Old Mr. Marmaduke Wharne had come down from Outledge, in the
mountains, on his way home to New York. He had stopped in Boston to
attend to some affairs of his own,--if one can call them so, since
Marmaduke Wharne never had any "own" affairs that did not chiefly
concern, to their advantage, somebody else,--in which his friend Mr.
Titus Oldways was interested, not personally, but Wharne fashion.
Now, reader, you know something about Mr. Titus Oldways, which up to
this moment, only God, and Marmaduke Wharne, and Rachel Froke, who
kept Mr. Oldways' house, and wore a Friend's drab dress and white
cap, and said "Titus," and "Marmaduke" to the two old gentlemen, and
"thee" and "thou" to everybody,--have ever known. In a general way
and relation, I mean; separate persons knew particular things; but
each separate person thought the particular thing he knew to be a
whimsical exception.
Mr. Oldways did not belong to any church: but he had an English
Prayer-book under his Bible on his study table, and Baxter and
Fenelon and à Kempis and "Wesley's Hymns," and Swedenborg's "Heaven
and Hell" and "Arcana Celestia," and Lowell's "Sir Launfal," and
Dickens's "Christmas Carol," all on the same set of shelves,--that
held, he told Marmaduke, his religion; or as much of it as he could
get together. And he had this woman, who was a Friend, and who
walked by the Inner Light, and in outer charity, if ever a woman
did, to keep his house. "For," said he, "the blessed truth is, that
the Word of God is in the world. Alive in it. When you know that,
and wherever you can get hold of his souls, then and there you've
got your religion,--a piece at a time. To prove and sort your
pieces, and to straighten the tangle you might otherwise get into,
there's _this_," and he laid his hand down on the Four Gospels,
bound in white morocco, with a silver cross upon the cover,--a
volume that no earthly creature, again, knew of, save Titus and
Marmaduke and Rachel Froke, who laid it into a drawer when she swept
and dusted, and placed it between the crimson folds of its quilted
silken wrapper when she had finished, burnishing the silver cross
gently with a scrap of chamois leather cut from a clean piece every
time. There was nothing else delicate and exquisite in all the plain
and grim establishment; and the crimson wrapper was comfortably
worn, and nobody would notice it, lying on the table there, with an
almanac, a directory, the big, open Worcester's Dictionary, and the
scattered pamphlets and newspapers of the day.
Out in the world, Titus Oldways went about with visor down.
He gave to no fairs nor public charities; "let them get all they
could that way, it wasn't his way," he said to Rachel Froke. The
world thought he gave nothing, either of purse or life.
There was a plan they had together,--he and Marmaduke Wharne,--this
girls' story-book will not hold the details nor the idea of
it,--about a farm they owned, and people working it that could go
nowhere else to work anything; and a mill-privilege that might be
utilized and expanded, to make--not money so much as safe and honest
human life by way of making money; and they sat and talked this plan
over, and settled its arrangements, in the days that Marmaduke
Wharne was staying on in Boston, waiting for his other friend, Miss
Craydocke, who had taken the River Road down from Outledge, and so
come round by Z----, where she was staying a few days with the
Goldthwaites and the Inglesides. Miss Craydocke had a share or two
in the farm and in the mill.
And now, Titus Oldways wanted to know of Marmaduke Wharne what he
was to do for Afterwards.
It was a question that had puzzled and troubled him. Afterwards.
"While I live," he said, "I will do what I can, and _as_ I can. I
will hand over my doing, and the wherewith, to no society or
corporation. I'll pay no salaries nor circumlocutions. Neither will
I--afterwards. And how is my money going to work on?"
"_Your_ money?"
"Well,--God's money."
"How did it work when it came to you?"
Mr. Oldways was silent.
"He chose to send it to you. He made it in the order of things that
it should come to you. You began, yourself, to work for money. You
did not understand, then, that the money would be from God and was
for Him."
"He made me understand."
"Yes. He looked out for that part of it too. He can look out for it
again. His word shall not return unto him void."
"He has given me this, though, to pass on; and I will not put it
into a machine. I want to give some living soul a body for its
living. Dead charities are dead. It's of no use to will it to you,
Marmaduke; I'm as likely to stay on, perhaps, as you are."
"And the youngest life might drop, the day after your own. You can't
take it out of God's hand."
"I must either let it go by law, or will it--here and there. I know
enough whom it would help; but I want to invest, not spend it; to
invest it in a life--or lives--that will carry it on from where I
leave it. How shall I know?"
"He giveth it a body as it pleaseth Him," quoted Marmaduke Wharne,
thoughtfully. "I am English, you know, Oldways; I can't help
reverencing the claims of next of kin. Unless one is plainly shown
otherwise, it seems the appointment. How can we set aside his ways
until He clearly points us out his own exception?"
"My 'next' are two women whom I don't know, my niece's children. She
died thirty years ago."
"Perhaps you ought to know them."
"I know _about_ them; I've kept the run; but I've held clear of
family. They didn't need me, and I had no right to put it into their
heads they did, unless I fully meant"--
He broke off.
"They're like everybody else, Wharne; neither better nor worse, I
dare say; but the world is full of just such women. How do I know
this money would be well in their hands--even for themselves?"
"Find out."
"One of 'em was brought up by an Oferr woman!"
The tone in which he _commonized_ the name to a satiric general
term, is not to be written down, and needed not to be interpreted.
"The other is well enough," he went on, "and contented enough.
A doctor's widow, with a little property, a farm and two
children,--her older ones died very young,--up in New Hampshire. I
might spoil _her_; and the other,--well, you see as I said, I _don't
know_."
"Find out," said Marmaduke Wharne, again.
"People are not found out till they are tried."
"Try 'em!"
Mr. Oldways had been sitting with his head bent, thoughtfully, his
eyes looking down, his hands on the two stiff, old-fashioned arms of
his chair. At this last spondaic response from Marmaduke, he lifted
his eyes and eyebrows,--not his head,--and raised himself slightly
with his two hands pressing on the chair arms; the keen glance and
the half-movement were impulsively toward his friend.
"Eh?" said he.
"Try 'em," repeated Marmaduke Wharne. "Give God's way a chance."
Mr. Oldways, seated back in his chair again, looked at him intently;
made a little vibration, as it were, with his body, that moved his
head up and down almost imperceptibly, with a kind of gradual
assenting apprehension, and kept utterly silent.
So, their talk being palpably over for this time, Marmaduke Wharne
got up presently to go. They nodded at each other, friendlily, as he
looked back from the door.
Left alone, Mr. Titus Oldways turned in his swivel-chair, around to
his desk beside which he was sitting.
"Next of kin?" he repeated to himself. "God's way?--Well! Afterwards
is a long time. A man must give it up somewhere. Everything escheats
to the king at last."
And he took a pen in his hand and wrote a letter.