Chapter II: Alex.’s Letters

After waiting an hour for her young people, Mrs. Marsh sat down to breakfast alone, and was finishing her coffee when Alex. came in. He had thought of the Pledgers while dressing, and laughed at himself for being so interested in a strange girl. “I don’t quite understand it, although it is like me to be attracted by every new face if it is at all out of the common,” he thought, “and she was rather uncommon in that expensive box with Old Pledger and his wife, who looked like a muff, and the girl so fair, and without the flumadiddles Amy and Ruth and the rest of ’em wear to such places. And then she had a striking face, though I might not know it again if I saw it.”

He was dressed by this time, and, going to the dining-room, kissed his mother, and, seating himself at the table, looked at the letters lying by his plate. There were two,—one a bill from his tailor, which gave him no concern, as he had money enough to pay it.

“Ball is in a hurry for his cash. I must see to it to-day,” he said, and took up the second letter, which bore in a corner the address of Sanders & Brown, Attorneys, Denver. “I don’t know Sanders & Brown, nor any one else in Denver,” he said, breaking the seal and beginning to read:

“DENVER, _December 18, 18—_.

“MR. ALEXANDER MARSH—DEAR SIR: It is our duty to inform you that your
great-uncle, Amos Marsh, for many years our client, died suddenly at
his ranch two weeks ago.”

Here Alex. stopped reading and said: “Great-uncle, Amos Marsh! I didn’t know I had one. Have I or had I a great-uncle Amos?”

He was speaking to his mother, who had torn off the envelope of a Denver paper received with Alex.’s letter, and was intent upon a marked column, which read as follows:

“It is with keen regret that we record the death of our old and highly
esteemed citizen, Amos Marsh, who was found dead in his bedroom at his
ranch, where he was spending a few days. Heart failure was the cause
of his death.”

The article then went on to enumerate the many virtues of the deceased, who was noted for his kindness to every one and his charities to the poor, and his great activity for one of his age. A few of his peculiarities were mentioned, and among them his living alone when in town, with no other company than a dog and a cat, and no one to care for him but a Chinaman. His reticence with his friends and his habit of talking to himself were spoken of, and the notice closed with a second eulogy upon him as a good and upright man, who would be greatly missed.

Mrs. Marsh read the article through before she replied to her son.

“Yes, you did have an uncle Amos, but he is dead. There is quite a long obituary of him in this paper.”

She held it toward Alex. But he did not take it. He had run his eyes rapidly over the rest of the letter, which made him hold his breath with surprise. After announcing the death of their client, the lawyer, Mr. Brown, went on to say that for a long time they had urged Mr. Marsh to make his will, but he always refused, giving as a reason that if he made it he must explain some things he would rather not explain to the world. He would leave the explanation in writing to the proper person. That Alex. was the person intended was proven by the fact that when Mr. Marsh was found dead in his bedroom there was on the table before him a partially written page of foolscap, addressed to Alex., which Mr. Brown enclosed in the letter. It had slipped to the floor, but Alex. did not notice it, and read on:

“He told us that his nearest of kin lived in New York, naming you and
your sister, and that his property would go to you as the children of
his nephew, Henry Marsh, and he always talked as if he expected you to
have a farm, or, at least, live on it for a while. He did not leave a
large fortune,—he spent so freely for the good of others. There are
several thousand dollars in banks and railroad stocks, the interest of
which he never cared to use. He was saving it for a particular
purpose, he said. He owned quite a valuable ranch, the income from
which supported him as his wants were very few. He had a house in
town, and an abandoned farm in New Hampshire, among the White
Mountains, where he lived a long time, but which he left years ago and
came to Denver. For a while it was rented, but so many repairs were
demanded and he had so much trouble with his tenants, that he decided
to close the house and let the farm run. He went East two years ago,
visited the old place, and when he came back he seemed brighter and
happier than we had ever seen him, and talked more about you having
the farm, or, at least, living there for a time.

“‘I’ve made it right,’ he said, ‘and Alex. will see to it,’ though
what he meant we do not know. He was always a little obscure in his
talk. Queer, or luny, people called him, but he was a good man. Please
write us with regard to your wishes, or come to Denver, if possible,
and look into the matter.”

Alex. read the letter through twice to himself and once aloud to his mother and to Amy and Ruth. The young ladies had come into the breakfast room languid and tired, until Alex. began to read the letter, when they became alive and interested at once, Amy looking over her brother’s shoulder as he read, and making sundry comments.

“A ranch in Colorado and an abandoned farm in New Hampshire! How delightful and romantic, and we the heirs! It is like a romance. What is this paper on the floor? Isn’t it the one they found on his table?”

She picked up the half sheet of foolscap and handed it to Alex., who unfolded it reverently, as if he felt the touch of the fingers, which must have stiffened in death in the act of writing. There was no date, and the writing was cramped and quite illegible and not very plain in its meaning. But Alex. deciphered it and read aloud:

“NEPHEW ALEXANDER: That was your grandfather’s name, and a good one.
They say you are honest, with fewer tricks than most young men in the
city. I inquired two years ago. I was there and saw your house, but it
wasn’t for me to go in. I’ve kept track of my family, what there is
left; nobody now but you and your sister. When your father was a boy
he came to the farm in New Hampshire and staid a week, but he found me
poor company and never came again. If he had and was older, I was
going to——; but no matter, I’ve fixed it, and leave it for you to do
right for me. Something tells me you will. I am too old to face it,
God knows, and he has forgiven me. I am an old man. The doctors say I
am not long for this world. I am ninety now, and sitting here alone
with no soul in the house; things come back plainer,—folks I knew
years ago, and one is standing by the door and looking at me as if he
was not satisfied the way I’ve fixed it, and wants me to put it down
again, but I can’t to-night, my head is so queer. My candle is nearly
out, and I can’t see. To-morrow I’ll try and write again and tell you
why you must go to the farm and do right.”

Here there was evidently an effort to write a word with a pen which had no ink in it, and then the hand must have grown powerless and dropped, clasping the side of the table as they found it, and the old man was dead. Alex.’s voice shook as he read this letter, while even the loquacious Amy was silent, wondering what it all meant.

“There’s something on the other side of the sheet,—some words,” she said at last, and turning the paper over, Alex. saw, written very plainly, the name “Crosby,” and after it another name he could not make out, except that the first was “Joel.”

“Can you tell me what that last name is?” he asked his sister.

She could not, and Ruth next tried her skill.

“The first letter is certainly ‘P,’ though a very queer one,” she said. “Can it be ‘Pleasure’?”

“‘Pleasure’? No. There’s a ‘g,’ or a ‘y’ in it. Try again,” Alex. said, and Ruth tried again with better success.

“It must be ‘Pledges,’” she suggested.

“‘Pledges,’” Alex. repeated, and taking the paper from Ruth, he made “Pledgers” distinctly from the irregular letters. “‘Pledgers,’ that’s funny,” he said, with a thought of Old Pledger and the girl.

Neither Amy nor Ruth saw anything funny in the names. They were too much absorbed in what the old man had written, and asked Mrs. Marsh what she knew of him. She knew very little, except that he once lived on a farm among the New Hampshire hills, and her husband, when a boy, had spent a week with him, but was glad to get away.

“Since your father died I have scarcely given the man a thought,” she added. “I did hear, in a roundabout way, that he had gone West; I fancied him dead long ago. He was said to be very eccentric,—half crazy, or something.”

She was not one to care much for people not in her sphere, and Amos Marsh evidently was not, or had not been while living. Now, however, he became an object of importance. He had left her children his money, and although they were not in need of it, as the Marsh fortune was a large one, she was glad for the addition, and, with Amy, began to wonder how much there was in the banks and how much the ranch and house in Denver were worth. She scarcely thought of the farm, which was uppermost in Alex.’s mind, as he sat looking at the papers in his hand.

“Heard I was honest, with fewer tricks than most city young men! I am much obliged to his informant. Who was it, I wonder?” he thought, then, as his eyes fell upon the last words his uncle had written, he said aloud: “It looks as if he had done some wrong which I am to right; but how can I, when I don’t know what it is?”

“Probably nothing but a whim,” Ruth said. “Evidently he _was_ half crazy as people thought. Think of his fancying some one standing in the door as he wrote and seeing things at the farm! It makes one feel creepy. Maybe the old house is haunted.”

“Oh, how delightful!” Amy cried. “I hope it is. A family ghost adds so much _éclat_ to one.”

Alex. did not reply. He was thinking of the two names, Crosby and Joel Pledger. Where did they live, if still alive? Possibly in New York, as his uncle was there so recently. “I’ll look in the directory,” he thought. “Joel Pledger is not a common name, and if I find it I’ll follow it up and see if he ever heard of Amos Marsh. Jolly, what if it should be Old Pledger in the box? I’ve had queer feelings about him ever since I saw him and about the girl.”

An hour later Alex. was poring over a city directory, going through the list of Crosbys and Pledgers and marvelling to find so many, especially Pledgers. He had only expected to find a few, but it seemed to him there was a legion. There were Toms and Johns and Henrys and Elis, and at last Joel,—the only one so far as he could see in the list,—and he lived far down town in a most unfashionable part of the city, where Alex. had not been in years. But he was going there now, and, telling his mother not to wait lunch if he happened to be late, he left the house and, walking to Sixth Avenue, took a down-town car in pursuit of Joel Pledger and the girl!