“Suggest?” he cried, laughing. “I don’t know; but I know there never was a will written that couldn’t be driven through with a coach and six if the right man sits on the box. You’re the lawyer, judge.”
The judge was a lawyer, as he then and there proceeded to prove. He rose to his feet and spoke in his old-fashioned style:
“Gentlemen, I think I speak for this company when I say that we strongly object to the breaking of this will as a bad precedent in the community. We wish it carried out to the very letter. Our fellow-townsman knew his sister’s needs better than we, and he chose to leave her needy. There are many, many things this town sorely wants, as he also knew, but he chose to use his money otherwise. What a monument to him it would have been had he built us the new school-house our town requires! The wet south lot down by the old mill is an eyesore to the village. Had he used that land and drained it and set up a school-house there, or indeed any public building, what a different meeting this would have been! He was our only man of wealth, and he leaves not so much as a town clock to thank him for. No; a monument to himself is what his will calls for, and a monument he shall have. If we failed him here, which of us would feel sure that our own wills would be carried out? In the confidence of these four walls we can say that the difficulties of the inscription and the style of monument seem insuperable. I know but one man to whom I would intrust this delicate commission. I feel confident that he would not render us too absurd by too conspicuous a monument or too florid an inscription. Need I name Dr. Michel?”
“Out of my bailiwick,” cried the doctor—”’way out of my bailiwick.” But his voice was drowned in the confusion of the popular acclaim that was forming him into a committee of one. The kindly butcher made his way to the doctor’s side under cover of the noise.
“Take it, doctor; now do take it,” he whispered in his ear. “There ain’t a man in the town that can shave this pig if you can’t. I was sayin’ just yesterday you’re lost in this little place of ourn. You’ve got more sense than’s often called for here. Here’s the chance for you to show ‘em what you can do. Do take it.”
The physician looked at the wheedling little butcher with a glance from his blue eye that was half kindly, half irritated. “Well, I’ll take it,” he cried; “I’ll take it; and I thank you for your confidence, gentlemen.”
It was a full month before the little company met again in the doctor’s office, but during that period they knew Dr. Michel had not been idle in the matter intrusted to his care. He was seen in close conversation with the town’s first masons, the best carpenters, the local architect, and these worthies, under close and eager examination, gave answers that dashed the unspoken hopes of those who questioned. Here were bona fide bids asked for on so much masonry, so much carpentering, and the architect had been ordered to send in designs of monuments, how high he deemed it unprofessional to state; but arguing inversely, they judged by the length of his countenance that the measurements were not short—he had particularly hated Carshena. It was, for all these reasons, a rather anxious-looking company that met in Dr. Michel’s office at his summons, and the doctor’s own face was not reassuring as he opened the meeting.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, slowly, “it’s a thankless task you’ve given me, but such as it is, I hope you will find I have performed it to your satisfaction. Here are various plans for the monument to be erected to our late fellow-citizen, and here is a plan of the ground that it has seemed to me most suitable to purchase. It has been a task peculiarly uncongenial to me, because I, I suppose, know more than any of you here how this money is needed where it ought to have gone. I saw Adelia yesterday, and lonely and ghost-ridden as that old house would be to any of us, it’s a home to her that’s to be sold over her head to build this.” He laid his hand on the papers he had thrown down on the table before him. The little company looked silently at each other, with faces as downcast as if they were to blame. It was Judge Bowles who spoke first.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “we must not let ourselves feel too responsible in this matter. We are only following our plain duty. Show us the monument which you consider best, doctor.”
The doctor was silently turning over the papers. “Family feeling is a queer thing,” he said, meditatively. “I saw Adelia the other day, and I asked her if she wanted a neighbor to sleep in the house at night.