THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE
After Lucy left the office, Mr. Benton sat for an interval thinking. Then
he yawned, stretched his arms, went to his desk drawer, and took out the
will which he slipped into his waistcoat pocket.
With hands behind him he took a turn or two across the room.
He was a man not lacking in feeling, and impulses of sympathy and mercy
until now had deterred him from the execution of his legal duties. Since,
however, it was Lucy Webster who had rung up the curtain on the drama in
which an important part had been assigned him, there was no need for him
to postpone longer the playing of his role. He had received his cue.
His lines, he admitted, were not wholly to his liking--not, in fact, to
his liking at all; he considered them cruel, unfair, vindictive.
Notwithstanding this, however, the plot was a novel one, and he was too
human not to relish the fascinating uncertainties it presented. In all his
professional career no case so remarkable had fallen to his lot before.
When as a young man he had attacked his calling, he had been thrilled with
enthusiasm and hope. The law had seemed to him the noblest of professions.
But the limitations of a small town had quickly dampened his ardor, and
instead of righting the injustices of the world as he had once dreamed of
doing, he had narrowed into a legal machine whose mechanism was never
accelerated by anything more stirring than a round of petty will-makings,
land-sellings, bill collections and mortgage foreclosures.
But at last here was something out of the ordinary, a refreshing and
unique human comedy that would not only electrify the public but whose
chief actors balked all speculation. He could not help owning that Ellen
Webster's bequest, heartily as he disapproved of it, lent a welcome bit of
color to the grayness of his days. Ever since he had drawn up the
fantastic document it had furnished him with riddles so interesting and
unsolvable that they rendered tales of Peter Featherstone and Martin
Chuzzlewit tame reading. These worthies were only creations of paper and
ink; but here was a living, breathing enigma,--the enigma of Martin Howe!
What would this hero of the present situation do? For undoubtedly it was
Martin who was to be the chief actor of the coming drama.
The lawyer knocked the ashes from his pipe, thrust it into his pocket and,
putting on his hat and coat, stepped into the hall, where he lingered only
long enough to post on his office door the hastily scrawled announcement:
"Will return to-morrow." Then he hurried across the town green to the shed
behind the church where he always hitched his horse. Backing the wagon out
with care, he jumped into it and proceeded to drive off down the high
road.
Martin Howe was in the field when Mr. Benton arrived. Under ordinary
conditions the man would have joined him there, but to-day such a course
seemed too informal, and instead he drew up his horse at the front door
and sent Jane to summon her brother.
Fortunately Martin was no great distance away and soon entered, a flicker
of curiosity in his eyes.
The lawyer began with a leisurely introduction.
"I imagine, Howe, you are a trifle surprised to have a call from me," he
said.
"Yes, I am a bit."
"I drove over on business," announced Mr. Benton.
Nevertheless, although he prefaced his revelation with this remark, he did
not immediately enlighten his listener as to what the business was. In
truth, now that the great moment for breaking silence had arrived, Mr.
Benton found himself obsessed with a desire to prolong its flavor of
mystery. It was like rolling the honied tang of a cordial beneath his
tongue. A few words and the secret would lay bare in the light of common
day, its glamor rent to atoms.
Martin waited patiently.
"On business," repeated Mr. Benton at last, as if there had been no break
in the conversation.
"I'm ready to hear it," Martin said, smiling.
"I came, in fact, to acquaint you with the contents of a will."
Yet again the lawyer's tongue, sphinxlike from habit, refused to utter
the tidings it guarded.
"The will," he presently resumed, "of my client, Miss Ellen Webster."
He was rewarded by seeing a shock of surprise run through Martin's frame.
"I don't see how Miss Webster's will can be any concern of mine," Martin
replied stiffly.
The attorney ignored the observation. Continuing with serenity, he
observed:
"As I understand it, you and Miss Webster were not----" he coughed
hesitatingly behind his hand.
"No, we weren't," cut in Martin. "She was a meddling, aggravating old
harridan. I hated her, and I'm glad she's gone."
"That is an unfortunate sentiment," remarked Mr. Benton, "unfortunate and
disconcerting, because, you see, Miss Ellen Webster has left you all her
property."
"_Me_! Left _me_ her property!"
The dynamic shock behind the words sent the man to his feet.
Mr. Benton nodded calmly.
"Yes," he reiterated, "Miss Webster has made you her sole legatee."
Martin regarded his visitor stupidly.
"I reckon there's some mistake, sir," he contrived to stammer.
"No, there isn't--there's no mistake. The will was legally drawn up only a
few days before the death of the deceased. No possible question can be
raised as to her sanity, or the clearness of her wishes concerning her
property. She desired everything to come to you."
"Let me see the paper!" cried Martin.
"I should prefer to read it to you."
Slowly Mr. Benton took out his spectacles, polished, and adjusted them.
Then with impressive deliberation he drew forth and unfolded with a mighty
rustling the last will and testament of Ellen Webster, spinster. Many a
time he had mentally rehearsed this scene, and now he presented it with a
dignity that amazed and awed. Every _whereas_ and _aforesaid_ rolled out
with due majesty, its resonance echoing to the ceiling of the chilly
little parlor.
As Martin listened, curiosity gave place to wonder, wonder to indignation.
But when at last the concluding condition of the bequest was reached, the
rebuilding of the wall, an oath burst from his lips.
"The harpy!" he shouted. "The insolent hell hag!"
"Softly, my dear sir, softly!" pleaded Mr. Benton in soothing tones.
"I'll have nothin' to do with it--nothin'!" stormed Martin. "You can
bundle your paper right out of here, Benton. Rebuild that wall! Good God!
Why, I wouldn't do it if I was to be flayed alive. Ellen Webster knew that
well enough. She was perfectly safe when she left me her property with
that tag hitched to it. She did it as a joke--a cussed joke--out of pure
deviltry. 'Twas like her, too. She couldn't resist giving me one last jab,
even if she had to wait till she was dead and gone to do it."
Like an infuriated beast Martin tramped the floor. Mr. Benton did not
speak for a few moments; then he observed mildly:
"You understand that if you refuse to accept the property it will be
turned over to the county for a poor farm."
"I don't care who it's turned over to, or what becomes of it," blustered
Martin.
The attorney rubbed his hands. Ah, it was a spirited drama,--quite as
spirited as he had anticipated, and as interesting too.
"It's pretty rough on the girl," he at last remarked casually.
"The girl?"
"Miss Webster."
Violently Martin came to himself. The fury of his anger had until now
swept every other consideration from his mind.
"It will mean turning Miss Webster out of doors, of course," continued Mr.
Benton impassively. "Still she's a thoroughbred, and I fancy nothing her
aunt could do would surprise her. In fact, she as good as told me that,
when she was at my office this morning."
"She knows, then?"
"Yes, I had to tell her, poor thing. I imagine, too, it hit her pretty
hard, for she had been given to understand that everything was to be hers.
She hasn't much in her own right; her aunt told me that."
An icy hand suddenly gripped Martin's heart. He stood immovable, as if
stunned. Lucy! Lucy penniless and homeless because of him!
Little by little Ellen's evil scheme unfolded itself before his
consciousness. He saw the cunning of the intrigue which the initial
outburst of his wrath had obscured. There was more involved in his
decision than his own inclinations. He was not free simply to flout the
legacy and toss it angrily aside. Ellen, a Richelieu to the last, had him
in a trap that wrenched and wrecked every sensibility of his nature. The
more he thought about the matter, the more chaotic his impulses became.
Justice battled against will; pity against vengeance; love against hate;
and as the warring factors strove and tore at one another, and grappled in
an anguish of suffering, from out the turmoil two forces rose
unconquerable and stubbornly confronted one another,--the opposing forces
of Love and Pride. There they stood, neither of them willing to yield.
While Love pleaded for mercy, Pride urged the destruction of every gentler
emotion and clamored for revenge.
Mr. Benton was not a subtle interpreter of human nature, but in the face
of the man before him he saw enough to realize the fierceness of the
spiritual conflict that raged within Martin Howe's soul. It was like
witnessing the writhings of a creature in torture.
He did not attempt to precipitate a decision by interfering. When,
however, he had been a silent spectator of the struggle so long that he
perceived Martin had forgotten his very existence, he ventured to speak.
"Maybe I'd better leave you to reconsider your resolution, Howe," he
remarked.
"I--yes--it might be better."
"Perhaps after you've thought things out, you'll change your mind."
Martin did not reply. The lawyer rose and took up his hat.
"How long before you've got to know?" inquired Martin hoarsely.
"Oh, I can give you time," answered Mr. Benton easily. "A week, say--how
will that do?"
"I shan't need as long as that," Martin replied, looking before him with
set face. "I shall know by to-morrow what I am going to do."
"There's no such hurry as all that."
"I shall know by to-morrow," repeated the younger man in the same dull
voice. "All the time in the universe won't change things after that."
Mr. Benton made no response. When in his imaginings he had pictured the
scene, he had thought that after the first shock of surprise was over, he
and Martin would sit down together sociably and discuss each petty detail
of the remarkable comedy. But comedy had suddenly become tragedy--a
tragedy very real and grim--and all desire to discuss it had ebbed away.
As he moved toward the door, he did not even put out his hand; on the
contrary, whispering a hushed good night and receiving no reply to it, he
softly let himself out and disappeared through the afternoon shadows.
If Martin were conscious of his departure, he at least gave no sign of
being so, but continued to stand motionless in the same spot where Mr.
Benton had left him, his hands gripped tightly behind his back, and his
head thrust forward in thought.
Silently the hours passed. The sun sank behind the hills, tinting the
ridge of pines to copper and leaving the sky a sweep of palest blue in
which a single star trembled.
Still Martin did not move. Once he broke into a smothered cry:
"I cannot! My God! I cannot!"
The words brought Jane to the door.
"Martin!" she called.
There was no answer and, turning the knob timidly, she came in.
"Oh!" she ejaculated. "How you frightened me! I didn't know there was
anybody here. Don't you want a light?"
"No."
"Has--has Mr. Benton gone?"
"Yes."
"That's good. Supper's ready."
"I don't want anything."
"Mercy, Martin! You ain't sick?"
"No."
"But you must be hungry."
"No. I'm not."
Still the woman lingered; then making a heroic plunge, she faltered:
"There--there ain't nothin' the matter, is there?"
So genuine was the sympathy beneath the quavering inquiry that it brought
to Martin's troubled heart a gratifying sense of warmth and fellowship.
"No," he said, his impatience melting to gentleness. "Don't worry, Jane.
I've just got to do a little thinking by myself, that's all."
"It ain't money you're fussin' over then," said his sister, with a sigh of
relief.
"No--no, indeed. It's nothin' to do with money."
"I'm thankful for that."
Nevertheless as he mounted to his room, Martin reflected that after all it
was money which was at the storm center of his difficulties. He had not
thought at all of the matter from its financial aspect. Yet even if he had
done so in the first place, it would have had no influence upon his
decision. He didn't care a curse for the money. To carry his point, he
would have tossed aside a fortune twice as large. The issue he confronted,
stripped of all its distractions, was simply whether his love were potent
enough to overmaster his pride and bring it to its knees.
Even for the sake of Lucy Webster, whom he now realized he loved with a
passion more deep-rooted than he had dreamed, could he compel himself to
do the thing he had staked his oath he would not do?
Until this moment he had never actually examined his affection for the
girl. Events had shaped themselves so naturally that in cowardly fashion
he had basked in the joy of the present and not troubled his mind to
inquire whither the phantasies of this lotus-eater's existence were
leading him. When a clamoring conscience had lifted up its voice, he had
stilled it with platitudes. The impact of the crisis he now faced had,
however, jarred him out of his tranquillity and brought him to an
appreciation of his position.
He loved Lucy Webster with sincere devotion. All he had in the world he
would gladly cast at her feet,--his name, his heart, his worldly
possessions; only one reservation did he make to the completeness of his
surrender. His pride he could not bend. It was not that he did not wish to
bend it. The act was impossible. Keenly as he scorned himself, he could
not concede a victory to Ellen Webster,--not for any one on earth.
The jests of the townsfolk were nothing. He did not lack courage to laugh
back into the faces of the jeering multitude. But to own himself beaten by
a mocking ghost, a specter from another sphere; to relinquish for her
gratification the traditions of his race and the trust of his fathers; to
leave her triumphant on the field,--this he could not do for any woman
living--or dead.
Ah, it was a clever net the old woman had spun to ensnare him, more clever
than she knew, unless by some occult power she was cognizant of his
affection for Lucy. Could it be? The thought arrested him.
Had Ellen guessed his secret, and, armed with the knowledge, shaped her
revenge accordingly? If so, she was a thousand times more cruel than he
had imagined her capable of being, and it gave quite a different slant to
her perfidy. Suppose she had suspected he loved Lucy and that Lucy loved
him. Then her plot was one to separate them, and the very course he was
following was the result she had striven to bring about. She had meant to
wreck his happiness and that of the woman he loved; she had planned,
schemed, worked to do so.
Martin threw back his head and laughed defiantly up at the ceiling. Well,
she should not succeed. He would marry Lucy, and he would rebuild the
wall: and with every stone he put in place he would shout to the confines
of the universe, to the planets where Ellen Webster's spirit lurked, to
the grave that harbored her bones:
_Amor Vincit Omnia!_
With jubilant step he crossed to the window and looked out. A slender arc
of silver hung above the trees, bathing the fields in mystic splendor. It
was not late. Only the maelstrom of torture through which he had passed
had transformed the minutes to hours, and the hours to years. Why, the
evening was still young, young enough for him to go to Lucy and speak into
her ear all the love that surged in his heart. They had been made for one
another from the beginning. He would wed her, and the old homestead she
venerated should be hers indeed. It was all very simple, now.
With the abandon of a schoolboy he rushed downstairs, pausing only an
instant to put his head in at the kitchen door and shout to Jane:
"I'm goin' over to the Websters'. I may be late. Don't sit up for me."
Then he was gone. Alone beneath the arching sky, his happiness mounted to
the stars. How delicious was the freshness of the cool night air! How
sweet the damp fragrance of the forest! The spires of the pines richly
dark against the fading sky were already receding into the mists of
twilight.
He went along down the road, his swinging step light as the shimmer of a
moonbeam across a spangled pool.
The Webster house was in darkness. Nevertheless this discovery did not
disconcert him, for frequently Lucy worked until dusk among her flowers,
or lingered on the porch in the peace of the evening stillness.
To-night, however, he failed to find her in either of her favorite haunts
and, guided by the wailing music of a harmonica, he came at last upon Tony
seated on an upturned barrel at the barn threshold, striving to banish his
loneliness by breathing into the serenity of the twilight the refrain of
"Home, Sweet Home."
"Hi, Tony!" called Martin. "Do you know where Miss Lucy is?"
"I don't, sir," replied the boy, rising. "She didn't 'xactly say where she
was goin'."
"I s'pose she's round the place somewhere."
"Land, no, sir! Didn't she tell you? Why, she went away on the train this
afternoon."
"On the train?" Martin repeated automatically.
"Yes, sir."
"When is she comin' back?"
"She ain't comin' back," announced the Portuguese. "She's goin' out West
or somewheres to live."
A quick shiver vibrated through Martin's body, arresting the beat of his
pulse. Scarcely knowing what he did, he caught the lad roughly by the
shoulder.
"When did she go?" he demanded. "What time? What did she say?"
Tony raised a frightened glance to his questioner's face.
"She went this afternoon," gasped he, "about five o'clock it was. She took
the Boston train. She said she guessed she'd go back out West 'cause she
didn't want to stay here any more. She was afraid of ghosts."
"Ghosts!"
Tony nodded.
"I'm to leave the key of the house at Mr. Benton's in the mornin' an' tell
him everythin's cleaned up an' in order. An' Miss Lucy said I was to stay
here an' go on with the work till you or somebody else told me to stop."
Without comment Martin listened. Slowly the truth made its impress on his
mind. Lucy had gone! Gone!
With the knowledge, all the latent affection he felt for her crystallized
into a mighty tide that rushed over and engulfed him in its current.
Hatred, revenge, pride were no more; only love persisted,--love the
all-powerful, the all-conquering, the all-transforming.
Lucy, dearer to him than his own soul, had gone. Either in anger, or
driven forth by maiden shyness, she had fled from him; and until she was
brought back and was safe within the shelter of his arms, nothing remained
for him in life.
Tony saw him square his shoulders and turn away.
"Good night, Mr. Howe," he called.
"Good night, Tony."
"Any orders for to-morrow?"
"No. Go on with your work as usual. Just be sure to water Miss Lucy's
flowers."
"I will, sir."
"An' by the way. You needn't drive into town with that key. I'm goin' to
Mr. Benton's myself, an' I'll take it."
"All right."
The boy watched Martin go down the driveway; but at the gate the man
wheeled about and shouted back:
"You'll be sure not to forget Miss Lucy's flowers, Tony."
"I'll remember 'em."
"An' if I should have to be away for a while--a week, or a month, or even
longer--you'll do the best you can while I'm gone."
"I will, sir."
"That's all. Good night."
With a farewell gesture of his hand Martin passed out of the gate. To have
witnessed the buoyancy of his stride, one would have thought him
victorious rather than defeated. The truth was, the scent of battle was in
his nostrils. For a lifetime he had been the champion of Hate. Now, all
the energies of his manhood suddenly awakened, he was going forth to fight
in the cause of Love.