The White Virgin Part 17

"Heaven only knows," said the Doctor. "Since my poor wife died she has been mistress here, and naturally very independent and womanly--a strange girl, my dear boy. I have been so wrapped up in my profession, that I have lost the habit of guiding her."

"But the servants--what do they say?"

"That your brother saw her to the door, and she went straight up to her bedroom and shut herself in. When I came back she had gone out again, leaving this letter. I am afraid, my boy, you will have to wait. But there! it will be all right. Poor child! she will be as humble to you as I am.--Yes!"

This was to the Doctor's confidential servant, who brought in half-a-dozen cards with pencilled appeals.

"Dear me! dear me!" said the Doctor, taking the cards. "Any one else?"

"Room's packed, sir."

"Clive, my dear boy, I must see my poor patients. There, there! go and wait patiently. I'll come on to-night. You will see to matters, and perhaps I shall have a letter from Janet, and you will be able to write to her or go and see her. There, there! We are all straight again?"

"My dear old friend!" cried Clive.

"That's right! I did see the lawyer last night. Go and be patient; matters are mending fast. One moment though. Clive, my dear boy, angry pa.s.sions rise; you will not go and see your brother."

"No, sir; he is keeping out of my way, or--"

"Eh? yes--or what?"

"I believe I should kill him."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

THE RICH MAN'S WILL.

Jessop Reed took good care that his brother should have no opportunity for meeting him to bring him to book, and during the interval before Grantham Reed's funeral the only news Clive heard of Janet was that she would be back to accompany her father to old Mr Reed's burial.

"There! my dear boy," said the Doctor; "I can do no more. You see she does not even give me her address. I believe, though, that she is down at Weymouth with the Hartleys."

This was on the day before the funeral, and Clive had to exercise a little more patience till after all was over.

He was calmer now. There was that awful presence in the gloomy old house, and he felt that it was no time to think of his own troubles or to attack his brother. These matters, in spite of the suffering they caused him, were put aside, and he sat in the study thinking of all that had pa.s.sed with the stern, kindly-hearted old man lying above there in his last sleep. Of how he had fought the world to ama.s.s wealth, and of this his last speculation, whose success he had been fated not to witness, cut off as he was just after his son's announcement of the wealth it must of a certainty produce.

It seemed to Clive to be a hard lesson in the vanity of human hopes; but he did not flinch from his task.

"It was his wish," he said to himself, "that the mine should come out triumphant, and it shall, for all our sakes."

As he mused, he thought of different business friends who had embarked in the speculation upon the base of his father's credit, but mainly upon the reports which he had sent home, his father having made these announcements to him during his absence in the replies to letters, the last being that the Doctor had bought heavily just before the shares bounded up and were still rising.

"Poor old father!" he said to himself; "he shall find that I will do my duty by it to the end, for I suppose he will leave me the management-- perhaps fully to take his place."

These business matters would intrude, and he did not cavil at them, for he knew that he was carrying out the old man's wishes.

Then came the thoughts of Janet again, and they were mingled with a bitter feeling of indignation against her for her readiness to think evil of one whose every thought had been true. But he knew that the reconciliation would be very sweet, and told himself that she was still but a girl, and that her character would ripen by and by.

"And be full of trust," he muttered.

Then the scene of her leaving that room, angry, jealous, and proud, leaning upon his brother's arm, came back, and a sensation of fierce anger thrilled him.

"A coward!" he muttered, "a base, miserable coward! Well, we shall meet to-morrow, and afterward the less we see one another in the future the better for both."

Then he hurriedly devoted himself to his father's papers, so as to change the current of his thoughts and try to check the throbbing of his brain.

The next day broke gloomy and chill, well in accordance with the solemn occasion. Grantham Reed had instructed that his funeral should be perfectly quiet, and that few people should be asked, but many came unbidden to show their respect for a business friend whose name had been a power in the City, his word as good as any bond.

Jessop came late, and took his place in the darkened drawing-room without a word; and, nearly the last, Doctor Praed arrived with Janet, in deep mourning, and her face hidden behind a thick c.r.a.pe veil, without a word pa.s.sing between her and either of the brothers, from both of whom she seemed to shrink.

A few of the oldest friends went up to see the dead; then Janet placed her hand upon her father's arm, and went to the solemn chamber, staying some time, and being led back hanging heavily upon her father's arm, sobbing bitterly and covering her face beneath her veil as she sank down in her seat.

Clive's heart throbbed and his eyes grew dim.

"G.o.d bless her!" he murmured to himself; "she did love him dearly."

He felt softened, and as if he could rush across the room, clasp her to his heart, and whisper that he was true, as staunch as steel to her, the darling of his heart, his first and only love.

But it was neither time nor place for such an action, and turning to his brother, he signed to him to come, and, in the midst of a silence broken only by Janet's sobs, they two went out and upstairs without a word, to stand by the open coffin where their father lay calmly as if in sleep.

"How can I feel enmity now!" thought Clive, "as we stand here before you, father, whom I shall see no more on earth? Am I to forgive him and wipe away the past?"

As the young man bent down in that solemn moment, the words of the old prayer came to him, and he breathed out, "As we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us," and tenderly kissed the broad forehead.

Then half-blinded he went out, conscious that his brother followed him closely down to the drawing-room, to listen, as Janet's sobs still rose from time to time, to the heavy footsteps overhead, the hurried rustling on the stairs, and then to rise when the door was opened, and pa.s.s out with his brother to the mourning-coach.

Two hours, and the party were back in the long, gloomy dining-room, well filled now, for of the many who followed, those most intimate had entered to hear the reading of the deceased's will.

The brothers were widely separated now, while the Doctor, who looked old and careworn, was seated near the family lawyer, who sat there at a table with a tin despatch-box by his elbow, the most important personage present. Janet was by her father's side, clinging to his hand, still closely veiled, but trembling and weak, while a faint, half-suppressed sob escaped from her lips at intervals.

A few remarks were made by old friends, but the importance of the occasion acted as a check, and there was a sigh of relief as the deceased's old legal friend cleared his throat, put on his gla.s.ses, and took them off again twice to rub away imaginary blurrings which obscured his sight.

Then he began to read the various clauses of the will, which was singularly free from repet.i.tion, being concise, business-like, and clear in the extreme.

Clive, as he sat back in his chair, half closed his eyes, for to him it was as if his father were speaking, and all sounded so matter-of-fact that he felt that he had nothing to learn at first. Everything nearly was as he expected to hear; while Jessop, who kept his eyes rigidly fixed upon the lawyer's lips, smiled in a peculiar way as he found how prophetic he had been.

There were the minor bequests to servants of small sums and six or twelve months' wages; a snuff-box to this old friend, a signet ring to another, the watch and chain "to my dear trusty old friend Peter Praed, doctor of medicine; also one hundred pounds as a slight remuneration for his services as co-executor." And so on, and so on, till the lawyer turned over a sheet and paused for a few moments before beginning again, amidst profound silence now, for the more interesting portion of the will was to come.

In brief. "To my son Jessop Reed, the interest of twenty-one thousand pounds, two and a half per cent, bank-stock, to be paid to him during the term of his life quarterly by my executors, the aforesaid Peter Praed and Clive Reed, the capital sum of twenty-one thousand pounds reverting at the death of my said son Jessop Reed to my estate."

"Exactly what I expected," said Jessop, with a smile of indifference.

"Five hundred a year, eh?"

"About, sir," said the old lawyer gravely. Then, after sitting attent, as if expecting another question, he coughed again, and went on.

"I give and bequeath to my son, Clive Reed, the whole of my interest in the `White Virgin' mine, together with everything of which I die possessed in shares, bank-stocks, freehold and leasehold property, begging him that he will act in his possession thereof as a true and just man, and the steward of a large estate committed to his charge. I do this believing that he will carry out my wishes in connection with the said property for his own benefit, as well as for that of many friends who have embarked their money in my last enterprise, the aforesaid `White Virgin' mine."

The lawyer read the few remaining words connected with the signature amidst a murmur of congratulations, in the midst of which Jessop started up, black with fury and disappointment.