The young man, dumfounded, turned over the single sheet of paper that contained the whole message, examined again the envelope, read and reread the communication, and finally laid it aside. Not one word of explanation of his own (Edward's) existence no claim of relationship, no message of sympathy, only the curt voice of an eccentric old man, echoing beyond the black wall of mystery and already sunk into eternal silence. The old life no longer seemed dear or beautiful. It returned upon him with the dull weight of oppression he had known so long. It was a bitter ending, a crushing, overwhelming disappointment.
He smiled at length and lighted another cigar. His mind reverted to the singular character whose final expression lay upon the desk. His last act had been to guard against the curious, and that had included the beneficiary. He had succeeded in living a mystery, in dying a mystery, and in covering up his past with a mystery.
"It was well done." Such was Edward's reflection spoken aloud. He recalled the lines: "I now, assured of your character in every particular." Every word in that laconic letter, as also every word in the few communications made to him in life by this man, meant something. What did these mean? "Assured" by whom? Who had spied upon his actions and kept watch over him to such an extent as would justify the sweeping confidences? But he knew that the testator had read him right. A faint wave of pleasure flushed his cheek and warmed his heart when he realized the full significance of this tribute to his true character. He no longer felt like an intruder.
And yet, "assured" by whom? And who was Gerald Morgan? Not a relative or he would have said so; he would have said "my nephew, Gerald Morgan." The same argument shut him (Edward) out. Why this suspicious absence of relationship terms?—and they, both of them, Morgans and heirs to his wealth?
Again he dragged the papers from the desk and ran them over. Manuscripts all, they contained detached accounts of widely separated people and incidents, and moreover they were clearly briefed. "A Dramatic Trail," "The Storm," "A Midnight Struggle," etc. They had no bearing upon his life; they were the unpublished literary remains of John Morgan.
Every paper lay exposed; the mine was exhausted. He again read the letter slowly, idly lifted each paper and returned all to the desk.
The cigar was out again; he tossed it from the window, locked the desk and passed into the mother's room. The action was without forethought, but his new philosophy had taught him the value of instinctive human actions as index fingers. What cause then had drawn him into that long-deserted room? As he reflected, his eyes rested upon the picture of the girl in the little frame on the mantel. He started back, amazed and overwhelmed. It was the face that had been turned to him in the library—the face of Gerald Morgan!
Edward was surprised to find himself standing by the open window when he had exhausted the train of thought that the recognition put in motion, and counting his heart-beats, ninety to the minute. By that curious power or weakness of certain minds his thoughts ran entirely from the matter in hand along the lines of a lecture his friend Virdow as Jean had delivered, the theory of which was that organic heart disease, unless fastened to its victim by inheritance, is always a mental result. If a mere thought or combination of thoughts could excite, a thought could depress. It was plain; he would write to Virdow confirming his theory.
Then he became conscious that the moon hung like a plate of silver in the vast sky space of the east and that her light was flashed back by many little points in the city beneath him—a gilt ball, a vane, a set of window glasses, and the dew-wet slates of a modern roof. One white spot was visible in the yard in front, white and pale as the moon when the vapor had dispersed but set immovably. As he idly sought to unravel its little secret, it simply became a part of the shadow and invisible, but he felt that some one was looking up at him; and suddenly he saw the slender figure of a man pass, cross the gravel walk and vanish in the shrubbery on the left.
Edward did not cry out; he stood musing upon the fact, and lo, there came a glitter of rosy light along the horizon; the moon had vanished overhead, and sound arose in confused murmurs from the dull heaps of houses in the valley. He saw again at the moment, over the eastern hills, the face of a girl as she stood calling her pets, and felt her eyes upon him.