The Chief Legatee

by Anna Katharine Green

Harper and Ransom both remembered this remark a little while later.

"Mr. Hazen?" It was Harper who spoke. They had passed a little thicket of brush and were drawing near the group under the tree. "Have you duly considered what you are about to do? I have talked with several men of judgment and experience about this attempt, and they all say it can have but one termination."

"I know. That is because they know little or nothing of the life I have led since I left this town. There is not a man amongst them so slight and seemingly frail of figure as myself, but none of them, not one, has been so often up to the very gates of death and escaped, as I have. My schooling has been long and severe, perhaps in preparation for this day. I have been through fire; I have been through water. The swirling of my own native stream does not appall me. I rather welcome it; it is but another experience."

"But for money?" broke in Ransom. "You acknowledge it is for no other purpose. Will it pay? I own that in my eyes no amount of money could pay a man for so superhuman a risk as this. Take a few thousands from me—I had rather give them to you than see you leap into that water opening beneath us like a hungry maw."

Hazen stood silent, his eye glistening, his hand almost outstretched. Harper thought he would yield; the offer must have struck him as generous and very tempting—a good excuse for a hot-headed man to withdraw from a very doubtful adventure. But he did not know Hazen. This latter advanced his hand and squeezed Ransom's warmly, but his answer, when he was ready to give one, conveyed no intention of a change of mind.

"Will your thousands amount to a clean million?" he smiled. "That is the amount, I believe, bequeathed by your wife to Mr. Auchincloss. Nothing less will suffice. Yet I thank you, Ransom."

The latter bowed and fell a little behind the others. The struggle in his mind had been severe; it was severe yet; he did not know but that it was his duty to stop this Hazen from his intended action by force. He was not sure but that the onus of this whole desperate undertaking would yet fall upon him. Certainly it would fall upon his conscience if the end was fatal. He had had proof of that in the long night of wakeful misery he had just passed; a night in which he had faced the furies; in which this inexorable question had forced itself upon him despite every effort on his part to evade it.

Why had he, a humane man, consented to this attempt on the part of the devoted Hazen? That his mind might be free to mourn his beautiful young bride whose fatal and mysterious secret he was still as far from knowing as in the hour he turned to welcome her to their first home and found her fled from his arms and heart? Or had this suspense, this feeling of standing now, as never before, at the opening door of fate, a deeper significance, a more active meaning? Was this meditated test a crucial one, because it opened to him the only possible releasement of soul and conscience to the undivided care of one who had no other refuge in life save that offered by his devotion? The horror of this self-probing was still upon him as he followed Hazen's slight and virile figure across the rocks, but it fled as he felt the spray of the tossing waters dash its chilling reminder in his face.

The event was upon him and he must add to his former actions that of a complete and determined opposition to the risk proposed or possibly forfeit his peace of mind forever. Quickening his pace, he reached Hazen and the lawyer just as the men awaiting them had advanced on their side. Instantly he knew it was too late. There was neither time nor opportunity for any weak protests on his part now. Older men were speaking; men who knew the river, the danger, and the man, but even they said nothing to him in way of dissuasion. They only pointed out what especial points of suction were to be avoided, and showed him the chain they had brought for his waist and how he was to pull upon it the very instant he felt his senses or his strength leaving him.

He answered as a courageous man might, and making ready by taking off his coat and shoes he gave himself into their hands for the proper fastening on of the chain. Then, while the murmur of expectation rose from the crowd on the river bank, he stepped back to Mr. Ransom and whispered hurriedly in his ear: