"Must be getting close to the deppo. Yonder is old Corn Darby's gravestone over on the bluff," they would say, as the train chuffed up out of the valley on either side of the station. That was all the memory of him that remained, save as now and then a girl in a far-away Kansas town remembered a June evening when a discus shied out from its course and rolled to the door of a rose-arbor.
But "Eden," as a country estate, lost nothing by the passing of the husband of its lady and mistress, who spared none of the Darby dollars to make both the town and country home delightful in all appointments, hoping and believing that in her policy of stubbornness and force she could have her way, and bring back to the East the girl whom she would never invite to return, the girl whose future she had determined to control. The three years had found Jerusha Darby's will to have Jerry Swaim become her heir under her own terms—mistaking dependence for appreciation, and idleness for happiness—had ceased to be will and become a mania, the ruling passion of her years of old age. She never dreamed that she was being adroitly managed by her husband's relative, Eugene Wellington, but she did recognize, and, strangely enough, resent, the fact that the Darby strain in his blood was proving itself in his ability, not to earn dollars, but to make dollars earn dollars once they were put plentifully into his hands.
Since Mrs. Darby had only one life-purpose—to leave her property to Jerry Swaim under her own terms—it galled her to think of it passing to the hands of the relatives of the late Cornelius. She believed that love of Eugene would bring Jerry back, for she was Lesa's own romance-loving child—even if the luxuries that wealth can offer should fail; and she had coddled Eugene Wellington for this very purpose. But after three years he had failed to satisfy her. She was becoming slowly but everlastingly set on one thing. She would put her property elsewhere by will—when she was through with it. She could not do without Eugene as long as she lived—which would be indefinitely, of course. But she would have her say—and (in a whisper) it would not be a Darby nor kin of a Darby who might be sitting around now, waiting for her to pass to her fathers, who would possess it.
In this intense state of mind she called Eugene out to "Eden" in the late May of the third year of Jerry Swaim's stay in Kansas. The rose-arbor was aglow with the same blossoming beauty as of old, and all the grounds were a dream of May-time verdure.
Eugene Wellington, driving out from the city in a big limousine car, found them more to his taste than ever before, and he took in the premises leisurely before going to the arbor to meet Mrs. Darby.
"If I could only persuade Jerry to come now, all would be well," he meditated. "And I have hopes. The last news of her tells me a few things. She hasn't fallen in love with York Macpherson. He'd hate me less if she had, and he detests me. I saw that, all right, when he was here last month. And she's pretty tired of the life of the wilderness. I know that. If she would come right now it would settle things forever. I'd go after her if the old lady would permit it. I'd go, anyhow, if I dared. But I must keep an eye on Uncle Cornie's widow day and night, and, hungry as I am for one glimpse of Jerry's sweet face, I couldn't meet Jerusha D. in her wrath if I disobeyed her."
Eugene had the chauffeur pause while he surveyed the lilac-walk and the big maples and the lotus-pond.
"If Jerry would come now," he began again, with himself, "she would be heir to all this. If she doesn't come soon, there's trouble ahead for Eugene of the soft snaps. To the rose-arbor, Henderson."
So Henderson whirled the splendid young product to the doorway of the pretty retreat.
Mrs. Darby met her nephew with a sterner face even than she was accustomed to wear.