the rosewood box

Mr. Tertius dropped the telegram on the little table at which he and Peggie were sitting, and betrayed his feelings with a deep groan. Peggie, who was just about to give him his second cup of tea, set down her teapot and jumped to his side.

“Oh, what is it!” she exclaimed. “Some bad news? Please—”

Mr. Tertius pulled himself together and tried to smile.

“You must forgive me, my dear,” he said, with a feeble attempt to speak cheerily. “I—the truth is, I think I have lived in such a state of ease and—yes, luxury, for so many years that I am not capable of readily bearing these trials and troubles. I’m ashamed of myself—I must be braver—not so easily affected.”

“But—the telegram?” said Peggie.

Mr. Tertius handed it to her with a dismal shake of his head.

“I suppose it’s only what was to be expected, after all that Halfpenny told me this afternoon,” he remarked. “But I scarcely thought it would occur so soon. My dear, I am afraid you must prepare yourself for a great deal of unpleasantness and worry. Your cousin seems to be determined to give much trouble. Extraordinary!—most extraordinary! My dear, I confess I do not understand it.”

Peggie had picked up the telegram and was reading it with knitted brow.

“‘Barthorpe entered caveat in Probate Registry at half-past three this afternoon,’” she slowly repeated. “But what does that mean, Mr. Tertius? Something to do with the will?”

“A great deal to do with the will, I fear!” replied Mr. Tertius, lugubriously. “A caveat, my dear, is some sort of process—I’m sure I don’t know whether it’s given by word of mouth, or if it’s a document—by which the admission to probate of a dead person’s last will and testament can be stopped. In plain language,” continued Mr. Tertius, “your cousin Barthorpe has been to the Probate Registry and done something to prevent Mr. Halfpenny from proving the will. It is a wicked action on his part—and, considering that he is a solicitor, and that he saw the will with his own eyes, it is, as I have previously remarked, most extraordinary!”

“And all this means—what?” asked Peggie.

“It means that there will be legal proceedings,” groaned Mr. Tertius. “Long, tedious, most annoying and trying proceedings! Perhaps a trial—we may have to go to court and give evidence. I dread it!—I am, as I said, so used to a life of ease and freedom from anxiety that anything of this sort distresses me unspeakably. I fear I am degenerating into cowardice!”

“Nonsense!” said Peggie. “It is merely that this sort of thing is disturbing. And we are not going to be afraid of Barthorpe. Barthorpe is very foolish. I meant—always have meant, ever since I heard about the will—to share with him, for there’s no law against that. But if Barthorpe wants to upset the will altogether and claim everything, I shall fight him. And if I win—as I suppose I shall—I shall make him do penance pretty heavily before he’s forgiven. However, that’s all in the future. What I don’t understand about the present is—how can that will be upset? Mr. Halfpenny says it’s duly and properly executed, witnessed, and so on—how can Barthorpe object to it?”

Mr. Tertius put down his cup and rose.

“Your cousin, Barthorpe, my dear, is, I regret to say, a deep man,” he replied. “He has some scheme in his head. This,” he went on, picking up the telegram and placing it in his pocket, “this is the first step in that scheme. Well, it is perhaps a relief to know that he has taken it: we shall now know where we are and what has to be done.”

“Quite so,” said Peggie. “But there is another matter, Mr. Tertius, which seems to be forgotten in this of the will. Pray, what is Barthorpe doing, what is anybody doing, about solving the mystery of my uncle’s death? Everybody says he was murdered—who is doing anything to find the murderer?”

Mr. Tertius, who had advanced as far as the door on his way out of the room, came back to Peggie’s side in a fashion suggestive of deep mystery, walking on the tips of his toes and putting a finger to his lips as he drew near his chair.

“My dear!” he said, bending down to her and speaking in a tone fully as indicative of mystery as his tip-toe movement, “a great deal is being done—but in the strictest secrecy! Most important investigations, my dear!—the police, the detective police, you know. The word at present—to put it into one word, vulgar, but expressive—the word is ‘Mum’! Silence, my dear—the policy of the mole—underground working, you know. From what I am aware of, and from what our good friend Halfpenny tells me, and believes, I gather that a result will be attained which will be surprising.”

“So long as justice is done,” remarked Peggie. “That is all I want—all we ought to aim at. I don’t care twopence about surprising or sensational discoveries—I want to see my uncle’s murderer properly punished.”

She shed a few more quiet tears over Jacob Herapath’s untoward fate when Mr. Tertius had left her and fell to thinking about him. The thoughts which came presently led her to go to the dead man’s room—a simple, spartan-like chamber which she had not entered since his death. She had a vague sense of wanting to be brought into touch with him through the things which had been his, and for a while she wandered aimlessly about the room, laying a hand now and then on the objects which she knew he must have handled the last time he had occupied the room—his toilet articles, the easy chair in which he always sat for a few minutes every night, reading a little before going to bed, the garments which hung in his wardrobe, anything on which his fingers had rested. And as she wandered about she noted, not for the first nor the hundredth time, how Jacob Herapath had gathered about him in this room a number of objects connected with his youth. The very furniture, simple, homely stuff, had once stood in his mother’s bedroom in a small cottage in a far-off country. On the walls were portraits of his father and mother—crude things painted by some local artist; there, too, were some samplers worked by his mother in her girlhood, flanked by some faded groups of flowers which she had painted about the same time. Jacob Herapath had brought all these things to his grand house in Portman Square years before, and had cleared a room of fine modern furniture and fittings to make space for them. He had often said to Peggie, when she grew old enough to understand, that he liked to wake in a morning and see the old familiar things about him which he had known as a child. For one object in that room he had a special veneration and affection—an old rosewood workbox, which had belonged to his mother, and to her mother before her. Once he had allowed Peggie to inspect it, to take from it the tray lined with padded green silk, to examine the various nooks and corners contrived by the eighteenth-century cabinetmaker—some disciple, maybe, of Chippendale or Sheraton—to fit the tarnished silver thimbles on to her own fingers, to wonder at the knick-knacks of a departed age, and to laugh over the scent of rose and lavender which hung about the skeins and spools. And he had told her that when he died the rosewood box should be hers—as long as he lived, he said, it must stand on his chest of drawers, so that he could see it at least twice a day.

Jacob Herapath was dead now, and buried, and the rosewood box and everything else that had been his had passed to Peggie—as things were, at any rate. She presently walked up to the queer old chest of drawers, and drew the rosewood box towards her and lifted the lid. It was years since Jacob had shown it to her, and she remembered the childish delight with which she had lifted out the tray which lay on the top and looked into the various compartments beneath it. Now she opened the box again, and lifted the tray—and there, lying bold and uncovered before her eyes, she saw a letter, inscribed with one word in Jacob Herapath’s well-known handwriting—“Peggie.”

If Jacob Herapath himself had suddenly appeared before her in that quiet room, the girl could scarcely have felt more keenly the strange and subtle fear which seized upon her as she realized that what she was staring at was probably some message to herself. It was some time before she dared to lay hands on this message—when at last she took the letter out of the box her fingers trembled so much that she found a difficulty in opening the heavily-sealed envelope. But she calmed herself with a great effort, and carrying the half-sheet of note-paper, which she drew from its cover, over to the window, lifted it in the fading light and read the few lines which Jacob Herapath had scrawled there.

That was all—beyond a date, and the date was a recent one. “If anything ever happens suddenly”—had he then felt some fear, experienced any premonition, of a sudden happening? Why had he never said anything to her, why?

But Peggie realized that such questions were useless at that time—that time was pre-eminently one of action. She put the letter back in the rosewood box, took the box in her arms, and carrying it off to her own room, locked it up in a place of security. And that had scarcely been done when Kitteridge came seeking her and bringing with him a card: Mr. Frank Burchill’s card, and on it scribbled a single line: “Will you kindly give me a few minutes?”

Peggie considered this request in one flash of thought, and turned to the butler.

“Where is Mr. Burchill?” she asked. “In the study? Very well, I will come down to him in a few minutes.”

She made a mighty effort to show herself calm, collected, and indifferent, when she presently went down to the study. But she neither shook hands with the caller, nor asked him to sit; instead she marched across to the hearthrug and regarded him from a distance.

“Yes, Mr. Burchill?” she said quietly. “You wish to see me?”

She looked him over steadily as she spoke, and noted a certain air of calm self-assurance about him which struck her with a vague uneasiness. He was too easy, too quiet, too entirely businesslike to be free from danger. And the bow which he gave her was, to her thinking, the height of false artifice.

“I wished to see you and to speak to you, with your permission,” he answered. “I beg you to believe that what I have—what I desire to say is to be said by me with the deepest respect, the most sincere consideration. I have your permission to speak? Then I beg to ask you if—I speak with deep courtesy!—if the answer which you made to a certain question of mine some time ago is—was—is to be—final?”

“So final that I am surprised that you should refer to the matter,” replied Peggie. “I told you so at the time.”

“Circumstances have changed,” he said. “I am at a parting of the ways in life’s journey. I wish to know—definitely—which way I am to take. A ray of guiding light from you——”

“There will be none!” said Peggie sharply. “Not a gleam. This is waste of time. If that is all you have to say——”

The door of the study opened, and Selwood, who was still engaged about the house, came in. He paused on the threshold, staring from one to the other, and made as if to withdraw. But Peggie openly smiled on him.

“Come in, Mr. Selwood,” she said. “I was just going to ask Kitteridge to find you. I want to see both you and Mr. Tertius.”

Then she turned to Burchill, who stood, a well-posed figure in his fine raiment, still watching her, and made him a frigid bow.

“There is no more to say on that point—at any time,” she said quietly. “Good day. Mr. Selwood, will you ring the bell?”

Burchill executed another profound and self-possessed bow. He presently followed the footman from the room, and Peggie, for the first time since Jacob Herapath’s death, suddenly let her face relax and burst into a hearty laugh.

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