BREAKING IT.

As Margaret and her uncle sat at breakfast the next morning—later than usual, as was their wont on Sundays—scarce a word was interchanged between them. Her pale face and haggard eyes evoked no remark from him, who, indeed, himself looked pale and worn enough. If he had spoken upon the subject of the play it might have been made easier to her to tell him her dreadful tidings. But as it was, she felt herself unequal to the task; she could not break in upon his gloomy thoughts with such black news. She almost hoped, from his set lips and knitted brow, that he suspected something of the truth; otherwise surely, surely, she thought, he would express some anxiety concerning the continued absence of William Henry.

She was, however, mistaken. Where affection is not concerned, even the catastrophes that happen to others (and much less the apprehensions of them) do not concern us so much as our own material interests.

After a mere pretence of a meal, the antiquary produced pen and ink, and proceeded to make some calculations.

In the middle of them arrived Mr. Albany Wallis. His face was even graver than usual, which his host, however, thought natural enough. He took it for granted that he had come upon business connected with the play, the failure of which was sufficient to account for his depression; or his melancholy, perhaps, might have been put on with a view of cheapening the terms that had been agreed upon with his employers. But Margaret felt, the first instant she caught sight of the visitor’s face, that he knew all, and did not need that dumb assurance of human sympathy, the close, lingering pressure of his hand, to convince her of it.

‘This is a bad job,’ said Mr. Erin, with a pretence of briskness. ‘I suppose Sheridan will not give the play another chance?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Mr. Wallis decisively. ‘Almeyda is on the bill for to-morrow.’

‘Then there is nothing for it but to settle, and have done with it. It is quite as great a disappointment to me as to the management, I do assure you, and eventually will be as great a loss. I have ordered the paper for the publication of the play, and must needs go on with it. I cannot break faith with the public.’

‘You are a man of honour, I know,’ said Mr. Wallis gently; ‘but for that very reason you must not print this play.’

‘And why not, sir?’

‘Because it is spurious.’

‘That was not your opinion yesterday, Mr. Wallis, nor is it mine to-day. What, because a few scoundrels have bespattered it, and done their best to make it a failure, and succeeded, you call it spurious!’

‘Mr. Erin, I entreat you to be calm. I am as sorry for what has happened as you can be, though not, perhaps’ (here he stole a tender look at Margaret), ‘for the same reason.’

‘It needs no ghost from the grave to assure me of that much,’ replied the antiquary derisively. ‘You have your own interests, and those of your employers, to look to, and I have mine. You are here, as I conclude, to pay me the three hundred pounds agreed upon for the play and half the profits of the first night. The house was full enough, at all events.’

‘Yes, it was a good house. Your share of the adventure is a hundred and five pounds exactly. I have therefore to pay you four hundred and five pounds.’

‘Very good; I cannot permit any deductions. If it was worth while to discuss the matter, I might on my part reasonably make complaint of the manner in which the play was acted. Kemble never gave it a fair chance. At Covent Garden it would have had more justice done to it, and might have met with a better fate.’

‘Then it would have met with a fate that it did not deserve, Mr. Erin.’

‘I do not wish to discuss the subject,’ said the antiquary curtly. His reply would probably have been much less courteous but for the production of the bills—Mr. Sheridan paid everything in bills—for the amount in question. Bills and banknotes are the best ‘soft answers’ for the turning away of wrath.

‘You misunderstand me altogether, Mr. Erin,’ continued the other with dignity. ‘I had no intention, as you seem to have apprehended, of disturbing your business arrangements with Mr. Sheridan, which may be taken as concluded. I am sorry to say I am come here upon a much more unpleasant errand. I am here at the request of your son, William Henry.’

‘Ah! I see,’ broke in the antiquary with bitterness; ‘his professional adviser. He shall not have one penny more than the share—one-third of the profits—that has been agreed upon.’

Then he turned to Margaret.

‘So you have told him my determination of last night, have you, and he meets it by a declaration of war? Let him do as he pleases; but I warn you, hussey, that if once you throw in your lot with his, I have done with you. The money that is his by rights is not much, as you will find, to keep house upon.’

Margaret strove to speak, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. It was shocking to see the old man’s rage, and none the less so because it was so misdirected. If his passion was so aroused by the mere opposition (as he supposed it to be) to his will, how would he take the destruction of his hopes, and the knowledge that he had been made a public laughing-stock? Whatever he had been to others, he had been kind to her; and, abhorrent to her as was the crime of ingratitude, she would have been willing to rest under its imputation if by so doing she could have spared him the revelation of the truth.

‘Dear uncle,’ she presently murmured, with faltering voice, and laying her little hand upon the old man’s arm, ‘you wrong me in your thoughts; but that is nothing as compared with the wrong which has been done to you. All between William Henry and me is over; for the rest of my life I will endeavour to supply his place with you, and to remedy, as far as in me lies, the evil that he has committed against you.’

‘What is it? What is she saying? I do not understand,’ inquired the antiquary in trembling tones.

‘She is telling you the truth, sir,’ said Mr. Wallis impressively. ‘Heaven send you the strength to bear it!’

‘Dear uncle, you have been deceived,’ said Margaret with tender gravity. ‘From first to last you have been deceived, as we all have been. The Shakespeare manuscripts, of which you thought so much, are forgeries—every one of them. William Henry has confessed it.’

‘You lie, you baggage, you lie!’ he cried with fury.

‘I wish I did,’ sighed Margaret bitterly.

He did not hear her; there was a singing in his ears that shut out all other sounds.

‘So this is the last card you have to play, you two, is it? I am to be frightened into compliance with your wishes; frightened into annihilating common sense, and making two beggars happy! And you, you, sir!’ he added, turning to Mr. Wallis; ‘you are not ashamed to be a confederate in such a scheme as this? These two young fools think it is for their sake, but I know better. You are one of Malone’s creatures. Having already failed by fair means to disprove the genuineness of these manuscripts, you have bought over this ungrateful lad to your side. “If you will perjure yourself,“ you have said to him, “and admit yourself to be a forger, we will see that you do not lose by it; we will give you money—since the old man will not—upon which you and yours can subsist together.“ Oh, liars and villains!’

It was pitiful to see and hear him. King Lear himself, deserted by his own flesh and blood and invoking heaven’s vengeance on them, could hardly have been a more dreadful spectacle.

‘Mr. Erin,’ said Mr. Wallis gravely, ‘if you see me in no way moved by the infamous accusation you have made against me, and even restraining a still more natural indignation at the dishonour your words have cast upon that innocent girl, it is not because I do not feel it; it is because I pity you from the bottom of my heart. That you have been duped and fooled by the falsehood of this unhappy young man is only what has happened to others, myself amongst them; but in your own case the reflection must be infinitely more bitter, since he who wrought the wrong was your own flesh and blood—one who has taken your bread, and bitten the hand that fed him. If you do not believe us, Miss Margaret has his own words for it in black and white.’

Here Margaret drew the confession from her bosom, and laid it on the table beside her uncle; his fingers were grasping the arms of his chair, and his face was fixed full upon his visitor in hate and rage.

‘If you will read it at your leisure,’ continued the lawyer gently, ‘you will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that, with one exception, no one has had any hand in this shameful fraud save the miserable lad himself; that your niece was as innocent of any knowledge in it, from first to last, as you were; so much even those who have been inclined to suspect you of any connivance in it must needs acknowledge when they read that paper——’

Mr. Erin leaped from his chair, with an inarticulate cry of fury, and seizing the confession before him, tore it from left to right, and from right to left, into a hundred pieces.

‘Begone,’ he cried, ‘begone, both of you! Take her with you, I say, lest I do her a mischief; take her to the Perjurer, send her to the devil for all I care; but never let me see her false face again!’

With that he threw himself out of the room like one demented, and after the door had clanged behind him they heard his heavy step at first at a speed beyond his years, but presently with the tread of exhaustion and old age, creep up to his own room.

‘Is it safe to leave him, think you?’ inquired Mr. Wallis in a hushed voice. ‘Once convinced of the truth, his reflections must be terrible. To be deceived by one’s own flesh and blood!’

‘William Henry is not his son,’ said Margaret quietly; in a time of anguish and distress it is easy to speak of matters which under ordinary circumstances we should shrink from mentioning.

‘Thank heaven for that!’ ejaculated the lawyer; ‘there is no fear, then, that he will not get over it. What I took for paternal resentment is partly, no doubt, exasperation at the exposure of his own credulity. The only reason for your remaining here after his express commandment to the contrary no longer therefore exists. Your doing so for the present at least will only remind him of his misfortune and aggravate its bitterness. I have a sister who keeps my house for me, and who will welcome you as a mother; I entreat you to accept of her hospitality, not only for your own sake, but for that of your uncle. Indeed, after the threat he has made use of, I must insist upon your accompanying me.’

‘I am not afraid for myself; I am sure he will never harm me. Indeed, Mr. Wallis, I cannot leave him in his solitude and wretchedness.’

‘He will not be solitary, Miss Margaret. I will drop a hint to Mr. Dennis, whose intention I know it is to call upon him this afternoon, to take up his quarters with him for a while.’

At the mention of Frank Dennis’s name Margaret changed colour; the idea of meeting him had suddenly become intolerable.

‘If your sister will give me an asylum for a few days,’ she hurriedly replied, ‘I think I will take advantage of your most kind offer.’

In a few minutes she had made her preparations for departure; she trembled lest there should come a knock at the front door while she was yet in the house. She glanced apprehensively up the little street, as she sallied forth on Mr. Wallis’s arm, lest some one with eyes that spoke reproof, without intending it, should come across her before she had gained the shelter of another roof. Some one whom she had never estimated at his true worth, or treated as he deserved; some one she had blamed for his coldness and incredulity, but who had suspected all along—she was as convinced of it as of the fraud itself—the deception which had been practised upon her, but whom the nobleness of a nature that shrank from the exposure of a rival had kept silent.