remember, John, how he used to scold me, and say that I should never come to good. He has said the same thing to you, Kate, I dare say?”
“He has been very kind to me,” said Kate, standing at the foot of the bed. She was not one of those whose tears stand near their eyes.
“He was a fine old gentleman,” said John Vavasor;—”belonging to days that are now gone by, but by no means the less of a gentleman on that account. I don’t know that he ever did an unjust or ungenerous act to any one. Come, Kate, we may as well go down.” Mrs Greenow lingered to say a word or two to the nurse, of the manner in which Greenow’s body was treated when Greenow was lying dead, and then she followed her brother and niece.
George did not go into Penrith, nor did he see Mr Gogram till that worthy attorney came out to Vavasor Hall on the morning of the funeral. He said nothing more on the subject, nor did he break the seals on the old upright desk that stood in the parlour. The two days before the funeral were very wretched for all the party, except, perhaps, for Mrs Greenow, who affected not to understand that her nephew was in a bad humour. She called him “poor George,” and treated all his incivility to herself as though it were the effect of his grief. She asked him questions about Parliament, which, of course, he didn’t answer, and told him little stories about poor dear Greenow, not heeding his expressions of unmistakable disgust.
The two days at last went by, and the hour of the funeral came. There was the doctor and Gogram, and the uncle and the nephew, to follow the corpse,—the nephew taking upon himself ostentatiously the foremost place, as though he could thereby help to maintain his pretensions as heir. The clergyman met them at the little wicket-gate of the churchyard, having, by some reasoning, which we hope was satisfactory to himself, overcome a resolution which he at first formed, that he would not read the burial service over an unrepentant sinner. But he did read it, having mentioned his scruples to none but one confidential clerical friend in the same diocese.
“I’m told that you have got my grandfather’s will,” George said to the attorney as soon as he saw him.
“I have it in my pocket,” said Mr Gogram, “and purpose to read it as soon as we return from church.”
“Is it usual to take a will away from a man’s house in that way?” George asked.
“Quite usual,” said the attorney; “and in this case it was done at the express desire of the testator.”
“I think it is the common practice,” said John Vavasor.
George upon this turned round at his uncle as though about to attack him, but he restrained himself and said nothing, though he showed his teeth.
The funeral was very plain, and not a word was spoken by George Vavasor during the journey there and back. John Vavasor asked a few questions of the doctor as to the last weeks of his father’s life; and it was incidentally mentioned, both by the doctor and by the attorney, that the old Squire’s intellect had remained unimpaired up to the last moment that he had been seen by either of them. When they returned to the hall Mrs Greenow met them with an invitation to lunch. They all went to the dining-room, and drank each a glass of sherry. George took two or three glasses. The doctor then withdrew, and drove himself back to Penrith, where he lived.
“Shall we go into the other room now?” said the attorney.
The three gentlemen then rose up, and went across to the drawing-room, George leading the way. The attorney followed him, and John Vavasor closed the door behind them. Had any observer been there to watch them he might have seen by the faces of the two latter that they expected an unpleasant meeting. Mr Gogram, as he had walked across the hall, had pulled a document out of his pocket, and held it in his hand as he took a chair. John Vavasor stood behind one of the chairs which had been placed at the table, and leaned upon it, looking across the room, up at the ceiling. George stood on the rug before the fire, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and his coat tails over his arms.
“Gentlemen, will you sit down?” said Mr Gogram.
John Vavasor immediately sat down.
“I prefer to stand here,” said George.
Mr Gogram then opened the document before him.
“Before that paper is read,” said George, “I think it right to say a few words. I don’t know what it contains, but I believe it to have been executed by my grandfather only an hour or two before his death.”
“On the day before he died,—early in the day,” said the attorney.
“Well,—the day before he died; it is the same thing,—while he was dying, in fact. He never got out of bed afterwards.”
“He was not in bed at the time, Mr Vavasor. Not that it would have mattered if he had been. And he came down to dinner on that day. I don’t understand, however, why you make these observations.”
“If you’ll listen to me you will understand. I make them because I deny my grandfather’s fitness to make a will in the last moments of his existence, and at such an age. I saw him a few weeks ago, and he was not fit to be trusted with the management of property then.”
“I do not think this is the time, George, to put forward such objections,” said the uncle.
“I think it is,” said George. “I believe that that paper purports to be an instrument by which I should be villanously defrauded if it were allowed to be held as good. Therefore I protest against it now, and shall question it at law if action be taken on it. You can read it now, if you please.”
“Oh, yes, I shall read,” said Mr Gogram; “and I say that it is as valid a will as ever a man signed.”
“And I say it’s not. That’s the difference between us.”
The will was read amidst sundry interjections and expressions of anger from George, which it is not necessary to repeat. Nor need I trouble my readers with the will at length. It began by expressing the testator’s great desire that his property might descend in his own family, and that the house might be held and inhabited by some one bearing the name of Vavasor. He then declared that he felt himself obliged to pass over his natural heir, believing that the property would not be safe in his hands; he therefore left it in trust to his son John Vavasor, whom he appointed to be sole executor of his will. He devised it to George’s eldest son,—should George ever marry and have a son,—as soon as he might reach the age of twenty-five. In the meantime the property should remain in the hands of John Vavasor for his use and benefit, with a lien on it of five hundred a year to be paid annually to his granddaughter Kate. In the event of George having no son, the property was to go to the eldest son of Kate, or failing that to the eldest son of his other granddaughter who might take the name of Vavasor. All his personal property he left to his son, John Vavasor. “And, Mr Vavasor,” said the attorney, as he finished his reading, “you will, I fear, get very little by that latter clause. The estate now owes nothing; but I doubt whether the Squire had fifty pounds in his banker’s hands when he died, and the value of the property about the place is very small. He has been unwilling to spend anything during the last ten years, but has paid off every shilling that the property owed.”
“It is as I supposed,” said George. His voice was very unpleasant, and so was the fire of his eyes and the ghastly rage of his scarred face. “The old man has endeavoured in his anger to rob me of everything because I would not obey him in his wickedness when I was here with him a short while before he died. Such a will as that can stand nowhere.”
