“That’s a very different thing. Now that he’s dead, and she’s got his money, it’s all very well that you should go to her occasionally; but I won’t have her here.”
“It’s natural that she should come to her father’s house at her father’s deathbed.”
“I hate to be told that things are natural. It always means humbug. I don’t suppose she cared for the old man any more than I did—or than she cared for the other old man who married her. People are such intense hypocrites. There’s my uncle John, pulling a long face because he has come into this house, and he will pull it as long as the body lies up there; and yet for the last twenty years there’s nothing on earth he has so much hated as going to see his father. When are they going to bury him?”
“On Saturday, the day after tomorrow.”
“Why couldn’t they do it tomorrow, so that we could get away before Sunday?”
“He only died on Monday, George,” said Kate, solemnly.
“Psha! Who has got the will?”
“Mr. Gogram. He was here yesterday, and told me to tell you and uncle John that he would have it with him when he came back from the funeral.”
“What has my uncle John to do with it?” said George, sharply. “I shall go over to Penrith this afternoon and make Gogram give it up to me.”
“I don’t think he’ll do that, George.”
“What right has he to keep it? What right has he to it at all? How do I know that he has really got the old man’s last will? Where did my grandfather keep his papers?”
“In that old secretary, as he used to call it; the one that stands in the dining-room. It is sealed up.”
“Who sealed it?”
“Mr. Gogram did—Mr. Gogram and I together.”
“What the deuce made you meddle with it?”
“I merely assisted him. But I believe he was quite right. I think it is usual in such cases.”
“Balderdash! You are thinking of some old trumpery of former days. Till I know to the contrary, everything here belongs to me as heir-at-law, and I do not mean to allow of any interference till I know for certain that my rights have been taken from me. And I won’t accept a deathbed will. What a man chooses to write when his fingers will hardly hold the pen, goes for nothing.”
“You can’t suppose that I wish to interfere with your rights?”
“I hope not.”
“Oh, George!”
“Well; I say, I hope not. But I know there are those who would. Do you think my uncle John would not interfere with me if he could? By ⸻! if he does, he shall find that he does it to his cost. I’ll lead him such a life through the courts, for the next two or three years, that he’ll wish that he had remained in Chancery Lane, and had never left it.”
A message was now brought up by the nurse, saying that Mrs. Greenow and Mr. Vavasor were going into the room where the old Squire was lying, “Would Miss Kate and Mr. George go with them?”
“Mr. Vavasor!” shouted out George, making the old woman jump. She did not understand his meaning in the least. “Yes, sir; the old Squire,” she said.
“Will you come, George?” Kate asked.
“No; what should I go there for? Why should I pretend an interest in the dead body of a man whom I hated and who hated me;—whose very last act, as far as I know as yet, was an attempt to rob me? I won’t go and see him.”
Kate went, and was glad of an opportunity of getting away from her brother. Every hour the idea was becoming stronger in her mind that she must in some way separate herself from him. There had come upon him of late a hard ferocity which made him unendurable. And then he carried to such a pitch that hatred, as he called it, of conventional rules, that he allowed himself to be controlled by none of the ordinary bonds of society. She had felt this heretofore, with a nervous consciousness that she was doing wrong in endeavouring to bring about a marriage between him and Alice; but this demeanour and mode of talking had now so grown upon him that Kate began to feel herself thankful that Alice had been saved.
Kate went up with her uncle and aunt, and saw the face of her grandfather for the last time. “Poor, dear old man!” said Mrs. Greenow, as the easy tears ran down her face. “Do you remember, John, how he used to scold me, and say that I should never come to good. He has said the same thing to you, Kate, I dare say?”
“He has been very kind to me,” said Kate, standing at the foot of the bed. She was not one of those whose tears stand near their eyes.
“He was a fine old gentleman,” said John Vavasor;—“belonging to days that are now gone by, but by no means the less of a gentleman on that account. I don’t know that he ever did an unjust or ungenerous act to anyone. Come, Kate, we may as well go down.” Mrs. Greenow lingered to say a word or two to the nurse, of the manner in which Greenow’s body was treated when Greenow was lying dead, and then she followed her brother and niece.
George did not go into Penrith, nor did he see Mr. Gogram till that worthy attorney came out to Vavasor Hall on the morning of the funeral. He said nothing more on the subject, nor did he break the seals on the old upright desk that stood in the parlour. The two days before the funeral were very wretched for all the party, except, perhaps, for Mrs. Greenow, who affected not to understand that her nephew was in a bad humour. She called him “poor George,” and treated all his incivility to herself as though it
