode of urging that claim upon his
notice in order that the utmost possible advantage may accrue to you
therefrom. As you justly remarked the other day, the probability is
that Sir Gilbert was never made aware of his son’s marriage, and,
consequently, cannot have the remotest suspicion that the young man
left a widow to mourn his loss. Now, from all I heard of the baronet
when I was in the country last week, I take him to be a hardfisted,
penurious curmudgeon, who, to judge from his style of living, must be
laying by several thousands a year—though, why he should care to do so,
goodness only knows, seeing that he has nobody he cares about to leave
his savings to—the next heir being a half-cousin with whom he has been
at outs for the last thirty years. Now, it seems to me, taking into
account the kind of man he is, that if you were to introduce yourself
to his notice merely on the ground of being the widow of his son—who
died nearly twenty years ago—and a person of whom probably he has never
heard before, he might perhaps, without wholly ignoring your claim upon
him, not merely satisfy his conscience, but persuade himself into the
belief that he was acting a most generous part by you, if he were to
allow you a paltry hundred, or, at the most, a couple of hundred pounds
a year as long as he lives. But, Giovanna, my dear, it is more—much
more—than that that I want to help you to secure for yourself. I want
to see you in the position which would have been yours at your
husband’s death had you married John Alexander Clare with his father’s
full knowledge and consent. In that case you would undoubtedly have had
a jointure of not less than seven or eight hundred a year, and I want
us two to try whether we cannot see our way to secure something like an
equivalent settlement for you, even after all this length of time.”
Vanna was staring straight before her with an introspective expression
in her midnight orbs. When the silence had lasted some time, she said
very quietly:
“You are working out some scheme in your brain, Uncle, I feel sure of
it; you have something more to tell me—something to propose. Is it not
so?”
He considered the ash of his cigar for a moment or two, then, lifting
his eyes to her face, he said:
“What a pity—what a very great pity it is that your boy did not live to
be here to-day!”
As before, when he spoke of the loss of her child, an indescribable
expression flitted across Giovanna’s face.
“That is precisely what you said the other day,” she remarked, coldly.
“Where is the use of referring a second time to a misfortune which
happened so long ago?”
“Because I cannot help contrasting your position to-day with what it
would have been could you but have taken your boy by the hand, and have
said to Sir Gilbert: ‘You lost your son and heir long years ago: but
to-day I bring you a grandson to take his place. Here is the new heir
of Withington Chase.’ In that case, how the old man would have welcomed
you!—nothing would have seemed too good for you, so overjoyed would he
have been. The position which ought to have been yours from the first
would then be accorded you, and you would take your place in society as
the daughter-in-law of Sir Gilbert Clare, and the mother of the next
heir. And then, a little later, my Vanna, you would marry again. Oh,
yes, you would! Marry money—and perhaps a title to boot. Why not? You
are one of the handsomest women in London, or else I don’t know a
handsome woman when I see one!”
Vanna rose abruptly from her chair, and then sat down again. For once
she was profoundly moved.
“Oh, Uncle, this is the merest folly!” she cried. “Why talk of
impossibilities? Let us keep to realities. I thought you had something
to propose—something, perhaps, that would——”
“So I have, my dear; so I have something to propose,” responded the
Captain, with a chuckle. “What I said to you the other day was, ‘There
is only one course open to us, and that is to find Sir Gilbert an
heir.’”
“Well?” demanded Vanna with wide-open eyes. “I failed to understand
your meaning then and I am not a bit the wiser now.”
“Listen then. Although, owing to circumstances to which I need not
further refer, we are not in a position to go before Sir Gilbert and
produce the real heir, is that any reason why we should not find a
substitute who would answer both his purpose and ours just as well as
the genuine article?” His cunning eyes were watching her eagerly.
Vanna’s face expressed a growing wonder, but it was a wonder largely
compounded of bewilderment.
“_Ecoutez_,” resumed her uncle. “Let us assume for the moment that you
agree with me what a very desirable thing it would be to provide Sir
Gilbert with an heir, even though it would, of necessity, have to be a
fictitious one. Being, then, so far in accord, naturally the first
question would be, ‘But where are we to find the heir in question—or
rather, someone by whom he could be personated?’ To which I should
reply that I am prepared at any moment to lay my finger on the one
person out of all the hundreds and thousands of people in this big city
best suited to our purpose. That person is none other than your own
nephew (whom I believe you have never yet set eyes on), the son of your
only brother, Luigi Rispani.”
Sheer amazement kept Giovanna silent.
“I have already seen Luigi and sounded him in the matter,” resumed the
Captain. “He fully agrees with me that the idea is a most admirable
one, and one which, if carried out in all its details with that care
and foresight which I should not fail to bestow on it, could not prove
otherwise than brilliantly successful. In short, Luigi places himself
unreservedly in my hands. So now, my dear Vanna, it only remains for
you to follow your nephew’s excellent example.”
It is not needful that we should recount in detail what further passed
between uncle and niece either at this or subsequent interviews. Enough
to say that when once she had been talked over into giving her consent,
and had thoroughly mastered the details of the scheme as proposed to be
carried out by her uncle, she entered fully into the affair, and seemed
to have thrown whatever moral scruples might at one time have feebly
held her back completely to the winds. But before all this came about
Luigi Rispani and his aunt had been brought together. Although English
blood on the female side ran in the veins of both, they might have been
pure Italians for anything in their looks which proclaimed the
contrary. In point of fact, there was a very marked family likeness
between the two, so much so, indeed, that the Captain could not help
saying to himself with a chuckle, “Nobody seeing them together, would
take them for other than mother and son.”
At length all the details of the scheme were so far elaborated and
agreed upon by our three conspirators that Verinder felt the time had
come for him to make his first important move, which was, to seek an
interview with Sir Gilbert Clare, or, as he preferred to express it, to
“beard the lion in his den.”