“I said that, in the very unlikely event of her being left a young widow, it would be better that she should have the responsibility of living up to the Mearely name and estate. This duty would guide her choice in re-marriage. Whereas, without responsibilities, she might hark back to the farm strain and contract a union which would be a slur on the Mearely honour. He perceived the point, and, after providing for a few bequests to relatives, he left her everything, on condition that she continued to live in Villa Rose. ‘For,’ said he, ‘I won’t have her running up and down Europe, spending money to fatten a conscienceless army of waiters, guides, and concierges. Let her remain quietly at home and continue to carry out my artistic scheme, as the one rustic and indigenous object of beauty in the midst of my priceless antiques and objets d’art.’ That was his idea. A very superior man—was my dear friend, Mearely.”
“So Mrs. Mearely has control of her fortune and is obliged to live in Roseborough? Then she is compelled to choose a man from these parts.”
“Yes. If she leaves Villa Rose and Roseborough, she loses everything. Yes, it was I who drew up that will, Mrs. Taite. I relate the facts to you now in strict confidence, relying on your discretion. You have been my confidante for a number of years, Mrs. Taite, and I believe there is no woman in Roseborough so discreet.”
Whereupon, Mrs. Taite had besought him to continue this reliance, as no word of his confidences had ever passed, or should ever pass, her lips; but she believed that the will’s terms were not unknown in Roseborough; she had heard rumours, indeed, though she had not credited them. Perhaps, she thought, Mr. Howard, being a distant cousin of Mr. Mearely’s, had felt privileged to inform Roseborough. On the contrary, the Judge argued, Mr. Howard had known nothing of this proviso. He was sure of that.
“Poor Howard would have been left out entirely but for me. I got his little legacy for him. So much per year, you know—just enough to keep him, if prices don’t soar. I pointed out to Mearely that Howard is really an excellent chess player.”
Mrs. Taite, of course, had never heard the terms of the will as they affected Mrs. Mearely’s re-marriage. When she said she had heard rumours she meant that she was about to set some afloat. She put on her bonnet and took two pennies to the Widower’s Mite Society’s treasurer, Mr. Albert Andrews, and dropped the hint which, in due course, matured into the aim of his life. It was she who told the news to Wilton Howard, amid sly compliments; again sowing seed which, though ignored at the time, was to bear fruit later.
Mrs. Taite saw that the Judge was deliberately considering the pros and cons of a union with the young widow when all her black should have been put by, and she intended that he should not lack rivals. She knew that his legal mind would take its time in coming to a decision, and that his self-sufficient nature would neither anticipate rivals nor that the widow might say him nay. Meanwhile, there was the one chance in a hundred that Mrs. Mearely might marry a faster moving admirer.
She racked her brains for schemes to balk him. She even thought wildly of sending Mrs. Mearely anonymous letters, or of poisoning Villa Rose’s well by dropping a murdered cat into it. She nursed her fears in secret, copiously wept, prayed nightly that a worthy gentlewoman might not be brought to penury through the unnecessary matrimony of a paying guest, and took to walking at midnight, shut-eyed, in her nainsook and curl rags.
Meanwhile the judge had handed down his decision, and he apprehended no reversal of it by the higher court, i. e., by fair Rosamond herself. He felt that he, of all men, deserved her fortune because it was he who had prevented a pen-stroke from depriving her of it. Having accepted his decision, he began to formulate a plan of procedure. He rode out to Trenton churchyard and verified the date on the headstone. From that he computed a proper date for proposal, which appeared to be midsummer week, a year and six months from the day on which Mrs. Mearely had received him in black and white. He would go to see her—say, on a Wednesday—and inform her, in dignified yet adequate language, of the part he had played in smoothing life for her. She would have until Sunday to regard him as a benign fate and to become so mellowed with gratitude that, when he returned on the Sabbath afternoon to make formal offer of himself, she would answer with blushing enthusiasm, “Oh, be my fate again—a second time, and forever.”
Unaware that this midsummer day was Rosamond’s “Wonderful Day” (though, if he had known, he would have found the fact pleasantly apropos) or that she had given up her last attenuation of mourning only a few hours before he set out to make this preliminary and way-paving call—resolved upon, even to the date, eighteen months previously—Judge Giffen nosed his flea-bitten white horse up to the gate post, removed and replaced his tall hat in high and solemn salutation, slipped off his glove (gray, with two pearl buttons), enclosed Rosamond’s rosy palm, and said in the tone of one who conveys information of grave import: