From One Generation to Another Part 15

Mr. Rigg bowed and resumed his seat. He took up a penholder and smiled, presumably at his own sunny thoughts.

Mrs. Agar was one of those fatuous ladies who think themselves capable of tricking a professional man out of his fee. She had a vague notion that if one asks a lawyer a question the price of his answer is at least six shillings and eightpence. Up to this point in the interview she was serenely conscious of having eluded the fee.

"I presume," she remarked carelessly, in pursuance of this economical policy, "that in such a case the property would go unconditionally to the second son."

"There are contingent possibilities," replied the man of subterfuge blandly. He did not mean anything at all, but shrewdly guessed that Mrs.

Agar would not credit him with so simple a design.

The lady smiled in a subtly commiserating manner, indicative of the fact that on some family matters the ignorance of all except herself was somewhat pitiful.

"Of course," she said, "as regards the present case, I know perfectly well that both Jem and his father would wish everything to go to Arthur."

She was picking a thread from the corner of her jacket with an air of nonchalance.

Mr. Rigg was silent. He had some thirty years before this period given up attaching importance to the wishes of the deceased as interpreted by disinterested survivors.

"And _I_ should imagine that the necessary transfers--and--and things would be much better put in hand at once. Delay seems to me quite unnecessary."

She paused for Mr. Rigg's opinion--quite a friendly opinion, of course, without price.

"Pardon me," said that lawyer, driven into a corner at last, "but are you consulting me on behalf of the late Squire's executor, Mr. Glynde, or on your own account?"

"Oh!" replied Mrs. Agar, drawing herself up with a deprecating little laugh, "I did not intend it to be a consultation at all. I happened to be pa.s.sing, that was all. You see, Mr. Rigg, Mr. Glynde does not know anything about these matters. Clergymen are so stupid."

"Seems to be afraid," Mr. Rigg was reflecting behind his pleasant mask, "of the young man coming alive again."

Mrs. Agar was like a child in many ways, more especially in her unbounded belief in her own cunning. She actually imagined herself to be a match for this man, who had been trained in the ways of duplicity all his life.

She saw nothing of his mind, and fatuously ignored the fact that from the moment she had entered the room he had begun the interview with a mental hypothesis.

"This woman," he had reflected, "has always hated her step-son. She got him a commission in an Indian regiment for the primary purpose of getting him out of the way while she saved money on her life-interest in the estate for her second son. The secondary purpose was little more than a hope. She hoped for the best. The best has come off, and she is not clever enough to let things take their course."

Every word Mrs. Agar had uttered, every silence, every glance had gone to confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He did not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor in the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law.

And in one as in the other the finer susceptibilities grow dull. The doctor almost forgets the pain he inflicts. The lawyer gradually loses his sense of right and wrong.

Mr. Rigg was an honest man--as honesty is understood in the law. He was keenly alive to all the motives of this woman, who, in the law of humanity, was a criminal. He had started from a lawyer's standpoint--_id est_, personal advantage. "To whose advantage?" they ask, and there they a.s.sign the action. But Mr. Rigg was also a good lawyer, and therefore he kept his own counsel.

"Things must be allowed," he said, "to take their course. You know, Mrs.

Agar, we are proverbially slow in moving, but we are sure."

Now it happened that this was precisely the position a.s.sumed by Mr.

Glynde, whose respect for legal routine was enormous. He rarely moved in any matters wherein the law could by hook or crook be introduced without consulting Mr. Rigg, whom he vaguely called his "man." And it was precisely this delay that Mrs. Agar disliked. She had no definite reason for so doing; but this stroke of good fortune presented itself to her mind more in the light of an opportunity to be seized than as a just inheritance to be thankfully received in its due time.

She was awake to the fact that Arthur was not the man to seize any opportunity, however obviously it might be thrust into his grasp, and her knowledge of the world tended to exaggerate its dishonesty in her mind.

Sister Cecilia and she had talked this matter over with that small modic.u.m of learning which is a dangerous thing, and they had arrived at the conclusion that Mr. Glynde was not competent to carry out the duties thus suddenly thrust upon him. Wrapped up as was her heart in the welfare of her weakling son, the one lasting motive of her life had been to secure for him the largest possible portion of earthly goods. Now that success seemed to be within measurable distance, she gave way to the baneful panic of the weak conspirator, and fancied that the whole world was allied against her.

She could not keep her fingers off "Every Man his own Lawyer," and consulted that boon to the legal profession to such good effect that she placed a handsome fee in the pocket of one of its brightest ornaments at the earliest opportunity. Mr. Rigg continued to beam and to keep his own counsel, merely notifying that things must be allowed to take their own course, and presently he bowed Mrs. Agar out of his office, dissatisfied, and with an uncomfortable feeling of having been somewhat indiscreet.

Arthur was waiting for her in a hansom cab in Holborn, and with a sigh of relief they drove westward to a shop in Regent Street to order a supply of the newest procurable mode of signifying grief on paper and envelopes.

Arthur Agar was an expert in such matters, and indeed both mother and son were more at home in the graceful pastime of spending money than in the technicalities of making or keeping the same.

Arthur was already beginning to taste the sweetness of his adversity, and being intensely sensitive to the influence of those with whom he happened to be at the moment, he was already beginning to look back with mild surprise to the first burst of grief to which he had given way on hearing that Jem was killed.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION

_There is one that keepeth silence and is found wise._

Sister Cecilia received--nay, she almost welcomed--the news of Jem Agar's death in an intensely Christian spirit. She looked upon it in the light of a chastening-a sort of moral cold bath, unpleasant at the time, but cleanly and refreshing in its effect. Intense goodness and virtue of the jubby-jubby order seem frequently to produce this result.

Trouble--provided that it be not personal--is elevated to a position which it was never intended to occupy by an all-seeing Providence. There are some people who step into the troubles of others as into the chastening bath above referred to, and splash about. They pretend to feel deeply bereavements which cannot reasonably be expected to affect them, and go about the world with a well-scrubbed air of conscious virtue, saying in manner if not in words, "Look at me; my troubles compa.s.s me about, but my innate goodness enables me to take them in the proper spirit and to be cheerful despite all."

This was precisely Sister Cecilia's att.i.tude towards her small world of Stagholme, after the news of the young Squire's death had cast a gloom over the whole neighbourhood.

"Ah!" she would say to some honest cottage mother who had more true feeling in her rough little finger than Sister Cecilia possessed in her whole heart. "These trials are sent to us for our good. The ways of Providence are strange, Mrs. Martin--strange to us now."

"Yes, miss; that they be," Mrs. Martin replied, looking at her with the hard and far-seeing gaze of a poor mother who has known trouble in its least romantic form. And Sister Cecilia, with that blindness which comes from systematically closing the eyes to the earthly side of earthly things, never realised that the small change of sympathy is often slightly aggravating.

At this period she took to calling Jem Agar her "poor boy." The grave seems to have the power of completely altering the past, and with persons of the stamp of Sister Cecilia death appears not only to wipe out all sin, but to impair the memory of the living to such an extent that the individuality of the deceased is no longer recognisable.

Jem never had in any sense of the word been her boy. His feelings for her had pa.s.sed from the distrust of childhood to the lofty contempt of a schoolboy for all things preternaturally virtuous, finally settling down into the more tolerant contempt of manhood. The dead, however, have perforce to accept much affection which they scornfully refused in life.

"Poor Jem!" said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar the day after that lady's visit to Gray's Inn. "I always thought that perhaps he and dear Dora would come to--to some understanding."

She stirred her tea with patient, suffering head inclined at a resigned angle.

"Do you think there _was_ any understanding between them?" inquired Mrs.

Agar.

"Well--I should not like to say."

Which, being translated, meant that she would like to say, but did not know.

It had always been a pet scheme of Mrs. Agar's that Dora should marry Arthur; firstly, because she would have nearly two thousand pounds a year on the death of her parents; and, secondly, because she was a capable person with plenty of common-sense. These two adjuncts--namely, money and common-sense--Mrs. Agar wisely looked for in candidates for the flaccid hand of her son.

"I will try and find out," said Sister Cecilia after a pause.

Mrs. Agar said nothing. She was meditating over this last stroke of fate in favour of her scheme, and her thoughts were disturbed by that distrust in the continuance of good fortune which usually spoils the enjoyment of the unscrupulous in those good things which they have obtained for themselves.

So Sister Cecilia took it for granted that she was doing the will of the mistress of Stagholme when she wrote a note that same evening inviting Dora to have tea with her the following afternoon.

At the hour appointed Dora arrived, and was duly shown into the little cottage drawing-room, of which the decoration hovered between the avowedly devout and the economo-aesthetic.

Sister Cecilia swept down upon her with a speechless emotion which, in the nature of things (and Sister Cecilia), could not well be of long duration.