“Well, my dear, well. Your parents might reasonably have looked—my dear brother was very impulsive in some ways—I can’t doubt but that he intended to make proper provision. But he kept his affairs very much to himself—too much. However, at such a time—to judge the beloved dead—! No, no. For the same reason I can’t press you——”
“No—please do not,” she said, and turned to the window. He left her.
The will, then, was read before the Rector and Mrs. James, Miss Germain, and Miss Hester Germain, and produced its effect. It bore the date of a month before the testator’s second marriage and was expressed to be made in view of that coming ceremony, and to take the place of any settlement. It left her Porchfield House in Farlingbridge, “otherwise known as the Dowry House,” with all its furniture and household gear, and three thousand pounds a year charged upon his Southover estate “so long as she remain chaste and unmarried.” Mr. Dockwra, solicitor, slurred his phrase, excusing it. Mrs. James liked it extremely. In the case of remarriage, Mary was to have five hundred pounds. That was all, said Mr. Dockwra, so far as Mrs. Germain was concerned; and he only said this much because he was asked by Mrs. James Germain if there was no further reference to her. For the rest the deceased gave handsome legacies to his sisters, though they were otherwise provided for, and liberal remembrances to his servants—annuities calculated upon their years of service; and referred to the fact that the Southover property and the London property alike were in strict settlement upon his own children, should he have any, and, failing them, upon his brother James.
Mr. Dockwra then produced a small bundle of papers. “There was a codicil,” he said, “which bore date the 26th of August—a week before Mr. Germain’s wedding. By this document he left five hundred a year to “my cousin Tristram Duplessis,” so long as he remained unmarried.” Thus tersely expressed, the Rector started as if he had been shot, and his wife compressed her lips.
“I think that I should explain,” said Mr. Dockwra, “that this codicil was not drawn by me, and that I had no knowledge of its existence until the day after Mr. Germain’s death. Mr. James Germain, however, as executor, handed me then the sealed envelope containing it. That envelope contained one other paper—a telegram, which (as it has no obvious reference to the disposition) may have been put there by oversight. I shall hand it now to Mr. Germain.”
The Rector took it, opened it, looked at it, and raised his eyebrows. Presently he put it quietly on the table before him. Mrs. James, without turning her head, read it. It was very short—Middleham, Hill-street, Berkeley-square—Look out. Mrs. James smiled at her thoughts—and presently left the room.
Mary must now be told what she had not cared to hear. The Rector broke her the contents of the will but said nothing of the codicil. He had not asked his wife the meaning of that second document, and did not mean to. It pointed to a domestic mystery. Without being a prude, all such matters were distasteful to him.
He was very kind, as he had always been. “You will be very comfortably left, you see, Mary,” he said, “at any rate, let us say, while you are looking about you.”
Mary had shown no more than a polite interest in his report. Three thousand a year? Porchfield? She may have been dazed, but she certainly was not dazzled. James Germain reflected to himself on the ease with which one gets acclimatized. Little more than two years ago this child was working hard for sixty pounds a year; now she hears that she is secured three thousand—without moving a muscle.
“I need not tell you,” he went on, “that your home is here or at Southover for any length of time convenient to you. Indeed, I am sure I might include the Rectory in my general invitation. We have been so nearly related; I could not bear to think the tie severed by my dear brother’s death. Apart from that, we have learned to love each other, I hope. I shall always look upon you as one of us—if you will let me; and your settlement at Porchfield will be a reason the more to keep me at Southover.”