Mr. Meeson's Will. H. Rider Haggard
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the ominous expression on the great man’s brow. “I am sure I am very sorry that you were kept waiting, my dear Sir: but I was at the moment engaged with an excellent and most Christian testator.”—
Here he suddenly jumped and dried up again, for Mr. Meeson, without the slightest warning, ejaculated: “Curse your Christian testator! And look here, Todd, just you see that it does not happen again. I’m a Christian testator too; and Christians of my cut aren’t accustomed to be kept standing about just like office-boys or authors. See that it don’t happen again, Todd.”
“I am sure I am exceedingly grieved. Circumstances”—
“Oh, never mind all that—I want my will.”
“Will—will—Forgive me—a little confused, that’s all. Your manner is so full of hearty old middle-age’s kind of vigour”—
Here he stopped, more suddenly even than usual, for Mr. Meeson fixed him with his savage eye, and then jerked himself out of the room to look for the document in question.
“Little idiot!” muttered Meeson; “I’ll give him the sack, too, if he isn’t more careful. By Jove! why should I not have my own resident solicitor? I could get a sharp hand with a damaged character for about £300 a year, and I pay that old Todd quite £2000. There is a vacant place in the Hutches that I could turn into an office. Hang me, if I don’t do it. I will make that little chirping grasshopper jump to some purpose, I’ll warrant,” and he chuckled at the idea.
Just then Mr. Todd returned with the will, and before he could begin to make any explanations his employer, cut him short with a sharp order to read the gist of it.
This the lawyer proceeded to do. It was very short, and, with the exception of a few legacies, amounting in all to about twenty thousand pounds, bequeathed all the testator’s vast fortune and estates, including his (by far the largest) interest in the great publishing house, and his palace with the paintings and other valuable contents, known as Pompadour Hall, to his nephew, Eustace H. Meeson.
“Very well,” he said, when the reading was finished; “now give it to me.”
Mr. Todd obeyed, and handed the document to his patron, who deliberately rent it into fragments with his strong fingers, and then completed its destruction by tearing it with his big white teeth. This done, he mixed the little pieces up, threw them on the floor, and stamped upon them with an air of malignity that almost frightened jerky little Mr. Todd.
“Now then,” he grimly said, “there’s an end of the old love; so let’s on with the new. Take your pen and receive my instructions for my will.”
Mr. Todd did as he was bid.
“I leave all my property, real and personal, to be divided in equal shares between my two partners, Alfred Tom Addison and Cecil Spooner Roscoe. There, that’s short and sweet, and, one way and another, means a couple of millions.”
“Good heavens! Sir,” jerked out Mr. Todd. “Why, do you mean to quite cut out your nephew—and the other legatees?” he added by way of an afterthought.
“Of course I do; that is, as regards my nephew. The legatees may stand as before.”
“Well all I have to say,” went on the little man, astonished into honesty, “Is that it is the most shameful thing I ever heard of!”
“Indeed, Mr. Todd, is it? Well now, may I ask you: am I leaving this property, or are you? Don’t trouble yourself to answer that, however, but just attend. Either you draw up that will at once, while I wait, or you say good-bye to about £2000 a year, for that’s what Meeson’s business is worth, I reckon. Now you take your choice.”
Mr. Todd did take his choice. In under an hour, the will, which was very short, was drawn and engrossed.
“Now then,” said Meeson, addressing himself to Mr. Todd and the managing clerk, as he took the quill between his fingers to sign, “do you two bear in mind that at the moment I execute this will I am of sound mind, memory, and understanding. There you are; now do you two witness.”
It was night, and King capital, in the shape of Mr. Meeson, sat alone at dinner in his palatial dining-room at Pompadour. Dinner was over, the powdered footman had departed with stately tread, and the head butler was just placing the decanters of richly coloured wine before the solitary lord of all. The dinner had been a melancholy failure. Dish after dish, the cost of any one of which would have fed a poor child for a month, had been brought up and handed to the master only to be found fault with and sent away. On that night Mr. Meeson had no appetite.
“Johnson,” he said to the butler, when he was sure the footman could not hear him, “has Mr. Eustace been here?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Has he gone?”
“Yes, Sir. He came to fetch his things, and then went away in a cab.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know, Sir. He told the man to drive to Birmingham.”
“Did he leave any message?”
“Yes, Sir, he bade me say that you should not be troubled with him again; but that he was sorry that you had parted from him in anger.”
“Why did you not give me that message before?”
“Because Mr. Eustace said I was not to give it unless you asked after him.”
“Very good. Johnson!”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You will give orders that Mr. Eustace’s name is not to be mentioned in this house again. Any servant mentioning Mr. Eustace’s name will be dismissed.”
“Very good, Sir”; and Johnson went.
Mr. Meeson gazed round him. He looked at the long array of glass and silver, at the spotless napery and costly flowers. He looked at the walls hung with works of art, which, whatever else they might be, were at least expensive; at the mirrors and the soft wax-lights; at the marble mantelpieces and the bright warm fires (for it was November); at the rich wall paper and the soft, deep-hued carpet; and reflected that they were all his. And then he sighed, and his coarse, heavy face sank in and grew sad. Of what use was this last extremity of luxury to him? He had nobody to leave it to, and to speak the truth, it gave him but little pleasure. Such pleasure as he had in life was derived from making money, not from spending it. The only times when he was really happy were when he was in his counting house directing the enterprises of his vast establishment, and adding sovereign by sovereign to his enormous accumulations. That had been his one joy for forty years, and it was still his joy.
And then he fell to thinking of his nephew, the only son of his brother, whom he had once loved, before he lost himself in publishing books and making money, and sighed. He had been attached to the lad in his own coarse way, and it was a blow to him to cut himself loose from him. But Eustace had defied him, and—what was worse—he had told him the truth, which he, of all men, could not bear. He had said that his system of trade was dishonest, that he took more than his due, and it was so. He knew it; but he could not tolerate that it should be told him, and that his whole life should thereby be discredited, and even his accumulated gold tarnished—stamped as ill-gotten; least of all could he bear it from his dependent. He was not altogether a bad man; nobody is; he was only a coarse, vulgar tradesman, hardened and defiled by a long career of sharp dealing. At the bottom, he had his feelings like other men, but he could not tolerate exposure or even contradiction; therefore he had revenged himself. And yet, as he sat there, in solitary glory, he realized that to revenge does not bring happiness, and could even find it in his heart to envy the steadfast honesty that had defied him at the cost of his own ruin.
Not that he meant to relent or alter his determination. Mr. Meeson never relented, and never changed his mind. Had he done so he would not at that moment have been the master of two millions of money.