LXIII
The next day I took up my abode in Edgar’s room, not to leave him again till he was strong enough to face the importunities of friends and the general talk of the public. The doctor, warned by Orpha of my intention, fell into it readily enough after a short conversation we had together, and a week went by without Edgar hearing of Wealthy’s death or the inevitable inquest which had followed it. Then there came a day when I told him the whole story; and after the first agitation caused by this news had passed, I perceived with strengthening hope that the physical crisis had passed and that with a little more care he would soon be well and able to listen to what I had to say to him about the future.
Till then we both studiously avoided every topic connected with the present. This, strange as it may appear, was at his request. He wanted to get well. He was bent upon getting well and that as quickly as it was in his power to do so. Whether this desire, which was almost violent in its nature, sprang from his wish to begin proceedings against me in the surrogate’s court or from a secret purpose to have one last word with Lucy Colfax before her speedily approaching marriage, the result was an unswerving control over himself and a steady increase in health.
Miss Colfax was in Newark where the ceremony was to take place. The cards were just out and in my anxiety to know what was really seething in his mind—for his detached air and effort from time to time at gayety of manner and speech had not deceived me—I asked the doctor if it would be safe for me to introduce into my conversation with Edgar any topic which would be sure to irritate, if not deeply distress him.
“Do you consider it really necessary to broach any such topic at this time?”
“I certainly do, Doctor; circumstances demand it.”
“Then go ahead. I think your judgment can be depended upon to know at what moment to stop.”
I was not long in taking advantage of this permission. As soon as the doctor was gone, I drew from my pocket the cards which had come in the morning’s mail and handed them to Edgar, with just the friendly display of interest which it would be natural for me to show if conditions had been what they seemed to be rather than what they were.
I heard the paper crunch under the violent clutch which his fingers gave it but I did not look at him, though the silence seemed long before he spoke. When he did, there was irony in his tone which poorly masked the suffering underlying it.
“Lucy will make a man like Dr. Hunter a model wife,” was what he finally remarked; but the deliberate way in which he tore up the cards and threw the fragments away—possibly to hide the marks of his passion upon them—troubled me and caused me to listen eagerly as he went on to remark: “I have never liked Dr. Hunter. We could never hit it off. Talk about a crooked stick! She with all her lovers! What date is it? The seventeenth? We must send her a present!”
I sat aghast; his tone was indescribable. I felt that the time had come to change the subject.
“Edgar,” said I, “the doctor has assured me that so far as symptoms go your condition is satisfactory. That all you need now is rest of mind; and that I propose to give you if I can. You remember how when we two were at the bottom of that stairway with the unopened will between us that I declared to you that I would abide by the expression of our uncle’s wishes when once they were made plain to me? My mind has not changed in that regard. If you can prove to me that his last intention was to recur—”
“You know I cannot do that,” he broke in petulantly, “why talk?”
“Because I cannot prove that he did not so intend any more than you can prove that he did.”
I felt a ghostly hand on my arm jerking me back. I thought of Mr. Jackson and of how it would be like him to do this if he were standing by and heard me. But I shook off this imagined clutch, just as I would have withdrawn my arm from his had he been there; and went quietly on as Edgar’s troubled eyes rose to mine.
“I am not going to weary you by again offering you my friendship. I have done that once and my mind does not easily change. But I here swear that if you choose to contest the will now in the hands of the surrogate, I will not offer any defense, once I am positively assured that Orpha’s welfare will not suffer. The man who marries the daughter of Edgar Quenton Bartholomew must have no dark secret in his life. Tell me—we are both young, both fortunate enough, or shall I say unfortunate enough, to have had very much our own way in life up to the difficult present—what was the cause of your first rupture with Uncle? It is not as a father confessor I ask you this, but as a man who cannot rightfully regulate his own conduct till he has a full knowledge of yours.”
With starting eyes he rose before me, slowly and by jerks as though his resisting muscles had to be coerced to their task. But once at his full height, he suddenly sank back into his chair with a loud shout of laughter.
“You should have been a lawyer,” he scoffed. “You put your finger instinctively on the weakest spot in the defense.” Then as I waited, he continued in a different tone and with a softer aspect: “It won’t do, Quenton. If you are going to base your action on Orpha’s many deserts and my appreciation of them, you had better save yourself the trouble. I”—his head fell and he had to summon up courage to proceed—“I love her as my childhood’s playmate, and I admire her as a fine girl who will make a still finer woman, but—”
I put up my hand. “You need not say it, Edgar. I will spare you that much. I know—we all know where your preference lies. You shouted it out in your sickness. But that is something which time will take care of if—”
“There is no if; and time! That is what is eating me up; making me the wretch you have found me. It is not the fortune that Uncle left which I so much want,” he hurried on as his impulsive nature fully asserted itself. “Not for myself I mean, but for its influence on her. She is a queen and has a queen’s right to all that this world can give of splendor and of power. But Orpha has her rights, too; Lucy can never be mistress here. I see that as well as you do and so thanking you for your goodness, for you have been good to me, let us call it all off. I am not penniless. I can go my own way; you will soon be rid of me.”
Why couldn’t I find a word? Now was the time to speak, but my lips were dumb; my thoughts at a standstill. He, on the contrary, was burning to talk—to free himself from the bitterness of months by a frank outpouring of the hopes and defeats of his openly buoyant but secretly dissatisfied young life.
“You asked me what came between Uncle and myself on that wretched night of the ball,” he hurried on. “I have a notion to tell you. Since you know about Lucy—” His tongue tripped on the word but he shook his head and began volubly again. “I am not a fellow given to much thought unless it is about art or books or music, so I was deep in love before I knew it. She had come back from school—But I cannot go into that. You have seen her, and perhaps can understand my infatuation. I had supposed myself happy in the prospects always held out to me. But a few days of companionship with her convinced me that there was but one road to happiness for me and that was closed against me. That was when I should have played the man—told Uncle, and persuaded him to leave his fortune directly to Orpha. Instead of which, I let Uncle dream his dreams while Lucy and I met here and there, outwardly just friends, but inwardly—Well, I won’t make a fool of myself by talking about it. Had Orpha been older and more discerning, things might have been different; but she was a child, happy in the pleasures of the day and her father’s affection. When he, eager to see his plans matured, proposed a ball and the announcement of our engagement at this ball, she consented joyfully, more because she was in love with the ball than with me. But to Lucy and me it was quite another matter. We woke to the realities of life and saw no way of opposing them. For me to be designated as my uncle’s heir and marry Orpha had been the expectation of us all for years. Besides, there is no use in my concealing from you who know me so well, I saw no life ahead of me without fortune. I was accustomed to it and it was my natural heritage; nor would Lucy have married a poor man; it was not in her; there are some things one can never accept.
“I am speaking of affairs as they were that week when Lucy and I virtually parted. Before it was over she had engaged herself to Dr. Hunter, in order, as she said, to save ourselves from further folly. This marked the end of my youth and of something good in me which has never come back. I blamed nobody but I began to think for myself and plan for myself with little thought of others, unless it was for Lucy. If only something would happen to prevent that announcement! Then it might be possible for me to divert matters in a way to secure for me the desires I cherished. How little I dreamed what would happen, and that within a short half hour!
“I have asked the doctor and he says that he thinks Uncle’s health had begun to wane before that day. That is a comfort to me; but there are times when I wish I had died before I did what I did that night. You have asked to know it and you shall, for I am reckless enough now to care little about what any one thinks of me. I had come upon Uncle rather unexpectedly, as, dressed for the ball, he sat at his desk which was then as you know in the little room off his where we afterwards slept. He was looking over his will—he said so—the one which had been drawn up long before and which had been brought to the house that day by Mr. Dunn. As I met his eye he smiled, and tapping the document which he had hurriedly folded, remarked cheerfully, ‘This will see you well looked after,’ and put it back in one of the drawers. With some affectionate remark I told him my errand—I forget what it was now—and left him just as he rose from his desk. But the thought which came to me as he did this went with me down the stairs. I wanted to see that will. I wanted to know just how much it bound me to Orpha—Don’t look at me like that. I was in love, I tell you, and the thought which had come to me was this; he had not locked the drawer.
“Uncle was happy as a king as he joined us below that night. He looked at Orpha in her new dress as if he had never seen her before, and the word or two he uttered in my ear before the guests came made my heart burn but did not disturb my purpose. When I could—when most of the guests were assembled and the dance well under way—I stole through the dining-room into the rear and so up the back stairs to Uncle’s study. No one was on that floor; all the servants were below, even Wealthy. I found everything as we had left it; the drawer still unlocked, and the will inside.
“I took it out—yes, I did that—and I read it greedily. Its provisions were most generous so far as I was concerned. I was given almost everything after some legacies and public bequests had been made; but it was not this which excited me; it was that no conditions were attached to my inheriting this great fortune. Orpha’s name was not even mentioned in connection with it. I should be free—
“My thoughts had got thus far—dishonorable as they may appear—when I felt a sudden chill so quick and violent that the paper rattled in my hands; and looking up I beheld Uncle standing in the doorway with his eyes fixed upon me in a way no man’s eyes had ever been before; his, least of all. He had remembered that he had not locked up his desk and had come back to do so and found me reading his will.
“Quenton, I could have fallen at his feet in my shame and humiliation, for I loved him. I swear to you now that I loved him and do now above every one in the world but—but Lucy. But he was not used to such demonstrations, so I simply rose and folding up the paper laid it between us on the desk, not looking at him again. I felt like a culprit. I do yet when I think of it, and I declare to you that bad as I am, when, as sometimes happens I awake in the night fresh from a dream of orchestral music and the tread of dancing feet, I find my forehead damp and my hands trembling. That sound was all I heard between the time I laid down the will and the moment when he finally spoke:
“‘So eager, Edgar?’
“I was eager or had been, but not for what he thought. But how could I say so? How could I tell him the motive which had driven me to unfold a personal document he had never shown me? I who can talk by the hour had not a word to say. He saw it and observed very coldly:
“‘A curiosity which defies honor and the trust of one who has never failed you has its root in some secret but overpowering desire. What is that desire, Edgar? Love of money or love of Orpha?’
“A piercing thrust before which any man would quail. I could not say ‘Love of Orpha,’ that was too despicable; nor could I tell the truth for that would lose me all; so after a moment of silent agony, I faltered:
“‘I—I’m afraid I rate too high the advantages of great wealth. I am ashamed—’
“He would not let me finish.
“‘Haven’t you every advantage now? Has anything ever been denied you? Must you have all in a heap? Must I die to satisfy your cupidity? I would not believe it of you, boy, if you had not yourself said it. I can hardly believe it now, but—’
“At that he stumbled and I sprang to steady him. But he would not let me touch him.
“‘Go down,’ he said. ‘You have guests. I may forget this, in time, but not at once. And heed me in this. No announcement of any engagement between you and Orpha! We will substitute for that the one between Lucy and Dr. Hunter. That will satisfy the crowd and please the two lovers. See to it. I shall not go down again.’
“I tried to protest, but the calamity I had brought upon myself robbed me of all initiative and I could only stammer useless if not meaningless words which he soon cut short.
“‘Your guests are waiting,’ came again from his lips as he bent forward, but not with his usual precision, and took up the will.
“And I had to go. When halfway down the stairs I heard him lock the door of his room. It gave me a turn, but I did not know then how deeply he had been stricken—that before another hour he would be really ill. I had my own ordeal to face; you know what it was. My degeneration began from that hour. Quenton, it is not over. I—” He flung his hands over his face; when he dropped them I saw a different man—one whom I hardly understood.
“You see,” he now quietly remarked, “I am no fit husband for Orpha.”
And after that he would listen to nothing on this or any other serious topic.