THE PURITANS HAVE TRIUMPHED!
The early afternoon sun was streaming in the library windows. Miss
Gastonguay's carved chair was placed in the full light of its rays. Her
gray head and velvet jacket were resplendent, and her wrinkled face
glowed with an unearthly lustre.
She was making her will. Captain Veevers sat at the big table in the
centre of the room. He was reserved and taciturn as usual, yet he
glanced at her occasionally with some anxiety. He had deep respect for
her as an old friend and substantial patron, and he saw that he was
going to lose her.
She dictated in a firm and collected voice, "First, I revoke all wills
and codicils by me heretofore made."
He repeated the words after her, and a number of bequests to servants
and friends followed. Captain Veevers was surprised at none of them,
until he came to one in which the sum of twenty thousand dollars was
ordered to be paid to Captain Micah White.
However, he took pains not to exhibit his surprise. The captain had
probably been executing some commission for Miss Gastonguay.
But a greater surprise was to follow. "Now that I am about to die,"
continued Miss Gastonguay, "and, wishing to gratify my earnest wish
that some of my own townspeople may reside under my roof, and raise up
a Christian family to bless the State, I give and bequeath to my friend
Justin Mercer my house, furniture, and estate of French Cross, together
with the sum of--" and she paused, while the scratching of Captain
Veevers's pen ceased.
She was making a calculation on a scrap of paper she held in her hand,
and when she finished, he, to his astonishment, was directed to name an
amount representing one-half the value of her entire property.
Self-possessed as he was, he could not suppress a slight sneer.
Her deep set eyes caught it. "What is it?" she asked, gently. "You
would like to make an observation?"
His concentrated malice and implacability found expression in a
murmured sentence, "So you too have found her out?"
"Who--Chelda?"
"Yes."
She waved her pencil at him with a melancholy smile, and continued
dictating, "To my beloved niece, Chelda Gertrude Gastonguay, who has
been my companion and solace since her childhood, I give and bequeath
the remainder and residue of my real and personal estate, and direct
and authorise my executors to collect the income derived therefrom,
and pay said income in quarter-yearly payments to said Chelda Gertrude
Gastonguay during her natural life. And it is further my will, and I do
hereby authorise and empower the said Chelda Gertrude Gastonguay by her
last will and testament duly executed by her, according to the laws of
this State, to bequeath, limit, and appoint the said rest and residue
of my estate in any way and for such objects as she may deem best."
Here she broke off. "Young man," she said, abruptly, "come with me."
She rose from her seat, and extended a hand to Captain Veevers, who
left the table, and accompanied her into the adjoining music-room.
She pointed to a bevelled glass panel. "Look in there, will you?"
He looked in, and saw his sallow face disfigured by an expression of
inexorable contempt.
"It grieves me," she said, simply. "You are angry with my niece."
"Not angry,--I despise her. I despise myself," he continued, in a low
voice, "for letting you know."
His head hung down. He would fain have covered his wound, but it was
too new, too painful.
"She has had you dangling about her for years," said Miss Gastonguay.
"She has deceived you,--hurt your feelings."
"She has made a fool of me," he articulated. "When I marry,--if I
marry,--I shall look for a stupid woman. I am tired of clever ones."
"This is not love," continued Miss Gastonguay, "it is self-esteem. Let
me speak to you as if you were my son. I like you--I pity you. Thank
Heaven that Chelda does discard you. Such a match would have been most
unsuitable. Pay court to some gentle girl like Aurelia Sinclair, who
will love and admire you. Chelda is, as you say, insincere and she
loves another man. Dear young man," and she suddenly laid her hand on
his shoulder, "let me say a last word to you. I am soon to shake off
this world and its troubles. Already I feel myself in it but not of it.
Nothing burdens me, nothing vexes me. I have had worries and trials.
They have all rolled from me. With unspeakable longing I look forward
to another existence. Let me have one more consolation before I depart.
Let me plant a little seed of forgiveness in your heart."
Her face was transfigured. With something like awe the young man felt
his own face clearing, and the cloud lifting from his mind.
"Forgive her, forgive her," she murmured, "as you wish to be forgiven.
It is the great secret of life. No happiness without forgiveness. Alas!
we are none of us perfect, but resentment is so trivial, so petty."
Captain Veevers moved back into the library. He was strangely
uncomfortable. Miss Gastonguay's mind seemed wandering. "Shall we
finish our business?" he said.
"Yes, yes," and like one in a dream, and yet with entire composure, she
continued the work in hand, spoke a few words to the witnesses called
in, and then after signing the will, and seeing it laid away in a safe
place, rang the bell and requested her niece's presence.
"Chelda, my dear," she said, softly, "you have something to say to this
young man."
The feverish flush on the young lady's face deepened. Her head was not
held as high as formerly and her manner had become nervous and startled.
"Captain Veevers," she said, moving toward him in an automaton-like
fashion, but keeping her eyes fixed on her aunt, "I wounded your
feelings in an interview you sought last week. I deeply regret it."
"She wishes to curry favour with her aunt," the young man sneeringly
reflected. Aloud he said, "The matter had better be left buried."
"If you knew how I have suffered!" said Chelda, with agitation. "How I
have suffered!"
A quick gleam sprang to his eyes. Had she repented? If so, though he
was very angry, he might possibly forgive.
She retreated from him, and drawing up her slender figure against the
dark panelling of the wall, hastily ejaculated a few sentences divided
between him and her mildly observing aunt.
"I did not think when I began--I only sought my own gratification.
Then--then it was too late. The agonies of fear, of apprehension, of
mortification, that I have undergone, I cannot describe. If you knew,
you would not scorn but pity me. I have had no sleep--my food is like
ashes. You think you suffer," and she bestowed a glance of mingled fear
and aversion on the man, "you know nothing of it,--a little wounded
vanity, that is all. I cannot describe what I endure--I cannot describe
it," and she buried her face in her hands. "Such days of misery--such
nights of pain!"
Her agitation was intense--almost too intense for the occasion. Captain
Veevers looked at Miss Gastonguay, around whose lips a curious tremor
was stealing. There was something tragic and overwrought in her niece's
despair,--almost as if she were speaking of one thing and thinking of
another.
Miss Gastonguay waved him to depart. With a last glance at Chelda,
he obeyed her. That woman's sentiment was dead and buried. She only
felt remorse. She had flirted with the clergyman; she had been playing
with him. Both had found her out. His heart felt lighter. She was too
much like a woman with a past. Possibly he had been favoured in being
delivered from her.
"Chelda," said Miss Gastonguay, softly, "have you anything to tell me?"
"No, no," said her niece, in an unhappy, terrified voice, "nothing,
nothing. I have behaved badly to Captain Veevers,--I am ashamed."
"I am going to take a walk in the wood," said Miss Gastonguay, in the
same grave, kind way. "Possibly when I come back you will talk freely
to me."
"Talk freely--" stammered her niece, raising her head, but her aunt was
already gone. She hurried to the window. "Oh, if I dared--if I dared!
She might forgive me. She is so changed now, but I cannot, I cannot,"
and hiding her face in the back of a chair she writhed in an agony of
doubt and contrition. "If I were a child or a girl, but I am a woman. I
should have known better. If I had only thought--if I had only thought!"
Miss Gastonguay went first to the cemetery. The newly made grave could
not be seen. Every morning, long before the household was astir,
Chelda left her bed, and her aunt sometimes secretly watched her as
she went toiling from grave to greenhouse, her delicate hands bearing
unaccustomed burdens. This grave was her special charge, the one spot
at French Cross to be tenderly cared for and unceasingly beautified,
and she ruthlessly stripped the most costly exotics and most precious
of house flowers of blossom and leaf.
To Derrice, lying pale and languid ever since the night that made her
an orphan, Miss Gastonguay daily bore a description of Chelda's latest
designs in ornamentation. One day it was a huge white cross outlined
in a bank of ferns; another, a white heart covered the rooting sod and
gaping earth-seams.
To-day there was a carpet of variegated bloom scenting the air for
yards around with a delicious perfume. With dry eyes, but with the
same unearthly brightness of face, Miss Gastonguay stooped and passed
her hand caressingly over a pillow of flowers laid at the head of the
grave, then talking softly to herself she proceeded to the wood.
She had no pain, no distress. Soon--perhaps in the night, perhaps next
day--would come the terrible anguish in her chest, the wild struggle
for breath. She must not go far from the house, she would halt by the
old playground where she had romped with her little brother, and barely
entering the wood she sat down in the shade of some underbrush beside
the pond.
How fair was this world! How transcendent must be the beauty of the
other world to eclipse this! She leaned back against a tree and mused
on deep and unutterable things until there was a soft footfall beside
her.
"Dear pony," she said, and, with a new fondness added to her old
fondness for all created things, she stroked the head dropped
caressingly before her.
After a time she started to get up, but could not do so.
"Ah," she said, quietly, and she lay back against the tree.
A carpenter going home with his tools a few minutes later had occasion
to pass the pond. He touched his hat when he saw her, and was greeted
calmly and called to her side. "Can you give me a pencil and a piece
of paper, Mr. Munro, and if you are not in a hurry would you be kind
enough to go and sit yonder for a short time? If I do not speak at the
end of ten minutes come to me. I want to send a message to my niece,
and shall be obliged if you will leave it at the door as you go by."
The man cheerfully complied with her request. In common with the whole
town, he had heard that she was not likely to live long, but she
looked better to-day than he had ever seen her before. Her eye was
bright,--almost triumphant. Perhaps she had conquered her complaint.
Miss Gastonguay fingered the broad-pointed pencil. "Only ten minutes,
perhaps less. I am not mistaken this time,--let me make haste," and,
laying the paper on a flat stone beside her, she wrote firmly: "To
Chelda, my beloved niece. The conversation will not take place, but I
forgive, fully, freely. May God bless you. Forget the past,--forget,
forget. Look steadily forward. Leave French Cross and be happy. My
blessing always,--always. Never forget it. Nothing would change it,
nothing you could say or do. No one has told me anything, but I
suspected and know the truth."
She stopped for a few minutes. The pain was coming on. One look she
cast up at the brave blue of the sky, then she went on, "Derrice
Mercer, my dear friend. Good-bye, good-bye. Keep clean your sweet soul.
Train wisely all who may come to you. Do not forget me. We shall meet
again. Do not lose heart. Trust your husband; he will advise."
This time the pencil fell from her grasp, and an acute spasm of pain
contracted her features. She pressed her hands to her throat, and
gasped for breath. When it came, she seized the pencil and wrote,
hurriedly, "I have offended some. I pray all to forgive me. In this
last hour I think kindly, so kindly of all. Would that my poor death
could bring happiness to all I know. Good-bye, dear townspeople. On
the whole, we have lived happily together. I beg you, I pray you, I
beseech you to meet me in a better world. Would that I could comfort
some sore hearts before I go.
"Chelda, once again,--do not grieve that I am alone. I thought to have
you with me at the last, but it would have been hard for you. It is
better so. Bury me beside the wanderer."
Here she broke off. The pencil rolled away. She hurriedly thrust the
paper in the bosom of her coat, and fell on the ground in a paroxysm of
pain.
The carpenter sitting by the pond with his back to her heard nothing.
He had become absorbed in a newspaper that he had taken from his
pocket. The pony uneasily touched the back of her head with his nose,
and when she presently revealed her exhausted face he whinnied joyfully.
Her strength was all gone. She was reclining on the moss, her hands
full of violet leaves that she had grasped in her excess of pain.
She drew herself to her old position against the tree, and straightened
her clothing. Now she felt nothing but weariness, deadly weariness.
She drew one hand caressingly over the ground. "Good-bye, good-bye,"
she murmured, "dear old Pine Tree State. _Dirigo_--motto of staunch
hearts. Pony, kiss me--" and she tried to upraise a feeble hand.
She could not. The pony rubbed his velvet nose over her forehead. "And
this is death, no blackness of doubt and unbelief. All peace. The
Puritans have triumphed!"
Her voice rose suddenly. The carpenter heard it, and threw down his
paper. He ran to her, then retraced his steps to the pond and filled
his hat with water.
He was too late. The old lady was dying. Her glazed eyes were fixed
on the sky. She could not see him, but he caught her murmured words,
"I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ
his Son--Dear Lord, open the gates of heaven and let a tired old child
creep in."
There was a wistful pleading note in her voice. The carpenter, leaning
over her, tried in vain to revive her. She fell back, and a smile of
unutterable joy lighted up her face.