There was a slight attempt at imitation of Anne’s voice in Mr. Loseby’s tone; he tried a higher key when he made those imaginary speeches on her behalf: but his eyes were glistening all the time: he did not intend to be humorous. And neither was Mr. Mountford a man who saw a joke. He took it grimly without any softening.
‘When she does that, Loseby, if I see reason to believe that she means it, I’ll make another will.’
‘You speak at your ease of making another will—are you sure you will have it in your power? When a man makes an unjust will, I verily believe every word is a nail in his coffin. It is very seldom,’ said Mr. Loseby, with emphasis, carried away by his feelings, ‘that they live to repent.’
Mr. Mountford paled in spite of himself. He looked up sharply at his mentor, then laughed a short uneasy laugh. ‘There’s nothing like a partisan,’ he said; ‘I call that brutal—if it were not so silly, Loseby—unworthy a man of your sense.’
‘By——!’ the lawyer cried to relieve himself, ‘I don’t see the silliness; when you’ve taken a wrong step that may plunge other people into misery, I cannot see how you can have any confidence, even in the protection of God; and you are not in your first youth any more than myself. The thought of dying can’t be put aside at your age or at my age, Mountford, as if we were boys of twenty. We have got to think of it, whether we will or not.’
This address made Mr. Mountford furious. He felt no occasion at all in himself to think of it; it was a brutal argument, and quite beyond all legitimate discussion; but nevertheless it was not pleasant. He did not like the suggestion. ‘Perhaps you’ll call that clerk of yours, and let us finish the business, before we get into fancy and poetry. I never knew you were so imaginative,’ he said, with a sneer; but his lips were bluish, notwithstanding this attempt at disdain. And Mr. Loseby stood with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, as if with a desire not to see, holding his little bald head high in the air, with a fine indignation in every line of his figure. Heathcote, who was brought in to sign as one of the witnesses, felt that it needed all his consciousness of the importance of what was going on to save him from indecorous laughter. When Mr. Mountford said, ‘I deliver this,’ ‘And I protest against it,’ Mr. Loseby cried, in a vehement undertone, ‘protest against it before earth and heaven.’ ‘Do you mean little Thompson there and Heathcote Mountford?’ said the testator, looking up with a laugh that was more like a snarl. And Heathcote too perceived that his very lips were palish, bluish, and the hand not so steady as usual with which he pushed the papers away. But Mr. Mountford recovered himself with great courage. ‘Now that I have finished my business, we will have time to consider your proposition,’ he said, putting his hand on Heathcote’s shoulder as he got up from his chair. ‘That is, if you have time to think of anything serious in the midst of all this ball nonsense. You must come over for the ball, Loseby, a gay young bachelor like you.’
‘You forget I am a widower, Mr. Mountford,’ said the lawyer, with great gravity.
‘To be sure; I beg your pardon; but you are always here when there is anything going on; and while the young fools are dancing, we’ll consider this question of the entail.’
‘I don’t know what he means,’ Mr. Loseby said, some time after taking Heathcote into a corner; ‘consider the question of the entail the moment he has made another will! I’ll tell you what it is—he is repenting already. I thought what I said couldn’t be altogether without effect. St. John Mountford is as obstinate as a pig, but he is not a fool. I thought he must be touched by what I said. That’s how it is; he would not seem to give in to us; but if you agree on this point, it will be a fine excuse for beginning it all over again. That’s a new light—and it’s exactly like him—it’s St. John Mountford all over,’ said the lawyer, rubbing his hands; ‘as full of crotchets as an egg is full of meat—but yet not such a bad fellow after all.’
The household, however, had no such consoling consciousness of the possibility there was of having all done over again, and there was a great deal of agitation on the subject, both upstairs and down. Very silent upstairs—where Mrs. Mountford, in mingled compunction on Anne’s account and half-guilty joy (though it was none of her doing she said to herself) in respect to Rose’s (supposedly) increased fortune, was reduced to almost complete dumbness, her multiplicity of thoughts making it impossible to her to share in Rose’s chatter about the coming ball; and where Anne, satisfied to think that whatever was to happen had happened, and could no longer be supposed to depend upon any action of hers, sat proud and upright by the writing-table, reading—and altogether out of the talk which Rose carried on, and was quite able to carry on whatever happened, almost entirely by herself. Rose had the same general knowledge that something very important was going on as the rest; but to her tranquil mind, a bird in the hand was always more interesting than two or three in the bush. Downstairs, however, Saymore and Worth and the cook were far from silent. They had a notion of the state of affairs which was wonderfully accurate, and a strong conviction that Miss Anne for her sins had been deposed from her eminence and Miss Rose put in her place. The feeling of Saymore and the cook was strong in Anne’s favour, but Mrs. Worth was not so certain. ‘Miss Rose is a young lady that is far more patient to have her things tried on,’ Worth said. Saymore brought down an account of the party in the drawing-room, which was very interesting to the select party in the housekeeper’s room. ‘Missis by the side of the fire, as serious as a judge—puckering up her brows—never speaking a word.’