JACOB NOWELL'S WILL.
At his usual hour, upon the evening after his arrival in London, Gilbert
Fenton called at the silversmith's shop in Queen Anne's Court. He found
Jacob Nowell weaker than when he had seen him last, and with a strange
old look, as if extreme age had come upon him suddenly. He had been
compelled to call in a medical man, very much against his will; and this
gentleman had told him that his condition was a critical one, and that it
would be well for him to arrange his affairs quickly, and to hold himself
prepared for the worst.
He seemed to be slightly agitated when Gilbert told him that his
granddaughter had been found.
"Will she come to me, do you think?" he asked.
"I have no doubt that she will do so, directly she hears how ill you have
been. She was very much pleased at the idea of seeing you, and only
waited for her husband's permission to come. But I don't suppose she will
wait for that when she knows of your illness. I shall write to her
immediately."
"Do," Jacob Nowell said eagerly; "I want to see her before I die. You did
not meet the husband, then, I suppose?"
"No; Mr. Holbrook was not there."
He told Jacob Nowell all that it was possible for him to tell about his
interview with Marian; and the old man seemed warmly interested in the
subject. Death was very near him, and the savings of the long dreary
years during which his joyless life had been devoted to money-making must
soon pass into other hands. He wanted to know something of the person who
was to profit by his death; he wanted to be sure that when he was gone
some creature of his own flesh and blood would remember him kindly; not
for the sake of his money alone, but for something more than that.
"I shall make my will to-morrow," he said, before Gilbert left him. "I
don't mind owning to you that I have something considerable to bequeath;
for I think I can trust you. And if I should die before my grandchild
comes to me, you will see that she has her rights, won't you? You will
take care that she is not cheated by her husband, or by any one else?"
"I shall hold it a sacred charge to protect her interests, so far as it
is possible for me to do so."
"That's well. I shall make you one of the executors to my will, if you've
no objection."
"No. The executorship will bring me into collision with Mr. Holbrook, no
doubt; but I have resolved upon my line of conduct with regard to him,
and I am prepared for whatever may happen. My chief desire now is to be a
real friend to your granddaughter; for I believe she has need of
friends."
The will was drawn up next day by an attorney of by no means spotless
reputation, who had often done business for Mr. Nowell in the past, and
who may have known a good deal about the origin of some of the silver
which found its way to the old silversmith's stores. He was a gentleman
frequently employed in the defence of those injured innocents who appear
at the bar of the Old Bailey; and was not at all particular as to the
merits of the cases he conducted. This gentleman embodied Mr. Nowell's
desires with reference to the disposal of his worldly goods in a very
simple and straightforward manner. All that Jacob Nowell had to leave was
left to his granddaughter, Marian Holbrook, for her own separate use and
maintenance, independent of any husband whatsoever.
This was clear enough. It was only when there came the question, which a
lawyer puts with such deadly calmness, as to what was to be done with the
money in the event of Marian Holbrook's dying intestate, that any
perplexity arose.
"Of course, if she has children, you'd like the money to go to them,"
said Mr. Medler, the attorney; "that's clear enough, and had better be
set out in your will. But suppose she should have no children, you'd
scarcely like all you leave to go to her husband, who is quite a stranger
to you, and who may be a scoundrel for aught you know."
"No; I certainly shouldn't much care about enriching this Holbrook."
"Of course not; to say nothing of the danger there would be in giving him
so strong an interest in his wife's death. Not but what I daresay he'll
contrive to squander the greater part of the money during her lifetime.
Is it all in hard cash?"
"No; there is some house-property at Islington, which pays a high
interest; and there are other freeholds."
"Then we might tie those up, giving Mrs. Holbrook only the income. It is
essential to provide against possible villany or extravagance on the part
of the husband. Women are so weak and helpless in these matters. And in
the event of your granddaughter dying without children, wouldn't you
rather let the estate go to your son?"
"To him!" exclaimed Jacob Nowell. "I have sworn that I would not leave
him sixpence."
"That's a kind of oath which no man ever considers himself bound to
keep," said the lawyer in his most insinuating tone. "Remember, it's only
a remote contingency. The chances are that your granddaughter will have a
family to inherit this property, and that she will survive her father.
And then, if we give her power to make a will, of course it's pretty
certain that she'll leave everything to this husband of hers. But I don't
think we ought to do that, Mr. Nowell. I think it would be a far wiser
arrangement to give this young lady only a life interest in the real
estate. That makes the husband a loser by her death, instead of a
possible gainer to a large amount. And I consider that your son's name
has a right to come in here."
"I cannot acknowledge that he has any such right. His extravagance almost
ruined me when he was a young man; and his ingratitude would have broken
my heart, if I had been weak enough to suffer myself to be crushed by
it."
"Time works changes amongst the worst of us, Mr. Nowell, I daresay your
son has improved his habits in all these years and is heartily sorry for
the errors of his youth."
"Have you seen him, Medler?" the old man asked quickly.
"Seen your son lately? No; indeed, my dear sir, I had no notion that he
was in England."
The fact is, that Percival Nowell had called upon Mr. Medler more than
once since his arrival in London; and had discussed with that gentleman
the chances of his father's having made, or not made, a will, and the
possibility of the old man's being so far reconciled to him as to make a
will in his favour. Percival Nowell had gone farther than this, and had
promised the attorney a handsome percentage upon anything that his father
might be induced to leave him by Mr. Medler's influence.
The discussion lasted for a long time; Mr. Medler pushing on, stage by
stage, in the favour of his secret client, anxious to see whether Jacob
Nowell might not be persuaded to allow his son's name to take the place
of his granddaughter, whom he had never seen, and who was really no more
than a stranger to him, the attorney took care to remind him. But on this
point the old man was immovable. He would leave his money to Marian, and
to no one else. He had no desire that his son should ever profit by the
labours and deprivations of all those joyless years in which his fortune
had been scraped together. It was only as the choice of the lesser evil
that he would consent to Percival's inheriting the property from his
daughter, rather than it should fall into the hands of Mr. Holbrook. The
lawyer had hard work before he could bring his client to this point; but
he did at last succeed in doing so, and Percival Nowell's name was
written in the will.
"I don't suppose Nowell will thank me much for what I've done, though
I've had difficulty enough in doing it," Mr. Medler said to himself, as
he walked slowly homewards after this prolonged conference in Queen
Anne's Court. "For of course the chances are ten to one against his
surviving his daughter. Still these young women sometimes go off the
hooks in an unexpected way, and he _may_ come into the reversion."
There was only one satisfaction for the attorney, and that lay in the
fact that this long, laborious interview had been all in the way of
business, and could be charged for accordingly: "To attending at your own
house with relation to drawing up the rough draft of your will, and
consultation of two hours and a half thereupon;" and so on. The will was
to be executed next day; and Mr. Medler was to take his clerk with him to
Queen Anne's Court, to act as one of the witnesses. He had obtained one
other triumph in the course of the discussion, which was the insertion of
his own name as executor in place of Gilbert Fenton, against whom he
raised so many specious arguments as to shake the old man's faith in
Marian's jilted lover.
Percival Nowell dropped in upon his father that night, and smoked his
cigar in the dingy little parlour, which was so crowded with divers kinds
of merchandise as to be scarcely habitable. The old man's son came here
almost every evening, and behaved altogether in a very dutiful way. Jacob
Nowell seemed to tolerate rather than to invite his visits, and the
adventurer tried in vain to get at the real feelings underlying that
emotionless manner.
"I think I might work round the governor if I had time," this dutiful son
said to himself, as he reflected upon the aspect of affairs in Queen
Anne's Court; "but I fancy the old chap has taken his ticket for the next
world--booked through--per express train, and the chances are that he'll
keep his word and not leave me sixpence. Rather hard lines that, after my
taking the trouble to come over here and hunt him up."
There was one fact that Mr. Nowell the younger seemed inclined to ignore
in the course of these reflections; and that was the fact that he had not
left America until he had completely used up that country as a field for
commercial enterprise, and had indeed made his name so far notorious in
connection with numerous shady transactions as to leave no course open to
him except a speedy departure. Since his coming to England he had lived
entirely on credit; and, beyond the fine clothes he wore and the contents
of his two portmanteaus, he possessed nothing in the world. It was quite
true that he had done very well in New York; but his well-being had been
secured at the cost of other people; and after having started some
half-dozen speculations, and living extravagantly upon the funds of his
victims, he was now as poor as he had been when he left Belgium for
America, the commission-agent of a house in the iron trade. In this
position he might have prospered in a moderate way, and might have
profited by the expensive education which had given him nothing but showy
agreeable manners, had he been capable of steadiness and industry. But of
these virtues he was utterly deficient, possessing instead a genius for
that kind of swindling which keeps just upon the safe side of felony. He
had lived pleasantly enough, for many years, by the exercise of this
agreeable talent; so pleasantly indeed that he had troubled himself very
little about his chances of inheriting his father's savings. It was only
when he had exhausted all expedients for making money on "the other side"
that he turned his thoughts in the direction of Queen Anne's Court, and
began to speculate upon the probability of Jacob Nowell's good graces
being worth the trouble of cultivation. The prospectuses which he had
shown his father were mere waste paper, the useless surplus stationery
remaining from a scheme that had failed to enlist the sympathies of a
Transatlantic public. But he fancied that his only chance with the old
man lay in an assumption of prosperity; so he carried matters with a high
hand throughout the business, and swaggered in the little dusky parlour
behind the shop just as he had swaggered on New-York Broadway or at
Delmonico's in the heyday of his commercial success.
He called at Mr. Medler's office the day after Jacob Nowell's will had
been executed, having had no hint of the fact from his father. The
solicitor told him what had been done, and how the most strenuous efforts
on his part had only resulted in the insertion of Percival's name after
that of his daughter.
Whatever indignation Mr. Nowell may have felt at the fact that his
daughter had been preferred before him, he contrived to keep hidden in
his own mind. The lawyer was surprised at the quiet gravity with which he
received the intelligence. He listened to Mr. Medler's statement of the
case with the calmest air of deliberation, seemed indeed to be thinking
so deeply that it was as if his thoughts had wandered away from the
subject in hand to some theme which allowed of more profound speculation.
"And if she should die childless, I should get all the free-hold
property?" he said at last, waking up suddenly from that state of
abstraction, and turning his thoughtful face upon the lawyer.
"Yes; all the real estate would be yours."
"Have you any notion what the property is worth?"
"Not an exact notion. Your father gave me a list of investments.
Altogether, I should fancy, the income will be something
handsome--between two and three thousand a year, perhaps. Strange, isn't
it, for a man with all that money to have lived such a life as your
father's?"
"Strange indeed," Percival Nowell cried with a sneer. "And my daughter
will step into two or three thousand a year," he went on: "very pleasant
for her, and for her husband into the bargain. Of course I'm not going to
say that I wouldn't rather have had the income myself. You'd scarcely
swallow that, as a man of the world, you see, Medler. But the girl is my
only child, and though circumstances have divided us for the greater part
of our lives, blood is thicker than water; and in short, since there was
no getting the governor to do the right thing, and leave this money to
me, it's the next best thing that he should leave it to Marian."
"To say nothing of the possibility of her dying without children, and
your coming into the property after all," said Mr. Medler, wondering a
little at Mr. Nowell's philosophical manner of looking at the question.
"Sir," exclaimed Percival indignantly, "do you imagine me capable of
speculating upon the untimely death of my only child?"
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders doubtfully. In the course of his varied
experience he had found men and women capable of very queer things when
their pecuniary interests were at stake; and he had not a most exalted
opinion of Mr. Nowell's virtue--he knew too many secrets connected with
his early career.
"Remember, if ever by any strange chance you should come into this
property, you have me to thank for getting your name into the will, and
for giving your daughter only a life interest. She would have had every
penny left to her without reserve, if I hadn't fought for your interests
as hard as ever I fought for anything in the whole course of my
professional career."
"You're a good fellow, Medler; and if ever fortune should favour me,
which hardly seems on the cards, I sha'n't forget what I promised you the
other day. I daresay you did the best you could for me, though it doesn't
amount to much when it's done."
Long after Percival Nowell had left him, Mr. Medler sat idle at his desk
meditating upon his interview with that gentleman.
"I can't half understand his coolness," he said to himself; "I expected
him to be as savage as a bear when he found that the old man had left him
nothing. I thought I should hear nothing but execrations and blasphemies;
for I think I know my gentleman pretty well of old, and that he's not a
person to take a disappointment of this kind very sweetly. There must be
something under that quiet manner of his. Perhaps he knows more about his
daughter than he cares to let out; knows that she is sickly, and that he
stands a good chance of surviving her."
There was indeed a lurking desperation under Percival Nowell's airy
manner, of which the people amongst whom he lived had no suspicion.
Unless some sudden turn in the wheel of fortune should change the aspect
of affairs for him very soon, ruin, most complete and utter, was
inevitable. A man cannot go on very long without money; and in order to
pay his hotel-bill Mr. Nowell had been obliged to raise the funds from an
accommodating gentleman with whom he had done business in years gone by,
and who was very familiar with his own and his father's autograph. The
bill upon which this gentleman advanced the money in question bore the
name of Jacob Nowell, and was drawn at three months. Percival had
persuaded himself that before the three months were out his father would
be in his grave, and his executors would scarcely be in a position to
dispute the genuineness of the signature. In the meantime the money thus
obtained enabled him to float on. He paid his hotel-bill, and removed to
lodgings in one of the narrow streets to the north-east of Tottenham
Court Road; an obscure lodging enough, where he had a couple of
comfortable rooms on the first floor, and where his going out and coming
in attracted little notice. Here, as at the hotel, he chose to assume the
name of Norton instead of his legitimate cognomen.