Chapter V

For three years Annora reigned empress over her father’s heart, and then he died--caught cold and died, after two days’ illness. He was a strange, eccentric being, but he had been loved, and he was mourned. By his servants bitterly, by his little daughter passionately, by his wife as deeply as her nature could mourn for anything. She had looked forward to living many years under his protection, and she wept when she found herself unprotected. She was only three-and-twenty, and Annora was little more than four years old. She wondered how they ever should struggle through mortal life alone.

The news of the death of Mr. Smythe, while the child had chosen to live, stirred Mr. Devereux into a storm of agitation. There was a pause of a few days, and then the grand question, the will, was made known. It was a very simple one. There were many small bequests to servants and persons who now first appeared as dependent on his charity. There were two or three large bequests to hospitals. There was a legacy of £25,000 to Henry Devereux at his mother’s death, the interest to be paid to her during her life; and the whole of the rest of his property was left to his daughter. It was left in the hands of guardians until she attained the age of sixteen, and then was to be solely and absolutely at her own disposal. His wife had been provided for in a settlement made after their hurried marriage, and to her he only left a gold box, “as a mark of gratitude for her constant obedience to his wishes.”

This was the will. It was dated six months before the day of his death.

Mr. Devereux was paralysed. His worst anticipations had never pictured anything like this. He had made sure of a large legacy to Letitia. Those rights which he had asserted so constantly seemed to secure this at the least. It was a blow not only to his ingrained love of money, but a blow to his daily life. He was not a hoarder. His love of money was not of that nature. He wished to have it, and to increase it: he liked to give his time and thought to it, making innumerable small speculations. He wanted money for his life, for his increasing family; he wanted money--money! He had made sure of it, and the prospect was suddenly clouded. The promised riches had taken wings and flown away. His original plan had been to dispute the will on the ground of his uncle’s insanity at the time of his marriage. Annora’s birth had overset this hope; for even though mad, there was the child with her rights as nearest of kin. She was a fact which no one could gainsay. After the first paralysing blow, however, this plan, somewhat modified, revived again. There were new circumstances to deal with. It appeared that there were several wills--wills made on different occasions for ten years back, and they were not all as unfavourable to the rights of Letitia Allen as the last.

Careful and methodical as Mr. Smythe had been in most things, he had not been very careful of his wills. He would make a will, and have it witnessed, and put it away, either in his own library or at his lawyer’s office, and there it would remain undestroyed till a new will came to bear it company. And these wills were seen by some of the young men about the lawyer’s office, and so it was that the fact of the many wills became known to Simon Devereux, and that he became possessed of copies of some of them.

It would be tedious to detail all the provisions of these wills. Suffice it to say that there were four wills before his marriage, in which, although the sum greatly varied, and gradually decreased, Letitia was liberally provided for. In the first of these wills the name of Mr. Devereux was associated with that of his wife; in the others the eldest son took the place of the father, who was mentioned no more. There was another peculiarity in these wills, which was that the sum gradually taken from Letitia was given to the payment of the National Debt.

A month after the marriage of Mr. Smythe there was a new will. Mrs. Smythe was not mentioned. (He had already provided for her by purchasing an annuity of a thousand a year. This he had done in the hopes of securing her comfort, and protecting her from the burden of wealth, when there were no brains to bear it.) To Letitia Devereux he left £30,000, to her eldest son £50,000. The whole of the rest of his property, “in the event of my death without a child,” was left to charities, or to the payment of the National Debt.

During the four following years, however, it was evident that the conduct of the Devereux family had affected the mind of Mr. Smythe regarding them, and thence the reduction of the legacy in the last will to the simple £25,000 left to Henry. It was not only the birth of his child. The wills contained a kind of biographical notice of the feelings of the great-uncle regarding his relations. In the scales of his just mind they had been tried and found wanting.

It was after mastering all the wills, and noting all their peculiarities, that Mr. Devereux at length determined on a course. He rejected all the wills made before Mr. Smythe’s marriage, and took his stand on the one made in the month of his marriage. The last will of all he rejected on the ground of insanity. It was with a bitter pang that the first wills were resigned, but while £25,000 was as nothing, £80,000 would be something to secure, and he saw his way to the securing of this.

Shortly after the death of Mr. Smythe, therefore, notice was given that the will would be disputed, and Mr. Devereux and his lawyers applied their minds to make out the case. It is not necessary here to state the case that was made out. It is enough to say that it was well done--that the proofs of insanity were, to say the least, plausible. Many months were consumed in working out the evidence, and then the trial came.

Mr. Devereux had an assistant, who helped him with a malignity almost equal to his own. It was James Field, the young clerk, the haberdasher’s apprentice, who conceived that he had been outwitted. He had evidence to give regarding a variety of interviews that had taken place between him and his late benefactor (for such Mr. Smythe had showed himself), and there had been at all times sufficient eccentricity in the strange old being for a malignant imagination to draw such a conclusion.

The ground, however, on which Mr. Devereux built his case was in proving how, up to a certain moment, the old man’s thoughts had constantly recurred to his niece, Letitia Allen; that as long, in fact, as he had his senses, he had acknowledged her claims.

The mind of Mrs. Smythe was not strong, but it laid tenaciously hold of impressions. The facts of the different wills were beyond her grasp; but this one thing she understood, that Mr. Smythe had left everything to his daughter, and that wicked people were trying to deprive her of her fortune. That in any case Annora would be a great heiress, she did not realize. She pictured wealth or penniless poverty, and she wept daily over the horrible prospect.

Mrs. Ratcliffe shared her feelings on this point. She had the brains, indeed, to distinguish, but not the will to do it. It was all or nothing with her, and she was determined to stand to Annora’s rights to the death. Her respect for her master prompted the same feeling. She was too angry to weep over the attack on the will, but she shed many tears over the insult to his memory occasioned by the trial.

And, to do her justice, her evidence to his sanity was very convincing. She had all her wits about her, and spoke with such an air of calm conviction that the impression made on the judge and jury was lasting and strong.

The verdict was given in favour of Annora, and Mr. Devereux was defeated.

The blow was again paralyzing, for he had made sure of a contrary result. There remained to him nothing now but to wish for the death of that child who stood between him and his rights; between him and his hopes; between him and money. And having no remaining hope but this, into this he cast the whole energy of his nature. To speculate on the difference the snapping of one frail link would make to him and his, became the sole subject of his unoccupied hours, and he pictured that difference, pictured his condition under those desired circumstances so vividly, that the conviction that the picture would be a reality became the rooted and settled conviction of his brain. Meanwhile he allowed himself a slight revenge.

Mrs. Smythe was much relieved by the favourable verdict. Unlike Mr. Devereux, she had feared a contrary result. She had almost persuaded herself that her poor husband was insane; would have been quite persuaded of the fact had not Mrs. Ratcliffe so boldly stood to the contrary. It was a relief in every way. It was a relief that Annora was not to be a pauper, and it was a relief to be assured that she had not married a madman. She had a short time of peace, and then a new trouble began.

Mr. Devereux caused an idea to be planted in her mind, which became, indeed, like a thorn in the flesh. It was this: that there was a possibility of his stealing Annora, and making away with her. Not that such a purpose ever crossed his mind. He was not boldly bad enough for that. But it was a pleasure to him to murder her peace by this dread. From the moment the suggestion was made, it took complete possession of her mind; and though Mrs. Ratcliffe argued with her fears, she, too, had a latent dread that Mr. Devereux might be capable even of this.

Her cousin the clerk cast his sting also into her weak mind. Among the words of advice given by her dying husband had been, “Don’t marry James Field, my dear;” and she had answered with eager protestations. But the warning was not needed. Weak minds often have an instinct to warn them who they may trust. It is but an instinct, and a clever man may overcome it; but it is a help; and that instinct Mrs. Smythe had opposed to the claims of her cousin. She disliked him as much as was in her nature, but dreaded his marrying her still more.

Now, like Mr. Devereux, his suggestion was only a revenge. He wished to torment, not to marry her. Her circumstances were different from what they had been, and he was unwilling to connect himself with the mother of a great heiress--one left to the guardianship of two honest, quick-sighted men. He was as keen-sighted as ever to his own interests, but these circumstances did not entice him. He made her, however, as much afraid of being stolen herself, as she already feared the robbery of her child; and the poor thing’s life was poisoned.

Mrs. Ratcliffe decided on removing into the country. To this her mistress made some objection. She liked the society of doctors. It was a pleasure to her to be visited by her physician, and to pour into his great mind her small griefs. It was a still greater pleasure to show Annora to her apothecary, and to be assured that the child was finer than the rest of her species. On this score her objections to move from the house where she had taken root were strong. In the end, however, they were overruled, and a pretty house was taken in a distant county. To this place they removed, and there the persecutors left them in peace. Both were London men, and soon wearied of the objectless revenge.

After they had been a year or two in the country, the guardians wrote to say that if Mrs. Smythe was looking out for a governess, which they supposed was necessary for Annora, they had one to recommend.

Though injured by the suggestion, Mrs. Smythe acquiesced, and when a young person arrived, submitted herself quietly to her guidance. The young person did not approve of the solitude of the country, and soon began to speak of masters. As London was out of the question, Mrs. Smythe consented to the suggestion that they should go abroad; and they went first to Brussels, then to different towns in Switzerland, settling finally at Geneva when Annora was about thirteen.