"Don't you worry about me, Anne," said George stoutly.
"Just the same, you should take care of yourself," said Braden. "Pneumonia gets after you big fellows, you know. How are you, Wade? Poor old Wade, you must miss my grandfather terribly. You knew him before I was born. It seems an age, now that I think of it in that way."
"Thirty-three years, sir," said Wade. "Nearly ten years longer than Murray, Mr. Braden, It does seem an age."
The will was not a lengthy document. The reading took no more than three minutes, and for another full minute after its conclusion, not a person in the room uttered a word. A sort of stupefaction held them all in its grip,—that is, all except the old lawyer who was putting away his glasses and waiting for the outburst that was sure to follow.
In the first place, Mr. Thorpe remembered Anne. After declaring that she had been satisfactorily provided for in a previous document, known to her as a contract, he bequeathed to her the house in which she had lived for a single year with him. All of its contents went with this bequest. To Josiah Wade he left the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, to Edward Murray ten thousand dollars, and to each of the remaining servants in his household a sum equal to half of their earnings while in his service. There were bequests to his lawyer, his doctor and his secretary, besides substantial gifts to persons who could not by any chance have expected anything from this grim old man,—such as the friendly doorman at his favourite club, and the man who had been delivering newspapers to him for a score of years or more, and the old negro bootblack who had attended him at the Brevoort in the days before the Italian monopoly set in, and the two working-girls who supported the invalid widow of a man who had gone to prison and died there after having robbed the Thorpe estate of a great many thousands of dollars while acting as a confidential and trusted agent.
Then came the astounding disposition of the fortune that had accumulated in the time of Templeton Thorpe. There were no bequests outright to charity, contrary to all expectations. The listeners were prepared to hear of huge gifts to certain institutions and societies known to have been favoured by the testator. Various hospitals were looked upon as sure to receive splendid endowments, and specific colleges devoted to the advancement of medical and surgical science were also regarded as inevitable beneficiaries. It was all cut and dried, so far as Judge Hollenback's auditors were concerned,—that is to say, prior to the reading of the will. True, the old lawyer had declared in the beginning, that the present will was drawn and signed on the afternoon of the day before the death of Mr. Thorpe, and that a previous instrument to which a codicil had been affixed was destroyed in the presence of two witnesses. The instrument witnessed by Wade and Murray was the one that had been destroyed. This should have aroused uneasiness in the mind of Braden Thorpe, if no one else, but he was slow to recognise the significance of the change in his grandfather's designs.
With his customary terseness, Templeton Thorpe declared himself to be hopelessly ill but of sound mind at the moment of drawing his last will and testament, and suffering beyond all human endurance. His condition at that moment, and for weeks beforehand, was such that death offered the only panacea. He had come to appreciate the curse of a life prolonged beyond reason. Therefore, in full possession of all his faculties and being now irrevocably converted to the principles of mercy advocated by his beloved grandson, Braden Lanier Thorpe, he placed the residue of his estate in trust, naming the aforesaid Braden Lanier Thorpe as sole trustee, without bond, the entire amount to be utilised and expended by him in the promotion of his noble and humane propaganda in relation to the fate of the hopelessly afflicted among those creatures fashioned after the image of God. The trust was to expire with the death of the said Braden Lanier Thorpe, when all funds remaining unused for the purposes herein set forth were to go without restriction to the heirs of the said trustee, either by bequest or administration.
In so many words, the testator rested in his grandson full power and authority to use these funds, amounting to nearly six million dollars, as he saw fit in the effort to obtain for the human sufferer the same mercy that is extended to the beast of the field, and to make final disposition of the estate in his own will. Realising the present hopelessness of an attempt to secure legislation of this character, he suggested that first of all it would be imperative to prepare the way to such an end by creating in the minds of all the peoples of the world a state of common sense that could successfully combat and overcome love, sentimentality and cowardice! For these three, he pointed out, were the common enemy of reason. "And in compensation for the discharge of such duties as may come under the requirements of this trusteeship, the aforesaid Braden Lanier Thorpe shall receive the fees ordinarily allotted by law and, in addition, the salary of twenty-five thousand dollars per annum, until the terms of this instrument are fully carried out."
Anne Tresslyn Thorpe was named as executrix of the will.