III.PAUL AND VIRGINIA.
Thusfortified in a material way against the approach of any enemy, and exalted in spirit above the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the minutes seemed hours and space and time but mediums of his own control. When his first pipe was finished he threw it aside and walked openly out upon the lawn. The very birds were sleepy, and the park lay spellbound in the shimmer of its own warm light. Austin took his way along the margin of the pool; it was studded with white still lilies that lay dreamily upon the green water; great gaudy dragon-flies hung motionless upon the lily-petals, like silk-robed ladies in some spotless marble hall.
What was it that gave such interest to the little familiar pool to him, who had smoked his cigar by the lotos-pools of Yeddo’smoats, or dreamed these same summer hours away by the fountain of the Court of Lions in far Granada? Well enough knew Mr. Austin May what memory it was that hung about the place; and he smiled his mature and mocking smile as he remembered his boyish love. Many times had they two wandered there, May Austin and himself, wandering together through crusty Uncle Austin’s strange demesne; his uncle Austin, her aunt’s husband. Old John Austin had married for love a poor and beautiful cousin whose mother had engineered the marriage against the girl’s will; and they had hated one another very cordially. Too proud to be divorced, John Austin had built himself this strange pavilion where his wife had promised she would never go. She kept her word faithfully; and he never went into the house without first sending in his card. They met in company, and with the greatest courtesy, and gave their grand due dinners of sixteen, each at one end of the long table, with a splendid high épergne between. Mrs. Austin had taken May Austin into her lonely bosom, and Uncle John had had Austin May home fromcollege, where his bounty kept him, and had given him his taste for claret, and tried to give his knowledge of the world. And they used to sit there, he and his uncle, in this same pavilion, smoking, close hedged in from womankind. And when the old man had fallen asleep, Austin would creep out into the park, and walk there with his lovely cousin May. And on one summer day, for all the world like this, he won her heart, this gay young Harvard senior, all among the rushes by the lily-pool. And Austin had gone back into the pavilion, quaking, to tell his uncle, and found the latter very dignified and dead, a bottle of the famous Eclipse Lafite close by his elbow. As with the old French poet
“Hear ye, who are soon to die,What Villon did before he started—He drank one glass of Burgundy;This he did; and then, departed.”
“Hear ye, who are soon to die,What Villon did before he started—He drank one glass of Burgundy;This he did; and then, departed.”
“Hear ye, who are soon to die,
What Villon did before he started—
He drank one glass of Burgundy;
This he did; and then, departed.”
the claret had not been wasted; its very last glass had been savored by its master before his spirit took flight.
Austin May was overcome with horror. He ran and gave the alarm at the house,and then sought his cousin May, whom he found, standing lovely, in the twilight by the lilies. He kissed her, preliminarily, and put his strong arm about her slender waist; then he broke the news to her, and then he kissed her again, by way of peroration.
Now May Austin was shocked; but not so much so as if she had seen her uncle since her aunt’s death, which had happened some three years before. He had suffered—even commanded—that she should go on living at the house; but since then, there being no covenance requiring his attendance at the family table, he had lived, eaten, and drunk, entirely in the pavilion. Miss Austin had had a fancy that she had seen him groping about in the shrubbery from time to time, and spying at her through the leaves; but upon the only occasion when she had gone to see him—it was to thank him for some birthday present, distantly conveyed—he had most mysteriously disappeared. But, as if he appreciated her visit, and were doing her all the honor possible, the fountain played its highest—an almost unheard-of thing since Mrs.Austin’s death. When she had been alive, the fountain had always played while she was walking in the garden. Uncle John, though prejudiced, was always courteous.
But the next memory was clearer yet to Austin May; and even now a twinge of sadness, as he recalled it, spoiled one puff or so of his fragrant cabaña. For it was by this same lily-pool, a few days later. Uncle Austin’s remains had been duly disposed of, according to the terms of the will, and he and pretty May had met for the last time; the last time for a few years, he had said; the last time forever, as she had feared. Austin, indeed, had rebelled at this, and spoken boldly of renouncing everything; but she had persevered, and made him see that it was best, at least for a trial term of years, for him to comply with his uncle’s last behest. And so he was going abroad; and she walked with him, by the lily-pool, through the lawn, through the hedge to the little seat beneath the linden that had been her favorite; and there they had said good-by, with kisses and tears; and the same grim station-master, messenger of fate! had carried him off in his carryall, appropriatelynamed. “The kisses had been very sweet, but the tears had been superfluous.”
May smiled as he thought of this, and, lighting another cigar, went back of the pavilion. There he threw back a drawer in the carven oak-table and drew out the queer old will. It was nothing but a copy, bearing the lugubrious skull and cinerary urn which form the seal of the Norfolk County probate court; but it was already yellow with time, and as May turned amusedly over the old leaves the dust dropped from them upon his spotless Poole-built trousers. Ah, a good judge of claret was old Uncle Austin; a good judge of claret and of other things. May looked at the bottle of the famous Eclipse (he had not yet tasted it, and there is a certain worldly wisdom about claret very inspiring to those who meditate a practical course of action), and began to read. But his hand shook, as he opened the will, and any doctor seeing him would have treated our hero for nervous prostration, or sent him to a faith-healer at the very least.
“In the name of God, Amen. I, John Austin, gentleman, being of sound mindand disposing memory, and a widower, for which I am reverently thankful” (it has been mentioned that Mrs. Austin died some years before) “do make and declare this my last will and testament.
“My body I consign to ashes, and direct that it be duly cremated under supervision of my executors; my soul I recommend to him who made it, provided that He have not already taken the soul of Georgiana Austin Austin, my late wife, under his same supervision, in which case I reverently pray that it be left to my own disposition.
“I bequeath to my executors the sum of Five Thousand Dollars, and direct that it be expended in the erection of a large white marble monument to my late wife, aforesaid, said monument to be designed after the florid manner of the later Gothic, and to be placed upon my family lot at Mount Auburn, and to bear, besides the name of my late wife aforesaid, but one inscription, viz.:A Perfect Woman.
“I direct my executors to pay the sum of five hundred dollars annually to the niece of my late wife aforesaid, May Austin, until she be married; and upon her marriage Idirect that said sum be annually paid to her husband, for his sole use and consolation.
“I devise and bequeath my bin of Lafite claret, so-called Eclipse, to my nephew, Austin May, together with all my other estate, real and personal, stocks, bonds, moneys, goods, and chattels, wherever the same be found, but subject only to the following condition, namely: I direct my executors to manage and invest all such moneys and estate, save the use of my house in Brookline, Massachusetts, which I give to my said nephew directly; and all the income, rents, and profits of such estate to pay over to my said nephew annually upon his sole receipt;provided, that if he marry at any time within eleven years after my death, or before he shall reach the age of thirty-five, whichever shall first occur, then and in that case I revoke all the devises and bequests to my said nephew aforesaid; but direct my executors to deliver such of my Eclipse claret as then remains, to the most prominent Total Abstinence Association which shall then exist in the town of Boston; and all the rest and residue of my estate I devise and bequeath absolutely and in fee to my residuary legatee.And I have written the name of said——”
At this point in his reading, May heard a woman’s laugh. It seemed to come from the shrubbery close by. In order to get more light for the will, he had opened the middle slats of the blind toward the trees; so that it almost seemed possible for a tall girl, standing close to the pavilion, to look directly in. With inconceivable agility, May dropped to the floor, beneath the window-sill, and ran rapidly around the large room on his hands and knees, close to the wall. When beneath the table where he had left his opera-glass, he took it up, and adjusting it hastily, stood upon his knees, high enough to look through the open shutter in the window toward the house. Sure enough, he had hardly got the proper focus, when a young girl emerged from the shrubbery and walked down the road. But she was very young, only eighteen or so, and though admirably pretty, May was confident that he had never seen her before. He watched her until she had disappeared in the distance; and then, rising to his feet, returned to the reading of the will. Butfirst he altered the angle of the slats of the blind, so that it would be impossible for anyone standing outside to look into the room.
“And I have written the name of the said residuary legatee in a sealed envelope, which I hereby incorporate as part of this will and append thereto; and I direct that said envelope be not opened, but remain in the custody of my executors, or of the proper court, until my said nephew marry, or reach the age of thirty-five, or until eleven years have elapsed from the date of my death, whichever shall first happen; and thereupon my said executors may open the same and deliver a copy thereof to my said nephew; and proceed to pay over and deliver all my estate, real and personal, to my residuary legatee therein mentioned.
“And I will explain, for the benefit of the gaping and the curious, that this I do that my nephew may profit by my experience of early marriages. For no man should by law be allowed to choose what woman shall be his wife until he be arrived at the age when he may be hoped to have sufficient discretion not to choose any woman atall.” Then followed the appointment of executors; and that was all.
May laid aside the scandalous old will and began to think.
How he had laughed at the last clause, he and May Austin, as they wandered by the lily-pond that evening! And when she had persuaded him not at once to give it all up and marry penniless, he had tried to make the best of it. If she would not marry him then, what were eleven years? Eleven years—bah! August 14, 1886—why, he would only be thirty-three and she twenty-seven! But she had refused to make it an engagement, refused even to write to him; and the poor young Bachelor of Arts had gone off to his steamer most unhappily. And that farewell kiss under the lindens! And the letters he had written back—from Liverpool—beseeching May Austin to reconsider her determination! Austin May took another cigar from the box, and smiled pensively.