“Miss Silver-I can’t!”
Miss Silver looked at her kindly but firmly.
“Indeed you can, my dear Miss Treherne. It is best for us to speak quite plainly. As matters stand, you are in continual fear of being obliged to suspect one or another of your relations. The situation is quite impossible, and it must be cleared up. If you withold information, I cannot help you. Let us continue. We will begin with your sister Mabel, Mrs. Wadlow.”
Chapter Four
Miss Silver’s notes:
“Mabel Wadlow:-Age 44. Nervous semi-invalid. Reads a great many novels-thrillers. Very fond of husband and children. Some sense of injury over father’s will.
Ernest Wadlow:-Age 52. Dilettante. Traveler. Writer. Never made much money by his books. Wife’s money not much in evidence. Miss Treherne obviously assists them.
Maurice Wadlow:-Age 23. Reading for the Bar. Socialistically inclined. Perhaps dearer to his parents than to Miss T. Anxiety on her part to be fair to him very marked. Probably clever, bumptious young man, too pleased with himself to please others. This merely conjecture.
Cherry Wadlow:-Age 19. Pretty girl. Out for a good time. Rather giddy. Nineteen usually either too giddy or too serious.
Ella Comperton:-Age 49. Daughter of Rollo Treherne’s elder sister Eliza. Spinster on small income. Small flat, small interests, small life. Some jealousy that younger cousin should be rich woman? Miss T’s tone that in which we speak of someone whom we commiserate but cannot really love.
Cosmo Frith:-Age 45. Another dilettante, but of a different type. All the talents but no executive ability. Jack of all trades and master of none. Unmarried. Fond of society, fond of pretty faces-Wein Weib und Gesang. Is a first cousin on the mother’s side, and Miss T. has a good deal of affection for him. Finances precarious.
Caroline Ponsonby:-Age 22. First cousin once removed of Miss T., Mrs. Wadlow, and Cosmo Frith. Miss T. has a great affection for this young girl. Described her in v. warm voice as ‘the dearest child.’ Small independent income.
Richard Treherne:-Age 26. First cousin once removed on the father’s side, being grandson of Rollo Treherne’s younger brother Maurice. Architect. Foot on bottom rung of ladder. Ambitious. Miss T. has put a certain amount of work in his way. From manner in which she spoke of there being no blood relationship between him and Caroline it is clear that she would welcome a match between them. Lord T. says, ‘In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. ’ Have not noticed that November has any chilling effect. Miss T. very warmly interested in both these young people.”
Chapter Five
Having taken down these notes, Miss Silver sat back in her chair and picked up the pale pink coatee.
“There-that is over,” she said, and began to knit. “And now, I am afraid, I must ask you what financial interest these relatives have in your death.”
Rachel Treherne met this question calmly, as one meets a long expected shock. She said,
“I knew you would ask me that, but it is not at all an easy question to answer. The circumstances are very unusual. I think I told you that my father had left me this money as a trust. He made no legal conditions as to how I was to dispose of it, but he told me what he wanted me to do, and I promised that I would carry out his wishes. Miss Silver, I do feel sure that I can trust you-you have really made me feel sure about that-but what I am going to tell you now concerns my father, and you won’t ever speak of it to anyone, will you, or-or write it down?”
Miss Silver looked at her. Miss Silver said,
“I will not speak of it, and I will not write it down.”
Rachel Treherne went on.
“My father ran away with my mother. She had a little money, and he had none. This is important, because it is what brings in my mother’s relations. Without her money he couldn’t have made a start, and so, in disposing of his fortune, he wished her relations to be considered on the same footing as his own. He took her to the United States, and they had a very hard struggle. They lost their first two children. It was ten years before Mabel was born, and I came five years later. Then my mother died. My father was only just getting along up till then, but the following year he began to make money. Everything he touched turned to gold. Oil was found on some land he had bought for a song. It made him an immensely wealthy man. He came back to this country and died here. The things he asked me to promise were these. It weighed on him that the man who had been his partner in buying the oil-field had not profited from it. There was some quarrel. The land was believed valueless. The partnership broke up, and Mr. Brent walked out. My father made a fortune, and it weighed on him that he ought to have shared it with Sterling Brent. He told me that he had always kept on the right side of the law, but that what mattered when you came to die was whether you had kept on the right side of your conscience. He had tried to find his old partner, but he hadn’t been able to. He told me the sum that was due to him, and he said I was never to touch it, and I was to go on trying to find Mr. Brent or his heirs. That was the first thing.”
“You have not been able to trace Mr. Brent?”
“No. It is so long ago that I think he must be dead. If he is not traced during my lifetime, the money is to endow a certain number of scholarships for Americans at Oxford and Cambridge, to be called the Brent Scholarships.”
Miss Silver gave an approving nod.
“Mr. Treherne expressed more than one wish, I think you said.”
“Yes. The other thing that I promised is much more difficult to carry out. He wished his money to come into the hands of those who would use it best. He considered that in the interval between his death and mine there would be changes in the characters and circumstances of the possible heirs. Children would be born, young people would grow up and marry. There might be deteriorations or improvements. There might be deaths. He did not feel able to decide on what was to happen to his money after another generation had passed, so he left the decision to me. That is not so unusual, though I was very young-too young. But what he asked me to promise was, I think, a very unusual thing. I was to make a new will every year. He said most people made their wills and forgot all about them. He wanted to insure that I would keep mine up-to-date. I was to go through it once a year and adjust the legacies in the light of what had happened during that year.”
Miss Silver’s needles clicked and checked. She said,
“Dear me-a very onerous task to lay upon a young girl.”
“I promised, and I have kept my promise. I don’t know that I would make such a promise today. But I was very young. I loved my father, and I would have done anything he asked of me.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“It did not occur to your father that you might marry?”
The color came into Rachel Treherne’s face. Not the brilliant flame of a little while back, but a faint, becoming flush.
“I don’t believe he did. Men are like that.”
Miss Silver was watching her.
“And you?”
Rachel Treherne laughed a little sadly.
“Oh, I thought about it-girls always do. But-well, since we are being so very frank, he thought I had too much money, and I thought he had too little courage. And after that I was much, much too busy.”
“It would have made it all a great deal easier for you if you had had a husband and children. But since you have no natural and undisputed heirs, this arrangement of Mr. Treherne’s must result in maintaining a continual state of excitement and uncertainty in the family-if it is known. Now, Miss Treherne, this is a very important question. Is it known?”
Rachel Treherne frowned. The frown made her look older. She said in a slow, vexed voice,
“I am afraid it is known.”