As we met, Edgar took the lead, supporting Orpha, weakened both by her grief and sudden arousal from sleep. I followed after, never feeling more lonely or more isolated from them all. And in this manner we entered the room.
Then, as always on crossing this threshold my first glance was given to the picture which held such sway over my heart. The living Orpha was but a step ahead of me, but the Orpha most real to me, most in accord with me, was the one in whose imaginary ear I had breathed my vows of love and from whose imaginary lips I had sometimes heard with fond self-deception those vows returned.
To-day, the picture was in shadow and my eyes turned quickly towards the fireplace. Shadow there, too. No leaping flame or smouldering coals. For the first time in months the fire had been allowed to die out. The ominous fact struck like ice to my heart and a secret shudder shook me. But it passed almost instantly, for on turning towardsthe bed I saw preparations made which assured me that my uncle’s mind was clear to the duty of the hour and that we had not been called to his side simply for his final embrace.
He was lying high on his pillow, his eyes blazing as if the fire which had gone out of the hearth had left its reflection on his blazing eye-balls. He had not seen us come in and he did not see us now.
At his side was a table on which stood a large bowl and a lighted candle. They told their own story. His hands were stretched out over the coverlid. They held in feverish grasp the two documents I knew so well, one in one hand and one in the other just as I had seen them the evening before. Edgar recognized them too, as I saw by the imperturbability of his look as his glance fell on them. But Orpha stood amazed, the color leaving her cheeks till she was as pale as I had ever seen a woman.
“What does that mean?” She whispered or rather uttered with throat half closed in fear and trepidation.
“Shall we explain?” I asked, with a quick turn towards Edgar.
“Leave it to him,” was the low, undisturbed reply. “He has heard her voice, and is going to speak.”
It was true. Slowly and with effort her father’s glance sought her out and love again became animate in his features. “Come here, Orpha,” he said and uttered murmuring words of affection as she knelt at his side. “I am going to make you happy. You have been a good girl. Do you see the two long envelopes I am holding, one in each hand?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Look at them. No, do not take them, just look at them where they lie and tell me if in the corner of one you see a cross drawn in red?”
“Yes, Father.”
“In which hand do you see it?”
“In this one,—the one nearest me.”
“You are sure?”
“Very sure. Edgar, look too, and tell him that I am right.”
“I will take your word, my darling child. Now pull that envelope,—the one with the mark on it, from under my hand.”
“I have it, Father.”
A moment’s silence. Edgar’s breath stopped on his lips; mine had come haltingly from my breast ever since I entered the room.
“Now, burn it.”
Instinctively she shrank back, but he repeated the command with a force which startled us all and made Orpha’s hand shake as she thrust the document into the flame and then, as it caught fire, dropped it into the gaping bowl.
As it flared up and the scent of burning paper filled the room, he made a mighty effort and sat almost erect, watching the flaming edges curl and drop away till all was consumed.
“A will made a few weeks ago of which I have repented,” he declared quite steadily. “It had a twin, drawn up on the same day. That is the one I desire to stand. It is not in the envelope I hold in this other hand. This envelope is empty but you will find the will itself in—”
A choke—a gasp. The exertion had been too much for him. With a look of consummate fear distorting his features, he centered his gaze on his child, then sought to turn it on—which of us? On Edgar, or on me?
We never knew. The light in his eye went out before his glance reached its goal.
Edgar Quenton Bartholomew was dead, and we, his two namesakes—the lesser and the greater—stood staring the one upon the other, not knowing to which that term ofgreaterrightfully belonged.