The Primrose Ring

by Ruth Sawyer

"Fill!" There was something akin to actual terror in the voice of the Meanest Trustee. He could feel himself growing pale; his tongue seemed to drop back in his throat, choking him. "That would take a great deal of money," he managed to wheeze out at last; and then he braced himself, his hands clutched deep in his pockets. "I will never pay; never, never, never!"

"Oh yes, you will!" and the piper's smile was insultingly cheerful. "It was a great deal of joy, you know," he reminded him. "Come, lads"—to the other pipers—"hold out your caps, there."

The Meanest Trustee had the strange experience of feeling himself worked by a force outside of his own will; it was as if he had been a marionette with a master-hand pulling the wires. Quite mechanically he found himself taking something out of his pocket and dropping it into the caps thrust under his very nose, and at the same time his pockets began to fill with money—his money. In and out, in and out, his hands flew like wooden members, until there was not a coin left and the last piper turned away satisfied. He closed his eyes, for he was feeling very weak; then he became conscious of the touch of a warm, friendly hand on his wrist and he heard the voice of the old family doctor—the one who had set his leg when he was a little shaver and had fallen off the banisters, sliding downstairs.

"You will recover," it was saying. "A good rest is all you need. Sometimes there is nothing so beneficial and speedy as the old-fashioned treatment of bleeding a patient."

Some warm ashes dropped across the wrist of the Meanest Trustee and scattered on the floor; his cigar had gone out.

The Executive Trustee dozed at his study table. For months he had been working his brain overtime; he had still more to demand of it, and he was deliberately detaching it from immediate executive consciousness for a few minutes that he might set it to work again all the harder.

The Executive Trustee knew that he was dozing; but for all that it was unbearable—this feeling of being bound by coil after coil of rope until he could not stir a finger. A terrifying numbness began to creep over him—as if his body had died. The thought came to him like a shock that he had an active, commanding intelligence, still alive, and nothing for it to command. What did people do who had to live with dead, paralyzed bodies, dependent upon others to execute the dictates of their brains? Did not their brains go in the end, too, and leave just a breathing husk behind? The thought became a horror to him.

And yet people did live, just so. Yes, even children. Somewhere—somewhere—he knew of hundreds of them—or were there only a few? He tried to remember, but he could not. He did remember, however, that he had once heard them laughing; and he found himself wondering now at the strangeness of it. He hoped there was some one who would always keep them laughing—they deserved that much out of life, anyway; and some one who could understand and could administer to them lovingly—yes, that was the word—lovingly! As for himself, there was no one who could supply for him that strength and power for action that he had always worshiped; he must exist for the rest of his life simply as a thinking, ineffective intelligence. The Executive Trustee forgot that he was dozing. He wrestled with the ropes that bound him like a crazed man; he called for help again and again, until his lips could make no sound. For the first time in his remembrance he tasted the bitterness of despair. Then it was that the door opened noiselessly and Margaret MacLean entered, her finger to her lips. Coil after coil she unwound until he was free once more and could feel the marvelous response of muscle and nerve impulse. With a cry—half sob, half thankfulness—he flung his arms across the table and buried his face in them.

The Executive Trustee slept heavily, after the fashion of a man exhausted from hard labor.

In the house left by the Richest Trustee a little gray wisp of a woman sat huddled in a great carved chair close to the hearth, thinking and thinking and thinking. The fire was blazing high, trying its best to burn away the heart-cold and loneliness that clung about everything like a Dover fog. For years she had ceased to exist apart from her husband—her thoughts, her wishes, her interests were of his creating; she had drawn her very nourishment of life from his strong, dominant, genial personality. It was parasitic—oh yes, but it had been something rarely beautiful to them both—her great need of him. The need had grown all the greater because no children had come to fill her life; and the need of something to take care of had grown with him. Their love, and her dependence, had become the greatest factors in his life; in hers they were the only ones. Therefore, it was hardly strange, now that he had died, that she should find it hard to take up an individual existence again; to be truthful, she had found it impossible—she had not even existed.