“He was evidently troubled about them and got out of bed to look them over. This one, that I found lying open on the table, is torn across as though he had begun to destroy it when the end came.”
“Very likely that was his intention,” Thurston replied. “I had just written a new will for him, but it wasn’t signed—not unless he executed it that same afternoon. Perhaps you know about that?”
“No one was here, I’m sure,” said Nan, after a moment’s consideration. “The nurse was off duty; she left for the evening at four o’clock, and I’m sure the servants weren’t in his room. I carried up his dinner tray myself.”
“It’s hardly possible he had signed that last will. I was always present on such occasions and I got the witnesses. When I called now and then with a couple of his friends, or telephoned for them, there was a will to be signed. You probably understood that.”
He began opening the papers, glancing quickly at the last sheet of each will, and turning them face down on the table. The torn one he scrutinized more carefully, and returned to it for further examination when he had disposed of the others. Nan watched him nervously. He was a small, slight man of sixty, with a stiff gray mustache and a sharp, rasping voice. It would not have been easy to deceive Thurston if she had destroyed the wills; she could never have gone through with it!
She felt that she had touched with her finger-tips the far horizons and knew at last something of the meaning of life. She had subjected herself to pitiless self-analysis and stood convicted in her own conscience of vanity, selfishness, and hardness. The recollection of her gay adventures with the Kinneys and her affair with Copeland had become a hideous nightmare. Not only was she ashamed of her dallying with Billy, but she accused herself of having exerted a baneful influence upon him. In all likelihood he would never have sunk so low as to propose the destruction of Farley’s will but for his infatuation for her.
Farley’s death had in itself exercised a chastening effect upon her. She was conscious of trying to see herself with his eyes and fortify herself with something of the stern righteousness that made him, in the retrospect, a noble and inspiring figure. The upturned faces at the Settlement haunted her; there was a work for her to do in the world if only she could lay her hands upon it! In this new mood the life of ease which money would secure weighed little against self-dependence and service. Money had ceased to be an important integer in her calculations.
Having concluded his examination of the papers, the lawyer lifted his head with an impatient jerk, then sighed, and began smoothing the open sheets into a neat pile.
“Those wills are worthless, Miss Farley,—not one of them can be probated. The testator’s signatures and the names of the witnesses have been scratched out!”
In proof of his statement he extended one of the wills, pointing to the heavy cross-crosses at the bottom of the sheet.