"You will wait for me, John," said Miss Mackenzie, asking this favour of him as though she were very anxious that he should grant it.
Mr Slow said that he might be closeted with Miss Mackenzie for some little time, perhaps for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. John Ball looked at his watch, and then at his cousin"s face, and then promised that he would wait. Mr Slow himself took him into the outer office, and then handed him a chair; but he observed that he was not allowed to go back into the waiting-room.
There he waited for three-quarters of an hour, constantly looking at his watch, and thinking more and more about that deed of gift. Surely it must be the case that the doc.u.ment which he had seen had some reference to this great delay. At last he heard a door open, and a step along a pa.s.sage, and then another door was opened, and Mr Slow reappeared with Margaret Mackenzie behind him. John Ball"s eyes immediately fell on his cousin"s face, and he could see that it was very pale. The lawyer"s wore that smile which men put on when they wish to cover the disagreeable seriousness of the moment.
"Good morning, Miss Mackenzie," said he, pressing his client"s hand.
"Good morning, sir," said she.
The lawyer and Mr Ball then touched each other"s hands, and the former followed his cousin down the steps out into the square.
CHAPTER XVIII
Tribulation
When they were once more out in the square, side by side, Miss Mackenzie took hold of her cousin"s arm and walked on for a few steps in silence, in the direction of Great Queen Street--that is to say, away from the city, towards which she knew her cousin would go in pursuit of his own business. And indeed the hour was now close at hand in which he should be sitting as a director at the Shadrach Fire a.s.surance Office. If not at the Shadrach by two, or, with all possible allowance for the shortcoming of a generally punctual director, by a quarter past two, he would be too late for his guinea; and now, as he looked at his watch, it wanted only ten minutes to two. He was very particular about these guineas, and the chambers of the Shadrach were away in Old Broad Street. Nevertheless he walked on with her.
"John," she said, when they had walked half the length of that side of the square, "I have heard dreadful news."
Then that deed of gift was, after all, a fact; and Mr Slow, instead of being a rogue, must be the honestest old lawyer in London! He must have been at work in discovering the wrong that had been done, and was now about to reveal it to the world. Some such idea as this had glimmered across Mr Ball"s mind as he had sat in Mr Slow"s outer office, with his chin still resting on his umbrella.
But though some such idea as this did cross his mind, his thought on the instant was of his cousin.
"What dreadful news, Margaret?"
"It is about my money."
"Stop a moment, Margaret. Are you sure that you ought to tell it to me?"
"If I don"t, to whom shall I tell it? And how can I bear it without telling it to some one?"
"Did Mr Slow bid you speak of it to me?"
"No; he bade me think much of it before I did so, as you are concerned. And he said that you might perhaps be disappointed."
Then they walked on again in silence. John Ball found his position to be very difficult, and hardly knew how to speak to her, or how to carry himself. If it was to be that this money was to come back to him; if it was his now in spite of all that had come and gone; if the wrong done was to be righted, and the property wrested from him was to be restored,--restored to him who wanted it so sorely,--how could he not triumph in such an act of tardy rest.i.tution? He remembered all the particulars at this moment. Twelve thousand pounds of his uncle Jonathan"s money had gone to Walter Mackenzie. The sum once intended for him had been much more than that,--more he believed than double that; but if twelve thousand pounds was now restored to him, how different would it make the whole tenor of his life; Mr Slow said that he might be disappointed; but then Mr Slow was not his lawyer.
Did he not owe it to his family immediately to go to his own attorney? Now he thought no more of his guinea at the Shadrach, but walked on by his cousin"s side with his mind intently fixed on his uncle"s money. She was still leaning on his arm.
"Tell me, John, what shall I do?" said she, looking up into his face.
Would it not be better for them, better for the interests of them both, that they should be separated? Was it probable, or possible, that with interests so adverse, they should give each other good advice? Did it not behove him to explain to her that till this should be settled between them, they must necessarily regard each other as enemies? For a moment or two he wished himself away from her, and was calculating how he might escape. But then, when he looked down at her, and saw the softness of her eye, and felt the confidence implied in the weight of her hand upon his arm, his hard heart was softened, and he relented.
"It is difficult to tell you what you should do," he said. "At present nothing seems to be known. He has said nothing for certain."
"But I could understand him," she said, in reply; "I could see by his face, and I knew by the tone of his voice, that he was almost certain. I know that he is sure of it. John, I shall be a beggar, an absolute beggar! I shall have nothing; and those poor children will be beggars, and their mother. I feel as though I did not know where I am, or what I am doing."
Then an idea came into his head. If this money was not hers, it was his. If it was not his, then it was hers. Would it not be well that they should solve all the difficulty by agreeing then and there to be man and wife? It was true that since his Rachel"s death he had seen no woman whom he so much coveted to have in his home as this one who now leaned on his arm. But, as he thought of it, there seemed to be a romance about such a step which would not befit him. What would his mother and father say to him if, after all his troubles, he was at last to marry a woman without a farthing? And then, too, would she consent to give up all further consideration for her brother"s family? Would she agree to abandon her idea of a.s.sisting them, if ultimately it should turn out that the property was hers? No; there was certainly a looseness about such a plan which did not befit him; and, moreover, were he to attempt it, he would probably not succeed.
But something must be done, now at this moment. The guinea at the Shadrach was gone for ever, and therefore he could devote himself for the day to his cousin.
"Are you to hear again from Mr Slow?" he said.
"I am to go to him this day week."
"And then it will be decided?"
"John, it is decided now; I am sure of it. I feel that it is all gone. A careful man like that would never have spoken as he did, unless he was sure. It will be all yours, John."
"So would have been that which your brother had," said he.
"I suppose so. It is dreadful to think of; very dreadful. I can only promise that I will spend nothing till it is decided. John, I wish you would take from me what I have, lest it should go." And she absolutely had her hand upon her purse in her pocket.
"No," said he slowly, "no; you need think of nothing of that sort."
"But what am I to do? Where am I to go while this week pa.s.ses by?"
"You will stay where you are, of course."
"Oh John! if you could understand! How am I to look my aunt in the face. Don"t you know that she would not wish to have me there at all if I was a poor creature without anything?" The poor creature did not know herself how terribly heavy was the accusation she was bringing against her aunt. "And what will she say when she knows that the money I have spent has never really been my own?"
Then he counselled her to say nothing about it to her aunt till after her next visit to Mr Slow"s and made her understand that he, himself, would not mention the subject at the Cedars till the week was pa.s.sed.
He should go, he said, to his own lawyer, and tell him the whole story as far as he knew it. It was not that he in the least doubted Mr Slow"s honesty or judgment, but it would be better that the two should act together. Then when the week was over, he and Margaret would once more go to Lincoln"s Inn Fields.
"What a week I shall have!" said she.
"It will be a nervous time for us both," he answered.
"And what must I do after that?" This question she asked, not in the least as desirous of obtaining from him any a.s.surance of a.s.sistance, but in the agony of her spirit, and in sheer dismay as to her prospects.
"We must hope for the best," he said. "G.o.d tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." He had often thought of the way in which he had been shorn, but he did not, at this moment, remember that the shearing had never been so tempered as to be acceptable to his own feelings.
"And in G.o.d only can I trust," she answered. As she said this, her mind went away to Littlebath, and the Stumfoldians, and Mr Maguire.
Was there not great mercy in the fact, that this ruin had not found her married to that unfortunate clergyman? And what would they all say at Littlebath when they heard the story? How would Mrs Stumfold exult over the downfall of the woman who had rebelled against her!
how would the nose of the coachmaker"s wife rise in the air! and how would Mr Maguire rejoice that this great calamity had not fallen upon him! Margaret Mackenzie"s heart and spirit had been sullied by no mean feeling with reference to her own wealth. It had never puffed her up with exultation. But she calculated on the meanness of others, as though it was a matter of course, not, indeed, knowing that it was meanness, or blaming them in any way for that which she attributed to them. Four gentlemen had wished to marry her during the past year. It never occurred to her now, that any one of these four would on that account hold out a hand to help her. In losing her money she would have lost all that was desirable in their eyes, and this seemed to her to be natural.
They were still walking round Lincoln"s Inn Fields. "John," she exclaimed suddenly, "I must go to them in Gower Street."
"What, now, to-day?"
"Yes, now, immediately. You need not mind me; I can get back to Twickenham by myself. I know the trains."
"If I were you, Margaret, I would not go till all this is decided."
"It is decided, John; I know it is. And how can I leave them in such a condition, spending money which they will never get? They must know it some time, and the sooner the better. Mr Rubb must know it too. He must understand that he is more than ever bound to provide them with an income out of the business."