“I will do so,” answered De Crespigney, very meekly.
“And now, Marcel, take my advice: Whatever else you do, don’t make a fool of yourself again by getting married. Such a bookworm as you has no business with a wife. So, don’t be a fool.”
“I will not,” sighed the colonel, obediently.
When he grew stronger still he sent for the little portable cabinet in which his lost wife was accustomed to keep her papers, and he had it placed upon a stand between his easy-chair and the open wood fire, and he went through her letters, with the intention of burning all of them, lest they should by unforeseen accident fall into other hands.
And here he found what newly awoke his grief and his remorse. It was her last will, duly drawn up, signed, sealed, and witnessed, in which she bequeathed to him the whole of her real and personal estate. Folded in with this document was a letter, dated some time back, and addressed to her husband, to be opened after her death. It seemed to have been written just after one of their fierce quarrels and sorrowful reconciliations. In it she wrote:
“I feel that some day I shall die suddenly in some one of my mad fits of excitement. I feel that when that shall have happened without time for reconciliation, I shall want to speak to you from the other life. I shall want to reach my hand across the great gulf that will divide us and be reconciled to you from the other life. But that may not be my privilege, so I write to you now, and leave with you, for that time, what I feel that I shall want to say to you then.”
And here followed a most pathetic plea for a charitable construction of her confessed infirmities of temper and a prayer for the merciful remembrance of her love. She said not one word about the will she had made securing all her property to him; she was silent on that subject, as if she thought it of little importance compared to the theme upon which she wrote, her own morbid, maddened affections.
The letter so agitated the convalescent that he suffered a relapse of several days’ duration.
As the spring advanced, however, he improved in health, strength and spirits. The season was early that year, so that by the middle of March every vestige of ice and snow had disappeared, and by the first of April the fields were green with grass and the trees blossoming for fruit. And then Marcel de Crespigney was able to sit out on the front porch and enjoy the resurrection of nature with a new sense of life.
Meanwhile the business on the fishing landing was opening briskly, and, among other workmen, David Lindsay found a plenty to do, patching boats and mending nets and clearing beaches.