HOMER SIVEWRIGHT’S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.
It was nearly dusk that evening when Lucius returned to Cedar House.
His daily round had occupied more time than usual, and however full
his mind might be of that strange old man, or of the woman he loved,
he did not shorten a visit or neglect the smallest detail of his duty.
The lamp was lighted in Mr. Sivewright’s room, though it was not yet
dark outside—only the sultry dusk of a late summer day. The day had
been oppressive, and the Shadrack district had a prostrate air in its
parched dustiness, like a camel in the desert panting for distant
waterpools. The low leaden sky had threatened a storm since noon,
and the denizens of the Shadrack-road, more especially the feminine
population, had been so fluttered and disturbed by the expectation
of the coming tempest as to be unable, in their own language, ‘to
set to anything,’ all day long. Work at the washtub had progressed
slowly, wringing had hung on hand, and the very mangles of Shadrack
had turned listlessly under the influence of the weather. It was the
cholera season, too—a period which set in as regularly in this district
as the gambling season or the water-drinking season at Homburg or
Baden, or the bathing season at Ostend or Biarritz. Stone-fruit was
selling cheaply on the hawkers’ barrows, cucumbers were at a discount,
vegetable marrows met with no inquiry, conger eel and mackerel were
unpopular, and even salmon was not a stranger to the barrows. All the
wealth of the vanishing summer—luxuries which a few short weeks ago
had been counted amongst the delicacies of the season, and paid for
accordingly—had drifted this way on the strong tide of time, and lay as
it were at the feet of the Shadrackites. Upon which the Shadrackites,
looking askant at the costermongers’ barrows, remarked that cholera was
about.
Mr. Davoren found his patient seated before a writing-table, which he
had never until now seen opened. It was that kind of writing-table
which is called a _bonheur du jour_, a small table provided with
numerous drawers; an ebony table, inlaid with brass and tortoiseshell,
with brass mounts; a table which, according to Mr. Sivewright, had been
made by no lesser hands than those of Francis Boule. The lamp stood on
this table, all the drawers were open and brimming over with papers,
and before it, wrapped in his ancient dressing-gown of faded damask,
sat the old man.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Lucius, about to withdraw, for he knew
that his patient had strange secret ways about his papers. ‘You are
not ready for me, perhaps. I’ll go down and talk to Lucille for a few
minutes.’
‘Do nothing of the kind; I am quite ready for you. These papers have
much to do with what I am going to say. Come in, and lock the door.
I have locked the other door myself. I want to be secure from the
possibility of interruption. And now sit down by my side.’
Lucius obeyed without a word.
‘Now,’ said Mr. Sivewright, with the old keen look and sharp tone, the
natural energy in the man dominating even the prostration of sickness,
‘give me a straight answer to a straight question. You have had the run
of this house for a long time; have seen everything, have had time to
form your judgment: which do you think me now—a poor man or a miser?’
‘You will not be offended by my candour?’ inquired Lucius.
‘Certainly not. Have I not enjoined you to be candid?’
‘Then,’ replied the other, with a grave smile, ‘I admit that, in spite
of your protestations of poverty, I have thought you rich. Until a
short time ago, indeed, I was inclined to believe your statement; I
really thought that you had sunk all your money in the purchase of
these things,’ with that half-contemptuous glance at the art-treasures
which Mr. Sivewright had before observed; ‘but when you spoke the other
day of a possible intruder in this house with so much alarm, I told
myself that if you had nothing to lose—or nothing more portable than
yonder mummy or this desk—you could hardly cherish the suspicion of
foul play.’
‘Fairly reasoned. Then you thought, because I was alarmed by the idea
of a secret visitant prowling about my house in the dead of the night,
that I must needs have some secret hoard, some hidden treasure for
whose safety I feared?’
‘That was almost my thought.’
‘There you were wrong; but only so far were you wrong,’ answered Mr.
Sivewright, with unwonted energy. ‘I am not such a baby as to hoard my
guineas in an old muniment chest, for the babyish pleasure of gloating
over my treasure in the stillness of the night—letting the golden
coins run like glittering yellow water through my fingers; counting and
recounting; stacking the gold into little piles, twenties, fifties,
hundreds. No. I am a miser—granted; but I am not a fool. There is
nothing in this house but the objects which you have seen; but those
are worth a fortune. This very table at which I am now sitting, and
which to your uneducated eye doubtless seems a trumpery gimcrack thing,
was sold at Christie’s three years ago for a hundred and twenty pounds,
and will sell a year hence for half as much again. The value of money
is diminishing year by year; the number of wealthy buyers is increasing
year by year; and these treasures and relics of the past—specimens
of manufactures that have perished, of arts that are forgotten, the
handiwork of genius which has left no inheritors—these cannot multiply.
The capital these represent is large, and whenever they are put up
to auction in Christie and Manson’s sale-rooms, that capital will be
quadrupled. I do not speak at random, Davoren; I know my trade. After
the apprenticeship of a lifetime I can venture to speak boldly. I have
spent something like ten thousand pounds upon the treasures of this
house, and I consider that ten thousand of sunk capital to represent
between forty and fifty thousand in the future.’
Lucius looked at the speaker mute with astonishment. Was this utter
madness? The hallucination of a mind which had become distorted by
constant dwelling upon one subject? The wild dream of an art fanatic?
Homer Sivewright’s calm and serious air—the business-like manner of his
statement—forbade the idea. He might deceive himself as to the value of
his possessions; but there was no madness here.
‘You do not believe me,’ said Mr. Sivewright, taking the surgeon’s
wondering silence as the indication of his incredulity. ‘You think I
am a doting old fool; that I must be stark mad when I tell you that I,
who have lived as poorly as an anchorite, have been content to sink ten
thousand pounds—representing at five per cent five hundred a year—in
the purchase of things which, to your untutored judgment, may perhaps
appear so much second-hand trumpery.’
‘No,’ answered Lucius slowly, like a man awakening from a dream; ‘I can
appreciate the value and the beauty of many among your treasures. But
ten thousand pounds—the sum seems prodigious.’
‘A mere bagatelle compared with the sums that have been sunk in the
same kind of property. But I have never bought unless I could buy a
bargain. I am an old hand—cautious as a fox. I have not disputed the
possession of a Sèvres tea-cup or a Dresden snuff-box with wealthy
amateurs. I have waited my chance, and bought gems which the common
herd were too ignorant to appreciate. I have picked up my treasures
in odd nooks and corners; have travelled half over Europe in quest of
spoil. Thus my ten thousand pounds represent thirty thousand of another
man’s money.’
‘And you have given up your declining years to constant labour; you
have racked your brains with never-ending calculations; and you have
lived, as you say, like an anchorite—for what result? Only to amass
this heap of things—as useless for any of the practical needs of life
as they are artistically beautiful. You have pinched and scraped and
toiled—shortened your own life, and robbed your grandchild of every
joy that makes youth worth having. Good heavens,’ exclaimed Lucius,
indignant at the thought of that joyless existence to which this old
man had condemned Lucille, ‘was there ever such folly! Nay, it is worse
than folly, it is a crime—a sin against yourself, whom you have robbed
of natural rest, and all the comforts to which men look forward as the
solace of age—a still greater sin against that unselfish girl whose
life you have filled with care and trouble.’
This reproach struck home. The old man sighed heavily, his head
drooped upon his breast, and he covered his face with his thin hand.
‘Why have you made this insensate use of your money?’ exclaimed Lucius.
‘What madness possessed you?’
‘The madness men call revenge,’ cried Mr. Sivewright, uncovering his
face and lifting his head proudly. ‘Listen, Lucius Davoren, and when
you have heard my story, call me a madman if you will. You will at
least perceive that there has been a fixed purpose in all I did. When
my false ungrateful son—whom I had loved with all the weak indulgent
affection of the solitary man who concentrates all his store of feeling
upon one object, his only child—when my wicked son left me, he left me
impoverished by his theft, and, as he doubtless believed, ruined for
life. He shook the dust of my house from his feet, and went out into
the world, never intending to recross my threshold. I had nothing more
that could tempt him. My stock had been diminishing daily under his
dishonest hands; the sacrifice I had made to secure the new premises
shrunk it to a vanishing point. Thus he left me, to all intents and
purposes a beggar. It was the old story of the squeezed orange. He had
no compunction in flinging away the rind.’
‘He used you hardly,’ said Lucius, ‘like a villain as he was.’
‘On the night after he left me, I sat alone by my miserable hearth, in
that room which had never witnessed one hour of domestic peace! I sat
alone, and brooded over my wrongs. Then it seemed to me almost as if
that very devil who came to Dr. Faustus in his study came and stood
behind my chair, and whispered in my ear. “Come,” said the fiend, “love
is worn out, but there is one thing left you still—revenge. Grow rich,
and this base son, who leaves you to perish like a maimed lion in his
den, will come back and fawn upon you for your money. Grow rich again;
show him what might have been his reward had he behaved decently to
you. Let him lie at your door and starve, and beg as Dives begged for a
drop of water, and be refused. Then it will be your turn to laugh, as
he no doubt is now laughing at you.”’
‘A strange suggestion, and worthy to come from the spirit of evil,’
said Lucius.
‘I cared not if it came straight from Lucifer,’ answered the other
passionately. ‘From that hour I lived only to make money. I had lived
for little else before, you will say, perhaps; but I worked harder
now. Fortune seemed to favour me, just as the Fates seem now and then
to favour the desperate gamester. I made some lucky sales with the
shrunken remnant of my stock. I found gems in queer out-of-the-way
places; for at this time I was endowed with an almost superhuman
activity, and travelled many miles every day. I roamed the Continent,
and brought home wonders of art. I acquired a reputation for finding
objects of rarest merit, and celebrated collectors paid me my price
without a murmur. So I worked on, until the expiry of my lease found me
with a large stock and some thousands in hand. Then the idea suddenly
occurred to me that my best chance of dying a rich man—or of doubling,
tripling, or quadrupling my capital before I died—was to let my stock
lie fallow. I surrendered my premises rather than pay the enormous rent
which the landlord demanded for them. I might have sold my stock, and
retired with a comfortable income; but I determined to keep it, and die
worth fifty thousand pounds. I found this old house—roomy and secluded;
I brought my wealth here. There are cases of rare old china stowed
away in some of the rooms which you have not even seen. Since I came
here, I went on buying, so long as my funds would admit; and since the
exhaustion of my capital, I have done a good deal of business in the
way of barter—weeding out objects of lesser value from my collection,
and making many a good bargain with dealers who only half know their
trade. Thus even after my funds were gone I managed to enrich my
collection.’
‘And now, I conclude,’ said Lucius, ‘that your chief pleasure is the
idea of giving your name to a museum—of leaving behind you a memorial
which shall survive for generations to come?’
‘I have no such thought,’ answered the other. ‘My talk of leaving these
things to the nation was but an idle threat. No, Lucius, my dream and
my hope from the time of my son’s desertion have been the realisation
of a large fortune—you understand, a fortune—a fortune to be left away
from that base boy—a fortune which he should hear of, whose full extent
should be known to him; wealth that he should hunger for, while he lay
in the gutter. I have made the fortune, Lucius, and I leave it all to
you. That is my revenge.’
‘To _me_!’ cried Lucius, aghast.
‘To you. But mind, not a sixpence, not a halfpenny, to that man, should
he come whining to you; not a crust of bread to ward off the pangs of
starvation.’
‘You have left everything to me,’ said Lucius, with undiminished
surprise, ‘to me! You pass over your granddaughter, your own flesh and
blood, to make me your heir!’
‘What does it matter whether it goes to you or Lucille?’ asked Mr.
Sivewright impatiently. ‘You love her?’
‘With all the strength of my heart.’
‘And she is to be your wife. She will have the full benefit of all I
leave you. Were it left to her—settled upon her ever so tightly, for
her sole use and benefit, and so on, as the lawyers have it—you would
have the advantage all the same. She would surrender all her rights
to you. But she would do something worse than that. She has a foolish
sentimental idea about that infamous father of hers; she would let him
share the money. That is why I bequeath everything to you.’
‘The precaution is needless, sir,’ replied Lucius gravely. ‘I have
reason to know that your son no longer lives to trouble you or his
daughter.’
‘You have reason to know!’ cried the old man angrily. ‘What do you know
about my son? And why have you withheld your knowledge from me until
this moment?’
‘Because it is only within the last few weeks that I have discovered
your son’s identity with a man I met in America, and I did not care to
disturb you by any allusion to an agitating subject.’
‘Who was this man?’
‘You will not speak of this to Lucille? She knows nothing—she must know
nothing of—of her father’s death,’ said Lucius, with painful eagerness.
He had spoken rashly, and found himself, as it were, caught in the
meshes of his own ill-advised admission.
‘She shall know nothing, if you insist upon it. For God’s sake, don’t
trifle with me. Is my son dead?’
He asked the question with as agonising an anxiety as if the son he had
long ago renounced were at this moment the idol of his heart.
‘I have good reason to believe that he is dead.’
‘That is no answer. Give me details, particulars—time, place, the
manner of his death.’
‘I—I can only tell you what I know,’ answered Lucius, pale to the lips.
‘There was a portrait amongst the lumber in your loft—the portrait of a
young man with dark hair and eyes.’
‘There was but one portrait there,’ answered the old man quickly—‘my
son’s.’
‘That picture resembles a man I once met in America, who, I afterwards
heard, was shot.’
‘How? by whom?’
‘That I cannot tell you. You must accept the evidence for what it is
worth.’
‘I reject it as worthless. What, you see a picture among the lumber
in the loft which reminds you of a face you saw in America—the face
of some man who may or may not have been killed in some gold-diggers’
fray, I suppose—and you jump at the conclusion that my son is dead;
that the order of nature has been reversed, and the green tree has
fallen before the disabled trunk! You tell me, on no better evidence
than this, that my dream of revenge has been vain; that my ungrateful
son will never hear, with all the pangs of baffled avarice, of his dead
father’s wealth—of wealth that might have been his had he been simply
honest.’
‘Say that I am mistaken, then,’ replied Lucius, infinitely relieved by
the old man’s incredulity. How could he have answered if Mr. Sivewright
had questioned him closely? He was not schooled in falsehood. The
horrible truth might have been wrung from him in spite of himself.
‘Say that your son still lives,’ he went on. ‘I accept your trust, and
thank you for your confidence in me. I shall receive your wealth, and
may it be long ere it falls to my hands—rather as a trustee than an
inheritor—for to my mind it will always belong to Lucille, and not to
me.’
‘And you swear that my wicked son shall never profit by my hard-earned
gains?’
‘I swear it,’ said Lucius.
‘Then I am satisfied. My will is straight and simple, and leaves all to
you without reserve. It has been duly witnessed, and lies in this inner
drawer.’ He lifted the flap of the table, and showed Lucius a concealed
drawer at the back. ‘You will remember?’
‘Yes,’ answered the surgeon, ‘but I trust in God that it may be long
ere that document is needed.’
‘That is a polite speech common to heirs,’ answered Mr. Sivewright,
with a touch of bitterness. ‘But you have been very good to me,’ he
added in a softer tone; ‘and I like you. Nay, could I believe in the
existence of friendship, I should be induced to think that you return
my liking.’
‘I do, sir, with all my heart,’ returned Lucius. ‘Your eccentricities
kept us asunder for some time; but since you have treated me with
confidence—since you have bared your heart to me, with its heavy burden
of past wrongs and sorrows—you have drawn me very near to you. I
deplore the mistaken principle which has guided your later life; but I
cannot but acknowledge the magnitude of the wrong which inspired that
dream of revenge. Yet, while I accept the trust which you are generous
enough to confide in me, I regret that I should profit by your anger
against another. If I did not think your son was dead—that all hope
of earthly atonement for his wrong-doing is over—I should refuse to
subscribe to the conditions of your bequest.’
‘Say no more about his death,’ exclaimed the old man, ‘or you will
make me angry. Now one more word about business. If, immediately
after my death, you want money, sell my collection at once. You will
find a catalogue, and detached instructions as to the manner of the
sale, in this desk. If, on the other hand, you can afford to wait for
your fortune—if you want the present value of those things to double
itself—wait twenty years, and sell them before your eldest child comes
of age. In that case, you will have a fortune large enough to make your
sons great merchants—to dower half-a-dozen daughters.’
‘I shall not be too eager to turn your treasures into money, believe
me, sir,’ answered Lucius.
‘Good,’ said Mr. Sivewright. ‘I bought those things to sell
again—speculated in them as a broker speculates in shares. Yet it gives
me a sharp pang to think of their being scattered. They represent all
the experience of my life, my youthful worship of art, the knowledge
of my later years. I have looked at them, and handled them, till they
seem to me like sentient things.’
‘Even Pharaoh yonder,’ said Lucius with a smile, anxious to turn the
current of his patient’s thoughts, which had been dwelling too long
upon painful themes, ‘though he seems scarcely a lively object to adorn
a bedchamber.’
‘Pharaoh was a bargain,’ answered Mr. Sivewright, ‘or I shouldn’t have
bought him. The manufacture of mummies is one of the extinct arts, and
the article must rise in market value with the lapse of years. New
towns spring up; provincial museums multiply—each must have its mummy.’
‘Come, Mr. Sivewright, you have been talking rather more than is good
for an invalid. May I unlock those doors, and ring for your supper?’
‘Yes, if you forbid further talk, but I have something more, another
matter, and one of some importance, to discuss with you.’
‘Let that stand over till to-morrow. You have fatigued and excited
yourself too much already. I will be with you at the same time
to-morrow evening, if you like.’
‘Do, there is something I am anxious to speak about; not quite so
important as the subject of our conversation to-night, but yet
something that ought to be spoken of. Come to-morrow evening at the
same time. Yes, you are right, I have tired myself already.’
Mr. Sivewright flung himself back in his chair exhausted. Lucius
reproached himself for having suffered his patient to talk so much, and
upon so agitating a topic. He stayed while the old man sipped a cup of
beef-tea, which he finished with a painful effort; Lucille standing
by, and looking on anxiously all the while. She had brought the little
supper-tray from the adjoining room with her own hands.
‘Do try to eat it, dear grandpapa,’ she said, as Mr. Sivewright trifled
with his spoon, and looked despondently at the half-filled cup. ‘I made
it myself, on purpose that it should be good and strong.’
‘It is good enough, child, if you could give me the inclination to
eat,’ answered the old man, pushing away the cup with a sigh; ‘and now
good-night to you both. I am tired, and shall go to bed at once.’
‘Don’t lock the dressing-room door to-night, grandpapa,’ said Lucille.
‘I am going to sleep there in future, so that I may be close at hand if
you should want anything in the night.’
‘I never want anything in the night,’ answered Mr. Sivewright
impatiently. ‘You may just as well sleep in your own room.’
‘But I like to be near you, grandpapa, and Lucius says you ought to
take a little beef-tea very early in the morning. Please leave the door
unlocked.’
‘Very well; but, in that case, mind you lock the outer door.’
‘I will be careful to do so, grandpapa.’
‘Be sure of that. This change of rooms is a foolish fancy: but I am too
feeble to dispute the point. Good-night.’
He dismissed them both with a wave of his hand—the grandchild who
represented the sum-total of his kindred, and the man to whom he had
bequeathed his fortune.
Lucille and Lucius went down-stairs together, but both were curiously
silent.
The surgeon’s mind was full of that strange conversation with Homer
Sivewright; the girl had a preoccupied air.
In the dimly-lighted hall she paused, by the open door of the
sitting-room, where Mrs. Wincher had just put down the little tray with
her young mistress’s meagre supper.
‘Will you come into the parlour for a little while, Lucius?’ she asked,
as her lover lingered on the threshold with an undecided air. Something
unfamiliar in the tone of her voice jarred upon his ear.
‘You ask the question almost as if you wished me to say no, Lucille,’
he said.
‘I am rather tired,’ she answered faintly, ‘and I am sure you must
be tired too, you have been so long up-stairs with grandpapa. It has
struck ten.’
‘That sounds like my dismissal,’ said Lucius, scrutinising the pale
face, in which there was a troubled expression that he had never seen
there until of late; ‘so I will say good-night, though I had something
to tell you, had you been inclined to listen.’
‘Tell me all to-morrow, Lucius.’
‘It shall be to-morrow then, dearest. Good-night.’
And thus with one tender kiss he left her.