"It is time to pay the pipers," said one.
"Let those who dance pay; that's according to the adage," and he smiled
caustically at his own wit.
"It's a false adage," said a second, "like many another that you follow
in your world. It is not the ones who dance that should pay, but the
ones who keep others from dancing--the ones who help to rob the world
of some of its joy. And the ones who rob the most must pay the
heaviest. Come!" And he shook his cap significantly.
A sudden feeling of helplessness overpowered the Meanest Trustee.
Muttering something about "pickpockets" and "hold-ups," he ferreted
around in his pocket and brought out a single coin, which he dropped
ungraciously into the insistent cap.
"What's that?" asked the head piper, curiously.
"It looks to me like money--good money--and I'm throwing it away on a
parcel of rascals."
"Come, come, my good man," and the piper tapped him gently on the
shoulder, in the fashion of a professional philanthropist when he
remonstrates with a professional vagrant; "don't you see you are not
giving your soul any room to grow in? A great deal of joy might have
reached the world across your open palm. Instead, you have crushed it
in a hard, tight fist. You must pay now for all the souls you've kept
from dancing. Come--fill all our caps."
"Fill!" There was something akin to actual terror in the voice of the
Meanest Trustee. He could feel himself growing pale; his tongue seemed
to drop back in his throat, choking him. "That would take a great deal
of money," he managed to wheeze out at last; and then he braced
himself, his hands clutched deep in his pockets. "I will never pay;
never, never, never!"
"Oh yes, you will!" and the piper's smile was insultingly cheerful.
"It was a great deal of joy, you know," he reminded him. "Come,
lads"--to the other pipers--"hold out your caps, there."
The Meanest Trustee had the strange experience of feeling himself
worked by a force outside of his own will; it was as if he had been a
marionette with a master-hand pulling the wires. Quite mechanically he
found himself taking something out of his pocket and dropping it into
the caps thrust under his very nose, and at the same time his pockets
began to fill with money--his money. In and out, in and out, his hands
flew like wooden members, until there was not a coin left and the last
piper turned away satisfied. He closed his eyes, for he was feeling
very weak; then he became conscious of the touch of a warm, friendly
hand on his wrist and he heard the voice of the old family doctor--the
one who had set his leg when he was a little shaver and had fallen off
the banisters, sliding downstairs.
"You will recover," it was saying. "A good rest is all you need.
Sometimes there is nothing so beneficial and speedy as the
old-fashioned treatment of bleeding a patient."
Some warm ashes dropped across the wrist of the Meanest Trustee and
scattered on the floor; his cigar had gone out.
The Executive Trustee dozed at his study table. For months he had been
working his brain overtime; he had still more to demand of it, and he
was deliberately detaching it from immediate executive consciousness
for a few minutes that he might set it to work again all the harder.
The Executive Trustee knew that he was dozing; but for all that it was
unbearable--this feeling of being bound by coil after coil of rope
until he could not stir a finger. A terrifying numbness began to creep
over him--as if his body had died. The thought came to him like a
shock that he had an active, commanding intelligence, still alive, and
nothing for it to command. What did people do who had to live with
dead, paralyzed bodies, dependent upon others to execute the dictates
of their brains? Did not their brains go in the end, too, and leave
just a breathing husk behind? The thought became a horror to him.
And yet people did live, just so. Yes, even children.
Somewhere--somewhere--he knew of hundreds of them--or were there only a
few? He tried to remember, but he could not. He did remember,
however, that he had once heard them laughing; and he found himself
wondering now at the strangeness of it. He hoped there was some one
who would always keep them laughing--they deserved that much out of
life, anyway; and some one who could understand and could administer to
them lovingly--yes, that was the word--lovingly! As for himself, there
was no one who could supply for him that strength and power for action
that he had always worshiped; he must exist for the rest of his life
simply as a thinking, ineffective intelligence. The Executive Trustee
forgot that he was dozing. He wrestled with the ropes that bound him
like a crazed man; he called for help again and again, until his lips
could make no sound. For the first time in his remembrance he tasted
the bitterness of despair. Then it was that the door opened
noiselessly and Margaret MacLean entered, her finger to her lips. Coil
after coil she unwound until he was free once more and could feel the
marvelous response of muscle and nerve impulse. With a cry--half sob,
half thankfulness--he flung his arms across the table and buried his
face in them.
The Executive Trustee slept heavily, after the fashion of a man
exhausted from hard labor.
In the house left by the Richest Trustee a little gray wisp of a woman
sat huddled in a great carved chair close to the hearth, thinking and
thinking and thinking. The fire was blazing high, trying its best to
burn away the heart-cold and loneliness that clung about everything
like a Dover fog. For years she had ceased to exist apart from her
husband--her thoughts, her wishes, her interests were of his creating;
she had drawn her very nourishment of life from his strong, dominant,
genial personality. It was parasitic--oh yes, but it had been
something rarely beautiful to them both--her great need of him. The
need had grown all the greater because no children had come to fill her
life; and the need of something to take care of had grown with him.
Their love, and her dependence, had become the greatest factors in his
life; in hers they were the only ones. Therefore, it was hardly
strange, now that he had died, that she should find it hard to take up
an individual existence again; to be truthful, she had found it
impossible--she had not even existed.
The habit of individual, separate thinking had grown rusty, and as she
sat before the hearth ideas came slowly. The room was dim--lighted
only by the firelight; and in that dimness her mind began to stir and
stretch and yawn itself awake, like a creature that had been
hibernating through a long, dark winter. Suddenly the widow of the
Richest Trustee broke out into a feeble little laugh--a convalescing
laugh that acted as if it was just getting about for the first time.
"I haven't the least idea what is the matter with me," she said,
addressing the fire, "but I think--I think--I'm becoming alive again."
The fire gave an appreciative chuckle--it even slapped one of the logs
on the back; then it sputtered and blazed the harder, just as if it
were ashamed of showing any emotion.
"It is funny," agreed the little gray wisp of a woman, "but I actually
feel as I used to when I was a little girl and Christmas Eve had come,
or Hallowe'en, and--and-- What other night in the year was it that I
used to feel creepy and expectant--as if something wonderful was going
to happen?"
The fire coughed twice, as if it would have liked to remind her that it
was May Eve, but felt it might be an intrusion.
"I believe," she continued, speculatively--"I believe I am going to
begin to think things and do them again; and what's more, I believe I
am going to like doing them."
The fire chuckled again, and danced about for a minute in an absurd
fashion; it was so absurd that one of the logs broke a sap-vessel.
After that the fire settled down to its intended vocation, that of
making dream-pictures out of red and gold flames, and black, charred
embers.
The widow of the Richest Trustee watched them happily for a long time,
until they became very definite and actual pictures. Then she got up,
went to her desk, and wrote two letters.
The first was addressed to "The Board of Trustees of Saint Margaret's
Free Hospital for Children"; the second was addressed to "Miss Margaret
MacLean." They were both sealed and mailed that night.
What befell the other trustees does not matter, either from the
standpoint of Fancy or of what happened afterward; moreover, it was
nearly midnight, and what occurs after that on May Eve does not count.