Chapter III: Part 3

The following one was less troublesome, and so was the next; then came the week of my sojourn elsewhere and of Edgar’s dominance in the house we all felt would soon be his own. Whether Orpha confided to him her latest trouble I never heard. When his week was up and I replaced him again in the daily care of our uncle, I sought to learn if help or disappointment had come to her in my absence. But beyond a graver bearing and a manifest determination not to be alone with me even for a few moments in any of the rooms on the ground floor, I received no answer to my question. Orpha could be very inscrutable when she liked.

It was during the seven happy days of this week that three rather important conversations took place between Uncle and myself, portions of which I now propose to relate. I will not try your patience by repeating the preamble to any one of them or the after remarks. Just the bits necessary to make this story of the three Edgars understandable.

* * * * *

Uncle is speaking.

“I have been criticised very severely by my lawyer and less openly but fully as earnestly by both men and women of my acquaintance, for my well-known determination to leave the main portion of my property to a man--the man who is to marry my daughter. My answer has always been that no woman should be trusted with the responsibilities and conduct of very large interests. She has not the nerve, the experience, nor the acquaintanceship with other large holders, requisite for conducting affairs of wide scope successfully. She would have to employ an agent which in this case would of course be her husband. Then why not give him full control from the start?”

I was silent, what could _I_ say?

“Quenton?”

His tone was so strange, so different from any I had ever heard pass his lips, that I looked up at him in amazement. I was still more amazed when I noted his aspect. His expression which until now had impressed me as fundamentally stern however he might mask it with the smile of sympathy or indulgence, had lost every attribute suggestive of strength or domination. Gone the steady look of power which made his glance so remarkable. Even the set of his lips had given way to a tremulous line full of tenderness and indefinable sorrow.

“Quenton,” he repeated, “there are griefs and remembrances of which a man never speaks until the sands of life are running low; and not even then save for a purpose. I loved my wife.” My heart leaped. I knew from his tone why he had understood me that night of the ball and taken instantly and at its full value the love I had expressed for Orpha. “Orpha was only two years old when her mother died. A babe with no memories of what has made my life! For me, the wife of my youth lives yet. This house which has been constructed so as to incorporate within its walls the old inn where I first met her, is redolent of her presence. Her tread is on the stairs. Her beauty makes more beautiful every object I have bought of worth or value to adorn her dwelling-place. Yet were she really living and I had no other inheritor, I should not consider that I was doing right by her or right by the world to leave her in full possession of means so hardly accumulated and interests so complicated and burdensome. She was tested once with the temporary charge of my affairs and, poor darling, broke under it. Orpha is her child. She has the same temperament, the same gentleness, the same strictness of conscience, to offend which is an active and all-absorbing pain. If this burden fell upon her--”

When he had finished I wondered if he had ever spoken of his wife to Edgar as he spoke of her to me that hour.

* * * * *

“You have heard the gossip about this house. Some one must have told you of unaccountable sounds heard at odd moments on the stairs or elsewhere--steps other than your own keeping pace with you as you went up or down.”

“Yes, uncle, I have been told of this. I heard something of the kind once myself.”

“You did? When?” The glance he shot at me was quick and searching.

I told him and for a long time he sat very still gazing with retrospective eyes into the fire.

“More than that,” I whispered after a while, “I heard a cough. It came from no one in sight. It sounded smothered. It seemed to come from the wall at my left, but that was impossible of course.”

“Impossible, of course. The whole thing is foolishness--not to be thought of for a moment. The harmless result of some defect in carpentry. I smile when people speak of it. So do my servants. I keep them all, you see.”

“Uncle, if this house needed a finishing touch to make it the most romantic in the world, this suggestion of mystery supplies it.”

I shall never forget his quick bend forward or the long, long look he gave me.

It emboldened me to ask almost seriously:

“Uncle, have you ever felt this presence yourself?”

He laughed a long, hearty, amused laugh, then a strange expression crossed his face unlike any I had ever seen on it before. “There’s romance in these old fancies,--romance,” he murmured--“romance.”

No lover’s voice could have been more tender; no poet’s eye more dreamy.

I locked the remembrance away in my mind, for I doubted if I ever should see him in just such a mood again.

* * * * *

“Your eyes are very often on Orpha’s picture. I do not wonder at it; so are mine. It has a peculiar power to draw and then hold the attention. I chose an artist of penetrating intelligence; one who believes in the soul of his sitter and impresses you more with that than with the beauty of a woman or the mind of a man. I wanted her painted thus. Shall I tell you why? I think I will. It may steady you as it has steadied me and so serve a double purpose. Wealth has its charms; it also has its temptations. To keep me clean in the getting, the saving, and the spending, I had this picture painted and hung where I could not fail to see it when sitting at my desk. If a business proposition was presented to me which I could not consider under that clear, direct gaze so like her mother’s, I knew what to do with it. You will have the same guardianship. The souls of two women will protect you from yourself; Orpha’s mother’s and Orpha’s own.”

I felt a thrill. Something more than wealth, more even than love, was to be my portion. The living of a clean life in sight of God and man.

XIV

This gave me a great lift for the time. He had not changed his mind, then. He still meant me to marry Orpha; and some of the mystery of the last lawyer’s visit was revealed. That connected with the one which preceded it might rest. I needed to know nothing about that. The great question had been answered; and I trod on air.

Meanwhile Uncle seemed better and life in the great house resumed some of its usual formality. But this did not last. The time soon came when it became evident to every eye that this man of infinite force was rapidly losing his once strong hold on life. From rising at ten, it grew to be noon before he would put foot to floor. Then three o’clock; then five; then only in time to eat the dinner spread before him on a small table near the fireplace. Then came the day when he refused to get up at all but showed great pleasure at our presence in the room and even chatted with us on every conceivable topic. Then came a period of great gloom when all his strength was given to a mental struggle which soon absorbed all his faculties and endangered his life. In vain we exerted ourselves to distract him. He would smile at our sallies, appear to listen to his favorite authors, ask for music--(Orpha could play the violin with touching effect and Edgar had a voice which like all his other gifts was exceptional) but not for long, nor to the point of real relief. While we were hoping that we had at last secured his interest, he would turn his head away and the struggle of his thoughts would recommence, all the stronger and more unendurable because of this momentary break.

Orpha’s spirits were now at as low an ebb as his. She had sat for weeks under the shadow of his going but now this shadow had entered her soul. Her beauty once marked for its piquancy took on graver lines and moved the hearts of all by its appeal. It was hard to look at her and keep back all show of sympathy but such as was allowable between cousins engaged in the mutual tasks which brought us together at a sick man’s bedside. If the discipline was good for my too selfish nature, the suffering was real, and in some of those trying hours I would have given all my chance in life to know if Orpha realized the turmoil of mind and heart raging under my quiet exterior.

Meantime, a change had been made in our arrangements. Edgar and I were no longer allowed to leave town though we continued to keep religiously to our practice of spending alternate weeks in attendance on the invalid.

This, in these latter days included sleeping in the den opening off Uncle’s room. The portrait of Orpha which had made this room a hallowed one to me, had been removed from its wall and now hung in glowing beauty between the two windows facing the street, and so in full sight from Uncle’s bed. His desk also, with all its appurtenances had been in a corner directly under his eye, and as I often noted, it was upon one or other of these two objects his gaze remained fixed unless Orpha was in the room, when he seemed to see nothing but her.

He had been under the care of a highly trained nurse during the more violent stages of his illness, but he had found it so difficult to accommodate himself to her presence and ministrations that she had finally been replaced by Wealthy, who had herself been a professional nurse before she came to Quenton Court. This he had insisted upon and his will was law in that household. He ruled from his sick bed as authoritatively as he had ever done from the head of his own table. But so kindly that we would have yielded from love had we not done so from a sense of propriety.

His gloom was at its height and his strength at its lowest ebb when an experience befell me, the effects of which I was far from foreseeing at the time.

Edgar’s week was up and the hour had come for me to take his place in the sick room. Usually he was ready to leave before the evening was too old for him to enjoy a few hours in less dismal surroundings. But this evening I found him still chatting and in a most engaging way to our seemingly delighted uncle, and taking the shrug he made at my appearance as a signal that they were not yet ready for my presence, I stepped back into the hall to wait till the story was finished which he was relating with so much spirit.

It took a long time, and I was growing quite weary of my humiliating position, when the door finally opened and he came out. With every feature animated and head held high he was a picture of confident manhood. This should not have displeased me and perhaps would not have done so had I not caught, as I thought, a gleam of sinister meaning in his eye quite startling from its rarity.

It also, to my prejudiced mind, tinged his smile, as slipping by me, he remarked:

“I think I had the good fortune to amuse him to-night. He is asleep now and I doubt if he wakes before dawn. Lower his light as you pass by his bed. Poor old Uncle!”

I had no answer for this beyond a slight nod, at which, with an air I found it difficult to dissociate with a sense of triumph, he uttered a short good-night and flew past me down the stairs.

“He has won some unexpected boon from Uncle,” I muttered in dismay as the sound of his footsteps died out in the great rooms below. “Is it fortune? Is it Orpha?” I could bear the loss of the first. But Orpha? Rather than yield her up I would struggle with every power with which I had been endowed. I would--

But here I entered the room and coming under the direct influence of the masterly portraiture of her who was so dear to me, better feelings prevailed.

To see her happy should and must be my chief aim in life. If union with myself would ensure her that and I came to know it, then it would be time for me to exert my prowess and hold to my own in face of all opposition. But if her heart was his--truly and irrevocably his, then my very love should lead me to step aside and leave them to each other. For that would be their right and one with which it would be presumptuous in me to meddle.

The light which I had been told to extinguish was near my uncle’s hand as he lay in bed.

Seeing that he was, as Edgar said, peacefully asleep, I carefully pulled the chain attached to the flaming bulb.

Instantly the common-places of life vanished and the room was given over to mystery and magic. All that was garish or simply plain to the view was gone, for wherever there was light there were also shadows, and shadows of that shifting and half-revealing kind which can only be gotten by the fitful leaping of a few expiring flames on a hearth-stone.

Uncle’s fire never went out. Night or day there was always a blaze. It was his company, he said, and never more so than when he woke in the wee small hours with the moon shut out and silence through all the house. It would be my task before I left him for the night to pile on fresh fuel and put up the screen, which being made of glass, allowed the full play of the dancing flames to be seen.

Reveling in the mystic sight, I drew up a chair and sat before Orpha’s portrait. Edgar was below stairs and doubtless in her company. Why, then, should I not have my hour with her here? The beauty of her pictured countenance which was apparent enough by day, was well nigh unearthly in the soft orange glow which vivified the brown of her hair and heightened the expression of eye and lip, only to leave them again in mystery as the flame died down and the shadows fell.

I could talk to her thus, and as I sat there looking and longing, words fell from my lips which happily there was no one to hear. It was my hour of delight snatched in an unguarded hour from the hands of Fate.

She herself might never listen, but this semblance of herself could not choose but do so. In this presence I could urge my plea and exhaust myself in loving speeches, and no displeasure could she show and even at times must she smile as the shadows again shifted. It was a hollow amends for many a dreary hour in which I got nothing but the same sweet show of patience she gave to all about her. But a man welcomes dream food if he can get no other and for a full hour I sat there talking to my love and catching from time to time in my presumptuous fancy faint whispers in response which were for no other ears than mine.

At last, fancy prevailed utterly, and rising, I flung out my arms in inappeasable longing towards her image, when, simultaneously with this action I felt my attention drawn irresistibly aside and my head turn slowly and without my volition more and more away from her, as if in response to some call at my back which I felt forced to heed.

Yet I had heard no sound and had no real expectation of seeing any one behind me unless it was my uncle who had wakened and needed me.

And this was what had happened. In the shadow made by the curtains hanging straight down from the head-board on either side of his bed, I saw the gleam of two burning eye-balls. But did I? When I looked again there was nothing to be seen there but the shadowy outlines of a sleeping man. My fancy had betrayed me as in the hour of secret converse I had just held with the lady of my dreams.

Yet anxious to be assured that I had made no mistake, I crossed over to the bedside and, pushing aside the curtains, listened to his breathing. It was far from equable, but there was every other evidence of his being asleep. I had only imagined those burning eye-balls looking hungrily into mine.

Startled, not so much by this freak of my imagination as by the effect which it had had upon me, I left the bed and reluctantly sought my room. But before entering it--while still on its threshold--I was again startled at feeling my head turning automatically about under the uncanny influence working upon me from behind, and wheeling quickly, I searched with hasty glances the great room I was leaving for what thus continued to disturb me.

Orpha’s picture--the great bed--the desk, pathetic to the eye from the absence before it of its accompanying chair--books--tables--Orpha’s pet rocker with the little stand beside it--each and every object to which we had accustomed ourselves for many weeks, lit to the point of weirdness, now brightly, now faintly and in spots by the dancing firelight! But no one thing any more than before to account for the emotion I felt. Yet I remember saying to myself as I softly closed my door upon it all:

“Something impends!”

But what that something was, was very far from my thoughts as are all spiritual upheavals when we are looking for material disaster.

* * * * *

I had been asleep, but how long I had no means of knowing, when with a thrill such as seizes us at an unexpected summons, I found myself leaning on my elbow and staring with fascinated if not apprehensive gaze at the door leading into my uncle’s room left as I always left it on retiring, slightly ajar.

I had heard no sound, I was conscious of no movement in my room or in his, yet there I was looking--looking--and expecting--what? I had no answer for this question and soon would not need one, for the line of ruddy light running upward from the floor upon which my eyes were fixed was slowly widening, and presently I should see whose hesitating foot made these long pauses yet showed such determination to enter where no foot should come thus stealthily on any errand.

Again! a furtive push and I caught the narrowest of glimpses into the room beyond. At which a sudden thought came, piercing me like a dart. Whoever this was, he must have crossed my uncle’s room to reach this door--may have stood at the sick man’s side--may have--Fear seized me and I sprang up alert but sank back in infinite astonishment and dismay as the door finally swung in and I beheld dimly outlined in the doorway the great frame of Uncle himself standing steadily and alone, he, who for days now had hardly moved in his bed.

Ignorant of the cause which had impelled him to an action for which he was so unfit; not even being able to judge in the darkness in which I lay whether he was conscious of his movements or whether he was in that dangerous state where any surprise or interference might cause in him a fatal collapse, I assumed a semblance of sleep while covertly watching him through half shut lids.

A moment thus, then I felt rather than saw his broad chest heave and his shaking limbs move bringing him step by step to my side. Had he fallen face downward on to my narrow couch I should not have wondered. But he came painfully on and paused, his heart beating so that I could hear it above my own though that was throbbing far louder than its wont.

Next moment he was on his knees, with his arms thrown over my breast and clinging there in convulsive embrace as he whispered words such as had never been uttered into my ears before; words of infinite affection laden with self-reproaches it filled me with a great compassion to hear.

For I knew that these words were not meant for me; that he had been misled by the events of the evening and believed it to be in Edgar’s ear he was laying bare his soul.

“I cannot do it.” These were the words I heard. “I have tried to and the struggle is killing me. Forgive me, Edgar, for thinking of punishing you for what was the result of my own shortsighted affection.”

* * * * *

I stirred and started up. I had no right to listen further.

But his hold on me tightened till the pressure became almost unendurable. The fever in his veins made him not only strong but oblivious to all but the passion of the moment,--the desire to right himself with the well-beloved one who was as a son to him.

“I should have known better.” Thus he went on. “I had risen through hardship, but I would make it easy for my boy. Mistake! mistake! I see it now. The other is the better man, but my old heart clings to its own and I cannot go back on the love of many years. You must marry Orpha and her gentle heart will--”

A sob, a sudden failing of his fictitious strength, and I was able to rise and help him to rise, though he was almost a dead weight in my arms.

Should I be able alone and unassisted to guide him back to his bed without his discovering the mistake he had made and thus shocking him into delirium? The light was dim where we stood and rapidly failing in the other room as the great log which had been blazing on the hearth-stone crumbled into coals. Could I have spoken, the task might have been an easier one; but my accent, always emphasized under agitation, would have betrayed me.

Other means must be taken to reassure him and make him amenable to my guidance. Remembering an action of Edgar’s which I had lately seen, I drew the old man’s arm about my shoulder and led him back into his room. He yielded easily. He had passed the limit of acute perception and all his desire was for rest. With simple, little soothing touches, I got him to his bed and saw his head sink gratefully into his pillow.

Much relieved and believing the paroxysm quite past, I was turning softly away when he reached out his hand and, grasping me by the arm, said with an authority as great as I had ever seen him display even on important occasions:

“Another log, Edgar. The fire is low; it mustn’t go out. Whatever happens, it must never go out.”

And he, burning up with fever!

Though this desire for heat or the cheer of the leaping blaze might be regarded as one of the eccentricities of illness, it was with a strange and doubtful feeling that I turned to obey him--a feeling which did not leave me in the watchful hour which followed. Though I had much to brood over of a more serious character than the mending or keeping up of a fire, the sense of something lying back of this constant desire for heat would come again and again to my mind mingling with the great theme now filling my breast with turmoil and shaping out new channels for my course in life. Mystery, though of the smallest, has a persistent prick. We want to know, even if the matter is inconsequent.

* * * * *

I had no further sleep that night, but Uncle did not move again till late morning. When he did and saw me standing over him, he mentioned my name and smiled almost with pleasure and gave me the welcoming hand.

He had forgotten what had passed, or regarded it, if it came to his mind at all, as a dream to be ignored or cherished according to his mood, which varied now, as it had before, from one extreme to the other.

But my mood had no ups and downs. It had been given me to penetrate the depths of my uncle’s heart and mind. I knew his passionate wish--it was one in which I had little part--but nothing must ever make me forget it.

However, I uttered no promises myself. I would wait till my judgment sanctioned them; and the time for that had not yet come.

XV

Nevertheless it was approaching. One day Orpha came to me with the report that her father was worse--that the doctor was looking very sober and that Edgar, whose week it was to give what aid and comfort he could in the sick room, complained that for the first time during his uncle’s illness he had failed to find any means of diverting him even for a moment.

As she said this her look wandered anywhere but to my face.

“It is growing to be very hard for Edgar,” she added in a tone full of feeling.

“And for you,” I answered, with careful attention to voice and manner.

She shuddered, and crept from my side lest she should be tempted to say how hard.

When an hour or two later I went up to Uncle’s room, I found him where I had never expected to see him again, up and seated close to the fire. His indomitable will was working with some of its by-gone force. It was so hot that I noted when I took the seat he pointed out to me, that the perspiration stood on his forehead, but he would not be moved back.

He had on a voluminous dressing gown and his hands were hidden in its folds in what I thought was an unnatural manner. But I soon forgot this in watching his expression, which was more fixed and harder in its aspect than I had supposed it could be, and again I felt ready to say, “Something impends!”

Wealthy was present; consequently my visit was a brief one. It might have been such had she not been there, for he showed very little desire for my company and indeed virtually dismissed me in the following words:

“I may have need of you this evening and I may not. May I ask you to be so good as to stay indoors till you receive a message from me?”

My answer was a cheerful acquiescence, but as I left, I cast one long, lingering look at Orpha’s picture. Might it not be my last? The doubt was in my mind, for Edgar’s foot was on the stair; there would be a talk between him and Uncle, and if as a result of that talk Uncle failed to send for me, my place at his bedside would be lost. He would have no further use for my presence.

I had begun to understand his mind.

I have no doubt that I was helped to this conclusion by something I saw in passing his bedside on my way out. Wealthy was rearranging the pillows and in doing so gave me for the first time a full glimpse of the usually half-hidden head-board. To my amazement I perceived that it held a drawer, cunningly inserted by a master hand.

A drawer! Within his own reach--at all times--by night and day! It must contain--

Well, I had no difficulty in deciding what. But the mystery of his present action troubled me. A few hours might make it plain. A few hours! If only they might be spent with Orpha!

With beating heart I went rapidly below, passing Edgar on my way. We said nothing. He was in as tense a mood as I was. For him as well as for myself the event was at hand. Ah! where was Orpha?

Not where I sought her. The living rooms as well as the court and halls were all empty. For a half hour I waited in the library alone, then the door opened and my uncle’s man showed himself:

“Am I wanted?” I asked, unable to control my impatience.

He answered with a respectful affirmative, but there was a lack of warmth in his manner which brought a cynical smile to my lips. Nothing would ever change the attitude of these old servants towards myself, or make Edgar anything less in their eyes than the best, kindest and most pleasing of masters. Should I allow this to disturb me or send me to the fate awaiting me in the room above in any other frame of mind than the one which would best prepare me for the dreaded ordeal?

No. I would be master of myself if not of my fate. By the time I had reached my uncle’s door I was calm enough. Confident that some experience awaited me there which would try me as it had tried Edgar, I walked steadily in. He had not come out of his ordeal in full triumph, or why the look I had seen on every face I had encountered in coming up? Wealthy at the end of the long hall, with a newspaper falling from her lap, had turned at my step. Her aspect as she did so I shall not soon forget. The suspicious nods and whispers of the two maids I had surprised peering at me from over the banisters, were all of a character to warn me that I was at that moment less popular in the house than I had ever been before. Was I to perceive the like in the greeting I was about to receive from the one on whom my fortunes as well as those of Orpha hung?

I trembled at the prospect, and it was not till I had crossed the floor to where he was seated in his usual seat at the fire-place, that I ventured to look up. When I did so it was to meet a countenance showing neither pleasure nor pain.

When he spoke it was hurriedly as though he felt his time was short.

“Quenton, sit down and listen to what I have to say. I have put off from day to day this hour of final understanding between us in the hopes that my duty would become plain to me without any positive act on my part. But it has failed to do so and I must ask your help in a decision vital to the happiness of the two beings nearest if not dearest to me in this world I am so soon to leave. I mean my daughter and the man she is to marry.”

This took my breath away but he did not seem to notice either my agitation or the effort I made to control it. He was too intent upon what he had yet to say, to mark the effect of the words he had already spoken.

“You know what my wishes are,--the wishes which have been expectations since Edgar and Orpha stood no higher than my knee. The fortune I have accumulated is too large to be given into the hands of a girl no older than Orpha. I do not believe in a woman holding the reins when she has a man beside her. I may be wrong, but that is the way I feel, as truly to-day as when she was a wee tot babbling in my ear. The inheritor of the millions I perhaps unfortunately possess must be a man. But that man must marry my daughter, and to marry her he must love her, sincerely and devotedly love her or my money will prove a curse to her, to him and, God pardon the thought, to me in my grave, if the dead can still feel and know.

“Until a little while ago,--until you came, in fact,--I was content, thinking that all was well and everything going to my mind. But presently a word was dropped in my ear,--from whose lips it does not matter,--which shook my equanimity and made me look for the first time with critical eyes on one I had hitherto felt to be above criticism; and once my attention was called that way, I saw much that did not quite satisfy me in the future dispenser of a fortune which in wise hands could be made productive of great good but in indifferent ones of incalculable mischief.

“But I thought he loved Orpha, and rating her, as we all must, as a woman of generous nature with a mind bound to develop as her happiness grows and her responsibilities increase, I rested in the hope that with her for a wife, his easy-going nature would strengthen and the love he universally inspires would soon have a firmer basis than his charming smile and his invariable good nature.

“But one day something happened--do not ask me what, I cannot talk about it; it has been the struggle of my life since that day to forget it--which shook my trust even in this hope. The love capable of accomplishing so much must be a disinterested one, and I saw--saw with my own eyes--what gave me reason to doubt both the purity and depth of his feeling for Orpha.

“You remember the day, the hour. The ball which was to have ended all uncertainty by a public recognition of their engagement saw me a well man at ten, and a broken down one at eleven. You know, for you were here, and saw me while I was still suffering from the shock. I had to speak to some one and I would not disturb Orpha, and so I thought of you. You pleased me in that hour and the trust I then felt in your honor I have never lost. For in whatever trial I have made of the character of you two boys you have always stood the test better than Edgar. I acknowledge it, but, whether from weakness or strength I leave you to decide, I cannot forget the years in which Edgar shared with Orpha my fatherly affection. You shall not be forgotten or ungenerously dealt with--I owe you too much for that--but I ask you to release me from the ill-considered promise I made to you that night of the ball. I cannot cut him off from the great hopes I have always fostered in him. I want you to--”

He did not conclude, but, shifting nervously in his seat, brought into view the hands hidden from sight under the folds of his dressing-gown. In each was a long envelope apparently enclosing a legal document. He laid them, one on each knee and drooped his head a little as he remarked, with a hasty glance first at one document and then at the other:

“Here, Quenton, you see what a man who once thought very well of himself has come to through physical weakness and mental suffering. Here are two wills, one made largely in his favor and one equally largely in yours. They were drawn up the same day by different men, each ignorant of the other’s doing. One of these it is my wish to destroy but I have not yet had the courage to do so; for my reason battles with my affection and I dare not slight the one nor disappoint the other.”

“And you ask me to aid you in your dilemma,” I prompted, for I saw that he was greatly distressed. “I will do so, but first let me ask one question. How does Orpha feel? Is she not the one to decide a matter affecting her so deeply?”

“Oh! She is devoted to Edgar,” he made haste to assert. “I have never doubted her feeling for _him_.”

“Uncle, have you _asked_ her to aid your decision?”

He shook his head and muttered sadly:

“I dare not show myself in such colors to my only child. She would lose her respect for me, and that I could never endure.”

My heart was sad, my future lost in shadows, but there was only one course for me to take. Pointing to the two documents lying in his lap, I asked, with as little show of feeling as I could command:

“Which is the one in my favor? Give it to me and I will fling it into the fire with my own hand. I cannot endure seeing your old age so heavily saddened.”

He rose to his feet--rose suddenly and without any seeming effort, letting the two wills fall unheeded to the floor.

“Quenton!” he cried, “_You are the man!_ If Orpha does not love you she must learn to do so. And she will when she knows you.” This in a burst; then as he saw me stumble back, dazed and uncomprehending like one struck forcibly between the eyes, “This was my final test, boy, my last effort to ascertain what lay at the root of your manhood. Edgar failed me. You--”

His lip quivered, and grasping blindly at the high back of the chair from which he had risen, he turned slightly aside in an effort to hide his failing self-control. The sight affected me even in the midst of the storm of personal feeling he had aroused within me by this astounding change of front. Stooping for the two documents lying on the floor between us, I handed them to him, then offered my arm to aid him in reseating himself. But I said nothing. Silence and silence only befitted such a moment.

* * * * *

He seemed to appreciate both the extent of my emotion and my reticence under it. It gave him the opportunity to regain his own poise. When I finally moved, as I involuntarily did at the loud striking of the clock, he spoke in his own quiet way which nevertheless carried with it so much authority.

“I have deceived you; not greatly, but to a certain necessary degree. You must forgive this and forget.” He did not say how he had deceived me and for months I did not know. “To-morrow we will talk as a present master confers with a future one. I am tired now, but I will listen if there is anything you want me to hear before you call in Clarke.”

Then I found voice. I must utter the one protest which the situation called for or despise myself forever. Turning softly about, I looked up at Orpha’s picture, never more beautiful in my eyes, never more potent in its influence than at this critical instant in our two lives.

Then addressing him while pointing to the picture, I said:

“Your goodness to me, and the trust you have avowed in me, is beyond all words. But Orpha! Still, Orpha! You say she must learn to love me. What if she cannot? I am lacking in many things; perhaps in the very thing she naturally would look for in the man she would accept as her husband.”

His lips took a firm line; never had he shown himself more the master of himself and of every one about him, than when he rejoined in a way to end the conversation:

“We will not talk of that. You are free to sound her mind when opportunity offers. But quietly, and with due consideration for Edgar, who will lose enough without too great humiliation to his pride. Now you may summon Clarke.”

I did so; and left thus for a little while to myself, strove to balance the wild instinctive joy making havoc in my breast, with fears just as instinctive that Orpha’s heart would never be won by me completely enough for me to benefit by the present wishes of her father. It was with the step of a guilty man I crept from the sight of Edgar’s door down to the floor below. At Orpha’s I paused a moment. I could hear her light step within, and listening, thought I heard her sigh.

“God bless my darling!” leaped from heart to lip in a whisper too low for even my own ears to hear. And I believed--and left that door in the belief--that I was willing it should be in His way, not mine, so long as it was a blessing in very truth.

But once on the verandah below, whither I went for a cooling draught of the keen night air, I stopped short in my even pacing as though caught by a detaining hand.

A thought had come to me. He had two wills in his hand, yet he had destroyed neither though the flames were leaping and beckoning on the hearth-stone at his feet. Let him say this or let him say that, the ordeal was not over. Under these circumstances dare I do as he suggested and show my heart to Orpha?

Suppose he changed his mind again!

* * * * *

The mere suggestion of such a possibility was so unsettling that it kept me below in an unquiet mood for hours. I walked the court, and when Haines came to put out the lights, paced the library-floor till I was exhausted. The house was still and well nigh dark when I finally went upstairs, and after a little further wandering through the halls entered my own room.

Three o’clock! and as wide awake as ever. Throwing myself into the Morris chair which had been given me for my comfort, I shut my eyes in the hope of becoming drowsy and was just feeling a lessening of the tense activity which was keeping my brain in a whirl when there came a quick knock at my door followed by the hurried word:

“Mr. Bartholomew is worse, come quickly.”

I was on my feet in an instant, my heart cold in my breast but every sense alert. Had I feared such a summons? Had some premonition of sudden disaster been the cause of the intolerable restlessness which had kept my feet moving in the rooms below?

Useless to wonder; the sounds of hurrying steps all over the house warned me to hasten also. Rushing from my room I encountered Wealthy awaiting me at the turn of the hall. She was shaking from head to foot and her voice broke as she said:

“A sudden change. Mr. Edgar and Orpha are coming. Mr. Bartholomew wants to see you all, while he has the power to speak and embrace you for the last time.”

I saw her eyes leave my face and pass rapidly over my person. I was fully dressed.

“There they are,” she whispered, as Edgar emerged from his room far down the hall just as Orpha, trembling and shaken with sobs, appeared at the top of the staircase. Both were in hastily donned clothing. I alone presented the same appearance as at dinner.

As we met, Edgar took the lead, supporting Orpha, weakened both by her grief and sudden arousal from sleep. I followed after, never feeling more lonely or more isolated from them all. And in this manner we entered the room.

Then, as always on crossing this threshold my first glance was given to the picture which held such sway over my heart. The living Orpha was but a step ahead of me, but the Orpha most real to me, most in accord with me, was the one in whose imaginary ear I had breathed my vows of love and from whose imaginary lips I had sometimes heard with fond self-deception those vows returned.

To-day, the picture was in shadow and my eyes turned quickly towards the fireplace. Shadow there, too. No leaping flame or smouldering coals. For the first time in months the fire had been allowed to die out. The ominous fact struck like ice to my heart and a secret shudder shook me. But it passed almost instantly, for on turning towards the bed I saw preparations made which assured me that my uncle’s mind was clear to the duty of the hour and that we had not been called to his side simply for his final embrace.

He was lying high on his pillow, his eyes blazing as if the fire which had gone out of the hearth had left its reflection on his blazing eye-balls. He had not seen us come in and he did not see us now.

At his side was a table on which stood a large bowl and a lighted candle. They told their own story. His hands were stretched out over the coverlid. They held in feverish grasp the two documents I knew so well, one in one hand and one in the other just as I had seen them the evening before. Edgar recognized them too, as I saw by the imperturbability of his look as his glance fell on them. But Orpha stood amazed, the color leaving her cheeks till she was as pale as I had ever seen a woman.

“What does that mean?” She whispered or rather uttered with throat half closed in fear and trepidation.

“Shall we explain?” I asked, with a quick turn towards Edgar.

“Leave it to him,” was the low, undisturbed reply. “He has heard her voice, and is going to speak.”

It was true. Slowly and with effort her father’s glance sought her out and love again became animate in his features. “Come here, Orpha,” he said and uttered murmuring words of affection as she knelt at his side. “I am going to make you happy. You have been a good girl. Do you see the two long envelopes I am holding, one in each hand?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Look at them. No, do not take them, just look at them where they lie and tell me if in the corner of one you see a cross drawn in red?”

“Yes, Father.”

“In which hand do you see it?”

“In this one,--the one nearest me.”

“You are sure?”

“Very sure. Edgar, look too, and tell him that I am right.”

“I will take your word, my darling child. Now pull that envelope,--the one with the mark on it, from under my hand.”

“I have it, Father.”

A moment’s silence. Edgar’s breath stopped on his lips; mine had come haltingly from my breast ever since I entered the room.

“Now, burn it.”

Instinctively she shrank back, but he repeated the command with a force which startled us all and made Orpha’s hand shake as she thrust the document into the flame and then, as it caught fire, dropped it into the gaping bowl.

As it flared up and the scent of burning paper filled the room, he made a mighty effort and sat almost erect, watching the flaming edges curl and drop away till all was consumed.

“A will made a few weeks ago of which I have repented,” he declared quite steadily. “It had a twin, drawn up on the same day. That is the one I desire to stand. It is not in the envelope I hold in this other hand. This envelope is empty but you will find the will itself in--”

A choke--a gasp. The exertion had been too much for him. With a look of consummate fear distorting his features, he centered his gaze on his child, then sought to turn it on--which of us? On Edgar, or on me?

We never knew. The light in his eye went out before his glance reached its goal.

Edgar Quenton Bartholomew was dead, and we, his two namesakes--the lesser and the greater--stood staring the one upon the other, not knowing to which that term of _greater_ rightfully belonged.

_BOOK II_

HIDDEN

XVI

“_DEAD?_”

The word was spoken in such astonishment that it had almost the emphasis of unbelief.

From whose lips had it come?

I turned to see. We were all still grouped near or about the bed, but this voice was strange, or so it seemed to me at the moment.

But it was strange only from emotion. It was that of Dr. Cameron, who had come quietly in, in response to the summons sent him at the first sign of change seen in his patient.

“I did not anticipate this,” he was now saying. “Yesterday he had strength enough for a fortnight or more of life. What was his trouble? He must have excited himself.”

Looking round upon our faces as we failed to reply, he let his fingers rest on the bowl from which little whiffs of smoke were still going up. “This is an odd thing to have where disinfection is not necessary. Something of a most unusual nature has taken place here. What was it? Did I not tell you to keep him quiet?”

It was Edgar who answered.

“Doctor, you knew my uncle. Knew him in health and knew him in illness. Do you think that any one could have kept him quiet if he had the will to act even if it were to please simply a momentary whim? What then if he felt himself called upon to risk his life in the performance of a duty? Could you or I or even his well loved daughter have prevented him?” And looking very noble, Edgar met the doctor’s eye unflinchingly.

“Ah, a duty!” The doctor’s voice had grown milder. “No, I do not think that any of us could have stopped him in that case.”

Turning towards the bed, he stood a moment gazing at the rigid countenance which but a few minutes before had been so expressive of emotion. Then, raising his hand, he pointed directly at it, saying with a gravity which shook every heart:

“The performance of duty brings relief to both mind and body. Then why this look of alarm with which he met his end--”

“Because he felt it coming before that duty was fully accomplished. If you must know, doctor, I am willing to tell you what occasioned this sudden collapse. Shall I not, Orpha? Shall I not, Quenton? It is his right, as our physician. We shall save ourselves nothing by silence.”

“Tell.”

That was all Orpha seemed to have power to utter, and I attempted little more. I was willing the doctor should know--that all the world should know--my part in this grievous tragedy. Even if I had wished for silence, the sting of Edgar’s tone as he mentioned my name would have been enough to make me speak.

“I have no wish to keep anything from the doctor,” I affirmed as quickly and evenly as if the matter were of ordinary purport. “Only tell him all; keep nothing back.”

And Edgar did so with a simplicity and fairness which did him credit. If he had shown a tinge of sarcasm when he addressed me directly, it was not heard in the relation he now gave of the drawing up of the two wills and our uncle’s final act in destroying one. “He loved me--it was a life-long affection--and when Quenton came, he loved him.” This was said with a certain display of hardihood.--“Not wishing to divide his fortune but to leave it largely in favor of one, he wavered for a time between us, but finally, at the conscious approach of death, made up his mind and acted as you have seen. Only,” he finished with naïveté peculiar to his temperament and nature, “we do not know which of us he has chosen to bless or curse with his great fortune. You see the remains of one will. But of the other one or of its contents we have as yet no knowledge.”

The doctor, who had followed Edgar’s words with great intentness, opened his lips as though to address him, but failed to do so, turning his attention towards me instead. Then, still without speaking, he drew up the sheet over the face once so instinct with every generous emotion, and quietly left our presence. As the door closed upon him Orpha burst into sobs, and it was Edgar’s arm, not mine, which fell about her shoulders.

XVII