He had heard the wife, who had deserted her husband in favor of the
teetotal platform, cry out for another chance, when her husband had died
away from her. But God had compassion upon the husband. She did not get
him back.
He pitied with all his heart the poor woman who would be one of the
richest women in England in the course of a day or two, and he said so
to Mr. Courtland when he called early in the morning. Mr. Courtland did
not remain for long in the house. It might have been assumed that
so intimate a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Linton’s would be an acceptable
visitor to the widow; but Mr. Courtland knew better. He hurried away to
town without even asking to see her. He only begged of Mr. Ayrton to let
him know if he could be of any use in town--there were details--ghastly;
but he would take care that there was no inquest.
Phyllis went up to town with poor Ella, and remained by her side in that
darkened house through all the terrible days that followed. Mr. Linton’s
death had an appreciable influence upon the quarter’s revenue of the
country. The probate duty paid by the executors was a large fortune in
itself, and Ella was, as Mr. Ayrton had predicted she would be, one of
the richest women in England. The hundred thousand pounds bequeathed to
some unostentatious charities--charities that existed for the cause of
charity, not for the benefit of the official staff--made no difference
worth speaking of in the position of Mrs. Linton as one of the richest
women in England.
But the codicil to the will which surprised most people was that which
placed in the hands of Mrs. Linton and the Rev. George Holland as
joint trustees the sum of sixty thousand pounds, for the building and
endowment of a church, the character and aims of which would be in
sympathy with the principles recently formulated by the Rev. George
Holland in his book entitled “Revised Versions,” and in his magazine
article entitled “The Enemy to Christianity,” the details to be decided
by the Rev. George Holland and Mrs. Linton as joint trustees.
The codicil was, of course, a very recent one; but it was executed in
proper form; it required two pages of engrossing to make the testator’s
desires plain to every intelligence that had received a thorough
training in legal technicalities. It was susceptible of a good deal of
interpretation to an ordinary intelligence.
When it was explained to Mrs. Linton, she also was at first a good deal
surprised. It read very like a jest of some subtlety: for she had no
idea that her husband had the slightest feeling one way or another on
the subject of the development of one Church or another; and as for the
establishment of an entirely new Church--yes, it struck her at first
that her solicitor was making a bold and certainly quite an unusual
attempt to cheer her up in her bereavement by bringing under her notice
a jest of the order _pachydermato_.
But soon it dawned upon her that her husband meant a good deal by this
codicil of his.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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