The fire was dully drowsing on the hearth; a lamp on the desk burned
dimly with the wick turned low. Desmond had a quick, nervous touch as he
stirred the embers into flames, threw on a fresh stick of wood, and set
the lamp aglow. His sensibilities, despite his vigor and youth, had felt
the inroads of all the agitation to which the household had been
subjected. The renewed cheer of the room dispensed, however, its cordial
influence. We are at last but animal mechanism, and must needs shiver
with cold, and burn with heat, and gloom in darkness, and hope in the
glad light. Everything seemed suddenly more facile of adjustment, more
possible of optimistic interpretation, and at all events the period of
suspense was terminated when, seated at the desk, he turned the key in
the lock of the drawer and wheeled in his swivel-chair, the envelope in
his hand.
“Here it is, at last,—all safe,” he said, in his firm, clear voice.
Mrs. Faurie, who had sunk down on the end of the sofa, almost collapsing
in uncertainty and agitation and dubious foreboding, her hands pressed
to her eyes, roused herself as the room sprang into its wonted cheerful
guise and lifted her head. She did not immediately take the paper as
Desmond held it out to her. She adjusted a sofa-pillow under her elbow,
and set her dainty foot on a hassock on the floor, and piled up the
supporting cushions,—hesitating, contriving hindrance, postponing the
evil moment.
“I am afraid of entering upon some hasty action and that I may afterward
regret my precipitancy,” she temporized.
“I should advise you to be deliberate,” he rejoined. “From what we know
of the history of this paper, it would not seem to press for action.”
“And yet delay might be prejudicial,” she said, eager when not opposed.
She held out her hand for it, and then drew back, once more doubtful.
She had grown calm, and she looked deeply meditative as she leaned
forward in her soft, clinging white dress from amongst the dull crimson
silk cushions, her slim, jeweled hand extended, yet not touching the
paper that he held out to her as he sat near by in the chair before the
desk. “But have I the right to examine it?” she argued. “It may not
concern me or mine. Mr. Stanlett has affairs of his own, no doubt, into
which I am not privileged to intrude.”
“His course has been very eccentric,” said Desmond, tingling with
impatience to reach a conclusion, yet not willing to urge her decision,
and weighing considerately her every argument and scruple. “He has
carried on for years, apparently, a very elaborate and mysterious
emprise of concealing a document which, if it were his own, might be
considered safe enough among his valuable papers. His midnight comings
and goings have given rise, as he knew, to a theory of spectral
manifestation in the house which might be very injurious to young minds,
and even, in default of all explanation, to elder people. He went so far
as to foster this theory by a semi-disguise as a precaution against
recognition should he be unwarily glimpsed.”
Then they both sat silent while the freshened fire glowed red in the
room, and the lamp dispensed its steady, white light, and the great
windows revealed the moon shoaling on the vast stretch of silvery water,
with the shadows of the trees on its expanse below, and the dendroidal
forms towering high into the pearl-tinted sky,—all seeming some strange,
mystic, illuminated tangle of enchanted forest and lake, full of dreams
and vagaries, of quivering radiance and yearning melancholy, under a
spell, perpetual, somehow, and far away from to-morrow.
“But I feel as you do,” Desmond recommenced after a moment of
reflection. “From the first I doubted my right to touch it. Still, it
has occurred to me that in view of his age and its possible relation to
his eccentric actions in this matter, and also in view of your position
as the head of this house in which these practices have come to your
knowledge, you might justifiably open the package, and glance at its
contents sufficiently to discern if they concern you. If they do not,
then I will restore the papers to him and apologize as well as I can for
my interference.”
“I believe you are right,” she conceded. She took the envelope from his
hand. Even then she drew back. “The seal!” she exclaimed. “I cannot
break a seal.”
“That is only my seal,” Desmond explained. “I put it on to protect the
papers from interference.”
She leaned toward the desk to catch the light on the papers, broke the
seal, and drew out two inclosures, one a document of length, the other
evidently a letter.
“It is mine!—mine!” she cried wildly. She gave a gasp, her free hand
fluttering nervously. “It is my husband’s handwriting,” she whispered in
a reverent, awed tone, as if consciously in an unseen presence.
Then, as her brilliant eyes scanned the lines, shifting from side to
side as she read, the color surged up into her cheeks and her lips
curved in a radiant smile. Suddenly she burst into a flood of tears, her
words, as she sought to speak, breaking into gusts of happy laughter,
her brimming eyes looking into his with eagerness to disclose the tenor
of the papers, yet in her agitation her powers of speech failing,
inadequate. “It is such happiness,—happiness,—happiness” was all that
she could say.
Once more she strove to read, but her voice broke and trailed off into a
sob that was yet like a gurgle of laughter. “Read it,”—she handed it to
him. “Read the letter—I’d rather have it than all the diamonds of
Golconda!”
As Desmond straightened the pages, he saw that it was addressed to a
lawyer of Memphis, whom he knew to be the executor of the will of the
late Mr. Faurie, and in fact this letter related to that instrument. He
desired to alter certain dispositions of this will, the writer said,
although mailed so recently as by the last packet, and he stated that he
had set forth these changes in a paper that he inclosed, duly signed and
witnessed, and which he pronounced a codicil to his last will and
testament.
“It is, I doubt not, a poor performance,” he wrote, “in comparison with
the admirable instrument that you drew with such care and skill; but it
will hold, and I cannot hope to have a lawyer to come to Great Oaks in
time to take my instructions for the codicil, for I fear that my days
are at an end indeed.” The writer went on to explain that he had grown
dissatisfied with the provision which he had directed to be made in the
will for his wife. He had desired that she should enjoy as large an
income as practicable, and that she should not be burdened with the
management of real estate other than her home place, unless she should
herself elect to make such investments with the surplusage of her
income. Hence he had thought best not to assign to her the usual one
third life-interest in his property, but an annuity of thirty thousand
dollars during widowhood, which was a larger income than her statute
right to dower in Tennessee could justify, and chargeable upon the whole
estate, and he had given her also, subject to the same restrictions, his
plantation, Great Oaks, the annual yield from which necessarily
fluctuated according to the season. Under these circumstances, the
interest of the three sons in the rest of the property was to remain
undivided during minority, that the estate could be nursed to better
advantage. It was to be partitioned, or sold for division, when the
youngest became twenty-one years of age, the elder two, however, to
receive a certain sum of money upon attaining majority, for the purchase
of business interests, that they might not pass in inaction the years of
waiting for the division of the whole and the possession of their
respective shares.
“So thoughtful,” murmured Mrs. Faurie.
It had seemed to him, the writer stated, that the three sons would be
rich enough when they came severally to their majority, and could well
spare the aggregations of such portion of the income of the estate as he
had assigned to the use of their mother, over and above her rightful
share, in order that she might have no reasonable wish ungratified.
“Oh, to be thinking of that in those awful last days!” she interpolated,
her flush fluctuating, and once more bursting into tears.
“I should like her to travel, for this she enjoys,” the letter
continued. “I should like her to see the world, and that others might
have the privilege and benefaction of seeing her, as I could wish that
no one should be beyond the reach of the sunshine. And with all this in
view I directed you, as you know, to draw the will as it stands.”
Forthwith he entered upon a systematic defense of his motives and views
in the corollaries necessitated by these provisions embodied in the
instrument. While he had no crude jealousy, he protested, and would not
seek to curb his widow’s independence in making a second marriage, he
was not willing that the extra income allotted to her should go into the
control of a stranger at the expense of the estates of his sons. It was
one thing, he argued, to restrict the wealth of his sons for their
mother’s benefit. It was quite another thing to take from them to enrich
a stranger, who might or might not be of mercenary motives, of
ungenerous temper, or of undue domestic ascendency, and who might or
might not permit her the free use of what was her own. Then, too, the
subjection of the estates of the sons to the charge of her income under
the circumstances of a second marriage was of discordant suggestion;
possibly, in the unforeseen mutations of human affairs, even subversive
of their independence, and inimical to family peace. Therefore he had
had the clause inserted revoking the allotment of her income should she
marry again, and substituting as her provision one fourth of the
Mississippi property in fee, and a life-interest in one third of the
Tennessee realty including, in lieu of Great Oaks, his town residence in
the city of Nashville, the rest of the estate in that event to be sold
for division, that the portion of each devisee might be ascertained and
set apart.
These were his reasons for such disposition as he had made of his
property. Now, however, since he had executed and forwarded the will to
his executor, he had begun to fear that this matrimonial clause would be
misunderstood by Mrs. Faurie, whose feeling for him it might possibly
affect, all unexplained as it was.
“But never!—never!” she sobbed. “I always realized that you were
actuated by the best motives for what you deemed the welfare of all
concerned. But I am so happy to know _why_ you did it!”
Desmond paused, a strange thrill at his heart as he gazed at her. She
might have been some young girl in the childlike abandonment to her
tears, as she leaned on the arm of the sofa, her long white dress
a-trail on the dark carpet, her scarlet cheek against her upheld bare
white arm, her lovely hands clasped above her drooping head. Desmond’s
voice was strained, husky, with sudden breaks as he read on.
Upon further reflection, the writer stated, the provisions he had made
in the will for Mrs. Faurie in the event of a second marriage had become
obnoxious to him. He had accorded her merely the equivalent of her dower
rights, such as the law would allow her were he to die intestate, or
were she to dissent from the will. In effect, he seemed to make a point
of giving her nothing in the contemplated contingency that he could
avoid giving. He had not intended thus to interdict a second marriage,
and her right to order her life after her widowhood as she chose,
according to her most excellent judgment.
“Oh,” cried Mrs. Faurie, with a little irrelevant laugh, not for
Desmond, but as if she rallied the writer with the extravagance of his
approval.
Therefore, the testator declared, he had revoked in set terms both the
dispositions of a life-interest in the real estate in reference to a
second marriage, and the imposition of a charge for her benefit upon the
realty of the whole estate during widowhood. Instead, he had thought
best to devise to her absolutely one fourth of the real estate in fee,
inclusive of Great Oaks, which he considered particularly desirable
because of its income-bearing values, the other three fourths to be
equally divided between his three sons.
He added some words setting forth arrangements for the guidance of the
executor in regard to disbursements for maintenance, emergencies, and
education of the minors, pending an interval which he evidently
anticipated would endure for a considerable time, before the estate
could be fairly administered. This depended upon the conclusion of a
certain litigation involving some conditional increments, then in
abeyance. When a decision should be reached, and these assets realized
upon, he directed that the whole estate should be partitioned; and in
order that the several shares might be justly ascertained, the portion
of each of the minors should be chargeable with such expenditures as had
been made for him during the interim, and the portion of the widow
should be chargeable with such sums as she had received from the funds
of the estate; but she should not be obliged to put also into the common
stock for division the profits from any investments that she had made,
or accretions of value, of whatever sort, that had accrued from means
derived from the estate.
Desmond stared blankly at the paper for a few moments after he had
concluded the reading of the letter. “Did the executor win the suit to
which he refers?”
“Oh, yes,—in the infinitely leisurely legal fashion. It would go up to
the Supreme Court and be remanded on a certain point, and then it would
go up on another and come down as before. It was a sort of legal
shuttlecock. I was amazed when I heard that the lawyers were through
playing with it.”
Desmond could not control the cadence of depression in his voice. “How
long ago was it decided?” he asked, hoping against hope.
“A little more than a year, I believe.”
Evidently, the lapse of time could not be a potential factor in the
impending future. The contingent event on which the partitioning was
conditioned by the codicil had just fallen out, and the rest of the
estate, save for the aggregations of income and the depletion of
expenditures, was much as the testator had left it, for the executor had
no general powers of sale. Desmond could see no reason why this codicil
should not be admitted to probate and at once subvert the existing
status. Technically, it was itself a part of the will already in force,
though its provisions were _pro tanto_ a revocation of the previous
testamentary disposition. The indeterminate interval after probate in
common form allowed in Tennessee, where the bulk of the property was
situated, for the institution of revocatory proceedings; the disability
of non-age in the minors, to whom laches could hardly be imputed; the
fact that it was manifestly impossible for their guardian to take any
action in view of the unsuspected existence of the codicil of which the
executor was the proper proponent, would seem to annul all obstacles to
its effectiveness, despite any complications with which the conflict of
laws in the two sovereign states might otherwise invest the situation,
the statutes of each of course controlling the realty within their
respective borders.
There was silence for a time. Both looked out from the mellow light of
the room through the windows on that pale scape of moonlit mist and
water and mystic woods, all in pearly neutral tones, soft, sheeny,
white, like some dream scene, full of weird suggestions and dim
spectacular configurations. Now there was a floating island, distant,
half descried; now a flying, gauzy, vaporous figure, with feet touching
the surface of the water, and hands laid against the star-studded gates
of the sky; now a phantom craft under full sail, with clouds of tenuous
canvas and streaming pennants of mist. She saw naught, busied with her
memories; and he, strangely grudging, sought for words to snatch her
from them.
“You must look at the codicil,” he said, holding the document out toward
her.
“I don’t care for that—heavens, how I love that letter!” and once more
she burst into tears. She rose after a moment to reach for it, and then
she read it anew, with sudden gurgles of tender laughter and sobs and
gushes of tears.
“I suppose that this codicil will, to this extent, revoke the provisions
of the will that has stood all this time,” he said. He was no lawyer,
but he had a definite understanding of the ways of the business world
and the justice of its methods. A very appalling possibility began to
open before him. He leaned forward and turned the upper corner of the
pages of the letter, still in her hands, to look once more at the date,
written evidently only the day before the testator’s death.
“It has been a good many years,” he said, in dismal forecast.
“Oh, forever!” she exclaimed, the tears coursing down her cheeks.
He had begun to understand the quandary of the poor ghost, slipping
slyly about the midnight quiet of the house to conceal this bit of
paper, potent destroyer of its peace. He doubted the policy of putting
into words the fear in his mind. But he must have her attention. He
clutched at her thoughts with imperative insistence. Those memories,
those gentle, tender memories in which he had no share,—how desolate,
how deserted they left him! His jealous reproach was in his eyes, all
unnoted. His indignation burned red in his cheek. A figment, a
recollection, pervaded the room and annulled his presence. But he would
not be ignored, forgotten, denied. He grasped at her attention as a
child clutches the skirts of its unthinking mother, and persists in its
plea.
“In this division the executor may make a claim on you for the income
that you have spent. It strikes me that this will operate as the
equivalent of a refunding bond.”
“Let them take everything. I have this letter!” and she clasped it to
her bosom.
He had a sense of turning aside. He could not move her. He opened the
codicil himself and scanned its contents. It duplicated the intendment
of the letter, but in more formal and lucid phrase. A very exact and
strict man of business Mr. Faurie showed himself to be in this paper.
Desmond was impressed with this fact, yet dismayed in a sort, in regard
to the accuracy of the accounting which the testator contemplated
between the minors and widow at the partitioning of his estate. He even
superfluously directed that the difference of age among the children
should be considered and the actual outlay for each charged, and not
merely an approximation of expense as applied to each of them; since the
expenditure for the youngest might for a time be more, in view of extra
attendance, elaborate attire, and special liability to ailments, and
later less than the disbursements for the elder boys. Desmond might have
laughed, yet he could have wept, that the testator, despite his evident
astuteness, should have permitted himself the simplicity of anticipating
that Mrs. Faurie would have applied any portion of her receipts from the
estate to investments of real property or the acquisition of other
assets that would yield “accretions of value.” As well might one expect
the sun to hoard its gold or the bird its song of spring. No! nearly
seven years of joyous, open-handed dispensing of all her income from the
estate were thus chargeable against the one fourth in fee of realty and
of the personalty that formed her liberal portion. How much this might
be, Desmond of course was not qualified to judge; but the ravages in
this provision which the restoration of that great income for nearly
seven years must needs work might well appall the pallid Mr. Stanlett in
his niece’s interest, and set as talk the storied spectre, the
Slip-Slinksy of the midnight stairs.
“Mr. Stanlett must have found this paper in some unaccustomed
receptacle,” Desmond hazarded.
Mrs. Faurie sat stiffly erect. This phase troubled her more than the
fear of the financial loss; it touched her pride. Her level eyebrows
were corrugated into a frown. Her eyes were bright, hard, restlessly
glancing. But she bent her faculties to the consideration calmly.
“Perhaps,” she said thoughtfully, but her lips were stiff; they moved
with difficulty to frame the words so distasteful to her. “It was
understood that all Mr. Faurie’s important papers were already in the
hands of his executor. He, himself, had them transferred some time
before his death,—it was not unexpected.”
She was silent for a few moments, looking reflectively out of the
window. “I remember that the rest of the papers, account-books, packages
of letters, files, and all such things were taken out of the library
soon after Mr. Faurie’s death and, without examination, placed in
japanned boxes and locked in the press of the blue room. It was presumed
that there was nothing of real importance among them, but they were
preserved on the chance. He must have written this codicil and letter
the day before his death,—both are dated on the 18th,—and had the paper
witnessed and laid it aside among the other papers in his desk,
intending to forward it to Mr. Hartagous in Memphis. The mail packet was
due the next day, and passed about dusk; he died just before
candle-light that evening, and I dare say this paper was among those in
his desk that were packed away in the press of the blue room.”
“I suppose that this codicil must have been found some years afterward,”
Desmond dolefully suggested. “Mr. Stanlett seems to me to be a man of
good business judgment. He would never have desired to conceal this
paper if a great part of those liabilities had not been already
incurred. Of course he had only your interest in view. He has sufficient
means of his own. It is nothing to him.” She brought herself more
willingly to follow his line of thought, since she perceived
justification, in some poor sort, in the perspective, for Mr. Stanlett’s
aberrations.
“I remember,” she said drawlingly, as if the recollection had just begun
to trail its dubious length into her mind, “that about three years ago
the executor called for some old levee bonds, on which the estate was
entitled to something, and asked that the papers here be searched for
them.”
“Who made this search,—do you recollect?”
She visibly winced from the inquiry, but she answered with her usual
directness: “I recollect very well that it was Uncle Clarence who made
the search; and now that it seems to bear upon the question, I do recall
that he was much out of sorts afterward. I remember that his petulance
astonished me. He was never a profane man, but he swore violently
because the executor had given him so much trouble, and declared that if
he had wanted to be set to a clerk’s work, he would have asked for a
clerk’s pay. And he said that the papers were disordered and dusty and
devilish, and that he had broken himself down in working amongst them. I
was a little hurt by the tone he was taking; and when I said that I was
sorry he had put himself out to do a favor for me, he replied very
significantly, ‘A favor,—for you, Honoria,—for _you_? Why, I would eat
off my little finger for _you_.’ And oh, poor old Uncle Clarence! We
must keep him from ever suspecting that we have discovered his course.
It would humiliate him; it would bow him down to the earth with
mortification.”
Desmond looked dumfounded. “I don’t see how we can prevent it. This
codicil must be produced, and at once.”
“Of course; but will it be necessary to publish all the details, his
fantastic masquerades and midnight vigils to protect its concealment?”
she argued.
“His course has been very strange, certainly.” Then, after a pause, “In
fact, I am confident that concealing a document of this sort, a will or
codicil, to prevent it from being proved and becoming operative, is
obnoxious to the law,—a very serious matter,” said Desmond, nerving
himself for her storm of protest.
“He has not prevented it from becoming operative,” she retorted
frostily. “The codicil is discovered and will be sent to-morrow to the
executor, who will at once secure the two subscribing witnesses,—the
same who swore to the will in force,—both still living, and will offer
the codicil for probate. I will have to return the money that I have
spent out of the different provision now made for me. I see no sense in
telling our little yarn of Slip-Slinksy, and blue room, and secret
drawers, for all the world to guy and laugh at, and mortify poor old
Uncle Clarence to the soul. Oh, poor, poor Uncle Clarence,—how his
discovery of the codicil must have tortured him! What must he have felt
for me! It must have turned his brain,—it must have crazed him. That is
the explanation of his course,—that is the solution of the mystery.”
Desmond did not conceive it necessary to contend on this theory. At
first glimpse it seemed to him a remarkably coherent scheme for a
disordered brain to evolve, and one which only a strange accident had
frustrated. Mr. Stanlett, however, was very old, and it may have been
that at first he had withheld the paper in the frantic, senile, foolish
expectation that another will might be found, not so destructive to his
niece’s interest as this codicil, which, by reason of the time that had
elapsed in her enjoyment of the estate that was not hers by right, had
practically beggared her. Doubtless he had postponed the disclosure from
day to day, the disaster augmented by his delay, till perchance the
pressure on his brain had resulted in subverting his reason. He had
always intended to bring it forth, some day,—some day,—for he had
carefully preserved it at great cost of anxiety and suspense and
comfort, when its easy destruction would have given him security, and
confirmed the existing status which was so happy for all concerned.
Realizing as Desmond did the magnitude of the disaster, that the
interests of the widow so tenderly, so richly provided for, had been
wrecked by the extreme of the solicitude exerted for her welfare, he was
utterly unprepared for the airy lightness and consummate tact with which
Mrs. Faurie made the disclosure without revealing the discovery of the
concealment of the codicil.
She came fluttering into the parlor the next morning when were present
all the family, Mr. Bainbridge, the manager, and Colonel Kentopp, who
had been out in a skiff to a passing packet and had paused on his way
back to Dryad-Dene to leave some newspapers. “What do you suppose?” she
cried. “I can tell you news more astonishing to our neighborhood than
anything you are likely to hear from the outside world. You know that of
course we had the blue room upstairs, where that wounded river pirate
died, thoroughly overhauled, and in one of the big presses in the wall
Mr. Desmond found a secret drawer, and in it a later will of Mr.
Faurie’s,—are you not surprised?—a codicil it is, I should have said.”
Mr. Stanlett stared for a moment blankly, rose to his feet, essayed to
speak, and sank back very pale and entirely unobserved amidst the
excitement of the others.
“Regularly executed?” Colonel Kentopp inquired, amazed.
“A codicil all in his own handwriting,” said Mrs. Faurie, “perfectly
regular, with the same witnesses as the will.”
“To your advantage, I hope,” said Colonel Kentopp, his glossy hazel-nut
eyes glittering, his eager curiosity difficult to control.
“Oh, I am perfectly satisfied,” Mrs. Faurie declared, smiling proudly;
and Colonel Kentopp knew as well as if he had seen the instrument that
Mrs. Faurie had been relegated to a designated share of the real estate,
out of which she would be required to make good her lavish expenditures
heretofore. He was not indisposed to rejoice after the manner of men of
his kind in the disasters of others, but presently his spirits fell.
This change boded doubtless the partitioning of the Faurie property, and
with Great Oaks on the market, he knew that there was scant hope of
Loring as a purchaser of Dryad-Dene. So ill at ease was he under this
theory, so suddenly out of countenance, that he sought to avoid
observation, and made haste to conclude his call and get himself away.
He was promptly followed by Bainbridge, dully pondering on the news,
half stunned by the revelation, and apprehensive of a change in the
ownership of Great Oaks and the jeopardy of his own employment there.
Desmond breathed more freely when both were gone; he felt that he could
not have summoned the nerve that Mrs. Faurie had shown in risking the
disclosure in the presence of others, although he realized that, had Mr.
Stanlett spoken inconsiderately, it would have been ascribed to the
vagaries of age and his natural and extreme disappointment,—in effect,
the overthrow of his reason in so signal a misfortune to his nearest and
dearest relative, who had always been like a duteous daughter to him.
Nevertheless, Desmond was glad that surprise and dismay had held the old
gentleman silent till only the family group was present. In the
disclosure Mrs. Faurie had stated the literal truth, that Desmond had
found the codicil in a secret drawer, and Mr. Stanlett accepted it
without demur or suspicion of the further discovery of his knowledge of
the cache, or agency and motive in its concealment.
“But why, and how, and when, in the name of all that is sacred sir,” the
old man said, scarlet, trembling, his eyes blazing, and scarcely able to
keep his feet, “should _you_ go rummaging around into the secret drawers
of a locked press?”
“The press was not locked,” Desmond said, without looking up, and
trifling with the violets in a glass bowl in the centre of the table
beside which he sat. “The bolt did not reach the slot.”
“And why did you send it off without consulting me, Honoria? Another
will might yet be found. I have searched and searched. Another will and
a later one is now right among those papers in the blue room. Oh, how
many nights, how many nights I have searched!”
“Dear Uncle Clarence, the codicil was written and dated and witnessed on
the 18th, and my husband died the night of the 19th.”
“Plenty of time for another will,—Faurie was a most expeditious man of
business. He was not bedridden, as you know. He even slept in his chair
toward the last, as you must remember. That heart trouble would not let
him lie down in peace—queer, for a man of his physical strength. He died
at last in his chair, in that library. Plenty of time for another will;
it could be found! This Mr. Desmond seems to have a nose for game; set
him after another will, and see what he can tree this time.”
Mrs. Faurie broke in to prevent the old man from indulging in further
sarcasm along this line. “And oh, Uncle Clarence, such a dear letter was
with the document! I want Reginald and Horace and Rufus, each one, to
read that letter, and bless God for a father so good and generous and
considerate for us all.”
As they sat and listened they had that look so pathetic in children old
enough to appreciate their situation in matters of moment, yet realizing
their helplessness in the hands of others, and not able to compass a
full reliance on the direction of the course of events.
“Do you understand, Honoria, that you will have to refund to the
executor, the estate, the expenditures of all these years, the
accumulated amount of the income, your annuity,—the money that you have
been spending so royally with both hands for nearly seven years? It will
certainly sweep away more than half your present provision, possibly the
whole, into the craws of those vipers that you have warmed on your
hearth.” The old man was piteous in his age and agitation, as he stood,
lean, gray, wrinkled, half bent in his tremulous emphasis, his arm
outstretched, the fingers quivering as he shook them at the group of
aghast boys. “Do you understand that, woman?”
“Why, what else, Uncle Clarence? Would you have me rob my children?” She
had reached out for Chub when he was denominated a viper with a craw,
and was now drawing him into that juxtaposition so unbecoming to his
appearance, his fledgeling blond head on her bosom, his hard, round,
freckled red cheek against the soft, exquisite whiteness of her neck. He
struggled to speak through her tender kisses.
“You will oblige me, Uncle Clarence, by not calling my mother a woman,”
he said, in callow affront.
“What else is she?—and a most ill-used, unlucky, and poverty-stricken
woman.”
“She is as ’spectable as any man!” protested Chub; and while the other
two boys burst out laughing as usual at Chubby’s queer views, they were
all three in tears presently, horrified that their mother should be
impoverished to make restitution to them, and that they were powerless
to hinder the sacrifice.
“Oh, terrible! terrible!” the old man said as he strode to and fro
before the fire, literally wringing his hands. “It is the duty of the
executor to exact every mill, and he will do it. The executor has no
option whatever in the matter. He is constrained by the terms of the
codicil.”
Then he fell to crying again and again, “Oh, terrible! terrible!” and
wringing his hands as he wavered to and fro with his uncertain, senile
step.
“Uncle Clarence, why will you not set an example of composure and
courage in adversity to these boys? The event must have fallen out this
way, at any rate.”
“Why?”—he had paused abruptly. “Why, Honoria, why? If the codicil had
not been found, you would not have had to refund under any
circumstances.”
“I only meant that this codicil must have come to light sooner or
later,” she explained.
But he went on unheeding: “Did you intend to give up the income for a
life-interest in the third, under the provisions of the old will? Are
you going to marry this man Desmond?”
Mrs. Faurie sat still and amazed for a moment. Then her buoyant laughter
rang joyously through the room. “Marry?—a mere boy, like Edward? Uncle
Clarence, you are funny,—positively funny!”
“He is no boy,—he is as old as the almighty hills! And if you have not
thought of such a possibility, _he has_,—take my word for it, _he has_.
He has a keen eye for the main chance. He found the codicil, and now you
have to give up the income whether or no. But he had better not be in
too great a hurry for the fourth of the estate. Wait till you make good
these expenditures. He hasn’t seen you spend money as I have done. Wait
till you make good your refunding bond, for that is just what this
amounts to.”
Desmond felt the flush rising to his forehead. His heart was beating
furiously. In his agitation he had upset the bowl of violets and the
blossoms were scattered over the table, while the water in which they
were steeped began to drip slowly, slowly to the floor. He did not lift
his eyes, not even when Mrs. Faurie spoke in apology.
“I cannot express to him how grateful I am for his forbearance under
these insults,” she said gravely. “And, Uncle Clarence, you would never
subject him to them and so tax his generosity were you yourself
to-day—so scrupulous as you are in every relation in life,—so—”
“_Too_ scrupulous! _Too_ scrupulous! Scrupulous enough to be such a
stupendous fool as not to tear a bit of paper when I had my chance,
and save you a gigantic fortune, as fortunes go in this
country,—ah,—ah,—when I had my chance!”
He tottered out of the room, banging the door, the three boys staring in
dismay after the lurching figure with the feeble impetuousness of gait,
and listening to the mutter of his impotent wrath as he went stumbling
and cursing down the hall.