Then her eyes widened. Her breath caught in a gasp. One hand crept up to her heart, as she leaned forward, peering down intently. She must be mistaken, yet certainly a man passing through the shadows from the back of the building, accompanied by one of the maids, was Junior. Gazing earnestly to convince herself that she must be mistaken, she saw them pause and look around them to assure themselves that no one was watching. As the man turned, she saw for a certainty that he was Junior. With her lips parted and her eyes incredulous, she sat an instant watching him indulge in familiarities with the maid. She saw him give her money. She saw him take her in his arms and kiss her.
Quite unconscious of what she was doing, possibly in order to make sure of what was really happening, Edith arose, leaning far over the balcony. As the maid started to go, Junior caught her back and kissed her repeatedly. A terrible cry broke from Edith’s lips. The hand upon which she was leaning, slipped. Head first she plunged over the railing and down to the stone walk far below.
At the sound of her voice, Junior looked up. The next instant he saw her plunging fall. He stopped a second, cautioning the maid to disappear. He was the first to reach Edith. He gathered her in his arms and carried her down the walk, offering the plausible explanation that in leaning over the railing to speak to him as he was passing below, she had lost her balance and fallen.
He carried her to their room and physicians were summoned, but it was found that her neck was broken. So it was Junior’s task to take her back to Ashwater, lay her away with every outward sign of mourning and lavish expenditure, and ingratiate himself as deeply as possible with her relatives by a clever semblance of heart-broken grief.
The morning after the funeral, Junior entered the president’s room of the bank and closing the door behind him, went to the table and sat down, facing his father.
“Dad,” he said, “you’ve looked so ghastly ever since I’ve been home that I’ve come to put you out of your misery. Cheer up! Things are not as bad as they might be. In the first place, you will be rejoiced to know that I’ve got complete control of all of Edith’s finances. And in the second place, if I don’t mistake my guess, for once you will be even more rejoiced to know that what happened really and truly was an accident. I was downstairs. Edith did lose her balance and fall. There was a woman on the veranda with her near enough to see what happened and there were people on the veranda below when she came smashing down. I got to her first because I was coming that way and it wasn’t far. But it was an accident pure and simple.”
Moreland Senior leaned back in his chair and breathed to the depth of his lungs.
“Well, Junior,” he said. “I don’t know that I ever heard anything in all my life with which I was better pleased. I may, or I may not, have a few things I regret on my own soul, but I’d hate to undertake the strain of carrying a burden like that concerning you. As a man grows older, he doesn’t sleep so well as he did when he had the cast-iron constitution of youth, and there are times when the night gets pretty bad if a man’s conscience is not altogether clean. Of course, I’m not intimating that I’ve got anybody’s blood on my hands, but in the wild, hot-headed days of youth I may have done two or three things and been through a few experiences that I’d hate to see measured out to you. I want you to have a good time and get all you can out of my money—which is really your money—but be slightly careful. See to it that you don’t get into anything that’ll raise the hair on your head about three o’clock in the morning twenty years from now.”
Junior laughed. “Sure!” he said. “Don’t worry, Governor, I’ll be careful. I’ve never done anything so terrible and I’m not planning to do anything except go on with the work I’d started before I went away. Has anything come up concerning Mahala?”
Mr. Moreland shook his head.