The Moonstone - Page 185/404

I drove home, selected and marked my first series of readings, and drove

back to Montagu Square, with a dozen works in a carpet-bag, the like of

which, I firmly believe, are not to be found in the literature of any

other country in Europe. I paid the cabman exactly his fare. He received

it with an oath; upon which I instantly gave him a tract. If I had

presented a pistol at his head, this abandoned wretch could hardly have

exhibited greater consternation. He jumped up on his box, and, with

profane exclamations of dismay, drove off furiously. Quite useless, I

am happy to say! I sowed the good seed, in spite of him, by throwing a

second tract in at the window of the cab.

The servant who answered the door--not the person with the cap-ribbons,

to my great relief, but the foot-man--informed me that the doctor had

called, and was still shut up with Lady Verinder. Mr. Bruff, the lawyer,

had arrived a minute since and was waiting in the library. I was shown

into the library to wait too.

Mr. Bruff looked surprised to see me. He is the family solicitor, and

we had met more than once, on previous occasions, under Lady Verinder's

roof. A man, I grieve to say, grown old and grizzled in the service of

the world. A man who, in his hours of business, was the chosen prophet

of Law and Mammon; and who, in his hours of leisure, was equally capable

of reading a novel and of tearing up a tract.

"Have you come to stay here, Miss Clack?" he asked, with a look at my

carpet-bag.

To reveal the contents of my precious bag to such a person as this would

have been simply to invite an outburst of profanity. I lowered myself to

his own level, and mentioned my business in the house.

"My aunt has informed me that she is about to sign her Will,"

I answered. "She has been so good as to ask me to be one of the

witnesses."

"Aye? aye? Well, Miss Clack, you will do. You are over twenty-one, and

you have not the slightest pecuniary interest in Lady Verinder's Will."

Not the slightest pecuniary interest in Lady Verinder's Will. Oh, how

thankful I felt when I heard that! If my aunt, possessed of thousands,

had remembered poor Me, to whom five pounds is an object--if my name had

appeared in the Will, with a little comforting legacy attached to it--my

enemies might have doubted the motive which had loaded me with the

choicest treasures of my library, and had drawn upon my failing

resources for the prodigal expenses of a cab. Not the cruellest scoffer

of them all could doubt now. Much better as it was! Oh, surely, surely,

much better as it was!