PERHAPS THE TERROR with which I anticipated the hour of one, and the disclosure of the unknown undertaking to which I had bound myself, was irrational and morbid. But, honestly, I doubt it; my tendency has always been that of many other weak characters, to act impetuously, and afterwards to reproach myself for consequences which I have, perhaps, in reality, had little or no share in producing.
It was Doctor Bryerly’s countenance and manner in alluding to a particular provision in my father’s will that instinctively awed me. I have seen faces in a nightmare that haunted me with an indescribably horror, and yet I could not say wherein lay the fascination. And so it was with his — an omen, a menace, lurked in its sallow and dismal glance.
“You must not be so frightened, darling,” said Cousin Monica. “It is foolish; it is, really; they can’t cut off your head, you know: they can’t really harm you in any essential way. If it involved a risk of a little money, you would not mind it; but men are such odd creatures — they measure all sacrifices by money. Doctor Bryerly would look just as you describe, if you were doomed to lose 500l., and yet it would not kill you.”
A companion like Lady Knollys is reassuring; but I could not take her comfort altogether to heart, for I felt that she had no great confidence in it herself.
There was a little French clock over the mantelpiece in the school-room, which I consulted nearly every minute. It wanted now but ten minutes of one.
“Shall we go down to the drawing-room, dear?” said Cousin Knollys, who was growing restless like me.
So down-stairs we went, pausing by mutual consent at the great window at the stair-head, which looks out on the avenue. Mr. Danvers was riding his tall, grey horse at a walk, under the wide branches toward the house, and we waited to see him get off at the door. In his turn he loitered there, for the good Rector’s gig, driven by the Curate, was approaching at a smart ecclesiastical trot.
Doctor Clay got down, and shook hands with Mr. Danvers; and after a word or two, away drove the Curate with that upward glance at the windows from which so few can refrain.
I watched the Rector and Mr. Danvers loitering on the steps as a patient might the gathering of surgeons who are to perform some unknown operation. They, too, glanced up at the window as they turned to enter the house, and I drew back. Cousin Monica looked at her watch.
“Four minutes only. Shall we go to the drawing-room?”
Waiting for a moment to let the gentlemen get by on the way to the study, we, accordingly, went down, and I heard the Rector talk of the dangerous state of Grindleston bridge, and wondered how he could think of such things at a time of sorrow. Everything about those few minutes of suspense remains fresh in my recollection. I remember how they loitered and came to a halt at the corner of the oak passage leading to the study, and how the Rector patted the marble head and smoothed the inflexible tresses of William Pitt, as he listened to Mr. Danvers’ details about the presentment; and then, as they went on, I recollect the boisterous nose-blowing that suddenly resounded from the passage, and which I then referred, and still refer, intuitively to the Rector.
We had not been five minutes in the drawing-room when Branston entered, to say that the gentlemen I had mentioned were all assembled in the study.
“Come, dear,” said Cousin Monica; and leaning on her arm I reached the study door. I entered, followed by her. The gentlemen arrested their talk and stood up, those who were sitting, and the Rector came forward very gravely, and in low tones, and very kindly, greeted me. There was nothing emotional in this salutation, for though my father never quarrelled, yet an immense distance separated him from all his neighbours, and I do not think there lived a human being who knew him at more than perhaps a point or two of his character.
Considering how entirely he secluded himself, my father was, as many people living remember, wonderfully popular in his county. He was neighbourly in everything except in seeing company and mixing in society. He had magnificent shooting, of which he was extremely liberal. He kept a pack of hounds at Dollerton, with which all his side of the county hunted through the season. He never refused any claim upon his purse which had the slightest show of reason. He subscribed to every fund, social, charitable, sporting, agricultural, no matter what, provided the honest people of his county took an interest in it, and always with a princely hand; and although he shut himself up, no one could say that he was inaccessible, for he devoted hours daily to answering letters, and his checque-book contributed largely in those replies. He had taken his turn long ago as High Sheriff; so there was an end of that claim before his oddity and shyness had quite secluded him. He refused the Lord–Lieutenancy of his county; he declined every post of personal distinction connected with it. He could write an able as well as a genial letter when he pleased; and his appearances at public meetings, dinners, and so forth were made in this epistolary fashion, and, when occasion presented, by magnificent contributions from his purse.
If my father had been less goodnatured in the sporting relations of his vast estates, or less magnificent in dealing with his fortune, or even if he had failed to exhibit the intellectual force which always characterised his letters on public matters, I dare say that his oddities would have condemned him to ridicule, and possibly to dislike. But every one of the principal gentlemen of his county, whose judgment was valuable, has told me that he was a remarkably able man, and that his failure in public life was due to his eccentricities, and in no respect to deficiency in those peculiar mental qualities which make men feared and useful in Parliament.
I could not forbear placing on record this testimony to the high mental and the kindly qualities of my beloved father, who might have passed for a misanthrope or a fool. He was a man of generous nature and powerful intellect, but given up to the oddities of a shyness which grew with years and indulgence, and became inflexible with his disappointments and affliction.
There was something even in the Rector’s kind and ceremonious greeting which oddly enough reflected the mixed feelings in which awe was not without a place, with which his neighbours had regarded my dear father.
Having done these honours — I am sure looking woefully pale — I had time to glance quietly at the only figure there with which I was not tolerably familiar. This was the junior partner in the firm of Archer and Sleigh who represented my uncle Silas — a fat and pallid man of six-and-thirty, with a sly and evil countenance, and it has always seemed to me, that ill dispositions show more repulsively in a pale fat face than in any other.
Doctor Bryerly, standing near the window, was talking in a low tone to Mr. Grimston, our attorney.
I heard good Dr. Clay whisper to Mr. Danvers —
“Is not that Doctor Bryerly — the person with the black — the black — it’s a wig, I think — in the window, talking to Abel Grimston?”
“Yes; that’s he.”
“Odd-looking person — one of the Swedenborg people, is not he?” continued the Rector.
“So I am told.”
“Yes,” said the Rector, quietly; and he crossed one gaitered leg over the other, and, with fingers interlaced, twiddled his thumbs, as he eyed the monstrous sectary under his orthodox old brows with a stern inquisitiveness. I thought he was meditating theological battle.
But Dr. Bryerly and Mr. Grimston, still talking together, began to walk slowly from the window, and the former said in his peculiar grim tones —
“I beg pardon, Miss Ruthyn; perhaps you would be so good as to show to which of the cabinets in this room your late lamented father pointed out as that to which this key belongs.”
I indicated the oak cabinet.
“Very good, ma’am — very good,” said Doctor Bryerly, as he fumbled the key into the lock.
Cousin Monica could not forbear murmuring —
“Dear! what a brute!”
The junior partner, with his dumpy hands in his pockets, poked his fat face over Mr. Grimston’s shoulder, and peered into the cabinet as the door opened.
The search was not long. A handsome white paper enclosure, neatly tied up in pink tape, and sealed with large red seals, was inscribed in my dear father’s hand:—“Will of Austin R. Ruthyn, of Knowl.” Then, in smaller characters, the date, and in the corner a note —“This will was drawn from my instructions by Gaunt, Hogg, and Hatchett, Solicitors, Great Woburn Street, London, A. R. R.”
“Let me have a squint at that indorsement, please, gentlemen,” half whispered the unpleasant person who represented my uncle Silas.
“‘Tisn’t an indorsement. There, look — a memorandum on an envelope,” said Abel Grimston, gruffly.
“Thanks — all right — that will do,” he responded, himself making a pencil-note of it, in a long clasp-book which he drew from his coat-pocket.
The tape was carefully cut, and the envelope removed without tearing the writing, and forth came the will, at sight of whic............