hitherto repressed passion, totally incomprehensible to me, found sudden
vent, rose in one simultaneous sound from about that table, and I heard
one jocular voice sing out:
"Pass it around, Smead. I'll drink to Uncle Anthony out of that bottle
till there isn't a drop left to tell what was in it!"
But the lawyer was in no hurry.
"You have forgotten the letter, for the hearing of which you are called
together. Mr. Anthony Westonhaugh left behind him a letter. The time is
now come for reading it."
As I heard these words and realized that the final toast was to be
delayed and that some few moments must yet elapse before the room would
be cleared and an opportunity given me for obtaining what I needed for
the famishing mother and child, I felt such impatience with the fact
and so much anxiety as to the condition of those I had left behind me
that I questioned whether it would not be better for me to return to
them empty-handed than to leave them so long without the comfort of my
presence, when the fascination of the scene again seized me and I found
myself lingering to mark its conclusion with an avidity which can only
be explained by my sudden and intense consciousness of what it all might
mean to her whose witness I had thus inadvertently become.
The careful lawyer began by quoting the injunction with which this
letter had been put in his hands. "'When they are warm with food and
wine, but not too warm,'--thus his adjuration ran, 'then let them hear
my first and only words to them.' I know you are eager for these words.
Folk so honest, so convinced of their own purity and uprightness that
they can stand unmoved while the youngest and most helpless among them
withdraws her claim to wealth and independence rather than share an
unmerited bounty, such folk, I say, must be eager, must be anxious to
know why they have been made the legatees of so great a fortune, under
the easy conditions and amid such slight restrictions as have been
imposed upon them by their munificent kinsman."
"I had rather go on drinking toasts," babbled one thick voice.
"I had rather finish my figuring," growled another, in whose grating
tones no echo remained of Hector Westonhaugh's formerly honeyed voice.
"I am making out a list of stock--"
"Blast your stock! that is, if you mean horses and cows!" screamed a
third. "I'm going in for city life. With less money than we have got,
Andreas Amsberger got to be alderman--"
"Alderman!" sneered the whole pack; and the tumult became general. "If
more of us had been sick," called out one; "or if Uncle Luke, say, had
tripped into the ditch instead of on the edge of it, the fellows who
came safe through might have had anything they wanted, even to the
governorship of the state or--or--"
"Silence!" came in commanding tones from the lawyer, who had begun to
let his disgust appear, perhaps because he held under his thumb the
bottle upon which all eyes were now lovingly centered; so lovingly,
indeed, that I ventured to increase, in the smallest perceptible degree,
the crack by means of which I was myself an interested, if unseen,
participator in this scene.
A sight of Smead, and a partial glimpse of old Luke's covetous profile,
rewarded this small act of daring on my part. The lawyer was standing;
all the rest were sitting. Perhaps he alone retained sufficient
steadiness to stand; for I observed by the control he exercised over
this herd of self-seekers, that he alone had not touched the cup which
had so freely gone about among the others. The woman was hidden from me,
but the change in her voice, when by any chance I heard it, convinced me
that she had not disdained the toasts drunk by her brothers and
nephews.
"Silence!" the lawyer reiterated, "or I will smash this bottle on the
hearth." He raised it in one threatening hand and every man there seemed
to tremble, while old Luke put out his long fingers with an entreaty
that ill became them. "You want to hear the letter?" old Smead called
out. "I thought so."
Putting the bottle down again, but still keeping one hand upon it, he
drew a folded paper from his breast. "This," said he, "contains the
final injunctions of Anthony Westonhaugh. You will listen, all of you;
listen till I am done; or I will not only smash this bottle before your
eyes, but I will keep for ever buried in my breast the whereabouts of
certain drafts and bonds in which, as his heirs, you possess the
greatest interest. Nobody but myself knows where these papers can be
found."
Whether this was so, or whether the threat was an empty one thrown out
by this subtile old schemer for the purpose of safeguarding his life
from their possible hate and impatience, it answered his end with these
semi-intoxicated men, and secured him the silence he demanded. Breaking
open the seal of the envelope he held, he showed them the folded sheet
which it contained, with the remark:
"I have had nothing to do with the writing of this letter. It is in Mr.
Westonhaugh's own hand, and he was not even so good as to communicate to
me the nature of its contents. I was bidden to read it to such as should
be here assembled under the provisos mentioned in his will; and as you
are now in a condition to listen, I will proceed with my task as
required."
This was my time for leaving, but a certain brooding terror, latent in
the air, held me chained to the spot, listening with my ears, but
receiving the full sense of what was read from the expression of old
Luke's face, which was probably more plainly visible to me than to those
who sat beside him. For, being bent almost into a bow, as I have said,
his forehead came within an inch of touching his plate, and one had to
look under his arms, as I did, to catch the workings of his evil mouth,
as old Smead gave forth, in his professional sing-song, the following
words from his departed client:
"Brothers, nephews and heirs! Though the earth has lain upon my breast a
month, I am with you here to-night."
A snort from old Luke's snarling lips; and a stir--not a comfortable
one--in the jostling crowd, whose shaking arms and clawing hands I could
see projecting here and there over the board.
"My presence at this feast--a presence which, if unseen, can not be
unfelt, may bring you more pain than pleasure. But if so, it matters
little. You are my natural heirs and I have left you my money; why, when
so little love has characterized our intercourse, must be evident to
such of my brothers as can recall their youth and the promise our father
exacted from us on the day we set foot in this new land.
"There were nine of us in those days: Luke, Salmon, Barbara, Hector,
Eustace, Janet, Hudson, William and myself; and all save one were
promising, in appearance at least. But our father knew his offspring,
and when we stood, an alien and miserable band in front of Castle
Garden, at the foot of the great city whose immensity struck terror to
our hearts, he drew all our hands together and made us swear by the soul
of our mother, whose body we had left in the sea, that we would keep the
bond of brotherhood intact, and share with mutual confidence whatever
good fortune this untried country might hold in store for us. You were
strong and your voices rang out loudly. Mine was faint, for I was
weak--so weak that my hand had to be held in place by my sister Barbara.
But my oath has never lost its hold upon my heart, while yours--answer
how you have kept it, Luke; or you, Janet; or you Hector, of the smooth
tongue and vicious heart; or you, or you, who, from one stock, recognize
but one law: the law of cold-blooded selfishness which seeks its own in
face of all oaths and at the cost of another man's heart-break.
"This I say to such as know my story. But lest there be one amongst you
who has not heard from parent or uncle the true tale of him who has
brought you all under one roof to-night, I will repeat it here in words,
that no man may fail to understand why I remembered my oath through life
and beyond death, yet stand above you an accusing spirit while you quaff
me toasts and count the gains my justice divides among you.
"I, as you all remember, was the weak one--the ne'er-do-weel. When all
of you were grown and had homes of your own, I still remained under the
family roof-tree, fed by our father's bounty and looking to our father's
justice for that share of his savings which he had promised to all
alike. When he died it came to me as it came to you; but I had married
before that day; married, not, like the rest of you, for what a wife
could bring, but for sentiment and true passion. This, in my case, meant
a loving wife, but a frail one; and while we lived a little while on the
patrimony left us, it was far too small to support us long without some
aid from our own hands; and our hands were feeble and could not work.
And so we fell into debt for rent and, ere long, for the commonest
necessities of life. In vain I struggled to redeem myself; the time of
my prosperity had not come and I only sank deeper and deeper into debt
and finally into indigence. A baby came. Our landlord was kind and
allowed us to stay for two weeks under the roof for whose protection we
could not pay; but at the end of that time we were asked to leave; and I
found myself on the road with a dying wife, a wailing infant, no money
in my purse and no power in my arm to earn any. Then when heart and hope
were both failing, I recalled that ancient oath and the six prosperous
homes scattered up and down the very highway on which I stood. I could
not leave my wife; the fever was in her veins and she could not bear me
out of her sight; so I put her on a horse, which a kind old neighbor was
willing to lend me, and holding her up with one hand, guided the horse
with the other, to the home of my brother Luke. He was a straight
enough fellow in those days--physically, I mean--and he looked able and
strong that morning, as he stood in the open doorway of his house,
gazing down at us as we halted before him in the roadway. But his temper
had grown greedy with the accumulation of a few dollars, and he shook
his head as he closed his door, saying he remembered no oath and that
spenders must expect to be beggars.
"Struck to the heart by a rebuff which meant prolongation of the
suffering I saw in my dear wife's eyes, I stretched up and kissed her
where she sat half-fainting on the horse; then I moved on. I came to
Barbara's home next. She had been a little mother to me once; that is,
she had fed and dressed me, and doled out blows and caresses, and taught
me to read and sing. But Barbara in her father's home and without
fortune was not the Barbara I saw on the threshold of the little cottage
she called her own. She heard my story; looked in the face of my wife
and turned her back. She had no place for idle folk in her little house;
if we would work she would feed us; but we must earn our supper or go
hungry to bed. I felt the trembling of my wife's frame where she leaned
against my arm, and kissing her again, led her on to Salmon's. Luke,
Hector, Janet, have you heard him tell of that vision at his gateway,
twenty-five years ago? He is not amongst you. For twelve years he has
lain beside our father in the churchyard, but his sons may be here, for
they were ever alert when gold was in sight or a full glass to be
drained. Ask _them_, ask John, whom I saw skulking behind his cousins at
the garden fence that day, what it was they saw as I drew rein under the
great tree which shadowed their father's doorstep.
"The sunshine had been pitiless that morning, and the head, for whose
rest in some loving shelter I would have bartered soul and body, had
fallen sidewise till it lay on my arm. Pressed to her breast was our
infant, whose little wail struck in pitifully as Salmon called out:
'What's to do here to-day!' Do you remember it, lads? or how you all
laughed, little and great, when I asked for a few weeks' stay under my
brother's roof till we could all get well and go about our tasks again?
_I_ remember. I, who am writing these words from the very mouth of the
tomb, _I_ remember; but I did not curse you. I only rode on to the next.
The way ran uphill now; and the sun which, since our last stop, had been
under a cloud, came out and blistered my wife's cheeks, already burning
red with fever. But I pressed my lips upon them, and led her on. With
each rebuff I gave her a kiss; and her smile, as her head pressed harder
and harder upon my arm now exerting all its strength to support her,
grew almost divine. But it vanished at my nephew Lemuel's.
"He was shearing sheep, and could give no time to company; and when,
late in the day, I drew rein at Janet's, and she said she was going to
have a dance and could not look after sick folk, the pallid lips failed
to return my despairing embrace; and in the terror which this brought me
I went down, in the gathering twilight, into the deep valley where
William raised his sheep and reckoned, day by day, the increase among
his pigs. Oh, the chill of that descent! Oh, the gloom of the gathering
shadows! As we neared the bottom and I heard a far-off voice shout out a
hoarse command, some instinct made me reach up for the last time and
bestow that faithful kiss, which was at once her consolation and my
prayer. My lips were cold with the terror of my soul, but they were not
so cold as the cheek they touched, and, shrieking in my misery and need,
I fell before William where he halted by the horse-trough and-- He was
always a hard man, was William, and it was a shock to him, no doubt, to
see us standing in our anguish and necessity before him; but he raised
the whip in his hand and, when it fell, my arm fell with it and she
slipped from my grasp to the ground, and lay in a heap in the roadway.
"He was ashamed next minute and pointed to the house near-by. But I did
not carry her in, and she died in the roadway. Do you remember it,
Luke? Do you remember it, Lemuel?
"But it is not of this I complain at this hour, nor is it for this I ask
you to drink the toast I have prepared for you."
The looks, the writhings of old Luke and such others as I could now see
through the widening crack my hands unconsciously made in the doorway,
told me that the rack was at work in this room so lately given up to
revelry. Yet the mutterings, which from time to time came to my ears
from one sullen lip or another, did not rise into frightened imprecation
or even into any assertion of sorrow or contrition. It seemed as if some
suspense, common to all, held them speechless if not dumbly
apprehensive; and while the lawyer said nothing in recognition of this,
he could not have been quite blind to it, for he bestowed one curious
glance around the table before he proceeded with old Anthony's words.
Those words had now become short, sharp, and accusatory.
"My child lived; and what remained to me of human passion and longing
centered in his frail existence. I managed to earn enough for his eating
and housing, and in time I was almost happy again. This was while our
existence was a struggle; but when, with the discovery of latent powers
in my own mind, I began to find my place in the world and to earn money,
then your sudden interest in my boy taught me a new lesson in human
selfishness; but not, as yet, new fears. My nature was not one to grasp
ideas of evil, and the remembrance of that oath still remained to make
me lenient toward you.
"I let him see you; not much, not often, but yet often enough for him to
realize that he had uncles and cousins, or, if you like it better,
kindred. And how did you repay this confidence on my part? What hand had
ye in the removal of this small barrier to the fortune my own poor
health warranted you in looking upon, even in those early days, as your
own? To others' eyes it may appear, none; to mine, ye are one and all
his murderers, as certainly as all of you were the murderers of the
good physician hastening to his aid. For his illness was not a mortal
one. He would have been saved if the doctor had reached him; but a
precipice swallowed that good Samaritan, and only I, of all who looked
upon the footprints which harrowed up the road at this dangerous point,
knew whose shoes would fit those marks. God's providence, it was called,
and I let it pass for such; but it was a providence which cost me my boy
and made you my heirs."
Silence as sullen in character as the men who found themselves thus
openly impeached had, for some minutes now, replaced the muttered
complaints which had accompanied the first portion of this denunciatory
letter. As the lawyer stopped to cast them another of those strange
looks, a gleam from old Luke's sidewise eyes startled the man next him,
who, shrugging a shoulder, passed the under-handed look on, till it had
circled the board and stopped with the man sitting opposite the crooked
sinner who had started it.
I began to have a wholesome dread of them all and was astonished to see
the lawyer drop his hand from the bottle, which to some degree offered
itself as a possible weapon. But he knew his audience better than I did.
Though the bottle was now free for any man's taking, not a hand trembled
toward it, nor was a single glass held out.
The lawyer, with an evil smile, went on with his relentless client's
story.
"Ye had killed my wife; ye had killed my son; but this was not enough.
Being lonesome in my great house, which was as much too large for me as
my fortune was, I had taken a child to replace the boy I had lost.
Remembering the cold blood running in the veins of those nearest me, I
chose a boy from alien stock and, for a while, knew contentment again.
But, as he developed and my affections strengthened, the possibility of
all my money going his way roused my brothers and sisters from the
complacency they had enjoyed since their road to fortune had been
secured by my son's death, and one day--can you recall it, Hudson? can
you recall it, Lemuel?--the boy was brought in from the mill and laid at
my feet, dead! He had stumbled amongst the great belts, but whose was
the voice which had startled him with a sudden 'Halloo!' Can you say,
Luke? Can you say, John? I can say in whose ear it was whispered that
three, if not more of you, were seen moving among the machinery that
fatal morning.
"Again, God's providence was said to have visited my house; and again
_ye_ were my heirs."
"Stop there!" broke in the harsh voice of Luke, who was gradually
growing livid under his long gray locks.
"Lies! lies!" shrieked Hector, gathering courage from his brother.
"Cut it all and give us the drink!" snarled one of the younger men, who
was less under the effect of liquor than the rest.
But a trembling voice muttered "Hush!" and the lawyer, whose eye had
grown steely under these comments, took advantage of the sudden silence
which had followed this last objurgation and went steadily on.
"Some men would have made a will and denounced you, I made a will, but
did not denounce you. _I_ am no breaker of oaths. More than this, I
learned a new trick. I, who hated all subtlety and looked upon craft as
the favorite weapon of the devil, learned to smile with my lips while my
heart was burning with hatred. Perhaps this was why you all began to
smile too, and joke me about certain losses I had sustained, by which
you meant the gains which had come to me. That these gains were many
times greater than you realized added to the sting of this good
fellowship, but I held my peace; and you began to have confidence in a
good-nature which nothing could shake. You even gave me a supper."
_A supper!_
What was there in these words to cause every man there to stop in
whatever movement he was making and stare, with wide-open eyes, intently
at the reader. He had spoken quietly; he had not even looked up, but
the silence which, for some minutes back, had begun to reign over that
tumultuous gathering, now became breathless, and the seams in Hector's
cheeks deepened to a bluish criss-cross.
"_You remember that supper?_"
As the words rang out again, I threw wide the door; I might have stalked
openly into their circle; not a man there would have noticed me.
"It was a memorable occasion," the lawyer read on with stoical
impassiveness. "There was not a brother lacking. Luke and Hudson and
William and Hector and Eustace's boys, as well as Eustace himself; Janet
too, and Salmon's Lemuel, and Barbara's son, who, even if his mother had
gone the way of all flesh, had so trained her black brood in the love of
the things of this world that I scarcely missed her when I looked about
among you all for the eight sturdy brothers and sisters who had joined
in one clasp and one oath, under the eye of the true-hearted immigrant,
our father. What I did miss was one true eye lifted to my glance; but I
did not show that I missed it; and so our peace was made and we
separated, you to wait for your inheritance, and I for the death which
was to secure it to you. For, when the cup passed round that night, you
each dropped into it a tear of repentance, and tears make bitter
drinking. I sickened as I quaffed and was never myself again, as you
know. Do you understand me, you cruel, crafty ones?"
Did they not! Heads quaking, throats gasping, teeth chattering--no
longer sitting--all risen, all looking with wild eyes for the door--was
it not apparent that they understood and only waited for one more word
to break away and flee the accursed house?
But that word lingered. Old Smead had now grown pale himself and read
with difficulty the lines which were to end this frightful scene. As I
saw the red gleam of terror shine out from his small eyes, I wondered if
he had been but the blind tool of his implacable client and was as
ignorant as those before him of what was to follow this heavy
arraignment. The dread with which he finally proceeded was too marked
for me to doubt the truth of this surmise. This is what he found himself
forced to read:
"There was a bottle reserved for me. It had a green label on it,--"
A shriek from every one there and a hurried look up and down at the
bottles standing on the table.
"A green label," the lawyer repeated, "and it made a goodly appearance
as it was set down before me. But you had no liking for wine with a
green label on the bottle. One by one you refused it, and when I rose to
quaff my final glass alone, every eye before me fell and did not lift
again until the glass was drained. I did not notice this then, but I see
it all now, just as I hear again the excuses you gave for not filling
your glasses as the bottle went round. One had drunk enough; one
suffered from qualms brought on by an unaccustomed indulgence in
oysters; one felt that wine good enough for me was too good for him,
and so on and so on. Not one to show frank eyes and drink with me as I
was ready to drink with him! Why? Because one and all of you knew what
was in that cup, and would not risk an inheritance so nearly within your
grasp."
"Lies! lies!" again shrieked the raucous voice of Luke, smothered by
terror; while oaths, shouts, imprecations, rang out in horrid tumult
from one end of the table to the other, till the lawyer's face, over
which a startling change was rapidly passing, drew the whole crowd
forward again in awful fascination, till they clung, speechless, arm in
arm, shoulder propping shoulder, while he gasped out in dismay equal to
their own, these last fatal words:
"That was at your board, my brothers; now you are at mine. You have
eaten my viands, drunk of my cup; and now, through the mouth of the one
man who has been true to me because therein lies his advantage, I offer
you a final glass. Will you drink it? I drank yours. By that old-time
oath which binds us to share each other's fortune, I ask you to share
this cup with me. _You will not?_"
"No, no, no!" shouted one after another.
"Then," the inexorable voice went on, a voice which to these miserable
souls was no longer that of the lawyer, but an issue from the grave they
had themselves dug for Anthony Westonhaugh, "know that your abstinence
comes too late; that you have already drunk the toast destined to end
your lives. The bottle which you must have missed from that board of
yours has been offered you again. A label is easily changed and--Luke,
John, Hector, I know you all so well--that bottle has been greedily
emptied by you; and while I, who sipped sparingly, lived three weeks,
you, who have drunk deep, _have not three hours before you, possibly not
three minutes_."