There was no difficulty whatever in establishing the identity of the
Van Deust brothers, and no obstacles were interposed to prevent their
entering into possession of their fortune as speedily as the forms of
law and the time requisite for communication with Holland would
permit; for in those days it had not yet become a branch of the legal
business to stir up vexatious will contests, based upon the fictitious
claims of presumptive heirs, in order that lawyers might fleece the
real inheritors. Even before the money arrived from Holland Peter
wanted a few thousand dollars of it in the house as a tangible
evidence of the reality of their wealth; and Mr. Holden very
cheerfully humored his whim by making him an advance of the required
amount. The old man had no idea of investing the money, or buying
anything with it; but he loved to run his fingers through the
glittering coins from time to time and listen to the mellifluous music
of their chinking; to count, and recount, and pile the yellow discs,
and think what he could do with them if he had a mind to. The unhappy
fact was that this sudden acquisition of wealth had developed a really
miserly disposition in the elder brother. As is very common,
especially among those who only acquire large fortunes late in life,
possession begat in him a longing to possess. He even felt it an
injury that he had been all those years without that money, the
existence even of which he had not known, and for which, now that he
clutched it, he really had not the slightest use. He had never been
one at whom the tongue of scandal might have wagged the reproach of
prodigality, even in his youth; but his jealously careful economy was
greater now than it had ever before been.
Jacob proposed one day that they should purchase two black broadcloth
suits and crape-bound hats, to be worn as mourning for Uncle Dietrich;
but was completely discomfited by the look of pained surprise with
which Peter regarded him, and the tone in which he replied:
"Now, Jacob, would you go to making ducks and drakes of our little
money in that way, and at your time of life?"
No, Jacob resigned his idea of a tribute to Uncle Dietrich's memory,
and penitently declared he really had no notion of becoming a
spendthrift; and thereafter he uncomplainingly and unquestioningly
left his elder brother to the sole administration of their joint
wealth.
When the bulk of their inheritance arrived and was placed in the hands
of Mr. Holden for investment on bond and mortgage in New York, that it
might yield more dollars to covetous Peter's longings, then the old
man's troubles indeed began. When he heard of a fire, he trembled to
think that perhaps it was property mortgaged to the Van Deust Fund
that was burned. When he read of a bankruptcy he shuddered for fear
that the delinquent might have been indebted to the Van Deust Fund.
When he had no bad news, then his anxiety was even greater, for at
times he was capable of thinking it possible that worthy little Mr.
Holden might have run away with the Van Deust Fund bodily. All this
made him a very uneasy and unhappy old man. Jacob's kinder and more
trustful nature gave place to none of those anxieties, and Peter
resented his seeming indifference to the Van Deust Fund.
"Jacob," said he, one day, "we might live to see the Fund doubled."
"Well, Peter, if it were, what more good would it do us?"
The elder brother felt almost sick with disgust at that unambitious
reply, and said that he felt so.
Thus it was that Peter's temper, never a remarkably sweet one, became
so sour that meek old Jacob grew to look upon him with actual dread
and would shun him, or sit looking askance and timidly at him, when
they smoked together on the porch in the evenings, in the habit but
not the content of former days. And, seeing this, a new suspicion
entered Peter's soul to plague him.
"I suppose," said he, one day, with a grim smile, "that you think
because I'm the oldest, I'll die first."
"Now, now, Peter, my dear Peter! I assure you I never had such a
thought," protested horrified Jacob.
"Oh, it's only natural you should. I don't blame you. But I'm good for
a good many years yet, Jacob; a good many years yet."
"I trust and fervently hope and pray, brother Peter, that you may be
good for very many years to come." And the tender-hearted old man's
voice trembled, and his eyes were moist as he spoke. "Why," said he,
"to think of your dying, Peter, gives me a--a--a--"
"An idea, eh?"
"No, no, Peter, not at all that. No. A cold shudder, I meant; but you
startled me so I couldn't think of the word. After all the many years
we have lived together, all by ourselves, with no other companions and
hardly any other friends than each other! Why, Peter, if I were to
lose you, I'd want to die myself, right off."
"Humph. Not you. I know what you'd want to do a heap more. And I don't
blame you. Oh, no. It's natural for you. But I know."
"Know what?"
"I know what you'd do with the Fund if I was out of the way."
"Then you know much more, Peter, than I should know, even if I had it
in my hands, to do what I pleased with this blessed minute."
"Why, you'd be a special Providence for the women. That's what you'd
be, you soft old noodle. You'd give it away to the young ones that
wanted to marry, like Mary Wallace; to the middle-aged ones who were
sorry they had married, like Mrs. Richards. Oh, you don't think I've
noticed and understood your hinting 'how poor she was,' and 'how hard
she must find it to get along with her five small children and
deserted by her worthless husband;' and I've no doubt, if the truth
were known, he had some good reasons for leaving her. And you'd give
it to the old ones, just because they were old women. You'd give a lot
of it to Mary Wallace, for her mother's sake, I've no doubt. Oh, yes.
Beautiful ideas you'd have, and fine things you'd do with the Fund if
I was out of the road."
"If I should do all that you have said, brother, I think the Fund
would be doing a great deal more good than it does now."
"Aha! There! You admit it! I knew it! But you needn't think you'll
ever get the chance. I'll live to bury you yet."
By this time he had worked himself up into a veritable passion; his
lean old fingers trembled with the agitation of his wrath, and his
perverted senses were deaf and blind to the loving kindness of Jacob's
meek and gentle response, "And I hope, Peter, that you may."
"You don't. You're a hypocrite," he retorted, furiously. Jacob looked
at him sadly, shook his head, and after lighting his pipe in silence,
strolled away for his evening smoke to the woods, where he was wont to
retire when Peter made the house too warm for him.
But the crushed worm, proverbially at least, eventually turns; and one
day the younger brother, badgered beyond endurance by those
oft-repeated taunts and reproaches, which were always accompanied by
cruel raspings of the old wound in his heart, faced his tormentor and
replied:
"Well," he said, "take it by and large, and I think if I should do all
that you have said with the money I'd make a better use of it than
you'd be likely to."
"What do you know about what I'd do with it?"
"No more than you know what I would; but I've got just as good a right
to guess as you have."
"Well, what do you 'guess'?" retorted Peter, with a sneering wicked
grin.
"Why, I imagine that as long as you lived you would hang on to every
penny of it, like an old miser as you are, and when Death loosed the
greedy clutch of your avaricious fingers from it, it would be
discovered that you had left it all to found a home for worn-out,
dried-up, useless, ill-natured old animals such as we are, creatures
who have outlived all love but that of self, and deserve no other; men
who, like you, have no without a blush for what they are, and a sigh
for what they might have been."
"Jacob, you're a chuckle-headed ass."
"Peter, you're a soulless old curmudgeon, and a brute."
"Don't you talk to me like that. For two cents I'd knock your head
off."
"For a money consideration I've no doubt you'd try it; but I'll bet
you a thousand dollars you can't knock one side of it off."
"You'll bet a thousand dollars! I'd like to know where you'd get 'em."
"Right in the house. Half the money that's there belongs to me. It all
belongs to me just as much as to you."
"Oh, indeed! And you'd like to knock me in the head and get possession
of it, wouldn't you?"
"No. But I'd like to jam some sense into your thick skull, and bleed
out some of the meanness and selfishness that fills your heart."
"Faw de Lo'd's sake. Is you boys a qwa'lin'?" demanded old black
Betsy, coming up on the porch; and they slunk away ashamed before her.
But when Jacob had once "read the Declaration of Independence," as he
styled his self-assertion against Peter's domineering disposition, he
soon fell into the habit of repeating the precedent, and as Peter did
not willingly or easily relinquish his sovereignty--the prerogative of
seniority in his opinion--they had many a wordy wrangle, and not
infrequently uttered to each other such threats as might well have
seemed ominous if overheard by strangers. And they were overheard, and
their quarrels were repeated and magnified in circulation from mouth
to mouth; so that it was not long before it became matter of common
notoriety in the community that the two old men had actually had
knock-down fights; and once, when Peter was laid up with the
rheumatism, and Jacob was nursing him most tenderly and
assiduously--notwithstanding the invalid's temper was just then even
worse than usual--it was popularly believed that the elder brother had
been almost killed by the younger in a bloody combat, and there were
those who even talked of "speaking to the squire about it." But the
brothers never did come to blows, and the only immediate result of
their quarrels was a formal division between them of the money on hand
in the house, after which it was allowed to lie in two parts, as
useless as it before was in one. Jacob indeed had some idea of giving
his share to Mary Wallace, but could not exactly make up his mind upon
what pretence or with what excuse to offer it, and feared to offend
her.
One day he sat on a little mossy bank by the roadside when she passed
him, coming from the woods with a bunch of wild flowers in her hands
and going toward her uncle's house. She was close to him, but did not
see him. Her thoughts were upon her absent lover, and in the
exaltation of her happiness she was oblivious to all about her but her
own joy. The old man's eyes were upon her, however, reading her secret
in her countenance transfigured by love and hope. Ah! how her look
brought back her mother's face to his remembrance.
"Little she would care," he said softly to himself, "for the money
now. She has love; and that is better than gold."