Mr. Meeson's Will

by H. Rider Haggard

“Also I had a regard for Mr. Eustace Meeson, and I knew that he had lost his inheritance through a quarrel about myself.”

“Ah! now we are coming to it. Then you were tattooed out of regard for the plaintiff, and not purely in the interests of justice?”

“Yes; I suppose so.”

“Well, Mr. Attorney,” interposed the Judge, “and what if she was?”

“My object, my Lord, was to show that this young lady was not the purely impassive medium in this matter that my learned friend, Mr. Short, would lead the Court to believe. She was acting from motive.”

“Most people do,” said the Judge drily. “But it does not follow that the motive was an improper one.”

Then the learned gentleman continued his cross-examination, directing all the ingenuity of his practised mind to trying to prove by Augusta’s admissions, first, that the testator was acting under the undue influence of herself; and secondly, that when the will was executed he was non compos mentis. To this end he dwelt at great length on every detail of the events between the tattooing of the will and the death of the testator on the following day, making as much as was possible out of the fact that he died in a fit of mania. But do what he would, he could not shake her evidence upon any material point, and when at last he sat down James Short felt that his case had not received any serious blow.

Then a few more questions having been asked in cross-examination by various other counsel, James rose to re-examine, and, with the object of rebutting the presumption of the testator’s mental unsoundness, made Augusta repeat all the details of the confession that the late publisher had made to her as regards his methods of trading. It was beautiful to see the fury and horror portrayed upon the countenance of the choleric Mr. Addison and the cadaverous Mr. Roscoe, when they saw the most cherished secrets of the customs of the trade, as practised at Meeson’s, thus paraded in the open light of day, while a dozen swift-pencilled reporters took every detail down.

Then at last Augusta was told to stand down, which she did thankfully enough, and Mrs. Thomas, the wife of Captain Thomas, was called. She proved the finding of Augusta on the island, and that she had seen the hat of one of the sailors, and the rum-cask two-thirds empty, and also produced the shell out of which the men had drunk the rum (which shell the Judge had called Augusta to identify). What was most important, however, was that she gave the most distinct evidence that she had herself seen the late Mr. Meeson interred, and identified the body as that of the late publisher by picking out his photograph from among a bundle of a dozen that were handed to her. Also she swore that when Augusta came aboard the whaler the tattoo marks on her back were not healed.

No cross-examination of the witness worth the name having been attempted, James called a clerk from the office of the late owners of the R.M.S. Kangaroo, who produced the roll of the ship, on which the names of the two sailors, Johnnie Butt and Bill Jones, duly appeared.