CHAPTER IX.

_WASTE PAPER._

HARVEY saw his sister safely home, having rather hurried her away from Campion. It was very easy to see whither things were tending, but he did not particularly wish a dénouement to take place just then, during a time of general excitement. The drive was silent and not long. Gabrielle began already to feel ashamed of the feelings she had betrayed: only, side by side with the shame was a dawning of new happiness.

Harvey said nothing till they reached his house. He went indoors with Gabrielle, spoke a few kind bracing words, advised two hours' rest in her own room, and re-entered the hansom. Ten minutes brought him to the porch of a goodly West End mansion, inhabited by a friend of Harvey's—more strictly speaking, a friend of his father's—who was also an eminent judge.

Harvey alighted, dismissed his chariot, and made his way to the front door.

The eminent judge was at home, and very much engaged. Harvey's card, however, proved potent, and the dignified butler led him across the hall to a shut door, within which he speedily found admission.

There a huge fire blazed merrily, and piles of books and papers upon the writing-table almost hid from view the undersized slight man beyond. Harvey could see only the expansive forehead, overshadowing a pair of deep-set and critical eyes.

"Ha, my friend Harvey! How do you do? Quite well?" asked the judge, with his inviolable air of composure. "Yes, very busy, but I can spare you a few minutes."

"I will not take up much of your time," Harvey said apologetically. "There is a certain point on which I should be glad of your opinion."

"By all means," and he was motioned to a chair, the judge resuming his own seat.

Harvey thought for three seconds—not longer—how to open what he had to say. He had already decided to present the case in supposititious terms. When he began, it was without preamble.

"An old man, worth some fifty thousand pounds, falls into ill-health, and makes his will. He has no living relatives, and he leaves the whole between two of his friends,—two at least in whom he feels a kind interest. Nearly a year later, he again falls ill. He then makes a new will—no matter under whose influence—entirely subversive of the last. This will receives his signature; and on the same day a singular thing occurs. The old man has once known intimately a certain individual—John Smith, let us say—and several years earlier has with his own eyes witnessed the death of John Smith by drowning. Upon the day that the new will is signed, a friend calls to see him, and, in the presence of three other gentlemen and two servants, he seriously assures his friend that, the day before, this same John Smith has paid him a visit in that very room. The assertion is repeated, and insisted on."

Harvey paused, then asked, "Would the new will stand?"

The eminent judge put a few brief questions, receiving brief replies. When his opinion came, there was about it no tinge of hesitation. "Such a will would be worth no more than waste paper."

"If you were a legatee by the first will, you would contest the second?"

"Undoubtedly I should."

Harvey thanked his friend, apologised again for the interruption, and withdrew.

"As I expected!" he said to himself, passing down the stone steps. "But it has been touch and go. If I had not called exactly when I did, the machinations of that miserable crew would have succeeded. It was mere chance, as one talks of chance, that I met Campion there and then. I do not believe in chance, however. May it not be 'meant' that the money should go to some better purpose?"

Even then Harvey did not return home. He stepped into an omnibus, and went some distance before alighting, thereafter finding his way on foot to the Marsons' home.

It was only natural, he told himself, that he should call to see how they were getting on, and whether the parents were the worse for hearing of their little boy's peril. But it appeared that Ella, with a thoughtfulness beyond her age, had guarded them from any needless shock. They were only much moved and very thankful. Ella was suffering, he could see, she looked so pale and hollow-eyed, but she had no leisure to think of her own feelings, or to rest. When he spoke a word of sympathy, she nearly broke down, and begged him not to go on—yet somehow, he fancied that she liked it from him. She asked him to see her father, and Harvey came away from the interview, touched with the man's quiet endurance of trouble.

If this money should come to him and Campion, the first consideration would be the question of Mr. Marson's due. Harvey made up his mind on that point. As he had told Gabrielle, he could not walk in to present the Marsons with a cheque for their necessities, but it would be quite another matter if, in making use of Mr. Detroit's accumulated hoards, they were to weigh the just claims of those who had long worked under the old man for an inadequate return.

Harvey could not get Ella's young sad face out of his mind. It haunted him incessantly.

Campion came next day to dinner; not, however, to hear of the interview with the eminent judge. Harvey said nothing about it, and no recollections seemed to trouble Campion of the merchant dying in his wealthy old age, alone and friendless. Campion's mind was full of other matters.

He found Gabrielle quite restored to her usual girlish beauty, and to more than her usual girlish dignity. For, in dismay at her own lack of self-control the day before, she had sternly resolved to keep Mr. Campion now "quite at a distance." Nobody should ever say that Gabrielle was too easily won.

So a very uncomfortable evening was passed by the three; Gabrielle being cold and distant, Campion shy and miserable, Harvey perplexed what to make of them both.

The dénouement might have been postponed indefinitely. But at the very last moment, Gabrielle relaxed. "Good-bye," she said gently; "I hope—I hope you are not any the worse for your adventure." And the pretty lips, proudly set hitherto, trembled like those of a child.

Harvey was considerate enough to walk out of the room on some flimsy pretext, and Campion was prompt to use his opportunity.

Thus before nightfall Gabrielle and Arthur were engaged.

Days passed, and each will was put in claim. After many days, the opinion of the eminent judge proved to be correct.

The last will was found to be literally "worth no more than waste paper." That one feeble utterance of the old man about his quondam friend, Nathanael Plunkett, defeated all the false claims of his would-be legatees.

The large sum of fifty thousand pounds falling thus within the absolute power of Harvey and Campion might well have proved no small temptation to them. Had they spent at least part upon themselves, some observers would scarcely have been astonished. For they were not strictly bound to devote the whole to charitable purposes, although in a measure this was implied by the terms of the will.

But they rose superior to the temptation; and it speaks well for human nature—not human nature unaided—that they did.

The much-needed hospital for Portminster was built by Harvey; and some such scheme as Campion had devised for city toilers was carried out by Campion.

Before these greater matters received attention, however, the needs of the Marson family came up. Through the strenuous exertions of Harvey, Mr. Marson kept his situation, and not only kept it, but had his salary raised, under the new heads of the business. Moreover, he was persuaded to accept from "The Detroit Fund" a cheque in additional payment for his past services—not, indeed, very large, but yet enough to go far towards ending the bitter poverty from which he and his had suffered so severely in time past.

It was remarkable how often Harvey found it needful to call at the Marsons' house, and to discuss plans with Ella Matson. Gabrielle wondered first, and then was delighted. She did all she could to help the matter on, sure in her heart that Ella would be the very girl to "make Ted happy."

That consummation came about in the end, though not quickly. After due waiting, two weddings took place, not far apart. It would be hard to say which of the two young wives, Gabrielle Campion or Ella Harvey, found greater interest thereafter in helping forward the benevolent uses of the fund, which had so strangely fallen to the keeping of their husbands.

If any are disposed to think that Harvey and Campion acted with an extreme and unlikely disinterestedness, I can only answer that the main particulars in this story of an old man's will are not fancy, but fact.