Peter and Jane; Or, The Missing Heir

by S. Macnaughtan

'I can go out to Spain, where he is supposed to have died,' said Peter, 'and make inquiries.'

'I want to ask you something,' said Jane, after a pause. 'Let us be married quietly, first of all, and then we can do everything together.'

'I 'm probably a pauper,' he said simply, 'without the right to a single stone of Bowshott. I went fully into my father's will with the lawyer last night, and he leaves nearly everything to the eldest son.'

'Dear Peter!' protested Jane, accepting Peter's statement, but brushing aside its purport.

They talked on far into the morning, at one time half distrusting the evidence of their eyes which read the letter, at another looking far into the future to try to pierce the veil of darkness that at present shrouded it. Then, for there were many things to do, the young man turned his face homeward again, and Jane sat on alone in the garden, looking with eyes that hardly were conscious of seeing what they rested on, while the wet branches of the beech trees rocked themselves together, and the tearful autumn sunshine flickered on the disordered beds of mignonette. She sat there until the stable clock struck one, then rose and went indoors. One important decision had been made. They would be married quietly on the day Mrs. Ogilvie had fixed for the wedding; and then together they would seek the brother who, if he were still alive, would be brother to them both.

But the Court of Chancery took that reasonable view of the case which, as it frequently happens, is directly opposed to the view-sentimental. The Court of Chancery, in fact, refused to sanction the marriage of a minor with a man without settled prospects, and one whose position in the world was not confirmed by the possession either of money or of lands. At the age of twenty-five Miss Erskine might do as she liked; until then the Court of Chancery decided that she should divide her time each year between her two guardians, with whom she had always lived. No protests were of any avail, and wise relations and friends were agreed in thinking that it was better to postpone the marriage, at least for a time.

The autumn passed miserably. Peter went to Juarez first of all, and proved to be substantially true what at first he had supposed might have been the disordered fancy of a sick woman's mind. There was no record of the death of Edward Ogilvie, nor did any entry in registers show the name of an English child in the year when he was supposed to have died. No little grave in the cemetery marked his resting-place. One fact, at least, seemed established, and that was that Peter's elder brother had not died in infancy at Juarez.

Not much more than this could be proved, and Peter returned home to find that for the present nothing was legally his. Pending inquiries Bowshott was closed. Those who were in ignorance of the real state of affairs talked glibly of enormous death-duties which had crippled, for a time, even the immense Ogilvie estates, and had rendered it necessary for Peter to shut up the house and live economically. The countryside, which called itself gay, met at many little parties and talked charitably of the woman who was gone, saying, with an unconscious sense of patronage, that they had always liked Mrs. Ogilvie in spite of her faults. Death, the great leveller, had brought their unapproachable neighbour nearer to them; they were not afraid of her now. It was strange to think that she was really less than one of themselves in the cold isolation and the pathetic impotence of the grave. They could hardly picture her yet as a powerless thing—the keen, narrowing eyes closed, the sharp-edged poniard of her speech for ever sheathed.

Meanwhile, papers were examined, and every box and chest which contained written matter was searched for a clue to the missing child. Peter was engaged in long consultations with detectives, and lawyers were running up goodly bills, and British Consuls were making investigations abroad. A whole train of inquiries was set in motion, and pens and tongues were busy. The powerful hand of the law stretched itself out in secret to this country and to that, only to be met with a baffling failure to hold or to discover anything. Money was spent lavishly, and great brains tried to solve the mystery; and Mrs. Ogilvie lay in her grave in a silence that could not be broken, her hand, which had traced the few lines on one sheet of notepaper, cold and still for ever.