The sordid moneyed class of England will haggle over bequests and settlements and dowries on their bridal eve, or by the coffins of their dead. Herminia had no such ignoble possibilities. How could he speak of it in her presence at a moment like this? How obtrude such themes on her august sorrow?
“This was drawn up,” Dr Merrick went on in his austere voice, “the very day before my late son left London. But, of course, you will have observed it was never executed.”
And in point of fact Herminia now listlessly noted that it lacked Alan’s signature.
“That makes it, I need hardly say, of no legal value,” the father went on, with frigid calm. “I bring it round merely to show you that my son intended to act honourably towards you. As things stand, of course, he has died intestate, and his property, such as it is, will follow the ordinary law of succession. For your sake, I am sorry it should be so; I could have wished it otherwise. However, I need not remind you”—he picked his phrases carefully with icy precision—“that under circumstances like these neither you nor your child have any claim whatsoever upon my son’s estate. Nor have I any right over it. Still”—he paused for a second, and that incisive mouth strove to grow gentle, while Herminia hot with shame, confronted him helplessly—“I sympathise with your position, and do not forget it was Alan who brought you here. Therefore, as an act of courtesy to a lady in whom he was personally interested . . . if a slight gift of fifty pounds would be of immediate service to you in your present situation, why, I think, with the approbation of his brothers and sisters, who of course inherit——”
Herminia turned upon him like a wounded creature. She thanked the blind caprice which governs the universe that it gave her strength at that moment to bear up under his insult. With one angry hand she waved dead Alan’s father inexorably to the door. “Go,” she said simply. “How dare you? how dare you? Leave my rooms this instant.”
Dr Merrick still irresolute, and anxious in his way to do what he thought was just, drew a roll of Italian bank notes from his waistcoat pocket, and laid them on the table. “You may find these useful,” he said, as he retreated awkwardly.
Herminia turned upon him with the just wrath of a great nature outraged. “Take them up!” she cried fiercely. “Don’t pollute my table!” Then, as often happens to all of us in moments of deep emotion, a Scripture phrase, long hallowed by childish familiarity, rose spontaneous to her lips. “Take them up!” she cried again. “Thy money perish with thee!”
Dr Merrick took them up, and slank noiselessly from the room, murmuring as he went some inarticulate words to the effect that he had only desired to serve her. As soon as he was gone, Herminia’s nerve gave way. She flung herself into a chair, and sobbed long and violently.
It was no time for her, of course, to think about money. Sore pressed as she was, she had just enough left to see her safely through her confinement. Alan had given her a few pounds for housekeeping when they first got into the rooms, and those she kept; they were hers; she had not the slightest impulse to restore them to his family. All he left was hers too, by natural justice; and she knew it. He had drawn up his will, attestation clause and all, with even the very date inserted in pencil, the day before they quitted London together; but finding no friends at the club to witness it, he had put off executing it; and so had left Herminia entirely to her own resources. In the delirium of his fever, the subject never occurred to him. But no doubt existed as to the nature of his last wishes; and if Herminia herself had been placed in a similar position to that of the Merrick family, she would have scorned to take so mean an advantage of the mere legal omission.
By this time, of course, the story of her fate had got across to England, and was being read and retold by each man or woman after his or her own fashion. The papers mentioned it, as seen through the optic lens of the society journalist, with what strange refraction. Most of them descried in poor Herminia’s tragedy nothing but material for a smile, a sneer, or an innuendo. The Dean himself wrote to her, a piteous, paternal note, which bowed her down more than ever in her abyss of sorrow. He wrote as a dean must—grey hairs brought down with sorrow to the grave; infinite mercy of Heaven; still room for repentance; but oh, to keep away from her pure young sisters! Herminia answered with dignity, but with profound emotion. She knew her father too well not to sympathise greatly with his natural view of so fatal an episode.