Aunt Mirabelle sniffed. “Good for nothing. He’s most as scatter-brained as you are.”
Henry declined the combat, and after she sensed his intention, she went on, with increasing acridity.
“The rest of the whole estate’s tied up for a year in a trust, to see what you’re going to 51 do with some piece of property he deeded to you just before he died, but Mr. Archer wouldn’t tell me much about it ’till you came home. I suppose it’s part of the business––some department of it. If you can make ten thousand dollars out of it, you’re to have everything. All I get’s a few thousand outright, and what John gave me in a little separate fund, and a year’s income from the whole estate. I suppose you think that’s perfectly fair and right and just. Naturally, you would.”
In his present mood, Henry was immune to astonishment. “I don’t believe it’s up to me to criticize Uncle John, whatever he did.”
“Not under the circumstances, no. You’ve got some piece of property––I don’t know what it is; he didn’t tell me; I’m only his sister––and he’s fixed things so it’s just a gamble for you. You’re going to do the gambling; and I sit back and fold my hands and wait a year to see whether you get everything, or I do. Even this house.”
“What’s that?”
She made a deprecating gesture. “Oh, yes, if you aren’t a good enough gambler, then I 52 come into everything. It puts me in such a sweet position, doesn’t it? So comfortable for me.” Her smile was bitter; she was recalling what her brother had said to her at lunch, on that final day––that he wouldn’t listen to her, because already he had heard the worst that she had to say. Originally, as she knew, he had intended to bequeath Henry a fourth of his property, and herself the remainder; and she knew that by her too vigorous indictment of Henry she had egged her brother into a state of mind which, regardless of the cause of it, she still considered to be unfathomable. The memory galled her, and so did the possibility of Henry’s triumph. “Well,” she said, “I wish you every happiness and success, Henry. I suppose you feel in your conscience you deserve it, don’t you?”
When he left her, he was aware that the last tie had been severed.
His friend Bob Standish was a young man who in the past ten years had achieved many 53 different kinds of success by the reason that mere acquaintances, as well as strangers, invariably underestimated him. For one thing, his skin was so tender, his eyes so blue and innocent, his mouth so wide and sensitive, his forehead so white and high, that he gave the impression of almost childish simplicity and ingenuousness. For another thing, he dressed with such meticulous regard for the fashion, and he moved about with such indolent amiability, that his clothes and his manners distracted attention from what was underneath.