"You are dependent on your aunt for everything. Well, she's glad of that. So am I, in a way. Only, if you go against her will you won't be her heir any more. You mightn't be, anyhow, if she—went first. The Darby estate isn't really Jerusha Swaim's; it's mine. But she thinks it's hers and it's all right that way, because, in the end, I do control it." Uncle Cornie paused.
Jerry sat motionless, and, although it was June-time, the little white hand on the speaker's thin yellow one was very cold.
"If you are satisfied, I'm glad, but I won't let Jim Swaim's child think she's got a fortune of her own when she hasn't got a cent and must depend on the good-will of her relatives for everything she wants. Jim would haunt me to my grave if I did."
Jerry stared at her uncle's face in the darkening twilight. In all her life she had never known him to seem to have any mind before except what grooved in with Aunt Jerry's commanding mind. Yet, surprised as she was, she involuntarily drew nearer to him as to one whom she could trust.
"We agreed long ago, Jim and I did, when Jim was a rich man, that some day you must be shown that you were his child as well as Lesa's—I mean that you mustn't always be a dependent spender. You must get some Swaim notions of living, too. Not that either of us ever criticized your mother's sweet spirit and her ideal-building and love of adventure. Romance belongs to some lives and keeps them young and sweet if they live to be a million. I'm not down on it like your Aunt Jerry is."
Romance had steered wide away from Cornelius Darby's colorless days. And possibly only this once in the sweet stillness of the June twilight at "Eden" did that hungering note ever sound in his voice, and then only for a brief space.
"Jim would have told you all this himself if he had got his affairs untangled in time. And he'd have done that, for he had a big brain and a big heart, but God went and took him. He did. Don't rebel always, Jerry. God was good to him—you'll see it some day and quit your ugly doubting."
Who ever called anything ugly about Jerry Swaim before? That a creature like Cornelius Darby should do it now was one of the strange, unbelievable things of this world.
"I just wanted to say again," Uncle Cornie continued, "if I go first you'd be Jerusha's heir. We agreed to that long ago. That is, if you don't cross her wishes and start her to make a will against you, as she'd do if you didn't obey her to the last letter in the alphabet. If I go after she does, the property all goes by law to distant relatives of mine. That was fixed before I ever got hold of it—heirs of some spendthrifts who would have wasted it long ago if they'd lived and had it themselves."
The sound of voices and Eugene Wellington's light laughter came faintly from the lily-pond.