The Lion's Share - Arnold Bennett

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with precisely the same gesture as he had offered the key.

      Audrey tried to decipher the will, and completely failed.

      “Will you read it, Miss Ingate?” she muttered.

      “I can’t! I can’t!” answered Miss Ingate in excitement. “I’m sure I can’t. I never could read wills. They’re so funny, somehow. And I haven’t got my spectacles.” She flushed slightly.

      “May I venture to tell you what it contains?” Mr. Cowl suggested. “There can be no indiscretion on my part, as all wills after probate are public property and can be inspected by any Tom, Dick or Harry for a fee of one shilling.”

      He took the document and gazed at it intently, turning over a page and turning back, for an extraordinarily long time.

      Audrey said to herself again and again, with exasperated impatience: “He knows now, and I don’t know. He knows now, and I don’t know. He knows now, and I don’t know.”

      At length Mr. Cowl spoke:

      “It is a perfectly simple will. The testator leaves the whole of his property to Mrs. Moze for life, and afterwards to you, Miss Moze. There are only two legacies. Ten pounds to James Aguilar, gardener. And the testator’s shares in the Zacatecas Oil Development Corporation to the National Reformation Society. I may say that the testator had expressed to me his intention of leaving these shares to the Society. We should have preferred money, free of legacy duty, but the late Mr. Moze had a reason for everything he did. I must now bid you good-bye, ladies,” he went on strangely, with no pause. “Miss Moze, will you convey my sympathetic respects to your mother and my thanks for her most kind hospitality? My grateful sympathies to yourself. Good-bye, Miss Ingate. … Er, Miss Ingate, why do you look at me in that peculiar way?”

      “Well, Mr. Cowl, you’re a very peculiar man. May I ask whether you were born in this part of the country?”

      “At Clacton, Miss Ingate,” answered Mr. Cowl imperturbably.

      “I knew it,” said Miss Ingate, and the corners of her lips went sardonically down.

      “Please don’t trouble to come downstairs,” said Mr. Cowl. “My bag is packed. I have tipped the parlourmaid, and there is just time to catch the train,”

      He departed, leaving the two women speechless.

      After a moment, Miss Ingate said dryly:

      “He was so very peculiar I knew he must belong to these parts.”

      “How did he know I left my blue frock at Miss Pannell’s?” cried Audrey. “I never told him.”

      “He must have been eavesdropping!” cried Miss Ingate. “He never found the key in your frock. He must have found it here somewhere; I feel sure it must have dropped by the safe, and I lay anything he had opened the safe before and read the will before. I could tell from the way he looked.”

      “And why should he suppose that I’d the key?” Audrey put in.

      “Eavesdropping! I’m convinced that man knows too much.” Audrey reddened once more. “I believe he thought you’d be capable of burning the will. That’s why he made you handle it in his presence and mine.”

      “Well, Winnie,” said Audrey, “I think you might have told him all that while he was here, instead of letting him go off so triumphant.”

      “I did begin to,” said Miss Ingate with a snigger. “But you wouldn’t back me up, you little coward.”

      “I shall never be a coward again!” Audrey said violently.

      They read the will together. They had no difficulty at all in comprehending it now that they were alone.

      “I do think it’s a horrid shame Aguilar should have that ten pounds,” said Audrey. “But otherwise I don’t care. You can’t guess how relieved I am, Winnie. I imagined the most dreadful things. I don’t know what I imagined. But now we shall have all the property and everything, just as much as ever there was, and only me and mother to spend it.” Audrey danced an embryonic jig. “Won’t I keep mother in order! Winnie, I shall make her go with me to Paris. I’ve always wanted to know that Madame Piriac—she does write such funny English in her letters.”

      “What’s that you’re saying?” murmured Miss Ingate, who had picked up the letter which Mr. Cowl had laid on the small table.

      “I say I shall make mother go to Paris with me.”

      “You won’t,” said Miss Ingate. “Because she won’t go. I know your mother better than you do. … Oh! Audrey!”

      Audrey saw Miss Ingate’s face turn scarlet from the roots of her hair to her chin.

      Miss Ingate had dropped the letter. Audrey snatched it.

      “My dear Moze,” the letter ran. “I send you herewith a report of the meeting of the Great Mexican Oil Company at New York. You will see that they duly authorised the contract by which the Zacatecas Oil Corporation transfers our property to them in exchange for shares at the rate of four Great Mexican shares for one Zacatecas share. As each of the Development Syndicate shares represents ten of the Corporation shares, and as on my recommendation you put £4,500 into the Syndicate, you will therefore own 180,000 Great Mexican shares. They are at present above par. Mark my words, they will be worth from seven to ten dollars apiece in a year’s time. I think you now owe me a good turn, eh?”

      The letter was signed with a name unknown to either of them, and it was dated from Coleman Street, E.C.

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       Table of Contents

      Half an hour later the woman and the girl, still in the study and severely damaged by the culminating events of Mr. Cowl’s visit, were almost prostrated by the entirely unexpected announcement of the arrival of Mr. Foulger. Mr. Foulger was the late Mr. Moze’s solicitor from Chelmsford. Audrey’s first thought was: “Has heaven telegraphed to him on my behalf?” But her next was that all the solicitors in the world would now be useless in the horrible calamity that had befallen.

      It is to be noted that Audrey was no worse off than before the discovery of the astounding value of the Zacatecas shares. The Moze property, inherited through generations and consisting mainly in farms and tithe-rents, was not in the slightest degree impaired. On the contrary, the steady progress of agriculture in Essex indicated that its yield must improve with years. Nevertheless Audrey felt as though she and her mother were ruined, and as though the National Reformation Society had been guilty of a fearful crime against a widow and an orphan. The lovely vision of immeasurable wealth had flashed and scintillated for a month in front of her dazzled eyes—and then blackness, nothingness, the dark void! She knew that she would never be happy again.

      And she thought, scornfully, “How could father have been so preoccupied and so gloomy, with all those riches?” She could not conceive anybody as rich as her father secretly was not being day and night in a condition of pure delight at the whole spectacle of existence. Her opinion of Mathew Moze fell lower than ever, and fell finally.

      The parlourmaid, in a negligence of attire indicating that no man was left alive in the house, waited at the door of the study to learn whether or not Miss Moze was in.

      “You’ll have to see him,” said Miss Ingate firmly. “It’ll be all right. I’ve known him all my life. He’s a very nice man.”

      After the parlourmaid had gone, and while Audrey was upbraiding her for not confessing earlier her acquaintance with Mr. Foulger,

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