The Executor

It was the most extraordinary of speeches, considering the circumstances and place in which it was spoken. A parlour of very grim and homely aspect, furnished with dark mahogany and black haircloth, the blinds of the two windows solemnly drawn down, the shutters of one half-closed; two traditional decanters of wine standing reflected in the shining uncovered table; half-a-dozen people all in mourning, in various attitudes of surprise, disappointment, and displeasure; and close by one of the windows Mr Brown, the attorney, holding up to the light that extraordinary scrap of paper, which had fallen upon them all like a thunderbolt. Only half an hour ago he had attended her funeral with decorum and perfect indifference, as was natural, and had come into this parlour without the slightest idea of encountering anything which could disturb him. Fate, however, had been lying in wait for the unsuspecting man at the moment he feared it least. He had not been employed to draw out this extraordinary document, nor had he known anything about it. It was a thunderbolt enclosed in a simple envelope, very securely sealed up, and delivered to him with great solemnity by the next of kin, which carried him off his balance like a charge of artillery, and made everybody aghast around him. The sentiment and exclamation were alike natural; but the woman was not mad. By the side of the table, very pale and profoundly discomposed, sat the next of kin; a woman, of appearance not unaccordant with that of the house, over fifty? dark-complexioned and full of wrinkles, with a certain cloud of habitual shabbiness, not to be cast aside, impairing the perfection of her new mourning. Her new mourning, poor soul! got on the strength of that letter containing the will, which had been placed in her safe keeping. She was evidently doing everything she could to command herself, and conceal her agitation. But it was not a very easy matter. Cherished visions of years, and hopes that this morning had seemed on the point of settling into reality, were breaking up before her, each with its poignant circumstances of mortification and bitterness and dread disappointment. She looked at everybody in the room with a kind of agonised appeal—could it really be true, might not her ears have deceived her?—and strained her troubled gaze upon that paper, not without an instinctive thought that it was wrongly read, or misunderstood, or that some mysterious change had taken place on it in the transfer from her possession to that of Mr Brown. His amazement and dismay did not convince the poor dismayed woman. She stretched out her hand eagerly to get the paper to read it for herself. He might have changed it in reading it; he might have missed something, or added something, that altered the meaning. Anything might have happened, rather than the reality that her confidence had been deceived and her hopes were gone.