"If your nephew fails to comply with these conditions--that is to say, if being either a bachelor or a widower at the time of my decease, he fails to marry in all respects as I have here instructed him to marry, within Six calendar months from that time--it is my desire that he shall not receive the legacy, or any part of it. I request you, in the case here supposed, to pa.s.s him over altogether; and to give the fortune left you in my will to his married sister, Mrs. Girdlestone.
"Having now put you in possession of my motives and intentions, I come to the next question which it is necessary to consider. If, when you open this letter, your nephew is an unmarried man, it is clearly indispensable that he should know of the conditions here imposed on him, as soon, if possible, as you know of them yourself. Are you, under these circ.u.mstances, freely to communicate to him what I have here written to you? Or are you to leave him under the impression that no such private expression of my wishes as this is in existence; and are you to state all the conditions relating to his marriage, as if they emanated entirely from yourself?
"If you will adopt this latter alternative, you will add one more to the many obligations under which your friendship has placed me.
"I have serious reason to believe that the possession of my money, and the discovery of any peculiar arrangements relating to the disposal of it, will be objects (after my decease) of the fraud and conspiracy of an unscrupulous person. I am therefore anxious--for your sake, in the first place--that no suspicion of the existence of this letter should be conveyed to the mind of the person to whom I allude. And I am equally desirous--for Mrs. Girdlestone"s sake, in the second place--that this same person should be entirely ignorant that the legacy will pa.s.s into Mrs. Girdlestone"s possession, if your nephew is not married in the given time. I know George"s easy, pliable disposition; I dread the attempts that will be made to practice on it; and I feel sure that the prudent course will be, to abstain from trusting him with secrets, the rash revelation of which might be followed by serious, and even dangerous results.
"State the conditions, therefore, to your nephew, as if they were your own. Let him think they have been suggested to your mind by the new responsibilities imposed on you as a man of property, by your position in my will, and by your consequent anxiety to provide for the perpetuation of the family name. If these reasons are not sufficient to satisfy him, there can be no objection to your referring him, for any further explanations which he may desire, to his wedding-day.
"I have done. My last wishes are now confided to you, in implicit reliance on your honor, and on your tender regard for the memory of your friend. Of the miserable circ.u.mstances which compel me to write as I have written here, I say nothing. You will hear of them, if my life is spared, from my own lips--for you will be the first friend whom I shall consult in my difficulty and distress. Keep this letter strictly secret, and strictly in your own possession, until my requests are complied with. Let no human being but yourself know where it is, on any pretense whatever.
"Believe me, dear Admiral Bartram, affectionately yours,
"NOEL VANSTONE."
"Have you signed, sir?" asked Mrs. Lecount. "Let me look the letter over, if you please, before we seal it up."
She read the letter carefully. In Noel Vanstone"s close, cramped handwriting, it filled two pages of letter-paper, and ended at the top of the third page. Instead of using an envelope, Mrs. Lecount folded it, neatly and securely, in the old-fashioned way. She lit the taper in the ink-stand, and returned the letter to the writer.
"Seal it, Mr. Noel," she said, "with your own hand, and your own seal."
She extinguished the taper, and handed him the pen again. "Address the letter, sir," she proceeded, "to _Admiral Bartram, St.
Crux-in-the-Marsh, Ess.e.x._ Now, add these words, and sign them, above the address: _To be kept in your own possession, and to be opened by yourself only, on the day of my death_--or "Decease," if you prefer it--_Noel Vanstone._ Have you done? Let me look at it again. Quite right in every particular. Accept my congratulations, sir. If your wife has not plotted her last plot for the Combe-Raven money, it is not your fault, Mr. Noel--and not mine!"
Finding his attention released by the completion of the letter, Noel Vanstone reverted at once to purely personal considerations. "There is my packing-up to be thought of now," he said. "I can"t go away without my warm things."
"Excuse me, sir," rejoined Mrs. Lecount, "there is the Will to be signed first; and there must be two persons found to witness your signature."
She looked out of the front window, and saw the carriage waiting at the door. "The coachman will do for one of the witnesses," she said. "He is in respectable service at Dumfries, and he can be found if he happens to be wanted. We must have one of your own servants, I suppose, for the other witness. They are all de testable women; but the cook is the least ill-looking of the three. Send for the cook, sir; while I go out and call the coachman. When we have got our witnesses here, you have only to speak to them in these words: "I have a doc.u.ment here to sign, and I wish you to write your names on it, as witnesses of my signature."
Nothing more, Mr. Noel! Say those few words in your usual manner--and, when the signing is over, I will see myself to your packing-up, and your warm things."
She went to the front door, and summoned the coachman to the parlor.
On her return, she found the cook already in the room. The cook looked mysteriously offended, and stared without intermission at Mrs. Lecount.
In a minute more the coachman--an elderly man--came in. He was preceded by a relishing odor of whisky; but his head was Scotch; and nothing but his odor betrayed him.
"I have a doc.u.ment here to sign," said Noel Vanstone, repeating his lesson; "and I wish you to write your names on it, as witnesses of my signature."
The coachman looked at the will. The cook never removed her eyes from Mrs. Lecount.
"Ye"ll no object, sir," said the coachman, with the national caution showing itself in every wrinkle on his face--"ye"ll no object, sir, to tell me, first, what the Doec.u.ment may be?"
Mrs. Lecount interposed before Noel Vanstone"s indignation could express itself in words.
"You must tell the man, sir, that this is your Will," she said. "When he witnesses your signature, he can see as much for himself if he looks at the top of the page."
"Ay, ay," said the coachman, looking at the top of the page immediately.
"His last Will and Testament. Hech, sirs! there"s a sair confronting of Death in a Doec.u.ment like yon! A" flesh is gra.s.s," continued the coachman, exhaling an additional puff of whisky, and looking up devoutly at the ceiling. "Tak" those words in connection with that other Screepture: Many are ca"ad, but few are chosen. Tak" that again, in connection with Rev"lations, Chapter the First, verses One to Fefteen.
Lay the whole to heart; and what"s your Walth, then? Dross, sirs! And your body? (Screepture again.) Clay for the potter! And your life?
(Screepture once more.) The Breeth o" your Nostrils!"
The cook listened as if the cook was at church: but she never removed her eyes from Mrs. Lecount.
"You had better sign, sir. This is apparently some custom prevalent in Dumfries during the transaction of business," said Mrs. Lecount, resignedly. "The man means well, I dare say."
She added those last words in a soothing tone, for she saw that Noel Vanstone"s indignation was fast merging into alarm. The coachman"s outburst of exhortation seemed to have inspired him with fear, as well as disgust.
He dipped the pen in the ink, and signed the Will without uttering a word. The coachman (descending instantly from Theology to Business) watched the signature with the most scrupulous attention; and signed his own name as witness, with an implied commentary on the proceeding, in the form of another puff of whisky, exhaled through the medium of a heavy sigh. The cook looked away from Mrs. Lecount with an effort--signed her name in a violent hurry--and looked back again with a start, as if she expected to see a loaded pistol (produced in the interval) in the housekeeper"s hands. "Thank you," said Mrs. Lecount, in her friendliest manner. The cook shut up her lips aggressively and looked at her master. "You may go!" said her master. The cook coughed contemptuously, and went.
"We shan"t keep you long," said Mrs. Lecount, dismissing the coachman.
"In half an hour, or less, we shall be ready for the journey back."
The coachman"s austere countenance relaxed for the first time. He smiled mysteriously, and approached Mrs. Lecount on tiptoe.
"Ye"ll no forget one thing, my leddy," he said, with the most ingratiating politeness. "Ye"ll no forget the witnessing as weel as the driving, when ye pay me for my day"s wark!" He laughed with guttural gravity; and, leaving his atmosphere behind him, stalked out of the room.
"Lecount," said Noel Vanstone, as soon as the coachman closed the door, "did I hear you tell that man we should be ready in half an hour?"
"Yes, sir."
"Are you blind?"
He asked the question with an angry stamp of his foot. Mrs. Lecount looked at him in astonishment.
"Can"t you see the brute is drunk?" he went on, more and more irritably.
"Is my life nothing? Am I to be left at the mercy of a drunken coachman?
I won"t trust that man to drive me, for any consideration under heaven!
I"m surprised you could think of it, Lecount."
"The man has been drinking, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "It is easy to see and to smell that. But he is evidently used to drinking. If he is sober enough to walk quite straight--which he certainly does--and to sign his name in an excellent handwriting--which you may see for yourself on the Will--I venture to think he is sober enough to drive us to Dumfries."
"Nothing of the sort! You"re a foreigner, Lecount; you don"t understand these people. They drink whisky from morning to night. Whisky is the strongest spirit that"s made; whisky is notorious for its effect on the brain. I tell you, I won"t run the risk. I never was driven, and I never will be driven, by anybody but a sober man."
"Must I go back to Dumfries by myself, sir?"
"And leave me here? Leave me alone in this house after what has happened? How do I know my wife may not come back to-night? How do I know her journey is not a blind to mislead me? Have you no feeling, Lecount? Can you leave me in my miserable situation--?" He sank into a chair and burst out crying over his own idea, before he had completed the expression of it in words. "Too bad!" he said, with his handkerchief over his face--"too bad!"
It was impossible not to pity him. If ever mortal was pitiable, he was the man. He had broken down at last, under the conflict of violent emotions which had been roused in him since the morning. The effort to follow Mrs. Lecount along the mazes of intricate combination through which she had steadily led the way, had upheld him while that effort lasted: the moment it was at an end, he dropped. The coachman had hastened a result--of which the coachman was far from being the cause.
"You surprise me--you distress me, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "I entreat you to compose yourself. I will stay here, if you wish it, with pleasure--I will stay here to-night, for your sake. You want rest and quiet after this dreadful day. The coachman shall be instantly sent away, Mr. Noel. I will give him a note to the landlord of the hotel, and the carriage shall come back for us to-morrow morning, with another man to drive it."
The prospect which those words presented cheered him. He wiped his eyes, and kissed Mrs. Lecount"s hand. "Yes!" he said, faintly; "send the coachman away--and you stop here. You good creature! You excellent Lecount! Send the drunken brute away, and come back directly. We will be comfortable by the fire, Lecount--and have a nice little dinner--and try to make it like old times." His weak voice faltered; he returned to the fire side, and melted into tears again under the pathetic influence of his own idea.
Mrs. Lecount left him for a minute to dismiss the coachman. When she returned to the parlor she found him with his hand on the bell.
"What do you want, sir?" she asked.
"I want to tell the servants to get your room ready," he answered. "I wish to show you every attention, Lecount."
"You are all kindness, Mr. Noel; but wait one moment. It may be well to have these papers put out of the way before the servant comes in again. If you will place the Will and the Sealed Letter together in one envelope--and if you will direct it to the admiral--I will take care that the inclosure so addressed is safely placed in his own hands. Will you come to the table, Mr. Noel, only for one minute more?"