The step on the stair

by Anna Katharine Green

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 But I shook off this imagined clutch, just as I would have withdrawn my arm from his had he been there; and went quietly on as Edgar’s troubled eyes rose to mine.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.”