James Payn

“ Wallis it seemed equally clear that Mr. Frank Dennis also knew. He sat very pale and quiet, but with a face expectant of ill. Every now and [261] then he stole a glance at Margaret, full of ineffable shame and sorrow. As for her, she looked neither to the right nor to the left, but always at the door; her ears were on the stretch for William Henry’s return from the moment that his departing footstep died away. In her face alone was to be seen unshaken confidence; a woman’s faith—so often wasted, as Mr. Wallis thought to himself, upon false and worthless objects. ”

“ The eye of love is an auger that can pierce the heart, if not the soul; but to the other members of the party William Henry’s face told nothing. It did not indeed wear the expression of defeat, but still less did it exhibit triumph or exultation. It had the same quiet, almost indifferent air that it habitually wore when the Shakespearean discoveries were under discussion; but the pallor which anxiety had caused in it when he left the house upon his apparently hopeless errand was gone; with a quiet smile he drew forth a paper from his pocket, and handed it to Mr. Wallis. ”

“ Gladly as William Henry himself doubtless received this mark of his patron’s favour, his joy could hardly have exceeded that of Mr. Erin when the news was communicated to him. It must need be confessed, however, that his gratitude was not wholly dissociated from a sense of favours to come.
‘Why, my dear lad,’ he cried, ‘this note of hand of Shakespeare’s, priceless as it is, may be yet outdone by what remains to be discovered. ”

“ A thing that costs nothing, yet is exceedingly precious, and which speaks of love and fidelity. It is too good for any antiquary.”’
‘Your patron is mad, my lad,’ said Mr. Erin, in a tone of cheerful conviction; ‘he must be mad to talk like that; and, indeed, he would never give away these things at all if he were in his sober senses. The idea of bestowing such an inestimable relic upon a girl! Why, it should rather be preserved in some museum in the custody of trustees, to the delight of the whole nation for ever.’
‘Nevertheless, sir, such was my patron’s injunction. ”

“ Indeed, the chief use of information in his eyes [9] is not so much to raise oneself above the crowd (though a sense of elevation is agreeable) , as to have the privilege of imparting it to others with a noble air of superiority and self-importance. I will therefore call my hero by such a name as will at once be recognised by the learned, whom I shall thus render my intermediaries—exponents of the transparent secret to those who are in blissful ignorance of it. I will call him William Henry Erin. ”

“ A scornful poet, whose appetite was considerably jaded, has expressed his disgust at seeing women eat; but women, I have noticed, take great pleasure in seeing men, for whom they have any regard, relish a hearty meal. The new-comer ate as only a young gentleman who has travelled for hours on a coach-top can eat, and Margaret so enjoyed the spectacle that she neglected her own opportunities in that way, to watch him. ”

“ The world outside knows nothing of it. It interests itself in Shakespeare only, and but little in his belongings; but with us, breathing the air he breathed, walking on the same ground he trod, things are different; we still fancy him amongst us, and not alone. There is Hamnet, too; we still speak of Hamnet.’
It was fortunate for William Henry that he repressed the observation that rose to his lips. ”

“ In literature we have few such fanatics as Samuel Erin now; but in art he has many modern parallels—men who, having once convinced themselves that a painting is by Rubens or Titian, will see in it a hundred merits where there are not half a dozen, and even discover beauties in its spots and blemishes. ”

“ It is Stratford-on-Avon.
There, save once a year, when Shakespeare’s birthday is commemorated, fashion brings but few persons to simulate admiration. It is not as at some great funeral, where curiosity or official position or other extraneous motive brings men together to do honour to the departed; they come like humble friends, to pay tribute to one whom they not only admire, but revere, to this little Warwickshire town. It is too remote from the places where men congregate to entice the thoughtless crowd ”

“ I’ve robbed nobody.’
‘You have robbed everybody—the whole world!’ exclaimed Mr. Erin excitedly. ‘In burning those papers you burnt the most precious things on earth. A bonfire, you call it! Nero, who fiddled while Rome was burning, was guiltless compared to you. You are a disgrace to humanity. Shakespeare had you in his eye, sir, when he spoke of “a marble-hearted fiend.”’
Mr. Samuel Erin had his favourite bard by heart, and was consequently in no want of ‘base comparisons,’ but he stopped a moment [72] for want of breath. Annoyance and indignation had had the same effect upon Mr. Williams. ”

“ Certainly no diplomatic explanation could have been conducted under greater difficulties. ‘Some people yearn for fame, my dear Erin,’ he said; ‘to others it [162] is very undesirable to be well known, even by a single individual.’
‘If you imagine I wish to deceive you, Talbot, you are quite wrong,’ said William Henry firmly, ‘but it is true that I cannot be so frank with you as I could wish. I have a secret which is not my own, or you may be sure that you should share it. Listen.’ Then he told him the whole story of his acquaintance with the Templar and its singular result. ”

“ Dennis good-naturedly, as he came up to the door with Margaret upon his arm.
The young man’s cheeks flushed with anger.
‘You do not know William Henry,’ said the girl, interposing with a smile; ‘he does not care for the nest when he can sit upon the bough.’
‘It is pleasanter outside—for some things—no doubt,’ assented Mr. Dennis as he assisted her into the coach. She cast a sympathising glance over her shoulder at William Henry, as he swung himself up to the hind seat, and he returned it with a grateful look. She had saved him from a humiliation. ”

“ Behind yonder walls, too, stood the house to which, full of honour though not of years, he had retired to spend that leisure in old age which he had desiderated more than most men.
The aim of all is but to crown the life
With honour, wealth, and ease in waning age,
were the words Mr. Erin repeated to himself with mystic devotion, as a peasant mutters a Latin prayer. He had no poetic gifts himself, nor was he even a critic in a high sense; but [36] his long application to Shakespearean literature had given him some reflected light. ”

“ The discovery, and the discoverer, William Henry Erin, became ‘the Talk of the Town.’ It seemed to Margaret impossible that the meritorious though fortunate young fellow could ever become more famous; but the possibilities of greatness are infinite; his foot, as it turned out, was only on the first rung of the ladder. The modest house in Norfolk Street became a sort of metropolitan Stratford-on-Avon; it was absolutely besieged by the antiquarian and learned world. ”

“ Erin’s adoration has taken such pains to instil gentleness and feeling among his fellow-creatures, that his disciple should have harboured the sentiments he sometimes expressed; and yet it is hardly to be wondered at when one remembers that the advocates of Christianity itself have fallen into the same error, and from the same cause. Mr. Samuel Erin was not only a devotee, but a fanatic. ”

“ When the turn is not a mere taste, but a natural gift, this does not much matter; no true flame was ever [48] put out by the breath of contempt: but when it halts midway the youth has a bad time of it. He shivers at every sneer, without the means of giving it the lie. ‘Like a dart it strikes to his liver,’ because his armour, unlike that of true genius, is not arrow-proof. ”

“ Erin.
‘What I was thinking,’ said Margaret, ‘was that if you, Willie, or Mr. Talbot (who informed us the other night, you know, that he was a poet) had written those lines about spreading her wings over her little brood, it would have been considered plagiarism.’
‘What then?’ inquired Mr. Erin contemptuously. ‘It is the peculiar province of a genius such as Shakespeare’s to make everything his own. He improves it by addition.’
‘The idea in question, however, is taken from the New Testament,’ observed Maggie. ”

“ There had been a sort of false dawn of love with her, but, now that her uncle seemed to give such solid ground for hope, the sun which had long lain in wait behind those clouds of doubt came out with all the splendour of the morn. Love arose within her.
As Mr. Erin reverently placed his treasures in the iron safe, William Henry stole his arm round Margaret’s waist:—
‘Is there on earthe a manne more treue
Than Willie Erin is to you?’
he whispered softly: and for the first time she did not reprove him. ”

“ Erin intended her to marry Dennis, and had brought him down with him to Stratford ‘to throw the young people together,’ as he would doubtless express it. Young people, indeed! why, Frank Dennis was old enough—well, scarcely, to be her father, unless he had been unusually precocious, but certainly to know better. ‘Crabbed age’—the man was thirty if he was a day—‘and youth cannot live together.’ It was a most monstrous proposition! On the other hand, what could he, poor William Henry, do? ”

“ Erin angrily, ‘how gross and contemptible are your ideas, sir!’
‘Still,’ interposed Dennis, his sense of justice [60] aiding his wish to stand between Mr. Erin’s wrath and its object—Margaret’s cousin—‘Shakespeare did transgress in that way. It is not likely that he strained at a hare if he swallowed a deer.’
‘No doubt he poached,’ admitted Jervis gravely. ‘He was very human, and did all things that became a boy. But I was thinking rather of the companionship of the two boys than their pursuits. Their talk was not of hares nor of rabbits. How one would like to know their boyish confidences! ”

“ Erin, as though he was reading from the register itself.
‘Just so,’ continued Jervis, ‘only a little over two hundred years ago. He was eleven years old, too young to understand the greatness of him who begat him, yet old enough to have an inkling of it. Once a year or so, as it is believed, his father came home to Stratford fresh from the companionship of the great London wits and poets—Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Camden, and Selden. What meetings must those have been with his only son; the boy whom he fondly hoped, but hoped in vain, would inherit the proceeds of his fame! ”

“ Mr. Erin, however, anticipated him. ‘I was somewhat more vehement, Dennis,’ he said, ‘in the remarks that I addressed to you just now than the occasion demanded; but the fact is, some sort of diversion was imperatively demanded. My friends, I saw, were getting turbulent; the discovery of the quintin on the seal was too much for them, already excited as they were by the exhibition of this extraordinary document. Sir Frederick in particular, under circumstances of such extreme temptation, I knew to be capable of any outrage. ”

“ Erin, who knew Latin, was an admirer of the ancient line, ‘litera scripta manet,’ which literally translated means, ‘One can’t well wriggle out of one’s own handwriting.’ As pilgrims did not pay for the privilege of admission to view these sacred relics, they were naturally inclined to be civil to their custodians, and, when sufficiently convinced of the genuineness of what they saw, to express themselves with much effusion and enthusiasm. ”

“ The effects of a prolonged holiday upon the human mind are various. Like other things much ‘recommended by the faculty,’ it does not suit every one. It is the opinion of an eminent physician of my acquaintance that little comes of it in the way of wholesomeness except sunburn; and that when that wears off, the supposed convalescent looks as he feels—satiated and jaded. To William Henry, the conveyancer’s clerk, that week or two at Stratford-on-Avon was what the long vacation is to many lawyers. ”

“ Erin was haunted by the notion that some Shakespearean fanatic might step in and buy the whole of it before he could secure some mementoes, whereas the birthplace in Henley Street could ‘wait;’ an idea at which, for the life of him, the proprietor of the sacred timber could not restrain a dry smile. It was the general opinion that enough tobacco stoppers, busts, and wafer seals had already been sold to account for a whole grove of mulberry trees. ”

“ We do a good deal of it in New Inn ourselves.’
‘Yonder are our “velvet friends,”’ said Mr. Erin, pointing to a herd of deer in the distance.
The allusion caused some trepidation in his companions, as chiming in only too opportunely with their late disloyal remarks; and it was much to their relief that Mr. Erin proceeded, as was his wont, to indulge himself in quotation. ”