Chapter V: The Poison of Gold

There was no difficulty whatever in establishing the identity of the Van Deust brothers, and no obstacles were interposed to prevent their entering into possession of their fortune as speedily as the forms of law and the time requisite for communication with Holland would permit; for in those days it had not yet become a branch of the legal business to stir up vexatious will contests, based upon the fictitious claims of presumptive heirs, in order that lawyers might fleece the real inheritors. Even before the money arrived from Holland Peter wanted a few thousand dollars of it in the house as a tangible evidence of the reality of their wealth; and Mr. Holden very cheerfully humored his whim by making him an advance of the required amount. The old man had no idea of investing the money, or buying anything with it; but he loved to run his fingers through the glittering coins from time to time and listen to the mellifluous music of their chinking; to count, and recount, and pile the yellow discs, and think what he could do with them if he had a mind to. The unhappy fact was that this sudden acquisition of wealth had developed a really miserly disposition in the elder brother. As is very common, especially among those who only acquire large fortunes late in life, possession begat in him a longing to possess. He even felt it an injury that he had been all those years without that money, the existence even of which he had not known, and for which, now that he clutched it, he really had not the slightest use. He had never been one at whom the tongue of scandal might have wagged the reproach of prodigality, even in his youth; but his jealously careful economy was greater now than it had ever before been.

Jacob proposed one day that they should purchase two black broadcloth suits and crape-bound hats, to be worn as mourning for Uncle Dietrich; but was completely discomfited by the look of pained surprise with which Peter regarded him, and the tone in which he replied:

"Now, Jacob, would you go to making ducks and drakes of our little money in that way, and at your time of life?"

No, Jacob resigned his idea of a tribute to Uncle Dietrich's memory, and penitently declared he really had no notion of becoming a spendthrift; and thereafter he uncomplainingly and unquestioningly left his elder brother to the sole administration of their joint wealth.

When the bulk of their inheritance arrived and was placed in the hands of Mr. Holden for investment on bond and mortgage in New York, that it might yield more dollars to covetous Peter's longings, then the old man's troubles indeed began. When he heard of a fire, he trembled to think that perhaps it was property mortgaged to the Van Deust Fund that was burned. When he read of a bankruptcy he shuddered for fear that the delinquent might have been indebted to the Van Deust Fund. When he had no bad news, then his anxiety was even greater, for at times he was capable of thinking it possible that worthy little Mr. Holden might have run away with the Van Deust Fund bodily. All this made him a very uneasy and unhappy old man. Jacob's kinder and more trustful nature gave place to none of those anxieties, and Peter resented his seeming indifference to the Van Deust Fund.

"Jacob," said he, one day, "we might live to see the Fund doubled."

"Well, Peter, if it were, what more good would it do us?"

The elder brother felt almost sick with disgust at that unambitious reply, and said that he felt so.

Thus it was that Peter's temper, never a remarkably sweet one, became so sour that meek old Jacob grew to look upon him with actual dread and would shun him, or sit looking askance and timidly at him, when they smoked together on the porch in the evenings, in the habit but not the content of former days. And, seeing this, a new suspicion entered Peter's soul to plague him.

"I suppose," said he, one day, with a grim smile, "that you think because I'm the oldest, I'll die first."

"Now, now, Peter, my dear Peter! I assure you I never had such a thought," protested horrified Jacob.

"Oh, it's only natural you should. I don't blame you. But I'm good for a good many years yet, Jacob; a good many years yet."

"I trust and fervently hope and pray, brother Peter, that you may be good for very many years to come." And the tender-hearted old man's voice trembled, and his eyes were moist as he spoke. "Why," said he, "to think of your dying, Peter, gives me a--a--a--"

"An idea, eh?"

"No, no, Peter, not at all that. No. A cold shudder, I meant; but you startled me so I couldn't think of the word. After all the many years we have lived together, all by ourselves, with no other companions and hardly any other friends than each other! Why, Peter, if I were to lose you, I'd want to die myself, right off."

"Humph. Not you. I know what you'd want to do a heap more. And I don't blame you. Oh, no. It's natural for you. But I know."

"Know what?"

"I know what you'd do with the Fund if I was out of the way."

"Then you know much more, Peter, than I should know, even if I had it in my hands, to do what I pleased with this blessed minute."

"Why, you'd be a special Providence for the women. That's what you'd be, you soft old noodle. You'd give it away to the young ones that wanted to marry, like Mary Wallace; to the middle-aged ones who were sorry they had married, like Mrs. Richards. Oh, you don't think I've noticed and understood your hinting 'how poor she was,' and 'how hard she must find it to get along with her five small children and deserted by her worthless husband;' and I've no doubt, if the truth were known, he had some good reasons for leaving her. And you'd give it to the old ones, just because they were old women. You'd give a lot of it to Mary Wallace, for her mother's sake, I've no doubt. Oh, yes. Beautiful ideas you'd have, and fine things you'd do with the Fund if I was out of the road."

"If I should do all that you have said, brother, I think the Fund would be doing a great deal more good than it does now."

"Aha! There! You admit it! I knew it! But you needn't think you'll ever get the chance. I'll live to bury you yet."

By this time he had worked himself up into a veritable passion; his lean old fingers trembled with the agitation of his wrath, and his perverted senses were deaf and blind to the loving kindness of Jacob's meek and gentle response, "And I hope, Peter, that you may."

"You don't. You're a hypocrite," he retorted, furiously. Jacob looked at him sadly, shook his head, and after lighting his pipe in silence, strolled away for his evening smoke to the woods, where he was wont to retire when Peter made the house too warm for him.

But the crushed worm, proverbially at least, eventually turns; and one day the younger brother, badgered beyond endurance by those oft-repeated taunts and reproaches, which were always accompanied by cruel raspings of the old wound in his heart, faced his tormentor and replied:

"Well," he said, "take it by and large, and I think if I should do all that you have said with the money I'd make a better use of it than you'd be likely to."

"What do you know about what I'd do with it?"

"No more than you know what I would; but I've got just as good a right to guess as you have."

"Well, what do you 'guess'?" retorted Peter, with a sneering wicked grin.

"Why, I imagine that as long as you lived you would hang on to every penny of it, like an old miser as you are, and when Death loosed the greedy clutch of your avaricious fingers from it, it would be discovered that you had left it all to found a home for worn-out, dried-up, useless, ill-natured old animals such as we are, creatures who have outlived all love but that of self, and deserve no other; men who, like you, have no without a blush for what they are, and a sigh for what they might have been."

"Jacob, you're a chuckle-headed ass."

"Peter, you're a soulless old curmudgeon, and a brute."

"Don't you talk to me like that. For two cents I'd knock your head off."

"For a money consideration I've no doubt you'd try it; but I'll bet you a thousand dollars you can't knock one side of it off."

"You'll bet a thousand dollars! I'd like to know where you'd get 'em."

"Right in the house. Half the money that's there belongs to me. It all belongs to me just as much as to you."

"Oh, indeed! And you'd like to knock me in the head and get possession of it, wouldn't you?"

"No. But I'd like to jam some sense into your thick skull, and bleed out some of the meanness and selfishness that fills your heart."

"Faw de Lo'd's sake. Is you boys a qwa'lin'?" demanded old black Betsy, coming up on the porch; and they slunk away ashamed before her.

But when Jacob had once "read the Declaration of Independence," as he styled his self-assertion against Peter's domineering disposition, he soon fell into the habit of repeating the precedent, and as Peter did not willingly or easily relinquish his sovereignty--the prerogative of seniority in his opinion--they had many a wordy wrangle, and not infrequently uttered to each other such threats as might well have seemed ominous if overheard by strangers. And they were overheard, and their quarrels were repeated and magnified in circulation from mouth to mouth; so that it was not long before it became matter of common notoriety in the community that the two old men had actually had knock-down fights; and once, when Peter was laid up with the rheumatism, and Jacob was nursing him most tenderly and assiduously--notwithstanding the invalid's temper was just then even worse than usual--it was popularly believed that the elder brother had been almost killed by the younger in a bloody combat, and there were those who even talked of "speaking to the squire about it." But the brothers never did come to blows, and the only immediate result of their quarrels was a formal division between them of the money on hand in the house, after which it was allowed to lie in two parts, as useless as it before was in one. Jacob indeed had some idea of giving his share to Mary Wallace, but could not exactly make up his mind upon what pretence or with what excuse to offer it, and feared to offend her.

One day he sat on a little mossy bank by the roadside when she passed him, coming from the woods with a bunch of wild flowers in her hands and going toward her uncle's house. She was close to him, but did not see him. Her thoughts were upon her absent lover, and in the exaltation of her happiness she was oblivious to all about her but her own joy. The old man's eyes were upon her, however, reading her secret in her countenance transfigured by love and hope. Ah! how her look brought back her mother's face to his remembrance.

"Little she would care," he said softly to himself, "for the money now. She has love; and that is better than gold."