CHAPTER XXIX.
THE RIVAL HEIRS.
LOUIS and Rachel returned that night with Miss Anastasia to the Priory, which, the old lady said proudly—the family jointure house for four or five generations—should be their home till the young heir took possession of his paternal house. The time which followed was too busy, rapid, and exciting for a slow and detailed history. The first legal steps were taken instantly in the case, and proper notices served upon Lord Winterbourne. In Miss Anastasia’s animated and anxious house dwelt the Tyrolese, painfully acquiring some scant morsels of English, very well contented with her present quarters, and only anxious to secure some extravagant preferment for her son. Mrs Atheling and her daughters had returned home, and Louis came and went constantly to town, actively engaged himself in all the arrangements, full of anxious plans and undertakings for the ease and benefit of the other parties concerned. Miss Anastasia, with a little reluctance, had given her consent to the young man’s plan of a compromise, by which his uncle, unattacked and undisgraced, might retire from his usurped possessions with a sufficient and suitable income. The ideas of Louis were magnificent and princely. He would have been content to mulct himself of half the revenues of his inheritance, and scarcely would listen to the prudent cautions of his advisers. He was even reluctant that the first formal steps should be taken, before Mr Foggo and an eminent and well-known solicitor, personally acquainted with his uncle, had waited upon Lord Winterbourne. He was overruled; but this solemn deputation lost no time in proceeding on its mission. Speedy as they were, however, they were too late for the alarmed and startled peer. He had left home, they ascertained, very shortly after the late trial—had gone abroad, as it was supposed, leaving no information as to the time of his return. The only thing which could be done in the circumstances was hastened by the eager exertions of Louis. The two lawyers wrote a formal letter to Lord Winterbourne, stating their case, and making their offer, and despatched it to the Hall, to be forwarded to him. No answer came, though Louis persuaded his agents to wait for it, and even to delay the legal proceedings. The only notice taken of it was a paragraph in one of the fashionable newspapers, to the effect that the late proceedings at Oxford, impugning the title of a respected nobleman, proved now to be a mere trick of some pettifogging lawyer, entirely unsupported, and likely to call forth proceedings for libel, involving a good deal of romantic family history, and extremely interesting to the public. After this, Louis could no longer restrain the natural progress of the matter. He gave it up, indeed, at once, and did not try; and Miss Anastasia pronounced emphatically one of her antique proverbs, “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
This was not the only business on the hands of Louis. He had found it impossible, on repeated trials, to see the Rector. At the Old Wood House it was said that Mr Rivers was from home; at his London lodgings he had not been heard of. The suit was given against him in the Ecclesiastical Courts, and Mr Mead, alone in the discharge of his duty, mourned over a stripped altar and desolated sanctuary, where the tall candles blazed no longer in the religious gloom. When it became evident at last that the Rector did not mean to give his young relative the interview he sought, Louis, strangely transformed as he was, from the petulant youth always ready to take offence, to the long-suffering man, addressed Lionel as his solicitors had addressed his uncle. He wrote a long letter, generous and full of hearty feeling; he reminded his kinsman of the favours he had himself accepted at his hands. He drew a very vivid picture of his own past and present position. He declared, with all a young man’s fervour, that he could have no pleasure even in his own extraordinary change of fortune, were it the means of inflicting a vast and unmitigated loss upon his cousin. He threw himself upon Lionel’s generosity—he appealed to his natural sense of justice—he used a hundred arguments which were perfectly suitable and in character from him, but which, certainly, no man as proud and as generous as himself could be expected to listen to; and, finally, ended with protesting an unquestionable claim upon Lionel—the claim of a man deeply indebted to, and befriended by him. The letter overflowed with the earnestness and sincerity of the writer; he assumed his case throughout with the most entire honesty, having no doubt whatever upon the subject, and confided his intentions and prospects to Lionel with a complete and anxious confidence, which he had not bestowed upon any other living man.
This letter called forth an answer, written from a country town in a remote part of England. The Rector wrote with an evident effort at cordiality. He declined all Louis’s overtures in the most uncompromising terms, but congratulated him upon his altered circumstances. He said he had taken care to examine into the case before leaving London, and was thoroughly convinced of the justice of the new claim. “One thing I will ask of you,” said Mr Rivers; “I only wait to resign my living until I can be sure of the next presentation falling into your hands: give it to Mr Mead. The cause of my withdrawal is entirely private and personal. I had resolved upon it months ago, and it has no connection whatever with recent circumstances. I hope no one thinks so meanly of me as to suppose I am dismayed by the substitution of another heir in my room. One thing in this matter has really wounded me, and that is the fact that no one concerned thought me worthy to know a secret so important, and one which it was alike my duty and my right to help to a satisfactory conclusion. I have lost nothing actual, so far as rank or means is concerned; but, more intolerable than any vulgar loss, I find a sudden cloud thrown upon the perfect sincerity and truth of some whom I have been disposed to trust as men trust Heaven.”
The letter concluded with good wishes—that was all; there was no response to the confidence, no answer to the effusion of heartfelt and fervent feeling which had been in Louis’s letter. The young man was not accustomed to be repulsed; perhaps, in all his life, it was the first time he had asked a favour from any one, and had Louis been poor and without friends, as he was or thought himself six months ago, such a tone would have galled him beyond endurance. But there is a charm in a gracious and relenting fortune. Louis, who had once been the very armadillo of youthful haughtiness, suddenly distinguished himself by the most magnanimous patience, would not take offence, and put away his kinsman’s haughty letter, with regret, but without any resentment. Nothing was before him now but the plain course of events, and to them he committed himself frankly, resolved to do what could be done, but addressing no more appeals to the losing side.
Part of the Rector’s letter Louis showed to Marian, and Marian repeated it to Agnes. It was cruel—it was unjust of Lionel—and he knew himself that it was. Agnes, it was possible, did not know—at all events, she had no right to betray to him the secrets of another; more than that, he knew the meaning now of the little book which he carried everywhere with him, and felt in his heart that he was the real person addressed. He knew all that quite as well as she did, as she tried, with a quivering lip and a proud wet eye, to fortify herself against the injustice of his reproach, but that did not hinder him from saying it. He was in that condition—known, perhaps, occasionally to most of us—when one feels a certain perverse pleasure in wounding one’s dearest. He had no chance of mentioning her, who occupied so much of his thoughts, in any other way, and he would rather put a reproach upon Agnes than leave her alone altogether; perhaps she herself even, after all, at the bottom of her heart, was better satisfied to be referred to thus, than to be left out of his thoughts. They had never spoken to each other a single word which could be called wooing—now they were perhaps separated for ever—yet how strange a link of union, concord, and opposition, was between these two!