Vickers had heard Overton’s voice downstairs, and would have liked to
explain his reasons for staying. And yet they would have been difficult
to define. He had come home the evening before, fully determined to
go. He had dressed and packed, and just as he was ready a knock had
come at his door. Waiting only to hide his bags, and to shut up all the
bureaus which the haste of his packing had left open, he heard Nellie
call to him. For an instant he had thought that she had discovered his
intention; the next he heard Nellie was asking him to go for a doctor.
Before dawn, however, a time had come when he might easily have slipped
away, unobserved, if he had wanted to; and yet he had not again
thought of going. No one, he had said to himself, would go away and
leave in such trouble the household that had sheltered him. Nor was
it only the sense of companionship with Nellie that kept him, but the
unwonted knowledge that some one depended on and needed him.
Trained nurses were not to be obtained in Hilltop, and even if they had
been, most of the work of nursing would have devolved on Vickers, for
Mr. Lee would not let him go out of his sight. All that day and most of
the next night Vickers sat beside his bed, wondering whether the old
man’s death was to be the end of the story or the beginning. Should he
stay, or should he go? He told himself that Overton was right, and that
the only decent thing for a wanderer and a fugitive to do was to go
quickly and quietly. But the remembrance of Emmons poisoned the vision
of his own departure.
On the second day of his illness, Mr. Lee died. For all his devotion
Vickers was not with him at the moment. The old man had fallen into a
comfortable sleep about noon; and Nellie had made Vickers go and lie
down. He was awakened a few hours afterward by the girl herself. She
came and sat down beside his sofa, and told him gently that his father
had died without waking.
“My poor child,” said Vickers, “were you all alone?”
“I have been thinking that I ought to tell you, Bob,” she went on,
disregarding his interest in her welfare, “that you have so much more
than made up to my uncle. He has been happier than I ever expected
to see him. I think that must be a help to you, Bob;” and, under the
impression that he was suffering a very intimate sorrow, she gave him
her hand.
Vickers took it only for a moment, and then replaced it on her lap.
They sat in the twilight of the darkened room for some time, talking of
plans and arrangements.
* * * * *
The funeral took place on Friday, and Hilltop, which had always honored
the name of Lee, turned out in full force. And to increase Vickers’s
embarrassment, every member of the family came to pay the old gentleman
a last token of respect.
“You must stand near me, Nellie,” he said to her the morning of the
funeral, “and tell me their names.”
“Oh, you can’t have forgotten them, Bob,” she answered. “In the first
place, Uncle Joseph, who gave you the goat when you were a little boy.
You remember the goat, don’t you?”
He merely smiled at her for answer, and taking his meaning, she
returned quickly:
“Ah, not to-day, Bob. I could not bear to think you would repudiate
your father to-day.” Then, after a moment, for he said nothing, she
went on: “Of course you remember Bertha and Jane. You used to be so
fond of Jane. They are coming by the early train. They must have left
Philadelphia before eight o’clock. I think that is wholly on your
account, Bob.”
Subsequently he discovered that they were daughters of a sister of Mrs.
Lee’s, his supposed first cousins.
They came some minutes before any one else. Vickers was alone in
the parlor decorously drawing on a pair of black gloves, when they
were ushered in. Fortunately they were quite unmistakable--two neat,
rustling, little black figures, followed by a solitary male, whose
name proved to be Ferdinand. Looking up, Vickers greeted them without
hesitation:
“Why, Jane and Bertha!” he cried.
They lifted their veils, displaying cheerful and pretty countenances,
and to his intense amusement, each imprinted a kiss upon his ready
cheek.
“Dear Bob,” said one of them, “we are so sorry for you. And yet how
glad you must have been to be at home when it happened. Poor Uncle
Robert! We haven’t seen him for years.”
“Sam was so dreadfully sorry he could not come,” said the other, with a
manner so frankly disingenuous that Vickers could not resist answering:
“Aye, I suppose so!”
Not in the least abashed, the little lady smiled back.
“Well, it is strange,” she admitted, “that he always has a toothache
when it is a question of a family funeral. He keeps one tooth
especially, I believe.” And feeling that more friendly relations were
now established, she continued: “How tall you are, Bob. Were you
always as tall as that? You look sad, poor boy. Why don’t you come down
after the ceremony, and stay a few weeks with us, and let us try to
console you?”
“Thank you,” said Vickers, “but I shall have to be here until
to-morrow.”
“Oh, I see. Nellie will need you. But you might ask her. Nellie,” she
added, “we want Bob to come with us after the funeral. He seems to
think you can’t spare him.”
Nellie, who had just entered the room, looked for an instant somewhat
confused by this sudden address, but almost at once she replied coldly
that she had spared Bob for so many years that she could probably do it
again.
Without very much encouragement the two new cousins continued to cling
to Vickers throughout the remainder of the ceremonies. They looked upon
him as a direct reward of virtue. They had risen at an impossibly
early hour, given up engagements merely from a sense of obligation to
an old gentleman they hardly knew. The discovery of a good-looking
cousin was a return--no more than just, but utterly unexpected.
For his part, if he had not been very conscious that this was his last
day with Nellie, he would have enjoyed the company of the others. He
took them down to the station and put them on their train, though he
continued to refuse to accompany them.
“But you’ll come some day, soon, won’t you, Bob?” Bertha exclaimed. “I
hear you are very wicked, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Yes,” said Vickers, “I myself understand that I am an excellent
subject for reform.”
“We won’t try and reform you,” they answered; “we like you as you are,”
and they kissed him again, and departed.
On his return to the house he heard that Nellie had gone to lie down,
leaving word that Mr. Overton was coming after lunch. Overton had been
Mr. Lee’s man of business. He and Emmons arrived soon after two. They
sat round the library stiffly. Only Overton seemed to be as usual, his
calm Yankee face untouched by the constraint visible in the others.
“I don’t know whether you want me actually to read the will itself,” he
said. “It is a very simple one. He leaves all the Hilltop property to
his son, without restrictions of any kind. That is all he had to leave.
The town house is nominally Nellie’s, but it is mortgaged to its full
value.”
“Do you mean to say,” Emmons cried, “that Nellie gets nothing?”
“Nothing, I’m sorry to say--perhaps a hundred or so, but I doubt even
that.”
“You mean that Mr. Lee did not even leave her the equivalent of the
sum which his son took from her?”
“That is exactly what I mean, Mr. Emmons.”
“It is an iniquitous will. The man who made that will was mad, and no
lawyer should have drawn it for him.”
“I drew it,” said Overton gently.
“You should not have done so, sir,” replied Emmons; “knowing the facts
as you do, you ought to have pointed out to the old man where his
obligations lay.”
“It is the profession of a clergyman, not of a lawyer, to point out his
client’s duty, Mr. Emmons.”
Emmons looked from one to the other, and then, remembering the sudden
friendship that had sprung up between them, he asked, “And when was
this will made?”
“Almost three years ago,” Overton answered, and there was silence
until, seeing Emmons about to break out again, Nellie said mildly,
“Really, James, if I can bear it, I think you might.”
“The sacrifices you made--” Emmons began, but she stopped him.
“Blood is thicker than water. It would be a pretty poor sort of world
if men did not love their own children better than other people’s.”
“Oh, if you are satisfied,” said Emmons bitterly; and then changed his
sentence but not his tone. “All I can say is I am glad you all are
pleased.”
“You have not given us much of a chance to say whether we were or not,”
suggested Vickers mildly.
Emmons turned on him. “I don’t have to ask whether you are satisfied or
not. I don’t imagine that you have any complaint to make.”
“None at all,” said Vickers.
“Do you mean to tell me that you would take that property?” Emmons
demanded.
“What are you talking about, James?” said Nellie. “Of course Bob will
take what his father leaves to him.”
“I shall have my opinion of him if he does.”
“Well,” said Vickers, “if anything could separate me from an
inheritance, it would certainly be the fear of Mr. Emmons’s criticism.”
“I shall only call your attention to one thing,” said Emmons, flushing
slightly. “Does it ever strike you, Mr. Bob _Lee_, to ask what it was
saved you from criminal prosecution twelve years ago? No? Well, I’ll
tell you. Respect for your father, and the fact that you did not have
any money. Both of these conditions have changed to-day.”
Vickers turned to Overton as if he had not heard. “I wonder,” he said,
“if we could not talk over family affairs more comfortably if there
were no outsiders present.”
“James is not an outsider,” said Nellie.
“He is to me,” said Vickers.
“If he goes, I go too,” Nellie answered.
“In that case,” said Vickers, “of course he must be allowed to stay,
but perhaps you will be so good as to ask him, if he must be here, not
to interrupt----”
“Come, come,” said Overton hastily, “can’t we effect some compromise in
this matter? As I understand it, Mr. Emmons believes that certain sums
are owed Miss Nellie by you----”
“Compromise be damned, Overton,” said Vickers. “You know this money is
not mine, and I won’t touch it.”
Nellie started up. “The money is yours, Bob. My uncle would never have
pinched and saved to pay me back. The money exists only because he
loved you so much. It is yours.”
Vickers smiled at her. “I am glad,” he said, “that I do not have to
argue that extremely sophistical point with you. The reason that the
money is not mine is--I hate to repeat a statement that you asked me
not to make again--but I am not Bob Lee.”
He had the satisfaction of seeing that, for the first time, she weighed
the possibility of the assertion’s being true.
“What does he mean, Mr. Overton?” she asked.
“He means he is not the person he represented himself as being.”
“What is this?” cried Emmons, who had remained silent hitherto only
from a species of stupefaction. “Is he trying to make us believe that
his own father did not know him? What folly! How frivolous!”
Nellie’s face clouded again; evidently to her, too, it seemed folly,
but she said temperately:
“At least, James, it will cost him his inheritance, if he can make us
believe him. He certainly does not gain by the assertion.”
“What?” cried Emmons. “How can you be so blind! He was willing enough
to be Bob Lee--he kept mighty quiet, until I threatened suit. He was
willing enough to take the money, until it looked dangerous; and then
we began to hear that he was not the fellow at all.”
Nellie turned desperately to Overton.
“Mr. Overton,” she said, “do you believe this story?”
Overton nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I do; but I must tell you that I have
no proofs of any kind, no facts, no evidence.”
“Then why do you believe it?”
“Why, indeed?” murmured Emmons with a carefully suppressed laugh; “a
very good question.”
“I have asked myself why,” Overton answered, “and I can find only
two reasons, if they may be called so. First, I do feel a difference
between this man and the Bob Lee I used to know--a difference of
personality. And, second, I have never had any reason to doubt this
man’s word.”
“Ah, but I have,” said Nellie. “As a boy Bob was not truthful.”
“I was not speaking of Lee,” said Overton.
Nellie put her hand to her head. “Oh, I don’t know what to think,” she
said, and jumped up and walked to the window, as if to get away from
Emmons, who was ready to tell her exactly what to think.
She stood there, and there was silence in the room. Overton sat feeling
his chin, as if interested in nothing but the closeness of his
morning’s shave. Vickers, though his head was bent, had fixed his eyes
on Nellie; and Emmons leant back with the manner of the one sane man in
a party of lunatics.
Nellie was the first to speak. Turning from the window she asked,
“If you are not my cousin, who are you?”
“My name is Lewis Vickers.”
She thought it over a minute, and threw out her hands despairingly.
“Oh, it is impossible!” she cried. “Why, if you were not my cousin,
should you have stayed and worked for us, and borne all the hideous
things I said to you? Only a saint would do such a thing.”
“He’ll not ask you to believe him a saint,” put in Overton.
“No, I don’t even claim to be much of an improvement on Lee.”
“Oh, any one would be an improvement on poor Bob.”
In answer, Vickers got up, and going over to where she stood beside the
window, he told her his story. He told it ostensibly to her alone, but
Emmons on the sofa was plainly an interested listener. Vickers spoke
with that simplicity, that directness and absence of any attempt at
self-justification, which the wise use when they are most desirous of
being leniently judged.
From the first, he began to hope that he was succeeding. Nellie
regarded him with a clear and steady glance from the start, and when he
had finished, she remained gazing at him--no longer doubtful, but with
something almost terror-stricken in her expression.
In the pause that followed, Emmons turned to the lawyer.
“Now, you are a clever man, Mr. Overton,” he said easily. “Perhaps you
can explain to me, why it is that a fellow who is known to be a thief
and a liar should be in such a hurry to write himself down a murderer
as well?”
The tone and manner of the interruption, coming at a moment of high
emotion, were too much for Vickers’s temper. He turned on Emmons white
with rage.
“I’ve stood about as much as I mean to stand from you,” he said.
“Overton and Nellie are welcome to believe me or not as they like, but
you will either believe me or leave this house.”
His tone was so menacing that Overton stood up, expecting trouble, but
it was Nellie who spoke.
“James will do nothing of the kind,” she said. “If you are not Bob Lee
you have no right to say who shall stay in this house and who shall
not. The house is mine, and I won’t have any one in it who can’t be
civil to James.”
“Then you certainly can’t have me,” said Vickers.
“It seems not,” answered Nellie.
They exchanged such a steel-like glance as only those who love each
other can inflict, and then Vickers flung out of the house.
When, a few minutes later, Overton caught up with him, his anger had
not cooled.
“Hush, hush, my dear fellow,” said the lawyer. “Hilltop is not
accustomed to such language. Let a spirited lady have her heroics if
she wants.”