Volume Iii Part 8 (2/2)

I verily believe that should fortune desert young Lucius Haggard he need never really starve, for his talents as a light comedian should certainly be worth several guineas a week to him.

”Spunyarn,” said Lucius after a pause, ”who can have taken these papers?

Have you any suspicion?”

”It's a mystery I cannot penetrate,” he replied. ”Brookes may be able to get at the bottom of it, however; I hope and trust so.”

”Can it be possible,” said Lucius, ”that my mother destroyed the papers herself, or has secreted them?”

”I hardly think so; she seemed as much astonished as I was, when we found them gone. Besides, why should she destroy them? Lucius, she trusted you; and she judged you rightly, my boy; you have chosen the only honourable and manly course. No man has cause to regret running straight in this world. You will never have reason to repent of it, Lucius.”

”Do you think no one outside the family, Lord Spunyarn, by any possibility can be in possession of the key to the secret?”

”No one. Besides it interests no one, save my dear old friend, your brother, and yourself.”

”Yes, I suppose after all George is my brother, in a sort of way, still.”

”George will never forget that he is your brother, Lucius.”

There was a pause.

”Let us go to her,” said Lucius Haggard with a sigh.

The elder man consented, and they left the room.

CHAPTER VII.

ENTER MR. BROOKES.

When Lord Spunyarn and Lucius entered Mrs. Haggard's room they found her stretched upon a sofa, and to the inexperienced eye she presented very much her ordinary appearance; but as the young fellow, who had been nursed and tended by the invalid when he was a helpless friendless child, gazed upon the woman who had been a mother to him, he saw that one corner of the mouth was slightly drawn. The old lord was seated by her side; her left hand was clasped in his; the marks of recent tears were on the face of the old n.o.bleman, and he roused himself with an effort to welcome his heir.

”Mother,” said the young fellow, as he took her other hand, ”poor mother!” And even the long-headed youth felt a pang, as he gazed upon the wreck before him.

An answering smile illumined the suffering face as she heard the greeting.

Then there was a pause of some length; and then the old man made his moan, for the selfishness of age is as natural as the selfishness of childhood. This is what the possessor of countless wealth, and of all the heart could desire to obtain, said in his cracked querulous old voice:

”All gone from me, wife and son, and nephews, all taken; and now she is stricken down, the joy of my dotage, the comfort of my old age. It's very hard to bear,” groaned the old man, and the hollow old eyes became moist again. But there was an answering pressure from the slender hand which he held between his wrinkled fingers, and the old man's face was lighted up once more by a happy smile. ”You won't leave me, Georgie,” he continued, ”for I can't spare you, my dear, I can't spare you.” Again there came the same answering pressure. But she spoke no word; heaven had set the seal of silence on her lips; they moved, those pale lips, but no sound came from them; and then the sufferer made an impatient gesture. As she did so young George Haggard entered the room; his eyes were red with weeping and he trod daintily upon the carpet, as a man would do who feared to disturb a sleeping child. The sick woman smiled as he came to his brother's side and affectionately placed his hand upon Lucius Haggard's shoulder; her eyes sought those of Lord Spunyarn, dwelt upon his an instant, and then the lids closed upon the yet lovely orbs, and still smiling, like a tired child, Mrs. Haggard sank into a peaceful sleep.

No word was spoken by those around the couch; they sat silent, fearing to disturb her slumber. As Lucius Haggard gazed upon the sweet sleeping face, he was racked by torturing doubt. How would it all end? Would she recover her bodily health again? The mind was evidently still uninjured.

_Would she ever speak again?_ That was the important question to Lucius Haggard. The papers gone and the mouth of this one witness closed, he felt himself comparatively safe; still in the eyes of the law and of the world his father's lawful heir. But should she speak again, she might communicate the secret of his shame. Without her evidence all that Lord Spunyarn might say could but be mere surmise, a simple _ex parte_ statement.

One by one they left her sleeping, the old earl leaning heavily on the arm of Haggard's eldest son. And then they separated; the old lord to his slumbers and his dreams and the society of the faithful Wolff, the two young fellows to the park, to wander up and down the great avenue side by side, and talk with bated breath over their fresh misfortune, the affliction that had befallen their mother; while Lord Spunyarn returned to the examination of the ma.s.s of papers lying on the dead Reginald Haggard's table, and to wait with impatience the arrival of the family solicitor.

”If there is a thing in this world that I hate,” said old Mr. Brookes to his partner, as he sat in his cosy private room in Lincoln's Inn Fields that morning, ”it's this modern system of telegrams; they're almost as bad as a doctor's night-bell. You have to go, whether you like it or not. Here's probably some simple matter of common law. Why on earth can't he write? Not a bit of it, he simply wires me, and I have to go,”

and he handed a telegram across the table:

”Walls End Castle.

<script>