CHAPTER XI. TAKING ACTION.

There were great rejoicings in Vaughan-street upon Herbert’s return. The house was en fête. It was lighted up as for a grand entertainment; when the door was opened men in smart livery were seen ranged within the hall. Hanlon came out first, and received Herbert as he descended from his cab. He would have carried his old comrade and master in bodily on his shoulders; but as Herbert objected, ‘the Boy’ contented himself with the portmanteaus. At the foot of the stairs Miss Ponting, with new ribbons in her cap, met the traveller with a precisely-worded speech of welcome, and led him to the drawing-room,[185] where the dowager awaited him. She was dressed magnificently in dark velvet and costly lace, amidst which gleamed many diamonds of the finest water. This was all in Herbert’s honour and of the great occasion.

‘Hail, Sir Herbert Farrington! all hail!’ cried the old lady, using the language, but having little of the appearance of a witch in Macbeth.

‘My dearest grandmother,’ Herbert said, ‘I am so glad to see you again, and looking so well. Why, you are like a queen!’

‘I am a queen dowager receiving the young king,’ she replied, as she made him sit by her side. ‘Let me look at you well, my sweet boy; you are my own son’s son. I knew it; I felt it all along, and now there is no longer any doubt, and you will soon come into your own.’

[186]

‘Please, dear grandmother, be more explicit. Is there anything new? You threw out vague hints in your last letter; but I am still quite in the dark.’

‘Light will soon be let in on you, my sweet boy. At last, after all this dreary waiting and long suspense, information has reached Mr. Bellhouse—from the other side of the grave, I believe—’

Herbert looked keenly at the dowager. Was her mind again becoming unhinged?

‘I cannot account for it otherwise. The letter was from my Herbert, my long-lost Herbert. Of that I have no doubt; and is he not dead, dead these many many years? Mr. Bellhouse laughed at it, sneered at it and the information it gave. Yet he was wrong; his prejudices misled him. He could not deny that there was something in it all when we found that it put us on[187] the right track. Now we have the only evidence that was wanting to complete the case.’

‘Not evidence of the marriage, surely? Can it be possible that you have discovered that?’

‘Authentic evidence of the marriage.’

And she told him the whole story as it has been given in a previous chapter.

‘Now you understand, Herbert, why I give you your title. It is yours, clearly, by right. You must assume it at once.’

‘Not quite yet, I think,’ Herbert replied gently, fearing his refusal might vex her; ‘I would still rather wait. It would look so foolish to have to go back again. Suppose we do not gain our cause.’

‘But we must and shall win it; of that I have not the shadow of a doubt.’

‘I trust in Heaven we shall,’ Herbert[188] said, in a voice so earnest and yet so sad that his good old friend, with a woman’s unerring intuition, guessed that he was suffering and sore at heart.

‘Something has happened to grieve you, Herbert, dear? You have been ill-used; you are unhappy? Tell me, at once, every word.’

Herbert was willing enough. Young men crossed in love generally ask for nothing better than an appreciative and consolatory listener.

‘You love her, truly, deeply, with all your heart and soul?’ said the dowager, when she had heard all about Edith Prioleau from beginning to end.

‘Indeed I do, and have done so ever since I saw her first.’

‘And you think she returns it?’

‘I cannot be quite positive, of course.[189] But I should be hopeful were I certain I did not lose ground. But when one is miles away, and there are so many others close by her, encouraged and approved of by her parents, and with ever so many opportunities, I begin to be half-afraid. She may give way; she may change her mind. There is an old Spanish proverb, “The dead and those gone away have no friends.” She will soon forget me, perhaps; she may have done so already.’

‘Stuff and nonsense!’ cried the old lady, with great spirit. ‘“Faint heart”—you know the rest—is a better proverb than that. Win her! Of course, you shall win her, as you will the law-suit, the title, estates, and everything else.’

‘What does Mr. Bellhouse say? Is he sanguine?’

‘You know what lawyers are;’ and[190] from this Herbert gathered that doubts and difficulties still stood in the way, notwithstanding Lady Farrington’s confident hopefulness.

‘Mr. Bellhouse is very tiresome at times. He is a very self-opinionated man, almost too slow and cautious for me. It was only at my most earnest entreaty that he would take any action at all.’

‘You have commenced the suit then?’

‘Yes; and given Sir Rupert notice to quit,’ said the Dowager, rubbing her hands in high glee.

‘Has he replied?’

‘He came here in person, but I would not see him. Then he went to Mr. Bellhouse, who declined to discuss the matter with him. The last thing was a letter from him, imputing the basest motives to all of us, threatening a counter-action for conspiracy[191] or something—and that’s where it stands now. But with God’s help we shall beat him, dear; we shall beat him, and he will wish that he had given in.’

Next day Herbert paid an early visit to Mr. Bellhouse in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and found the old lawyer, although in manner cordial and kind, somewhat disheartening in tone.

‘Do not expect too much, Mr.—shall I still say Larkins? Yes? I agree with you, it is so much better not to be premature. Do not be over-confident, Mr. Larkins, I beg of you; the disappointment would be so bitter if we failed after all.’

‘Failure is quite on the cards, I presume?’ Herbert asked, coolly enough.

‘Unhappily, yes. There are flaws, not many, but one or two serious ones, in the chain of evidence. I have no moral doubt[192] myself that the marriage we have discovered is truly that of your father and mother. But moral proofs are not enough in a court of justice. Our difficulty will be to establish identity between this Corporal William Smith and the missing Herbert Farrington.’

‘Mrs. Larkins will swear to him.’

‘She never knew him as Farrington. All she can do is to describe the person she knew as Smith, who ran off with her sister, and we must compare her description with that of Lady Farrington.’

‘But there was the letter addressed and sent to Lady Farrington after my mother’s death; surely that will go some way?’

‘It is a strong presumption, I don’t deny; but not necessarily sufficient, at least to a British jury, when titles and large possessions[193] are at stake. That was why I counselled compromise.’

‘Was it rejected?’

‘Indignantly. Threats, moreover, were used, as perhaps you have heard.’

‘Mrs. Cavendish-Diggle was at the bottom of that, I suppose? She, as heir apparent, would be a principal loser, supposing things remained as they are.’

‘Are you not aware of the change in her prospects? There is a lawful male heir, independent of you, I hear. Ernest Farrington left a son.’

‘A son? By Mimie? He married her, then? Thank heaven for that! If, indeed, it be true.’

‘There can be no question about it. Mrs. Ernest Farrington is accepted by the family, and the child Ernest is mentioned[194] by Sir Rupert as a party to the forthcoming suit.’

‘I wonder whether the old people, the Larkins’, are aware of this? It will gladden their hearts. I almost wish that we were going no further with the case. They have been such staunch friends to me always, that I should be loth to oust their grandson.’

‘That is pure sentimentalism,’ said the matter-of-fact lawyer. ‘There must be a limit to that sort of thing, or the world would come to an end.’

‘Well, perhaps so. When will the cause come on for trial?’

‘That will depend. We have gone through the preliminaries, but have asked for time. I am most anxious to find out more about the letter which gave us the great news. Lady Farrington insists that the writer was your father.’

[195]

‘My father? Still alive?’

‘It seems incredible. But I am making all possible inquiries. The letter, such as it was, was scrawled upon the back of an old invoice for goods. The invoice was for powder and two shot guns, and the goods were supplied by Messrs. Jan Steen, of Pietermaritzburg, in Natal.’

‘Have you followed up that clue?’

‘To the best of my ability. I sent a special messenger to the Cape of Good Hope. His instructions were to trace the invoice from Messrs. Jan Steen, if possible, to the person who eventually received the goods. It may take some little time to ferret out, but I can trust Jimlett implicitly in all such affairs. Of course, if we could only produce Herbert Farrington, alias Corporal Smith, in propria persona, the case would be won.’

[196]

‘Have you any news yet from Mr. Jimlett?’

‘Only short business communications reporting progress. In his last I was informed that he had arrived at Pietermaritzburg, and had easily come upon Messrs. Jan Steen. That was where the real difficulty began, of course.’

‘Did they help him in any way?’

‘They were not very cordial,’ he says; ‘they deal largely with the gun-runners, or persons employed in the contraband trade across the frontier of Natal. Their business is a large one—a lucrative one, and possibly dangerous. Hence Jimlett had to overcome considerable reticence on their part. They acknowledged their invoice—that, indeed, it was impossible to repudiate—but they decline to say to whom the arms were supplied; indeed, they declare[197] they cannot, as all such goods pass through many hands.’

‘And there the matter stands?’

‘For the present, yes. We must wait patiently. I confess I have confidence still in Jimlett, and feel sure he will unravel the mystery if any man can. Perhaps we shall hear more next mail.’

Nothing came, however—neither next mail nor the one after. Meanwhile the suit dragged itself slowly along, and went through the usual phases and formalities. At first it attracted but little notice from, and excited but little interest in, the public. The announcement in the daily papers that a suit was pending which promised to be as involved and interminable as the half-forgotten Tichborne trial was classed with the ‘big gooseberry’ paragraphs of the ‘silly season’ and treated with contempt. No[198] one read the short accounts which appeared in the law notices; and it was not until the spring term, when the case was duly opened, that general attention was aroused.

There was an element of romance in it. The young claimant—not in this case an overgrown ex-butcher, but a gallant soldier bearing the Queen’s commission and that envied decoration the Victoria Cross—was entitled to a certain respect, and soon won the suffrages of the crowd. Nor was society against him. Sir Rupert was not beloved in his own walk of life. The great world is generally indifferent, and often unjust, but it is seldom very wrong in its estimate of those who belong to it. Wicked people may prosper well enough, and long be fairly spoken of, but never if they are unpleasant and disagreeable to boot. Sir Rupert had all these bad traits, and was, in[199] consequence, universally unpopular. His character stood out all the blacker as the case proceeded, and his treatment of the Dowager Lady Farrington was set forth in its true light; nor was he absolved from harshness in his attitude towards Herbert Larkins as a lad.

The law, nevertheless, was, as it seemed, altogether on the side of the strong. The claimant’s case was good so far as it went, but, as was feared, there were several serious flaws in it. Lady Farrington’s peculiarities were brought out into somewhat unfavourable prominence in the witness-box, and elicited considerable merriment. The cross-examining counsel made the most of her craze, and turned her inside out, so to speak, on the subject of claimants in general and Herbert in particular. Mrs. Larkins was so very stout and positive that[200] her statements could not be shaken; but after all, although hers was the evidence most relevant, it was entirely uncorroborated and unsupported. Not even Herbert, with his undoubtedly honest bearing, could turn the scale; and the case day after day was going more and more in favour of Sir Rupert, when all at once came a report from Mr. Jimlett, which inspired the plaintiffs with fresh—almost exaggerated—hopes.