The Pit Town Coronet Volume Iii Part 3

"Well, you see, Lucius, it might be awkward if his lordship found me out. I'm afraid I find more pleasure in walking up and down this big avenue and staring up at the rooks, than in spending my time in the Pit Town galleries."

"Oh! I see; Child of Nature, and all that sort of thing. Why don't you go in for being a poet, George? It's the only real business that I know of suited for a thorough-paced fool, though as a rule it don't pay."

"Simply because I'm not a humbug, my boy."

"You might do a good deal with a rhyming dictionary, you know; particularly if you let your hair grow."

"I don't think there's much poetry about me, Lucius. I like the air, and the light, and the green leaves, and those black chaps who hop about from branch to branch, and who look like a lot of disreputable parsons, all preaching at once about nothing at all."

"Oh, I see, you admire the beauties of nature. Now I look upon this old avenue from quite another standpoint. Sooner or later it'll be mine, and all the rest of the pomps and vanities too, I suppose--the plate and the pictures, and the t.i.tle, George. Yes, there's something in a t.i.tle. But they're a precious long while coming."

"Don't be a brute, Lucius," was all his brother replied.

While the two young fellows carelessly talked and smoked in the great avenue, old Lord Pit Town sat in his study and held a momentous conversation with Georgie's husband. Reginald Haggard stood before the fire looking exceedingly uncomfortable.

"I wish you'd be candid with me, Haggard. Was there any informality about your marriage with Georgina?"

"Good gracious, no. What makes your lordship hint at such a thing?"

"That I will explain to you directly. In the meantime answer me honestly; don't forget that as the head of the family I stand in the position of a father to you. Anything you may say to me will of course be between ourselves. Can you a.s.sure me, as between gentlemen, that you made no previous marriage? Was there any such entanglement in America?"

"It seems to me that your lordship is asking me to say that I am an unmitigated villain. Still, to satisfy you as the head of the family, I give you my word that nothing of the sort ever occurred. Of course like most young fellows I have made a fool of myself with dozens of women, or rather perhaps they made a fool of me. I sighed and dangled, perhaps I even hinted at marriage. Doubtless I was a young idiot, like most young fellows of my age, but my peculiar form of idiotcy never developed itself in a matrimonial direction."

"I'm uncommonly glad to hear it, Reginald, for I have been uncomfortable for a day or two, and now that my mind is at rest, you shall see what caused my apparently indiscreet questions."

The old lord opened a despatch-box which lay upon his writing-table, and taking from it a letter, handed the doc.u.ment to his heir. Haggard seated himself, opened the letter, and read it carefully through. It was a strangely written ma.n.u.script on ordinary thick note-paper. If the writer had intended to prevent any attempt at identification, he had thoroughly succeeded. The precaution he had taken was simple, but sufficiently ingenious. Your ordinary anonymous letter writer is content to slope his writing the wrong way, or if very acute he uses his left hand; but the expert, if placed upon his trail, generally succeeds in detecting some peculiarity sufficient to identify him. The writer of the letter which Lord Pit Town handed to Haggard was evidently a man of originality, for the letter and its address were not written in a running hand, but in carelessly printed Roman capitals.

As Haggard perused the letter his brow grew black as night, but when he had ended it, he tossed it with a contemptuous laugh upon the table.

Here is the letter _verbatim_:

"MY LORD,

"I ADDRESS YOU TO LET YOU KNOW THAT I AM POSSESSED OF INFORMATION WHICH WILL ENABLE ME, SHOULD I FEEL SO DISPOSED, TO ENTIRELY ALTER THE SUCCESSION TO YOUR t.i.tLE AND TO UPSET ANY DISTRIBUTION OF YOUR PROPERTY THAT YOU MAY MAKE. I AM PREPARED TO SELL TO YOU THE INFORMATION FOR THE SUM OF 5000. I MAKE YOUR LORDSHIP THE FIRST OFFER, SIMPLY BECAUSE I THINK THAT YOU WILL AT ONCE SEE THE WISDOM OF ACCEPTING IT. SHOULD YOU DECIDE NOT TO DO SO, I SHALL STILL GET MY PRICE, THOUGH I MAY HAVE TO WAIT TILL YOUR LORDSHIP'S DEATH.

LITIGATION WILL, OF COURSE, ENSUE, AND A DISGRACEFUL SCANDAL WILL BECOME COMMON PROPERTY. SHOULD YOUR LORDSHIP FEEL DISPOSED TO LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO TELL, A LINE ADDRESSED TO 193B, BROWN'S NEWS ROOMS, CHEAPSIDE, WILL BE SUFFICIENT. THE FACT OF MY NOT ASKING FOR PAYMENT FOR MY INFORMATION UNTIL I HAVE GIVEN IT SHOULD BE TO YOUR LORDSHIP A SUFFICIENT GUARANTEE OF ITS GENUINENESS."

"What can the fellow mean?" said the old lord. "Can Hetton have contracted a secret marriage?"

Haggard shook his head. "It's probably a mere vulgar trick to obtain money," said he. "Shall you see the fellow?"

"It would, perhaps, be better that you saw him, Reginald; you are as much concerned as I am, nay more so. Make an appointment to see the man in town. I will write to him, and if the secret he alludes to be genuine it is cheap at the money, if it were only to prevent expensive litigation and the worse horror that he hints at--the dragging of our name through the mire."

So it was arranged. A letter was dispatched to 193 B, making an appointment for the astute writer of the letter to see Mr. Reginald Haggard upon a certain day at the old lord's house in Grosvenor Square.

Reginald Haggard sat for a whole hour waiting in vain. n.o.body came to him with a mysterious communication, and at the end of a week both he and the old lord had dismissed the matter from their minds as an impudent and stupid hoax.

To the mind of the shrewd reader the name of the writer of the anonymous letter is no mystery. Mr. Maurice Capt had been seriously disappointed when, for the first time in his life, one of his applications to Lucy Warrender had been unsuccessful. But Lucy Warrender was now beyond his reach. Capt felt aggrieved; he considered that his demands upon Miss Warrender had been excessively moderate, and he felt a sort of pride in the fact that he had kept her secret so long and so cheaply. But now Lucy Warrender was dead, and the contract between Capt and the lady at an end. Mr. Capt, when he wrote his rather ambiguous anonymous communication to the old lord, had thought the matter well out; he had made up his mind not to reveal the nature of what he had to tell until he had the old lord's promise to let him have the sum he demanded. For Mr. Capt well knew that it is possible to provide even against extraordinary contingencies; he knew that there were such things as family treaties, and he knew that his threat, if he could only get Lord Pit Town to believe in its genuineness, would be only terrible to the old man by its rendering him practically incapable of disposing of his property, and leaving the very succession to his t.i.tle in doubt. Mr.

Capt was sharp enough to know that if once he had the old lord's promise, the five thousand pounds was as good as paid. But Mr. Capt had a holy horror of two things. The one, which he dreaded with a natural terror of the unknown, was the criminal law of England; the other was a desperate fear of the wrath of big Reginald Haggard. For once his master had lost his temper with the valet. It was nearly twenty years ago now since Reginald Haggard, in a moment of indignation, had literally thrashed Mr. Capt within an inch of his life, and though it was twenty years ago Mr. Capt's bones still ached with the remembrance of that tremendous beating. So that the suggested interview with Haggard entirely upset all the valet's well-arranged plans. Could he but have had a private conversation with the old lord, and the required promise, he felt that he would have proved his case up to the hilt, and thus have obtained what he looked upon as the honest reward of his long silence.

But though a clever man, Mr. Capt was a coward, and he feared to face the fury of Lord Pit Town's heir.

The valet repeatedly turned the matter over in his mind, and found it a very complicated question. Of course, the one person in the world to whom the secret was most valuable was young George Haggard. The facts had but to be published to the world and George would jump at once from the precarious position of a younger son into that of the direct heir to an earldom and the property of a man of enormous wealth, while as for Lucius, he would become but the nameless byblow of old Warrender's niece. But there were several disturbing influences to Mr. Capt's calculations. To neither of the young men could he sell his secret for money down. This was a very serious consideration indeed. As for George, he might decline to do business at all, from loyalty to his mother; while as for Lucius, Mr. Capt well knew that it was impossible to trust him. The valet at length determined that he would sound young George Haggard upon the matter, and having made up his mind, proceeded to do so at the first opportunity.

Mr. Capt had not long to wait, for he encountered the young fellow in one of his solitary rambles in the park, and seeing that they were secure from interruption, plunged at once _in medias res_.

Young George Haggard was seated upon a stile meditatively gazing upon the landscape, when he was roused by a slight cough behind him, which proceeded from his father's discreet body servant.

"Halloa! Capt," said the youth good-naturedly; "enjoying the beauties of nature?"

"Yes, Mr. George; one can't well help it in such a lovely place as this."

"I suppose ordinary people like you and I, Capt, don't appreciate it as we ought. That, as my brother tells me, requires culture. He would doubtless see more in it than we do, being a man of culture, as he is, you know."

"Perhaps the old place, sir, may look all the pleasanter to him, for in the ordinary course of things, you see, sir, he must come into it some day or other. That must be a very pleasant thought, sir," added the valet after a pause.

"Well, I'm not so sure about that, you know; there are lots of responsibilities, you see," and the young man proceeded to fill his pipe philosophically.

"You may come into it yourself, sir, one of these days, who knows?" said the valet in a carneying tone.

Young George Haggard started, and stared at Mr. Capt, who seemed to him to have slightly forgotten himself.

"Stranger things than that have happened, sir," continued the Swiss.

"Well, you see, my man, as my father and Mr. Lucius--to say nothing of his lordship--would both have to go to the wall first, it doesn't seem a likely contingency. And do you know I don't think it's quite the thing to talk about, Capt."

But the valet was not to be put down.

"Anyhow, it's a great position for so young a gentleman as Mr. Lucius,"

insisted the man. "Many a man has sold his soul for less than that," he continued, as he gazed admiringly at the Castle, which occupied the centre of the peacefully romantic landscape.

Young George Haggard stared at the valet in undisguised astonishment.

"Fellow's been drinking," he thought; "he seems strangely impertinent, that accounts for it."

"Ah, they manage things differently, sir, in my country. It's share and share alike there. My father, sir, had seven sons, and we each of us took an equal share of his little bit of land as a matter of right."

"Well, perhaps, Capt, that's what they'll do here when England becomes a republic. But I don't think that it'll happen in my time, and I don't think I could persuade Lucius to go halves with me."

Seeing that the young man was disinclined to continue the conversation, the valet touched his hat respectfully and took himself off.

It is a highly respectable thing to be a landowner; the freeholder has many advantages, but getting rid of the property, particularly in the present day, is as a rule both difficult and expensive. Mr. Capt was like the proprietor of an Irish estate; far from being able to dispose of it at a reasonable figure, he was unable to obtain even an offer for his secret, and it was a valuable secret; but then, though a white elephant is a valuable animal, it is not an investment that most people would care to hold, and Mr. Capt's property now seemed indeed but a white elephant. Had it not been for his holy fear of his master he might have attempted to make terms with Mrs. Haggard, but his terror of Lord Pit Town's heir was extreme and had become a second nature to him.

The love of home is specially developed among the honest and economical inhabitants of Switzerland; like the Scotchmen they quit their dear native land young, in the hope of making their fortunes; but unlike the Scots they inevitably return to the Fatherland with the results of a life of industry, and this was the dream of Mr. Capt's life. Like a wise man, finding he could not get a cash purchaser, he determined, though very much against his own inclination, to make a bargain with young Lucius Haggard at the earliest opportunity; but he knew that if he trusted to the honour of Lucy Warrender's son he would be leaning upon a broken reed, and he walked back to the discharge of his duties at the Castle in a state of considerable depression.

CHAPTER IV.

PALLIDA MORS.