Notwithstanding Part 34

"All the arrangements were so carefully made," she said softly, putting her little thumb into the big thumb of his glove, and finding where the mischief had started. He watched her without seeing her.

"I think everything went right," he said. "I hope it did, and Black did his part. I never heard him read so well."

"I thought the same."

Roger was so accustomed to hear this expression from Janey whenever he made a statement that he had long since ceased to listen to it.

"I'm thankful there was no hitch. I could not sleep last night, earache or something, and I had an uneasy feeling--very silly of me, but I could not get it out of my head--that one of those women would turn up and make a scene."

"From what you've told me, Mary Deane would never have done a thing like that."

"No. She was too proud, but there was the other one, the Fontainebleau one. I had a sort of idea _she_ might have been in the church. Queer things happen now and then. I didn't like to look round. Mustn't be looking about at a funeral. I suppose you didn't see anyone that might have been her?"

Janey laid down the glove.

"I didn't look round either," she said.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

"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 pa.s.s over."

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, 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 pa.s.sed over."

"d.i.c.k 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 s.h.i.+lling."

"Yes. But mother foresaw that d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k'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 d.i.c.k had made a will and left it in his charge, and said that he wanted to make some alteration in it."

"Last autumn! But d.i.c.k was not capable then of wis.h.i.+ng 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."