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<h2>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2> <blockquote>"Others besides Moses have struggled up the mountain only to be shown the promised land, and to hear the words: Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not pass over." </blockquote> The following morning saw Janey and Roger sitting opposite each other once more, but this time in his office-room, staring blankly at each other. In spite of her invariably quiet demeanour, she was trembling a little. "I am afraid you must believe it, Roger." "Good Lord!" was all Roger could say, evidently not for the first time. There was a long silence. "When did she tell you?" "This morning, after breakfast. She and Harry came in together when I was writing letters, hand in hand, as if they were in a novel, and she said they had been married three months." "Three months!" "Yes." "Why, they must have been married in June." "Yes." "Good Lord!" Janey told him how they had been married at Ipswich at a Registry Office. "Her brother,[Pg 299] who is a solicitor, was one of the witnesses. She showed me a copy of the certificate. She seems to have been very—methodical." "It won't hold. Poor Harry is a loony." "I hinted that, but she only smiled. I think she must have gone thoroughly into that before she took any step. And then she looked at him, and he said like a parrot that it was time he took his proper place in the world and managed his own affairs." "I never in my life heard such cheek." "After a bit I sent away Harry. He looked at her first before he obeyed, and she signed to him to go. She has got absolute control over him. And I tried to talk to her. She was very hard and bitter at first, and twitted me with having to put up with her as a sister-in-law. But I could not help being sorry for her. She was ashamed, I'm sure, of what she'd done, though she tried to carry it off with a high hand. She's not altogether a bad woman." "Isn't she? Well, she's near enough to satisfy me. I don't know what you call bad if kidnapping that poor softy isn't. But the marriage can't hold. It's ridiculous." "She says it will, and I think she'll prove to be right. She is a shrewd woman, and after all Harry is twenty-three. Besides, mother's always stuck to it that he was only backward, and she got together medical evidence to attest her view. Mother has always wanted to guard against Harry being passed over." [Pg 300] "Dick could leave the property to anyone he liked. It wasn't entailed. He was perfectly free to leave it to Jones, if he wanted to. Poor Jones! He's down with gout at the Lion. He won't get a shilling." "Yes. But mother foresaw that Dick might never get a will made. He never could get anything done. And I am afraid, Roger, that if he had made a will, mother would have got hold of it if she could." "Janey!" said Roger, deeply shocked. "You don't know what you're saying." "Oh yes, I do. I feel sure, if poor Dick had made a will, Aunt Jane and mother between them would have——" "Would have what?" "Would have destroyed it." "You simply don't know what you're saying. No one destroys a will. It's a very serious crime, punishable by law. And you are accusing your own mother of it." "Mother has done some strange things in her time," said Janey firmly. "It's no good talking about it or thinking about it, but Jones told me that when she went to Paris last autumn she looked through all Dick's papers, and went to see his lawyer." "I went to see him too, and he told me she had been, and had been very insistent that Dick had made a will and left it in his charge, and said that he wanted to make some alteration in it." [Pg 301] "Last autumn! But Dick was not capable then of wishing anything." "Last autumn, I tell you, since his illness." They both looked at each other. "Well, it's no use thinking of that at this moment," said Janey. "The question is, what is to be done about Nurse?" "Pay her up, and pack her off at once." "She's gone already. She said it was best that she should go. I've telegraphed for another. But she'll come back as Harry's legal wife, Roger, I do believe." "This medical evidence in Harry's favour—where does Aunt Louisa keep it?" "In her secretaire. She made me get it out, and read it to her since her last visit to Paris. I could not bear to look at it. It was all so false. And I know she showed it Nurse. It was after that Nurse worked so hard to make Harry more amenable, more like other people. She slaved with him. I believe she was quite disinterested at first." "She has certainly done him a lot of good." "And he's fond of her. He's frightened of her, but he likes her better than anyone, much better than me. Before she left she told every servant in the house, and the men in the garden. At least, she took Harry round with her and made him say to each one of them, 'This is my wife.' The whole village knows by now. And she has taken the medical evidence about[Pg 302] him. She made no secret of it. She said she sent it yesterday to her brother." "She stole it, in fact." "She said that as his wife she thought she ought to put it in safe keeping. I told her she need not have been afraid that we should destroy it. She said she knew that, but that those who deceived others never could trust anyone else. Roger, she has done a very wicked and shameless thing, for the sake of a livelihood, but I think she is suffering for it. And I believe, in spite of herself, she had a kind of devotion for mother. She had done so much for her. She never spared herself. She felt leaving her." "Did she ask about the will?" "No. I think there was a general feeling of surprise that the will was not read after the funeral." "Well, my good girl, how could we, when we couldn't find one?" "I know, I know. But what I mean is, it must soon be known that no will is forthcoming." "Of course it is bound to come out before long." "Have you asked Pike and Ditton, Dick's London men?" "Yes. I wrote to them days ago. They know of nothing. There is no will, Janey. We have got to make up our minds to it. Pritchard is coming over this morning about the probate, and I shall have to tell him." Something fierce crept into Janey's gentle face. [Pg 303] "Oh, Roger, it is such a shame!" she stammered. "If ever any man deserved Hulver it is you." "Dick once said so," said Roger. "Last time he was here, two years ago, that time he never came to the Dower House though I begged him to, and I went round the park with him, and showed him where I had cut down the oak avenue in the old drive. It went to my heart to do it, but he had left me no choice, insisted on it. And when he saw the old trees all down he was quite taken aback, and he said, 'Roger, it is you who ought to have had Hulver. You'd have kept it together, while I'm just pulling it to pieces stick by stick. I must reform, and come and settle down here, and marry Mary. By God I must.' That was the last time he was here, just before he sold the Liverpool property." "Everything seems to be taken from you, Roger," said Janey passionately. "And to think that this unscrupulous woman will have absolute power over everything!" "She will be able to turn me off," said Roger. "She will get in another agent—put in her brother, I should think. I always disliked her, and she knew it. Now she will be able to pay off old scores." Roger looked out of the window, and his patient, stubborn face quivered ever so slightly. It would have been a comfort to Janey to think that she should one day inherit Noyes, if[Pg 304] there had been any question of his sharing it with her. But the long-cherished hope that they might some day share a home together had died. It had died hard, it had taken a grievous time to die, but it was dead at last. And Janey had buried it, delved a deep grave for it in the live rock of her heart. "I don't see how I am ever to marry now," he said hoarsely. "I can't count on the two hundred a year from the agency and this cottage. Even that may go to-morrow. It wasn't much. It wasn't enough to set up house on, but even that is as good as gone." "I have thought lately that you had it in your mind to marry." A small tear suddenly jumped out of Roger's eye, and got held up in his rough cheek. "I want to marry Annette," he said. "Yes, my dear, I guessed it." "Dreadfully. You don't know, Janey. Dreadfully." "I know, my poor boy," she said,—"I know all about it." And she came and stood by him and patted his hand. For a moment Roger sobbed violently and silently against her shoulder. Then he drew himself away, and rummaged for his pocket-handkerchief. "You are a brick, Janey," he said gruffly. <hr /> [Pg 305] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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