THE READING OF THE WILL.
Under a light shower of sudden April rain three carriages rolled in
through the broad gates of Castellane bearing Barrington’s relations
and the lawyer who was to remain for the reading of the will that
afternoon.
Much interest centered in that important event, for with successive
years Barrington had grown richer and richer, fairly piling up gold,
which he hoarded with almost miserly greed, and all his neighbors
declared that he had never in his life been known to do but one
charitable deed.
That was when he went to see some California gold-mines in which he
owned large shares and brought back with him the little daughter of a
miner who had died without achieving the success he had vainly courted
through weary years. The motherless child, so pretty and winsome, had
touched Barrington’s heart, and he could not refuse her father’s dying
plea to adopt her as his daughter.
When Maisie Van Allyn came to Castellane she was ten years old, a
bright-eyed, fearless little beauty, and Delmar was a handsome,
spirited lad of fourteen, while Byrd, his elder brother, was
twenty-five, and the pride of his father’s heart.
And, needless to say, he had kept faith with his dead mother in his
secret, untiring persecution of Delmar, who in the neighborhood was
called the unloved son, so small a place had he in his father’s heart,
thanks to the machinations of Byrd.
Indeed, the younger son could scarcely be said to enjoy the really
intimate acquaintance of his father, so little time had they passed
together from the boy’s infancy till now, when he stood and listened to
the clods rattling down on the grave of one whom he could remember only
as a stern, censorious parent, finding always naught to praise but all
to blame in the child of his second wife.
From nurses and tutors he had passed to college, and vacations by the
sea or in the country, Byrd always managing to keep the two apart while
encouraging Delmar in all boyish extravagance.
Now the last act in the drama of hate was to be played in the reading
of the will, and as the family assembled in the darkened library that
afternoon a grim smile played on Barrington’s fair mustached lips as he
recalled his mother’s adjuration:
“Swear that not a dollar of the gold your father wrested from me shall
ever be left to a second wife or her children!”
In the years while Delmar was kept at college Byrd had had ample time
to perfect his schemes.
His younger brother, open-handed and warm-hearted, taking his nature
from the generous Delmars, was painted to his father as dissolute and
spendthrift, unworthy to be trusted with money that he would only
squander in dissolute pleasures.
So in time the seed he had planted bore its natural fruit.
Though the father could not repress a thrill of pride when Delmar
graduated at twenty-five with the highest honors of his Alma Mater, the
triumph could not undo Byrd’s long work of misrepresentation. It worked
well with the leaven of his resentment toward the beautiful girl who
had married him for his money and learned to hate him afterward for
his parsimony. It never came home to him that he was reaping what he
had sown. He only remembered with humiliation and bitterness that the
woman he had loved had not returned his passion, while the one he had
slighted had been his devoted slave. With the flight of years he began
to realize that the best of his love was due to her son, thus doing a
tardy justice to her memory.
While much of this had been guessed at by the curious outside world,
and by the group of relations who awaited the reading of the will, yet
not one dreamed of the startling finale except Byrd, who sat with grim
smile at the corners of his lips and that hard light in his cold blue
eyes so like those of his dead mother, whose vengeance he had brought
to pass.
Lawyer Munsey opened the seals of the will, cleared his throat, and
began the reading.
Barrington had generously remembered his few country relatives with
small bequests, the largest amount, ten thousand dollars, going to his
sister, Mrs. French, in grateful acknowledgment of her services as
chatelaine of his home during the years of his widowerhood. A smile
of satisfaction dawned on all those faces at finding their names
remembered in the will of their rich relation.
Next came the name of Maisie Van Allyn, whom the testator complained
he had treated for eight years as a daughter, only to be rewarded by
ingratitude, of which he now reminded her by cutting her off with fifty
dollars that would pay her way until she could find a situation to
support herself.
Maisie’s dewy rosebud of a mouth parted in a startled “Oh,” and she
flashed a quick, resentful glance at Byrd Barrington’s calm, impassive
face, then dropped the dark curly fringe of her lashes almost to her
cheek, listening in silence to the lawyer’s monotonous voice droning
on in the next paragraph which disposed of Delmar Barrington’s
expectations.
The testator put on record that he was exceedingly wroth with his
younger son by reason of his low tastes and spendthrift habits, and
felt that the inheritance of a fortune would only help him to go to the
dogs faster. Having toiled hard to amass a large fortune, he objected
to having it dissipated in riotous living, hence Delmar’s portion would
be the monthly interest of fifty dollars accruing from stocks set aside
for that purpose, and a home at Castellane for life. Perhaps Delmar
would thus learn by this needful lesson the virtues of thrift and
economy.
You might have heard a pin drop at that moment.
It seemed as if every one forgot to breathe through sheer astonishment,
and in the breathless silence the lawyer resumed his reading of the
will, which named last of all Byrd Barrington as the sole inheritor of
his father’s vast wealth--in stocks, bonds, and real estate, over five
millions of money. A final clause stated that the beginnings of his
wealth having come from Byrd’s mother, it was but just to restore it to
her son.
Delmar’s great dark eyes blazed with disappointment and anger. He
sprang to his feet, facing his elder brother accusingly:
“You have done me this foul wrong, Byrd! It is your cursed malice! You
told lies of me to my father, and set his heart against me!” he cried
scathingly.
Maisie Van Allyn sprang to his side with a second accusation:
“It was spite work, too, that turned his love from me! I have always
been dutiful and obedient to my adopted father--I never crossed his
wishes in but one thing!”--she hesitated a moment, then added bitterly:
“He wished me to marry that snake in the grass, his elder son! Bah,
I would not have him with all his five millions thrown in!” and she
stamped her foot at him in superb rage.
Mrs. French reprimanded her curtly:
“Fie, Maisie, this behavior is unseemly. Do not forget that you are
simply Byrd’s guest now!”
“I am not forgetting it, I shall leave here as soon as I can pack my
clothes!” beautiful Maisie retorted, flying from the room in a passion.
Thus through “the long slow years that bring us all things ill,” the
dead cold hand of the wronged wife had stretched forth from the grave
and taken vengeance through her devoted son for all the sufferings of
her wedded life.
Would she rest any easier in her grave now that innocent lives had
been sacrificed to her memory? Would the restless dead lie still now
that her husband had come at last to sleep by her side beneath the
churchyard grass? For it was an open secret among the more credulous of
the servants at Castellane that Barrington’s first wife “walked,” in
approved ghost fashion, gowned in white, with streaming hair, wringing
her hands in distress, and wailing, “Woe is me! Woe is me!” till she
won the name: “The Mad Lady!”