THE SIGNING OF THE WILL.
After this alarm, however, Mr. Trevor got better, and there was an
interval of calm. Life resumed its usual routine, and all went on as
before. During this interval, Frank St. Clair became Mr. Trevor’s
constant visitor. He saw the old man almost every day, and there can be
no doubt that he entertained and amused him much. Old Trevor even went
so far as to talk to him about the will, that all-important document,
which was the object of his existence--not, indeed, of its actual
composition, but of its existence as a mysterious authority which was to
guide the steps of his successors for years. They had a great many most
interesting conversations about wills. Frank was not a great lawyer, but
yet he could remember some cases which had made a noise in their day,
and some which had kept families in great commotion and trouble without
making much noise in the world; and he took a somewhat malicious
pleasure in telling his new acquaintance alarming stories of wills that
had been lost, then found again to the confusion of every rational
arrangement; and of wills that had been suppressed, and of some which no
one had paid any attention to, setting aside their stipulations
entirely, almost before the testator was cold in his grave. This was
very startling to old Trevor. He inquired into it with a wonderful look
of anxiety on his face. There was one will, in particular, of which his
informant told him, with malicious calm, in which there was question of
a house which the testator had built for his daughter, and which he left
to her under the condition that it should never be let or sold, but
remain a home for her and her children forever. What had happened? the
house had been let directly, the daughter not finding it convenient to
live there, and it was now about to be sold. Yes, the will was perfectly
sound, not contested by any one; had been proved in due form, and
administered to, and all formalities fulfilled--except in this important
particular of carrying it out. Old Trevor’s throat grew dry as he
listened, the color went out of his face.
“But--but--but--” he said, “was it allowed--was it permitted? Why wasn’t
it put a stop to? You must be making a mistake. Nobody can go against a
will! A will! You forget what you’re saying--a will is part of the law.”
“Who was to put a stop to it?” said St. Clair, calmly, “Who was to
interfere? There were several brothers and sisters, and none of them
wanted the house to stand empty, though the father so willed it. Whose
business was it to stand up for the will? There was no one to
interfere.”
“That is the most wonderful thing I ever heard in my life, the most
wonderful thing,” said the old man, stammering and stumbling. “I can not
understand it. A will--and they paid no attention to it. I never heard
of such a thing in my life.”
“Oh, I have heard of a great many such things,” said St. Clair, and he
gave a little sketch--which, indeed, was interesting--of careful
testaments set aside by the law, or made null by some trifling omission,
or solemnly ignored by the very heirs they appointed. It was a cruel
joke. Poor old Trevor did not get over it for a long time. He sat and
thought of it all the rest of the day. Who was to interfere? who was to
make sure that anybody would do as he had ordained--would take upon them
the trouble of superintending all Lucy’s actions, and following out his
code? He had Ford up when St. Clair left, and talked to him long on the
subject, not betraying his fears, by cunningly endeavoring to pledge
him, over and over, to the carrying out of his views. “You would not see
my will neglected after I’m gone? If the others should be careless, or
refuse the trouble, you’d always see justice done, Ford? I am sure I can
trust in you whatever happens,” the old man said.
“The best thing to do is to get the will signed and sealed and
delivered,” said Ford; “that is the first way of making it sure. So long
as you are adding a little bit every day, you can never be certain. Yes,
yes, you may trust in me, Mr. Trevor. I would never dare to go against a
dead person’s will. I’d expect to be haunted every night of my life. You
may trust in me; but I can’t answer for others. I have charge of half of
the time, no more. I can’t answer for others-- Lady Randolph will pay
little attention to me.”
“Lady Randolph will pay attention to her own interests,” said the old
man.
“Ah! that she will,” cried Ford, with energy. There was much more
meaning in the tone than in the words; and the inference was not
agreeable to old Trevor, who retired within himself, and sat for the
rest of the afternoon with a very serious face ruminating how to invent
safeguards for the will, which, however, he would not sign, as Ford
suggested. “There’s something more I want to put in,” the old man said
pettishly. “I’ll try to wind it all up to-morrow.” But as a matter of
fact, he did not want to wind it all up, or conclude the document. When
he did so, his occupation would be gone. It would be the conclusion of
all things. With a natural shrinking he thrust this last action from
him, notwithstanding the composure with which he had long regarded his
own death as something necessary to the fulfillment of his intentions.
But he did not feel disposed to put his final seal to it, and dismiss
himself out of the world with a stroke of his pen. To-morrow was soon
enough. When Lucy returned from school, she found him shivering by the
fire. It was a cold day, but he was chilled by more than the weather;
chilled in his vivacious spirit, which had done more to keep him warm
than his good fire or warmly lined dressing gown. “No, I am not ill,”
he said, in answer to her inquiries, “not at all poorly, only low, Lucy.
If you and the rest should throw me overboard after I am gone; if it
should turn out that I have taken all this trouble for nothing--thinking
of you night and day, and planning for your good and your happiness--if
it should be all for nothing, Lucy?”
“But how could that be,” said Lucy, with her usual calm, “when you have
been so particular--when you have written it all down?”
“Yes, I have written it all down,” he said, “and it can’t come to
nothing, if you will be a good girl, and take care that all your old
father’s wishes are carried out.”
“Papa, I promise you, all you have arranged about me, and all your
wishes for me, shall be carried out,” said Lucy, with a very slight
emphasis upon the pronoun, which indicated a mental reservation, but her
father did not notice this. His voice, already enfeebled, took a
coaxing, beseeching tone.
“I’ll not fear anything, I’ll try not to fear anything, if you’ll give
me your promise. Give me your promise, Lucy,” he said, and Lucy repeated
with more effusion, when she saw the feverish uneasiness in which he
was, the promise she had already made.
“Except about Jock,” she said, within herself; but even if she had said
it aloud her father’s thoughts were too much bent on the general
question to have remarked this. Ford, who was very anxious too, beckoned
to her from behind the screen, and whispered, “Get him to sign it, ask
him to sign it!” with the most energetic gesticulations; but how could
Lucy press such a request upon her father? They were all anxious in the
house that evening, and Mrs. Ford sat up all night, and her husband lay
on the sofa in his clothes, fearing a midnight summons, but it was not
till the next evening that the blow came. When their anxiety had been
softened, and their precautions forgotten, the loud jar and tinkle of
the bell once more woke little Jock in his little bed, and Ford from his
comfortable slumbers; and this time it was no false alarm. Old Trevor
was seized at last by the paralytic attack which had been, hovering over
him for sometime. Ford going hastily for the doctor caught a bronchitis
which kept him in bed for a week (just, his wife said, like a man--when
he is most wanted), but the old man had his death-stroke. The house
changed all at once, as sudden and dangerous illness always changes the
abode it dwells in. All thought, all consideration were merged in the
sick-room. For the first few days not even the affairs which he had left
unsettled were thought of. The poor chilly blue-and-white drawing-room
in which he had spent his days stood vacant, colder, and more
commonplace than ever, yet with a pathos in its nakedness. The
blotting-book, with the big blue folio projecting on every side, still
lay on the writing-table where it had lain so long; but nobody touched
it except the house-maid who dusted it daily, and was often tempted to
take the sheaf of untidy papers to light her fire. What could it have
mattered if she had lighted her fire with them? The work upon which the
old man had spent so much of his fading life was of little importance
now. No one thought of it except Ford, who at the worst of his
bronchitis mourned over the uncompleted, document.
“Will he ever come to himself, doctor? Will he ever have the use of his
faculties?” he moaned; but even this no one could tell.
The old man lay for more than a week in this state of unconsciousness;
but after a time began to give faint indications of returning
intelligence. He could not move nor speak, but his eyes regained a gleam
of meaning, and very awful it was to see this reawakening, and to guess
at the desires and feelings that awoke dimly, coursing like lights and
shadows, a dumb language upon his countenance. One night Lucy felt that
his eyes were fixed upon her with more meaning than before, and the
three anxious people gathered round the bed, questioning and consulting
each other.
He was like a prisoner, making faint half distinguishable gestures
beyond the bars of his prison--questions on which deliverance might
depend, but which the watchers could not understand. Presently the
efforts increased, the powerless ashy old hand which lay on the
coverlet, all the fingers in a helpless heap together, began to flicker
in vague movement. Old Trevor’s eyes had not been remarkable for any
force of expression, for nothing indeed, save for the keenness of his
seeing when he was well. They had been small and sharp, and of a reddish
gray, with puckered eyelids, making them smaller than they were by
nature. Now they seemed to stand out enlarged and clear, and full of a
spiritual force, which was partly weakness and partly the feverish dumb
impotence of a desire to which he could not give words. They all
gathered closely round, as anxious and not less helpless than he. Lucy
in her inexperience was driven desperate by this crisis. She knelt down
by the bedside, speaking to him wildly, clasping her hands, and
beseeching, “What is it? What is it? Oh, papa, what is it? Try and speak
to me,” she cried. This hopeless kind of interrogation went on for some
time without any result, and they had all subsided again into the
quietness of despair, when Lucy was suddenly enlightened by a movement
of the old man’s crumpled fingers, which he had managed to curve as if
holding a pen. “He wants to write,” she said, hurrying to find a pencil
and paper, but these were rejected by an indignant gleam from the
sufferer’s eyes.
“It is pen and ink he wants,” Lucy cried in desperation, yet tidy still;
“dear papa, this will be easier, and will not make stains; not that! Oh,
what is it, then you want? what is it he wants? can no one guess what it
is?”
“It is of no use,” said Ford; “he wants to write, but he can’t, that’s
the whole matter: he has something to tell us, but he can’t. It’s the
will, he has never signed the will. Doctor, is he fit? would it be any
good?”
The doctor had just come in, and stood shaking his head.
“Let him try,” he said; “I suppose it can’t do any harm, at least.”
They thought they saw a softening of satisfaction in the patient’s eyes,
and Ford ran to get the papers, while they all gathered round more like
conspirators about to drag some forced concession from the dying, than
anxious attendants seeking every means of satisfying a last desire. Then
the old man’s lips began to move. To his own consciousness he was
evidently demanding something, struggling with his eyes almost bursting
from his head. They raised him up, following the imperative demand made
by his face, and put the familiar document before him. His eyes, they
thought, brightened at the sight of it; something like a smile came upon
his ashy and somewhat contorted countenance. Though he was supported
like a log of wood by Ford and Lucy, yet his skeleton figure, raised
erect, took an air of dominance and energy. He had reigned in a
fantastic visionary world where everything was subject to his will when
he had composed these papers, and something of the same sentiment was in
his aspect now. He clutched the pen in that bundle of bony fingers, then
gave a glance of triumph round upon them all, and dabbed down the pen
upon the paper with that skeleton hand.
What had he put there? A blot, nothing more.
A perception that he had not succeeded, a gleam of anguish went over his
face; and then grasping the pen with increased energy in a wildly
renewed effort, he brought it down in a sea of ink, with a helpless daub
as unmeaning as before. Then a groan came from his shriveled bosom; he
let the pen drop, and dropped himself like a log of wood.
The doctor had been standing by all the time, shaking his head; he
interfered now in a passionless, easy tone.
“There is no harm done,” he said; “it could not have stood had he
succeeded; nobody could have said his mind was in a fit state. Don’t
take it away, but wait and have patience. After this he may mend, most
likely he will mend.”
“Papa,” cried Lucy, close to his ear, “do you hear that? You are not to
mind, you will still be able to do it. Do you hear, papa?”
The old man made no response. Another groan, the very utterance of
despair, broke from him. His eyes closed, his bony fingers fell on the
coverlet, a collection of contracted joints, helpless as they had been
before. He made a half fling of intended movement, without strength to
carry his intention out. What he wanted was evidently to turn his head
from the light, to turn the countenance to the wall; what image is there
which speaks more eloquently of that despair which is moral death? The
spectators stood by mournfully, with but half a sense of the full tragic
meaning of the scene, yet vaguely impressed by it, feeling something of
the horrible sense of failure, tragical, yet stupefying, which invaded
all the half-awakened faculties of the chief sufferer. Even now they
were but half aware of it, Lucy looking on with infinite pity and awe,
struggling to assure the half deafened ear that it did not matter, that
all would be well, while the Fords quickened by self-interest, realized
with a dull dismay the loss, the misfortune, which would affect
themselves. But the real tragedy remained concentrated in that worn-out
old body and imprisoned soul. How much of his life was in those
elaborate plans and settlements and he had failed at the last moment to
give them the necessary warrant. The old man closed his eyes, and, so
far as his will went, flung himself away from the light, turned his face
to the wall, yet could not do even that, in the prostration of all his
powers.
“If he can sleep, he may wake--himself,” the doctor said doubtfully. It
was just as likely he might not wake at all. But the light was carefully
shaded, and the nurse, who had no anxiety to disturb her, and the calm
of professional serenity to keep her composed, took the place of the
other watchers. The doctor, who was interested in an unusual “case,” and
who was a young man, as yet without much practice, offered to Ford, who
was excited and worn out, to remain, that there might be help at hand,
and a professional guarantee in case of any new incident; and this being
settled, sent all the other watchers to rest. Lucy, though she would
fain have stayed with her father, fell asleep--how could she help it?
after so many broken nights--the moment her young head touched the
pillow. The Fords were more wakeful, and retired, more to consult
together than to sleep, talking in whispers, though nothing they could
have said on the upper floor could have reached the sick-room, and full
of alarm and trouble as to the consequences of the future. Mrs. Ford,
for her part, employed this moment of relief chiefly in crying and
mourning over “their luck,” which no doubt would be enough to secure
that the old man should die without signing the charter of their
privileges. But even the whispering and weeping came to an end at last,
and all was still in the house, where the doctor occupied the forsaken
drawing-room, so bare and chilly, and the nurse watched in the silent
chamber, and old Trevor lay between life and death.
The only one of the family who could not rest was little Jock. Who does
not remember that sleeplessness of childhood which is more desolate and
more restless in its contradiction of nature, and innocent vacancy than
even the maturer misery of wakeful nights all rustling full of care and
thought? Jock had been waked out of his first sleep by the muffled
coming and going, the sound of subdued steps and whispering voices. He
had heard a great deal which “the family” are never supposed to hear. He
heard the doctor’s whispered conference with the Fords in the passage.
“I can say nothing with certainty,” the doctor had said; “if he can
sleep he may be himself in the morning, and able to attend to his
business.” “Or he may pass away,” Mr. Ford had said; “at the dawning.
That is the time when they get their release.” Pass away! Jock wondered,
with a shiver, what it meant. Visions flitted before his eyes of his
father’s figure, like that of Time, which he had seen on an old almanac,
his gray locks flying behind him, and a long staff in his hand. Where
would he go to in the dark, or at the dawning? Jock tried to turn his
face to the wall, away from the long mysterious window, which attracted
his gaze in spite of himself, and through which he almost expected to
see some weird passenger step forth. His door was open, as he liked to
have it, and the faint light shining through it usually afforded him a
little consolation; but on this particular night, among his vague
horrors, this too became a dangerous opening, through which some
terrible figure might suddenly appear. He was obliged to turn round
again, to keep both door and window within sight. And all kinds of
visions flitted before him. The noise of a wagon far off on the road,
across the common, suggested the dead-cart of the Plague, rolling
heavily, stopping here and there to take up its horrible load. He seemed
to hear the bell tinkle, the heavy tramp of the attendants; and at any
moment the child felt the door might be pushed open, and some one come
to take him away, and toss him among all those confused limbs and dead
faces. Or was it his father whom they would seize as he “passed away,”
with his gray hair blown about by the winds. Then Jock’s imagination
changed the theme, and he was in the valley of death with Christian,
hearing all those horrible whispers on every side, and looking into the
mouth of hell. He did everything he could to get to sleep; he counted,
as far as his knowledge of numbers would go, and said to himself all the
poetry he knew; but all was of no avail. When he began to see the walls
of his little room grow more distinct round him in a faint blueness,
Jock was not encouraged by the prospect of day-break. He thought of what
Mr. Ford had said, and of the people who were “released” at the dawning,
and he could not bear it any longer; he sprung from his bed, and rushed
toward the light in the passage, a light which was more cheerful, more
reassuring, than the pale beginning of the day. The door of his father’s
room was ajar, and the light was burning within, and a faint glimmer as
of firelight. Jock crept in, trembling and shivering, in his little
white night-gown, like an incarnation of the white, cold, tremulous,
infantile day.
Jock stole in very quietly, feeling protection in the warmth and
stillness; he edged his way in the shadow of the curtains, drawing
instinctively toward the fire, but afraid of being seen and turned out
again. He was afraid, yet he was very curious and anxious about the bed,
in which he knew his father was lying. The curtains at the head were
thrown back, twisted and pushed out of the way to give more air; and
there the pale gray head of the old man revealed itself on the pillow,
lying motionless. Jock stopped short with a sob in his throat, and
terror, too intense for expression, in his soul. His father had not
“passed away;” but whether he was alive or dead, Jock could not tell.
The nurse was dozing in the stillness, in her chair by the fire. The day
was rising, penetrating, even here, between the closed curtains, with
that chill, all-pervading blueness; it was the moment when every watch
relaxes, when the strain is relieved, and weariness makes itself felt.
Not a sound was to be heard, except now and then the ashes falling, and
the breathing of the strange woman in the big chair, who was almost as
alarming an object to Jock as his father. The child stood shivering, his
mouth half open, to cry, the sob arrested, by pure terror, in his
throat.
And whether it was that the sob escaped unawares, or that some sense of
the presence of another living creature in the room, that subtle
consciousness with which the atmosphere seems to penetrate itself, of a
living and thinking soul in it, reached the old man on the bed, it is
impossible to say; but while Jock stood watching, his father suddenly
opened his eyes, and turned, ever so little, yet turned toward him. Jock
was not aware that the old man had been up to this time unable to move,
but his imagination was excited, and the instantaneous revival into
awful life of the mute figure on the bed produced the strangest effect
upon him. A wild scream burst from his lips; he ran out to the stairs
crying wildly. “He has got his release,” Jock cried, not knowing what he
said.
The cry woke the nurse, brought the young doctor, drowsy and confused,
from the next room, and Lucy flying, all her fair locks about her
shoulders, down-stairs. The Fords followed more slowly--the very maids
were roused. But the release which the old man had got was not of the
kind anticipated by his companions. He was liberated from the disease,
which nobody had hoped; he had recovered his speech, though his
utterance was greatly changed and impeded; and, though one side remained
powerless, he retained the use of the other. He was even so much himself
as to chuckle feebly, but quietly, when the doctor returned a few hours
later, and pronounced him to be almost miraculously better. “I’ll
trouble you, doctor, to witness it,” the old man said, babbling over the
words, and looking with his enlarged but dimmed eyes at the papers by
his bedside. “I’ve got something to add; but I’ll not put off and cheat
myself, not put off and cheat myself again.” This they thought was what
he said. And thus the will got signed at last.
He lingered for some time after, continually endeavoring to resume his
old work, and now and then becoming sufficiently articulate to give full
evidence of the perfect possession of his faculties. But within a week a
third seizure carried off the old man without power of protest or
remedy. His unexpressed intentions died with him, but the words, “I’ve
something to add,” were the last he said.