But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship,
And gazed upon him sallow from the storm."
George Meredith.
Roger went to Fontainebleau. He looked at the oaks as they came close up on both sides of the line, and thought that they needed thinning, and made a mental note of the inefficiency of French forestry. And he put up at an old-fashioned inn, with a prim garden in front, with tiny pebbled walks, and a fountain, and four stunted clipped acacia trees. And he found the doctor in the course of the next morning; and the doctor, who had not realized Dick's death under another name, gave him the notary's address; and the notary explained by means of an interpreter that Monsieur Le Geyt had warned him emphatically not to give up the will to his mother, if she came for it, or sent for it after his death. Only to Monsieur Roger Manvers his cousin, or Mademoiselle Manvers his sister.
And when Roger had presented his card, and the credentials with which his English lawyer had supplied him, the will was produced. The notary opened it, and showed him Dick's signature, almost illegible but still Dick's, and below it the doctor's and his own; and at the bottom of the sheet the two words, Annette Georges, in Annette's large childish handwriting. Roger's heart contracted, and for a moment he could see nothing but those two words. And the notary explained that the lady's signature had not been necessary, but she had witnessed it to pacify the dying man. Then Roger sat down, with a loudly hammering heart, and read the will slowly—translated to him sentence by sentence. It gave him everything: Hulver and Welmesley, and Swale and Scorby, and the Yorkshire and Scotch properties, and the street in the heart of Liverpool, and the New River Share. There was an annuity of five hundred a year out of the estate and the house at Aldeburgh to Harry, and the same sum to Mary Deane for life and then in trust to her daughter, together with a farm in Devonshire. But except for these bequests, everything was left to Roger. Dick had forgotten Jones his faithful servant, and he had forgotten also that he had parted with his New River Share the year before to meet his colossal losses on the day, still talked of in racing circles, when Flamingo ran out of the course. And the street in Liverpool, that gold mine, was mortgaged up to the hilt. But still in spite of all it was a fine inheritance. Roger's heart beat. He had been a penniless man all his life; and all his life he had served another's will, another's caprice, another's heedlessness. Now at last he was his own master. And Hulver, his old home, Hulver which he loved with passion as his uncle and his grandfather had loved it before him, Hulver was his.
Mechanically he turned the page and looked at the last words of the will upon it, and poor Dick's scrawl, and the signature of the witnesses. And all the joy ebbed out of his heart as quickly as it had rushed in as he saw again the two words, Annette Georges.
He did not sleep that night. He lay in a bed which held no rest for him, and a nameless oppression fell upon him. He was over-tired, and he had suffered severely mentally during the past week. And it seemed as if the room itself exercised some sinister influence over him. Surely the mustard-coloured roses of the wall-paper knew too much. Surely the tall gilt mirror had reflected and then wiped from its surface scenes of anguish and despair. Roger sat up in bed, and saw himself a dim figure with a shock head reflected in it. The moonlight lay in a narrow band upon the floor. The blind tapped against the window ledge. Was that a woman's white figure crouching near the window, with bent head against the pane! It was only the moonlight upon the curtain, together with the shadow of the tree outside. Roger got up and fastened the blind so that the tapping ceased, and then went back to bed again. But sleep would not come.
He had read over the translation of the will several times. It, and the will itself, were locked into the little bag under his pillow. His hand touched it from time to time.
And as the moonlight travelled across the floor, Roger's thoughts travelled also. His slow, honest mind never could be hurried, as those who did business with him were well aware. It never rushed, even to an obvious conclusion. It walked. If urged forward, it at once stood stock-still. But if it moved slowly of its own accord, it also evaded nothing.
Then Dick must have distrusted his mother just as Janey had done. Roger had been shocked by Janey's lack of filial piety, but he at once concluded that Dick must have "had grounds" for his distrust. It did not strike him that Janey and Dick might have had the same grounds—that some sinister incident locked away in their childish memories had perhaps warned them of the possibility of a great treachery.