THE WILL.
It was Hillyard’s behaviour at this meal which gained him the regard of
the various members of the Renton family. He took such pains to attend
to the strangers, and give to the agitated group the air of an ordinary
party, that all of them who were sufficiently disengaged to observe his
exertions felt grateful to him. Millicent sat next to Ben on one side,
but Hillyard had placed himself between her and Mary Westbury on the
other, and in all the intervals of his general services to the company
Mrs. Rich had his attention, for which Mary blessed him. She herself,
overcome by many emotions, was but a pale spectator, able to take little
part in what was going on, saying now and then a languid word to the
unfortunate Guardsman, but capable of nothing more except watching,
which she did with a sick excitement beyond all description. Mary was so
pale, indeed, and watchful and excited, that her mother was alarmed, and
made signs to her across the table which she did not feel capable of
understanding. ‘She will cry if she does not mind, and make a scene,’
Mrs. Westbury said to herself; and set it all down to the score of Ben,
which was true enough, but not as she thought. As for Ben, he inclined
his ear specially to Mrs. Tracy, who was at his other hand, and hoped
she liked The Willows, and that her rheumatism was better, and a hundred
other nothings. There was, it is true, nothing very remarkable about
this party, looking at it from the outside. They were well-dressed
people, gathered round a well-appointed table, getting through an
average amount of talk, smiling upon each other like ordinary mortals;
but yet underneath how different it was; Mrs. Renton was consoled, and
ate her luncheon, sustained by her son Laurie’s attentions; but Mrs.
Frank Renton trembled so that she could scarcely keep up the fiction of
eating, and grew pale and flushed again six times in a minute, and
nervously consulted the countenance of her husband, who, very silent and
self-absorbed, drank his sherry, and more of it than he wanted at that
hour, taking little notice of any one; then, at the other end of the
table, there was Mrs. Tracy, hanging with ostentatious, artificial
interest on every word uttered by Ben; and Millicent, very pale, with an
excited gleam in her eyes, casting tender, wistful looks at him, which
he never saw; and Hillyard talking enough for six, helping everybody,
introducing a hundred indifferent subjects of conversation, which ran a
feeble course half-way round the table and then died a natural death.
Mrs. Westbury, one of the few people who was calm enough to remark upon
the appearance of the others, concluded within herself that, after all,
the strangers were a mistake. If the family party had been alone, their
excitement would have been nothing beyond what was natural; but her own
child, Mary, who ought at least to have been one of the calmest of the
party, sat by that unhappy Guardsman pale as a ghost, once in ten
minutes saying something to him, and looking as if she were about to
faint; and all the others were equally under the sway of agitation and
self-restraint. When this uncomfortable meal came to an end, everybody
rose with an alacrity which showed how glad they were that it was over.
And then there ensued another moment of supreme embarrassment. If the
strangers had any sense of the position they would go away instantly,
the family felt; but instead of that, Millicent moved at once to the
upper end of the room, where there stood upon a crimson pedestal a bust
of the last Benedict Renton, and humbly begged of Ben to explain to her
who it was; and while the others stood about waiting, he had to follow
and describe his grandfather, and fulfil the duties of showman, Mrs.
Tracy rushing to join the group.
‘Benedict Renton--your name!’ Millicent said, with again another attempt
upon his feelings, while Ben stood angrily conscious of the effort and
contemptuous of the fooling, scarcely concealing his eagerness to be at
liberty. ‘And this portrait, Mr. Renton? I can trace the family
resemblance,’ said Mrs. Tracy. And all this while Mr. Ponsonby’s blue
bag waited outside, and the family murmured, standing round in agonies
of suspense to know their fate. Then once more Hillyard stood forth,
vindicating his claim to be called Ben’s right-hand man.
‘Let me be cicerone,’ he said, ‘Renton, I know you are anxious to see to
your business. Mrs. Rich will take me for her guide to the pictures for
the moment. You know Mr. Ponsonby cannot wait, and you are losing time.’
‘If Mrs. Rich will excuse me,’ said Ben.
‘Oh, please don’t think of excuses; we can wait,’ said Millicent.
‘Mayn’t we wait to learn the news?’ and she clasped her hands softly,
unseen of the bystanders, and gazed into his face. ‘Nobody,’ she
murmured, lowering her voice, ‘can be more interested than I.’
‘So long as you can find anything to amuse you,’ said Ben, half frantic.
‘Hillyard, I confide it to you;’ and he had turned away, before any
further dart could be thrown at him. Then there was a hurried
consultation between Mrs. Renton and her sister-in-law. ‘I shall stay
with them; never mind. Of course I am anxious too; but half-an-hour more
or less don’t matter,’ Mrs. Westbury said, with the voice of a martyr;
and when Millicent looked round she found herself standing alone with
her own special party, Hillyard at her right hand, and Mrs. Westbury,
with a smile of fixed politeness, behind. Ben was gone. He had made no
answer to her appeal,--he had shown no inclination to linger by her
side. She had put forth all her strength for this grand final _coup_,
and it had failed.
‘I don’t think Mr. Renton has improved in politeness in his travels,’
she said to Hillyard, unable altogether to restrain the expression of
her despite.
‘He has not been in polite regions,’ said Hillyard; ‘and everything, you
know, must give place to business, now-a-days, even the service of
ladies. You must forgive him, when you consider what it is----’
‘I have nothing to do with him,’ said Millicent, angrily. ‘I hope I
never shall have anything to do with so rude a man;’ and then she
paused, thinking she had gone too far. ‘You know it is not a way to
treat an old friend----’
‘Poor Renton!’ said Hillyard. ‘He is so unlikely to be any the better
for this anxiety, you know,--that is the worst of it; and I don’t think
he has any hopes to speak of. He has made all his arrangements for going
back to his work----’
‘You don’t say so!’ cried Mrs. Tracy, with a look at her daughter. ‘And
I can’t believe it!’ cried Millicent.
‘But I assure you it is true. No one can know better than I, for I go
with him,’ said Hillyard; ‘all our arrangements are made. But let me
show you the pictures. This was Sir Anthony Renton, who was a--Master in
Chancery in Queen Elizabeth’s time,’ pointing to a respectable merchant
in snuff-coloured garments of the days of Queen Anne. But the visitors
cared nothing for the family portraits, and Hillyard’s last shaft had
told. If Ben was unlikely to have Renton, it was of no use spending more
trouble upon him. They consulted together hastily for a moment, and then
they turned their backs upon the pictures. ‘I have the pleasure to wish
you good morning, Mrs. Westbury,’ said Mrs. Tracy. ‘Since our friends
are so much occupied we will take our leave. Pray give Mrs. Renton my
best sympathies.’
‘It is to be hoped some one will get the money at the end,’ said
Millicent, with less civility, sweeping towards the door. And thus the
strangers were got rid of at last.
‘I flatter myself I did that,’ said Hillyard, with a chuckle of
satisfaction. And then he, too, took his departure, and left Aunt Lydia
free to join the party in the library, where the great revelation of the
future fate of the family was about to take place.
The air of restrained excitement in this room was such that it would
have communicated itself to the merest stranger who had entered. It was
a dark room by nature; and a cloud had just passed, as if in sympathy,
over the brightness of the day. The window was open, and the blind beat
and flapped against it in the wind, which was a sound that startled
everybody, and yet that nobody had nerve enough to stop. Mrs. Renton had
been placed in an easy chair near the vacant fireplace. Alice and Mary
sat formally on two chairs against the wall; and the three brothers
stood up together in a lump, though they neither spoke nor looked at
each other. Mr. Ponsonby was seated at the writing-table, arranging his
papers and holding in his hand a large blue envelope, sealed. There was
complete silence, except now and then the rustle of papers, as the
lawyer turned them over. The members of the family scarcely ventured to
breathe. When Aunt Lydia entered they all turned round with a look of
reproach; their nerves were so highly strung that the least motion
startled them. In the midst of this silence, all at once Mrs. Renton
began to sob and cry, ‘I feel as if you had just come home from the
funeral!’ she said, with a wail of feeble grief. There was a little
momentary stir at the suggestion, so true was it; and Alice, being at
the end of her strength, cried too, silently, out of excitement. As for
the brothers, they were beyond taking much notice of the interruption.
They were now so much wiser, so much more experienced, since the day of
the funeral, the last time they had all met together in this solemn way.
Now they did not know what they were to expect: their confidence in
their father and the world and things in general was destroyed. By this
time it had become apparent to them that things the most longed for were
about the last things to be attained. Had they been all sent away again
for another seven years, or had the property been alienated for ever and
ever, the brothers would not have been surprised. Whether they would
have submitted, was a different question. Their opinions about many
things had changed. Their unhesitating resolution to obey their father’s
will seven years ago, without a word of blame, appeared to them now
simple Quixotism. They were scarcely moved by their mother’s tears. He
had done them harm, though they had been dutiful to him. He might now be
about to do them more harm for anything they could tell. The
uncriticising anxiety and expectation which filled the women of the
party was a very different sentiment from the uneasy, angry
anticipations of ‘the boys.’ Few dead men have ever managed to secure
for themselves such a vigorous posthumous opposition. In short, he was
not to them a dead man at all, but a living power, against which they
might yet have to struggle for their lives.
Mr. Ponsonby looked round upon this strange company, with the big
envelope in his hand and an excitement equal to their own. He looked at
them all, after Mrs. Renton’s crying had been quieted, and cleared his
throat. ‘Boys,’ he said, hoarsely, ‘I don’t know what’s in this any more
than you do. He did it without consulting me. If it is the will of ‘54
that is here, it is all just and right; but if it is any new-fangled
nonsense, like what I read to you here seven years ago, by the Lord I
will fight it for you, die or win!’
This extraordinary speech, it may be supposed, did not lessen the
excitement of the listeners. Alice crossed over suddenly to her husband,
and clung to him, taking it for granted that disappointment and downfall
were involved in these words. ‘Dear, if there is nothing for us, I shall
not mind!’ she cried, gazing at Mr. Ponsonby with a kind of terror.
‘Quickly, please; let us wait no longer than is necessary,’ said Ben,
with a certain peremptoriness of tone. Mr. Ponsonby had settled down in
a moment, after this outburst, to his usual look and tone.
‘I need not trouble you with many preliminaries,’ he said; ‘you all
remember how everything happened. He sent for me a week before his
death, and gave me this,’ holding up the envelope, ‘and this letter,
which I have also here. When I remonstrated his answer was, “If the one
harms, the other will set right.” My own impression now is, I tell you
frankly, that his mind was affected. Have patience one moment. Nothing
in the shape of a will, even in draft, was found among his papers, so
that there is nothing whatever to set against this, or explain his
intention. If it is that of ‘54 it is all right----’
‘No more!’ cried Ben; ‘let us know what it is at once.’
Then the lawyer tore open the envelope. Not a sound but the tearing of
the paper and crackling sound of the document within was to be heard in
the room, except one sob from Mrs. Renton, which seemed to express in
one sound the universal thirst of all their hearts. Mr. Ponsonby rose up
as he unfolded the paper; he stopped and gazed round upon them blankly,
with consternation in his eyes. Then he opened the sheet in his hand,
turned it over and over, shook out the very folds to make sure that
nothing lurked within,--then caught up the torn envelope and did the
same. And then he uttered an oath. The man was moved out of himself,--he
stamped his foot unconsciously, and clenched his fist, and swore at his
dead antagonist. ‘D---- him!’ he cried fiercely. This pantomime drove
the spectators wild. When he held up the paper to them they all crowded
on each other to see, but understood nothing. It was a great sheet of
blue paper, spotless--without a word upon it. Mr. Ponsonby in his rage
tossed it down on the floor at their feet across the table. ‘Take it for
what it is worth!’ he shouted, almost foaming with rage. Frank, at whose
feet it fell, picked it up, and held it in his hands, turning it over,
stupid with wonder. ‘What does it mean?’ cried Ben, hoarsely. Surprise
and excitement had taken away their wits.
‘Give it to me!’ said Mrs. Renton, from behind; and her son, upon whom
the truth was beginning to dawn, threw it into her lap. It flashed upon
them all at once, and a kind of delirium, fell on the party,--flouted,
laughed at, turned into derision, as it seemed, by the implacable dead.
‘It means that there is no will. I have been keeping a blank sheet of
paper for you,’ said Mr. Ponsonby bitterly, ‘for seven years.’
And then there was another pause, and they all looked at each other, too
much bewildered to understand the position, as if the earth had been
rent asunder at their very feet.
‘We never did anything to him to deserve this!’ said Laurie suddenly,
with a voice of pain. ‘Is there no mistake?’
As for Ben, he said nothing. His eyes followed the gleam of the paper,
which his mother was turning over and over in her helpless hands, as if
the secret of it might still be found out. But by degrees his eyes
lighted up. Almost unconsciously he made a step apart, separating
himself, as it were, from the audience, placing himself by Mr.
Ponsonby’s side as a speaker. There was a certain triumph in his eye.
After all, he was but a man, like other men, and the heir; and his
rights had been debated and questioned by everybody, himself included.
There was a flush and movement of satisfaction about him,--a sudden warm
blaze out of the absorbing disappointment, baffled hopes, and bitter
resentment which were rising round him.
‘If there is no will,’ he said, with a deep flush on his face, and
nervous gesture of his hand, ‘Renton is mine, as it ought to be. I am in
my father’s place; and what has been done amiss, it is my place to undo.
I cannot believe that there is any one here who doubts me.’
While he was speaking, Alice uttered a little cry. She had turned to him
her white face, but without seeing him or any one. ‘Must we go back to
India?’ she said, with a voice of anguish. That was the shape it took to
the young pair. She was pale as marble, but Frank’s face was blazing
red.
‘Hush, Alice!’ he said, fiercely; ‘that is our own affair.’
Ben made a movement towards them in his impatience. ‘I have told you you
should not go back!’ he cried. ‘I am here in my father’s place to set
all right.’
‘Stop a little,’ said Mr. Ponsonby, suddenly coming forward with a chair
in his hand, which he placed in the midst of them, sitting down upon it,
amid the agitated group. ‘You have not done with me yet. We have not
come to such simple means yet. Mrs. Frank, my dear, don’t be angry, and
don’t give way to your feelings. Things are not so bad as you suppose. I
lost my head, which is inexcusable in a man of my profession. It was a
dirty trick of him, after a friendship of thirty years. My dear young
people, sit down, all of you, and listen to me.’
No one made any change of position, but they all turned their eyes upon
him with looks differing in intensity, but full of a hundred questions.
Frank was defiant; Alice wild with despairing anxiety; Mrs. Renton
crying; Laurie soothing her; Ben very watchful, eager, and attentive.
Mr. Ponsonby, however, had entirely recovered his composure, which
unconsciously had a calming effect upon them all.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I lost my head, which I had no right to do; but I am
coming to myself. Now, listen to me. There is no will; and Ben from this
moment is master of Renton, as he says. But stop a little. The personal
property remains, which is worth as much as Renton. I don’t know what I
could have been thinking of to forget that. After all, there is really
nothing to find fault with but the look of the thing. The money has been
accumulating these seven years;--it has been as good as a long
minority;--and some of the investments have done very well. The land, of
course, goes to the eldest son; but the personality, as some of you
ought to have known, is divided. It comes to just about the same thing.
God forgive me if I said anything I ought not to have said in the
excitement of the moment. It is shabby to me, but it won’t harm you,
thank God! I lost my head, that was all, and more shame to me. The will
of ‘54 would have come to much about the same thing.’
‘Oh, Mr. Ponsonby,’ cried Alice, with streaming eyes, thrusting herself,
unconscious of what she was about, in front of them all; ‘tell me, will
there be enough to keep us from going to India again?’
‘There will be twenty thousand pounds, or more,’ said Mr. Ponsonby, ‘if
you can live on that; and I could, for my part.’
Alice, like the lawyer, had lost her head. She was too young to bear
this wonderful strain of emotion. She threw her arms about his neck in
her joy, and wept aloud, while they all stood by looking on, with such
feelings as may be supposed.
She was the only one who spoke. Her husband drew her back at this point,
half angry, half sullen, with his disappointment still dark in his face.
‘You had better go,’ he said to her, almost harshly; ‘you have heard all
that there is to be heard. It is best we should discuss the real
business by ourselves.’
‘Yes, come along,’ said Laurie, ‘all you ladies. You have heard it is
all right. You don’t want to hear the accounts, and all that legal
stuff. We will manage the business. I will take you back to your sofa,
mother, now you know all’s right.’
‘But is it all right?’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘I don’t seem to understand
anything. Ben, will you come and tell me? Have they all got their
money,--all the boys? And what is Frank to have for his children? Till
you have children of your own, it is his boy who is the heir. Laurie is
always telling me it will come right. I would rather hear it from the
rest. Oh, boys! your poor father meant it for the best.’
‘It is all right, mother,’ said Ben; ‘better than we thought.’
‘Ah, but Frank says nothing,’ said the mother. ‘I will not go away till
I am satisfied about Frank.’
‘You heard Alice, I suppose,’ said Frank, somewhat sulky still. ‘I do
think it is a shame there is no will; but if we are to have our shares,
as Mr. Ponsonby says, I suppose, mother, it is all right.’
‘Of course it is,’ said Laurie. ‘Come, and I’ll see if the carriage is
round for your drive. You know how important it is you should have your
drive.’
‘Your dear papa always made such a point of it, Laurie,’ Mrs. Renton
said, holding her handkerchief to her eyes, ‘or else I am sure I never
could have the heart to go out on such a day.’
And thus the ladies were dismissed, and the brothers held their meeting,
and settled their business by themselves. It would be vain to say that
they were satisfied. Frank, whose mind had been vaguely excited,--he
could not tell why,--and to whom it had begun to seem inevitable that
some special provision should have been made for the only one of the
three who had ‘ties’ and a family to provide for, had experienced a most
sharp and painful downfall. And it took him a long time to accustom
himself to the idea that after all he was not wronged. It was a personal
offence to him, as it had been to his wife, that Ben should look
satisfied. ‘When he has Renton, I do not see the justice of Ben having
his share of the money too,’ he said, with a little bitterness in his
unreasonable disappointment. And Ben was half displeased to feel that it
was not to be his magnanimous part to provide for his brothers, but that
their own right and share remained to them as indisputably as Renton was
his. His proposal was that they should return to the will of ‘54, of
which Mr. Ponsonby still possessed the draft, and a great deal of
discussion took place between them. It was half-past six o’clock before
any of the party emerged out of the dark library, where they had spent
between three and four hours. Mr. Ponsonby came out, declaring that he
was tired and thirsty and half dead, and demanding sherry from the
butler, who was preparing the table for dinner. They all went in and
stood by the sideboard, and swallowed something to refresh themselves.
‘And, my dear boys, give me the satisfaction of hearing you say you are
contented,’ said Mr. Ponsonby, ‘before dinner comes on; for I should
like to be jolly, if I may.’
‘I am perfectly satisfied,’ said Laurie; ‘and Ben is happy for the first
time for some years. As for Frank, he must speak for himself; he has
been dreaming, and it is sometimes unpleasant to wake up.’
‘If I have been dreaming, it was not for myself,’ said Frank; ‘a man
with a family is so different from you fellows; but if it will be any
satisfaction to you, I think I may say I am content, since better can’t
be.’
And then he went up-stairs abruptly to dress. Alice had been waiting for
him long, trembling a little, and not daring to believe anything till
her authorised expositor of external events came to deliver the judgment
to her. It did not seem right to Alice that Frank should not be the
first in any distribution of prizes or honours. And yet she was not
insensible to the claims of natural justice. ‘We should never have been
able to give it up if it had come to us,’ she said to herself; ‘and it
would have been contrary to all traditions of the family to disinherit
Ben.’
‘You always told me he was to have it,’ she said, when Frank came in,
with the remnants of his sulkiness still hanging about him. ‘You used to
say if it came to you, you would give it up to Ben.’
‘And so I should, of course,’ said Frank; ‘the thing is, the fellow was
so self-satisfied,--with a kind of look of pleasure that we were all cut
out. That was what I could not stand.’
‘But don’t you think he meant to be good to us?’ Alice said, trying hard
to smoothe her savage down.
‘Good to us, by Jove! but fortunately that’s all over,’ said Frank. ‘We
are safe enough. No need to worry yourself over those blessed children
any more. Poor little beggar! he won’t have much to look forward to; but
still you may bring him up at home, and that is all you care for, you
little goose,’ the young husband said, softening over the happiness in
Alice’s eyes.
‘How much shall we have, Frank?’ she asked, with a sudden relapse into
prudence.
‘Let me dress now,--and go and make yourself pretty,’ he said. ‘We shall
not be so badly off; there will be something like a thousand a-year.’
And thus Frank Renton too acknowledged to himself that things might have
been worse, and that he was content.
But perhaps the strangest thing of all was that Mrs. Westbury withdrew
into her daughter’s room, and locked the door, and had a cry, in which
Mary, over-worn and over-excited, was quite disposed to share, though
for a different reason. ‘I cannot understand your uncle Laurence,’ said
Mrs. Westbury. ‘I am sure I am not mercenary. I have given you up to
your aunt, and never grumbled, much though I wanted you; and you have
given up seven years of your life to her, and he has not left you so
much as a gown. I do feel it, my dear, for you.’
‘I am sure, mamma, I don’t feel it for myself,’ said Mary, with a smile.
‘One does not mind so long as all is right with the boys.’
‘The boys are all very well,’ said Mrs. Westbury, ‘but he might have
left something, my dear, to you.’
‘I did not want anything, mamma,’ said Mary. ‘But godmamma will not want
me so much when she has Ben, and oh, I do so long to get home!’ Poor
Mary was over-done, over-worn, excited by so many diverse feelings that
her power of self-command failed her at last. She put her arms round her
mother’s neck, and threw, as it were, all her weight of unexpressed
cares and griefs upon her. ‘Take me home, mamma!’ she said, and wept in
the abandonment of weariness and disappointment, and that overwhelming
despondency for which one can give no reason, on her mother’s neck.
Mrs. Westbury was a woman fond of explanations from other people, but
she understood her child by instinct, ‘Yes, yes, you shall go home, my
darling!’ she said, soothing her, but without any intention of carrying
out her promise. It was early days, as she said to herself. Before any
change was made, it must be made plainly apparent what the rest of the
family meant to do.
On the whole, the dinner-table was more cheerful that night. They were
all worn out with excitement, it is true, and signs of tears were about
the women’s eyes; but still there was the sense that, after all, justice
was once more in force, and natural law ruling their affairs. One man’s
will, fantastic and unaccountable, was no longer supreme over them. Ben
took his place at the head of the table with a certain glow of
satisfaction. ‘I know none of you would have seen me wronged,’ he said
when they were sipping over their wine. It was the first time that he
had taken any notice of the often-repeated declaration of his younger
brothers.
‘Not if the prize had been Great Britain, instead of Renton,’ said
Laurie; ‘though, to tell the truth, the one would have been as great a
bore as the other, had it come to me.’
‘Of course I should have given it up to Ben,’ said Frank; ‘but it would
have been a struggle; therefore I’m very glad things have been settled
as they are without my help.’
‘Bravo!’ cried Mr. Ponsonby, ‘that is the best sentiment I have heard
to-night.’
‘Shake hands, old fellow,’ said Ben, holding out his hand. Laurie
somehow did not count. The world would indeed have been coming to an end
had he been out of temper about his rights. It was the younger and the
elder who exchanged the grasp of peace and mutual amity. ‘And, remember,
Renton is home to us all,’ Ben said, with moisture in his eyes. ‘Of
course my mother remains here; as it has always been, with room for
all.’
‘Bravo, bravo!’ said Mr. Ponsonby, ‘now is the time for generous
feelings! My dear fellows, prosperity is the thing that opens men’s
hearts. Don’t talk to me of the benefits of misfortune! Let a man feel
he has his thousand a-year, or his five thousand a-year, safe in his
pocket, and then is the time his heart warms. But I’d have Mrs. Frank
come to an understanding with Mrs. Ben before I would take the
invitation in too literal a sense,’ said the old lawyer, with a chuckle
over his own wit.
‘I do not expect there will ever be a Mrs. Ben,’ said the heir, with an
impatient movement of his head.
‘Tell me that this time twelvemonths,’ said Mr. Ponsonby; and then they
all went out to the lawn to smoke their evening cigar.