Three days later Leslie came home from the city with tidings on his
face, and he told them to his wife when they were alone that night
“Marsden's lawyer made an appointment after the funeral, and I had an
hour with him. He has asked me to be a trustee with himself in Mrs.
Marsden's settlement.”
“I'm so glad; you must accept, for it will be such a comfort to poor
Beatrice; but I thought Godfrey was her sole trustee.”
“So he was,” said Leslie grimly, “more's the pity, and he embezzled
every penny of the funds--gambled them away in card-playing and... other
ways.”
“Godfrey Harrison, Beatrice's brother?”
“Yes, her much-admired, accomplished, ill-used brother, the victim of
her husband's stinginess.”
“If that be true, then Godfrey is simply a...”
“You mean an unmitigated scoundrel. Quite so, Florence, and a number
of other words we won't go over. I tell you,” and Leslie sprang to his
feet, “there is some use in swearing; if it had not been for one or two
expressions that came to my memory suddenly to-day, I should have been
ill. Curious to say, the lawyer seemed to enjoy them as much as myself,
so it must be a bad case.”
“But I don't understand--if Godfrey spent Trixy's money, how is there
anything to manage? Did he pay it back?”
“No, he did not, and could not; he has not enough brains to earn
eighteen pence except by cheating, and if by any chance he came into a
fortune, would grudge his sister a pound.”
“Then...?”
“Don't you begin to catch a glimpse of the facts? Why, Marsden toiled
and scraped, and in the end, so the doctors say, killed himself to
replace the money, and he had just succeeded before his death.”
“How good of him! but I don't see the necessity of all this secrecy on
his part, and all those stories about low interest that he told Trixy.”
“There was no necessity; if it had been some of us, we would have let
Mrs. Marsden know what kind of brother she had, and ordered him out of
the country on threat of jail.
“It was Marsden's foolishness, let us call it, to spare his wife the
disgrace of her idol and the loss of his company. So her husband was
despised beside this precious rascal every day.”
“Trixy will get a terrible shock when she is told; it would almost have
been kinder to let her know the truth before he died.”
“Mrs. Marsden is never to know,” said Leslie; “that was his wish; she's
just to be informed that new trustees have been appointed, and we are to
take care that she does not waste her income on the fellow.
“People will send letters of condolence to Mrs. Marsden, but they will
say at afternoon teas that it must be a great relief to her, and that
it's quite beautiful to see her sorrow. In two years she will marry some
well-dressed fool, and they will live on Marsden's money,” and Leslie's
voice had an unusual bitterness.
“Did you ever hear of another case like this, John?”
“Never; when old Parchment described Marsden giving him the
instructions, he stopped suddenly.
“'Marsden,' he said, 'was the biggest fool I ever came across in the
course of forty-two years' practice,' and he went over to the window.”
“And you?”
“I went to the fireplace; we were both so disgusted with the man that we
couldn't speak for five minutes.”
After a short while Mrs. Leslie said, “It appears to me that this slow,
uninteresting man, whom every one counted a bore, was in his own way...
almost a hero.”
“Or altogether,” replied John Leslie.