"Perhaps not," said Mrs. Grey, settling back comfortably in her corner. "I want to say this—not that I don't know that you are holding Evalina's hand behind my back, and I should know it, even if I were as blind as a bat, which I'm thankful to say I am not—I want to say that I think I believe in democracy, after all. The only really interesting and agreeable man there this evening, except yourself, my dear Richard, was that delightful old farmer. Evidently the thing that makes American society so dull is not the people they let in nowadays, as I had always imagined, but the people they keep out. Yes, Richard, you have converted me to democracy."
But Richard and Evalina were not paying as much attention to this philosophy as it undoubtedly deserved.
THE WIDOW'S MIGHT
Fifth: To my executors hereinafter named, or to such of them as shall qualify, and the survivors of them, I give and bequeath the sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000) in trust to hold, invest and reinvest the same and to collect the income, issues and profits thereof and pay over the whole of said income, issues and profits, accruing from the date of my death, in semiannual payments, less proper charges and expenses, to my wife, Doris Helen Southgate, as long as she shall remain my widow; and upon the death or remarriage of my said wife, I direct that the principal of said trust shall be paid over to my sister, Antonia Southgate, or in the event of her death—
It was this fifth clause that Vincent Williams, the dead man's lawyer, found himself considering as he drove uptown with a copy of the will in his pocket. Was or was not a man justified in cutting his wife off in case of her remarriage? After all, why should a fellow work hard all his life to support his successor and perhaps his successor's children? The absolute possession of a large fortune may be a definite danger to a young woman of twenty-five. Yes, there was much to be said in favor of such a provision; and yet, when he had said it all, Williams found himself feeling as he had felt when he drew the will—that it was an unwarranted insult, an ungracious gesture of possession from the grave. He himself couldn't imagine making such a will; but then he had not married a girl thirty-five years his junior. Southgate may have had a vision of some pale, sleek-headed professional dancer, or dark-skinned South European with a criminal record—
Williams was shocked to find he was thinking that the widow would have a right even to such companions as these, if these were what she wanted. He had no clew as to what she did want, for he had never seen her, although he had been Southgate's lawyer for many years. Southgate, since his marriage five years before, had spent most of his time at Pasadena, although he always kept the house on Riverside open.
It was toward this house that Williams was now driving. There was a touch of the mausoleum about it—just the kind of house that a man who had made his fortune in coffins ought to have owned. It was built of cold, smooth graystone, and the door was wider at the bottom than at the top, in the manner of an Egyptian tomb. You went down a few steps into the hall, and Williams always half expected to hear a trapdoor clang behind him and find that, Rhadames in the last act of Aïda, he was walled up for good.
Nichols, Southgate's old manservant, opened the door for him and conducted him to the drawing-room, which ran across the front of the house on the second story, with three windows, somewhat contracted by stone decorations, which looked on the river.