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Philiberta: A Novel

Chapter XX. A Last Will and Testament

Chapter XX. A Last Will and Testament.

Philiberta's scheme succeeded.

She and Mrs. Hugill had a hard struggle for it with the magistrate; but there could be but one end—his vanquishment, as anyone knowing the domestic engineering of this family might easily foresee. Once having lent himself to the plan, however, Mr. Hugill did his most earnest best towards its furtherance. So he entered into voluminous correspondence page 140with Mr. Otto Berliner, of the missing friends agency, in Melbourne, and finally went to town with his wife, went through ceremonies in identification, paid an enormous sum in liquidation of accumulated expenses in re the estate of Philiberta Campbell, deceased, and then took entire possession of that estate under said Philiberta Campbell's duly attested will.

'I should get ten years on the roads for it at the very least, if it were found out,' said Mr. Hugill, when it was all over and he was safe under his own roof-tree once more.

'I don't believe it,' said Philiberta. 'I don't believe there is any law against a person's making a will and having it carried out during lifetime.'

'I shall make a point of reading up to see,' said Mr. Hugill; 'and at any rate if I didn't get into gaol through it, I should most certainly be committed to Yarra Bend. It is the maddest thing I ever heard of.'

'Then why did you do it, James?' inquired his wife, very unfairly, since it was she who had made him do it.

What made it worse for the poor gentleman was that he had been kept in total ignorance of the grand motive of all this manœuvring, so that it seemed to him a piece of meaningless gratuitous folly.

'And now all that I want,' said Philiberta, 'is a promise that you will preserve perfect secrecy.'

'Secrecy, by Jove! Cela va sans dire, I reckon. Did it strike you as being at all likely that I should ever be such an ass as to tell? I dare say it did, though, seeing that I have already suffered you both to make such a consummate one of me.'

Leslie was out of all this. Whether his mother feared the reignition of his old hopeless flame, or merely wanted him to be out of the way till this affair was all settled, one cannot say; but certain it is that she sent him off on a visit to distant friends without allowing him to see Philiberta at all that time. Afterwards she told him all about it; that is, as much as she told his father, which was very little; for Mrs. Hugill, though hating secrets, had the poorest opinion of masculine capacity for preserving them, and so kept them to herself and ran no risk.

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'Though women may be more prone to babble for babbling's sake,' she was wont to say, 'yet they are much more retentive under the process of pumping. I never saw the man yet who wouldn't leak out everything he knew if skilfully pumped; but let a woman see that you are trying to draw her out, and she shuts up as suddenly and perfectly as a trap-door spider's house when a fly gets in.'

Of course there is no masculine mind that will be imposed upon by this little woman's theory. Every man will perceive the absurdity of it at a glance; therefore to attempt to point it out would be entirely supererogatory.

Mrs. Hugtll went to Melbourne with Philiberta to help at the transfer of the money. Philiberta felt the inadvisability of appearing personally in the affair if she wished to carry out her fraud successfully.

So Mrs. Hugill managed it through an agent who, for a liberal 'consideration,' contrived the whole arrangement with Edgar Paget's bankers cleverly and with the utmost secrecy. Mrs. Hugill gave this individual a false name and account of herself, and he never even saw Philiberta, so there was little danger of the truth ever coming out through him. And Paget's bankers, who were extremely partial to Paget, and deeply distressed over the circumstances that were forcing them to foreclose on him, were only too rejoiced to accept his redemption from any quarter, and to refrain from pressing too closely any unwelcome inquiries.

'So now it is done,' said Philiberta, smoothing out on her knee the bankers' receipt in acknowledgment of twelve thousand pounds, paid into their hands to the credit of Edgar Paget. 'Now it is done.'

'Yes, and I only hope you may never have to regret it, dear,' said her friend.

The two were in quiet lodgings in St. Kilda, and were sitting in a pretty chamber that overlooked the bay. Philiberta loved the sea, though it had treated her so ill. The boom of its waves upon the beach was always music to her soul; she could always find relief from herself in the contemplation of sunlight or moonlight on its varying waters.

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'I shall never regret it,' she said, in answer to Mrs. Hugill's last remark. 'The money counted as nothing to me, and it will save him. And I have none other in the world to need it from me, only him.'

In her heart Mrs. Hugill hated and despised Edgar Paget as a treacherous and dishonourable ruffian. So figure to yourself the loyal allegiance to friendship that could restrain her from all bitterness of speech concerning him! If prayer could have brought about his death, I believe she would have prayed for it; but never a word uttered she against him to Philiberta, lest the word should wound her darling.

'Come back with me to Emuville, Berta; and gladden our hearts by staying with us a while.'

'My dear, I am too restless. It will be better for me to lose no time in getting to work.'

'How do you mean to set about it at first, dear?'

'Oh, I will go and make application at the theatres. What I have still retained of my fortune will keep me until I can justly demand salary. It will not do to press for salary at first, you know, as I am unknown and inexperienced.'

'I suppose not. But, Berta, are you not afraid that Mr. Paget will see you and know you one of these days if you stop in Melbourne?'

'I have thought of that, but there is little likelihood of such a contingency. From now until the end of the year is a busy time for a squatter. And in the first flush of his release from difficulties it is most probable that he would cling close to home to make the most of his renewed chances. By the end of this year I shall most likely have an engagement in some other colony if I succeed in this. And then every year of my life will lessen the probability of his recognising me even if we should meet. I am altered a great deal already, you know.'

'Yes, you are altered,' said Mrs. Hugill.

'And every year will alter me more.'

'How calmly you talk of it, Berta.'

'Dear, I have had a long time to think calmly of it, you know, and to learn that life is made up of more senses than page 143one, and that there is something for everyone to do and live for beyond mourning the one boon which is denied.'

'My child, it was a bitter lesson for you to learn at the very outset of your life.'

'Don't!' said Philiberta, hastily. 'Somehow I can bear anything better than tenderness lately. But don't think I am ungrateful for yours, dearest; it is only that it—that it––'

'I know, I know, darling. So you will try the theatres at once.'

'Yes, it will be better. And this great ambition of mine,' said Philiberta, 'will fill up my life and compensate for all that is as yet a failure in it. With an end in view—something to achieve—something to work for and win—no one can be unhappy.'

'And you will win, darling, you will succeed.'

'I think I shall,' said Philiberta.

Not a doubt of it entered either of their minds; and so they went out arm in arm for their last walk together on the beach, and their last anticipatory discussion of the glory they bath felt so sure of.