And he pushed the slate across the table to John.
Whereupon John wrote on the slate: 'Don't know. He telephoned me he
wanted to see us tonight.'
And he pushed back the slate to Robert.
This singular procedure was not in the least attributable to deafness
on the part of the brothers; they were in the prime of life, aged
forty-two and thirty-nine respectively, and in complete possession of
all their faculties. It was due simply to the fact that they had
quarrelled, and would not speak to each other. The history of their
quarrel would be incredible were it not full of that ridiculous
pathetic quality known as human nature, and did not similar things
happen frequently in the manufacturing Midlands, where the general
temperament is a fearful and strange compound of pride, obstinacy,
unconquerableness, romance, and stupidity. Yes, stupidity.
No single word had passed between the brothers in that house for ten
years. On the morning after the historical quarrel Robert had not
replied when John spoke to him. 'Well,' said John's secret heart--and
John's secret heart ought to have known better, as it was older than
its brother heart--'I'll teach him a lesson. I won't speak until he
does.' And Robert's secret heart had somehow divined this idiotic
resolution, and had said: 'We shall see.' Maggie had been the first to
notice the stubborn silence. Then their friends noticed it, especially
Mr Liversage, the solicitor, their most intimate friend. But you are
not to suppose that anybody protested very strongly. For John and
Robert were not the kind of men with whom liberties may be taken; and,
moreover, Bursley was slightly amused--at the beginning. It assumed the
attitude of a disinterested spectator at a fight. It wondered who would
win. Of course, it called both the brothers fools, yet in a tone
somewhat sympathetic, because such a thing as had occurred to the
Hessians might well occur to any man gifted with the true Bursley
spirit. There is this to be said for a Bursley man: Having made his
bed, he will lie on it, and he will not complain.
The Hessians suffered severely by their self-imposed dumbness, but they
suffered like Stoics. Maggie also suffered, and Maggie would not stand
it. Maggie it was who had invented the slate. Indeed, they had heard
some plain truths from that stout, bustling woman. They had not
yielded, but they had accepted the slate in order to minimize the
inconvenience to Maggie, and afterwards they deigned to make use of it
for their own purposes. As for friends--friends accustomed themselves
to the status quo. There came a time when the spectacle of two men
chattering to everybody else in a company, and not saying a word to
each other, no longer appealed to Bursley's sense of humour. The silent
scenes at which Maggie assisted every day did not, either, appeal to
Maggie's sense of humour, because she had none. So the famous feud grew
into a sort of elemental fact of Nature. It was tolerated as the
weather is tolerated. The brothers acquired pride in it; even Bursley
regarded it as an interesting municipal curiosity. The sole
imperfection in a lovely and otherwise perfect quarrel was that John
and Robert, being both employed at Roycroft's Majolica Manufactory, the
one as works manager and the other as commercial traveller, were
obliged to speak to each other occasionally in the way of business.
Artistically, this was a pity, though they did speak very sternly and
distantly. The partial truce necessitated by Roycroft's was confined
strictly to Roycroft's. And when Robert was not on his journeys, these
two tall, strong, dark, bearded men might often be seen of a night
walking separately and doggedly down Oldcastle Street from the works,
within five yards of each other.
And no one suggested the lunatic asylum. Such is the force of pride, of
rank stupidity, and of habit.
The slate-scratching was scarcely over that evening when Mr Powell
Liversage appeared. He was a golden-haired man, with a jolly face,
lighter and shorter in structure than the two brothers. His friendship
with them dated from school-days, and it had survived even the entrance
of Liversage into a learned profession. Liversage, who, being a
bachelor like the Hessians, had many unoccupied evenings, came to see
the brothers regularly every Saturday night, and one or other of them
dropped in upon him most Wednesdays; but this particular night was a
Thursday.
'How do?' John greeted him succinctly between two puffs of a pipe.
'How do?' replied Liversage.
'How do, Pow?' Robert greeted him in turn, also between two puffs of a
pipe.
And 'How do, little 'un?' replied Liversage.
A chair was indicated to him, and he sat down, and Robert poured out
some coffee into a third cup which Maggie had brought. John pushed away
the extra special of the Staffordshire Signal, which he had been
reading.
'What's up these days?' John demanded.
'Well,' said Liversage, and both brothers noticed that he was rather
ill at ease, instead of being humorous and lightly caustic as usual,
'the will's turned up.'
'The devil it has!' John exclaimed. 'When?'
'This afternoon.'
And then, as there was a pause, Liversage added: 'Yes, my sons, the
will's turned up.'
'But where, you cuckoo, sitting there like that?' asked Robert. 'Where?'
'It was in that registered letter addressed to your sister that the
Post Office people wouldn't hand over until we'd taken out letters of
administration.'
'Well, I'm dashed!' muttered John. 'Who'd have thought of that? You've
got the will, then?'
Liversage nodded.
The Hessians had an elder sister, Mrs Bott, widow of a colour merchant,
and Mrs Bott had died suddenly three months ago, the night after a
journey to Manchester. (Even at the funeral the brothers had
scandalized the town by not speaking to each other.) Mrs Bott had
wealth, wit, and wisdom, together with certain peculiarities, of which
one was an excessive secrecy. It was known that she had made a will,
because she had more than once notified the fact, in a tone suggestive
of highly important issues, but the will had refused to be found. So Mr
Liversage had been instructed to take out letters of administration of
the estate, which, in the continued absence of the will, would be
divided equally between the brothers. And twelve or thirteen thousand
pounds may be compared to a financial beef-steak that cuts up very
handsomely for two persons. The carving-knife was about to descend on
its succulence, when, lo! the will!
'How came the will to be in the post?' asked Robert.
'The handwriting on the envelope was your sister's,' said Liversage.
'And the package was posted in Manchester. Very probably she had taken
the will to Manchester to show it to a lawyer or something of that
sort, and then she was afraid of losing it on the journey back, and so
she sent it to herself by registered post. But before it arrived, of
course, she was dead.'
'That wasn't a bad scheme of poor Mary Ann's!' John commented.
'It was just like her!' said Robert, speaking pointedly to Liversage.
'But what an odd thing!'
Now, both these men were, no doubt excusably, agonized by curiosity to
learn the contents of the will. But would either of them be the first
to express that curiosity? Never in this world! Not for the fortune
itself! To do so would scarcely have been Bursleyish. It would
certainly not have been Hessianlike. So Liversage was obliged at length
to say--
'I reckon I'd better read you the will, eh?'
The brothers nodded.
'Mind you,' said Liversage, 'it's not my will. I've had nothing to do
with it; so kindly keep your hair on. As a matter of fact, she must
have drawn it up herself. It's not drawn properly at all, but it's
witnessed all right, and it'll hold water, just as well as if the
blooming Lord Chancellor had fixed it up for her in person.'