Mr. Hartagous brought with him a metropolitan atmosphere, the manner of
one used to good society, a portly stomach accustomed to fine feeding, a
handsome gray-streaked beard parted in the middle, and a pair of
searching, quickly glancing dark eyes. He landed at Great Oaks shortly
before dinner, and it was at table that he made Desmond’s acquaintance.
It was not he, but the guardian of the Faurie boys who had sought out
Desmond, and through the offices of mutual friends secured his services
as tutor, when Mrs. Faurie had placed a period to her European
wanderings, but Mr. Hartagous, in the general family interests, had been
apprised of all the details, and in meeting Desmond for the first time,
inwardly congratulated all concerned upon the phenomenal opportunity of
finding such a man for such a place. The meal was somewhat more
elaborate than usual, in honor of the guest. Mrs. Faurie, in one of her
Parisian gowns, was in great beauty. So marked, indeed, was the effect,
that it seemed not inappropriate to take some notice of what was so
obvious.
“Upon my word, madam,” Mr. Hartagous declared, having progressed with
great prosperity in feeding through the menu to the dessert, “you must
surely lose the tally of the years as you go, else you would not have
the effrontery to look younger than when I first met you as a bride.”
“I was a skinny bride,” she smiled. “The years round out the angles. But
they lay on fat and fads and frumpishness, and I feel really like an old
country-woman.
He looked at her beamingly, his face flushed, partly from the reflection
of the old-fashioned red Bohemian glass finger-bowls, and partly from
Mr. Faurie’s Madeira, which he had laid down a good many years ago, and
which had survived him to delight other palates. Mr. Hartagous was
pleased and surprised to find how debonair was her carriage under the
changed prospects. He had not thought she could sustain her equanimity
in such cruel incertitudes, nothing positively established, but great
loss,—financial ruin, more or less complete. He had feared the visit as
a dismal experience; but her brilliant aspect, her joyous tones, might
enliven even a board at which sat the three downcast and indignant
Faurie boys, thoroughly schooled as to their civility, but showing in
every facial line how they deprecated and resented his part in the
untoward falling out of affairs. The two younger ones asked to be
excused shortly after the entrance of the dessert; and as Mr. Stanlett
had not appeared at all since the arrival of the guest, sending in by
Bob a plea of indisposition, Mrs. Faurie felt some anxiety, and a desire
to go and inquire into his malady.
“I leave you in good hands with Mr. Desmond and Reginald,” she said to
Mr. Hartagous, as she rose from the table with a rich stir of silks and
laces; “I will go and see how Uncle Clarence feels now, and meet you
later in the parlor.”
Reginald, pale and disaffected, and all unlike himself, lingered
listlessly for an interval, and presently asked Desmond if he might be
excused also.
“What?—are you going to leave us, too?” Mr. Hartagous cried out
genially, in a determinedly cheerful and friendly tone.
“I am nothing of a boon companion,” said Reginald. “Mr. Desmond does not
allow me to drink but one glass of light wine,—I shall not be missed.”
And with a poor effort at a friendly smile, obviously insincere, he
stayed for no more parley.
“Ah, you seem to have the young fellows under good control,—excellent
for them. A short tether,—best thing in the world for colts apt to feel
their oats.”
Mr. Hartagous was now looking about the room with considerable freedom
and a sort of disregard of the presence of the tutor, taking _faute de
mieux_ the part of host. “Everything is just as it used to be: old
sylvan wall-paper, in design of tapestry hangings, hunting-scene; old
racing-cups in that big mahogany cabinet. Faurie used to have a string
of good horses. And there is the family silver,—very fine,—armorial
bearings,—all just as it used to be. Can’t think what Mrs. Faurie did
with her money,—didn’t put any of it on Great Oaks, at all events.”
Desmond cloaked his failure to respond in speculations on this theme by
passing the bottle, and Mr. Hartagous promptly refilled his glass.
“Severe stroke for her,—the finding of that codicil. Pity it didn’t come
into my hands earlier! There wouldn’t be the devil and all to pay as
there is now.” He lifted his glass and refreshed himself bountifully.
Perhaps he was used to livelier company at dinner, for he presently
remarked Desmond’s serious, not to say dispirited expression, and,
possibly because unable to appreciate that the tutor’s anxiety could be
disconnected with a personal application, hastened to stipulate: “But it
will not affect _you_ at all. Your salary comes out of the minors’
estates. Mrs. Faurie is not at expenses, except such as may be voluntary
in their education and maintenance.”
Mr. Hartagous was well aware that there had been some difficulty in
catching an appropriate man to consign to the remote depths of an
isolated plantation in the Mississippi bottom-lands. As Mrs. Faurie was
not willing that her sons should be separated from her for their
schooling, already much postponed, Mr. Keith, the guardian, must needs
secure a college graduate, of irreproachable character, of elegant
breeding, and so piteously poor as to be willing, for a small salary, to
turn his back on the world at the outset of his career. As by signal
good fortune the guardian had captured this _rara avis_, it was no part
of the executor’s scheme to interfere to set him at liberty again, or to
foster restlessness by any suspicion that his financial interest was
threatened in the impending changes.
“But Mrs. Faurie will have to pay the piper for the dance that she has
had,—a long and a lively one from all that I hear,—and I should think
that it would sweep away the best part of her provision under this
codicil. I do hope that she won’t make a fight for it,—very embarrassing
the whole affair is for me, especially considering the attitude the boys
take in the matter. Mr. Keith can afford to pooh-pooh it, and say they
will think differently when they come to their majority. He is not
called upon to sustain their resentment. Yet he would be ready at the
drop of a hat to sue me, the executor, in their interest in this very
matter that the little fools want to relinquish. As far as their
interest is concerned, however, there will be no litigation in carrying
out the provisions of the codicil. But I confess I dread the idea of
Mrs. Faurie’s futile resistance.”
“I think Mrs. Faurie has no intention of making a contest,” said
Desmond, fearing that his silence on the subject might be misconstrued.
The lawyer whirled around excitedly. “Turn over Great Oaks Plantation
without a fight,—eh? She will have to lose it to make good.”
Mr. Hartagous had a brightening aspect. There had been already
sufficiently discordant elements in the situation fomented by the
conflict of laws in the two states where the properties lay, a pertinent
instance of which came to mind in the incongruity of an indeterminate
limit of twenty or thirty years in Tennessee for the revocation of
probate in common form, and in Mississippi a prescription, with the
statutory savings, of only two years, which had long ago elapsed. Though
this was hardly conclusive, by reason of the exception of the statute,
in favor of the disability of the minors, and their financial interests
in the revocation of the Mississippi probate, it might further be
inoperative to render Mrs. Faurie secure in her local holdings, if her
interest in Great Oaks, for life or widowhood, as under the will, could
be subjected to levy as for debt to satisfy the requirements of the
codicil in Tennessee. The guardian of the minors had been alert to
perceive another phase of the situation incident to the discovery of the
paper, and had indeed averred to Mr. Hartagous that, even could their
rights of prescription be defeated, he felt that the long and
incomprehensible delay to produce the codicil savored of concealment,
and in the event of proof of this, the Mississippi statute allowed two
years further for the revocation _pro tanto_ of the probate. The lapse
of time had wrought such ruin to Mrs. Faurie’s interests that, even
apart from her high character, which precluded such a suspicion, she
could never be supposed to have been a party to such a disastrous scheme
of concealment; and the diligence of the search of Mr. Hartagous among
the valuable papers of the decedent was protected by a letter from Mr.
Faurie himself, dated a few days before his death, stating that all
important papers had been transferred to his keeping, as the executor,
in view of the settlement of the estate. Mr. Hartagous had not found it
an easy task, with its diversified interests, its complicated
litigation, its many details, and he welcomed the thought that perhaps
after all Mrs. Faurie might yield at once to the inevitable, and the
settlement of the estate might yet go cannily on, including the
provisions of the codicil, without raising the issue of _devisavit vel
non_ and repairing to the circuit court for probate in solemn form.
Desmond was a trifle embarrassed. “It may not be necessary to relinquish
Great Oaks,” he said uneasily. “Mrs. Faurie has other convertible
assets.”
The lawyer bent his brows and cast a keen glance at him. There was a
significant silence. “So you are in her confidence, are you?”
There was so much receptivity in his aspect as he waited for the reply,
he was so evidently ready to discriminate and utilize all manner of
subtle and diffusive impressions and information, that Desmond grew
unwontedly wary. “Not to the extent of being able to speak for her,” he
stipulated. “But Mrs. Faurie is very candid, as you know, and I am in a
position to hear much of the family conversation.”
He came to a dead halt. But Mr. Hartagous had not wrestled with
reluctant witnesses for a matter of thirty years to be baffled at this
late day by an after-dinner interlocutor with a bottle of choice wine
between them. He gave it a push as he said: “And I also stand in a
quasi-confidential relation to her, having long been the friend of her
husband and herself, as well as the executor of his will. It would
gratify me extremely to be able to adjust this difficult matter without
contention and the rupture of long-established amicable sentiments.” He
gazed keenly at the handsome face of the tutor, intellectual and
powerful beyond his years and experience, the expression of mental value
enhancing the effect of symmetry of feature. He was about to suggest
that it might be beneficial to Mrs. Faurie’s interests to canvass the
matter between them, and from its incidents strike out some middle
course of advantage to all parties concerned. But there was something in
Desmond’s deep, steadfast eyes that admonished him that this confidence
could come about only from inadvertence. Desmond would not of set
purpose disclose Mrs. Faurie’s intentions. The executor began to realize
that if he wanted such facts as the tutor knew, he must surprise them.
“Mrs. Faurie would not want Great Oaks at any rate,” he hazarded. “I
wonder at Faurie for that disposition of the plantation,—cumbrous
property.”
“It is a fine place,” said Desmond, non-committally.
“Looks mighty pretty now,—a full fathom deep in water in the shallowest
spot,” sneered the lawyer.
“The land is of fine quality,—raises good crops, I am told,” Desmond
commented.
“Don’t need fertile land to raise crawfish.”
“Why, even the floods that drowned the world dried off after a while;
and Great Oaks is relying on precedent and Providence, and expects to
raise cotton here again some day.” Desmond’s tone was crisp. He had no
necessity that he recognized to submit to the acerbities of the
executor. It was strain enough on his patience to make allowances for
the infirmities and age of Mr. Stanlett.
His tone, the vigor of his argument, shook the self-restraint of Mr.
Hartagous. The lawyer’s spirit of contention responded. He wagged his
head with an aspect of melancholy, not unrelated to his sentiment, when
he said: “The overflow will cry down the price. I have a letter in my
pocket now from a would-be purchaser, a Mr. Loring, formerly a resident
of this county. His offer is low, but as much as the place can command
for the next ten years to come.” He shook his head and filled his glass
anew.
Desmond quickly reviewed the events of the past weeks. Doubtless the
news of the discovery of the codicil had been widely bruited abroad, and
thus Mr. Loring, aware of the exigencies of the prospective refunding
and of Mrs. Faurie’s depleted resources, had taken the field with the
first offer. He had astutely approached the executor rather than its
present owner, whose disposition to sell might be in inverse proportion
to the necessity; and as the exacting creditor, Mr. Hartagous, knowing
that such an opportunity of sale would not be easily duplicated, might
press an acceptance as a ready solution of the emergency, which promised
him a world of anxiety and perplexity. Little effort indeed might be
requisite to urge, flatter, overpersuade a woman unaccustomed to the
turmoils of hopeless debt and annoyed by business complications.
But poor Honoria Faurie! To have unwittingly dispensed her whole fortune
as her income, her annuity. To be called upon now to surrender the roof
above her head as penance of those years of plenty that had held out to
her the deceit of perpetuity. Desmond trembled for her future, for her
sons were mere children and helpless. He feared lest she be harassed
into precipitancy and clutch at any prospect of speedy deliverance from
these troublous toils, willing to concede anything, to relinquish
everything, to have peace,—when, alas! there would he no more peace. He
realized the immense capacity to clinch tight, to hold hard, of the
genus of which Mr. Hartagous was a type,—cool, collected, with no
personal interest involved that might affect his judgment, ready to
stand on a quibble, to fight for the minutest fraction, to prolong the
contention to the uttermost, to the extremest exhaustion of his
adversary’s slender resources of resistance. And she had not a soul to
whom she might appeal, save indeed some lawyer, earning his fee, and
appreciative only of the surface conditions of her case,—but no one who
cared for her, who would think for her. The realization roused Desmond
in her behalf.
“You had best wait till morning to place the offer before her,” Desmond
said, determined to be the first to acquaint her with the facts,
determined that she should not meet her adversary in his guise of friend
without consideration of the double identity in which he came. “There is
always so much stir in the parlor after dinner,—the children and their
dogs make a deal of noise. Mrs. Faurie always gives up her evenings to
the entertainment of her sons.”
He had no mind to offer the library, which indeed had been assigned to
his exclusive use, and he hoped that Mr. Hartagous did not remember its
facilities for quiet consultation, so long had it been dismantled.
Mr. Hartagous was one of the most acute of men, and his facial traits
were well under control. Few people could have interpreted the sudden
cynical uplifting of his bushy eyebrows as he said casually, “Ah,
well,—plenty of time,—plenty of time.”
But Desmond’s perceptions were quickened in her interests and he knew
that the hour was come, that before they separated for the night, Mrs.
Faurie would be acquainted with the executor’s version of the
facts,—that they were the most lucky of mortals! for property was slow
of sale, plantations a drug upon the market, the labor questions
impossible of solution; clouds, darkness, environed them on every side,
and they knew not whither to grope,—and here suddenly a flood of
financial sunlight was opening upon them in the midst of their night of
despondency. Only the touch of her pen,—the title of Great Oaks, which
she had always loathed, would be transferred. The millionaire’s cash and
notes would make good her indebtedness to the estate to that extent, at
least; the rest could be “carried”—fatal word!—arranged for a time with
liens on smaller properties. Plausible representation!—the sense of a
load of debt lifted, the turbulent apprehension of contention averted.
She might adopt the executor’s conclusions, and indeed from his point of
view there was naught else practicable. She had known him long, liked
him well, and relied on his friendship. But his duty in the premises was
to the estate, to make the most and the best of the testator’s
dispositions as far as it was concerned. As to the widow, the wreck was
her own work, unconscious though she had been, mistaken; he had no
responsibility so far as she was interested save to enforce the
provisions of the codicil, and to exact the terms of the refunding
clause. She might be prevailed upon, in the first flush of relief that
any solution of the problem was at hand, to sign at once, to-night, some
agreement of sale; she might not commit herself beyond the possibility
of withdrawal, but so far embrace the proposition as to be unwilling to
recede from it. And indeed she might be persuaded into a coincidence of
opinion. His representations might fix her resolution. Later, Desmond’s
remonstrances might not avail. He was young, as she knew,—she had called
him repeatedly a mere boy. He could not be sure that she seriously
valued his business instincts, when he had no business experience. He
desired only to put her on her guard, to excite her apprehension, to
counsel reserve, above all delay. He could imagine the sequence, and it
appalled him. The wishes of Mrs. Faurie, reduced to poverty, to
insignificance, would no longer have such weight as when issued from her
princess-like affluence and preëminence, and the wishes of the boys were
as empty of influence as the disability of their minority would compel.
He wondered dolorously as to her impending fate. Perhaps there might be
accorded to her, from among the chips and blocks of the Faurie estate,
saved from the cormorant clutch of the refunding, some cottage on a side
street in the outskirts of Vicksburg or Natchez, some little farm of a
few acres regularly overflowed, and raising indeed more crawfish than
cotton.
It seemed as if Desmond had intentionally misled Mr. Hartagous when he
opened the parlor door and they entered a room of absolute silence and
stillness. Mrs. Faurie, in a gown of sage green silk brocaded in lighter
tones, the lace at her throat coruscating with the delicate white fires
of a diamond “sunburst,” leaned back in a large chair, her eyes on the
hearth, evidently moody from argument and remonstrance with her sons.
Their faces, as they sat in a row on a sofa, were downcast, full of
distress, and marked with the distorting trace of nervous anxiety, which
they could feel as if they were men, but unlike men could not hope to do
aught to abate;—only Chub gazed up at Mr. Hartagous with childish,
lowering, resentful eyes and a half-suppressed tendency to pout. Mr.
Stanlett, pallid, seeming more lean than usual, shrunken, and very
perceptibly aged by the shock of the excitements of finding the codicil,
lay in a reclining-chair on the opposite side of the fire. He greeted
Mr. Hartagous with courtesy indeed, but with noticeably few words, and
protesting that his indisposition had passed, welcomed him to Great Oaks
mansion. Desmond felt the future in the instant. It would require but
little exertion of Mr. Hartagous’s tact to inaugurate one of the
old-time reminiscences, which seemed the delight and the resource of Mr.
Stanlett’s failing life. His eyes would flash, his thin cheek flush, the
boys would listen in spellbound silence, and Mr. Hartagous, already
seated beside her, would secure an uninterrupted tête-à-tête with Mrs.
Faurie; for the tutor, in his subsidiary position and obligatory show of
respect, must needs accord Mr. Stanlett’s narration his attention also.
But even should Desmond so far forget himself as to interpose in the
discussion of business in which he had no concern, Mr. Hartagous had
arguments which on first view would easily discomfit his crude and
inexperienced counsels. Nevertheless, Desmond resolved anew that she
should not hear of the offer of Mr. Loring for Great Oaks first from the
executor. He cast about him in desperation. Mr. Stanlett was already
replying with some spirit as to the early history of certain localities
that Mr. Hartagous had noticed from the guards of the steamboat in
coming down the Mississippi River from Memphis, which itself was built
on one of the famous Chickasaw Bluffs. Mr. Stanlett’s memory reached
back to the days before the Chickasaws and Choctaws had generally
vanished westward, and he had then gleaned from the chiefs some
traditions at first hand which made him an authority on moot points of
early history, and he piqued himself on his accuracy. It was easy indeed
to engage him in a discussion as to the site of the old Chickasaw
towns,—seven of them together in a row, the last called Ash-wick-boo-ma
(Red Grass),—where they defeated D’Artaguette and later Bienville, and
the details of the battle of Ackia and its famous last charge. The young
Fauries’ faces had brightened. Suddenly Reginald asked a breathless
question as to the boy-commander, the Canadian, Voisin, who at sixteen
years of age conducted the safe and skilled retreat of the troops
through many miles of wilderness from the field of the battle which his
superior officer, the unfortunate D’Artaguette, had lost.
Mr. Stanlett needed no more prompting, nor, Desmond feared, would he
heed interruption. Mr. Hartagous presently leaned forward with his elbow
on the table at Mrs. Faurie’s right hand, and had begun to speak to her
in a low voice, when Desmond asked Mr. Stanlett if he knew the ancient
French buglecalls, and said that one claimed a Merovingian origin. He
declared that he would like to believe that the same strain which had
rung from the famous “Olivant,” the horn of the Paladin at Roncesvalles,
had served to rally D’Artaguette’s motley levies of Indians, and
_coureurs des bois_, and French soldats along the banks of the
Mississippi, and would forever continue to sound down the centuries, to
find echoes in the heart of the enthusiast and the metre of the poet.
“Let me see if you find the old calls familiar,” Desmond exclaimed,
lifting the lid of the piano and tangling it in his haste with its
crimson embroidered cloth cover. It was an old piano, with the felt of
its hammers worn hard and thin. So much the better, since he desired to
drown out the voice of Mr. Hartagous. The martial strain, instinct with
its imperative mandate, throbbed through the room and then died away,
and as they listened a note was repeated, and still a vibration, as from
some vague distance.
“An echo!—an echo!” cried Chub, vociferously. “Oh, mamma, listen to our
Mr. Desmond! He can do anything,—how he can play!”
“Now, what do you suppose is the date of that call?” Mr. Stanlett’s
cheek had flushed; his interest was roused.
“The introduction of this one can be definitely fixed,” and once more a
spirited lilting strain rang through the room. Then Desmond turned on
the piano stool. “Where, Reginald, did you put that old book on the
Ancient Military Orders of France? It gives some old calls. I found that
rummaging about in the library.”
“You find too much, sir, rummaging about!” said Mr. Stanlett, with a
bent brow and a fiery eye. “You should curb your talents for rummaging
about.”
But Desmond had thrust an old folio into his hand, with a recommendation
to examine the very quaint and antique illustrations of arms and
accoutrements and military costume with which it was embellished. There
were some extra inserts of military portraits, steel engravings, and Mr.
Stanlett was turning the leaves, his thin mouth drawn in very small, his
eye alight with a fervor of interest, his rebuke and its cause forgotten
in an instant.
Not by Mr. Hartagous. He made the serious mistake of casting a merry,
significant glance at the tutor, expecting it to be returned in like
genial wise. He desired to establish confidential relations with
Desmond. He might find so accomplished, so versatile, so lightning-quick
a fellow of special use here, where diplomatic management might be
necessary to smooth the way for readjustments. But Desmond did not
respond, and Mr. Hartagous felt the rising surge of anger. He realized
that the young man was too observant to have lost the demonstration; he
was far too keen to fail to appreciate its relish and its demand for the
recognition of Mr. Stanlett’s pitiably funny allusion to the tutor’s
instrumentality in discovering the codicil of the last will and
testament of the late Mr. Faurie. Desmond’s studied insensibility was a
covert rebuke, and the spirit of Mr. Hartagous revolted against this
schooling, which he felt might befit some crude hobbledehoy. He would
have liked to remind the tutor that he was the guardian’s employee and
not Mrs. Faurie’s, and that the pedagogic office was held at his
pleasure; to recall the fact that despite the young man’s learning and
many accomplishments, it had been already demonstrated to him that one
must have foothold, a starting-point, to make these felt by the world. A
flood, quotha!—a sorry time a dove or any other fowl would have to find
a perch, set adrift from this ark of Great Oaks mansion.
Mrs. Faurie intercepted and interpreted the glance, and for a time she
held her eyes down to the fan in her hand with which she seemed
gracefully to toy, but Desmond had seen that they were full of tears.
She felt that these two men, in the pride of their powers, in the flush
of their prime, in the vigor of their health and strength, were
ridiculing poor, dear Uncle Clarence for his distress in her loss, for
his feeble, inadequate, unreasoning indignation at the officious
intermeddling, as he thought it, which had brought the catastrophe
about.
But Desmond had begun to sing,—she had not known that he could sing,—and
the room was filled with surging waves of melody. A powerful baritone
voice he had, of no great cultivation, enough only to temper the
crudities of his rendering, but of correct intonation, and it was
singularly, lusciously sweet. They were military songs that he sang,
with the triumph of the trumpets, the gay clash of the cannikin, the
impetuous speed of the high-couraged war-horse, all infused through
them. Now they were French and again German, and some were in quaint old
English phrase of mediæval suggestion.
“Never, never let me hear you speak another word,” cried Mr. Stanlett,
in senile delight. “You should go singing through the world like the
mockingbirds in spring.”
He looked across the room, smiling and nodding, expectant of sympathetic
response from Mr. Hartagous, who was as weary of it all as if the
evening were spent in that other ark to which Great Oaks mansion was so
often likened. Under these circumstances he could have as easily
communicated with the ladies of the patriarchal Noah as with Mrs.
Faurie,—the terrible Chub chasing continually from the side of the piano
and across the room to fling himself into his mother’s arms crying,
“Ain’t it beautiful, mamma? Ain’t it beautiful? The grand opera in Paree
don’t touch Mr. Desmond nowhere!”
So weary, indeed, did Mr. Hartagous presently look that the dispersal of
the party for the night was obviously in order, although much earlier
than usual.
“Can you find your way back to your room, do you think?” Mrs. Faurie
said to the guest, as the group stood at a side table in the hall and
she lighted their bedroom candles seriatim.
The house was so large and so rambling in its plan that he was not sure
that he remembered his way about it, he replied. He had expected, and
indeed so had she, that Desmond would come forward with his readiness
for any emergency and officiate as guide. But Desmond, stolidly
unmindful, snuffed out and then relighted his own candle, its tiny white
blaze illumining his flushed, absorbed face, and after a moment’s
hesitation Reginald offered to accompany the guest to his room. Thus Mr.
Hartagous departed to his night’s rest, a little dissatisfied with the
situation, and not a little doubtful of the tutor. He resented this
incertitude, because it was partly his influence that had placed Desmond
here. “And mighty glad he was to come, too,” he reflected. He rather
wondered that Desmond should not discern his own interests more clearly
than to seem to adhere to the losing side, for Mrs. Faurie’s power,
always limited, was now definitely a thing of the past. “For she is not
worth one red cent, as matters stand!” Mr. Keith, he was aware, had
begun to doubt whether the redundant maternal coddling was the best
thing for the boys, and had only agreed to their persistent retention
under her wing in deference to her wish; but Hartagous was sure, did he
so desire, that he could easily induce him to insist as their guardian
upon packing them off summarily to boarding-school, where they might
encounter some of the roughening and hardening phases of boy life. “Make
men of them.” Although balked of the conversation which he had expected
to have with Desmond when he should have reached the room assigned him,
and feeling distinctly man-handled, he determined to have a definite
understanding with the tutor on the morrow, and apprise him that he was
expected to act in the interest of his employer, the guardian, which was
identical with that of the executor, in smoothing the way to a pacific
adjustment of the troublous toils in which the discovery of the codicil
had entangled the household of Great Oaks,—and this signified, in the
interpretation of Mr. Hartagous, an unconditional surrender of all the
opposing interests.
“It is not late, though you seem tired,—and I must speak to you
to-night,” Desmond said to Mrs. Faurie, when the young host and the
guest had vanished down the cross-hall.
She had her lighted candle in her hand, and the flame threw into high
relief against the dull shadows her exquisite face, with the subdued
green of her gown, the shimmer of the lace above her bosom, the diamond
“sunburst” at her throat. “Won’t to-morrow answer?” she replied,
stifling a yawn.
“No! Oh, no, indeed! Believe me, I would not insist, but the matter is
urgent.”
“Heavens! More business!” she remonstrated. “I imagined that with the
arrival of Mr. Hartagous all the bother would be over. He can think for
us all. What else is a lawyer created for?”
“Your lawyer,—yes! But this man is not acting in your interest. He is
acting for the estate.”
“It is the same thing,—my sons’ interest. He will settle everything.”
Desmond could scarcely have feared a more inert attitude of submission
than this. How could the woman be so blind! “Come,” he said
authoritatively, drawing her arm through his. “You shall hear first what
I have to say.”
She turned back to the parlor with him, dragging a little unwillingly on
his arm. “I have always appreciated ‘gentlemen’s society,’ as it is
called, and I have to a degree and with exceptions loved my fellow men,
but I had no conception until lately that the creatures had it in them
to be so wonderfully and fearfully dull and depressing as they are when
they talk of their everlasting business. Hereafter, if I have my choice,
I shall always prefer ‘hen parties’ as the lesser evil.”
With an elaborate air of patience she seated herself on the sofa while
he stirred up the fire and brightened the lamp. As he began to talk, she
was inattentive at first, and interpolated irrelevant remarks. “What a
lovely voice you have,” she said, as her eyes wandered to the open
piano. “I shall be wanting you to sing all day.”
As he began to recapitulate the details of the codicil and the
executor’s requirements concerning the refunding clause, she broke out,
“Wouldn’t you hate to be as chuffy and as stuffy as Mr. Hartagous when
you come to be of his age, and look so like a weasel?”
When he disclosed the real mission of Mr. Hartagous, to effect an
immediate sale of Great Oaks, a light suddenly sprang into her face, and
her voice broke into a sob. He saw that the situation bore far more
heavily upon her than she had manifested. She had been whistling, as it
were, to keep her courage up.
“How providential!” she cried. “It breaks my heart now to part from
Great Oaks, but I see that it is the only way. And oh, for liberation!
To be free from debt. The sense of it weighs upon me; I can understand
the agony of the old torture of death by pressing.”
He was still for a moment, looking at her in sombre thought. “This is
what I feared,” he said at last,—“your precipitancy. I want you to
think, to survey the ground first, to test the possibilities.”
He had made out from the will a schedule of the properties, with their
approximate values, and the amounts by years of the annual income that
must be returned. He went across the room and sat beside her on the
sofa, that they might look over the page together. Her face paled while
scanning the estimates,—they seemed methodically to set forth financial
ruin, absolute, hopeless.
“Then why,—how _dare_ that man come here and press Mr. Loring’s
inadequate offer for Great Oaks?” she blazed out.
“Because he is not acting in your interest, but against you.”
She turned and looked Desmond in the face, her beautiful eyes
bewildering at these close quarters. He dropped his own eyes on the
paper in his hands.
“Mr. Hartagous must distribute the estate according to the terms of the
codicil. As executor he is constrained by law to require the refunding
of your receipts from it. He is coerced, too, by the position of the
guardian, who also has no option, and who will in the changed state of
things require this amount to be charged against your portion at the
partitioning of the estate and the ascertaining and setting aside of the
several shares of the minors. Naturally, Mr. Hartagous is anxious to
seize the first opportunity of converting your assets to make good,
whatever sacrifice it may impose on _you_.”
“What shall I do?—oh, what shall I do?” she cried, in despairing
realization of the situation. “But why should I ask? I can only yield.”
“You can temporize,—stand out for the full value of the property,— fight
for terms. Time is your ally. And you have this strength in your
position, that you might give them a contest; a lawyer might find you
sufficient grounds,—but, at all events, you are entitled to a fair
valuation of your property.”
“But even then, Edward,” she put her hand on his and pressed it
convulsively, “there is not a competence, not a hope from the estate for
me.”
He did not seek to encourage her by false representations. He was
looking the disaster squarely in the eye. “And the boys are powerless
for years to come!” he admitted despondently.
Her lips were trembling piteously. “I have not a dollar that I can call
my own. I have not a friend in the world.”
“You have me,—such as I am,” he said, his eyes downcast, still on the
papers.
“I never think of you,—you are like another self. But you _are_ my
friend, and I am not alone! You think for me,—you rescued me at the risk
of your life. You think for me,—you care for me,—I am not alone!”
“Care for you!” he broke out, tempted beyond all resistance. “I care for
nothing else on God’s earth. I love you,—I love you,—I worship you!”
She turned, staring at him in quiet surprise; then, as if she thought he
might come nearer, she put one hand against his shoulder, holding him at
arm’s length.
“Oh, I should have eaten out my heart in silence; I should never have
said a word but for this strange change, when you seem as poor as I! But
since you feel alone, you may care to know now how beloved, how
cherished, how adored you are by me.”
“But suppose,—suppose,”—she was still looking hard at him, into his very
eyes—“but suppose it might have been grateful to me earlier to know so
much—”
“I could not have spoken then; I could not have asked you to make so
great a sacrifice for me,—to relinquish your status under the will.”
She smiled radiantly at him. “It seems to me now that I might have been
glad to make that sacrifice,—for you.” Once more her hand pressed
against his shoulder to hold him at arm’s length. “But it can never be,
now,” she stipulated, “when I can give you nothing.”
“Nothing! You are all the world to me,” he protested.
“No, you have your own difficult way to make, and I shall not burden
you. It was only a fleeting fancy that came over me,—a sentimental
glimpse of what I _might_ have felt for you had fortune favored us.”
“You shall not decree the future,” he declared imperiously. “I shall
fashion it for us both. It is not yours to say. You have said enough. I
know your heart better than you do,—I believe you love me—”
“Like a son,” she interrupted, with a gurgling laugh. “I am older than
you by ten years.”
“And younger by a century in spirit, and as beautiful as the angels in
heaven. If you leave Great Oaks, we go forth together. Life in poor
conditions would not be sordid with you. It would always be fresh and
deliriously sweet and forever a blessing, whatever hardships fate might
impose. I am strong and well equipped, and with this hand in mine I
could make my way against all the world. I would have no false pride to
hamper my efforts, so truly proud would I be in having the dear
privilege of working for you.”
“Like Chub,—would you dig in the garden?” The anticlimax was of
conclusive import in the stress of the moment. She had not intended to
yield, but she laughed in tender recollection of her little son’s
childish offer of help, and in the instant of relaxation she burst into
happy tears. Her head sank on Desmond’s shoulder, and his arm was around
her.
“Like Chub, I would even dig in the garden,” he protested.