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_ John and Robert Hessian, brothers, bachelors, and dressed in
mourning, sat together after supper in the parlour of their house
at the bottom of Oldcastle Street, Bursley. Maggie, the middle-
aged servant, was clearing the table.
'Leave the cloth and the coffee,' said John, the elder, 'Mr
Liversage is coming in.'
'Yes, Mr John,' said Maggie.
'Slate, Maggie,' Robert ordered laconically, with a gesture
towards the mantelpiece behind him.
'Yes, Mr Robert,' said Maggie.
She gave him a slate with slate-pencil attached, which hung on a
nail near the mantlepiece.
Robert took the slate and wrote on it: 'What is Liversage coming
about?'
And he pushed the slate across the table to John.
Whereupon John wrote on the slate: 'Don't know. He telephoned me
he wanted to see us tonight.'
And he pushed back the slate to Robert.
This singular procedure was not in the least attributable to
deafness on the part of the brothers; they were in the prime of
life, aged forty-two and thirty-nine respectively, and in complete
possession of all their faculties. It was due simply to the fact
that they had quarrelled, and would not speak to each other. The
history of their quarrel would be incredible were it not full of
that ridiculous pathetic quality known as human nature, and did
not similar things happen frequently in the manufacturing
Midlands, where the general temperament is a fearful and strange
compound of pride, obstinacy, unconquerableness, romance, and
stupidity. Yes, stupidity.
No single word had passed between the brothers in that house for
ten years. On the morning after the historical quarrel Robert had
not replied when John spoke to him. 'Well,' said John's secret
heart--and John's secret heart ought to have known better, as it
was older than its brother heart--'I'll teach him a lesson. I
won't speak until he does.' And Robert's secret heart had somehow
divined this idiotic resolution, and had said: 'We shall see.'
Maggie had been the first to notice the stubborn silence. Then
their friends noticed it, especially Mr Liversage, the solicitor,
their most intimate friend. But you are not to suppose that
anybody protested very strongly. For John and Robert were not the
kind of men with whom liberties may be taken; and, moreover,
Bursley was slightly amused--at the beginning. It assumed the
attitude of a disinterested spectator at a fight. It wondered who
would win. Of course, it called both the brothers fools, yet in a
tone somewhat sympathetic, because such a thing as had occurred to
the Hessians might well occur to any man gifted with the true
Bursley spirit. There is this to be said for a Bursley man: Having
made his bed, he will lie on it, and he will not complain.
The Hessians suffered severely by their self-imposed dumbness, but
they suffered like Stoics. Maggie also suffered, and Maggie would
not stand it. Maggie it was who had invented the slate. Indeed,
they had heard some plain truths from that stout, bustling woman.
They had not yielded, but they had accepted the slate in order to
minimize the inconvenience to Maggie, and afterwards they deigned
to make use of it for their own purposes. As for friends--friends
accustomed themselves to the status quo. There came a time when
the spectacle of two men chattering to everybody else in a
company, and not saying a word to each other, no longer appealed
to Bursley's sense of humour. The silent scenes at which Maggie
assisted every day did not, either, appeal to Maggie's sense of
humour, because she had none. So the famous feud grew into a sort
of elemental fact of Nature. It was tolerated as the weather is
tolerated. The brothers acquired pride in it; even Bursley
regarded it as an interesting municipal curiosity. The sole
imperfection in a lovely and otherwise perfect quarrel was that
John and Robert, being both employed at Roycroft's Majolica
Manufactory, the one as works manager and the other as commercial
traveller, were obliged to speak to each other occasionally in the
way of business. Artistically, this was a pity, though they did
speak very sternly and distantly. The partial truce necessitated
by Roycroft's was confined strictly to Roycroft's. And when Robert
was not on his journeys, these two tall, strong, dark, bearded men
might often be seen of a night walking separately and doggedly
down Oldcastle Street from the works, within five yards of each
other.
And no one suggested the lunatic asylum. Such is the force of
pride, of rank stupidity, and of habit.
The slate-scratching was scarcely over that evening when Mr Powell
Liversage appeared. He was a golden-haired man, with a jolly face,
lighter and shorter in structure than the two brothers. His
friendship with them dated from school-days, and it had survived
even the entrance of Liversage into a learned profession.
Liversage, who, being a bachelor like the Hessians, had many
unoccupied evenings, came to see the brothers regularly every
Saturday night, and one or other of them dropped in upon him most
Wednesdays; but this particular night was a Thursday.
'How do?' John greeted him succinctly between two puffs of a pipe.
'How do?' replied Liversage.
'How do, Pow?' Robert greeted him in turn, also between two puffs
of a pipe.
And 'How do, little 'un?' replied Liversage.
A chair was indicated to him, and he sat down, and Robert poured
out some coffee into a third cup which Maggie had brought. John
pushed away the extra special of the Staffordshire Signal, which
he had been reading.
'What's up these days?' John demanded.
'Well,' said Liversage, and both brothers noticed that he was
rather ill at ease, instead of being humorous and lightly caustic
as usual, 'the will's turned up.'
'The devil it has!' John exclaimed. 'When?'
'This afternoon.'
And then, as there was a pause, Liversage added: 'Yes, my sons,
the will's turned up.'
'But where, you cuckoo, sitting there like that?' asked Robert.
'Where?'
'It was in that registered letter addressed to your sister that
the Post Office people wouldn't hand over until we'd taken out
letters of administration.'
'Well, I'm dashed!' muttered John. 'Who'd have thought of that?
You've got the will, then?'
Liversage nodded.
The Hessians had an elder sister, Mrs Bott, widow of a colour
merchant, and Mrs Bott had died suddenly three months ago, the
night after a journey to Manchester. (Even at the funeral the
brothers had scandalized the town by not speaking to each other.)
Mrs Bott had wealth, wit, and wisdom, together with certain
peculiarities, of which one was an excessive secrecy. It was known
that she had made a will, because she had more than once notified
the fact, in a tone suggestive of highly important issues, but the
will had refused to be found. So Mr Liversage had been instructed
to take out letters of administration of the estate, which, in the
continued absence of the will, would be divided equally between
the brothers. And twelve or thirteen thousand pounds may be
compared to a financial beef-steak that cuts up very handsomely
for two persons. The carving-knife was about to descend on its
succulence, when, lo! the will!
'How came the will to be in the post?' asked Robert.
'The handwriting on the envelope was your sister's,' said
Liversage. 'And the package was posted in Manchester. Very
probably she had taken the will to Manchester to show it to a
lawyer or something of that sort, and then she was afraid of
losing it on the journey back, and so she sent it to herself by
registered post. But before it arrived, of course, she was dead.'
'That wasn't a bad scheme of poor Mary Ann's!' John commented.
'It was just like her!' said Robert, speaking pointedly to
Liversage. 'But what an odd thing!'
Now, both these men were, no doubt excusably, agonized by
curiosity to learn the contents of the will. But would either of
them be the first to express that curiosity? Never in this world!
Not for the fortune itself! To do so would scarcely have been
Bursleyish. It would certainly not have been Hessianlike. So
Liversage was obliged at length to say--
'I reckon I'd better read you the will, eh?'
The brothers nodded.
'Mind you,' said Liversage, 'it's not my will. I've had nothing to
do with it; so kindly keep your hair on. As a matter of fact, she
must have drawn it up herself. It's not drawn properly at all, but
it's witnessed all right, and it'll hold water, just as well as if
the blooming Lord Chancellor had fixed it up for her in person.'
He produced the document and read, awkwardly and self-
consciously--
'"This is my will. You are both of you extremely foolish, John and
Robert, and I've often told you so. Nobody has ever understood,
and nobody ever will understand, why you quarrelled like that over
Annie Emery. You are punishing yourselves, but you are punishing
her as well, and it isn't fair her waiting all these years. So I
give all my estate, no matter what it is, to whichever of you
marries Annie. And I hope this will teach you a lesson. You need
it more than you need my money. But you must be married within a
year of my death. And if the one that marries cares to give five
thousand pounds or so to the other, of course there's nothing to
prevent him. This is just a hint. And if you don't either of you
marry Annie within a year, then I just leave everything I have to
Miss Annie Emery (spinster), stationer and fancy-goods dealer,
Duck Bank, Bursley. She deserves something for her disappointment,
and she shall have it. Mr Liversage, solicitor, must kindly be my
executor. And I commit my soul to God, hoping for a blessed
resurrection. 20th January, 1896. Signed Mary Ann Bott, widow." As
I told you, the witnessing is in order,' Liversage finished.
'Give it here,' said John shortly, and scanned the sheet of paper.
And Robert actually walked round the table and looked over his
brother's shoulder--ample proof that he was terrifically moved.
'And do you mean to tell me that a will like that is good in law?'
exclaimed John.
'Of course it's good in law!' Liversage replied. 'Legal
phraseology is a useful thing, and it often saves trouble in the
end; but it ain't indispensable, you know.'
'Humph!' was Robert's comment as he resumed his seat and relighted
his pipe.
All three men were nervous. Each was afraid to speak, afraid even
to meet the eyes of the other two. An unmajestic silence followed.
'Well, I'll be off, I think,' Liversage remarked at length with
difficulty.
He rose.
'I say,' Robert stopped him. 'Better not say anything about this
to Miss--to Annie, eh?'
'I will say nothing,' agreed Liversage (infamously and
unprofessionally concealing the fact that he had already said
something).
And he departed.
The brothers sat in flustered meditation over the past and the
future.
Ten years before, Annie Emery had been an orphan of twenty-three,
bravely starting in business for herself amid the plaudits of the
admiring town; and John had fallen in love with her courage and
her sense and her feminine charm. But alas, as Ovid points out,
how difficult it is for a woman to please only one man! Robert
also had fallen in love with Annie. Each brother had accused the
other of underhand and unbrotherly practices in the pursuit of
Annie. Each was profoundly hurt by the accusations, and each, in
the immense fatuity of his pride, had privately sworn to prove his
innocence by having nothing more to do with Annie. Such is life!
Such is man! Such is the terrible egoism of man! And thus it was
that, for the sake of wounded pride, John and Robert not only did
not speak to one another for ten years, but they spoilt at least
one of their lives; and they behaved ignobly to Annie, who would
certainly have married either one or the other of them.
At two o'clock in the morning John pulled a coin out of his pocket
and made the gesture of tossing.
'Who shall go first!' he explained.
Robert had a queer sensation in his spine as his elder brother
spoke to him for the first time in ten years. He wanted to reply
vocally. He had a most imperious desire to reply vocally. But he
could not. Something stronger even than the desire prevented his
tongue from moving.
John tossed the coin--it was a sovereign--and covered it with his
hands.
'Tail!' Robert murmured, somewhat hoarsely.
But it was head.
Then they went to bed. _
Read next: PART III - THE SILENT BROTHERS: CHAPTER II
Read previous: PART II - BABY'S BATH: CHAPTER III
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