LUIGI ACKNOWLEDGED
As on the previous day, luncheon was provided for the baronet’s
visitors, and, as before, they partook of it without his presence.
Giovanna, in her clear simple way, related to her uncle all that had
passed—all except that last speech of Sir Gilbert, which she left to be
told later on.
The Captain rubbed his hands gleefully.
“All has gone well so far, very well indeed,” he said; “and now that
the worst is over—by which I mean now that Luigi has been introduced to
the old man and accepted by him as his grandson, as, from what you tell
me, seems undoubtedly to be the case—now that the most difficult part
of our task has been successfully accomplished, I don’t mind saying
that I shall sleep more soundly to-night than I have for the last week
or more.”
“It seems to me that Sir Gilbert favoured me with a precious cool
reception,” said Luigi, in an aggrieved tone; “in fact it was enough to
freeze one. And those eyes of his seemed to go right through me; I was
never so nervous in my life. I wouldn’t go through such a quarter of an
hour again for a good deal.”
“There will be no call for you to do so,” replied the Captain. “As I
said before, you have gone through the worst. You know now the kind of
man he is, and must act accordingly. If you only knew how”—adding, to
himself, “and were not so self-opinionated and conceited”—“you might
lead Sir Gilbert anywhere with your little finger. In the case of such
a man, you have only to fall in with his humours, or make believe to
fall in with them, and you may do anything in reason with him.”
“If I had but your head on my shoulders, uncle!” exclaimed Luigi, with
a smile that had a spice of mockery in it.
“Or my brains in your numbskull,” retorted the Captain. “Oh, the
chance—the golden chance that is now yours! One can but hope that you
will know how to make the best of it.”
It seemed to Giovanna that the time had now come for making her uncle
acquainted with what Sir Gilbert had said about him. The Captain pulled
a wry face for a moment, and then broke into one of his short harsh
laughs.
“What a cantankerous old shaver he is!” he exclaimed. “I was sure from
the first that he had taken a dislike to me.” Then laying a hand on his
niece’s arm, he added in a voice which had become suddenly grave: “It
matters not a grain of salt in what light Sir Gilbert chooses to regard
me, so long as you and Luigi—especially the boy—contrive to keep in his
good graces. That is the only thing of any real consequence.”
For the next few days Sir Gilbert felt thoroughly unsettled and out of
sorts. His ordinary avocations seemed to have lost all interest for
him; he was unable to fix his attention on anything outside the special
current of his thoughts for more than a few minutes at a time. He shut
himself up in his own room, a small apartment which opened out of the
library, and even Everard Lisle was only admitted to the briefest
possible audience each forenoon. His mental attitude at this time was a
puzzle to himself. A wonderful thing had come to pass. One which, had
an inkling of it been permitted him beforehand, he should have assured
himself could not fail to fill his few remaining days with a happiness
undreamt of, and almost too deep to find expression in words. A gift,
the most precious of any he could have asked for (seeing that we cannot
bring back our lost ones from the tomb), had been vouchsafed to him,
yet, strange to say, he felt little or none of that elation which would
have seemed the natural outcome of such a state of affairs. Why was
this, and to what cause was it attributable? He tried to look forward
to the presence of his newly-found grandson as to something that would
crown his life with a blessing, and to mentally picture their daily
life together in time to come, but he derived no pleasure from the
process; neither did the future, now that he looked at it with fresh
eyes, as it were, take to itself any added brightness from the fact
that a son of his son would succeed him when the time should have come
for him to pass into the Silent Land.
“Is it that my heart is dead?” he sadly asked himself, “or is it
because I am so old and have gone through so much, that only the ghost
of either joy or sorrow will ever keep me company again? Or is it,” he
went on, “because in this youth who has so suddenly intruded himself
into my life I can discern nothing that serves to recall his father to
memory, nor any likeness, however vague, to any of my pictured
ancestors in the long gallery—who are his ancestors also—that I seem in
no way drawn towards him? I cannot tell why it is so. I only know that
it is.”
In one respect, however, he derived a certain amount of mordant
satisfaction from the knowledge that he would now be followed by an
heir in the direct line of descent. His detested kinsman, Colonel
Eustace Clare, who, he felt sure, never missed a day without hoping it
would bring the tidings of his death, would now, at what might be
termed the eleventh hour, be baulked of his chance of succession to the
title, even as the cutting off of the entail in years gone by had
deprived him of all prospect of ever succeeding to the estates.
Monday at noon brought Giovanna and Luigi again to the Chase. Verinder
had kept them company as far as Mapleford station, where they all
alighted. It had been arranged that he should await, either their
return, or the receipt of some message from them, at the railway hotel,
it being impossible to say how long Sir Gilbert might choose to detain
them. The Captain’s impatience would not admit of his quietly awaiting
their return in London.
If Sir Gilbert received his guests without any particular display of
cordiality he yet greeted them with a grave and kindly courtesy which
went far towards putting them at their ease. For the time the more
brusque and imperious traits of his character failed to assert
themselves: indeed, no stranger seeing him on this occasion only, would
have as much as suspected their existence. To-day he kept the others
company at luncheon, although all he partook of was a biscuit and a
glass of Madeira. By special invitation Everard Lisle made a fourth at
table.
When once Sir Gilbert had made up his mind to acknowledge Giovanna as
his daughter-in-law, and Luigi as his grandson, he was not a man to
stick at half measures. The acknowledgment should be full and complete,
and Everard Lisle was the person he chose to whom first to communicate
his intentions, with which purpose in view he invited him to dine at
the Chase on Sunday. It was as they sat together after dinner that Sir
Gilbert broke his news.
“For the present I shall have the boy to live with me,” he said. “I
want us to become better acquainted. My daughter-in-law, if she chooses
to do so, can take up her residence at Maylings, the family
dower-house, although not used as such in my time, which has stood
empty since old Miss Hopkins’s death three years ago. Of course the
news that my grandson and his mother have been received and
acknowledged by me will very soon get noised abroad, and as you are
likely, owing to your being at the Chase so much, to be appealed to on
the point by a number of people, I want you to be in a position to
confirm the accuracy of the report and to give it the stamp of verity.
That all sorts of ridiculous stories will get about, originating in the
fact of my grandson’s and daughter-in-law’s existence not having been
made public till now, I do not doubt, but with any, or all, such
inventions you need have nothing to do. We have simply to deal with the
two or three plain facts of the case.”
Thus it fell out that Everard Lisle was already prepared for the
meeting on Monday. The baronet introduced him simply as “My secretary,
Mr. Lisle.”
As Luigi did not proffer his hand, Everard contented himself by bowing
slightly. But Sir Gilbert did not fail to notice the omission.
“Where is your hand, sir?” he demanded of his pseudo grandson with a
drawing together of his shaggy brows. “Let me tell you that, young as
Mr. Lisle is, I hold him in the highest esteem and regard.”
Luigi smilingly hastened to repair his oversight. He was quick-witted
enough in some things. “A favourite, evidently,” he said to himself
with an almost imperceptible shrug. “I suppose it will be to my
interest to keep in with this fellow for the present, but when it comes
to my turn he shall very soon be presented with the order of his
going.”
It seemed to Lisle that the best thing he could do would be to draw
young Clare into talk over luncheon and leave Sir Gilbert and Mrs.
Clare to get on together as best they could. Luigi responded readily
enough to Everard’s advances, all he asked just then being to be left
alone by his “grandfather,” whom he still regarded with secret fear and
trembling, the enormity of the fraud of which he had been guilty
impressing itself far more unpleasantly on his consciousness when in
the presence of the baronet than at any other time. Both the young men
were careful to confine their talk to the merest generalities. Both of
them were on their guard, neither of them could tell yet what his
future relations towards the other might develop into.
As for the baronet, he proceeded to mount one of his antiquarian
hobbies (it may have been of set purpose, and in order to save both
Giovanna and himself the awkwardness of having to make talk about
nothing in particular) and ambled on, apparently to the content of both
himself and his listener. Nothing more was required of Mrs. Clare than
to look interested and to interject an occasional “Yes,” or “No,” or
“Indeed,” at the proper moment, all of which she did to perfection,
although three-fourths of Sir Gilbert’s monologue was clearly beyond
her comprehension.
When luncheon was over, the baronet, turning to Everard, said: “Mr.
Lisle, I want you to be good enough to conduct Mrs. Clare and my
grandson over the house and grounds, and to show them everything worth
seeing. Mrs. Burton will place herself at your disposal as far as the
house is concerned, and you can impound Shotover to show you over the
gardens, and so forth. For myself, I am sorry that the infirmities of
age should have so far prevailed over me as to preclude me from
undertaking a task which otherwise would have been one of unmixed
pleasure. You will find me in the library when you have finished your
peregrination: but there is no need whatever for you to hurry
yourselves.”