This, yea, this alone is REVENGE itself: the Will's antipathy to time, and its "It was."
Verily, a great folly dwelleth in our Will; and it became a curse unto all humanity, that this folly acquired spirit!
And because in the willer himself there is suffering, because he cannot will backwards--thus was Willing itself, and all life, claimed--to be penalty!
He wrote that Ira Nutcombe of whom they had spoken so often had most surprisingly left him in his will a large sum of money, and eased his conscience by telling himself that half of a million pounds undeniably was a large sum of money.
It takes the legal mind, like mine, to tackle wills. What it says, when you've peeled off a few of the long words which they put in to make it more interesting, is that old Nutcombe leaves you the money because you are the only man who ever did him a disinterested kindness--and what I want to get out of you is, what was the disinterested kindness?
'Anything's possible with a man cracked enough to make freak wills and not cracked enough to have them disputed on the ground of insanity.
"This will do; but why you women always stick tassels and fringe all over a sofa-cushion, to tease and tickle a fellow, is what I don't understand."
"One thing that Polly does Sunday nights, is to take Will's head in her lap, and smooth his forehead.
'cause you look as if you were more tired of studying than Will," said Maud, with some hesitation, but an evident desire to be useful and agreeable.
This setting forth of the characters in the story will remind you a little perhaps of Chaucer in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
Exactly at five he passes through New Inn, crosses through Russel Court, and takes a turn at Wills' till the play begins.
For the moment, if the reader
will permit us, we shall return to the hostelry of les Medici, of which one of the windows opened at the very moment the orders were given for the departure of the king.