The old man stirred uneasily in his chair.
“This is all quite beside the mark. What might have been proper to do in my wife’s life-time became a different matter altogether after her death. I had my daughter’s welfare to think of; besides––”
“I’m not talkin’ about your legal right. But you know that if you’d wanted to have it, you could have got your interest on the mortgage quick enough. If you hadn’t held back on his salary, others wouldn’t have; or if they had, you could have got after ’em. What’s the use of tryin’ to mix each other up? You couldn’t keep Maxwell in your pocket, and because he didn’t come to you every day for orders you reckoned to turn him out of the parish. You’ve not one thing against him, and you know it, Sylvester Bascom. 279 He’s shown you every kind of respect as his Senior Warden, and more patience than you deserved. He let himself be—no, had himself—bled, to save your life. But instead of making him the best young friend you could have had, and makin’ yourself of real use to your town and your neighbors through him and his work, you’ve let the devil get into you; and when your accident come, you’d got to where you were runnin’ that fast down a steep place into the sea that I could ’most hear the splash.”
She cocked her head on one side, and smiled at him whimsically, hoping for some response to her humorous picture. A faint ghost of a smile—was it, or was it not?—flickered on the old man’s lips; but he gave no sign of grace.
Hepsey sighed, and paused for an instant. “Well—we can’t sit here talkin’ till midnight, or I shall be compromisin’ your reputation, I suppose. There’ll be a meeting of the parishioners called at the end of this week, and the rector won’t be present at it; so, Warden, I suppose you’ll preside. I hope you will. I’ve got to do my part—and that is to see that the parish understands just how their rector’s placed, right now, both about his house and his salary. He’s workin’ as a laborer to get enough for him and that little wife of his to live on, and the town knows it—but 280 they don’t all know that it’s because the salary that’s properly his is bein’ held back on him, and by those that pay their chauffeurs more than the rector gets, by a good piece. I shall call on every one at that meetin’ to pay up; and I shall begin with the poorest, and end up”—she fixed Bascom’s eye, significantly—“with the richest. And if it seems to be my duty to do it, I may have somethin’ more to say when the subscription’s closed—but I don’t believe—no,” she added, opening her bag and rummaging about among its contents till she hit upon a letter and brought it forth, “no, I don’t believe I’ll have to say a thing. I’ve got a hunch, Sylvester Bascom, that it’ll be you that’ll have the last word, after all.”
“I’VE GOT A HUNCH, SYLVESTER BASCOM, THAT IT’LL BE YOU THAT’LL HAVE THE LAST WORD, AFTER ALL”
The old man’s glance was riveted upon the familiar handwriting of the faded letter, and without a word Hepsey started to read it, date and all, in a clear voice: