THE FALSE HEIR
Sir Gilbert Clare’s deliberate announcement, evidently not made without
a purpose, that the family estates were no longer entailed, was one
which carried dismay to the heart of Captain Verinder. His face fell on
the instant, and for a little while the ruddy colour faded out of his
cheeks. Although aware that the baronet’s eyes were glancing keenly
from him to Giovanna, and then back, he could not for the life of him
help showing that the blow had struck home.
Sir Gilbert smiled grimly to himself.
“As I thought, this fellow is at the bottom of the business,” he
murmured, but this time not aloud. “It is he who has found me out and
induced his niece to lay her case before me, evidently in the
expectation of being able to feather his nest out of her, or me, or
both of us. Well, we shall see. As regards his niece, I am more than
ever inclined to believe in her. The story she told me was remarkably
clear and straightforward. But _festina lente_ must still be my motto.”
Then he rose. “And now, my dear madam,” he said, addressing himself
pointedly to Giovanna and wholly ignoring the Captain, “I must ask you
to excuse me till to-morrow, when I shall expect to see you here,
accompanied by your son, at the same hour as to-day. I would not have
quitted you so abruptly but that I have a couple of my tenant farmers
waiting all this time to see me about some repairs. But you must not
leave the Chase without partaking of some refreshment. Pardon me if I
insist. I cannot sit down with you myself, I am sorry to say, for I am
under the strictest dietetic regimen. They are terrible tyrants, these
doctors. Till to-morrow at eleven, then.”
Therewith he shook hands cordially with Giovanna, but the Captain he
merely favoured with a curt nod, as it might be a nod of dismissal to
one of his dependents; and, indeed, he had already made up his mind
that he had seen quite enough of Captain Verinder.
Presently a servant appeared with a liberally appointed luncheon tray,
at sight of which the Captain brightened visibly, for he was one of
those men to whom the good things of the table never appeal in vain.
It was not till they were jogging back to the station in their fly,
which had been kept waiting for them, that Giovanna said: “I am not
sure that I quite got at the meaning of Sir Gilbert’s speech about what
he called the entail. Does it mean that—— But perhaps you had better
tell me what it does mean.”
The Captain drew down the corners of his mouth. “Oh, there’s no
possible mistake about his meaning. It seems that your husband was so
unspeakably foolish as, in return for the sum of six thousand pound, to
deprive himself and his heirs of what otherwise would have been their
undoubted birthright. Thus the estate of Withington Chase, and other
estates into the bargain, for anything I know to the contrary, instead
of descending through the law of entail to Sir Gilbert’s grandson (whom
we hope to have the pleasure of introducing to him to-morrow), have, as
the result of that act, become the baronet’s sole and personal
property, to sell, or give away, or do what the dickens he likes with.
I wish with all my heart that John Alexander Clare had been at the
bottom of the Red Sea before putting his hand to any such iniquitous
document.”
“Then, if Sir Gilbert chooses to adopt Luigi as his grandson it does
not follow that he will come into the property?”
“It certainly does not follow that he will; but neither does it follow
that he won’t. Everything hinges on how Sir Gilbert takes to him. If
Luigi plays his cards skilfully, there’s no reason why he should not
come in for everything when the old gentleman dies. On the other hand,
if he plays them badly, he may be left without a shilling.”
“And the title?” queried Giovanna.
“Oh, the title can’t be cut off as the entail has been. That descends
to the next heir, whoever he may be, and nothing can deprive him of it.
But where would be the good of the title, I should like to know,
without the means to keep it up? It would be a white elephant—worse
than useless. Everything depends on Luigi.”
“He seems to me a rather clever young man.”
“Oh yes, he’s clever enough in his way,” said the Captain with a short
laugh. “The question is whether he’s not a little bit too clever. There
lies our danger.”
This was rather beyond Giovanna; but, as their fly drew up next minute
at the station, nothing more was said; and as there were several other
passengers in the compartment by which they travelled up to town, all
further private conversation was deferred till they reached Giovanna’s
rooms, where they found Luigi impatiently awaiting their arrival.
The young Italian was a rank coward both morally and physically, and
when told that he would have to face Sir Gilbert Clare on the morrow in
his assumed _rôle_ of grandson to the baronet, his cheeks blanched and
a nervous trembling took possession of him, which was not allayed till
the Captain had administered to him a tolerably stiff dose of brandy.
As already stated, Luigi was a fairly good-looking young man. He was
tall and slender, with a pale olive complexion and clear cut features
of an almost purely Greek type. His eyes were large, black and
expressive, and the knowledge of how to make the most of them had come
to him by intuition, as it does to the majority of his race. Jet black,
soft and silky were his hair and moustache. He was very proud of his
long tapering hands, and his carefully trimmed nails. Some of his
friends said they were the hands of an artist, others, less
complimentary, averred that he had the digits of a pickpocket. Both
statements went beyond the mark, as the generality of extreme
statements do, for although Luigi Rispani was a fairly clever
drawing-master, he was entirely lacking in the creative faculty, and
although he had no moral scruples whatever in lending himself to a
scheme for defrauding Sir Gilbert Clare, nothing less than hard
compulsion—a twinge of starvation, for instance—would have induced him
to insert his hand into another man’s pocket and abstract therefrom a
watch or purse. In the opinion of some people a transaction of the
latter kind would have been much more venial than the one to which he
had given his assent, but such was not Luigi Rispani’s way of thinking,
and such is not the way of thinking of thousands of others.
Our three conspirators did not separate till a late hour, for, on the
strength of his coming good fortune, Luigi had already thrown up his
post at the theatre. As a matter of course, the Captain was
spokesman-in-chief. He it was who thought out every detail and strove
to foresee and provide against every contingency which might
unexpectedly crop up at the morrow’s interview. The others had little
to do beyond listening and assenting and trying to fix in their memory,
so that they might be available at the right moment, the different
points enumerated by him.
In matters of business Captain Verinder was punctuality itself, and our
little party of three pulled up at the door of Withington Chase as the
turret clock was striking eleven. Having been ushered into the morning
room as before, they were left to themselves for a few minutes. Then
the footman reappeared with a request that “the lady and the young
gentleman” would be good enough to follow him. Before quitting the room
he rather ostentatiously placed a couple of newspapers on the centre
table.
Captain Verinder was left alone; he realised the fact unpleasantly.
Starting to his feet, he began to pace the room with anything but
placid strides. His face turned a purplish red, he shook his clenched
hands at an imaginary foe, and anathematised Sir Gilbert in tones not
loud but deep. He was quite aware that the baronet had conceived an
unaccountable dislike for him, but he had not thought it would take a
form of such active hostility as had now evinced itself. It was more
than a slight—it was an insult—as he fumingly told himself: but all the
same, it was one which he was not in a position to resent.
After all, as he assured himself when he had in some measure calmed
down, it was really a matter of little moment, even if Sir Gilbert
should continue to ignore him; he might feel sore at the time, but he
would soon get over that. The great point was that the scheme he had so
carefully elaborated was on the high road to success; the rest, as far
as he was concerned, was a trifling matter indeed. Let but Luigi and
Vanna attain to the positions he had designated them for, and
henceforth with him—Augustus Verinder—all would go well. Farewell,
then, to his existence of semi-genteel pauperism, and to his long
struggle against a fate which had so persistently turned a cold
shoulder to him, and would have none of his wooing! For the rest of his
days he would be able to live as a gentleman ought to live.
On leaving the morning-room, Giovanna and Luigi were conducted to the
library, where they found Sir Gilbert awaiting them. The baronet
received them with that frigid ceremoniousness to which Giovanna was
becoming accustomed by this time, but which did not tend to put Luigi
more at his ease. But the mere fact of Sir Gilbert betraying no outward
signs of perturbation afforded no gauge by which to measure the depth
of the emotions at work below. All his life it had been natural to him
to mask his feelings, and at his age it was not to be expected that he
should alter. In reality, he was profoundly moved—a fact which
increased, rather than diminished, the ingrained austerity of his
manner, and deepened the vertical line between his shaggy eyebrows.
“Madam, I wish you a very good day,” he said, as he took Giovanna’s
hand for a moment and bent over it. “You are punctuality itself—a
commendable virtue in your sex! but one, unless they are somewhat
belied, more honoured by them in the breach than the observance.”
Sir Gilbert’s banter, on the very rare occasions on which he
condescended to indulge in it, was of a somewhat ponderous and
old-fashioned kind. Not that he was in any bantering mood to-day—far
from it; his only object was, by means of it, the more effectually to
conceal the inward tremor which had seized him now the moment had come
which was to give him a grandson to take the place of the son whom he
had banished long years before.
For the moment Giovanna found nothing to say in reply. For the first
time she seemed to realise the enormity of the fraud to which she had
lent herself, and the shame of it. But it was too late to go back even
had she been willing to do so—which was doubtful: for it is no uncommon
experience for a person to recognise to the full the blackness of any
wrong-doing in which he or she may be engaged, and yet not to falter,
or swerve for a moment from the line of action they have laid down for
themselves.
“And this, madam, is the grandson whom you have brought from the
kingdom of Nowhere to make me a present of,” continued Sir Gilbert as
he faced Luigi.
“This, sir, is your grandson, Lewis Clare,” replied Giovanna in quiet
measured tones.
“Lewis Clare!—why Lewis?” demanded the old man, turning quickly on her.
“It was the name his father chose for him. Was there not—pardon the
question—a certain Colonel Lewis Clare, who lived a great number of
years ago and who fell in battle?”
The baronet nodded.
“It was after him that my husband named the boy,” added Giovanna, her
black eyes looking Sir Gilbert unflinchingly in the face.
“He might have done worse—he might have done very much worse. It is a
name to be proud of, madam.”
Then he again faced Luigi, eyeing him critically and keenly.
“So, sir, I am given to understand that you have been brought up in
England, consequently I presume that you speak the English language as
well as I do.”
“Scarcely that, I am afraid, sir,” answered Luigi with a glint of his
white teeth; “although I pride myself on being more of an Englishman
than an Italian.”
“Then you belie your looks,” muttered the old man as he turned abruptly
away. He was bitterly disappointed. His secret hope had been to find
another Alec, in any case as far as looks were concerned; for of late
years the memory of his eldest son (through a reactionary process by no
means uncommon when one whom we have treated ill or unjustly is lost to
us for ever) had become very dear to him. But in this olive-skinned,
black-eyed stripling, with his facile smile and gleaming teeth, he
could trace no single trait or feature which served to recall his dead
son. Voice, looks, manner, all were radically different; there was no
shadow of resemblance anywhere.
“Still, he is my grandson, and for Alec’s sake——” he murmured brokenly
under his breath. “It would be altogether unjust to blame the boy, or
to treat him in any way differently for what, after all, is no fault of
his.”
He had turned to the table and was making a pretence of searching among
the papers and books with which it was encumbered for something which
he apparently failed to find. Behind his back Giovanna and Luigi
exchanged glances of perplexity and dismay. Drawing himself up with a
sort of half-shake, as if trying to free himself from some harassing
thought, and with a sigh meant for himself alone, Sir Gilbert again
faced round.
“Pardon my remissness,” he said with a little gesture of annoyance, on
perceiving that both his visitors were still standing, “but it is not
every day that one is presented with a grandson. Pray be seated,” he
added, and not till they had complied did he find a chair for himself.
He was evidently nonplussed what to say or do next. Although his
disappointment was so extreme, and although he felt drawn towards Luigi
by no frailest thread of affinity or kinship, he was sternly determined
in his own mind that the fullest justice should be done to him, and
that his position as the heir of Withington Chase should receive the
amplest recognition both at his hands and those of the world at large.
Perhaps—and who could say to the contrary?—liking would come in time.
Perhaps, although it seemed hard to believe, the boy might gradually
win his way to his grandfather’s heart and become unspeakably dear to
him.
“Your mother, young sir, tells me that for some time past you have been
earning your living as a drawing-master,” resumed Sir Gilbert when the
silence had become painful to all three. He could not, just yet, bring
himself to address his grandson after any more familiar or affectionate
style.
“That is so, sir, and a very poor living I made of it.”
“Ah—ha!” interjected Sir Gilbert, but whether by way of expressing
approval, or disapproval, his hearers could not tell.
“You see, sir, there are so many drawing-masters not merely with more
experience than I, but with more natural ability to begin with.”
“Come now, that is well said, and becoming in a young fellow of your
age: although, on the other hand, it is not perhaps advisable—more
especially nowadays when everybody seems to make a point of blowing his
or her special trumpet as loudly as possible—to underestimate yourself
or treat yourself too diffidently. But tell me now, what you can do, or
what you think you could do if the opportunity were afforded you. You
have tastes, gifts, qualifications of some kind, I suppose?”
“If so, sir, they and I have hardly made acquaintance as yet. Both
money and leisure have been such scarce commodities with me, and I have
had to work so hard for my living that I suppose I hardly know myself
as I really am, or perhaps I ought to say, as I should have been had
the circumstances of my life been different.”
“There is good sense in what you say. Your modesty becomes you.”
Thanks to the Captain’s coaching, it was evident that Luigi had already
succeeded in creating a favourable impression.
“You have had no opportunity of learning to ride, or shoot, I suppose?”
queried Sir Gilbert.
“None whatever, sir.”
“Um—that’s a pity! What about the classics? Have you any knowledge of
Latin, or Greek?”
Luigi shook his head.
“Not the slightest, sir. Of course I know Italian as well as I know
English, or better. French, too, I speak with some degree of fluency;
but beyond that I am afraid you will find me nothing better than a rank
duffer.”
Sir Gilbert pricked up his ears.
“I hope you are not addicted to the use of slang, sir, as your last
phrase would seem to imply,” he said severely. “To me there are few
things more detestable. Pray let me never hear any more of it.”
Luigi was wise enough to refrain from replying. He simply coloured up
and did his best to look ashamed.
Presently the baronet rose. It was a signal to which the others at once
responded.
“To-day is Thursday,” he said. “Come to me again at noon on Monday
next. I have much to think of, many things to consider, but by that
time I shall probably have arrived at some decision with regard to
certain matters which materially concern all now present. Till then,
goodbye.”
As he held Giovanna’s hand for a moment he said, “I am not aware there
is any necessity for Captain Verinder’s presence here again. Um—um—it
is immensely kind of him to have interested himself as he has, but I
should be sorry to put him to any further trouble in the affair.” With
his right hand grasping that of Luigi, he placed his left in kindly
fashion on the young man’s shoulder. “You and I, in all probability,
will be much better acquainted by-and-by. In any case, I think I may
safely say that the fault will rest with you if we are not.”
No faintest suspicion clouded Sir Gilbert’s mind that he was clasping
the hand of an impostor.