CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE TIME FOR ACTION.

Yes, it was their father's will--the will they had vainly hunted for a year ago, little thinking what manner of will it was; executed when Eleanor was a baby in long clothes, and providing for their inheritance of that enormous English fortune. When they were a little recovered from the shock of this last overwhelming surprise, Mr. Brion broke the seal of the document, and formally and solemnly read it to them. It was very short, but perfectly correct in form, and the testator (after giving to his wife, in the event of her surviving him, the sole control of the entire property, which was unentailed, for her lifetime) bequeathed to his younger daughters, and to any other children who might have followed them, a portion of thirty thousand pounds apiece, and left the eldest, Elizabeth, heiress of Yelverton and residuary legatee. Patty and Eleanor were thus to be made rich beyond _their_ dreams of avarice, but Elizabeth, who had been her father's favourite, was to inherit a colossal fortune. That was, of course, supposing such wealth existed in fact as well as in the imagination of this incredible madman. Paul and his father found themselves unable to conceive of such a thing as that any one in his senses should possess these rare and precious privileges, so passionately desired and so recklessly sought and sinned for by those who had them not, and should yet abjure, them voluntarily, and against every natural temptation and moral obligation to do otherwise. It was something wholly outside the common course of human affairs, and unintelligible to men of business. Both of them felt that they must get out of the region of romance and into the practical domain of other lawyers' offices before they could cope effectively with the anomalies of the case. As it stood, it was beyond their grasp. While the girls, sitting together by the table, strove to digest the meaning of the legal phrases that had fallen so strangely on their ears, Mr. Brion and Paul exchanged _sotto voce_ suggestions and opinions over the parchment spread out before them. Then presently the old man opened a second document, glanced silently down the first page, cleared his throat, and looking over his spectacles, said solemnly, "My dears, give me your attention for a few minutes."

Each changed her position a little, and looked at him steadily. Paul leaned back in his chair, and put his hand over his eyes.

"What I have just been reading to you," said Mr. Brion, "is your father's last will and testament, as I believe. It appears that his surname was Yelverton, and that King was only an abbreviation of his Christian name--assumed as the surname for the purpose of eluding the search made for him by his family. Now, certain circumstances have come to our knowledge lately, referring, apparently, to this inexplicable conduct on your father's part." He paused, coughed, and nervously smoothed out the sheets before him, glancing hither and thither over their contents. "Elizabeth, my dear," he went on, "I think you heard Mr. Yelverton's account of his uncle's strange disappearance after--ahem--after a certain unfortunate catastrophe?"

"Yes," said Elizabeth. "We all know about that."

"Well, it seems--of course we must not jump at conclusions too hastily, but still it appears to me a reasonable conjecture--that your father and Mr. Yelverton's lost uncle _were_ one and the same person. The affair altogether is so extraordinary, so altogether unaccountable, on the face of it, that we shall require a great deal of proof--and of course Mr. Yelverton himself will require the very fullest and most absolute legal proof--before we can accept the theory as an established fact--"

"Did I not say so?" Elizabeth interrupted eagerly, surprised by the old man's sudden assumption of scepticism now that all doubt and uncertainty seemed to be over. "I wish that nothing should be done--that no steps of any sort should be taken--until it is all proved to the last letter."

"Well," said Mr. Brion, at once abandoning his cautious attitude, "we must take steps to obtain proof before we _can_ obtain it. And, as it providentially happens, we have received the most opportune and, as I believe, the most unimpeachable testimony from Mr. Yelverton himself, who is the loser by our gain, and who gave us the information which is so singularly corroborated in these documents before the existence of such documents was known to anybody. But if more were wanted--"

"More _is_ wanted," urged Elizabeth. "We cannot take advantage of his own admissions to ruin him."

"If more were wanted," Mr. Brion repeated, with growing solemnity of manner, "we have here a paper under your father's hand, and duly witnessed by the same persons who witnessed the will--where are you going, Paul?" For at this point Paul rose and walked quietly towards the door.

"Go on," said the young man. "I will come back presently."

"But where are you going?" his father repeated with irritation. "Can't you wait until this business is finished?"

"I think," said Paul, "that the Miss Kings--the Miss Yelvertons, I suppose I ought to say--would rather be by themselves while you read that paper. It is not just like the will, you know; it is a private matter--not for outsiders to listen to."

Elizabeth rose promptly and went towards him, laying her hand on his arm. "Do you think we consider _you_ an outsider?" she said, reproachfully. "You are one of us--you are in the place of our brother--we want you to help us now more than we have ever done. Come and sit down--that is, of course, if you can spare time for our affairs when you have so many important ones of your own."

He went and sat down, taking the seat by Patty to which Elizabeth pointed him. Patty looked up at him wistfully, and then leaned her elbows on the table and put her face in her hands. Her lover laid his arm gently on the back of her chair.

"Shall I begin, my dear?" asked the lawyer hesitatingly. "I am afraid it will be painful to you, Elizabeth. Perhaps, as Paul says, it would be better for you to read it by yourselves. I will leave it with you for a little while, if you promise faithfully to be very careful with it."

But Elizabeth wished it to be read as the will was read, and the old man, vaguely suspecting that she might be illegally generous to the superseded representative of the Yelverton name and property, was glad to keep the paper in his own hands, and proceeded to recite its contents. "I, Kingscote Yelverton, calling myself John King, do hereby declare," &c.

It was the story of Kingscote Yelverton's unfortunate life, put on record in the form of an affidavit for the benefit of his children, apparently with the intention that they should claim their inheritance when he was gone. The witnesses were an old midwife, long since dead, and a young Scripture reader, now a middle-aged and prosperous ecclesiastic in a distant colony; both of whom the lawyer remembered as features of the "old days" when he himself was a new-comer to the out-of-the-world place that counted Mr. King as its oldest inhabitant. It was a touching little document, in the sad story that it told and the severe formality of the style of telling it. Kingscote Yelverton, it was stated, was the second of three brothers, sons of a long line of Yelvertons of Yelverton, of which three, however, according to hereditary custom, only one was privileged to inherit the ancestral wealth. This one, Patrick, a bachelor, had already come into his kingdom; the youngest, a briefless barrister in comfortable circumstances, had married a farmer's daughter in very early youth (while reading for university honours during a long vacation spent in the farmer's house), and was the father of a sturdy schoolboy while himself not long emancipated from the rule of pastors and masters; and Kingscote was a flourishing young captain in the Guards--when the tragedy which shattered the family to pieces, and threw its vast property into Chancery, took place. Bradenham Abbey was neighbour to Yelverton, and Cuthbert Leigh of Bradenham was kin to the Yelvertons of Yelverton. Cuthbert Leigh had a beautiful daughter by his first wife, Eleanor D'Arcy; when this daughter was sixteen her mother died, and a stepmother soon after took Eleanor D'Arcy's place; and not long after the stepmother came to Bradenham Cuthbert Leigh himself died, leaving an infant son and heir; and not long after _that_ Mrs. Cuthbert Leigh married again, and her new husband administered Bradenham--in the interest of the heir eventually, but of himself and his own children in the meantime. So it happened that Elizabeth Leigh was rather elbowed out of her rights and privileges as her father's daughter; which being the case, her distant cousin and near friend, Mrs. Patrick Yelverton, mother of the ill-fated brothers (who lived, poor soul, to see her house left desolate), fetched the girl away from the home which was hers no more, and took her to live under her own wing at Yelverton. Then the troubles began. Elizabeth was young and fair; indeed, all accounts of her agreed in presenting the portrait of a woman who must have been irresistible to the normal and unappropriated man brought into close contact with her. At Yelverton she was the daily companion of the unwedded master of the house, and he succumbed accordingly. As an impartial chronicler, I may hazard the suggestion that she enjoyed a flirtation within lady-like limits, and was not without some responsibility in the matter. It was clear also that the dowager Mrs. Patrick, anxious to see her first-born suitably married and settled, and placed safely beyond the reach of designing farmers' daughters, contrived her best to effect a union between the two. But while Patrick was over head and ears in love, and Elizabeth was dallying with him, and the old mother planning new furniture for the stately rooms where the queen was to reign who should succeed her, Kingscote the guardsman--Kingscote, the handsome, strong-willed, fiery-tempered second son--came home. To him the girl's heart, with the immemorial and incurable perversity of hearts, turned forthwith, like a flower to the sun; and a very short furlough had but half run out when she was as deeply over head and ears in love with Kingscote as Patrick was with her. Kingscote also loved her passionately--on his own testimony, he loved her as never man loved before, though he made a proud confession that he had still been utterly unworthy of her; and so the materials for the tragedy were laid, like a housemaid's fire, ready for the match that kindled them. Elizabeth found her position untenable amid the strenuous and conflicting attentions bestowed on her by the mother and sons, and went away for a time to visit some of her other relatives; and when her presence and influence were withdrawn from Yelverton, the smothered enmity of the brothers broke out, and they had their first and last and fatal quarrel about her. She had left a miniature of herself hanging in their mother's boudoir; this miniature Patrick laid hands on, and carried off to his private rooms; wherefrom Kingscote, in a violent passion (as Elizabeth's accepted lover), abstracted it by force. Then the master of the house, always too much inclined to assert himself as such, being highly incensed in his turn at the liberty that had been taken with him, marched into his brother's bedroom, where the disputed treasure was hidden, found it, and put it in his breast until he could discover a safer place for it. They behaved like a pair of ill-regulated schoolboys, in short, as men do when love and jealousy combine to derange their nervous systems, and wrought their own irreparable ruin over this miserable trifle. Patrick, flushed with a lurid triumph at his temporary success, strolled away from the house for an aimless walk, but afterwards went to a gamekeeper's cottage to give some instructions that occurred to him. The gamekeeper was not at home, and the squire returned by way of a lonely track through a thick plantation, where some of the keeper's work had to be inspected. Here he met Kingscote, striding along with his gun over his shoulder. The guardsman had discovered his loss, and was in search of his brother, intending to make a calm statement of his right to the possession of the picture by virtue of his rights in the person of the fair original, but at the same time passionately determined that this sort of thing should be put a stop to. There was a short parley, a brief but fierce altercation, a momentary struggle--on one side to keep, on the other to take, the worthless little bone of contention--and it was all over. Patrick, sent backward by a sweep of his strong brother's arm, fell over the gun that had been carelessly propped against a sapling; the stock of the gun, flying up, was caught by a tough twig which dragged across the hammers, and as the man and the weapon tumbled to the ground together one hammer fell, and the exploded charge entered the squire's neck, just under the chin, and, passing upward to the brain, killed him. It was an accident, as all the family believed; but to the author of the mischance it was nothing less than murder. He was guilty of his brother's blood, and he accepted the portion of Cain--to be a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of the earth--in expiation of it. Partly with the idea of sparing pain and disgrace to his family (believing that the only evidence available would convict him of murder in a court of law), and partly because he felt that, if acquitted, it would be too horrible and impossible to take an inheritance that had come to him by such means, in the overwhelming desperation of his remorse and despair he took that determination to blot himself out which was never afterwards revoked. Returning to the house, he collected some money and a few valuables, and, unsuspected and unnoticed, took leave of his home, and his name, and his place in the world, and was half way to London, and beyond recall, before the dead body in the plantation was discovered. In London Elizabeth Leigh was staying with an old Miss D'Arcy, quietly studying her music and taking a rest while the society which was so fond of her was out of town; and the stricken man could not carry out his resolve without bidding farewell to his beloved. He had a clandestine interview with Elizabeth, to whom alone he confided the circumstances of his wretched plight. The girl, of course, advised him to return to Yelverton, and bravely meet and bear whatever might befall; and it would have been well for him and for her if he had taken that advice. But he would not listen to it, nor be turned from his fixed purpose to banish and efface himself, if possible, for the rest of his life; seeing which, the devoted woman chose to share his fate. Whether he could and should have spared her that enormous sacrifice, or whether she was happier in making it than she would otherwise have been, only themselves ever knew. She did her woman's part in helping and sustaining and consoling him through all the blighted years that he was suffered to live and fret her with his brooding melancholy and his broken-spirited moroseness, and doubtless she found her true vocation in that thorny path of love.

The story, as told by himself for the information of his children (who, as children ever do, came in time to have interests of their own that transcended in importance those that were merely personal to their parents), was much more brief and bald than this, and the reading of it did not take many minutes. When he had finished it, in dead silence, the lawyer took from the packet of papers a third and smaller document, which he also proceeded to read aloud to those whom it concerned. This proved to be a certificate of the marriage of Kingscote Yelverton and Elizabeth Leigh, celebrated in an obscure London parish by a curate who had been the bridegroom's Eton and Oxford chum, and witnessed by a pair of humble folk who had had great difficulty in composing their respective signatures, on the 25th of November in the year 1849. And, finally, half-folded round the packet, there was a slip of paper, on which was written--"Not to be opened until my death."

"And it might never have been opened until you were _all_ dead!" exclaimed the lawyer, holding up his hands. "He must have meant to give it to you at the last, and did not reckon on being struck helpless in a moment when his time came."

"Oh, poor father!" sobbed Elizabeth, whose head lay on the table, crushed down in her handkerchief. And the other sisters put their arms about her, Patty with a set white face and Eleanor whimpering a little. But Mr. Brion and Paul were incensed with the dead man, and could not pity him at present.

It was late before the two friendly advisers, summoned to dinner by their landlady, went back to No. 7, and they did not like going. It did not seem to them at all right that the three girls should be left alone under present circumstances. Mr. Brion wanted to summon Mrs. Duff-Scott, or even Mrs. M'Intyre, to bear them company and see that they did not faint, or have hysterics, or otherwise "give way," under the exceptional strain put upon their nervous systems. Then he wanted them to come next door for that dinner which he felt they must certainly stand much in need of, and for which they did not seem to have adequate materials; or to let him take them to the nearest hotel, or to Mrs. Duff-Scott's; or, at least, to permit him to give them some brandy and water; and he was genuinely distressed because they refused to be nourished and comforted and appropriately cared for in any of these ways.

"We want to be quiet for a little, dear Mr. Brion, that we may talk things over by ourselves--if you don't mind," Elizabeth said; and the tone of her voice silenced all his protests. The old man kissed them, for the first time in his life, uttering a few broken words of congratulation on the wonderful change in their fortunes; and Paul shook hands with great gravity and without saying anything at all, even though Patty, looking up into his inscrutable face, mutely asked for his sympathy with her wistful, wet eyes. And they went away.

As they were letting themselves out of the house, assisted by the ground-floor domestic, who, scenting mystery in the air, politely volunteered to open the hall door in order that she might investigate the countenances of the Miss Kings' visitors and perchance gather some enlightenment therefrom, Patty, dry-eyed and excited, came flying downstairs, and pounced upon the old man.

"Mr. Brion, Mr. Brion, Elizabeth says she hopes you will be _sure_ not to divulge what we have discovered to _anybody_," she panted breathlessly (at the same time glancing at her lover's back as he stood on the door-step). "It is of the utmost consequence to her to keep it quiet for a little longer."

"But, my dear, what object can Elizabeth have in waiting _now?_ Surely it is better to have it over at once, and settled. I thought of walking up to the club by-and-bye, with the papers, and having a word with Mr. Yelverton."

"Of course it is better to have it over," assented Patty.

"I know your time is precious, and I myself am simply frantic till I can tell Mrs. Duff-Scott. So is Elizabeth. But there is something she must do first--I can't tell you the particulars--but she _must_ have a few hours' start--say till to-morrow evening--before you speak to Mr. Yelverton or take any steps. I am sure she will do _whatever_ you wish, after that."

The lawyer hesitated, suspicious of the wisdom of the delay, but not seeing how much harm could happen, seeing that he had all the precious documents in his own breast pocket; then he reluctantly granted Patty's request, and the girl went upstairs again with feet not quite so light as those that had carried her down. Upstairs, however, she subordinated her own interests to the consideration of her sister's more pressing affairs.

"Elizabeth," she said, with fervid and portentous solemnity, "this is a crisis for you, and you must be bold and brave. It is no time for shilly-shallying--you have twenty-four hours before you, and you must _act_. If you don't, you will see that he will just throw up everything, and be too proud to take it back. He will lose all his money and the influence for good that it gives him, and _you_ will lose _him_."

"How shall I act?" asked Elizabeth, leaning instinctively upon this more courageous spirit.

"How?" echoed Patty, looking at her sister with brilliant eyes. "Oh!" drawing a long breath, and speaking with a yearning passion that it was beyond the power of good grammar to express--"oh, if it was only _me!_"