talk of that now. Where should I have been without him, tradesman or no tradesman?”
“I’ve no doubt he was an excellent man.”
“You may say that, John. Ah, well! we can’t keep everything in this life for ever.” It may, perhaps, be as well to explain now that Mrs Greenow had told Captain Bellfield at their last meeting before she left Norwich, that, under certain circumstances, if he behaved himself well, there might possibly be ground of hope. Whereupon Captain Bellfield had immediately gone to the best tailor in that city, had told the man of his coming marriage, and had given an extensive order. But the tailor had not as yet supplied the goods, waiting for more credible evidence of the Captain’s good fortune. “We’re all grass of the field,” said Mrs Greenow, lightly brushing a tear from her eye, “and must be cut down and put into the oven in our turns.” Her brother uttered a slight sympathetic groan, shaking his head in testimony of the uncertainty of human affairs, and then said that he would go out and look about the place. George, in the meantime, had asked his sister to show him his room, and the two were already together upstairs.
Kate had made up her mind that she would say nothing about Alice at the present moment,—nothing, if it could be avoided, till after the funeral. She led the way upstairs, almost trembling with fear, for she knew that that other subject of the will would also give rise to trouble and sorrow,—perhaps, also, to determined quarrelling.
“What has brought that woman here?” was the first question that George asked.
“I asked her to come,” said Kate.
“And why did you ask her to come here?” said George, angrily. Kate immediately felt that he was speaking as though he were master of the house, and also as though he intended to be master of her. As regarded the former idea, she had no objection to it. She thoroughly and honestly wished that he might be the master; and though she feared that he might find himself mistaken in his assumption, she herself was not disposed to deny any appearance of right that he might take upon himself in that respect. But she had already begun to tell herself that she must not submit herself to his masterdom. She had gradually so taught herself since he had compelled her to write the first letter in which Alice had been asked to give her money.
“I asked her, George, before my poor grandfather’s death, when I thought that he would linger perhaps for weeks. My life here alone with him, without any other woman in the house beside the servants, was very melancholy.”
“Why did you not ask Alice to come to you?”
“Alice could not have come,” said Kate, after a short pause.
“I don’t know why she shouldn’t have come. I won’t have that woman about the place. She disgraced herself by marrying a blacksmith—.”
“Why, George, it was you yourself who advised me to go and stay with her.”
“That’s a very different thing. Now that he’s dead, and she’s got his money, it’s all very well that you should go to her occasionally; but I won’t have her here.”
“It’s natural that she should come to her father’s house at her father’s deathbed.”
“I hate to be told that things are natural. It always means humbug. I don’t suppose she cared for the old man any more than I did,—or than she cared for the other old man who married her. People are such intense hypocrites. There’s my uncle John, pulling a long face because he has come into this house, and he will pull it as long as the body lies up there; and yet for the last twenty years there’s nothing on earth he has so much hated as going to see his father. When are they going to bury him?”
“On Saturday, the day after tomorrow.”
“Why couldn’t they do it tomorrow, so that we could get away before Sunday?”
“He only died on Monday, George,” said Kate, solemnly.
“Psha! Who has got the will?”
“Mr Gogram. He was here yesterday, and told me to tell you and uncle John that he would have it with him when he came back from the funeral.”
“What has my uncle John to do with it?” said George, sharply. “I shall go over to Penrith this afternoon and make Gogram give it up to me.”
“I don’t think he’ll do that, George.”
“What right has he to keep it? What right has he to it at all? How do I know that he has really got the old man’s last will? Where did my grandfather keep his papers?”
“In that old secretary, as he used to call it; the one that stands in the dining-room. It is sealed up.”
“Who sealed it?”
“Mr Gogram did,—Mr Gogram and I together.”
“What the deuce made you meddle with it?”
“I merely assisted him. But I believe he was quite right. I think it is usual in such cases.”
“Balderdash! You are thinking of some old trumpery of former days. Till I know to the contrary, everything here belongs to me as heir-at-law, and I do not mean to allow of any interference till I know for certain that my rights have been taken from me. And I won’t accept a deathbed will. What a man chooses to write when his fingers will hardly hold the pen, goes for nothing.”
“You can’t suppose that I wish to interfere with your rights?”
“I hope not.”
“Oh, George!”
“Well; I say, I hope not. But I know there are those who would. Do you think my uncle John would not interfere with me if he could? By ––––! if he does, he shall find that he does it to his cost. I’ll lead him such a life through the courts, for the next two or three years, that he’ll wish that he had remained in Chancery Lane, and had never left it.”
A message was now brought up by the nurse, saying that Mrs Greenow and Mr Vavasor were going into the room where the old Squire was lying, “Would Miss Kate and Mr George go with them?”
“Mr Vavasor!” shouted out George, making the old woman jump. She did not understand his meaning in the least. “Yes, sir; the old Squire,” she said.
“Will you come, George?” Kate asked.
“No; what should I go there for? Why should I pretend an interest in the dead body of a man whom I hated and who hated me;—whose very last act, as far as I know as yet, was an attempt to rob me? I won’t go and see him.”
Kate went, and was glad of an opportunity of getting away from her brother. Every hour the idea was becoming stronger in her mind that she must in some way separate herself from him. There had come upon him of late a hard ferocity which made him unendurable. And then he carried to such a pitch that hatred, as he called it, of conventional rules, that he allowed himself to be controlled by none of the ordinary bonds of society. She had felt this heretofore, with a nervous consciousness that she was doing wrong in endeavouring to bring about a marriage between him and Alice; but this demeanour and mode of talking had now so grown upon him that Kate began to feel herself thankful that Alice had been saved.
Kate went
