Old Mr. Tredgold

“I know everything, sir, as master did. I got him up, sir, and I put him to bed. There was never one in the house as did a thing for him but me. Miss Katherine she can tell as I never neglected him; never was out of the way when he wanted me; had no ’olidays, sir.” Harrison’s voice quivered as he gave this catalogue of his own perfections, as if with pure self-admiration and pity he might have broken down.

“It will be remembered in your favour,” said Mr. Sturgeon. “Now tell me precisely what happened.”

“Nothing at all happened, sir,” Harrison said.

“What, nothing? You can swear to it? In all these five, six years, nobody came from the village, town—whatever you call it—whom he consulted with, who had any documents to be signed, nothing, nobody at all?”

“Nothing!” said Harrison with solemnity, “nothing! I’ll take my Bible oath; now and then there was a gentleman subscribing for some charity, and there was the doctor every day or most every day, and as many times as I could count on my fingers there would be some one calling, that gentleman, sir,” he said suddenly, pointing to Mr. Turny, who looked up alarmed as if accused of something, “as was staying in the house.”

“But no business, no papers signed?”

“Hadn’t you better speak to the doctor, Sturgeon? He knew more of him than anyone.”

“Not more nor me, sir,” said Harrison firmly; “nobody went in or out of master’s room that was unknown to me.”

“This is all very well,” said Bob Tredgold, “but it isn’t the will. I don’t know what you’re driving at; but it’s the will as we want—my poor brother’s daughter here, and me.”

“I think, Miss Katherine,” said the lawyer, “that I’d rather talk it over with—with Mr. Turny, who is the other executor, and perhaps with the doctor, who could tell us something of your father’s state of mind.”

“What does it all mean?” Katherine said.

“I’d rather talk it over first; there is a great deal of responsibility on our shoulders, between myself and Mr. Turny, who is the other executor. I am sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Katherine.”

“Oh, it is of no consequence,” Katherine said. “Shall I leave you here? Nobody will interrupt you, and you can send for me if you want me again. But perhaps you will not want me again?”

“Yes, I fear we shall want you.” The men stood aside while she went away, her head bowed down under the weight of her veil. But Robert Tredgold opposed her departure. He caught her by the cloak and held her back. “Stop here,” he said, “stop here; if you don’t stop here none of them will pay any attention to me.”

“You fool!” cried the lawyer, pushing him out of the way, “what have you got to say to it? Take up your bag, and mind your business; the will is nothing to you.”

“Don’t speak to him so,” cried Katherine. “You are all so well off and he is poor. And never mind,” she said, touching for a moment with her hand the arm of that unlovely swaying figure, “I will see that you are provided for, whether it is in the will or not. Don’t have any fear.”

The lawyer followed her with his eyes, with a slight shrug of his shoulders and shake of his head. Dr. Burnet met her at the door as she went away.

“They have sent for me,” he said; “I don’t know why. Is there anything wrong? Can I be of any use?”

“I know of nothing wrong. They want to consult you, but I don’t understand on what subject. It is a pity they should think it’s necessary to go on with their business to-day.”

“They have to go back to town,” he said.

“Yes, to be sure, I suppose that is the reason,” she answered, and with a slight inclination of her head she walked away.

But no one spoke for a full minute after the doctor joined them; they stood about in the much gilded, brightly decorated room, in the outer portion outside that part which Katherine had separated for herself. Her table, with its vase of flowers, her piano, the low chair in which she usually sat, were just visible within the screen. The dark figures of the men encumbered the foreground between the second fireplace and the row of long windows opening to the ground. Mr. Sturgeon stood against one of these in profile, looking more than ever like some strange bird, with his projecting spectacles and long neck and straggling beard and hair.

“You sent for me, I was told,” Dr. Burnet said.

“Ah, yes, yes.” Mr. Sturgeon turned round. He threw himself into one of the gilded chairs. There could not have been a more inappropriate scene for such an assembly. “We would like you to give us a little account of your patient’s state, doctor,” he said, “if you will be so good. I don’t mean technically, of course. I should like to know about the state of his mind. Was he himself? Did he know what he was doing? Would you have said he was able to take a clear view of his position, and to understand his own intentions and how to carry them out?”

“Do you mean to ask me if Mr. Tredgold was in full possession of his faculties? Perfectly, I should say, and almost to the last hour.”

“Did he ever confide in you as to his intentions for the future, Doctor? I mean about his property, what he meant to do with it? A man often tells his doctor things he will tell to no one else. He was very angry with his daughter, the young lady who ran away, we know. He mentioned to you, perhaps, that he meant to disinherit her—to leave everything to her sister?”

“My poor brother,” cried Bob Tredgold, introducing himself to Dr. Burnet with a wave of his hand, “I’m his only brother, sir—swore always as he’d well provide for me.”

Dr. Burnet felt himself offended by the question; he had the instinctive feeling so common in a man who moves in a limited local circle that all his own affairs were perfectly known, and that the expectations he had once formed, and the abrupt conclusion to which they had come, were alluded to in this quite uncalled for examination.

“Mr. Tredgold never spoke to me of his private affairs,” he said sharply. “I had nothing to do with his money or how he meant to leave it. The question was one of no interest to me.”

“But, surely,” said the lawyer, “you must in the course of so long an illness have heard him refer to it, make some remark on the subject—a doctor often asks, if nothing more, whether the business affairs are all in order, whether there might be something a man would wish to have looked to.”

“Mr. Tredgold was a man of business, which I am not. He knew what was necessary much better than I did. I never spoke to him on business matters, nor he to me.”

There was another pause, and the two city men looked at each other while Dr. Burnet buttoned up his coat significantly as a sign of departure. At last Mr. Turny with his bald head shining said persuasively, “But, you knew, he was very angry—with the girl who ran away.”

“I knew only what all the world knew,” said Dr. Burnet. “I am a very busy man, I have very little time to spare. If that is all you have to ask me, I must beg you to–”

“One minute,” said the solicitor, “the position is very serious. It is very awkward for us to have no other member of the family, no one in Miss Tredgold’s interest to talk it over with. I thought, perhaps, that you, Dr. Burnet, being I presume, by this time, an old family friend as well as–”

“I can’t pretend to any such distinction,” he said quickly with an angry smile, for indeed although he never showed it, he had never forgiven Katherine. Then it occurred to him, though a little late, that these personal matters might as well be kept to himself. He added quickly, “I have, of course, seen Miss Tredgold daily, for many years.”

“Well,” said Mr. Sturgeon, “that’s always something, as she has nobody to stand by her, no relation, no husband—nothing but—what’s worse than nothing,” he added with a contemptuous glance at Robert Tredgold, who sat grasping his bag, and looking from one to another with curious and bewildered eyes.

Dr. Burnet grew red, and buttoned up more tightly than ever the buttons he had undone. “If I can be of any use to Miss Tredgold,” he said. “Is there anything disagreeable before her—any prohibition—against helping her sister?”

“Dr. Burnet,” said the solicitor imperiously, “we can find nothing among Mr. Tredgold’s papers, and I have nothing, not an indication of his wishes, except the will of eighteen hundred and seventy-one.”

CHAPTER XXXVII

When Katherine came into the room again at the call of her father’s solicitor it was with a sense of being unduly disturbed and interfered with at a moment when she had a right to repose. She was perhaps half angry with herself that her thoughts were already turning so warmly to the future, and that Stella’s approaching arrival, and the change in Stella’s fortunes which it would be in her power to make, were more and more occupying the foreground of her mind, and crowding out with bright colours the sombre spectacle which was just over, and all the troublous details of the past. When a portion of one’s life has been brought to an end by the closure of death, something to look forward to is the most natural and best of alleviations. It breaks up the conviction of the irrevocable, and opens to the soul once more the way before it, which, on the other hand, is closed up and ended. Katherine had allowed that thought to steal into her mind, to occupy the entire horizon. Stella was coming home, not merely back, which was all that she had allowed herself to say before, but home to her own house, or rather to that which was something still more hers than her own by being her sister’s. There had been, no doubt, grievances against Stella in Katherine’s mind, in the days when her own life had been entirely overshadowed by her sister’s; but these were long gone, long lost in boundless, remorseful (notwithstanding that she had nothing to blame herself with) affection and longing for Stella, who after all was her only sister, her only near relation in the world. She had begun to permit herself to dwell on that delightful thought. It had been a sort of forbidden pleasure while her father lay dead in the house, and she had felt that every thought was due to him, that she had not given him enough, had not shown that devotion to him of which one reads in books, the triumph of filial love over every circumstance. Katherine had not been to her father all that a daughter might have been, and in these dark days she had much and unjustly reproached herself with it. But now everything had been done for him that he could have wished to be done, and his image had gone aside amid the shadows of the past, and she had permitted herself to look forward, to think of Stella and her return. It was a great disturbance and annoyance to be called again, to be brought back from the contemplation of those happier things to the shadow of the grave once more—or, still worse, the shadow of business, as if she cared how much money had come to her or what was her position. There would be plenty—plenty to make Stella comfortable she knew, and beyond that what did Katherine care?

The men stood up again as she came in with an air of respect which seemed to her exaggerated and absurd—old Mr. Turny, who had known her from a child and had allowed her to open the door for him and run errands for him many a day, and the solicitor, who in his infrequent visits had never paid any attention to her at all. They stood on each side letting her pass as if into some prison of which they were going to defend the doors. Dr. Burnet, who was there too, closely buttoned and looking very grave, gave her a seat; and then she saw her Uncle Robert Tredgold sunk down in a chair, with Mr. Sturgeon’s bag in his arms, staring about him with lack-lustre eyes. She gave him a little nod and encouraging glance. How small a matter it would be to provide for that unfortunate so that he should never need to carry Mr. Sturgeon’s bag again! She sat down and looked round upon them with for the first time a sort of personal satisfaction in the thought that she was so wholly independent of them and all that it was in their power to do—the mistress of her own house, not obliged to think of anyone’s pleasure but her own. It was on her lips to say something hospitable, kind, such as became the mistress of the house; she refrained only from the recollection that, after all, it was her father’s funeral day.

“Miss Tredgold,” said the solicitor, “we have now, I am sorry to say, a very painful duty to perform.”

Katherine looked at him without the faintest notion of his meaning, encouraging him to proceed with a faint smile.

“I have gone through your late lamented father’s papers most carefully. As you yourself said yesterday, I have possessed his confidence for many years, and all his business matters have gone through my hands. I supposed that as I had not been consulted about any change in his will, he must have employed a local solicitor. That, however, does not seem to have been the case, and I am sorry to inform you, Miss Tredgold, that the only will that can be found is that of eighteen hundred and seventy-one.”

“Yes?” said Katherine indifferently interrogative, as something seemed to be expected of her.

“Yes—the will of eighteen hundred and seventy-one—nearly eight years ago—drawn out when your sister was in full possession of her empire over your late father, Miss Tredgold.”

“Yes,” said Katherine, but this time without any interrogation. She had a vague recollection of that will, of Mr. Sturgeon’s visit to the house, and the far-off sound of stormy interviews between her father and his solicitor, of which the girls in their careless fashion, and especially Stella, had made a joke.

“You probably don’t take in the full significance of what I say.”

“No,” said Katherine with a smile, “I don’t think that I do.”

“I protested against it at the time. I simply cannot comprehend it now. It is almost impossible to imagine that in present circumstances he could have intended it to stand; but here it is, and nothing else. Miss Tredgold, by this will the whole of your father’s property is left over your head to your younger sister.”

“To Stella!” she cried, with a sudden glow of pleasure, clapping her hands. The men about sat and stared at her, Mr. Turny in such consternation that his jaw dropped as he gazed. Bob Tredgold was by this time beyond speech, glaring into empty space over the bag in his arms.

Then something, whether in her mind or out of it, suggested by the faces round her struck Katherine with a little chill. She looked round upon them again, and she was dimly aware that someone behind her, who could only be Dr. Burnet, made a step forward and stood behind her chair. Then she drew a long breath. “I am not sure that I understand yet. I am glad Stella has it—oh, very glad! But do you mean that I—am left out? Do you mean– I am afraid,” she said, after a pause, with a little gasp, “that is not quite just. Do you mean really everything—everything, Mr. Sturgeon?”

“Everything. There is, of course, your mother’s money, which no one can touch, and there is a small piece of land—to build yourself a cottage on, which was all you would want, he said.”

Katherine sat silent a little after this. Her first thought was that she was balked then altogether in her first personal wish, the great delight and triumph of setting Stella right and restoring to her her just share in the inheritance. This great disappointment struck her at once, and almost brought the tears to her eyes. Stella would now have it all of her own right, and would never know, or at least believe, what had been Katherine’s loving intention. She felt this blow. In a moment she realised that Stella would not believe it—that she would think any assertion to that effect to be a figment, and remained fully assured that her sister would have kept everything to herself if she had had the power. And this hurt Katherine beyond expression. She would have liked to have had that power! Afterwards there came into her mind a vague sense of old injustice and unkindness to herself, the contemptuous speech about the cottage, and that this was all she would want. Her father thought so; he had thought so always, and so had Stella. It never occurred to Katherine that Stella would be anxious to do her justice, as she would have done to Stella. That was an idea that never entered her mind at all. She was thrown back eight years ago to the time when she lived habitually in the cold shade. After all, was not that the one thing that she had been certain of all her life? Was it not a spell which had never been broken, which never could be broken? She murmured to herself dully: “A cottage—which was all I should want.”

“I said to your father at the time everything that could be said.” Mr. Sturgeon wanted to show his sympathy, but he felt that, thoroughly as everybody present must be persuaded that old Tredgold was an old beast, it would not do to say so in his own house on his funeral day.

The other executor said nothing except “Tchich, tchich!” but he wiped his bald head with his handkerchief and internally thanked everything that he knew in the place of God—that dark power called Providence and other such—that Katherine Tredgold had refused to have anything to say to his Fred. Dr. Burnet was not visible at all to Katherine except in a long mirror opposite, where he appeared like a shadow behind her chair.

“And this poor man,” said Katherine, looking towards poor Bob Tredgold, with his staring eyes; “is there nothing for him?”

“Not a penny. I could have told you that; I have told him that often enough. I’ve known him from a boy. He shall keep his corner in my office all the same. I didn’t put him there, though he thinks so, for his brother’s sake.”

“He shall have a home in the cottage—when it is built,” said Katherine, with a curious smile; and then she became aware that in both these promises, the lawyer’s and her own, there was a bitter tone—an unexpressed contempt for the man who was her father, and who had been laid in his grave that day.

“I hope,” she said, “this is all that is necessary to-day; and may I now, if you will not think it ungracious, bid you good-bye? I shall understand it all better when I have a little time to think.”

She paused, however, again after she had shaken hands with them. “There is still one thing. I am going to meet my sister when she arrives. May I have the—the happiness of telling her? I had meant to give her half, and it is a little disappointment; but I should like at least to carry the news. Thanks; you must address to her here. Of course she will come at once here, to her own home.”

She scarcely knew whose arm it was that was offered to her, but took it mechanically and went out, not quite clear as to where she was going, in the giddiness of the great change.

“This is a strange hearing,” Dr. Burnet said.

“How kind of you to stand by me! Yes, it is strange; and I was pleasing myself with the idea of giving back the house and her share of everything besides to Stella. I should have liked to do that.”

“It is to be hoped,” he said, “that she will do the same by you.”

“Oh, no!” she cried with a half laugh, “that’s impossible.” Then, after a pause, “you know there’s a husband and children to be thought of. And what I will have is really quite enough for me.”

“There is one thing at your disposal as you please,” he said in a low voice. “I have not changed, Katherine, all these years.”

“Dr. Burnet! It makes one’s heart glad that you are so good a man!”

“Make me glad, that will be better,” he said.

Katherine shook her head but said nothing. And human nature is so strange that Dr. Burnet, after making this profession of devotion, which was genuine enough, did not feel so sorry as he ought to have done that she still shook her head as she disappeared up the great stairs.

Katherine went into her room a very different woman from the Katherine who had left it not half-an-hour before. Then she had entertained no doubt that this was her own house in which she was, this her own room, where in all probability she would live all her life. She had intended that Stella should have the house, and yet that there should always be a nook for herself in which the giver of the whole, half by right and wholly by love, should remain, something more than a guest. Would Stella think like that now that the tables were turned, that it was Katherine who had nothing and she all? Katherine did not for a moment imagine that this would be the case. Without questioning herself on the subject, she unconsciously proved how little confidence she had in Stella by putting away from her mind all idea of remaining here. She had no home; she would have no home unless or until the cottage was built for which her father had in mockery, not in kindness, left her the site. She looked round upon all the familiar things which had been about her all her life; already the place had taken another aspect to her. It was not hers any longer, it was a room in her sister’s house. She wondered whether Stella would let her take her favourite things—a certain little cabinet, a writing table, some of the pictures. But she did not feel any confidence that Stella would allow her to do so. Stella liked to have a house nicely furnished, not to see gaps in the furniture. That was a small matter, but it was characteristic of the view which Katherine instinctively took of the whole situation. And it would be vain to say that it did not affect her. It affected her strongly, but not as the sudden deprivation of all things might be supposed to affect a sensitive mind. She had no anticipation of any catastrophe of the kind, and yet now that it had come she did not feel that she was unprepared for it. It was not a thing which her mind rejected as impossible, which her heart struggled against. Now that it had happened, it fitted in well enough to the life that had gone before.

Her father had never cared for her, and he had loved Stella. Stella was the one to whom everything naturally came. Poor Stella had been unnaturally depressed, thrown out of her triumphant place for these six years; but her father, even when he had uttered that calm execration which had so shaken Katherine’s nerves but never his, had not meant any harm to Stella. He had not been able to do anything against her. Katherine remembered to have seen him seated at his bureau with that large blue envelope in his hand. This showed that he had taken the matter into consideration; but it had not proved possible for him to disinherit Stella—a thing which everybody concluded had been done as soon as she left him. Katherine remembered vaguely even that she had seen him chuckling over that document, locking it up in his drawer as if there was some private jest of his own involved. It was the kind of jest to please Mr. Tredgold. The idea of such a discovery, of the one sister who was sure being disappointed, and the other who expected nothing being raised to the heights of triumph, all by nothing more than a scratch of his pen, was sure to please him. She could almost hear him chuckling again at her own sudden and complete overthrow. When she came thus far Katherine stopped herself suddenly with a quick flush and sense of guilt. She would not consciously blame her father, but she retained the impression on her mind of his chuckle over her discomfiture.

Thus it will be seen that Katherine’s pain in the strange change was reduced by the fact that there was no injured love to feel the smart. She recognised that it was quite a thing that had been likely, though she had not thought of it before, that it was a thing that other people would recognise as likely when they heard of it. Nobody, she said to herself, would be very much surprised. It was unnatural, now she came to think of it, that she should have had even for a moment the upper hand and the extreme gratification, not to say superiority, of restoring Stella. Perhaps it was rather a mean thing to have desired it—to have wished to lay Stella under such an obligation, and to secure for herself that blessedness of giving which everybody recognised. Her mind turned with a sudden impulse of shame to this wish, that had been so strong in it. Everybody likes to give; it is a selfish sort of pleasure. You feel yourself for the moment a good genius, a sort of providence, uplifted above the person, whoever it may be, upon whom you bestow your bounty. He or she has the inferior position, and probably does not like it at all. Stella was too careless, too ready to grasp whatever she could get, to feel this very strongly; but even Stella, instead of loving her sister the better for hastening to her with her hands full, might have resented the fact that she owed to Katherine’s gift what ought to have been hers by right. It was perhaps a poor thing after all. Katherine began to convince herself that it was a poor thing—to have wished to do that. Far better that Stella should have what she had a right to by her own right and not through any gift.