Mr. Meeson's Will: Chapter 15

Chapter 15

EUSTACE CONSULTS A LAWYER.

Augusta was leaning against the marble mantelpiece--indeed, one of her
arms was resting upon it, for she was a tall woman. Perhaps she, too,
felt that there was something in the air; at any rate, she turned away
her head, and began to play with a bronze Japanese lobster which adorned
the mantelpiece.

"Now for it," said Eustace to himself, drawing a long breath, to try and
steady the violent pulsations of his heart.

"I don't know what to say to you Miss Smithers," he began.

"Best say nothing more about it," she put in quickly. "I did it, and I am
glad that I did it. What do a few marks matter if a great wrong is
prevented thereby? I am not ever likely to have to go to court. Besides,
Mr. Meeson, there is another thing; it was through me that you lost your
inheritance; it is only right that I should try to be the means of
bringing it back to you."

She dropped her head again, and once more began to play with the bronze
lobster, holding her arm in such a fashion that Eustace could not see her
face. But if he could not see her face she could see his in the glass,
and narrowly observed its every change, which, on the whole, though
natural, was rather mean of her.

Poor Eustace grew pale and paler yet, till his handsome countenance
became positively ghastly. It is wonderful how frightened young men are
the first time that they propose. It wears off afterwards--with practice
one gets accustomed to anything.

"Miss Smithers--Augusta," he gasped, "I want to say something to you!"
and he stopped dead.

"Yes, Mr. Meeson," she answered cheerfully, "what is it?"

"I want to tell you"--and again he hesitated.

"What you are going to do about the will?" suggested Augusta.

"No--no; nothing about the will--please don't laugh at me and put me
off!"

She looked up innocently--as much as to say that she never dreamed of
doing either of these things. She had a lovely face, and the glance of
the grey eyes quite broke down the barrier of his fears.

"Oh, Augusta, Augusta," he said, "don't you understand? I love you! I
love you! No woman was ever loved before as I love you. I fell in love
with you the very first time I saw you in the office at Meeson's, when
I had the row with my uncle about you; and ever since then I have got
deeper and deeper in love with you. When I thought that you were
drowned it nearly broke my heart, and often and often I wished that I
were dead, too!"

It was Augusta's turn to be disturbed now, for, though a lady's composure
will stand her in good stead up to the very verge of an affair of this
sort, it generally breaks down _in medias res_. Anyhow, she certainly
dropped her eyes and colored to her hair, while her breast began to heave
tumultuously.

"Do you know, Mr. Meeson," she said at last, without daring to look at
his imploring face, "that this is only the fourth time that we have seen
each other, including yesterday."

"Yes, I know," he said; "but don't refuse me on that, account; you can
see me as often as you like"--(this was generous of Master Eustace)--"and
really I know you better than you think. I should think that I have read
each of your books twenty times."

This was a happy stroke, for, however free from vanity a person may be,
it is not in the nature of a young woman to hear that somebody has read
her book twenty times without being pleased.

"I am not my books," said Augusta.

"No; but your books are part of you," he answered, "and I have learnt
more about your real self through them than I should have done if I had
seen you a hundred times instead of four."

Augusta slowly raised her grey eyes till they met his own, and looked at
him as though she were searching out his soul, and the memory of that
long, sweet look is with him yet.

He said no more, nor had she any words; but somehow nearer and nearer
they drew one to the other, till his arms were around her, and his lips
were pressed upon her lips. Happy man and happy girl! they will live to
find that life has joys (for those who are good and are well off) but
that it has no joys so holy and so complete as that which they were now
experiencing--the first kiss of true and honest love.

A little while afterwards the butler came in in a horribly sudden manner,
and found Augusta and Eustace, the one very red and the other very pale,
standing suspiciously close to each other. But he was a very well-trained
butler and a man of experience, who had seen much and guessed more; and
he looked innocent as a babe unborn.

Just then, too, Lady Holmhurst came in again and looked at the pair of
them with an amusing twinkle in her eye. Lady Holmhurst, like her butler,
was also a person of experience.

"Won't you come into the drawing room?" she said. And they did, looking
rather sheepish.

And there Eustace made a clean breast of it, announcing that they were
engaged to be married. And although this was somewhat of an assumption,
seeing that no actual words of troth had passed between them, Augusta
stood there, never offering a word in contradiction.

"Well, Mr. Meeson," said Lady Holmhurst, "I think that you are the
luckiest man of my acquaintance, for Augusta is not only one of the
sweetest and loveliest girls that I have ever met, she is also the
bravest and the cleverest. You will have to look out, Mr. Meeson, or you
will be known as the husband of the great Augusta Meeson."

"I will take the risk," he answered humbly. "I know that Augusta has more
brains in her little finger than I have in my whole body. I don't know
how she can look at a fellow like me."

"Dear me, how humble we are!" said Lady Holmhurst. "Well, that is the way
of men before marriage. And now, as Augusta carries both your fortunes on
her back as well as in her face and brain, I venture to suggest that you
had better go and see a lawyer about the matter; that is, if you have
quite finished your little talk. I suppose that you will come and dine
with us, Mr. Meeson, and if you like to come a little early, say
half-past six, I daresay that Augusta will arrange to be in, to hear what
you have found out about this will, you know. And now--an revoir."

"I think that that is a very nice young man, my dear," said Lady
Holmhurst as soon as Eustace had bowed himself out. "It was rather
audacious of him to propose to you the fourth time that he set eyes upon
you; but I think that audacity is, on the whole, a good quality in the
male sex. Another thing is, that if that will is worth anything he will
be one of the wealthiest men in the whole of England; so, taking it
altogether, I think I may congratulate you, my dear. And now I suppose
that you have been in love with this young man all along. I guessed as
much when I saw your face as he ran up to the carriage yesterday, and I
was sure of it when I heard about the tattooing. No girl would allow
herself to be tattooed in the interest of abstract justice. Oh, yes! I
know all about it; and now I am going out walking in the park with Dick,
and I should advise you to compose yourself, for that artist is coming to
draw you at twelve."

And she departed and left Augusta to her reflections, which were--well,
not unpleasant ones.

Meanwhile Eustace was marching towards the Temple. As it happened, in the
same lodging-house where he had been living for the last few months, two
brothers of the name of Short had rooms, and with these young gentlemen
he had become very friendly. The two Shorts were twins, and so like one
another that it was more than a month before Eustace could be sure which
of them he was speaking to. When they were both at college their father
died, leaving his property equally between them; and as this property on
realisation was not found to amount to more than four hundred a year, the
twins very rightly concluded that they had better do something to
supplement their moderate income. Accordingly, by a stroke of genius they
determined that one of them should become a solicitor and the other a
barrister, and then tossed up as to which should take to which trade. The
idea, of course, was that in this manner they would be able to afford
each other mutual comfort and support. John would give James briefs, and
James' reflected glory would shine back on John. In short, they were
anxious to establish a legal dong firm of the most approved pattern.

Accordingly, they passed their respective examinations, and John took
rooms with another budding solicitor in the City, while James hired
chambers in Pump-court. But there the matter stopped, for as John did not
get any work, of course he could not give any to James. And so it came to
pass that for the past three years neither of the twins had found the law
as profitable as they anticipated. In vain did John sit and sigh in the
City. Clients were few and far between: scarcely enough to pay his rent.
And in vain did James, artistically robed, wander like the Evil One, from
court to court, seeking what he might devour. Occasionally he had the
pleasure of taking a note for another barrister who was called away,
which means doing another man's work for nothing. Once, too, a man with
whom he had a nodding acquaintance, rushed up to him, and, thrusting a
brief into his hands, asked him to hold it for him, telling him that it
would be on in a short time, and that there was nothing in it--"nothing
at all." Scarcely had poor James struggled through the brief when the
case was called on, and it may suffice to say that at its conclusion, the
Judge gazed at him mildly, over his spectacles, and "could not help
wondering that any learned counsel had been found who would consent to
waste the time of the Court in such a case as the one to which he had
been listening." Clearly James' friend would not so consent, and had
passed on the responsibility, minus the fee. On another occasion, James
was in the Probate Court on motion day, and a solicitor--a real live
solicitor--came up to him and asked him to make a motion (marked
Mr.----, 2 gns.) for leave to dispense with a co-respondent. This motion
he made, and the co-respondent was dispensed with in the approved
fashion; but when he turned round the solicitor had vanished, and he
never saw him more or the two guineas either. However, the brief, his
only one, remained, and, after that, he took to hovering about the
Divorce Court, partly in the hope of once more seeing that solicitor, and
partly with a vague idea of drifting into practice in the Division.

Now, Eustace had often, when in the Shorts' sitting-room in the
lodging-house in the Strand heard the barrister James hold forth
learnedly on the matter of wills, and, therefore, he naturally enough
turned towards him in his recent dilemma. Knowing the address of his
chambers in Pump-court, he hurried thither, and was in due course
admitted by a very small child, who apparently filled the responsible
office of clerk to Mr. James Short and several other learned gentlemen,
whose names appeared upon the door.

The infant regarded Eustace, when he opened the door, with a look of such
preternatural sharpness, that it almost frightened him. The beginning of
that eagle glance was full of inquiring hope, and the end of resigned
despair. The child had thought that Eustace might be a client come to
tread the paths which no client ever had trod. Hence the hope and the
despair in his eyes. Eustace had nothing of the solicitor's clerk about
him. Clearly he was not a client.

Mr. Short was in "that door to the right." Eustace knocked, and entered
into a bare little chamber about the size of a large housemaid's closet,
furnished with a table, three chairs (one a basket easy), and a
book-case, with a couple of dozen of law books, and some old volumes of
reports, and a broad window-sill, in the exact centre of which lay the
solitary and venerated brief.

Mr. James Short was a short, stout young man, with black eyes, a hooked
nose, and a prematurely bald head. Indeed, this baldness of the head was
the only distinguishing mark between James and John, and, therefore, a
thing to be thankful for, though, of course, useless to the perplexed
acquaintance who met them in the street when their hats were on. At the
moment of Eustace's entry Mr. Short had been engaged in studying that
intensely legal print, the _Sporting Times_, which, however, from some
unexplained bashfulness, he had hastily thrown under the table, filling
its space with a law book snatched at hazard from the shelf.

"All right, old fellow," said Eustace, whose quick eyes had caught the
quick flutter of the vanishing paper; "don't be alarmed, it's only me."

"Ah!" said Mr. James Short, when he had shaken hands with him, "you see I
thought that it might have been a client--a client is always possible,
however improbable, and one has to be ready to meet the possibility."

"Quite so, old fellow," said Eustace; "but do you know, as it happens, I
am a client--and a big one, too; it is a matter of two millions of
money--my uncle's fortune. There was another will, and I want to take
your advice."

Mr. Short fairly bounded out of the chair in exultation, and then, struck
by another thought, sank back into it again.

"My dear Meeson," he said, "I am sorry I cannot hear you."

"Eh," said Eustace; "what do you mean?"

"I mean that you are not accompanied by a solicitor, and it is not the
etiquette of the profession to which I belong to see a client
unaccompanied by a solicitor."

"Oh, hang the etiquette of the profession!"

"My dear Meeson, if you came to me as a friend I should be happy to give
you any legal information in my power, and I flatter myself that I know
something of matters connected with probate. But you yourself said that
you have come as a client, and in that case the personal relationship
sinks into the background and is superseded by the official relationship.
Under these circumstances it is evident that the etiquette of the
profession intervenes, which overmastering force compels me to point out
to you how improper and contrary to precedent it would be for me to
listen to you without the presence of a properly qualified solicitor."

"Oh, Lord!" gasped Eustace, "I had no idea that you were so particular; I
thought perhaps that you would be glad of the job."

"Certainly--certainly! In the present state of my practice," as he
glanced at the solitary brief, "I should be the last to wish to turn away
work. Let me suggest that you should go and consult my brother John, in
the Poultry. I believe business is rather slack with him just now, so I
think it probable that you will find him disengaged. Indeed, I dare say
that I may go so far as to make an appointment for him here--let us say
in an hour's time. Stop! I will consult my clerk! Dick!"

The infant appeared.

"I believe that I have no appointment for this morning?"

"No, Sir," said Dick, with a twinkle in his eye. "One moment, Sir, I
will consult the book," and he vanished, to return presently with
the information that Mr. Short's time was not under any contributions
that day.

"Very good," said Mr. Short; "then make an entry of an appointment with
Mr. John Short and Mr. Meeson, at two precisely."

"Yes, Sir," said Dick, departing to the unaccustomed task.

As soon as Eustace had departed from Tweedledum to Tweedledee, or, in
other words, from James, barrister, to John, solicitor, Dick was again
summoned and bade go to a certain Mr. Thomson on the next floor. Mr.
Thomson had an excellent library, which had come to him by will. On the
strength of this bequest, he had become a barrister-at-law, and the
object of Dick's visit was to request the loan of the eighth volume of
the statutes revised, containing the Wills Act of 1 Vic., cap. 26, "Brown
on Probate," "Dixon on Probate," and "Powles on Brown," to the study of
which valuable books Mr. James Short devoted himself earnestly whilst
awaiting his client's return.

Meanwhile, Eustace had made his way in a two-penny 'bus to one of those
busy courts in the City where Mr. John Short practised as a solicitor.
Mr. Short's office was, Eustace discovered by referring to a notice
board, on the seventh floor of one of the tallest houses he had ever
seen. However, up he went with a stout heart, and after some five
minutes of a struggle, that reminded him forcibly of climbing the
ladders of a Cornish mine, he arrived at a little door right at the very
top of the house on which was painted "Mr. John Short, solicitor."
Eustace knocked and the door was opened by a small boy, so like the
small boy he had seen at Mr. James Short's at the temple that he fairly
started. Afterwards the mystery was explained. Like their masters, the
two small boys were brothers.

Mr. John Short was within, and Eustace was ushered into his presence.
To all appearance he was consulting a voluminous mass of correspondence
written on large sheets of brief paper; but when he looked at it
closely, it seemed to Eustace that the edges of the paper were very
yellow, and the ink was much faded. This, however, was not to be
wondered at, seeing that Mr. John Short had taken them over with the
other fixtures of the office.

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