“Do you know anything of this clergyman son who wants to marry my sister?” he asked.
“I met him once or twice, and thought him a prig,” said Mr. Mervyn. “But better a prig, than like his brother Roderick.”
“You knew Lady Pym?” asked Hugh.
“I did,” said Mr. Mervyn. “A lovely, winsome young creature; wretchedly unhappy. She was made for society and a lightsome life, and Sir Roderick literally imprisoned her. If she clung to her brother-in-law—if they were more affectionate to each other than in strict justice to him they should have been,—I, for one, cannot cast the first stone. It was piteous to see that poor girl. When the row came, and she disappeared, I felt inclined to give up the living. My one attempt to interfere was met with coldness; I could not try again. If it had not been for my wife, who was devoted to the poor baby, and literally went on her knees to me to stay, I should not be here talking to you now. It is this—with other things—that makes it impossible for me to regret Sir Roderick’s death, though he has been very kind to me, and to my wife too.”
“And to the poor?”
“No,” said Mr. Mervyn, energetically. “He has been their worst enemy. Your work is cut out for you, Mr. Paull, to undo his doings. But you are the man to do it.”
“But—I thought—you said—he left no fortune?”
Hugh’s ambition was certainly not to waste his energies in remedying Sir Roderick’s mistakes.
“No fortune, as Mr. Pym considers fortune. But you had better see Turner and Moffatt, the solicitors, Paull, you really had,” added Mr. Mervyn, lapsing into the familiar and confidential. “Someone must take up a position of authority; and you are the person to do it, as matters stand.”
Hugh wrote off to the hospital authorities for further leave; and next day, hearing from Mrs. Mervyn, who was acting as mistress of the house pro tem., that Lilia would not come down till after luncheon, he drove over to the quiet little town where “Messrs. Turner and Moffatt, solicitors,” was engraved large upon a brilliant brass plate on the door of an old red-brick house.