Читать книгу Signing the Contract and What it Cost - Finley Martha - Страница 8

“What is it, Nathan?”

Mrs. Alden had come upon her husband pacing the front porch of their dwelling with angry strides.

“That girl!” he said between his shut teeth. “I wash my hands of her and her affairs, and Espy shall never marry her with my consent, mark that, Jane!” and he brought down his clenched fist with emphasis upon the open palm of the other hand.

His wife looked disturbed, but after a moment’s thought said cheerfully, “She’ll come round yet, Nathan, and you don’t mean that to stand if she does?”

“No, of course not; but she isn’t going to come round; she hasn’t the sense to understand and appreciate an argument, and has somehow got her head full of Quixotic notions. I suppose she thinks she’ll make a grand heroine of herself by giving up everything to Kemper’s relations, and that they’ll generously hand back a share of it, or maybe the whole; but she’ll find out when it’s too late that she’s made a wonderful mistake.”

Mrs. Alden had her own opinion regarding Floy’s sense, but was far too wise to contradict her husband.

“I haven’t lived with him forty years for nothing,” she sometimes said. “I’ve found out that the only way to manage him is to seem to give in to all his notions. So I never cross him, and I generally contrive in the end to have things pretty much as I want them.”

Seeing she made no reply to his remark, Mr. Alden went on to give her a detailed account of his interview with Floy, winding up with, “There, now, what do you think of that?”

“Poor young thing!” sighed his wife, “it’s really dreadful to think what she’s gone through in the last two weeks, and perhaps she couldn’t quite put her mind on what you were saying so as to take it all in. Give her a little time; she may come around yet to your way of thinking. I must go and see about dinner now.”

“Yes,” he answered absently. “Suppose you go over after dinner; coaxing will move a woman sometimes when argument won’t.”

“I’ll try,” she said as she hurried away. It was what she had intended, though she had not thought it best to say so.

Mr. Alden’s departure had left Floy alone, for Espy had not yet returned. Sinking down upon the sofa, she wept convulsively for some minutes. Presently she grew calmer, and, wiping away her tears, rose and went to her father’s writing-desk.

Seating herself before it, she selected a sheet of note-paper, took up a pen, and was in the act of dipping it in the ink, when Susan, the maid of all work, put her head in at the door, saying, “Mr. Crosby’s in the parlor, Miss Floy, asking to see you.”

“Thank you very much for coming,” Floy said when she had shaken hands with her visitor. “I was just about to write a note asking you to call.”

“I shall be glad if I can be of service to you,” he said. “I should have called sooner, but returned only last night from a pleasure-trip, the first I have taken in years. Now what can I do for you?”

Mr. Crosby, the first lawyer in the place, had been Mr. Kemper’s legal adviser.

At first Floy seemed unable to speak. She rose, and motioning Mr. Crosby to follow her, led the way to the room she had just left. They were closeted together there for an hour, in which Mr. Crosby learned the whole story of Mrs. Kemper’s death-bed revelations, and the unsuccessful search for the deed of gift and the will.

“I am extremely sorry to hear all this,” he said. “I was pretty certain there was no will, because Mr. Kemper had spoken to me about drawing one up for him, telling me that he intended leaving the bulk of his property to his wife and daughter, but not going sufficiently into particulars to enable me to write out the instrument without further instructions. These he delayed giving me from time to time, being always so much occupied with his business. If you were, as I always believed till now, his own child, the omission would make little or no difference; but as it is, it leaves you quite unprovided for. If I had known the truth I should have urged him strongly to attend to the matter without delay. It’s a bad business, a very bad business for you, Miss Floy! I feel for you from the bottom of my heart, and I would do anything in the world I could to help you.”

“I believe it, Mr. Crosby,” she said with emotion, “and if you will undertake – ”

“To communicate with the heirs at law? Certainly; and I shall try to induce them to allow your claim to a share in the property you have so generously resigned to them – ”

“Not generously, Mr. Crosby,” she interrupted, “only justly.”

“Ah, well, if you will have it so; but Miss Floy, you might have kept the secret revealed by your mother locked up in your own breast, and retained the property without the least danger of interference from any one. Did you know that?”

She gave a silent assent.

“And even leaving the inheritance of the estate out of the question, you would have been glad to keep the secret?”

“Yes; oh, yes!” she said, covering her face with her hands, while the tears trickled between her fingers.

He looked at her with undisguised admiration.

“You are a noble girl!” he exclaimed; and rising, paced the floor to and fro.

“Oh!” he cried, “the mischief that simple neglect will do! It has been the ruin of thousands, and through it men have, in multitudes of instances, frustrated their own most cherished plans and purposes. Mr. Kemper schemed and toiled to provide for the old age of himself and wife, and that he might have wealth to bestow upon you, the darling of his heart; and now, through his own omission, it will pass to others, one or two of whom, I happen to know, are spendthrifts, who will probably speedily waste their shares in riotous living. It’s a thousand pities! If we could but bring proof of your formal adoption, making you his legal heir – ”

“There is none,” she sighed, “and perhaps they are very needy – those heirs – and may do better with this than you expect, Mr. Crosby. We will not blame poor dear father. How ungrateful it would be in me to do so after all that he and mother did for me – after all the love and care they bestowed on me for so many years! I had not the slightest claim on them, yet they clothed, fed, educated me – made my childhood and youth so bright and happy. Oh, never did poor little waif fall into hands so kind and tender!”

“Your sentiments do you honor, Miss Floy,” said Mr. Crosby, “and now I will return to my office and attend to this matter at once. I shall write the heirs, letting them know how entirely they are indebted to you for this accession of property, and urge upon them the justice of allowing you a share in it.”

He shook hands with her, said a few encouraging, hopeful words, and departed.

“Glad he’s gone at last,” said Susan, putting her head in at the door again. “Thought he never would go, and your dinner is drying up over the fire till ’tain’t hardly fit to eat. Come, Miss Floy, I’ll have it on the table by the time you can get out to the dining-room.”

Floy brought little appetite to her meal, and ate mechanically, scarcely knowing what the viands were.

She had just risen from the table when Mrs. Alden came in. Floy flushed slightly on seeing her. She knew that Mr. Alden had gone away very angry, and was doubtful how far his wife would be in sympathy with him.

But the greeting of the latter was kind and motherly as usual.

“I’m so glad the poor head is better again,” she said, kissing the girl affectionately. “You must forgive me for calling Espy away this morning. I had to get him to drive out to the country for butter and eggs, for there were none to be had in town, and I’d nobody else to send. He hasn’t got back yet, or you may be sure he’d have been in again.”

Talking on, with hardly a pause for a reply, Mrs. Alden gradually approached the subject of the morning’s conversation between her husband and Floy.

“I honor you for your intentions, my dear,” she said. “I know they are altogether good and right, but you’re very young and inexperienced, and I think have a morbid conscientiousness that blinds you to your own interests, and, if you’ll allow me to say it, to Espy’s too, because if you’re going to be man and wife you can’t have separate interests.”

“Dear Mrs. Alden,” said Floy, with a patient sigh, “you cannot surely think it is ever right to do evil that good may come, or that ill-gotten wealth will be of real benefit to its possessor?”

“No, child, certainly not,” she answered with some annoyance, “but those questions don’t apply in this case. You needn’t be afraid that anything my husband does or advises could be wrong, because he’s too good a man.”

It probably did not occur to the loyal wife that she was reversing the Bible test – judging of the fruit by the tree, instead of the tree by its fruit.

“I do not think he would do or advise anything that he thought wrong,” returned Floy gently; “but you know each of us must act according to his or her own conscience, and mine absolutely refuses to see this matter as Mr. Alden does.”

“Well, I mostly let him judge for me,” said Mrs. Alden. “I find it’s the only way to have peace, and I can’t live in a constant broil; not that he’s particularly ill-natured, but he naturally thinks he ought to be master in his own house. Another thing, Floy: if he once sets his foot down there’s no getting him to lift it again, and he vows that if you persist in giving up this property Espy shall never marry you with his consent. So, you see if you can’t be persuaded there’ll be endless trouble for us all.”

Floy’s cheek crimsoned and her eye flashed, while the pretty head was thrown haughtily back as she drew herself up with an air of wounded pride.

“It was your son who sought me, Mrs. Alden, not I him; nor shall I ever thrust myself into a family where I am not wanted and should be made an element of discord.”

Mrs. Alden was thoroughly dismayed.

“My dear child,” she hastened to say, “I did not mean to hurt your feelings, and I can’t bear the thought of losing you. But Espy will never give you up; he’d break with his father and all of us first, and – ”

“He can’t marry me against my will,” interrupted Floy; “so pray dismiss all anxiety on that score. I would no more rob you and Mr. Alden of your son than – than I would steal the inheritance of the heirs at law of this property.”

“Oh, Floy, Floy, to make you break with Espy is the very last thing I intended; don’t do it; he’d never forgive me; but oh! if I only could persuade you to keep this secret of your birth and – ”

“It is already too late,” answered the girl in a low, quiet tone, “the deed is done.”