Mrs. Jarvis was rocking herself to and fro in a state of great excitement. She was sane enough where a recollection of the events at the King's Arms was concerned, but her clouded brain revolved round the pivot of her son's death. She moaned, and twitched her mouth with nervous jerks.
"I'll make her up a bottle of bromide mixture when I get back to the surgery," said Dr. Tremayne to the neighbour. "Can you send one of your boys down for it about six o'clock? She oughtn't to be left alone."
"No, Doctor. I'll do what I can. She's in a bad way, poor soul. There's a lot of trouble in the world, isn't there?"
"There is indeed! Now I must hurry off, for I'm due at the Sanatorium, and I'm very late. Give her the mixture, and I'll call and see her again next week."
Dr. Tremayne put the linen case inside his safest inner pocket, and took his departure. As they drove down the hill towards the ravine all the little town and its neighbouring cliffs and woods lay stretched out before them.
"Uncle David," asked Mavis, "if those papers are proved does it mean that The Warren and the whole of Chagmouth will belong to Bevis? Is he the grandson of General Talland?"
"There seems very little doubt about it. It was evidence that ought to have been given at the inquest fourteen years ago. Poor lad! Poor lad! If we'd only known sooner."
"But why did his mother call herself Mrs. Hunter?"
"Probably she wouldn't care to give her true name at the hotel until she had been to see General Talland. The marriage had been kept secret, and nobody in Chagmouth knew about it. No doubt she had intended to go to The Warren and show her child to its grandfather. But General Talland had started for the West Indies. It was perhaps the news of his absence, and the consequent failure of her errand, that brought on the heart attack that caused her sudden collapse."
"So Chagmouth belongs to Bevis," repeated Merle wonderingly. "The house, and the grounds, and the woods, and the shooting, and the farms, and the town are Bevis's. It's like a fairy tale!"