NAN AGAINST NAN
Was Billy right, after all?
The question haunted her insistently. She lighted the lamp by her bed
and tried to read, but the words were a confused jumble. She threw down
her book impatiently. If only she had kept Fanny Copeland in the house
or had given the papers hidden away in the old table to Eaton to carry
away, she would have escaped this struggle.
Her thoughts were fixed upon Eaton for a time. He had enjoined her to
take a firmer hold of herself. She readily imagined what his abhorrence
would be of the evil thing Copeland had proposed....
But, after all, Farley had meant to treat her generously, as Copeland
had said, and if in some angry mood he had rewritten his will to reduce
his provision for her, there was no reason why she shouldn’t seize an
opportunity to right a wrong he never really intended....
She rose, drew on her kimono, snapped on all the lights and found that
it was only half-past one. She assured herself that she would not open
the door of Farley’s room; and yet, the thought kept recurring that no
one would ever know if she read those wills and destroyed them. The
fear that she might yield chilled her. She became frantic for something
to do and set herself the task of putting the drawers of her desk in
order. Some letters that Mrs. Farley had written her while she was at
boarding-school caught her eye.
Yes, the Farleys had been kind, even foolishly indulgent. She read in
her foster-mother’s even, old-fashioned hand:--
Don’t worry about your money, dear. I suppose when you go into town
you see a lot of little things that it’s nice for a girl to have.
We want you to appear well before the other girls. I’m slipping a
twenty-dollar bill into this letter just for odds and ends. Don’t say
anything to papa about it, as I would rather he didn’t know I send
you money.
A little later she turned up a letter of Farley’s in which he had
enclosed a fifty-dollar bill as an addition to her regular allowance.
In a characteristic postscript he enjoined her not “to tell mamma. She
thinks you have enough money and it might make her jealous!”
She closed the drawer, leaving it in worse confusion than before.
Comforts and luxuries were dear to her. She had enjoyed hugely her
years at boarding-school. To be set adrift with a small income while
the greater part of Farley’s money went to philanthropy--maybe Billy
was right, after all!...
Two o’clock. She was in Farley’s room, crouched in a low rocker with
her arms flung across the table in which the papers were hidden. Her
heart beat furiously, and her breath came in quick gasps. She had
decided now to read the wills; it would do no harm to have a look at
them. If everything was to be taken away from her, she might as well
know the worst and prepare for it.
Her fingers sought the catch that released the spring; the top turned
easily. The papers lay as she had left them the night Farley died. She
folded the open ones and thrust them into their envelopes. She counted
them deliberately; there were six, including the one that had fallen
from the dressing-gown, which she identified by the crosses on the
envelope....
If there should be no will, Copeland had said, all the property would
go to her as the only heir. There was a grate in the room with the fuel
all ready for lighting. It would be a simple matter to destroy all
the wills. She could explain the burnt-out fire to the maid by saying
that the house had grown cold in the night and that she had gone into
Farley’s room to warm herself. She was surprised to find how readily
explanations covering every point occurred to her. The very ease with
which she thought of them appalled her. No doubt it was in this fashion
that hardened criminals planned their defense....
She struck a match and touched it to the paper under the kindling.
The fire blazed brightly. She was really chilled and the warmth was
grateful. As she held her hands to the flames she surveyed the trifles
on the mantel and her gaze wandered to a portrait of Mrs. Farley which
had been done from photographs by a local artist after her death. The
memory of her foster-mother’s simple kindliness and gentleness gave her
a pang. She turned slowly until her eyes rested upon the bed in which
Farley had suffered so long. She went back to the beginning and argued
the whole matter over again.
As at other times, in moods of depression, she thought of the squalor
of her childhood; of her father, Dan Corrigan, trapper, fisherman,
loafer, brutal drunkard. She gazed at her white, slim fingers and
recalled her mother’s swollen, red hands as she had bent for hours
every day over the wash-tub. Her mother had been at least an honest
woman, who had addressed herself uncomplainingly to the business of
maintaining a home for her children.
All that the Farleys had done in changing her environment to one of
comfort and decency and educating her in a fashionable school with the
daughters of gentlefolk had not affected the blood in her. She had not
been worthy of their pity, their generosity, their confidence. Yet it
had meant much to these people in their childlessness to take her into
their hearts and give her their name. Farley’s ideas of honor had been
the strictest; the newspapers in their accounts of his career had laid
stress on this. And how he would hate an act such as she meditated,
that would prove her low origin, stamp her as the daughter of a
degenerate!...
Still, there was no reason why she shouldn’t read the wills. She
returned to the table, drew one of them out, played with it for a
moment uncertainly, then thrust it back.
It was Nan against Nan through the dark watches of the night. If she
yielded now she would never tread firm ground again. Once this trial
was over, she would be a different woman--better or worse; and she must
reach a decision unaided. She buried her face in her arms to shut out
the light and wept bitterly in despair of her weakness....
Four o’clock. A sparrow cheeped sleepily in the vines on the wall
outside the window. Farley had liked the sparrows and refused to have
them molested. They were “company,” he said, and he used to keep crumbs
of bread and cake for them....
She lifted her head, and confidence stole into her heart. She had not
done the evil thing; she had not even looked at the sheets of paper
that recorded Farley’s wavering, shifting faith in her.
“Why don’t you do it? You are a coward; you are afraid!”
Her voice sank to a whisper as she kept repeating these taunts. Then
she was silent for a time, sitting with arms folded, her eyes bent
unseeingly upon the envelopes before her. There could be no happiness
in store for her if she yielded. She saw herself carrying through life
the memory of a lawless act dictated by selfishness and greed. Suddenly
she rose and walked to the bed; and her voice rang out with a note of
triumph, there in the room where Farley had died:--
“I have not done it; I will not do it!”
The sound of her voice alarmed her, and she glanced nervously over her
shoulder. Then she laughed, struck by the thought that if Farley’s
spirit lurked there expecting to see her yield, it was a disappointed
ghost!
“You silly little fool,” he had often said to her in his anger. Well,
she was not so wicked as he had believed; but she thought of him now
without bitterness.
Wings fluttered; the sparrows began a persistent twitter.
Light was creeping in under the shades. She returned to the table,
stared at it, frowning, drew away quickly, ran to the door, and glanced
back breathlessly. She walked back slowly, turned the papers over,
peered into the drawer to make sure that she had overlooked nothing.
She took up the wills that recorded Timothy Farley’s doubts and
uncertainties and wavering generosities, dropped them into the little
well in the table and drew the top into place.
A feeling of exaltation possessed her as she heard the click of the
spring. This, perhaps, was the reward of righteousness. “We’re all
happier,” the simple-hearted Mrs. Farley used to say, “when we’re
good!”
She stood very still for a minute, stifling her last regret. Then she
turned to the window and opened it, unfastened the shutters, and thrust
her hands out into the gray light. A farmer’s wagon, bound for market,
passed slowly by, the driver asleep with a lighted lantern on the seat
beside him.
She remained there for a quarter of an hour listening to the first
tentative sounds of the new day. The newspaper carrier threw the
morning paper against the door beneath the window, unconscious that
she saw him. She closed the window, crept back to her room and threw
herself exhausted on her bed....
Outside Farley’s windows the sparrows chirruped impatiently for crumbs
from the hand that would feed them no more.