“There is one thing,” he said suddenly. “The sooner we pull up stakes the better. I do not propose to spend the best part of my life in the cars. The weather is cool and we will go back to town. So pack up your traps, Totty, and let us be off. Have you written to Tom?”
“No,” said Totty. “I would not announce the engagement till we were settled in town.”
Sherrington Trimm departed on the following morning, alleging with truth that the business could not be allowed to go to pieces. Totty and the two young people were to return two or three days later, and active preparations were at once made for moving. Totty, indeed, could not bear the idea of allowing her husband to remain alone in New York. It was possible that at any moment he might discover that the will was missing from her brother’s box. She might indeed have been spared much anxiety in this matter had she known that although Sherry had sealed and marked the document himself, it was not he who had placed it in the receptacle where it had been found by his wife. Sherry had handed it across the table to John Bond, telling him to put it in Craik’s deed-box, and had seen John leave the room with it, but had never seen it since. It was not, indeed, until much later that he had communicated to his partner the contents of the paper. If it could not now be found, Sherry would suppose that John had accidentally put it into the wrong box and a general search would be made. Then it would be thought that John had mislaid it. In any case poor John was dead and could not defend himself. Sherry would go directly to Tom Craik and get him to sign a duplicate, but he would never, under any conceivable combination of circumstances, connect his wife with the disappearance of the will, nor mention the fact in her presence. Totty, however, was ignorant of these facts, and lived in the constant fear of being obliged to explain matters to her husband. Though she had thought much of the matter she had not hit upon any expedient for restoring the document to its place. She kept it in a small Indian cabinet which her brother had once given her, in which there was a hidden drawer of which no one knew the secret but herself. This cabinet she had brought with her and had kept all through the summer in a prominent place in the drawing-room, justly deeming that things are generally most safely hidden when placed in the most exposed position, where no one would ever think of looking for them. On returning to New York the cabinet was again packed in one of Totty’s own boxes, but the will was temporarily concealed about her person, to be restored to its hiding-place as soon as she reached the town house.
Before leaving the neighbourhood George felt that it was his duty to apprise Constance and her sister of his departure, but he avoided the necessity of making a visit by writing a letter to Grace. It seemed to him more fitting that he should address his note to her rather than to her sister, considering all that had happened. He urged that both should return to New York before the winter began, and he inserted a civil message for Constance before he concluded.
Mamie took an affectionate leave of the place in which she had been so happy. During the last hours of the day preceding their return to town, George never left her side, while she wandered through the walks of the garden and beneath the beautiful trees, back to the house, in and out of the rooms, then lingered again upon the verandah and gazed at the distant river. He watched the movements of her faultless figure as she sat down for the last time in the places where they had so often sat together, then rose quickly, and, linking her arm in his, led him away to some other well-remembered spot.
“I have been so happy here!” she said for the hundredth time.
“You shall be as happy in other places, if I can make you so,” George answered.
“Shall we? Shall I?” she asked, looking up into his face. “Who can tell! One is never so sure of the future as one is of the past—and the present. Shall we take it all with us to our little house in New York? How funny it will seem to be living all alone with you in a little house! I shall not give you champagne every day, George. You need not expect it! It will be a very little house, and I shall do all the work.”
“If you will allow me to black the boots, I shall be most happy,” said George. “I know how.”
“Imagine! You, blacking boots!” exclaimed Mamie indignantly.