THE IRON SAFE.
The two men carried Mrs. Lander to her room and laid her down on the
white bed, with a canopy of lace falling mercifully over the selfishness
of her agony. Through the delicate frost-work of this lace they watched
her writhe and moan like a spirit in torment. A woman servant came in
but dared not approach the bed, for the cries that broke from under that
cloud of lace appalled her. So the servants stood together in a helpless
group, gazing wistfully at one another, shocked and irresolute. They all
wanted to help and comfort her, but were afraid. At last the woman
started up on the bed and flung back the volumes of lace that shut her
in, with a wild sweep of one arm. Her breakfast cap, with its fresh
rose-colored trimming, had fallen off, and lay in a knot of matted lace
and ribbon under the hand upon which she leaned. Her hair, scarcely yet
touched with gray, fell in a coil to her shoulder and slowly untwisted
there like a serpent troubled with sluggish life. The spasms had left
her face cold and white, but full of keen intelligence.
“David,” she said, in a shrill whisper, “come here.”
The man approached her and bent his head.
“You have his keys—bring them here. He was sorting papers the night
before he left. There is a will! The keys—the keys of his desk, I tell
you; I want to look for the will.”
“But, madam—”
“Hush! Do not say it—do not dare to say it! I know there was a will.
Lander was not a fool or bad enough to go to sea without a will. So
bring the keys, and when I find it you shall have five hundred dollars.”
She whispered this in his ear with the craft of an insane person, and
watched his face keenly to mark the effect made by her promise.
David, who was Mr. Lander’s confidential man, hesitated what to do. If
his master was dead, this lady would be, in fact, the person who had a
right to command him. He knew nothing of the law in such cases, and had
no one wiser than himself to consult with.
“Give me the keys, I will have them,” said Mrs. Lander, imperatively.
David went to his room and brought down his master’s keys with evident
reluctance. The offer of five hundred dollars had aroused unpleasant
suspicions in his mind. Mrs. Lander took the keys quietly, for her mind
had regained its firmness somewhat, and even in that hysterical fit was
active for her own interests. She twisted the loose hair up from her
shoulders, and flung a shawl over her white morning dress, which had
been crushed and torn about the neck in her struggles.
“I will ring for you if any help is wanted,” she said, looking David
steadily in the eyes, for she saw by his face that he was prepared to
follow her. Her coolness impressed the man so decidedly that she had
left the room before he could find words for an opposing answer. When
she was gone, the two servants stood gazing at each other. John gravely
shook his head. Both these men had been under Mr. Lander’s employ long
before he gave up active business, and were better educated than the
common run of servants. Having followed their old employer into private
life out of pure gratitude and affection, they still kept a vigilant eye
on his interests, and mutually disliked the woman who had just walked
away from them with such hard self-possession.
“I tell you, Dave, she’s a clipper,” said John, with a sob in his voice.
“Take care—take care. Who knows what the law will do with this place and
all that belonged to him? That poor, pretty child too. Down in the deep,
black water—think of it! think of it!—with her yellow hair, and them
eyes shut and cold! I seem to see her now! They went together, Dave;
I’ll be bound they went down with their arms around each other. Oh, it’s
hard! it’s hard!”
“But about Mrs. Noel, John; I don’t like this. She come to, awful sudden
for an honest woman. What right has she, after all, in Mr. Lander’s
office, or study, as she calls it? None at all. I tell you, Eben Stone
is the only man who has a right to those keys, and I’ve been a fool to
give ’em up.”
“That’s a fact, if one had but the heart to realize it—but I can’t—I
can’t—with him and her under water,” answered John, wringing his hands
in genuine sorrow. “All that he had seems to be nothing compared to them
two lives.”
“I tell you what I will do, John,” answered David, whose grief was too
deep for much expression. “I’ll jump onto the down train and bring Eben
Stone up here. He’ll know what is right, and do it—women or no women.”
“Yes, I would,” answered John. “To think that a woman could start up in
the midst of a fit like that and ask for keys! Yes, I’d do it. Eben
Stone’s the man to settle her. Bring him up, Dave.”
David went into the back entrance hall for his hat, and John followed
him.
“As a general thing, I don’t think peeking and listening through
keyholes just honorable,” he whispered, “but for this once I reckon I’ll
do it.”
David shook his head and hurried out of the hall, for the rattle of a
distant train admonished him that there was no time to lose. John turned
another way and, with the feeling of a heavy weight upon his shoulders,
crept up the back stairs, resolved to find out what the widow was doing
in his master’s study, and yet honestly ashamed of the method forced
upon him. But he found the door locked and heard no sound within.
Mr. Lander’s study or business office was in the second story, remote
from the bed-chambers, and in the back part of the house. He had been a
man of fine natural tastes, and there was an excellent sense of fitness
in all his arrangements which made that entire dwelling like a
well-studied poem. There was little ornament in this room. Devoted as it
was to the practical realities of life, everything connected with it was
plain and simple. A heavy black walnut desk, almost entirely devoid of
carving; a case or two of the same sombre wood filled with papers, and a
solid iron safe built in the wall, composed the principal articles of
furniture. Three office chairs, cushioned with green leather, a basket
for waste papers, now entirely empty, and a severely plain gas burner of
bronze upon the desk, completed the room. The walls were frescoed in
panels of dove-color, pointed with green, and even the mantelpiece was
one solitary picture—that of a little girl sitting on the grass and
taking off her shoe, with a roguish, naughty expression of the face that
made you love the golden-haired imp even on canvas. Here, in this
business office, where no other signs of luxury were allowed to creep,
Mr. Lander had installed the shadow of his child, the creature for whom
he thought, and calculated, and saved gold by thousands, loving the
exertion because it might bring power and happiness to her in the
distant hereafter.
When Mrs. Lander entered this room a dreary chill fell upon her.
Everything was so orderly, so clean and cold, that it seemed like
forcing her way into a death chamber. But after one half moment’s pause
she walked in resolutely, sat down in one of the office chairs and
unlocked a principal compartment of the desk. It was full of papers
neatly arranged in packages and labelled with the methodical precision
of an old business man. She took up these packages one by one, and
re-arranged them carefully. Her face was no longer pale, but hot with a
living red. Her eyes, vivid and keen, darted from package to package
with the quick scrutiny of a lawyer.
Nothing that she wanted was there, and with her lips compressed till
their sensual fullness almost disappeared, she closed the desk and
locked it with a sharp wrench of disappointment. Then her eyes fell on
the iron door which enclosed the safe, and her face lighted up. What a
fool she had been to waste so much precious time at the desk when the
most important papers must be in the safe, which up to that moment she
had overlooked. In the palm of her left hand she held a key, unlike the
others, but whose secret she understood. She paused a moment with her
hand on the closet door—made a rapid calculation and applied the flat
key. Then the heavy door swung open, and this was followed by an eager
and quick rustling of paper. Directly she came forth from the iron
closet with a folded paper in her hand. Her face was flushed scarlet,
her eyes fairly scintillated with triumph. She unfolded the large sheet
and devoured its contents eagerly.
“As I thought—as I knew,” she said, aloud, pressing down the paper on
the desk with both her hands. “To Virginia. After her, if she dies
childless, Cora—then, then me—me—me!”
Her voice rang through the room clear and exultant; she stooped her face
and kissed the paper passionately, as if it had been a living soul. Then
she fell to perusing it again, and a dead white blank settled on her
face.
“Oh, this is too much—too much—too much! It hurls me down a precipice—I
can grasp at nothing. This sick faintness—no, no, I must shake it off,
or they will come and find me here and it thus.”
The woman thought herself wholly alone, and her passion was so great
that she spoke aloud with rash vehemence. At last she grew quiet and
leaned over the desk, pressing it hard with both elbows, while her white
face pored over the paper with the blank dreariness of despair.
“Great Heavens, what am I to do—what can I do?” she muttered at last,
starting from the chair. “All this so near, so certain to pass from me.
It is hard—it is terribly cruel!”
She paced the floor with quick, impetuous steps, then new thoughts crept
over her, from which she shrunk shivering at first, as if they had been
vipers. Then her movements became slow and measured, her face hardened
to a more deadly white, and taking up the paper, she folded it
carefully, and withdrawing it when half way to her pocket, placed it in
her bosom.
A little time after this, John, who had been baffled in his attempt to
watch all these proceedings, met Mrs. Lander in the upper hall moving
toward her own suite of rooms. She stopped and spoke to him with the
grave sweetness of a person who had striven to resign herself to
inevitable bereavement.
“I could not examine anything in that room,” she said. “The effort was
too much. Where is David? To-morrow he must go to the city and summon
Mr. Lander’s man of business, who knows something of the law, I think.”
“David has gone now,” said John, bluntly. “I dare say Mr. Stone will
reach here before night.”
The woman started and drew a sharp breath, but the keys in her hand gave
an assurance of power, and she merely said:
“Indeed, I am glad of it. Where does Mr. Stone live in the city? I mean,
where is his place of business?”
John gave the required information. She thanked him with an air of
sorrowful abstraction, and turned into a little sitting-room that opened
alike from the hall and her bed-chamber.