Princess Puck

It was towards the end of January that Bella came to town to finish buying her trousseau. A trousseau is a really momentous affair, and Bella, feeling that the shops at Wrugglesby were not equal to the occasion, came to Bayswater, where Polly gave her limitless advice and all the help in her power. Polly really enjoyed Bella’s visit, and Bill, who knew Polly’s weakness, did all the housework so that the elder cousin should be free to go shopping or help with the needlework according as opportunity offered. During the time Bella was in London it seemed to Bill that they thought of, talked of, and considered very little beyond clothes, except perhaps once or twice in the evenings when Bella told them a little about Ashelton. Such conversations did not interest Polly, but as Bill liked them Bella talked to her. Once indeed Polly showed some interest, when Bella spoke of the change in Theresa and Robert.

“They both have altered a good deal,” she concluded,—“especially Robert. You saw him at Christmas, Bill; don’t you think he is changing?”

“Not changing exactly,” Bill said, “he is,—I think he is developing, growing to what you would expect. Some kinds of people are bound to grow in particular kinds of ways; they can hardly help themselves.”

“I don’t like Robert’s kind of way, then. I think he has changed a good deal, and for the worse; so would you if you had stayed at Haylands as long as I have.”

Bill did not explain that what Bella called “a change for the worse” and she “a natural growing” were one and the same thing; she did not say anything about it, though she felt a good deal, and knew that she could not help Theresa now any more than she could have helped her last spring.

Bella had gone on to speak of the change in Theresa and of the quiet of Haylands. “Hardly a soul comes there now,” she said; “Theresa keeps them all at arm’s length. I expect that is why Miss Minchin and Mrs. Johnson and the rest of them never come now. Of course Gilchrist Harborough would not come.”

Polly heaved a sigh. “I expect Bill’s breaking with Gilchrist troubled Theresa a good deal,” she said.

But Bella laughed at such an idea, and afterwards went on to speak of Gilchrist and the lawsuit. “He has so little spare time just now,” she said, “that I don’t believe he would go to see anyone except on business. Jack sees him sometimes, and that is how I get to hear about him and his case. He is rather disgusted with it just now, Jack says, abuses the lawyers, and professes a great contempt for the slowness of the law.”

Bill opened her eyes. “Why,” she said, “he has only just begun! It will be two years before it is over. What did he expect?”

“How do you know?” demanded Polly.

“I was told,” Bill answered, and Bella saved her further explanation by remarking: “That is what Mr. Stevens says; he told Jack so, and Jack told Gilchrist.”

“What did he say?” Bill inquired.

“Oh, that he did not see how they were going to make the time out, but he supposed they would do it somehow. Jack said he seemed disgusted with everything that day, and vowed he would not mind selling his chances for a good sum down.”

“Did he say that?” Bill asked quickly. “He told Jack that? But he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t sell his chances; they would be no good to anyone else.”

“He could sell them to the other side,” Bella said with the pride of recently acquired knowledge. “Jack told me that if the Harboroughs were rich they would probably by the autumn, if his claim seemed pretty good, try to compromise,—pay him to withdraw, you know. But then they are not rich; they have no spare money at all, and Jack says he does not think they could raise any. It seems rather a pity, for Jack says he believes Gilchrist would agree to a reasonable arrangement; he does not care a bit about Wood Hall now and only wants to go back to Australia.”

“We all know why that is,” Polly said with pious conviction. “Bill has only herself to thank if he does leave England like that.”

“I don’t suppose it would make any difference to Bill if he did go,” Bella retorted; “and she certainly has nothing to do with his wanting to go. Jack says he is disgusted with people in general, with the lawyers and the other claimant much more than with Bill.”

“Poor Gilchrist!” Polly said with commiseration, and continued to look in a meaning manner at Bill, who, however, was far too absorbed in the thoughts suggested to her by Bella’s words to heed her.

Long that night she lay thinking of these new ideas, her brain full of conflicting thoughts, impossible plans, crazy fancies. Money, money,—she had never felt the want of it before, never, for all her poverty, felt any desire to be rich. She had always been poor and she had never minded; she had never been tempted by girlish superfluities, had never cared for ribbons and lace and nice food. But now,—now she wanted money desperately, not a few shillings, or a few pounds as Polly, who did mind being poor, wanted it; but money in the big sense of the word, in the sense in which Polly never wanted it, in which she herself had hardly contemplated it before. Not that it mattered whether she wanted much or little, shillings or pounds or hundreds of pounds; one seemed about as attainable as the other.

It was always part of Bill’s work to get up and clean the boots and light the fires before breakfast; it was no very great effort to her, and seemed moreover to fall naturally to her share. On the morning after she had lain so long thinking over the problem of ways and means, she got up as usual, cleaned the lodgers’ boots, lighted the fires, washed her hands, and then, taking a candle from the kitchen-dresser, climbed on the back of a chair that stood against the wall. Moving an almanack hanging high above it, a hole became visible from which she drew out, wrapped in paper, Peter Harborough’s shoe-buckles. For a long time she stood looking at them. Once she rubbed them on the corner of her apron; once she held them close to the candle so that the brilliant, refracted light flashed back from the gems and scattered sparks of white fire over her face and hands. She could not tell what they were worth, perhaps a hundred pounds, perhaps two hundred,—Polly had said two; diamonds were very valuable she knew, but how valuable she could not tell. At last she wrapped the buckles up again, put them back in their hiding-place and went about her work with a thoughtful face.

She wore a thoughtful face all that day, for she was revolving a plan in her mind. In the afternoon she went to her bedroom and there opened the little oak box which used to stand in the spare room at Langford House. She had only been to it once since last winter, but now she turned over its contents carefully. She was not much the wiser for her examination; the only papers old enough to interest her conveyed little to her mind, beyond the indisputable fact that the name Corby appeared in them. However, her failure to find anything important in the little chest did not alter her plans, and in the evening, when the elder cousins were at leisure, she spoke to Polly about them. Bella and Polly had been busy with the trousseau all day, but by the evening they were able to listen to Bill when she informed them that she was going to Wrugglesby the next day.

“To Wrugglesby!” Bella exclaimed. “What on earth are you going there for?”

But this Bill was not prepared to say; she expected to be asked the question and several others, and to give much annoyance by not answering them, but it could not be avoided. She felt that she could not explain matters yet. Things fell out exactly as she anticipated; Bella was only curious, but Polly was decidedly angry; she felt that she had a right to inquire, and she exercised it,—with no good results, for when, on Bill’s refusing to assign any reasons, she forbade her going to Wrugglesby, the girl showed every intention of going in spite of her. Whereupon Polly, who by this time knew she could not always drive the stubborn Bill, became very dignified, retreating from her post of dictator behind a manner of superior and chilling indifference, after which she climbed down from her pinnacle of outraged authority and informed the offender that she should not pay her fare.

“No, of course not,” Bill said readily; “I have some money.”

And she had; for it so happened that after a battle royal with Polly one day she had succeeded in arranging for wages of a pound a month, the same as any other little servant. Polly had vowed that she should not have it, that she was a partner in the firm and not a paid servant, but Bill stood to her guns, foregoing any future profits but insisting on present wages; and as she struck work when they were not paid she contrived to get them regularly, and so to have a little money for an emergency. Remembering which Polly said ungraciously: “At any rate you can’t go until the one o’clock train.”

The one o’clock train was a very slow one, but it suited Bill admirably, and by it she went the next day.

It was nearly three when the one clerk who looked out on Wrugglesby High Street from Mr. Stevens’s office-window saw the small figure cross the road and come towards the door.

“A lady to see you, sir,—Miss Alardy.”

The clerk announced this to his employer, although he thought Miss Alardy an exceedingly young lady to consult a lawyer on her own account. Mr. Stevens thought so too; he had a hazy recollection on hearing the name that she must be one of Miss Brownlow’s nieces, but he was not sure of the relationship until he saw the girl. Then he remembered her as the youngest of the nieces, the one whom, it seemed only the other day, he used to see walking beside the governess with a dusky mane of hair hanging about her shoulders and a general appearance suggestive of a tendency to turn restive on provocation.

“Well, and what has brought you to Wrugglesby?” he said when he had asked after the other cousins. No one treated Bill in a business-like way; even the grocer at Bayswater regarded her as a man and a brother. Mr. Stevens certainly had no idea of being professionally consulted by this slip of a girl.

“I have come to see you,” she answered simply. “I want to ask you a question, a law question.”

She had her purse in her hand and looked somehow as if she were prepared to pay six-and-eightpence, cash down, for his opinion.

“I will try to answer you,” he said with as much gravity as he could contrive. “What is this question?”

“It begins in the year 1799,” she said without more ado. “In that year a man, Roger Corby,—perhaps you have heard of him? But that does not matter—in the year 1799 he gave a piece of land to another man—Briant. He gave it for ninety-nine years, but no rent was to be paid.”

“A lease, that is,” the lawyer said, “and the rental probably one peppercorn payable if demanded. Yes, proceed.”

“This year,” Bill said, “the time will be up, and I imagine Roger Corby would get his land back if he were alive?”

“Naturally.”

“But he is not alive, so I suppose his descendants would get it?”

“Yes, that is what is usually expected to take place.”

“He has only got one descendant; she comes like this,” and Bill took up some books which lay on the table. “Roger Corby’s only son died a year after him,”—she put a thin black book down,—“he is dead, you see”—pushing the book away—“and so does not count. The son’s only child, a daughter, is dead too, but she married when she was fairly young and she married twice. She ran away from her first husband and he divorced her; then she married the other man and had one son, the only child she had. Well, the son is dead too and the only person left is his daughter. Would she be able to get the land at the end of the ninety-nine years?”

“Most probably, if she has the necessary documents and can prove she is legally descended from Roger Corby.”

Bill said “Thank you,” and sat thinking a minute. The lawyer watched her curiously, feeling sure there must be something behind all this, and wondering a little what it could be.

“Mr. Briant,” Bill said at last,—“I mean the Mr. Briant who now has the land—does not think it will be claimed, at least I believe not; he probably does not know of the second marriage of Wilhelmina Corby, and the son and the granddaughter.”

“Which means,” Stevens observed, “that he will very strongly object to acknowledging their existence and will do his best to keep what he has got. Were I the granddaughter, I think I should first make quite sure that the thing in question is worth fighting for, and also I should be very clear that Wilhelmina Corby was divorced from her first husband and legally married to her second; can you tell me these things?”

Bill could tell him one of the things. “Do you know Sandover?” she asked. “Yes? A good part of Sandover now stands on the land; of course at the time it was given it was only corn fields and grass, but now it must be valuable.”

Mr. Stevens whistled, although it was supposed to be a business interview. “It is worth something, I admit. Now for Wilhelmina Corby,—how about her?”

“It would have to be found out,” Bill said, “but I believe it is all right. But tell me, what did you mean by necessary documents?”

“First and principally the counterpart of the lease. You don’t know what that is? It is an exact copy of the deed, the lease which is in possession of the man who now has the land and by right of which he has it. There is certain to have been such a deed; this man, Briant, is sure to have his lease, and unless the granddaughter can produce her counterpart she would find it well-nigh impossible to prove her case. Has she got it, do you think?”

Bill did not know, and Mr. Stevens went on to say:—“In the first instance it would probably have been among Roger Corby’s papers, and so it may have passed into his granddaughter’s keeping; if it did, the question is what became of it when she changed husbands? And if she kept it in her possession, has her granddaughter got it still, or failing that, is it possible to trace it?”

Bill considered a while; she was thinking of the little oak box and her search in it. “There is an oak box,” she said at last; “it is used as an ottoman in my bedroom, but I have heard that it belonged to my grandmother. It is full of papers, mostly letters and recipes of my mother’s, but there are a few which are older, one or two very large, tough, yellowish ones, not written in the ordinary way. I looked at them yesterday but I could not make them out, except that the name Corby occurs in them, and that at least one has the date 1799. Do you think the thing we want is there?”

“I think it is just possible.” Mr. Stevens was not altogether surprised at this dropping of the impersonal. “So you are the granddaughter of Wilhelmina Corby, are you?”

“Yes. I did not bring the box with me, but I wish I had now.”

“Perhaps there is nothing of value in it. What are these old papers like? Can you describe them to me?”

Bill did as well as she could, and though the description was not very detailed Mr. Stevens seemed satisfied. “I do not know,” he said, “if you have the counterpart, but I should say from what you tell me that you must have one or two of the old Corby documents. Don’t think that I mean they are of any pecuniary value, as the chances are all against it; the counterpart, if we could find it, might be, but the others are just so much legal lumber.”

Bill did not seem troubled by this discouraging remark, nor yet by the lawyer’s next words: “If it is not a rude question, may I ask how much of all this does your cousin’s solicitor know?”

“We have not got a solicitor,” Bill answered readily. “Mr. Brownlow made Aunt Isabel’s will, but he is dead now, and when he was alive we did not see anything of him. Polly thought him very stupid.”

“Polly? That’s Miss Hains, is it not? Has your coming to me her sanction?”

It had not, for the very good reason that Bill had not consulted her on the subject, or even informed her that any such subject existed; accordingly she told Mr. Stevens so, and explained that the affair was her own entirely.

“Am I to understand,” the puzzled man enquired, “that she knows nothing at all about this?”

“No,” Bill told him, “she doesn’t even know my grandmother was a Corby. I did not know much myself before Christmas, and when I did know, it hardly seemed worth while telling her. I did not realise then that it might be valuable; I did not realise that till the night before last.”

“The night before last? What happened then?”

“I wanted money desperately, and I thought and thought of ways of getting it.”

Mr. Stevens repressed an inclination to smile. “You have by no means got it yet in spite of your interesting story,” he said. “Let me enumerate some of the difficulties in the way. Supposing you have the counterpart of the lease and it is all correct, you have got to be sure of several things,—that none of all these people between yourself and Roger Corby were bankrupt, that they made no awkward marriage-settlements, and, if they died intestate, left no more than one child apiece to survive them.”

“These things will have to be found out,” Bill said calmly. “Marriage-settlements I don’t know anything about; children I do. There were no more than I have said, or at least none that lived to grow up; I have no relations at all on my father’s side. As for bankrupt, I believe it is all right, but I am not sure; Roger Corby died in debt, though I think it was all paid off after his death. But I know he was in debt when he died, that is why Wilhelmina, my grandmother, had his body carried away by night.”

Mr. Stevens had heard something of this story, but always believed it to be a mere local tradition. “I had no idea it really happened,” he said.

Bill assured him that she had excellent reasons for believing that it did; then she returned to the subject of more direct interest to herself. “Supposing,” she said, “that all these things of which you spoke were right, what then?”

“Then, if you can get over the difficulty of the divorce and remarriage and subsequent birth of a son, you should have a very good case and ought, if all goes well, eventually to get the money you so much need; or rather certain persons in authority would get it to hold in trust for you.”

“In trust for me?” Bill said with rather an anxious look.

“Certainly; you are not of age yet, are you? Eighteen! The law does not consider you of age till you are twenty-one. Until that time the money, if you get it, will be in the hands of guardians who will manage it entirely and only allow you the use of a moderate and reasonable proportion.”

“Polly and Theresa are called my guardians; would they have to look after the money?”

“That depends,” Mr. Stevens said. “If they are only ‘called’ your guardians, the court, if the case were decided in your favour, would appoint some one to look after you and your money, you would be a ward of the court, and the court takes very great care of its wards and looks after them in a manner not always permitted to parents nowadays. If, on the other hand, your cousins are legally appointed your guardians, they would, until you were twenty-one, have the control of your property, applying it solely for your benefit and allowing you a certain amount for your use. But, remember, they could not do as they chose with it, for they could be called upon to give a very exact account of their proceedings.”

Bill breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s all right,” she said. “Polly and Theresa, more especially Polly, are set down in Aunt Isabel’s will as my guardians; I should be able to manage if I got the money.”

“They would not allow you more than a comparatively small sum; you could not touch any great amount. I don’t fancy you would be much better off than under the court if you wanted to do anything foolish, unless of course, the folly took the form of an unwise marriage, when you certainly would have more liberty if you were not a ward of the court.”

Bill laughed softly. “I will tell you what I will do if I get the money,” she said. “I shall give Polly so much a year for the rest of her life; she deserves it and I would give her as much as I could afford; and with the rest I should do what I liked. We should arrange it somehow; Polly would do as I told her. There is time at least to try to find some way of doing it legally, but if I could not find one I don’t see that it would so very much matter, because Polly would be the person who did wrong according to the law and I should be the person who suffered wrong, and consequently the one who ought to have her up when I was old enough. As the case would really be the other way round, I should not have her up, and she could not have me up, so it would be all right.”

“Oh,” Mr. Stevens remarked drily, “that is how you think you will arrange matters, is it? It strikes me you are a worthy granddaughter of Wilhelmina the wilful. I fancy, though, you will find more obstacles than you bargain for in this little game; where, for instance, does the other cousin and guardian come in?”

“I should have to explain to Theresa that it was right. You would think it so if you knew. Theresa will always do what she thinks right, and Polly will do what she is made to do. To get your own way is mostly a matter of time.”

“This time I should not be surprised if it took you till one-and-twenty. Law is not so easy to play with as you think; and cases of this sort are not so easy to win either, neither are they settled in a hurry.”

Bill was prepared for that. “How long do you think it would take?” she asked. “A year?”

“Probably; it might be longer, or it might, if you have very good luck and few difficulties, be a little shorter.”

“Would it cost a great deal?”

“It could not be done for nothing.”

“Would a hundred pounds be any good to start with?”

“It would be excellent.”

Bill put her hand into her pocket and drew out the diamond buckles: “I don’t know what they are worth,” she said as she placed them before the astonished lawyer, “but at least a hundred pounds; more than that, I expect.”

“Where did you get them?” Mr. Stevens had taken one to the window, and glanced from it to the girl.

“Old Mr. Harborough gave them to me before he died.”

“What!” The lawyer lost all interest in the buckles and stood staring at their owner, wondering what new surprise this granddaughter of the Corbys was going to develop.

“Mr. Harborough gave them to me,” she repeated. “They are my very own; young Mr. Harborough was there at the time they were given, and he said they were my own and no one could take them away. I did mean to keep them for another purpose, but I believe it would be more right to use them for this.”

“Have you any idea what these buckles are worth?”

“More than a hundred pounds,” Bill said readily; “they will do to begin the case, won’t they?”

“It is altogether extraordinary,” the lawyer muttered, and began to wrap the buckles in paper with the resigned air of one who gives up a problem.

He offered the parcel to Bill, but she put her hands behind her back; “I want you to keep them,” she said, “and begin at once.”

It was perhaps as well that Mr. Stevens was not busy that afternoon, for he found there were several more points to be explained to his young client, among others that she herself could not bring an action or give directions for legal proceedings. This difficulty she disposed of by undertaking to arrange matters with Polly within two days. Another point the good man had to explain was that no one would undertake the case without first knowing a great deal more about it. This the indefatigable Bill met with a promise to send the oak box to him by an early train the next morning, and to set to work at once to find out any and every detail she could concerning the first Wilhelmina. When at last Mr. Stevens, again handing her the buckles, told her that her method of payment was not according to custom, she was still not nonplussed. “Shall I get them sold,” she asked, “and give you the money?”

“Certainly not; don’t attempt to sell them. And listen to me: I should not in any circumstances undertake this business for you; I will examine the contents of the box if you like, and tell you how I think you stand; but I would not undertake the case, which is completely out of my range. I am a country lawyer with quite as much country work as I can do; I am not a very young man, not a very poor one, and not at all an ambitious one. I have neither the time nor the inclination for such a piece of work as this.”

“But you could find someone who would do it?” Bill asked, not in the least impressed by the gravity of his manner.

“I suppose I could,” he said, smiling in spite of himself. “But even if I were to find someone, and there really was something for that someone to do, you must see that there are a good many things to settle before it comes to terms. When, and if, it does your cousin is the proper person to be consulted.”

But Bill did not agree with him there. She pointed out that the affair was hers and the buckles hers; still she conceded that Polly could be talked to, and, since he wished it, she would take the buckles back to town. She put them in her pocket again, to the no small uneasiness of Mr. Stevens, although, as she herself said, they were too big to drop out, and no one would expect to find anything of value in her pocket.

She was about to leave, by no means dissatisfied with the interview, when Mr. Stevens made a remark which caused her to pause. After saying that she must not make sure of her position, and that he himself could give her no hope until he had examined the contents of the oak box, he concluded: “And even if everything else proves satisfactory, it is quite possible you will come to grief over the matter of the divorce; the other side would be sure to make the most of that; it will have to be gone into very thoroughly.”

Bill stopped on the threshold. “Do you mean,” she asked, “that you will have to go into it thoroughly, or that it will have to be done in public?”

“I should not have much to do with it, but both your lawyers and those on the opposite side would have plenty; it is a point on which a good deal might turn.”

“I had not thought of that,” and Bill’s face clouded.

“You had better think of it,” the lawyer said, “for it will certainly arise. You must be sure, and the other side would insist on being sure, that there was a divorce; they would want the date of it and the date of the second marriage and the date of the birth of the child.”

“Will they want the name of the first husband?”

“Certainly.”

“Will it be published in the papers?”

“It would probably figure in the reports of the case.”

“Then I am not at all sure the case can ever come off,” Bill said, to Mr. Stevens’s great astonishment.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because the first husband is alive, and I would not hurt him for all the world.”

Mr. Stevens regarded this as a matter of sentiment, but a sentiment he could honour, though he hardly knew how to advise. “Well,” he said at last, “you need not, and indeed cannot, do anything for a long time. I will look over your papers and tell you how I think you stand, and by that time you will have been able to decide what you wish to do.”

But this was not Bill’s manner of going to work at all. “Thank you very much,” she said, “but I think I must decide sooner than that. When does the last up-train leave for London? Eight o’clock, is it? Thank you, I will decide before that. Perhaps I had better not come to see you so late; I will write from town.”

“My dear young lady,” the lawyer said, moved by the gravity of her face and manner, “there is no need to take the matter so seriously, or to do anything in such a hurry. Send me the box, and afterwards we will talk over what can be done.”

But though Bill again thanked him, not disagreeing with him this time, he was not at all sure that he had convinced her.

“It’s a pity if she drops it,” he meditated as he watched her go down the street. “She would win if she went in, somehow—and probably do precisely what she pleased with her fortune when she got it. She is the kind that does; she would bamboozle the Court of Chancery and dance through an Act of Parliament.”