“You are a good fellow, George. The best proof of it is that not a word has been breathed about this affair. We have simply announced that the engagement is broken off.”
“Then Mamie has refused to change her mind,” observed George, wondering how he could ever have been engaged to marry her, and how he could have forgotten that at his last meeting with Sherry Trimm he had still left the matter open, refusing to withdraw his promise. But between that day and this he had lived through many emotions and changing scenes in the playhouse of his brain, and his own immediate past seemed immensely distant from his present.
“Mamie would not change her mind, if I would let her,” Trimm answered briefly. “Let us get to business. Here is the will. I opened it yesterday after the funeral in the presence of the family and the witnesses as usual in such cases.”
“Excuse me,” George said. “I am very glad that I was not present, but would it not have been proper to let me know?”
“It would have been, of course. But as there was no obligation in the matter, I did not. I supposed that you would hear of the death almost as soon as it was known. You and your father were known to be on bad terms with Tom and if you had been sent for it would have looked as though we had all known what was in the will. People would have supposed in that case that you must have known it also, and you would have been blamed for not treating the old gentleman with more consideration than you did. I have often heard you say sharp things about him at the club. This is a surprise to you. There is no reason for letting anybody suppose that it is not. A lot of small good reasons made one big good one between them.”
“I see,” said George. “Thank you. You were very wise.”
He took the document from Trimm’s hands and read it hastily. The touch of it was disagreeable to him as he remembered where he had last seen it.
“I had supposed that he would make another after what I said to him,” George remarked. “You are quite sure he did not?”
“Positive. He never allowed it to be out of his sight after he found it. It was under his pillow when he died. The last words that anybody could understand were to the effect that you should have the money, whether you wanted it or not. It was a fixed idea with him. I suppose you know why. He felt that some of it belonged to your father by right. The transaction by which he got it was legal—but peculiar. There are peculiarities in my wife’s family.”
Sherry Trimm looked away and pulled his grizzled moustache nervously.