In the process of time the clock on the drawing-room chimneypiece
chimed six and Josiah "stepped round" to Lawyer Mossop's.
That celebrity lived at The Gables, the next house but one along The
Rise. Outwardly a more modest dwelling than Strathfieldsaye, it was
less modern in style, more reticent, more compact. As Josiah walked up
the drive he noted with approval its well kept appearance and its fine
display of rhododendrons, phlox, delphiniums, purple irises and many
other things that spoke to him. He was a genuine lover of flowers.
Mr. Munt's pressure of the electric button was answered by a manservant
in a starched shirt and a neat black cutaway. The visitor noted him
carefully as he noted everything. "I wonder what he pays a month for
that jockey!" was the form the memorandum took on the tablets of his
mind.
"Mr. Mossop in?"
"If you'll come this way I'll inquire, sir."
Josiah was led across a square-tiled hall, covered in the center by a
Persian rug, into a room delightfully cool, with a large window in a
western angle opening on to a pergola ablaze with roses, along which
the westering sun streamed amazingly.
"What name, sir?"
"Hey?" Josiah frowned. As if there was a man, woman or child in
Blackhampton who didn't know him! Still, it was good style. "Munt--Mr.
Munt."
"Thank you, sir!" The manservant bowed and withdrew.
Yes, it was good style. And this cool, clean but rather somber room had
the same elusive quality. Three of its four walls were covered with
neat rows of books, for the most part in expensive bindings. Style
again. All the same the visitor looked a little doubtfully upon those
shining shelves. Books were not in his line, and although he did not
go quite to the length of despising them he was well content that they
shouldn't be. Books stood for education, and in the purview of Mr.
Josiah Munt, "if they didn't watch it education was going to be the
ruin of the country."
Still to that room, plainly but richly furnished, those rows of shining
leather lent a tone, a value. A shrewd eye ran them up and down.
Meredith--Swinburne--Tennyson--Browning--Dickens--Thackeray--all flams, of
course, but harmless, if not carried too far. Personally he preferred
a good billiard room, but no one in Blackhampton disputed that Lawyer
Mossop was the absolute head of his profession; he could be trusted
therefore to know what he was doing. There was one of these books open
on a very good table--forty guineas worth of anybody's money--printed
in a foreign language, French probably, of which he couldn't read a
word. Il Purgatorio, Dante. Fine bit of printing. Wonderful paper! Yes,
wonderful! He handled it appraisingly. And then he realized that Lawyer
Mossop was in the room and smiling at him in that polite way, that was
half soft sawder, half good feeling. The carpet was so thick that he
had not heard him come in.
"Good evening, Mr. Munt." The greeting was very friendly and pleasant.
"Sit down, won't you?"
"No, I'll stand--and grow better." Mr. Munt had a stock of stereotyped
pleasantries which he kept for social use. They seemed to make for ease
and geniality.
The two men stood looking at each other, the solicitor all rounded
corners and quiet ease, the client stiff, angular, assertive, perhaps a
shade embarrassed.
"Anything I can do for you, Mr. Munt?"
The answer was slow in coming. It was embodied in a harsh growl.
"Mossop, I want you to take that gel of mine, Sally, out of my will."
The lawyer said nothing, but pursed his lips a little, a way he had
when setting the mind to work, but that was the only expression of
visible feeling in the heavily lined face.
"Excuse my troubling you to-night, Mossop. But I felt I couldn't wait.
Give me an appointment for the morning and I'll look in at the office.
Nice goings on! And to think what her education cost me!"
The lawyer made a silent gesture, spreading his hands like a stage
Frenchman, half dismay, half tacit protest.
"Better have a new document, eh?" The outraged parent had been already
dismissed; the highly competent man of affairs was now in control.
"My second girl, Ethel, Mrs. Doctor Cockburn, can have it all now,
except"--Josiah hesitated an instant--"except five thousand pounds I
shall leave to Gertrude Preston."
Lawyer Mossop was still silent. But the mobile lips were working
curiously. "Not for me to advise," he said at last, very slowly, with
much hesitation, "but if I might----"
Josiah cut him short with a stern lift of the hand.
"I know what you're going to say, but if she was your gel what'd you
do, eh?"
Lawyer Mossop rubbed his cheek perplexedly. "At bottom I might be
rather proud of her."
"You--might--be--rather--proud--of--her!" It was the tone of Alderman
Munt J.P. to a particularly unsatisfactory witness at a morning session
at the City Hall. An obvious lie, yet a white one because it was used
for a moral purpose. Mossop had no ax to grind; he merely wanted to
soften things a bit for a client and neighbor. "You can't tell _me_,
Mossop, you really think _that_."
The solicitor gazed steadily past the purple face of his client through
the open window to the riot of color beyond. "Why not?" he said. "Think
of the pluck required to do a thing like that."
Josiah shook his head angrily. "It's the devil that's in her." He spoke
with absolute conviction. "And it's always been there. When she was
that high"--he made an indication with his hand--"I've fair lammoxed
her, but I could never turn her an inch. If she wanted to do a thing
she'd do it--and if she didn't nothing would make her."
"A lady of strong character."
"Cussedness, my friend, cussedness. The devil. And it's brought her to
this."
The lawyer, however, shook his head gently. "Well, Mr. Munt, as I say,
it is not for me to advise, but if she was a daughter of mine----"
"You'd be proud of her." The sneer was rather ugly.
"In a way--yes--perhaps ... I don't say positively ... because one
quite sees.... On the other hand, I might ... I don't say I should ...
I _might_ be just as angry as you are."
The thundercloud began to lift a little. "Come now, that's sense. Of
course, Mossop, you'd be as mad as anybody--it's human nature. Every
Tom, Dick, and Harry pointin' the finger of scorn"--_Sally out of Quod
yet_ was still searing him like a flame--"you'd be so mad, Mossop, that
you'd want to forget that she belonged to you."
"It might be so." Mr. Mossop's far-looking eyes were still fixed on the
pergola. "At the same time, before I took any definite step, I think I
should give myself a clear fortnight in which to think it over."