Anne Hereford. Mrs. Henry Wood
as they went upstairs, I and Mr. Barley following.
The key of the cabinet lay in the corner of the drawer where I had placed it. Mr. Edwin Barley took it from me and opened the cabinet. But no will was to be seen.
"I did not think of looking here," he observed; "my wife never used the cabinet to my knowledge. There is no will here."
There was no will anywhere, apparently. Drawers were opened; her desk, standing now on the drawers, was searched; all without effect.
"It is very extraordinary," said Mr. Gregg to him.
"I can only come to one conclusion--that my wife must have destroyed it herself. It is true the keys were lying about for several hours subsequent to her death, at anybody's command; but who would steal a will?"
"I do not suppose Mrs. Edwin Barley would destroy it," dissented Mr. Gregg. "Nothing can be more improbable. She expressed her happiness at having been able to make a will; her great satisfaction. Who left the keys about, sir?"
"The blame of that lies with Charlotte Delves. It escaped her memory to secure them, she tells me: and in the confusion of the sudden blow, it is not to be wondered at. But, and if the keys were left about? I have honest people in my house, Mr. Gregg."
"Who benefited by the will?" asked Mr. Barley of the Oaks, he having helped in the search, and was now looking on with a face of puzzled concern. "Who comes into the money, Gregg?"
"Ay, who?" put in Mr. Edwin Barley.
"This little girl, Anne Ursula Hereford. Mrs. Edwin Barley bequeathed to her the whole of her money, and also her trinkets, except the trinkets that had been your own gift to her, Mr. Edwin Barley." And he proceeded to detail the provisions of the short will. "In fact, she left to Miss Hereford everything of value she had to leave; money, clothes, trinkets. It is most strange where the will can be."
"It is more than strange," observed Mr. Edwin Barley. "Why did she wish to make the will in secret?"
"I have told you, sir, that she did not say why."
"But can you not form an idea why?"
"It occurred to me that she thought you might not like her leaving all she had away from you, and might have feared you would interfere."
"No," he quietly said, "I should not have done that. Every wish that she confided to me should have been scrupulously carried out."
"Oh, but come, you know! a big sheet of parchment, sealed and inscribed, can't vanish in this way," exclaimed Mr. Barley. "It must be somewhere in the room."
It might be, but nobody could find it. Mr. Barley got quite excited and angry: Mr. Edwin was calm throughout. Mr. Barley went to the door, calling out for Miss Delves.
"Charlotte, come up here. Do you hear, Charlotte?"
She ran up quickly, evidently wondering.
"Look here," cried Mr. Barley, "Mrs. Edwin's will can't be found. It was left in this cabinet, my brother is told."
"Oh, then Mrs. Edwin did make a will?" was the response of Charlotte Delves.
"Yes; but it is gone," repeated Mr. Barley of the Oaks.
"It cannot be gone," said Charlotte. "If the will was left in the cabinet, there it would be now."
The old story was gone over again; nothing more. The will had been made, and as certainly placed there. The servants were honest, not capable of meddling with that or anything else. But there was no sign or symptom of a will left.
"It is very strange," exclaimed Mr. Edwin Barley, looking furtively from the corner of his black eyes at most of us in succession, as if we were in league against him or against the will. "I will have the house searched throughout."
The search took place that same evening. Himself, his brother, Mr. Gregg, and Charlotte Delves taking part in it. Entirely without success.
And in my busy heart there was running a conviction all the while, that Mr. Edwin Barley had himself made away with the will.
"Will you not act in accordance with its provisions, sir?" Mr. Gregg asked him as he was leaving.
"I do not think I shall," said Mr. Edwin Barley. "Produce the will, and every behest in it shall be fulfilled. Failing a will, my wife's property becomes mine, and I shall act as I please by it."
The days went by; ten unhappy days. I spent most of my time with Miss Delves, seeing scarcely anything of Mr. Edwin Barley. Part of the time he was staying at his brother's, but now and then I met him in the passages or the hall. He would give me a nod, and pass by. I cannot describe my state of feeling, or how miserable the house appeared to me: I was as one unsettled in it, as one who lived in constant discomfort, fear, and dread; though, of what, I could not define. Jemima remarked one day that "Miss Hereford went about moithered, like a fish out of water."
The will did not turn up, and probably never would: neither was any clue given to the mystery of its disappearance. Meanwhile rumours of its loss grew rife in the household and in the neighbourhood: whether the lawyer talked, or Mr. Barley of the Oaks, and thus set them afloat, was uncertain, but it was thought to have been one or the other. I know I had said nothing; Charlotte Delves said she had not; neither, beyond doubt, had Mr. Edwin Barley. When an acquaintance once asked him whether the report was true, he answered Yes, it was true so far as that Mr. Gregg said his late wife had made a will, and it could not be found; but his own belief was that she must have destroyed it again; he could not suspect any of the household would tamper with its mistress's private affairs.
One day Mr. Edwin Barley called me to him. I was standing by the large Michaelmas daisy shrub, and he passed along the path.
"Are you quite sure," he asked in his sternest tone, but perhaps it was only a serious one, "that you did not reopen the cabinet yourself, and do something with the parchment?"
"I never opened it again, sir. If I had, my aunt must have seen me. And I could not have done so," I added, recollecting myself, "for she kept the bunch of keys under her pillow."
"She was the only one, though, who knew where it was placed," muttered Mr. Edwin Barley to himself in allusion to me, as he walked on.
"It's a queer start about that will!" Jemima resentfully remarked that same night when she was undressing me. "And I don't half like it; I can tell you that, Miss Hereford. They may turn round on me next, and say I made away with it."
"That's not likely, Jemima. The will would not do you any good. Do you think it will ever be found?"
"It's to be hoped it will--with all this unpleasantness! I wish I had never come within hearing of it for my part. The day old Gregg and the young man were here, Charlotte Delves got hold of me, pumping me on this side, pumping me on that. Had they been up to Mrs. Edwin Barley? she asked: and what had their business been with her? She didn't get much out of me, but it made me as cross as two sticks. It is droll where the will can have gone! One can't suspect Mr. Edwin Barley of touching it; and I don't; but the loss makes him all the richer. That's the way of the world," concluded Jemima: "the more money one has, the more one gets added to it. It is said that he comes into possession of forty thousand pounds by the death of Philip King."
The ten days' sojourn in the desolate house ended, and then Charlotte Delves told me I was going to leave it. In consequence of the death of Selina, the trustees had assigned to Mrs. Hemson the task of choosing a school for me. Mrs. Hemson had fixed on one near to the town where she resided, Dashleigh; and I was to pass a week at Mrs. Hemson's house before entering it. On the evening previous to my departure, a message came from Mr. Edwin Barley that I was to go to him in the dining-room. Charlotte Delves smoothed my hair with her fingers; and sent me in. He was at dessert: fruit and wine were on the table; and John set a chair for me. Mr. Edwin Barley put some walnuts that he cracked and a bunch of grapes on my plate.
"Will you take some wine, little girl?"
"No, thank you, sir. I have just had tea."
Presently