The Ralstons

by F. Marion Crawford

CHAPTER IV.

In itself, Robert Lauderdale’s will was a very fair one. It provided, as has been seen, that each of the living members of the family in the direct line should have an equal income, while insuring the important condition that the money should remain in the hands of the Lauderdales and Ralstons as long as possible, since the income paid to the four elder members, Alexander Lauderdale Senior, Alexander Junior, the latter’s wife and Mrs. Ralston, John’s mother, should revert at the deaths of each to the three younger heirs, John Ralston, Katharine, and Charlotte Slayback, and afterwards to the children of each.

This result seemed just and, on the whole, to be desired. Robert Lauderdale had devoted much thought to the subject, and had seen no other way of acting fairly and at the same time of providing as far as possible against the subdivision and disappearance of the great fortune he had amassed. The will was to constitute three separate trusts, one for each of the direct legatees and their children, at whose death the trusts would expire, and the property be further divided amongst the succeeding generations in each line.

The old millionaire was a very enlightened man, and had honestly endeavoured during his lifetime to understand the conditions and obligations to which the possessors of very large fortunes should submit. Looking at the matter from this point of view, he had come to regard the accumulation and dissipation of wealth as a succession of natural phenomena, somewhat analogous to those of evaporation and rain, beneficial when gradual, destructive when sudden. As water is drawn up in the form of vapour, in invisible atoms, gradually to accumulate in the form of clouds, which, moving under natural conditions, are borne towards those regions where moisture is most needed, to descend gently and be lost in showers that give earth life, until the sky above is clear again, and all the fields below are green with growing things—so, thought Robert Lauderdale, should wealth follow a reasonable and beneficial course of constant distribution and redistribution, to promote which was a moral obligation upon those through whose hands it passed. He was not sure that it was in any way his duty to leave vast sums for charities, nor to hasten the subdivision of the property in any violent way; for he knew well enough that sudden divisions generally mean the forcible depression of values, in which case wealth, of which the income being spent regularly should find its way to the points where it is most needed, must, on the contrary, become dormant until values are restored, if indeed they ever are restored altogether.

If he had been the father of one or more children, there is no knowing how he might have acted. If there had been in the whole family one man whom he sincerely trusted to act wisely, he might have left him the bulk of the fortune, giving each of the others a sum which would have been large compared with what they had of their own, but wholly insignificant by the side of the main property. But no such selection was possible. His brother was a very old man, wholly unfitted for the purpose. His brother’s son was a miser, and a dull one at that, in Robert’s estimation. John Ralston was not to be thought of for a moment. Hamilton Bright would have answered the conditions, but he was far removed in relationship, being a descendant of Robert Lauderdale’s uncle through a female line. Nevertheless, Robert Lauderdale hesitated.

It was perhaps natural that Alexander Junior should believe that he was the proper person for his uncle to select as the principal heir. He was the only son of the eldest of the family. He was a man of stainless reputation, occupying a position of high importance and trust. No one could have denied that he was scrupulous in business matters to a degree rare even amongst the most honourable men of his own city. He was comparatively young, being only fifty years old, and he might live a quarter of a century to administer and hold together the Lauderdale estate, for his health was magnificent and his strength of iron.

He had thought it all over daily for so many years, that he could see no possible reason why he should not be the principal heir. In arguing the case, he told himself that his uncle was not capricious, that he would certainly not leave his fortune to Hamilton Bright, who was the only other sensible man of business in the whole connection, and that it was generally in the nature of very rich men to wish to know that their wealth was to be kept together after they were dead. No one could possibly do that better than Alexander Lauderdale Junior.

Nevertheless, he felt conscious that his uncle disliked him personally, and in moments of depression, when he had taken too little exercise and his liver was torpid, the certainty of this caused him much uneasiness. There was no apparent reason for it, and it suggested to his self-satisfied nature the idea that some caprice entered, after all, into the nature of his uncle. On such occasions he rarely failed to instruct Mrs. Lauderdale to ask uncle Robert to dinner, and to be particularly careful that the fish should be perfect. Uncle Robert was fond of fish and a quiet family party. Katharine was his favourite, but he liked Mrs. Lauderdale, and his brother, the old philanthropist, was congenial to him, though the two took very different views of humanity and the public good. Alexander Senior’s dream was to get possession of all Robert’s millions and distribute them within a week amongst a number of asylums and charitable institutions which he patronized. He should then feel that he had done a good work and that his benevolent instincts had been satisfied. He sometimes sat in his study in a cloud of smoke—for he smoked execrable tobacco perpetually—and tried to persuade himself that ‘brother Bob’ might perhaps after all leave him the whole fortune. There would be great joy among the idiots on that day, thought old Alexander, as the two-cent ‘Virginia cheroot’ dropped from his hand, and he fell asleep in his well-worn armchair. And then came dreams of unbounded charity, of unlimited improvement and education of the poor and deficient. The greatest men of the age should be employed to devote their lives to the happiness of the poor little blind boys, and of the little girls born deaf, and of the vacantly staring blear-eyed youths whom nature had made carelessly, and whom God had sent into the world, perhaps, as a means of grace to those more richly endowed. For old Alexander was charitable to every one—even to the Supreme Being, whose motives he ventured to judge. He was incapable of an unkind thought, and in the heaven of his old fancy he would have founded an asylum for reformed devils and would not have hesitated to beg a subscription of Satan himself, being quite ready to believe that the Prince of Hell might have his good moments. He would have prayed cheerfully for ‘the puir deil.’ There is no limit to the charity of such over-kind hearts. Nothing seems to them so bad but that, by gentleness and persuasion, it may at last be made good.

He knew, of course, for Robert had told him, that he was not to have the millions even during the few remaining years of his life, and he bore his brother no malice for the decision. Robert promised him that he should have plenty of money for his poor people, but did not hesitate to say that if he had the whole property he would pauperize half the city of New York in six months.

“You’d give every newsboy and messenger boy in the city a roast turkey for dinner every day,” laughed Robert.