A BOMBSHELL.

It was significant of the sensitiveness of Mr. Erin’s feelings in regard to his new-found treasures, though it by no means indicated any want of soundness in his faith, that he ignored as much as possible all attacks upon their authenticity. This by no means involved his shutting his eyes to them; indeed he had privately procured and read all that had been written about the MSS., even to that terrible letter of Lord Charlemont to Malone, in which he had said, ‘I am only sorry that Steevens (the rival commentator) is not the proprietor of them,’ in order (as he meant) that they might have had the additional pleasure, derived from private enmity, of exposing them. The sensations the antiquary endured from these things were something like those of Regulus rolling down a hill in his barrel stuck full of nails and knives, but he could not resist the temptation of reading them any more than a patient with hay-fever in his eyes can resist rubbing them.

I have known young authors afflicted with the same mad desire of perusing all the disagreeable criticisms they can lay their hands on; but these things were much more than criticisms, they were personal imputations of the vilest kind, which at the same time no law of libel could touch. They ate into the poor antiquary’s heart, but he never talked about them. If he had, perhaps they would have been made more tolerable by the sympathy of his friends and the arguments of his partisans; but, except to himself, he ignored them. He did not even mention to William Henry that one Mr. Albany Wallis, whom he had reason to believe was little better than an infidel, was coming to Norfolk Street, by permission, to examine the Shakespeare papers. It weighed upon his own mind nevertheless, and he actually regretted that Frank Dennis chanced to drop in that afternoon—loyal though he knew him to be in all other matters—lest in his lukewarm faith, if faith it could be called at all, he should let fall anything to encourage the sceptic.

Thus it came to pass that when the servant announced Mr. Reginald Talbot and Mr. Albany Wallis it was only Mr. Erin himself who felt no astonishment. William Henry was amazed, for though he had parted from his quondam friend on the previous evening on what were outwardly good terms, there had been no pretence of a renewal of friendship between them; their meeting at Vauxhall had, as we know, been accidental, and Talbot had not dropped a hint of renewing his visits to Norfolk Street. The young man had a smiling but scarcely a genial air; his manner was constrained, a thing which, being contrary to his habit, sat very ill upon him; and he addressed himself solely to his host, for which indeed his errand was a sufficient excuse.

‘Permit me, sir, to introduce to you my friend, Mr. Albany Wallis; a gentleman, like yourself, well versed in Shakespearean lore.’

‘Mr. Wallis’s name is not unknown to me,’ answered the antiquary coldly; ‘I have the pleasure of speaking to the late Mr. Garrick’s man of business, have I not?’

The visitor, a thin grey man, with sharp, intelligent features, by no means devoid of kindliness, bowed courteously.

‘I had that honour,’ he replied gravely; ‘I have also been acquainted all my life with many who take an interest in the drama, especially the Shakespearean drama. That some of them differ from you, Mr. Erin, on the subject on which I have called to-day, I am of course aware, but, believe me, I come in no unfriendly spirit. I take it for granted that you and I are equally interested in the establishment of the truth!’

‘It is to be hoped so,’ returned the antiquary, with dignity; ‘you would like, I conclude, to see the Profession.’

‘Well, no, sir, not immediately. You have other documents, as I am informed, in one of which I am more particularly concerned.’

‘Very good. Margaret, this is your affair, it seems,’ said the antiquary, smiling: it was a relief to his mind that the Profession at least was not about to be impugned. ‘Here is the key of the chest; bring out the Shakespeare letter and verses, with the lock of hair.’ For a moment or two Mr. Wallis remained silent. His eyes followed Margaret as she rose to obey her uncle’s request, with a curious look of gentle commiseration in them.

‘I did not know that this young lady had anything to do with these discoveries,’ he answered.

‘Nor has she, sir. The hair and the verses have become in a manner her own property, that is—er—under my trusteeship; but they were disinterred from a mass of ancient materials by my son here, William Henry.’

Mr. Wallis turned his face on the young gentleman thus alluded to much as a policeman flashes his dark-lantern on a suspected stranger. There was no commiseration in it now; it was a keen, and even a hostile glance.

‘I see; but besides the reputed epistle to Anne Hathaway, there was, I think, a note of hand purporting to be written to Shakespeare from John Hemynge.’

‘I don’t know as to “reputed” and “purporting,” sir,’ returned the antiquary stiffly, ‘which are adjectives not usually applied to documents professedly genuine, at all events under the roof of their possessor.’

‘You are right; I beg your pardon, Mr. Erin,’ put in the visitor apologetically. ‘One has no right to prejudge a case of which one has only heard an ex-parte statement. It is, however, that particular document which I ask to look at; a gentleman upon whose word I can rely has seen it, and assures me that the signature of John Hemynge appended to the receipt is—not to mince matters—a forgery.’

The antiquary started to his feet. ‘Do you come here to insult me, sir?’ he inquired angrily.

‘No, Mr. Erin, far from it,’ returned the other firmly. ‘No one would be better pleased both on your own account and on that of those belonging to you’—here his eye lit once more on Margaret, who had flushed to her forehead—‘if I should find my informant mistaken. But the fact is, I possess a deed with the authentic and undoubted signature of John Hemynge, which my friend, who has seen both of them, assures me is wholly different from that attached to this new-found document. Assertion, however, as you may reasonably reply, is out of place in this matter. The question is merely one of comparison. Have you any objection to my applying that test?’

‘Most certainly not, sir. Margaret, this gentleman wishes to see the note of hand.’

Margaret brought it from the iron safe and gave it to Mr. Wallis. Her face still retained some trace of indignation, and her eyes met those of the visitor with resolution and even defiance.

‘If there is fraud here,’ he said to himself, ‘this girl has nothing to do with it.’ The behaviour of Mr. Erin had also impressed him favourably; with that of William Henry he was not so satisfied, it seemed to him to have too much sang-froid; but then (as he frankly confessed to himself) he had been prejudiced against him. Mr. Wallis was a man accustomed to ‘thread the labyrinth of the mind’ in matters more important, or at all events more serious, than literary investigation, and had a very observant eye, and the conclusion he came to was that, if there was one person in the present company more guilty than another as regards the Shakespearean fabrications (as Malone had called them), it was Mr. Frank Dennis. He had not indeed uttered one word; but when the girl had approached the safe there had been unmistakable signs of trouble in his face, while at this moment, when, as he (Mr. Wallis) knew, and as the other must needs suspect, a damning proof of the worthlessness of one of these vaunted discoveries was about to be produced, he exhibited an anxiety and apprehension which, to do them justice, were absent from the rest.

‘This is a mortgage deed executed by John Hemynge,’ observed Mr. Wallis, drawing a document from his pocket, ‘concerning the genuineness of which there is no dispute. It was found among the papers of the Featherstonehaugh family, to whom the nation is indebted (through my late client, David Garrick) for the Shakespeare mortgage now in the British Museum. If the signature of yonder deed tallies with it, well and good; I shall, believe me, be pleased to find it so; but if it does not do so, there can be no question as to which is the spurious one.’

He threw the mortgage on the table, and stood with an air, if not of indifference, of one who has no personal concern in the matter on hand, while Mr. Erin compared the two signatures with minuteness. Presently he beckoned to his son in an agitated manner: ‘Your eyes are better than mine,’ he said: ‘what do you make of this?’

William Henry just glanced at the two documents in a perfunctory manner, as though he had been asked to witness some signature of a client of his employer, and quietly answered: ‘They are very dissimilar; whichever is the wrong one, it can hardly be called an imitation, for it has not a letter in common with the other.’

‘There is no question, young man, as to which is the wrong one,’ remarked Mr. Wallis, severely; ‘and as to imitation, it is clear enough that such a deception, however clumsily, has been seriously attempted. The only doubt we have to clear up is, “Who is the forger?”’ Mr. Wallis’s glance flashed for an instant upon Frank Dennis. He was standing apart, with his hand over the lower part of his features, and his eyes fixed on the ground. He looked like one upon whom a blow, long expected, has at last fallen.

It was strange, thought Mr. Wallis, that Talbot, who had seemed so convinced of the younger Erin’s guilt, had had not a word to say about this other fellow. His own impression—one of those sudden convictions to which men of his stamp are especially liable, but which they would be the last to call inspirations—was that the affair was a conspiracy, in which these two young men were alone concerned, and that its moving spirit was Dennis. Suddenly the silence was broken by Margaret’s clear tones:—

‘Mr. Wallis himself has not examined the deeds,’ she said.

‘There is no need, young lady, since your uncle and cousin have already admitted the discrepancy,’ returned the visitor. ‘I am only following the example of that gentleman yonder’—here he indicated Frank Dennis with his forefinger—‘in taking the matter for granted.’

Frank removed his hand from his mouth, showing a face ghastly pale, and quietly answered, ‘I am no judge of these things; but if I had made such a charge as you have done, sir, I think, as Miss Slade suggests, that I should give myself the trouble of seeing with my own eyes whether it was substantiated.’

‘Nay,’ said Margaret, quickly, ‘I spoke not of any charge. If I thought that Mr. Wallis was making any personal accusation, I should not have addressed him at all.’

‘But really, young lady,’ protested Mr. Wallis, ‘there must be something wrong somewhere, you know.’

‘I should rather think there was,’ observed Mr. Reginald Talbot, with a snigger.

‘And who the devil asked your opinion?’ inquired Mr. Erin, with the eager shrillness of a steam boiler which has just discovered its safety-valve. He did not forget that it was to this young gentleman’s good offices that he was indebted for this unsatisfactory state of things.

‘Well, I thought it was a matter of criticism,’ murmured the young Irishman.

‘That was the very reason, sir, you should have held your tongue,’ was the uncompromising reply.

‘I really don’t know,’ observed William Henry, who had been idly turning over the leaves of the mortgage deed during this discussion, ‘why any bitterness should be imported into this discussion. We are all equally interested, as Mr. Wallis has remarked, in the establishment of the truth; and I, for my part, have nothing to fear from it. I am in no way responsible, as he must be aware, for the genuineness of the documents in question, but only for their discovery. What has happened to-day is no doubt as disagreeable as it is unlooked for; but it is no fault of mine. The only course open to me is, I suppose, to go to my friend in the Temple and acquaint him with what has happened. Perhaps he may have some explanation to offer upon the subject.’

‘I should very much like to hear it,’ said Mr. Wallis, with a dry smile.

Mr. Reginald Talbot also began to smile—aloud, but he caught Mr. Frank Dennis’s eye, which had so unmistakably menacing an expression in it that the snigger perished in its birth.

‘Shall I go, father?’ inquired William Henry. For the antiquary sat like one in a dream, turning over the note of hand, once so precious to him, but which had now become waste paper.

‘Yes, go! We will wait here till you come back,’ he answered.

The words dropped from his lips like lead.