"You may well ask," Challoner replied grimly. "In the case of her dying unmarried her share in the mills and the rest of the Yorkshire property is left to Mr. Andrew Merriman, the partner and manager—a self-made man, who had the wit to get round old Mr. Smyrthwaite. He's feathered his own nest very tidily, it strikes me, one way and another. And the bulk of the invested property—prepare yourself for a pleasant surprise, Colonel—Joanna leaves, on trust, to her scrapegrace, rascally brother."
A flashlight hope of a solid legacy had momentarily illuminated Rentoul Haig's horizon. But the light of hope was extinguished almost as soon as kindled, giving him just time to be mortally disappointed. His face fell, while Challoner, watching, could barely repress his glee.
"But, but," he bubbled, "every one has been assured for years that the good-for-nothing boy was dead!"
"I don't want to be inhuman, but I can only say that, for the sake of my future wife's peace of mind, I most sincerely and cordially trust he is dead—dead and done with. Judging by what you told me yourself, Colonel, from a child he has been a downright bad lot, a regular waster. You may also be interested to hear we owe this precious bit of business to Mr. Adrian Savage. He came to Joanna, when he was over last, with some cock-and-bull story about young Smyrthwaite's turning up, half-starved, in Paris last winter. Worked upon her feelings no end with a whole lot of Frenchified false sentiment—brother and sister, the sacredness of family, and that sort of fluff-stuff. I am bound to say plainly I date the break-up of her health from that moment. He spoke to me about young Smyrthwaite, but, of course, I refused to touch it. Gave him a piece of my mind which I fancy he didn't quite relish, as he packed up and took himself off, on the quiet, next morning. As I told him, if he and Merriman wanted to dump the young scoundrel upon his two unfortunate sisters they mustn't look to me for assistance—the job, as I told him, wasn't in Joseph Challoner's line, not at all. Now, Colonel, I ought not to detain you any longer. I'm pleased to have had the chance to set your mind at ease on one or two points. And you'll do both Margaret and myself a favor if you will tell every one it was heart, just simply heart—a thing that might happen to any one of us, you or me, for instance, any day. Margaret will feel it very kind and thoughtful of you to call, like this at once, to inquire. Now I really must be off. Good-evening to you. Let you know the date of the funeral? Of course—good-evening."
And he swung up The Avenue, in the shrinking light, under the swaying, dripping trees, highly elate.
"Choked old froggy off neatly," he said to himself, "and got my knife into highty-tighty Cousin Adrian too. I wonder if he did carry on with Joanna. I'd give something to know—dare say it'll come out in time. Anyhow, he wouldn't touch her money; though it would have been bad policy to acquaint old Haig with that little fact. Better take the short-cut home. Stiff from standing so long in the wet; but it's worth while, if only for the fun of making old Haig feel so confoundedly cheap."
Supported by these charitable reflections, he turned off the main road into a footpath which, after skirting the gardens of a large villa facing on to The Avenue, struck northwestward across an as yet unreclaimed portion of the Baughurst Park Estate. By following this route Challoner took the base instead of the two sides of a triangle, thus saving about a quarter of a mile in his walk home to Heatherleigh. A dark plain of high, straggling heather, broken here and there by a thicker darkness of advancing ranks of self-sown firs, lay on either side the grayness of the sand and flint strewn track. Even in sunshine the region in question was cheerless, and, as seen now, in the driving rain and fading daylight, it bore a positively forbidding aspect. But to this Challoner, having returned to enumeration of his well-deserved blessings, was sublimely indifferent.
And among those blessings—here, alone, free to disregard conventional black-edged decencies and be honest with himself—Joanna Smyrthwaite's death, although an ugly suspicion of suicide did hang around it, might, he felt, be counted. Making the admission, he had the grace to feel slightly ashamed of his own cynicism. In the first shock of the tragedy, when Marion Chase sent for him in the morning, he had been genuinely troubled and overset. But, as the day wore on, the advantages of the melancholy event disclosed themselves more and more clearly. Joanna Smyrthwaite never liked him, considered him her social inferior, didn't mince matters in expressing her objection to her sister's engagement. Ignored him, when she got the chance, or snubbed him. Distinctly she'd done her best to make him feel awkward; and there was bound to be friction in the future both in their family relation and in the management of the Smyrthwaite property. Joanna was uncommonly strong. He, for one, had never underrated the force of her character. He even owned himself a trifle afraid of her, afraid of some pull—as he expressed it—that she might have over Margaret. Now he would have Margaret to himself, exclusively to himself—and Challoner's blood grew hot, notwithstanding the chill dreariness of wind and wet, thinking of that.
For his feeling toward Margaret Smyrthwaite had come to be the master power of his life, of all his schemes of self-aggrandizement. After the somewhat coarse and primitive manner of his kind, he was over head and ears in love with her. He was proud of her, almost sensitively anxious to please her; ready, for all his burly, bullying roughness, to play faithful dog, fetch and carry and slave for her. No woman had ever affected him or excited his passions as she did. In food he relished highly seasoned dishes to apprehend the flavor of which you do not need to shut your eyes and listen. And Margaret Smyrthwaite's attractions were of the highly seasoned order, the effect of her full-fleshed, slightly overdressed and overscented person presenting itself without any baffling reserve, frankly assailing and provoking the senses.—Oh! he'd treat her like a queen; work for her; buy her jewels, motor-cars, aeroplanes if she fancied them; pet, amuse, make Stourmouth bow down to, make himself a great man, for her!—Sir Joseph and Lady Challoner—a loftier flight than that—who could tell? Maybe a peerage. Lord and Lady Baughurst—why not? After all, if you play your cards cleverly enough such apparently improbable things do happen, particularly in this blessed twentieth century, when money is the prime factor.
And there was money in plenty, would be more, unless he was uncommonly out of his reckoning. At the start, so he calculated, their united incomes—his own and Margaret's—would amount to getting on for twelve thousand. All to the good, too, since there was no drain of a large landed estate absorbing more than half its yearly revenue in compulsory outgoings. They would be married soon, quite soon. Her sister's death and her present loneliness supplied ample reason for pushing on the wedding. It must be a quiet one, of course, out of respect for black-edged decencies. But he didn't object to that. The thing was to get her.—And then he'd carry her away, right away, shaking her free of the dismal, old-fashioned, Smyrthwaite rut altogether. They'd take a three months' honeymoon and travel somewhere, anywhere; go a yachting trip, say, up the Mediterranean. Never since he was a boy at school had he taken a holiday. It had been grind, grind, scheme, scheme, climb, climb without intermission. Not but what he'd climbed to some purpose, since he'd got high enough at forty to pluck such a luscious mouthful as Margaret off the apple-tree against which he'd set up his ladder! Now he would take a holiday, if only to show other men what a prize Joseph Challoner had won in the shape of a woman.