The speaker sat in extreme shadow. Her dress was a blur in the darkness,
faintly outlining her person, which seemed to be of medium height,
though in the great chair she looked shrunken and huddled together. Her
eyes, faint points of light, were steadfastly fixed on mine, but her
face was, I thought, in such deep shadow that I could not make it out.
But the concentration points, so to speak, were not her eyes, but her
hands. They lay in her lap motionless, and yet they were
extraordinarily alive. Even in that light their emaciated condition
testified to her extreme age; but they were not decrepit, they seemed to
glow with a steady light, an inward and consuming energy.
"You may leave us, Emily," said the voice, and Emily, who had been
hovering with what I somehow felt to be a hint of malice, unwillingly
withdrew. The other closed her eyes until the shutting of the door
assured us of privacy.
"I am dying," she began suddenly in her strange, impersonal manner.
"Do not interrupt me," she added coldly as I was about to utter some
inanity. "I desire to be certain of one thing while there is time,
namely, that my wishes respecting the disposition of my body shall be
respected--in every particular."
Her manner indicated nothing out of the ordinary. She might have been
speaking of the merest commonplace.
"You are a lawyer. How can I so arrange that the directions I will leave
must be carried out after my death?"
"Ordinarily," I managed to stammer, "directions in such matters when
given to the heirs, have the binding force----"
There was a second's pause.
"That is not what I wish," continued the inflexible voice. "I wish to
compel attention to my instructions."
"A provision can be inserted in your will," I said at length, "which
would make the inheritance of your property conditional upon the
fulfillment of your wishes."
She seemed to consider this. Her hands moved slightly in her lap.
"And if those conditions were not fulfilled?"
"Your estate would go elsewhere as you might direct."
There was prolonged pause. Her eyes disappeared, and try as I would, I
could not distinguish her face. Her hands shifted, and she spoke.
"Step to the door and call my daughter. I am Mrs. Drainger."
I might have been the servant. I arose and groped my way toward the
door. She neither offered me any direction as to its location, nor
commented upon the gloom in which I hesitated.
I reached the door and, opening it, was about to call, when I was aware
of Miss Drainger's presence; she seemed to have materialized, a pale
specter, out of the dusk, and I was again conscious of vague malice.
"Your mother wished me to call you," I said, holding the door open.
Her strange eyes searched mine for a brief moment as she entered the
room.
Suddenly Miss Drainger, poised in the gloom over her mother's chair,
seemed to my startled sense like a monstrous pallid moth. The
impression, though momentary, was none the less vivid. I felt choked,
uncomfortable. An instant only, and Mrs. Drainger's voice recalled me to
my senses.
She gave directions for the bringing of a box containing some documents
she wished. Miss Drainger said nothing, but turned abruptly, gave me
another sidelong glance and left the room.
In the time she was absent neither of us spoke. The strange woman in the
corner shrank, it seemed to me, deeper into the dusk, until only her
extraordinary hands remained; and I sat in my uncomfortable and ancient
chair, the little streaks of sunlight from the blind making odd patterns
on my legs and hands.
The return of the daughter with a tin box which she placed in my hands
was followed by an extraordinary moment. I became, if I did not deceive
myself, increasingly conscious of a silent struggle going on between the
two. Mrs. Drainger, in her biting, inflexible voice, again requested her
daughter to leave us. Emily demurred and in the interval that followed I
had a sense of crisis. Nay, I fancied more; upon hearing Emily's brief
protest Mrs. Drainger slowly clenched her hands, and the movement was as
though she were steadily bending her daughter's will to her purpose. At
length, with the same sibilant in-taking of the breath I had observed
before, Emily turned and swept through the door, her face unusually
yellow, the little spots of rouge on her cheeks burning suddenly.
The box she had given me contained a will made by Mrs. Drainger,
together with a few securities totaling no great value, and other less
important documents. This will she now directed me to modify so that
the inheritance of the property upon her death would be conditional upon
the fulfillment by the heir of certain conditions which she said she
would indicate in writing.