"THROUGH LOVE FOR MY CHILDREN"
On the day after the funeral, Mrs. Ranger and the two children and young Hargrave were in the back parlor, waiting for Judge Torrey to come and read the will. The well-meant intrusions, the services, the burial—all those barbarous customs that stretch on the rack those who really love the dead whom society compels them publicly to mourn—had left cruel marks on Adelaide and on Arthur; but their mother seemed unchanged. She was talking incessantly now, addressing herself to Dory, since he alone was able to heed her. Her talk was an almost incoherent stream, as if she neither knew nor cared what she was saying so long as she could keep that stream going—the stream whose sound at least made the voice in her heart, the voice of desolation, less clear and terrible, though not less insistent.
There was the beat of a man's footsteps on the side veranda. Mrs. Ranger started up, listened, sat again. "Oh," she said, in the strangest tone, and with a hysterical little laugh, "I thought it was your father coming home to dinner!" Then from her throat issued a stifled cry like nothing but a cry borne up to the surface from a deep torture-chamber. And she was talking on again—with Adelaide sobbing and Arthur fighting back the tears. Hargrave went to the door and admitted the old lawyer.
He had a little speech which he always made on such occasions; but to-day, with the knowledge of the astounding contents of that will on his mind, his lips refused to utter it. He simply bowed, seated himself, and opened the document. The old-fashioned legal phrases soon were steadying him as the harness steadies an uneasy horse; and he was monotonously and sonorously rolling off paragraph after paragraph. Except the judge, young Hargrave was the only one there who clearly understood what those wordy provisions meant. As the reading progressed Dory's face flushed a deep red which slowly faded, leaving him gray and haggard. His father's beloved project! His father's! To carry out his father's project, Arthur and Adelaide, the woman he loved and her brother, were to lose their inheritance. He could not lift his eyes. He felt that they were all looking at him, were hurling reproaches and denunciations.
Presently Judge Torrey read: "I make this disposal of my estate through my love for my children and because I have firm belief in the soundness of their character, and in their capacity to do and to be. I feel they will be better off without the wealth which would tempt my son to relax his efforts to make a useful man of himself and would cause my daughter to be sought for her fortune instead of for herself."
At the words "without the wealth," Arthur shifted sharply in his chair, and both he and Adelaide looked at Judge Torrey in puzzled wonder. The judge read on, read the names of signer and witnesses, then laid the will down and stared gloomily at it. Mrs. Ranger said: "And now, judge, can you tell us in plain words just what it means?"
With many a pause and stammer the old lawyer made it clear: the house and its contents and appurtenances, and seven thousand a year to the widow for life; two thousand a year to Adelaide; five thousand in cash to Arthur and the chance to earn the mill and factory; the rest, practically the whole estate, to Tecumseh University.
"Any further questions?" he asked, breaking the silence that followed his explanation.
No one spoke.
Still without looking at anyone, he put away his glasses? "Then I guess I'll be going. It won't be necessary to do anything further for a day or two."