But it was neither time nor place for such an action, and turning to his brother, he signed to him to come, and, in the midst of a silence broken only by Janet’s sobs, they two went out and upstairs without a word, to stand by the open coffin where their father lay calmly as if in sleep.
“How can I feel enmity now!” thought Clive, “as we stand here before you, father, whom I shall see no more on earth? Am I to forgive him and wipe away the past?”
As the young man bent down in that solemn moment, the words of the old prayer came to him, and he breathed out, “As we forgive them that trespass against us,” and tenderly kissed the broad forehead.
Then half-blinded he went out, conscious that his brother followed him closely down to the drawing-room, to listen, as Janet’s sobs still rose from time to time, to the heavy footsteps overhead, the hurried rustling on the stairs, and then to rise when the door was opened, and pass out with his brother to the mourning-coach.
Two hours, and the party were back in the long, gloomy dining-room, well filled now, for of the many who followed, those most intimate had entered to hear the reading of the deceased’s will.
The brothers were widely separated now, while the Doctor, who looked old and careworn, was seated near the family lawyer, who sat there at a table with a tin despatch-box by his elbow, the most important personage present. Janet was by her father’s side, clinging to his hand, still closely veiled, but trembling and weak, while a faint, half-suppressed sob escaped from her lips at intervals.
A few remarks were made by old friends, but the importance of the occasion acted as a check, and there was a sigh of relief as the deceased’s old legal friend cleared his throat, put on his glasses, and took them off again twice to rub away imaginary blurrings which obscured his sight.
Then he began to read the various clauses of the will, which was singularly free from repetition, being concise, business-like, and clear in the extreme.
Clive, as he sat back in his chair, half closed his eyes, for to him it was as if his father were speaking, and all sounded so matter-of-fact that he felt that he had nothing to learn at first. Everything nearly was as he expected to hear; while Jessop, who kept his eyes rigidly fixed upon the lawyer’s lips, smiled in a peculiar way as he found how prophetic he had been.
There were the minor bequests to servants of small sums and six or twelve months’ wages; a snuff-box to this old friend, a signet ring to another, the watch and chain “to my dear trusty old friend Peter Praed, doctor of medicine; also one hundred pounds as a slight remuneration for his services as co-executor.” And so on, and so on, till the lawyer turned over a sheet and paused for a few moments before beginning again, amidst profound silence now, for the more interesting portion of the will was to come.