Fifth: To my executors hereinafter named, or to such of them as
shall qualify, and the survivors of them, I give and bequeath
the sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000) in trust to hold,
invest and reinvest the same and to collect the income, issues
and profits thereof and pay over the whole of said income, issues
and profits, accruing from the date of my death, in semiannual
payments, less proper charges and expenses, to my wife, Doris
Helen Southgate, as long as she shall remain my widow; and upon
the death or remarriage of my said wife, I direct that the
principal of said trust shall be paid over to my sister, Antonia
Southgate, or in the event of her death--
It was this fifth clause that Vincent Williams, the dead man's lawyer,
found himself considering as he drove uptown with a copy of the will in
his pocket. Was or was not a man justified in cutting his wife off in
case of her remarriage? After all, why should a fellow work hard all
his life to support his successor and perhaps his successor's children?
The absolute possession of a large fortune may be a definite danger to
a young woman of twenty-five. Yes, there was much to be said in favor
of such a provision; and yet, when he had said it all, Williams found
himself feeling as he had felt when he drew the will--that it was an
unwarranted insult, an ungracious gesture of possession from the grave.
He himself couldn't imagine making such a will; but then he had not
married a girl thirty-five years his junior. Southgate may have had a
vision of some pale, sleek-headed professional dancer, or dark-skinned
South European with a criminal record--
Williams was shocked to find he was thinking that the widow would
have a right even to such companions as these, if these were what she
wanted. He had no clew as to what she did want, for he had never seen
her, although he had been Southgate's lawyer for many years. Southgate,
since his marriage five years before, had spent most of his time at
Pasadena, although he always kept the house on Riverside open.
It was toward this house that Williams was now driving. There was a
touch of the mausoleum about it--just the kind of house that a man who
had made his fortune in coffins ought to have owned. It was built of
cold, smooth graystone, and the door was wider at the bottom than at
the top, in the manner of an Egyptian tomb. You went down a few steps
into the hall, and Williams always half expected to hear a trapdoor
clang behind him and find that, Rhadames in the last act of Aïda, he
was walled up for good.
Nichols, Southgate's old manservant, opened the door for him and
conducted him to the drawing-room, which ran across the front of the
house on the second story, with three windows, somewhat contracted by
stone decorations, which looked on the river.
It was an ugly, pretentious room, done in the period of modern
satinwood, striped silks and small oil paintings in immense gold
frames. Over the mantelpiece hung a portrait of Southgate by Bonnat--a
fine, blatant picture, against a red background, of a man in a frock
coat with a square beard.
The house was well constructed and the carpets were deep, so that
complete silence reigned. Williams walked to the middle window and
looked out. It was the end of February and a wild wind was blowing
across the Hudson, but even a ruffled dark gray river was more
agreeable to look at than the drawing-room. He stood staring out at
an empty freighter making her way slowly upstream to her anchorage,
until a rustling of new crape garments made him turn, as Miss Southgate
entered.
She was tall--her brother had been tall too; nearly six feet; her face
was white as alabaster, and her hair, though she was nearly sixty, was
still jet black. Her mourning made her seem more majestic than ever,
though Williams would have said she could not possibly have been more
majestic than she had been the last time he saw her.
His first impression was that she was alone, but a second later he
saw that she was followed by a tiny creature, who looked as much out
of scale beside Antonia as if the Creator had been experimenting in
different sizes of human beings and had somehow got the two sets mixed
up--a little blond-headed doll with eyes the color of Delft china. Miss
Southgate held out a solid hand, white as a camellia. "I don't think
you know my sister-in-law," she said in her deep voice. "A very old
friend of Alexander's, my dear--Mr. Williams."
Williams smiled encouragingly in answer, assuming that anything so
small must be timid; but little Mrs. Southgate betrayed no symptom of
alarm. She bent her slender throat and sat down on the sofa beside
Antonia, with her hands, palms up, in her lap. She did it with a
certain crispness, like a good child doing what it has been taught as
exactly the right thing to do. She sat perfectly still; whereas Antonia
kept up a slow, magnificent undulation of shoulders and hips, as
Williams took the will out of his pocket.
"You are familiar with the terms of the will?" he asked, scrupulously
including both ladies in the question.
"Yes," said Antonia, "my brother discussed the will with me in
great detail before he made it, and I told Doris what you had said
to me yesterday after the funeral. I think she understands. You do
understand, my dear, don't you, that my brother left you the income of
his estate during your life?"
Mrs. Southgate nodded, without the least change of expression.
"During her life or until her remarriage," said Williams, giving the
word full weight.
"I shall not remarry," said Mrs. Southgate in a quick, sweet,
whispering voice--the sort of voice which made everyone lean forward,
although it was perfectly audible.
Antonia looked down at her sister-in-law and smiled, and Williams
recognized with surprise that she was obviously attached to the little
creature. He was surprised, because he knew that Miss Southgate had
disapproved of the marriage; and even if the marriage had been less
open to hostile criticism than it was, no one would expect a sister,
who had for many years been at the head of her brother's house and
a partner in his business, to welcome the intrusion of a young
blond-headed wife. It really spoke well for both women, he thought,
that they had managed to get on.
He began to go over the will, paragraph by paragraph. In the sixteenth
clause it was stated that the jewels now in possession of Mrs.
Southgate, in especial a string of pearls and pigeon's-blood rubies,
were not to be regarded as gifts, but as part of the estate. He glanced
at the widow.
"I suppose that was your understanding," he said.
"I never thought about it," she answered. "If Alexander says so, of
course he knew what he meant."
At this moment the door softly opened and Nichols appeared with
a visiting card on a salver, which he presented to Antonia. Miss
Southgate began feeling for her lorgnette.
"We can see no one," she said reprovingly to Nichols; then as she found
her glasses and read the card, she added, "I never heard of such a
person. Is it for me?"
"No, madam," said Nichols; "the gentleman asked for Mrs. Southgate."
"Explain to him that we can see no one," said Antonia; and then, as
Nichols left the room, she decided as an afterthought to give the card
to her sister-in-law--merely for information, however, for the door had
already shut behind Nichols.
As the little widow read the card she looked up with large, startled
eyes, which from having been light blue suddenly turned without any
warning at all to a deep, shiny black, and she colored until not only
her face and neck but even her tiny wrists were pink. It was really,
Williams thought, very interesting to watch; all the more because
Antonia, who was talking about a legacy to an old servant, was utterly
unaware of what was going on at her elbow. Mrs. Southgate had made no
muscular movement at all, except to turn her palms over, so that her
two hands were now domed above the visiting card. She sat quite still,
gazing into vacancy and obviously not hearing a single word that was
said.
But half an hour later, when Williams stood up to go, she came back to
life, and said to him without the least preamble, "You did not tell me
what would happen if I did remarry."
Antonia turned the full front of her majesty upon her sister-in-law,
and said, "You would lose the name of Southgate."
"I am glad you asked that question," said Williams. "You ought to
understand exactly what your situation is. In the event of your
remarriage, you would have an income from another small fund--amounting
to about forty-five hundred dollars a year, I should think."
She nodded thoughtfully; and Antonia, laying her hand on her shoulder,
said gently: "Now I have still a few family matters to discuss with Mr.
Williams; but you need not wait, if you want to finish your letters,
although we shall be very glad to have you with us if you wish to stay."
It was clear to Williams that she did not wish to stay. She held out
her hand to him--thin and narrow, but as strong as steel--gave him a
smile and left the room. She always had a little difficulty, like a
child, with the handle of a door.
Williams and Miss Southgate smiled at each other, and he expressed a
common thought as he said, "If I met Mrs. Southgate unexpectedly in the
woods, I shouldn't need any photographs to make me believe in fairies."
"She's a dear little thing," said Antonia as she seated herself again,
rather heavily. "Very intelligent in some ways, but in business
matters--almost a case of arrested development. My brother never even
gave her the trouble of signing a check."
"He just paid her bills?"
"She had very few. She has never been extravagant. She seems to have no
wishes at all. I often hope that she will learn to assert herself more
as she grows older."
Williams doubted if Miss Southgate would enjoy the realization of this
hope, but he only said, "An income of fifty thousand is apt to increase
human assertiveness."
"I sincerely hope so," said Miss Southgate. "It's a great care, Mr.
Williams, and no special pleasure to find yourself obliged to direct
every action, almost every thought, of another person's life. What I
wanted to say to you was that I think you had better consult me about
all the business details. You see how little grasp she has of them. My
brother never discussed anything of the kind with her. He was more like
a father than a husband--thirty-five years' difference in age--"
Miss Southgate shook her head.
"And yet," said Williams, "the marriage turned out well, wouldn't you
say?"
Antonia's fine arched black brows went up in doubt.
"It hadn't the disadvantages you ordinarily expect from such
marriages," she answered. "She did not run about flirting with young
men or spending my brother's money foolishly. On the other hand, she
did not introduce any of that gayety and youth into his daily life, any
of that humor and high spirits-- She is a curious little person, good
as gold, but not vital, not alive."
Williams went away wondering. Corpses don't blush like that, he
thought. The wind had died down as the sun set; and now, with a red
sky over the Palisades, the Riverside was not a bad place for a walk.
He strolled southward, trying to remember, now that he had seen Doris
Helen Southgate in the flesh, all that he had heard about her in the
days when she was only a name--the folly of an otherwise shrewd client.
He thought he remembered that she was some relation to the clergyman of
the Southgates' church--an orphan trying to support herself by one of
those extremely ill-paid occupations which are considered ladylike. He
thought she had come to the Southgate house to read to Antonia during
a temporary affliction of the eyes. Before he had seen her he had
thought of her as a serpent, insinuating herself into the household and
then coiling herself so firmly that she could never be driven out; but
now it seemed to him more as if a kitten had strayed into that great
mausoleum and had been shut up there for life.
He remembered a frequent phrase of Southgate's, which he had never
noticed much at the time: "Yes, I read it with great interest--at
least my wife read it to me." He had been fond of being read aloud to,
especially at night, when he couldn't sleep. Williams wondered whether
Doris Helen had spent six years reading aloud--above the rustling of
the avenue of palms at Pasadena, above the rattle of the private car
as they went back and forth and across the continent. Mercy, it was
no wonder she wasn't much alive. And Southgate had never given her
the trouble of signing a check, hadn't he? Well, that was one way to
put it. No, of course, he said to himself, he did not want to see the
little widow break loose--to hear that she was gambling at Monte Carlo
or being robbed of her jewels at some café on the Left Bank; but he
would have been glad to see her acting on the emotion that had turned
her eyes so black that afternoon.
Although he went to the house several times again in the course of the
next few days, he did not see Mrs. Southgate. She was always engaged
with the correspondence which had resulted from her husband's death.
"She writes a very nice letter, if I give her a general idea of what
ought to be said," Antonia had explained to Williams.
One afternoon about a month after Southgate's death, as Williams was
leaving his office in Nassau Street, a card was brought to him. He did
not know the name, and he sent word that he was just going home. If the
gentleman could give him some idea--
Word came back that the gentleman was an old friend of Mrs. Southgate.
Then Williams knew that he was holding in his hand the mate of the
card that Doris Helen had pressed down upon her lap so tenderly that
afternoon. The name was Dominic Hale.
Even Antonia could not have complained of lack of vitality in the young
man who presently walked into Williams' private office. There was
something vigorous about the way he was built, the way he moved, the
way his thick brown hair grew, like a close dark cap on his head. He
spoke at once.
"I wanted to see you, Mr. Williams, as a friend of Mrs. Southgate's.
You are a friend, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Williams, speaking as a man; and then added as a lawyer,
"Though I must confess I have seen her only once in my life."
"My goodness!" said Hale, with a shake of his head, "I never knew of
such a thing! I can't find that anyone has seen her more than once or
twice in the course of the last five years. Wasn't she allowed friends?"
"Perhaps she did not want any."
Hale gave what in a tiger would have been a growl, but which in a man
was merely a sound expressing complete disagreement.
"A girl of twenty-five--" he said; and added without pause, "Mr.
Williams, I want to marry Mrs. Southgate."
The exclamation "Good!" which rose to Williams' lips was suppressed in
favor of "I see." Then he went on, "And does she want to marry you?"
"She says not."
"But does not convince you of her sincerity?"
"Well, she said not in just the same tone seven years ago, when we
became engaged."
"Oh, you and she were engaged before her marriage?"
"Yes, we called it that. We had no possible prospect of ever getting
married. Then just before I went abroad to study--"
"And may I ask what it was you went abroad to study, Mr. Hale?"
The young man looked at him a moment in surprise before he answered,
"Painting. I'm Dominic Hale."
Williams shook his head.
"Ought I to know?"
Hale laughed.
"You perfectly well might," he said. "Doris broke our engagement before
I went. We did not part in a very friendly spirit."
"I see. She had already decided--"
"Oh, no! This was months before she went to the Southgates. She thought
it was wrong for us to be tangled up with each other so hopelessly. It
made me furious. She was so firm and clear about-- She has a will of
iron, that girl."
This last statement interested Williams almost more than anything Hale
had said, for he suddenly appreciated the fact that he himself had had
the same impression of the widow.
"Miss Southgate finds her almost too pliable and docile," he said.
"Then," answered Hale, "Miss Southgate has never tried to make her do
something she did not want to. Oh, she's not petty--Doris! She'll drift
quietly along with the stream, until something which makes a difference
to her comes along, and then--"
He wagged his head, compressing his lips in thought.
"I don't see exactly how I can help you in the matter--if she thinks
she does not want to marry you, and she has an iron will."
"I don't want help; I want advice," said Hale. "I think she cares about
me, but how much? If she really loves me, losing the fortune makes
no difference. But if she doesn't--if she's just fond of me as an old
friend--can I urge her to give up a million for the fun of being poor
with me?"
"Does it occur to you," asked Williams--"I don't want to say anything
painful, but we must face facts--that she might love you a great deal
and yet hesitate to give up the income from a million?"
"Of course it has occurred to me," answered Hale, "and if I thought it
was true I'd kidnap her."
"Well, of course, you can't do that," said the lawyer; but his tone
seemed to admit it wouldn't be a bad thing to do.
He was surprised after his visitor had left to find how sincerely he
hoped that Hale would succeed in marrying the little widow. He owned
that he himself would not give up a million for any romance in the
world; but then he was a middle-aged man who had lived his life, not a
pretty young woman who had spent five years of her youth almost as an
upper servant.
She ought, he thought, to be unafraid of the adventure of poverty;
though he was obliged to confess that there was an element of
adventure, too, in spending a large income; an adventure which would
appeal more strongly to most people. Only, he thought, there wouldn't
be much joy in riches if one remained forever under the iron rule of
Antonia.
Soon after this, that first day of spring arrived which always comes to
deceive New Yorkers sometime in March; that day when the air is warm
and the sky a pale even blue, and the north side of the street is dry
and clear and the south side still runs in slush and rivulets. Then
almost everyone does something foolish--from wearing thin clothes and
letting the furnace go out to mistakes of a more devastating sort.
Williams, who was prudent by nature, did nothing worse than, in
returning from arguing a case in Jersey City, to take the ferry
instead of the tube. As he stood watching the boat for which he was
waiting bumping its way into its slip, his attention was attracted
by two people seated on the upper deck, with their elbows hooked
over the rail and their bent heads close together, evidently at that
delightful stage of intimacy when it is possible to talk--or rather
whisper--simultaneously without either one losing a single word of
what the other is saying. They showed no disposition to get off, no
realization even that the boat had reached the shore, though the
process of winding up the dock and letting down the drawbridges and
opening the gates is not a quiet one. They were simply going to and fro
on the river, for when the deck hand came to collect their fare it was
obviously a repeated performance.
Williams had recognized Hale first, but the next second he had seen
that the diminutive figure in black could be no other than Doris Helen.
He did not disturb them, but from the window of the upper cabin he
watched them--rather wistfully. Now and then they seemed to be saying
something of the most serious importance, and, looking at each other in
the middle of a sentence, they would forget to complete it. At other
times they were evidently extremely frivolous, speaking with a manner
common to those a little drunk and those deeply in love, a manner as
if only they themselves could appreciate how deliciously ridiculous
they were.
Williams was not much surprised the very next day to be called on
the telephone by Miss Southgate, who wished to see him at once. She
said she would come to his office, where they could talk without
interruption.
She came. Her handsome alabaster mask was never allowed to express
emotion, but she undulated her vast shoulders more than usual. A young
man by the name of Hale--a painter--was coming every day to the house,
and that morning Doris had admitted that he wanted to marry her.
"And my brother hardly a month in his grave!" said Miss Southgate, with
all the concentrated bitterness of Hamlet's first soliloquy.
She was so deeply outraged by the idea that Williams did not dare point
out to her that she would profit by the marriage. There was something
noble about her utter indifference to this aspect of it, but there was
something bitter and egotistical in her anger against her sister-in-law
for daring to suggest the control of her own destiny. Williams
remembered having seen Antonia show the same ruthless, pitiless
bitterness toward a servant who had left her voluntarily. She regarded
it as an insult from an inferior. Yet in her emotion there was also the
wish to protect her brother's memory.
"It will make my brother ridiculous--an old man's widow," she said.
"It was bad enough when he married her, but he and I together managed
to keep the marriage on a dignified plane. No one could have found
anything to laugh at during his life; and now he is dead, after all
his kindness and generosity to her, she shall not insult his memory."
"But has she any idea of doing it?" asked Williams. "There is a pretty
heavy weight on the other side of the scale."
Miss Southgate clenched her hands.
"I don't know," she said, as if that were extraordinary enough. "I
can't read her mind. She says not, and yet she sees him every day."
Williams shook his head.
"She won't do it," he said, and fortunately Miss Southgate did not
catch the note of regret in his voice.
He promised to come and dine alone with the two women that evening.
He found the little widow more alive than before, more prone to smile
and talk, but no less docile in her attitude toward Antonia. There
was nothing of the rebel about her, no hint that she was preparing to
defy the lightning. And Williams admitted, as he saw the violence of
Antonia's determination that the marriage should not take place, that
a great deal of courage would be required. As he walked away from the
house that evening he said to himself that if he were Hale he would
kidnap her and take his chances of happiness.
A day or so later, a jubilant though black-bordered note from Miss
Southgate announced that the decision had been made.
"Doris has promised me that she will not marry this man, or any other,
without my consent. She is to see him this afternoon at four. I should
like you to be with me then, in case he makes a scene at his final
dismissal."
Well, Williams said to himself, he was a lawyer; he had seen a good
deal of life; he had always known that that was the way the thing would
end. But how pitiful and how stupid! He thought of the ferryboat plying
unnoticed from one bank of the Hudson to the other. Did Doris Helen
suppose she would duplicate that afternoon for a million dollars?
He went punctually at four, and was ushered into the back drawing-room.
The terrible room across the front of the house was already occupied
by the parting lovers, where presumably the portrait of Alexander
Southgate was dominating their farewells.
Antonia received him with a manner of calm triumph, unshadowed by the
least doubt that her sister-in-law would keep her word. But after about
an hour a silence fell upon her, and Williams became aware that she was
listening with increasing eagerness for the sound of the opening of the
front drawing-room door. At last she rose to her feet.
"This is unbearable," she said.
"An hour isn't so very long," he returned, "for two people who love
each other to take an eternal good-by."
"It's over two hours," said Antonia. "And she had nothing to say to him
but no."
A suspicion suddenly came to Williams that perhaps the other room was
empty, that perhaps Hale had been driven to the alternative of carrying
her off. He sprang to his feet.
"Just wait here," he said to Antonia.
The hallway between the two rooms was in shadow. As he stepped into
it, the door of the front room opened and Doris and Hale came out of
it together. They did not see Williams, for they both turned at once
toward the staircase, Hale in order to descend it and Doris leaning on
the balustrade, raising her shoulders and almost taking her feet off
the ground. Their manner was not that of people who have parted forever.
"There isn't another woman in the world would make such a sacrifice for
a fellow like me," Hale said. Williams could not see the smile she gave
him, but it must have been potent. He took her in his arms, wrenched
himself away, walked down about three steps, turned and walked up them
again, kissed her a second time--a good satisfactory hug, and then
exclaiming, "I can't bear to go," bounded down the stairs and was gone.
The front door banged behind him, and Doris Helen lifted her hands from
the balustrade. She hardly noticed Williams as he opened the door.
Antonia was still standing.
"Well, Doris," she said as the younger woman entered, and the tone of
her voice was deep and bell-like.
Doris sat down on the edge of the sofa--she always sat on the edge of
her chair so that her feet could touch the ground. Her hands, folded as
usual in her lap, were perfectly quiet, yet something in the way her
eyes darted from point to point made Williams feel that she was nervous.
"Well," he said briskly, "what did you decide?"
She looked at him wonderingly.
"I promised Antonia I would not marry without her consent. I shall keep
my word, of course."
Her sister-in-law held out a hand to her, and with the other covered
her eyes.
"Thank God!" she said.
Williams looked at the widow. Obviously she was deceiving either Hale
or Antonia. That was no rejected lover who had just left the house.
He speculated how the drama was going to unfold. There was no special
purpose in deceiving Antonia. If there was to be a marriage, she would
necessarily know it.
Perhaps Doris Helen was one of those people who couldn't say
disagreeable things, but could write them.
Miss Southgate removed her hand from her eyes.
"And now," she said, "that nightmare is over, let us go back to
Pasadena and begin our work editing my brother's memoirs."
Williams was aware of a certain bitter satisfaction in the thought that
such a life was about all the little creature deserved, but the little
creature was calmly shaking her head.
"No," she was saying gently; "no, I'm not going back to Pasadena,
Antonia. I'm going to Spain."
Her sister-in-law stared at her.
"To Spain? But I don't want to go to Spain, Doris, and you can hardly
go alone."
"I'm not going alone," answered Doris. "Mr. Hale is going with me."
Thirty years of training at the bar barely saved Williams from laughing
aloud; the solution was so simple and so complete. The recollection
flashed through his mind of the daughter of a friend of his, who
when discovered in the act of smoking a cigar explained that she had
promised her mother never to smoke a cigarette. He took himself in
hand. The thing was serious and must be stopped. Evidently the word
"sacrifice" had applied not to the loss of an income of fifty thousand
dollars but to the resignation of the less tangible asset--reputation.
Miss Southgate was already rolling out a magnificent invective. Doris
Helen did not attempt to interrupt her. She sat still, with her eyes
raised with interested surprise to Antonia's angry face. Only once she
spoke.