The Prisoners of Hartling

by J. D. Beresford

They sat close together in silence, happy in each other's company, and attentive to nothing that was going on around them until their interest was aroused by the voice of Mr Fleet, speaking in a raised tone that was evidently meant to carry. He was a tall, spare man, almost completely bald, with a long thin nose and an expression of careworn good nature. He looked, Arthur thought, rather like a benevolent old stork, and he kept clearing his throat as he spoke with a queer little croak that was curiously birdlike.

It seemed that he was painfully aware at this moment of the importance of what he had to say and that the knowledge embarrassed him. Whether by accident or design, a certain grouping had been effected that gave him the centre of the stage. He was standing with his back to the great carved stone mantelpiece that was one of the features of the Hartling drawing-room, with a clear space between him and the eight people who in their characteristic ways were exhibiting the various indications of the intense excitement that was stirring them. After all those years of waiting and uncertainty they were about to learn the truth, at last. They had awakened from their long nightmare of impalpable, inoppugnable resistances to the grateful sanity of everyday life. And they hoped. They had good cause for hope. After all, it could not be so bad for them now. The old man had never had any spite against them. He had been generous in his own quiet way. He would have done the right thing by them.

Only Miss Kenyon, Arthur thought, looked doubtful and uneasy. She sat a little apart from the others and something of her habitual resolution and confidence had gone from her. For the first time since he had known her, Arthur saw her truly as her father's daughter. She too, perhaps, suffered from some intrinsic weakness of character, a weakness that had been hidden by the commanding office she had held in the household....

"No need in this case," the embarrassed lawyer was saying, "to await any formal occasion. I have, as a matter of fact, the will in my bag upstairs. But it is so unusually simple and—and I might almost say drastic, that no direct reference to it is necessary."

Arthur and Eleanor looked at each other with a little start of surprise. They had never before doubted the legend of that untidy will.

"Er—er—er—in short," Mr Fleet continued, wiping his forehead, "the will could, in this case, certainly have been written on a half-sheet of note-paper. Er—er—it was made in '84, thirty-six years ago, soon after Mrs Kenyon's death. And—er—er—" his hesitation and distress became positively painful—"er—in short—he—he left everything absolutely to Miss Kenyon—to Miss Esther Kenyon—at her absolute disposal—er—there were no legacies of any other kind, and Miss Kenyon is the sole executrix."

Eleanor's hand had crept into Arthur's and at this announcement clasped his with such a sudden grip of anguish that he almost cried out. Then his heart seemed to miss a beat as realisation burst on him, and his eyes turned as the eyes of every other person in the room inevitably turned, to stare at Miss Kenyon.

She was sitting very upright in her chair, gazing out before her with a look of rapt contemplation. Her right hand was lightly clenched as if she grasped a sceptre, and her widely opened eyes had the cruel, predatory stare of a hawk.

And clear and bright, a text from the Old Testament leapt into Arthur's mind. How did it go? "Whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions."

Eleanor had suddenly leaned upon him and the grasp of her hand was relaxed.