Matthew spoke to me as we left the Churchyard.
'Cousin,' he said, with more civility than I expected, 'if you can come to the counting-house to-morrow morning you will learn your father's testamentary dispositions. The will is to be opened and read at ten o'clock.'
CHAPTER VII
THE READING OF THE WILL
'We will make him sell his Reversionary interest'—the voice was curiously harsh and grating—'and you will then be able to take the whole.'
You know how, sometimes, one hears things in a mysterious way which one could not hear under ordinary circumstances. I was standing in the outer counting-house in the room assigned to the accountants. In the inner counting-house, I knew, my cousin was sitting. Without being told any thing more, I guessed that the voice belonged to the tall lean man who was present at the funeral, and that he was addressing Matthew, and that he was talking about me. And, without any reason, I assumed a mental attitude of caution. They were going to make me sell something, were they?
When I was called into the room I found that I was so far right, inasmuch as the only two persons in the room were my cousin and the lean man who by his black dress I perceived to be an attorney.
Now, I daresay that there are attorneys in the City of London whose lives are as holy as that of any Bishop or Divine. At the same time it is a matter of common notoriety that the City contains a swarm of vermin—if I may speak plainly—who are versed in every kind of chicanery: who know how to catch hold of every possible objection: and who spend the whole of their creeping lives in wresting, twisting, and turning the letter of the law to their own advantage, under the pretense of advantage to their clients. These are the attorneys who suggest and encourage disputes and lawsuits between persons who would otherwise remain friends: there are those who keep cases running on for years, eating up the estates: when they fasten upon a man, it is the spider fastening on a big fat fly: they never leave him until they land him in a debtor's prison, naked and destitute. I have observed that a course of life, such as that indicated above, presently stamps the face with a look which cannot be mistaken: the eyes draw together: the mouth grows straight and hard: the lips become thin: the nose insensibly, even if it be originally a snub, becomes like the beak of a crow—the creature which devours the offal in the street: the cheeks are no longer flesh and skin, but wrinkled parchment: the aspect of the man becomes, in a word, such as that of the man who sat at the table, a bundle of papers before him.
I knew, I say, that Mr. Probus—which was his name—was an attorney at the outset. His black coat: his wig: his general aspect: left no doubt upon my mind. And from the outset I disliked and distrusted the man.