234CHAPTER XIVA PIECE OF DIPLOMACY
When Lucy, radiant in her own happiness, entered her aunt’s room, she was surprised to find that all Ellen’s recent anger had apparently vanished, and that she had dropped into a lethargic mood from which it was difficult to rouse her. It was not so much that the elder woman was out of temper—that was to be expected—as that she seemed to be turning over in her mind some problem which was either unsolved or unpleasant, and which knitted her brow into a web of wrinkles, forcing her lips together with an ominous curl.
Lucy, who stood at the table arranging a vase of freshly gathered pansies, furtively studied the invalid’s sullen reverie.
“How are you feeling to-day, Aunt Ellen?” she at last inquired with courageous effort.
“No different.”
“Melvina said she was afraid you did not have a comfortable night.”235
The blue eyes flashed a suspicious glance of inquiry over the questioner’s countenance, then closed wearily.
“I didn’t,” was all she said.
“I am sorry to hear that.”
The regret was uttered with gentle sincerity. In an existence cloudless as her own, magnanimousness required little effort. Moreover, Lucy was forgiving by nature; and had she not been, the helplessness and friendlessness of the lonely soul before her would have presented a powerful plea for pity.
Ellen did not respond to the words.
“What was the trouble?” went on Lucy, after waiting a suitable length of time and sensing that no answer was to be forthcoming. “Were you in pain?”
At the interrogation a flame of hatred leaped into the woman’s face, flickered there, and then died down, leaving it cold and hard as marble.
“I got to thinkin’,” she returned briefly.
“I hope what I said did not worry you, Aunt Ellen.”
“It did last night; but it don’t now,” responded Ellen, with a disagreeable laugh.
“That’s good. I should be sorry to have been the cause of your lying here fretting.”236
“I ain’t doin’ no frettin’ now,” repeated Ellen. Then, changing a subject both seemed to regard as a delicate one, she asked in a more natural tone: “What were you plannin’ to do this mornin’?”
“Oh, just the regular things,” Lucy said cordially, glad to be once more on safer ground. “Why?”
“’Cause I’m possessed of a hankerin’ for some raspberries,” said Ellen. “I like ’em, an’ I ain’t had any for a long time. Somehow it seems as if they’d taste awful good.”
Lucy’s face lighted.
“Why, I’d be glad to try and get some for you, Aunt Ellen,” she cried. “You know I’d love to get anything you wanted if I could. I’m so pleased that you mentioned it.”
Ellen twisted her head on the pillow and began outlining the figures on the counterpane with her long, misshapen finger.
“I s’pose you couldn’t find enough for a shortcake, could you?” she ventured skeptically.
“I don’t know but I could. At least, I could try. Of course it’s late in the season for them.”237
The lean finger continued to follow the flowered design of the bedcovering.
“There used to be some late ones up at the top of Pine Ridge,” remarked the invalid casually. “That would be quite a walk though, an’ likely further than you’d care to go.”
“No, indeed it wouldn’t!”
There was fervor in the protest. Already visions of a morning in the blue and gold world were shaping themselves in the girl’s mind. No doubt Jane Howe would go with her; probably Martin would be too busy to leave his work; but if he were not, what a bit of Paradise they could have together!
Ellen, who read her niece’s thoughts almost as readily as if they had been openly expressed, smiled a malevolent smile.
“It’s a good four miles to the Ridge,” she remarked. “Goin’, comin’, an’ pickin’ would take you the whole mornin’, I reckon.”
“I’m afraid it would,” agreed Lucy. “Could you spare me as long as that?”
“Yes. I don’t need nothin’; an’ if I do, Melviny can get it. I’d rather have you go than not. If you could get me enough berries for a shortcake it would be worth it.”238
The note of suppressed eagerness in the words caused Lucy to regard her aunt with quick, indefinable suspicion.
But Ellen met the glance unflinchingly, and with a baffled sense of being mistaken the girl hurried from the room. When she returned shortly afterward and paused in the doorway, she presented a winning picture.
She had donned a short khaki skirt and a pair of riding leggings such as she had been accustomed to wear in the West, and the broad sombrero crowning her golden hair outlined it like a halo. A simple blouse turned away to give freedom to the firm white throat completed the costume. Dimpling with anticipation, she held up her tin pail.
“I’m off, Aunt Ellen,” she called. “You shall have your shortcake if there is a berry within five miles.”
The woman listened to the fall of the light step on the stairs and the fragment of a song that came from the girl’s lips until the last note of the music died away; then she called Melvina.
“Melviny!”
“Yes, marm.”
“I want you should find Tony and tell him239to harness up. There’s somethin’ I need done in the village.”
“All right, Miss Webster.”
“Bring me a sheet of paper an’ a pencil before you go.”
The nurse entered with the desired articles.
“I’m sendin’ to town for Lawyer Benton,” announced the patient with elaborate carelessness.
Neither Melvina’s voice nor her face expressed the slightest curiosity.
“There’s some business I must see to right away, an’ I reckon I may’s well get it fixed up this mornin’.”
“Yes, marm.”
“Give Tony this note for Mr. Benton and tell him to fetch him back soon’s he can.”
Nodding acquiescence, Melvina disappeared.
During the interval between the time the wheels rattled out of the yard and rattled in again, Ellen fidgeted at a high-pitched excitement, starting nervously at every sound. Sometimes she scowled; and once she burst into a harsh, cracked peal of laughter. Her thoughts, whatever they were, seemed to amuse her vastly.
The moment the tramp of the horse’s hoofs240sounded on the gravel outside, she was alert and called to Melvina, stationed at the window:
“Is that Tony?”
“Yes, marm.”
“Has he got Mr. Benton with him?”
“Yes, Miss Webster. An’ there’s somebody else, too.”
“That’s good. Show Mr. Benton right up here. You needn’t wait. I’ll call you when I need you. Let the other man sit in the kitchen ’til we want him.”
Whatever the mysterious business was, it took no great while, for before an hour had passed Melvina, waiting in the hall outside the chamber door, heard a shrill summons.
“You can come in now, Melviny,” Ellen said. “There’s something here I want you should put your name to; an’ you can fetch that man who’s downstairs, an’ Tony.”
“All right.”
When, however, a few seconds later Melvina, accompanied by the stranger and the wondering Portuguese boy, entered the patient’s room, it was Mr. Benton who stepped into the foreground and who came obsequiously forward, pen in hand, to address the attendant.
“The paper which you are about to sign,241Miss Grey,” he began pompously, “is——” But Ellen cut short his peroration.
“It don’t make no difference to Melviny what it is, Mr. Benton,” she said impatiently. “All she’s got to do is to watch me write my name, an’ then put hers down where you tell her, together with Tony an’ the other witness. That will end it.”
“But don’t you think, Miss Webster, that in justice to Miss Grey, you should inform her——”
“No, I don’t,” snapped Ellen. “Melviny don’t care nothin’ about my affairs. I’ll write my name. Then you can give her the pen an’ let her sign. That’s all she’s got to do.”
Although Mr. Benton was a man of heavy, impressive appearance, he was in reality a far less effectual person to combat opposition than he seemed, and sensing that in the present instance it was easier to yield than to argue, he allowed himself to be cowed into submission and meekly gave the pen to Melvina who with blind faith inscribed her name on the crisp white paper in a small cramped hand. Caleb Saunders, the witness Mr. Benton had brought with him, next wrote his name, forming each letter with such conscientiousness that Ellen242could hardly wait until the painstaking and elaborate ceremonial was completed.
“Now let Tony sign,” she ordered imperiously. “He needn’t stop to wash his hands. A little dirt won’t be no hindrance, an’ I’m in a hurry to get this thing out of the way so Mr. Benton can go back.”
Yet notwithstanding Ellen’s haste, for Tony to affix his name to the document in question proved to be little short of a life work. Six times he had to be instructed on which line to write; and when on the seventh admonition his mind but vaguely grasped what was required of him, the lawyer took his stand at his elbow and with finger planted like a guidepost on the paper indicated beyond all chance of error where the signature was to be placed. When, however, the pen was redipped and upraised for the final legal touch, again it faltered. This time the delay was caused by uncertainties of spelling, which, it must be confessed, also baffled the combined intellects of the lawyer and the two women. Paponollari was not a name commonly encountered in New England. The three wrestled with it valiantly, but when a vote was taken, and it was set down in accordance with the ruling of the majority, it was243disheartening to discover that, when all was said and done, the Portuguese lad was not at all sure whether Tony was his Christian name or not.
“Good Lord!” ejaculated Ellen when, after more debating, the signature was finally inscribed, “I’m clean beat out. Why, I could have deeded away the whole United States in the time it’s taken this lout of a boy to scribble his name. Is it any wonder that with only a stupid idiot like this for help, my garden’s always behind other folks’, an’ my chores never done?”
Then to the bewildered, nerve-wracked alien she thundered:
“Don’t blot it, you fool!—don’t blot it! Can’t you keep your fingers out of the wet ink? Heavens, Melviny, do get him out of here!”
Tony was only too ready to retire. The ordeal had strained his patience and had left his brain feeling the stress of unaccustomed exercise. Therefore, allowing Melvina to drive him before her much as she would have driven a docile Jersey from a cabbage patch, he made his way downstairs, followed by the perspiring lawyer.244
It was not until both of them were safely on the road to the village, and the house had assumed its customary calm that Lucy arrived, her hair tumbled by the wind and her eyes glowing like stars.
“I’ve got your berries, Aunt Ellen,” she said, holding aloft a pail heaped with fruit. “See what beauties they are! You shall have a royal shortcake.”
Ellen’s appreciation for some reason was, however, scanty and confused. She averted her glance from her niece’s face, and even at noontime when the girl appeared bearing a marvelously baked and yet more marvelously decorated masterpiece of culinary art, she had not regained sufficient poise to partake of the delicacy in any mood save that of furtive and guilty silence.
Lucy, ever sympathetic, ventured the fear that the invalid was over-tired, and after the meal drew the shades that her aunt might rest.
In the dim light Ellen seemed more at ease and presently fell into a deep slumber that lasted until midnight and was broken only by some phantasy of her dreams which intermittently brought from her lips a series of245muttered execrations and bitter, insinuating laughs.
Toward morning she roused herself and gave a feeble cry of pain. Instantly alert, Melvina hastened to her bedside. But by the time a candle was lighted all human aid was vain. Ellen Webster was dead.
246CHAPTER XVELLEN’S VENGEANCE
It was useless to pretend that Ellen’s death did not bring to Lucy Webster a sense of relief and freedom. It was as if some sinister, menacing power that had suppressed every spontaneous impulse of her nature had suddenly been removed and left her free at last to be herself. Until now she had not realized how tired she was,—not alone physically tired but tired of groping her way to avoid the constant friction which life with her aunt engendered.
For the first few days after the funeral she kept Melvina with her and did nothing but rest. Then returning energy brought back her normal desire for action, and she began to readjust her plans. Together the two women cleaned the house from top to bottom, rooting into trunks, chests, and cupboards, and disposing of much of the litter that Ellen had accumulated. Afterward Melvina took her247leave, and Lucy turned her mind to renovations.
She would have new paper and fresh paint, she decided; also the long-coveted chintz hangings; and to this end she would make an expedition to the village to see what could be procured there in the way of artistic materials. It might be necessary for her to go to Concord, or even to Boston for the things she wanted.
In the meantime, since she was driving to town, perhaps she had better take along her aunt’s will. There must be formalities to be observed regarding it, and although she was not at all sure what they were, Mr. Benton would of course know.
But search as she would, the white envelope with its imposing red seal was nowhere to be found. She went through every drawer in her bureau, every pigeonhole in her desk; she ransacked closet and bookshelf; she even emptied all her belongings upon the bed and examined each article carefully to see if the missing document had by any chance strayed into a fantastic hiding place; but the paper failed to come to light.
What could have become of it? The envelope had been there, that she knew. Only a248week ago she had seen it in the top drawer of her desk. She would stake her oath that she had not removed it. Vague disquietude took possession of her. Tony had always been honest, and of Melvina’s integrity there could be no question. As for Ellen, had she not herself put the will into the girl’s keeping—as a weapon with which to meet this very emergency? It was incredible, preposterous to assume that she had taken it back, especially when one considered her helplessness to do so unaided. That solution might as well be dismissed as ridiculous.
The paper was lost, that was all there was to it. Lost!
In her own absent-mindedness, or in a moment of confusion and weariness, she had either accidentally destroyed it, or she had removed it from its customary place to a safer spot and forgotten where she had put it.
Yet, after all, how foolish it was of her to worry. Doubtless Mr. Benton had a copy of the document, and if she made full confession of her stupidity he would know what to do. Didn’t lawyers always keep copies of every legal paper they drew up? They must of course do so.249
Therefore without breathing a word of her troubles to the Howes—not even to Martin—she set forth to the village, her dreams of redecorating the house being thrust, for the time being, entirely into the background by this disquieting happening.
Mr. Benton was alone in his stuffy little office when she arrived. Evidently his professional duties were not pressing, for he was hunched up over a small air-tight stove and amid a smudge of tobacco smoke was reading “Pickwick Papers.” At the entrance of a client, however, and this client in particular, he rose in haste, and slipping simultaneously into his alpaca coat and his legal manner—the two seemed to be a one-piece garment—held out his hand with a mixture of solicitude and pleasure.
“My dear Miss Webster,” he began. “I hope you are well. You have sustained a great loss since I last beheld you, a great loss.”
He drew forward a second armchair similar to the one in which he had been sitting and motioned Lucy to accept it.
“Your aunt was a worthy woman who will be profoundly missed in the community,” he continued in a droning voice.250
Lucy did not answer. In fact the lawyer did not seem to expect she would. He was apparently delivering himself of a series of observations which came one after the other in habitual sequence, and which he preferred should not be interrupted.
“Death, however, is the common lot of mankind and must come to us all,” he went on in the same singsong tone, “and I hope that in the thought of your devotion to the deceased you will find comfort.”
Having now terminated the introduction with which he was accustomed to preface his remarks on all such occasions, he regarded the girl in the chair opposite him benignly.
“I was intending to come to see you,” he went on more cheerfully, and yet being careful to modulate his words so that they might still retain the bereavement vibration, “but you have forestalled me, I see. I did not wish to hurry you unduly.”
“I have been tired,” Lucy replied simply, “but I am rested now and quite ready to do whatever is necessary.”
“I am glad to hear that, very glad,” Mr. Benton returned. “Of course there is no251immediate haste; nevertheless it is well to straighten out such matters as soon as it can conveniently be done. When do you contemplate leaving town?”
Lucy met the question with a smile.
“Oh, I don’t intend to leave Sefton Falls,” she said quickly. “I have grown very fond of the place and mean to remain here.”
“Indeed,” nodded Mr. Benton. “That is interesting. I am glad to hear we are not to lose you from the village.”
He rubbed his hands and continued to nod thoughtfully.
“About how soon, if I might ask so personal a question, do you think you could be ready to hand over the house to the new tenant?” he at last ventured with hesitation.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”
The lawyer seemed surprised.
“You knew of your aunt’s will?”
“I knew she had made a will, yes, sir. She gave it to me to keep for her.”
“You were familiar with the contents of it?”
“Not entirely so,” Lucy answered. “I knew she had left me the house and some money. She told me that much.”252
“U—u—m!” observed Mr. Benton. “But the second will—she spoke to you of that also?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You were not cognizant that a few days before the deceased passed—shall we say, away”—he paused mournfully,—“that she made a new will and revoked the previous one?”
“No.”
“No one told you that?”
“No, sir.”
The lawyer straightened himself. Matters were becoming interesting.
“There was a second will,” he declared with deliberation. “It was drawn up one morning in your aunt’s room, with Miss Melvina Grey, Mr. Caleb Saunders, and the boy Tony as witnesses.”
Lucy waited breathlessly.
“This will,” went on Mr. Benton, “provides for quite a different disposition of the property. I must beg you to prepare yourself for a disappointment.”
The girl threw back her head.
“Go on, please,” she commanded.
“Quite a different disposition of the253property,” repeated Mr. Benton, dwelling on the cadence of the phrase.
“What is it?”
The man delayed.
“Have you any reason to suppose, Miss Webster, that your aunt was—shall we say annoyed, with you?”
“I knew she did not like the way I felt about some things,” admitted Lucy.
“But did not some vital difference of opinion arise between you recently?” Mr. Benton persisted.
“I spoke my mind to Aunt Ellen the other day,” confessed the girl. “I had to.”
“Ah! Then that explains matters!”
“What matters?”
“The somewhat strange conditions of the will.”
Having untangled the enigma to his own satisfaction, Mr. Benton proceeded to sit back and enjoy its solution all by himself.
“Can’t you tell me what they are?” Lucy at last inquired impatiently.
“I can enlighten you, yes. In fact, it is my duty to do so.”
Rising, he went to the desk drawer and made a pretense of fumbling through his papers; but254it was easy to see that the document he sought had been carefully placed on the top of the sparse, untidy pile that cluttered the interior of the rickety piece of furniture.
“Perhaps,” he remarked, “there is no real need to burden your mind with legal formalities; nevertheless——”
“Oh, don’t bother to read me the whole will,” broke out Lucy sharply. “Just tell me in plain terms what Aunt Ellen has done.”
It was obvious that Mr. Benton did not at all relish the off-handedness of the request.
He depended not a little on his professional pomposity to bolster up a certain lack of confidence in himself, and stripped of this legal regalia he shriveled to a very ordinary person indeed.
“Your aunt,” he began in quite a different tone, “has left her property to Mr. Martin Howe.”
Lucy recoiled.
“To whom?”
“To Martin Howe.”
There was an oppressive pause.
“To Martin Howe?” the girl stammered at length. “But there must be some mistake.”
Mr. Benton met her gaze kindly.255
“I fear there is no mistake, my dear young lady,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t mean because my aunt has cut me off,” Lucy explained with pride. “She of course had a right to do what she pleased. But to leave the property to Martin Howe! Why, she would scarcely speak to him.”
“So I have gathered,” the lawyer said. “That is what makes the will so remarkable.”
“It is preposterous! Martin will never accept it in the world.”
“That contingency is also provided for,” put in Mr. Benton.
“How?”
“The property is willed to the legatee—house, land, and money—to be personally occupied by said beneficiary and not sold, deeded, or given away on the conditions—a very unusual condition this second one——” Again Mr. Benton stopped, his thumbs and finger neatly pyramided into a miniature squirrel cage, over the top of which he regarded his client meditatively. His reverie appeared to be intensely interesting.
“Very unusual indeed,” he presently concluded absently.
“Well?” demanded Lucy.256
“Ah, yes, Miss Webster,” he continued, starting at the interrogation. “As I was saying, the conditions made by the deceased are unusual—peculiar, in fact, if I may be permitted to say so. The property goes to Mr. Martin Howe on the condition that in six months’ time he personally rebuilds the wall lying between the Howe and Webster estates and now in a state of dilapidation.”
“He will never do it,” burst out Lucy indignantly, springing to her feet.
“In that case the property goes unreservedly to the town of Sefton Falls,” went on Mr. Benton in an even tone, “to be used as a home for the destitute of the county.”
The girl clinched her hands. It was a trap,—a last, revengeful, defiant act of hatred.
The pity that any one should go down into the grave with such bitterness of heart was the girl’s first thought.
Then the cleverness of the old woman’s plot began to seep into her mind. All unwittingly Martin Howe was made a party in a diabolical scheme to defraud her—the woman who loved him—of her birthright, of the home that should have been hers.
The only way he could restore to her what257was her own was to marry her, and to do that he must perform the one deed he had pledged himself never to be tempted into: he must rebuild the wall. Otherwise the property would pass into other hands.
Nothing could so injure the Howe estate as to have a poor farm next door. Ellen of course knew that. Ah, it was a vicious document—that last Will and Testament of Ellen Webster.
Mr. Benton’s voice broke in upon Lucy’s musings.
“The deceased,” he added with a final grin of appreciation, “appoints Mr. Elias Barnes as executor,he being,” the lawyer quoted from the written page, “the meanest man I know.”
Thus did the voice of the dead speak from the confines of the grave! Death had neither transformed nor weakened the intrepid hater. From her aunt’s coffin Lucy could seem to hear vindictive chuckles of revenge and hatred, and a mist gathered before her eyes.
She had had no regrets for the loss of Ellen’s body; but she could not but lament with genuine grief the loss of her soul.
258CHAPTER XVILUCY COMES TO A DECISION
Slowly Lucy drove homeward, her dreams of rosy wall papers and gay chintz hangings shattered. Thrusting into insignificance these minor considerations, however, was the thought of Martin Howe and what he would say to the revelation of Ellen’s cupidity.
She would not tell him about the will, on that she was determined. She would not mention it to anybody. Instead she would go promptly to work packing up her few possessions and putting the house in perfect order. Fortunately it had so recently been cleaned that to prepare it for closing would be a simple matter.
As for herself and Martin, the dupes of an old woman’s vengeance, both of them were of course blameless. Nevertheless, the present twist of Fate had entirely changed their relation to one another.
When she had defied her aunt and voiced259with such pride her love for the man of her heart, it had been in a joyous faith that although he had not made similar confession, he would ultimately do so. The possibility that he was making of her affection a tool for vengeance had never come into her mind until Ellen had put it there, and then with involuntary loyalty she had instantly dismissed the suggestion as absurd. But here was a different situation. She was no longer independent of circumstances. She was penniless in the world, all the things that should have been hers having been swept away by the malicious stroke of a pen. It was almost as tragic to be married out of spite as out of pity.
She knew Martin’s standards of honor. He would recognize, as she did, the justice of the Webster homestead and lands remaining in her possession; and since the will stipulated that he must personally occupy these properties and could neither sell, transfer, nor give them to their rightful owner, she felt sure he would seize upon the only other means of making her freehold legally hers. Whether he loved her or not would not now be in his eyes the paramount issue. In wedding her he would feel he was carrying out an act of justice which260under the guise of affection it would be quite legitimate to perform.
This solution of the difficulty, however, cleared away but the minor half of the dilemma. Had she been willing to accept Martin’s sacrifice of himself and marry him, there still remained the wall,—the obstacle that for generations had loomed between the peace of Howe and Webster and now loomed ’twixt her and her lover with a magnitude it had never assumed before.
Martin would never rebuild that wall—never!
Had he not vowed that he would be burned at the stake first? That he would face persecution, nakedness, famine, the sword before he would do it? All the iron of generations of Howe blood rung in the oath. He had proclaimed the decree throughout the county. Everybody for miles around knew how he felt. Though he loved her as man had never loved woman (a miracle which she had no ground for supposing) he would never consent to such a compromise of principles. The being did not exist for whom Martin Howe would abandon his creed of honor.
She knew well that strata of hardness in his261nature, the adamantine will that wrought torture to its possessor because it could not bend. Even the concessions he had thus far made, had, she recognized, cost him a vital struggle. On the day of her aunt’s seizure had she not witnessed the warfare between pity and hatred, generosity and revenge? The powers of light had triumphed, it is true; but it had been only after the bitterest travail; and ever since she had been conscious that within his soul Martin had viewed his victory with a smoldering, unformulated contempt. Even his attentions to her had been paid with a blindfolded, lethargic unwillingness, as if he offered them against the dictates of his conscience and closed his eyes to a crisis he would not, dared not face.
It was one thing for her to light-heartedly announce that she loved Martin Howe and would marry him; but it was quite another matter for him to reach a corresponding conclusion. To her vengeance was an antiquated creed, a remnant of a past decade, which it cost her no effort to brush aside. Martin, on the contrary, was built of sterner stuff. He hated with the vigor of the red-blooded hater, fostering with sincerity the old-fashioned dogmas of justice and retribution. “An eye262for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was a matter of right; and the mercy that would temper it was not always a virtue. More often it was a weakness.
To be caught in Ellen Webster’s toils and own himself beaten would, Lucy well understood, be to his mind a humiliating fate.
Only a compelling, unreasoning love that swept over him like some mighty tidal wave, wrenching from its foundations every impeding barrier, could move him to surrender; and who was she to arouse such passion in any lover? She was only a woman human and faulty. She had indeed a heart to bestow, and without vain boasting it was a heart worth the winning; she held herself in sufficient esteem to set a price on the treasure. But was it jewel enough to prompt a man to uproot every tradition of his moral world for its possession?
Sadly she shook her head. No, Martin would never be lost in a mood of such over-mastering love as this for her. If he made a proposal of marriage, it would be because he was spurred by impulses of justice and pity; and no matter how worthy these motives, he would degenerate into the laughing stock of the community the instant he began to carry263out the terms of the will and reconstruct the wall. She could hear now the taunts and jests of the townsfolk. Some of them would speak in good-humored banter, some with premeditated malice; but their jibes would sting.
“So you’re tacklin’ that wall in spite of all you said, are you, Martin?”
“Ellen Webster’s got you where she wanted you at last, ain’t she, Martin?”
“This would be a proud day for the Websters, Martin!”
There would even be those who would meanly assert that a man could be made to do anything for money.
Ah, she knew what the villagers would say, and so, too, would Martin. How his proud spirit would writhe and smart under the lash of their tongues! Neither pity nor love for her should ever place him in a position of such humiliation.
Before he was confronted by the choice of turning her out of doors, or marrying her and making himself the butt of the county wits, she must clear his path from embarrassment and be gone. She had a pittance of her own that would support her until she could find employment that would render her independent of264charity. Her future would unquestionably be lonely, since she must leave behind her not only the man she loved but the home about which her fondest dreams centered. Nevertheless, she had never lacked courage to do what must be done; and in the present emergency the pride of the Websters came surging to re-enforce her in her purpose.
Nobody must know she was going away—nobody. There must be no leave-takings and no tears. The regrets she had at parting with all she held dear she would keep to herself, nor should any of her kindly acquaintances have the opportunity to offer to her a sheltering roof as they had to old Libby Davis, the town pauper.
Laughing hysterically, she dashed aside the tears that gathered in her eyes. Would it not be ironic if the Webster mansion became a poor farm and she its first inmate?
As for Martin—a quick sob choked her. Well, he should be left free to follow whatever course he ordained. Perhaps he would scornfully turn Ellen’s bequest back to the town; perhaps, on the other hand, he would conquer his scruples, rebuild the wall, and become rich and prosperous as a result. With an265augmented bank account and plenty of fertile land, what might he not accomplish? Why, it would make him one of the largest land-owners in the State!
A glow of pleasure thrilled her. She hoped he would accept the legacy; she prayed he would.
Then, even though she were lonely and penniless, she would have the satisfaction of knowing that what she had forfeited had been for his betterment. There would be some joy in that. To give over her ancestral homestead for a pauper institution that was neither needed nor necessary, and was only a spiteful device of Ellen’s to outwit her was an empty charity.
Having thus formulated her future action, Lucy hastened to carry out her plans with all speed. Before Mr. Benton imparted to Martin the terms of the will, before any hint of them reached his ears, she must be far from Sefton Falls; otherwise he might anticipate her determination and thwart her in it.
How fortunate it was that there was so little to impede her flight! All she owned in the world she could quickly pack into the small trunk she had brought with her from the West.266Not to one article in the house had she any claim; Mr. Benton had impressed that upon her mind. Even the family silver, the little dented mug from which her father had drunk his milk had been willed away.
However, what did it matter now? Sentiment was a foolish thing. There would never be any more Websters to inherit these heirlooms. She was the last of the line; and she would never marry.
Having reached this climax in her meditations, she turned into the driveway and, halting before the barn door, called to Tony to come and take the horse. Afterward she disappeared into the house.
All the afternoon she worked feverishly, putting everything into irreproachable order. Then she packed her few belongings into the little brown trunk. It was four o’clock when she summoned the Portuguese boy from the field.
“I want you to take me and my trunk to the station, Tony,” she said, struggling to make the order a casual one. “Then you are to come back here and go on with your work as usual until Mr. Howe or some one else asks you to do otherwise. I will pay you a month in267advance, and by that time you will be told what you are to do.”
Tony eyed her uncomprehendingly.
“You ain’t leavin’ for good, Miss Lucy?” he inquired at last.
“Yes.”
“B—u—t—t—how can you? Ain’t this your home?”
“Not now, Tony.”
The bewildered foreigner scratched his head.
The girl had been kind to him, and he was devoted to her.
“I don’t see——” he began.
“By and by you will understand,” said Lucy gently. “It is all right. I want to go away.”
“To go away from here?” gasped the lad.
Lucy nodded.
“Is it that you’re lonely since Miss Ellen died?”
“I guess so.”
Tony was thoughtful; then with sudden inspiration he ventured the remark:
“Mebbe you’re afraid to stay alone by yourself in the house nights.”
“Maybe.”
“You ain’t seen a ghost?” he whispered.268
“I’m going away because of a ghost, yes,” Lucy murmured half to herself.
“Then I don’t blame you,” exclaimed Tony vehemently. “You wouldn’t ketch me stayin’ in a house that was haunted by spirits. Where you goin’—back out West?”
“Perhaps so.”
She helped him to carry the trunk out to the wagon and strap it in; then she got in herself.
As they drove in silence out of the yard, not a soul was in sight; nor was there any delay at the station to give rise to gossip. She had calculated with such nicety that the engine was puffing round the bend in the track when she alighted on the platform.
Hurriedly she bought her ticket, checked her trunk, and put her foot on the step as the train started.
Waving a good-by to the faithful servant, who still lingered, she passed into the car and sank down into a seat. She watched the valley, beautiful in amethyst lights, flit past the window; then Sefton Falls, flanked by misty hills, came into sight and disappeared. At last all the familiar country of the moving panorama was blotted out by the darkness, and she was alone.269
Her eyes dropped to the ticket in her lap. Why she had chosen that destination she could not have told. It would, however, serve as well as another. If in future she was to be forever cut off from all she loved on earth, what did it matter where she went?
270CHAPTER XVIITHE GREAT ALTERNATIVE
After Lucy left the office, Mr. Benton sat for an interval thinking. Then he yawned, stretched his arms, went to his desk drawer, and took out the will which he slipped into his waistcoat pocket.
With hands behind him he took a turn or two across the room.
He was a man not lacking in feeling, and impulses of sympathy and mercy until now had deterred him from the execution of his legal duties. Since, however, it was Lucy Webster who had rung up the curtain on the drama in which an important part had been assigned him, there was no need for him to postpone longer the playing of his rôle. He had received his cue.
His lines, he admitted, were not wholly to his liking—not, in fact, to his liking at all; he considered them cruel, unfair, vindictive. Notwithstanding this, however, the plot was271a novel one, and he was too human not to relish the fascinating uncertainties it presented. In all his professional career no case so remarkable had fallen to his lot before.
When as a young man he had attacked his calling, he had been thrilled with enthusiasm and hope. The law had seemed to him the noblest of professions. But the limitations of a small town had quickly dampened his ardor, and instead of righting the injustices of the world as he had once dreamed of doing, he had narrowed into a legal machine whose mechanism was never accelerated by anything more stirring than a round of petty will-makings, land-sellings, bill collections and mortgage foreclosures.
But at last here was something out of the ordinary, a refreshing and unique human comedy that would not only electrify the public but whose chief actors balked all speculation. He could not help owning that Ellen Webster’s bequest, heartily as he disapproved of it, lent a welcome bit of color to the grayness of his days. Ever since he had drawn up the fantastic document it had furnished him with riddles so interesting and unsolvable that they rendered tales of Peter Featherstone and272Martin Chuzzlewit tame reading. These worthies were only creations of paper and ink; but here was a living, breathing enigma,—the enigma of Martin Howe!
What would this hero of the present situation do? For undoubtedly it was Martin who was to be the chief actor of the coming drama.
The lawyer knocked the ashes from his pipe, thrust it into his pocket and, putting on his hat and coat, stepped into the hall, where he lingered only long enough to post on his office door the hastily scrawled announcement: “Will return to-morrow.” Then he hurried across the town green to the shed behind the church where he always hitched his horse. Backing the wagon out with care, he jumped into it and proceeded to drive off down the high road.
Martin Howe was in the field when Mr. Benton arrived. Under ordinary conditions the man would have joined him there, but to-day such a course seemed too informal, and instead he drew up his horse at the front door and sent Jane to summon her brother.
Fortunately Martin was no great distance away and soon entered, a flicker of curiosity in his eyes.273
The lawyer began with a leisurely introduction.
“I imagine, Howe, you are a trifle surprised to have a call from me,” he said.
“Yes, I am a bit.”
“I drove over on business,” announced Mr. Benton.
Nevertheless, although he prefaced his revelation with this remark, he did not immediately enlighten his listener as to what the business was. In truth, now that the great moment for breaking silence had arrived, Mr. Benton found himself obsessed with a desire to prolong its flavor of mystery. It was like rolling the honied tang of a cordial beneath his tongue. A few words and the secret would lay bare in the light of common day, its glamor rent to atoms.
Martin waited patiently.
“On business,” repeated Mr. Benton at last, as if there had been no break in the conversation.
“I’m ready to hear it,” Martin said, smiling.
“I came, in fact, to acquaint you with the contents of a will.”
Yet again the lawyer’s tongue, sphinxlike274from habit, refused to utter the tidings it guarded.
“The will,” he presently resumed, “of my client, Miss Ellen Webster.”
He was rewarded by seeing a shock of surprise run through Martin’s frame.
“I don’t see how Miss Webster’s will can be any concern of mine,” Martin replied stiffly.
The attorney ignored the observation. Continuing with serenity, he observed:
“As I understand it, you and Miss Webster were not——” he coughed hesitatingly behind his hand.
“No, we weren’t,” cut in Martin. “She was a meddling, aggravating old harridan. I hated her, and I’m glad she’s gone.”
“That is an unfortunate sentiment,” remarked Mr. Benton, “unfortunate and disconcerting, because, you see, Miss Ellen Webster has left you all her property.”
“Me! Leftmeher property!”
The dynamic shock behind the words sent the man to his feet.
Mr. Benton nodded calmly.
“Yes,” he reiterated, “Miss Webster has made you her sole legatee.”
Martin regarded his visitor stupidly.275
“I reckon there’s some mistake, sir,” he contrived to stammer.
“No, there isn’t—there’s no mistake. The will was legally drawn up only a few days before the death of the deceased. No possible question can be raised as to her sanity, or the clearness of her wishes concerning her property. She desired everything to come to you.”
“Let me see the paper!” cried Martin.
“I should prefer to read it to you.”
Slowly Mr. Benton took out his spectacles, polished, and adjusted them. Then with impressive deliberation he drew forth and unfolded with a mighty rustling the last will and testament of Ellen Webster, spinster. Many a time he had mentally rehearsed this scene, and now he presented it with a dignity that amazed and awed. Everywhereasandaforesaidrolled out with due majesty, its resonance echoing to the ceiling of the chilly little parlor.
As Martin listened, curiosity gave place to wonder, wonder to indignation. But when at last the concluding condition of the bequest was reached, the rebuilding of the wall, an oath burst from his lips.
“The harpy!” he shouted. “The insolent hell hag!”276
“Softly, my dear sir, softly!” pleaded Mr. Benton in soothing tones.
“I’ll have nothin’ to do with it—nothin’!” stormed Martin. “You can bundle your paper right out of here, Benton. Rebuild that wall! Good God! Why, I wouldn’t do it if I was to be flayed alive. Ellen Webster knew that well enough. She was perfectly safe when she left me her property with that tag hitched to it. She did it as a joke—a cussed joke—out of pure deviltry. ’Twas like her, too. She couldn’t resist giving me one last jab, even if she had to wait till she was dead and gone to do it.”
Like an infuriated beast Martin tramped the floor. Mr. Benton did not speak for a few moments; then he observed mildly:
“You understand that if you refuse to accept the property it will be turned over to the county for a poor farm.”
“I don’t care who it’s turned over to, or what becomes of it,” blustered Martin.
The attorney rubbed his hands. Ah, it was a spirited drama,—quite as spirited as he had anticipated, and as interesting too.
“It’s pretty rough on the girl,” he at last remarked casually.277
“The girl?”
“Miss Webster.”
Violently Martin came to himself. The fury of his anger had until now swept every other consideration from his mind.
“It will mean turning Miss Webster out of doors, of course,” continued Mr. Benton impassively. “Still she’s a thoroughbred, and I fancy nothing her aunt could do would surprise her. In fact, she as good as told me that, when she was at my office this morning.”
“She knows, then?”
“Yes, I had to tell her, poor thing. I imagine, too, it hit her pretty hard, for she had been given to understand that everything was to be hers. She hasn’t much in her own right; her aunt told me that.”
An icy hand suddenly gripped Martin’s heart. He stood immovable, as if stunned. Lucy! Lucy penniless and homeless because of him!
Little by little Ellen’s evil scheme unfolded itself before his consciousness. He saw the cunning of the intrigue which the initial outburst of his wrath had obscured. There was more involved in his decision than his own inclinations. He was not free simply to flout278the legacy and toss it angrily aside. Ellen, a Richelieu to the last, had him in a trap that wrenched and wrecked every sensibility of his nature. The more he thought about the matter, the more chaotic his impulses became. Justice battled against will; pity against vengeance; love against hate; and as the warring factors strove and tore at one another, and grappled in an anguish of suffering, from out the turmoil two forces rose unconquerable and stubbornly confronted one another,—the opposing forces of Love and Pride. There they stood, neither of them willing to yield. While Love pleaded for mercy, Pride urged the destruction of every gentler emotion and clamored for revenge.
Mr. Benton was not a subtle interpreter of human nature, but in the face of the man before him he saw enough to realize the fierceness of the spiritual conflict that raged within Martin Howe’s soul. It was like witnessing the writhings of a creature in torture.
He did not attempt to precipitate a decision by interfering. When, however, he had been a silent spectator of the struggle so long that he perceived Martin had forgotten his very existence, he ventured to speak.279
“Maybe I’d better leave you to reconsider your resolution, Howe,” he remarked.
“I—yes—it might be better.”
“Perhaps after you’ve thought things out, you’ll change your mind.”
Martin did not reply. The lawyer rose and took up his hat.
“How long before you’ve got to know?” inquired Martin hoarsely.
“Oh, I can give you time,” answered Mr. Benton easily. “A week, say—how will that do?”
“I shan’t need as long as that,” Martin replied, looking before him with set face. “I shall know by to-morrow what I am going to do.”
“There’s no such hurry as all that.”
“I shall know by to-morrow,” repeated the younger man in the same dull voice. “All the time in the universe won’t change things after that.”
Mr. Benton made no response. When in his imaginings he had pictured the scene, he had thought that after the first shock of surprise was over, he and Martin would sit down together sociably and discuss each petty detail of the remarkable comedy. But comedy had280suddenly become tragedy—a tragedy very real and grim—and all desire to discuss it had ebbed away.
As he moved toward the door, he did not even put out his hand; on the contrary, whispering a hushed good night and receiving no reply to it, he softly let himself out and disappeared through the afternoon shadows.
If Martin were conscious of his departure, he at least gave no sign of being so, but continued to stand motionless in the same spot where Mr. Benton had left him, his hands gripped tightly behind his back, and his head thrust forward in thought.
Silently the hours passed. The sun sank behind the hills, tinting the ridge of pines to copper and leaving the sky a sweep of palest blue in which a single star trembled.
Still Martin did not move. Once he broke into a smothered cry:
“I cannot! My God! I cannot!”
The words brought Jane to the door.
“Martin!” she called.
There was no answer and, turning the knob timidly, she came in.
“Oh!” she ejaculated. “How you281frightened me! I didn’t know there was anybody here. Don’t you want a light?”
“No.”
“Has—has Mr. Benton gone?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Supper’s ready.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“Mercy, Martin! You ain’t sick?”
“No.”
“But you must be hungry.”
“No. I’m not.”
Still the woman lingered; then making a heroic plunge, she faltered:
“There—there ain’t nothin’ the matter, is there?”
So genuine was the sympathy beneath the quavering inquiry that it brought to Martin’s troubled heart a gratifying sense of warmth and fellowship.
“No,” he said, his impatience melting to gentleness. “Don’t worry, Jane. I’ve just got to do a little thinking by myself, that’s all.”
“It ain’t money you’re fussin’ over then,” said his sister, with a sigh of relief.
“No—no, indeed. It’s nothin’ to do with money.”
“I’m thankful for that.”282
Nevertheless as he mounted to his room, Martin reflected that after all it was money which was at the storm center of his difficulties. He had not thought at all of the matter from its financial aspect. Yet even if he had done so in the first place, it would have had no influence upon his decision. He didn’t care a curse for the money. To carry his point, he would have tossed aside a fortune twice as large. The issue he confronted, stripped of all its distractions, was simply whether his love were potent enough to overmaster his pride and bring it to its knees.
Even for the sake of Lucy Webster, whom he now realized he loved with a passion more deep-rooted than he had dreamed, could he compel himself to do the thing he had staked his oath he would not do?
Until this moment he had never actually examined his affection for the girl. Events had shaped themselves so naturally that in cowardly fashion he had basked in the joy of the present and not troubled his mind to inquire whither the phantasies of this lotus-eater’s existence were leading him. When a clamoring conscience had lifted up its voice, he had stilled it with platitudes. The impact of the crisis he283now faced had, however, jarred him out of his tranquillity and brought him to an appreciation of his position.
He loved Lucy Webster with sincere devotion. All he had in the world he would gladly cast at her feet,—his name, his heart, his worldly possessions; only one reservation did he make to the completeness of his surrender. His pride he could not bend. It was not that he did not wish to bend it. The act was impossible. Keenly as he scorned himself, he could not concede a victory to Ellen Webster,—not for any one on earth.
The jests of the townsfolk were nothing. He did not lack courage to laugh back into the faces of the jeering multitude. But to own himself beaten by a mocking ghost, a specter from another sphere; to relinquish for her gratification the traditions of his race and the trust of his fathers; to leave her triumphant on the field,—this he could not do for any woman living—or dead.
Ah, it was a clever net the old woman had spun to ensnare him, more clever than she knew, unless by some occult power she was cognizant of his affection for Lucy. Could it be? The thought arrested him.284
Had Ellen guessed his secret, and, armed with the knowledge, shaped her revenge accordingly? If so, she was a thousand times more cruel than he had imagined her capable of being, and it gave quite a different slant to her perfidy. Suppose she had suspected he loved Lucy and that Lucy loved him. Then her plot was one to separate them, and the very course he was following was the result she had striven to bring about. She had meant to wreck his happiness and that of the woman he loved; she had planned, schemed, worked to do so.
Martin threw back his head and laughed defiantly up at the ceiling. Well, she should not succeed. He would marry Lucy, and he would rebuild the wall: and with every stone he put in place he would shout to the confines of the universe, to the planets where Ellen Webster’s spirit lurked, to the grave that harbored her bones:
Amor Vincit Omnia!
With jubilant step he crossed to the window and looked out. A slender arc of silver hung above the trees, bathing the fields in mystic splendor. It was not late. Only the maelstrom of torture through which he had passed285had transformed the minutes to hours, and the hours to years. Why, the evening was still young, young enough for him to go to Lucy and speak into her ear all the love that surged in his heart. They had been made for one another from the beginning. He would wed her, and the old homestead she venerated should be hers indeed. It was all very simple, now.
With the abandon of a schoolboy he rushed downstairs, pausing only an instant to put his head in at the kitchen door and shout to Jane:
“I’m goin’ over to the Websters’. I may be late. Don’t sit up for me.”
Then he was gone. Alone beneath the arching sky, his happiness mounted to the stars. How delicious was the freshness of the cool night air! How sweet the damp fragrance of the forest! The spires of the pines richly dark against the fading sky were already receding into the mists of twilight.
He went along down the road, his swinging step light as the shimmer of a moonbeam across a spangled pool.
The Webster house was in darkness. Nevertheless this discovery did not disconcert him, for frequently Lucy worked until dusk among286her flowers, or lingered on the porch in the peace of the evening stillness.
To-night, however, he failed to find her in either of her favorite haunts and, guided by the wailing music of a harmonica, he came at last upon Tony seated on an upturned barrel at the barn threshold, striving to banish his loneliness by breathing into the serenity of the twilight the refrain of “Home, Sweet Home.”
“Hi, Tony!” called Martin. “Do you know where Miss Lucy is?”
“I don’t, sir,” replied the boy, rising. “She didn’t ’xactly say where she was goin’.”
“I s’pose she’s round the place somewhere.”
“Land, no, sir! Didn’t she tell you? Why, she went away on the train this afternoon.”
“On the train?” Martin repeated automatically.
“Yes, sir.”
“When is she comin’ back?”
“She ain’t comin’ back,” announced the Portuguese. “She’s goin’ out West or somewheres to live.”
A quick shiver vibrated through Martin’s body, arresting the beat of his pulse. Scarcely knowing what he did, he caught the lad roughly by the shoulder.287
“When did she go?” he demanded. “What time? What did she say?”
Tony raised a frightened glance to his questioner’s face.
“She went this afternoon,” gasped he, “about five o’clock it was. She took the Boston train. She said she guessed she’d go back out West ’cause she didn’t want to stay here any more. She was afraid of ghosts.”
“Ghosts!”
Tony nodded.
“I’m to leave the key of the house at Mr. Benton’s in the mornin’ an’ tell him everythin’s cleaned up an’ in order. An’ Miss Lucy said I was to stay here an’ go on with the work till you or somebody else told me to stop.”
Without comment Martin listened. Slowly the truth made its impress on his mind. Lucy had gone! Gone!
With the knowledge, all the latent affection he felt for her crystallized into a mighty tide that rushed over and engulfed him in its current. Hatred, revenge, pride were no more; only love persisted,—love the all-powerful, the all-conquering, the all-transforming.
Lucy, dearer to him than his own soul, had gone. Either in anger, or driven forth by288maiden shyness, she had fled from him; and until she was brought back and was safe within the shelter of his arms, nothing remained for him in life.
Tony saw him square his shoulders and turn away.
“Good night, Mr. Howe,” he called.
“Good night, Tony.”
“Any orders for to-morrow?”
“No. Go on with your work as usual. Just be sure to water Miss Lucy’s flowers.”
“I will, sir.”
“An’ by the way. You needn’t drive into town with that key. I’m goin’ to Mr. Benton’s myself, an’ I’ll take it.”
“All right.”
The boy watched Martin go down the driveway; but at the gate the man wheeled about and shouted back:
“You’ll be sure not to forget Miss Lucy’s flowers, Tony.”
“I’ll remember ’em.”
“An’ if I should have to be away for a while—a week, or a month, or even longer—you’ll do the best you can while I’m gone.”
“I will, sir.”
“That’s all. Good night.”289
With a farewell gesture of his hand Martin passed out of the gate. To have witnessed the buoyancy of his stride, one would have thought him victorious rather than defeated. The truth was, the scent of battle was in his nostrils. For a lifetime he had been the champion of Hate. Now, all the energies of his manhood suddenly awakened, he was going forth to fight in the cause of Love.