CHAPTER VI.
SUYDAM’S LEGACY AND HERMIA’S WILL.
Hermia attended her uncle’s funeral because Frank came over and insisted upon it; and she and her brother-in-law were the only mourners. But few people were in the church, a circumstance which Hermia remembered later with gratitude. The Suydams had lived on Second Avenue since Second Avenue had boasted a brick or brownstone front, but no one cared to assume a respect he did not feel. Among the tablets which graced the interior of St. Mark’s was one erected to the dead man’s father, who had left many shekels to the diocese; but John Suydam was lowered into the family vault with nothing to perpetuate his memory but his name and the dates of his birth and death engraved on the silver plate of his coffin.
Hermia took no interest in her uncle’s death; she was even past the regret that she would be the poorer by twenty-five dollars a year. When she received the letter from Suydam’s lawyer, informing her that she was heiress to a million dollars, her hands shook for an hour.
At first she was too excited to think connectedly. She went out and took a long walk, and physical fatigue conquered her nerves. She returned home and sat down on the edge of her bed and thought it all out. The world was under her feet at last. With such a fortune she could materialize every dream of her life. She would claim her place in society here, then go abroad, and in the old world forget the Nineteenth Century. She would have a house, each of whose rooms should be the embodiment of one of that strange medley of castles she had built in the land of her dreams. And men would love her—she was free to love in fact instead of in fancy—free to go forth and in the crowded drawing-rooms of that world not a bird’s flight away find the lover whose glance would be recognition.
She sprang to her feet and threw her arms above her head. New life seemed to have been poured into her veins, and it coursed through them like quicksilver; she felt young for the first time in the twenty-four centuries of her life. She dropped her arms and closed her hand slowly; the world was in the palm. She smiled and let her head drop back. She moved it slowly on the pivot of her throat. Her eyes met the glass.
The cry of horror which burst from her lips rang through the room. For this girl had lived so long and so consistently in her imagination that it was rarely she remembered she was not a beautiful woman. During the past hours she had slowly grasped the fact that, as with the stroke of a magician’s wand, her dream-estates had been hardened from shadow into substance; it had not occurred to her that the gift most coveted was the one gift withheld.
She sank in a heap on the bed, all spirit and hope gone out of her. For many minutes she remained motionless. Then she slowly straightened herself until she was erect once more, and in her face grew a look of hope fighting down doubt. In a moment hope triumphed, then gave way to determination, which in turn yielded to defiance. She sprang forward and with her clenched hand shattered her mirror into a star with a thousand points.
“I will be beautiful!” she cried aloud, “and I will never look into a glass again until I am.”