"YOU WILL VACATE THESE PREMISES AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE."
"Well, Gerald, I must confess this is rather tough on you!" Monsieur
Correlli remarked, in a voice of undisguised astonishment, as soon as
the lawyer disappeared. "I call it downright shabby of Anna to have
left you so in the lurch."
"It does not matter," returned the elder man, but somewhat coldly;
for, despite his feeling of relief over the disposition of her
property, he experienced a twinge of jealousy toward the more
fortunate heir, whose pity was excessively galling to him under the
circumstances.
Although the two men had quarreled just before Monsieur Correlli's
departure for New York, all ill-feeling had been ignored in view of
their common loss and sorrow, and each had conducted himself with a
courteous bearing toward the other during the last few days.
"What in the world do you suppose possessed her to make such a will?"
the young man inquired, while he searched his companion's face with
keen scrutiny. "And how strange that she should have imagined all of
a sudden that she was going to die, and so put her affairs in order!"
Mr. Goddard saw that he had no suspicion of the real state of things,
and he had no intention of betraying any secrets if he could avoid
doing so.
No one--not even her own brother--should ever know that Anna had not
been his wife. He would do what he could to shield her memory from
every reproach, and no one should ever dream that--he could not divest
himself of the suspicion--she had died willfully.
Therefore, he replied with apparent frankness:
"I think I can explain why she did so. On the day of our return from
Wyoming, Anna and I had a more serious quarrel than usual; I never saw
her so angry as she was at that time; she even went so far as to tell
me that she hated me; and so, I presume, in the heat of her anger, she
resolved to cut me off with the proverbial shilling to be revenged
upon me."
"Well, she has done so with a vengeance," muttered his brother-in-law.
"I went to her afterward and tried to make it up," his companion
resumed, "but she would have nothing to say to me. She was looking
very ill, also; and when the next morning she sent me word that she
was not able to join me at breakfast, I went again to her door and
begged her to allow me to send for Dr. Hunt, but she would not even
admit me."
"What was this quarrel about?"
"Oh, almost all our quarrels have been about a certain document which
has long been a bone of contention between us, and this one was an
outgrowth from the same subject."
"Was that document a certificate of marriage?" craftily inquired Emil
Correlli.
"Yes."
"Gerald, were you ever really married to Anna?" demanded the young
man, bending toward him with an eager look.
His companion flushed hotly at the question, and yet it assured him
that he did not really know just what relations his sister had
sustained toward him.
"Isn't that a very singular question, Emil?" he inquired, with a cool
dignity that was very effective. "What led you to ask it?"
"Something that Anna herself once said to me suggested the thought,"
Emil replied. "I know, of course, the circumstances of your early
attachment--that for her you left another woman whom you had taken to
Rome. I once asked Anna the same question, but she would not answer me
directly--she evaded it in a way to confirm my suspicions rather than
to allay them. And now this will--it seems very strange that she
should have made it if--"
"Pray, Emil, do not distress yourself over anything so absurd," coldly
interposed Gerald Goddard, but with almost hueless lips. "However, if
you continue to entertain doubts upon the subject, you have but to go
to the Church of the ---- the next time you visit Rome, ask to see the
records for the year 18--, and you will find the marriage of your
sister duly recorded there."
"I beg your pardon," apologized the doubter, now fully reassured by
the above shrewdly fashioned answer, "but Anna was always so
infernally jealous of you, and made herself so wretched over the fear
of losing your affection, that I could think of no other reason for
her foolishness. Now, about this will," he added, hastily changing the
subject and referring to the document. "I don't feel quite right to
have all Anna's fortune, in addition to my own, and no doubt the poor
girl would have repented of her rash act if she could have lived long
enough to get over her anger and realize what she was doing. I don't
need the money, and, Gerald, I am willing to make over something to
you, especially as I happen to know that you have sunk the most of
your money in unfortunate speculations," the young man concluded, Mr.
Goddard's sad, white face appealing to his generosity in spite of
their recent difference.
"Thank you, Emil," he quietly replied; "but I cannot accept your very
kind offer. Since it was Anna's wish that you should have her
property, I prefer that the will should stand exactly as she made it.
I cannot take a dollar of the money--not even what 'the law would
allow' in view of our relations to each other."
Those last words were uttered in a tone of peculiar bitterness that
caused Monsieur Correlli to regard him curiously.
"Pray do not take it to heart like that, old boy," he said, kindly,
after a moment, "and let me persuade you to accept at least a few
thousands."
"Thank you, but I cannot. Please do not press the matter, for my
decision is unalterable."
"But how the deuce are you going to get along?" questioned the young
man.
"I shall manage very well," was the grave rejoinder. "I have a few
hundreds which will suffice for my present needs, and, if my hands
have not lost their cunning, I can abundantly provide for my future by
means of my profession. By the way, what are your own plans?--if I may
inquire," he concluded, to change the subject.
The young man paled at the question, and an angry frown settled upon
his brow.
"I am going to return immediately to New York--I am bound to find that
girl," he said, with an air of sullen resolution.
"Then you were not successful in your search?" Mr. Goddard remarked,
dropping his lids to hide the flash of satisfaction that leaped into
his eyes at the words.
"No, and yes. I found out that she arrived safely in New York, where
she was met by a young lawyer--Royal Bryant by name--who immediately
spirited her away to some place after dodging the policeman I had set
on her track. I surmise that he has put her in the care of some of his
own friends. I went to him and demanded that he tell me where she was,
but I might just as well have tried to extract information from a
stone as from that astute disciple of the law--blast him! He finally
intimated that my room would be better than my company, and that I
might hear from him later on."
"Ah! he has doubtless taken her case in hand--she has chosen him as
her attorney," said Mr. Goddard.
"It looks like it," snapped the young man; "but he will not find it an
easy matter to free her from me; the marriage was too public and too
shrewdly managed to be successfully contested."
"It was the most shameful and dastardly piece of villainy that I ever
heard of," exclaimed Gerald Goddard, indignantly, "and--"
"And you evidently intend to take the girl's part against me," sneered
his companion, his anger blazing forth hotly. "If I remember rightly,
you rather admired her yourself."
"I certainly did; she was one of the purest and sweetest girls I ever
met," was the dignified reply. "Emil, you have not a ghost of a chance
of supporting your claim if the matter comes to trial, and I beg that
you will quietly relinquish it without litigation," he concluded,
appealingly.
"Not if I know myself," was the defiant retort.
"But that farce was no marriage."
"All the requirements of the law were fulfilled, and I fancy that any
one who attempts to prove to the contrary will find himself in deeper
water than will be comfortable, in spite of your assertion that I
'have not a ghost of a chance.'"
"Possibly, but I doubt it. All the same, I warn you, here and now,
Correlli, that I shall use what influence I have toward freeing that
beautiful girl from your power," Mr. Goddard affirmed, with an air of
determination not to be mistaken.
"Do you mean it--you will publicly appear against me if the matter
goes into court?"
"I do."
The young man appeared to be in a white rage for a moment; then,
snapping his fingers defiantly in his companion's face, he cried:
"Do your worst! I do not fear you; you can prove nothing."
"No, I have no absolute proof, but I can at least give the court the
benefit of my suspicions and opinion."
"What! and compromise your dead wife before a scandal-loving public?"
"Emil, if Anna could speak at this moment, I believe she would tell
the truth herself, and save that innocent and lovely child from a fate
which to her must seem worse than death," Mr. Goddard solemnly
asserted.
"Thank you--you are, to say the least, not very flattering to me in
your comparisons," angrily retorted Monsieur Correlli, as he sprang
from his chair and moved toward the door.
He stopped as he laid his hand upon the silver knob and turned a
white, vindictive face upon the other.
"Well, then," he said, between his white, set teeth, "since you have
determined to take this stand against me, it will not be agreeable for
us to meet as heretofore, and I feel compelled to ask you to vacate
these premises at your earliest convenience."
"Very well! I shall, of course, immediately comply with your request.
A few hours will suffice me to make the move you suggest," frigidly
responded Gerald Goddard; but he had grown ghastly white with wounded
pride and anger at being thus ignominiously turned out of the house
where for so many years he had reigned supreme.
Emil Correlli bowed as he concluded, and left the room without a word
in reply.
As the door closed after him Mr. Goddard sank back in his chair with a
heavy sigh, as he realized fully, for the first time, how entirely
alone in the world he was, and what a desolate future lay before him,
shorn, as he was, of home and friends and all the wealth which for so
long had paved a shining way for him through the world.
His head sank heavily upon his breast, and he sat thus for several
minutes absorbed in painful reflections.
He was finally aroused by the shutting of the street door, when,
looking up, he saw the new master of the house pass the window, and he
knew that henceforth he would be his bitter enemy.
He glanced wistfully around the beautiful room--the dearest in the
house to him; at the elegant cases of valuable books, every one of
which he himself had chosen and caused to be uniformly bound; at the
choice paintings in their costly frames upon the walls, and many of
which had been painted by his own hands; at the numerous pieces of
statuary and rare curios which he knew would never assume their
familiar aspect in any other place.
How could he ever make up his mind to dismantle that home-like spot
and bury his treasures in a close and gloomy storage warehouse?
"Homeless, penniless, and alone?" he murmured, crushing back into his
breast a sob that arose to his throat.
Then suddenly his glance fell upon the table beside him and rested
upon the letter that Mr. Clayton had given to him, and which, in the
exciting occurrences of the last hour, he had entirely forgotten.
He took it up and sighed heavily again as the faint odor of Anna's
favorite perfume was wafted to his nostrils.
"How changed is everything since she wrote this!--what a complete
revolution in one's life a few hours can make!" he mused.
He broke the seal with some curiosity, but with something of awe as
well, for it seemed to him almost like a message from the other world,
and drew forth two sheets of closely-written paper.
The missive was not addressed to any one; the writer had simply begun
what she had to say and told her story through to the end, and then
signed her name in full in a clear, bold hand.
The man had not read half the first page before his manner betrayed
that its contents were of the most vital importance.
On and on he read, his face expressing various emotions until by the
time he reached the end there was an eagerness in his manner, a gleam
of animation in his eyes which told that the communication had been of
a nature to entirely change the current of his thoughts and distract
them from everything of an unpleasant character regarding himself.
He folded and returned the letter to its envelope with trembling
hands.
"Oh, Anna! Anna!" he murmured, "why could you not have been always
governed by your better impulses, instead of yielding so weakly to the
evil in your nature? This makes my way plain at least--now I am ready
to bid farewell to this home and all that is behind me, and try to
fathom what the future holds for me."
He carefully put the letter away into an inner pocket, then sat down
to his desk and began to look over his private papers.
When that task was completed he ordered the butler to have some boxes
and packing cases, that were stored in the cellar, brought up to the
library, when he carefully packed away such books, pictures and other
things as he wished to take away with him.
It was not an easy task, and he could almost as readily have committed
them to the flames as to have despoiled that beautiful home of what,
for so long, had made it so dear and attractive to him.
When his work was completed he went out, slipped over into Boylston
street, where he knew there were plenty of rooms to be rented, and
where he soon engaged a _suite_ that would answer his purpose for the
present.
This done, he secured a man and team to move his possessions, and
before the shades of night had fallen he had stored everything he
owned away in his new quarters and bidden farewell forever to the
aristocratic dwelling on Commonwealth avenue, where he had lived so
luxuriously and entertained so elaborately the _creme de la creme_ of
Boston society.
Three days later he had disappeared from the city--"gone abroad" the
papers said, "for a change of scene and to recuperate from the
effects of the shock caused by his wife's sudden death."