Scene Fifth THE RESIDUARY BEQUEST

I. THE ORDER OF DISCHARGE.

May went back again to his pavilion. Great heavens, what a day! He looked at his watch. It was already after ten o’clock; and his heart gave a leap of joy. Could it be that the countess would never turn up at all?

He was too much shaken by the excitements of the day to sit still quietly, and count the minutes; so he took to wandering in the driveway about the lake. He was conscious of a marvellous accession of spirits! Poor Mr. Terwilliger Dehon! And May laughed to himself as he pictured their meeting, and the Eastmans taking him for a burglar. What could she have done to drive Dehon in such terror from the house? May wondered what had become of him, and looked with some apprehension lest he should have rushed into the lily-pond. But that was impossible in so light a night. Moreover, he could have waded out. Well, well! he never should have known how to get rid of him. Peace to his widower’s weeds.

The harvest moon had risen, and shone brightly on the familiar fields. Beauty is only relished by the free. How strong and sweet is our memory for places! Each swell of grassy hill seemed like an old playmate; the very contour of the masses of elm-foliage, darkly outlined under the moon, seemed all familiar to him. Every time that May walked by the main gate-way, with the iron cannon-balls, he looked nervously through it; but the white, shady road was clean and empty, and the night was still.

His fortune was almost too great to be believed in, and he looked frequently at his watch, and listened timidly for every sound. Had the countess forgotten him? Had she captured another? Well, Gladys was dead, and Georgiana “was married;” and he sat there, “dipping his nose in the Gascon wine”—still seven years short of “forty year.”

But the night waxed and the moon rose higher, and the white mists began to drift in, stilly, from the distant river; and there was yet no manifestation of the Countess Polacca de Valska.

And at last the village church rang out twelve bells; and the cocks crew; and May pitched his cigar into the lake with a sigh that resembled a benediction. The day was over. That most terrible twenty-four hours of his life was safely passed. He could go to bed and sleep serenely, in the consciousness that no one of his idle old dreams was to be realized, that no folly of his past was to assume shape and confront him now. And all his arsenal of weapons, his laboratory of drugs, his store-house of Dutch courage, had proved unnecessary.

He walked along by the margent of the little lake; and as he did so, a thought struck him. He entered the pavilion and set the fountain playing, in celebration of his deliverance. He threw open all the shutters and the wide door—useless precautions now—and the flood of moonlight streamed again into the familiar old hall. He looked about at the misanthropic pictures, and the moonlight fell fair upon the beautiful Venus of Milo in the corner. He looked again at the old will, and Georgiana Rutherford’s note, and Mrs. Dehon’s visiting-card lying beside it. Through such various fortunes had he tended into Latium.

He patted Fides on his massive head, as the dog walked along beside him. He went back into the house. It was all his own now; all his own, and untrammelled. He called his valet to him.

“Schmidt,” said he, “I am not going to sit up any longer. If anyone comes, I have been here and gone—you understand? I have gone—to Arizona.” Schmidt bowed. He had regained his imperturbability, and was fearful of being discharged. An American servant would have left, and brought an action for his ducking; not so the obsequious Oriental. And Austin May took his candle and went quietly to bed. He had kept his tryst honorably; he had made due tender of himself; and by all laws, human and divine, his three offers of marriage had now expired.

II. A PRIOR MORTGAGE.

Our hero sank comfortably into the great old-fashioned bed, with a sigh of relief that he could sleep at last in peace. The broad windows were opened, and the moonlight lay across the lawn; and from it came the speech of insects, and of summer birds; far off, one whip-poor-will.

If anyone ever deserved sleep, he thought that he did; but this is not a world where we get our deserts. All night long he lay awake. His mind would go from his infatuation with the de Valska to his passion for poor Gladys Dehon; from the Exmoor hounds to his engagement with Miss Rutherford. He was devoutly thankful that he had escaped them all, and yet the peace he had expected did not come. He heard the familiar old church-bell strike two, and three, and four, as he had heard it in his boyhood, when wakeful for a fishing-excursion, or for some country ride. What was he to do next?

He could not analyze his state of mind. The night hours passed, and still he lay there wondering. The whip-poor-will had some time been silent; suddenly, as if at a wave of an unseen baton, the orchestra of day birds fell to singing. May listened; in eleven years he had not heard them. Then, as suddenly, they stopped. And then the dawn came, one ray of orange sunlight, and the fragrance of the new-born day.

At last he rose, impatiently, and went to the wide window. The sunbeams slid beneath the arching elms and slanted through the sward. Such scenes had been wont to make him happy when he was young—and when he was in love. This was a strange mood for him at thirty-three and free—a mood of melancholy, almost a loneliness.

Even his cold bath failed to restore him. He was glad they had none of them come; he was certain of that. And yet——

As he was dressing, he opened the closet door. There was the broad straw hat, with its pink ribbons, still hanging, faded, on the nail; and suddenly he recognized it. He took it down, and looked at it curiously; and as he sat there, holding it in his hands, the great St. Bernard dog came up and sniffed at it. It was May Austin’s. And as Austin sat there, he remembered that he had loved her.

He walked out upon the lawn again, brushing the dews upon the grass. Fool that he was! First loves were best, after all.

But where was she? He had not heard from her for years. He had never even written, after the Trouville episode. And she—she must have divined that he was false. First loves were best. Oh, cruel Uncle Austin! Yet his own wretched fickleness was the most to blame, after all. His uncle was a cynic; but he had been a young man in love.

Of one thing he was sure—though he had taken eleven years to find it out. Wherever she might be, throughout the world, there he would find her. And he knew now what had been in his mind, that yesterday, when he had walked beside the lily-pond, along the soft path no longer trod by her. Where could she be? First loves were best. And he fell into a reverie.

He was still holding the hat in his hand, and Fides came up again and sniffed at it. There was something in his mouth—was it a glove?

May took the glove, and almost thought he recognized it. It was a woman’s glove, a garden-glove with a long arm—where had he found it?

The dog looked up at him, almost as if he read his thoughts, and then he led the way and Austin followed. He went across the lawn, and through the hedge, to the well-remembered seat in the orchard, by the linden-tree, and there he stopped. And May sat down upon the seat and dreamed.

An hour he sat there, and then he saw a figure coming through the field. And his heart told him that this was May Austin. She did not see him, and he waited there.

When she came out from under the last apple-tree, he saw her stop and waver. She was lovelier still than he remembered her, and he went up to her and took her hand. She blushed, and he could feel it tremble as it lay in his.

“I—I thought you were abroad,” said she.

“I have come back,” he answered, simply.

III. THE POSTHUMOUS JEST.

An hour later Schmidt was sitting by the front door, smoking his long pipe, when he thought he saw his master crossing the lawn along the lily-pond. But he was walking hand in hand with a young lady. The long pipe dropped from Schmidt’s hand; and

“Potztausend!”

The imperturbable valet was moved to say as much as this, but of further speech remained incapable. May approached.

“Schmidt, you will go to town and get the rest of my luggage.”

The valet only stared.

“And after this I shall not need your services. I will find you a good place (with some of my bachelor friends,” thought May; “poor devils!”). Schmidt still stood there, his broken pipe upon the door-step.

“Do you hear what I say?”

Schmidt made an effort. “There is a letter for monsieur—in the pavilion.” A letter! May trembled to himself once more.

“I must go home,” said May Austin, still blushing violently. She lived in a cottage there, near by, that she had bought with her slender fortune. But May begged her to wait until he had gone to the pavilion, and then he would go with her. He feared that he knew what the letter was. But it had come too late! A thousand countesses could not bind him now.

Coming thither, May sat upon the door-step, and Austin opened the letter.

Law Offices of Vesey & Beames, 3 Court Street, Boston, August 14, 1886.

Austin May, Esq., Brookline, Mass.

Dear Sir: The eleven years’ delay required by the will of your late uncle, John Austin, having expired to-day, I have much satisfaction in sending you a copy (herein enclosed) of the document contained in the sealed envelope referred to in said will, and constituting his residuary legatee; although, as I am informed that you have never married, the residuary clause of the will does not take effect. The executors hold themselves in readiness to deliver over to you all the securities and title-deeds representing your uncle’s estate upon receiving from you an affidavit that you have not, up to date, contracted a legal marriage.

I have some embarrassment in speaking to you of another aspect of this case, and can only hope you will think I acted for the best. You will remember that immediately after your uncle’s death, I sent you a copy of the will as it was filed for probate. But when it came to a hearing I found that the court utterly refused to allow probate of a will which contained as a most important part the contents of a sealed letter, left in my custody, and the purport of which was unknown to the court. His honor intimated that he considered the will ridiculous in tenor and inartificial in structure; and that it was at least questionable whether the residuary devise was not void, as dependent upon a condition in restraint of marriage. It was in vain that I cited the case where a man chalked his will upon his own barn-door, and the barn-door having been brought into court and copied was allowed to be replaced upon its hinges. The court wholly objected to being made, as it were, a confidant of Mr. Austin’s love projects; and insisted that the sealed letter should be opened then and there, and read to the court, and appended to the will and filed away with it. Accordingly this was done.

But I conceived that I should be best following out the wishes of your uncle and my old friend by not telling you of this. Suspecting that it would never occur to you to inspect the court records, the reporters were paid for their silence, and although you might at any time during the past eleven years have read this sealed envelope, your continued absence abroad leads me to hope that you have never done so.

I am, sir, with great respect,

Faithfully yours, J. Vesey, Jr.

Austin May dropped the letter from his hands and looked at May. “I might have known it any time these eleven years,” said he.

“Known what?” said she, picking up the enclosure, which had fluttered to the floor.

“Perhaps it is as well,” gasped Austin; and he shuddered as he thought of Mrs. Terwilliger and the scheming Countess. He took the paper from May’s hands and read as follows:

“I, John Austin, gentleman, hereby incorporate this sealed writing, referred to in my will of even date herewith, as part of my said will. Having provided in such my will that in the event of my said nephew, Austin May, becoming married before he attain the age of thirty-five, or before the period of eleven years shall have elapsed from the date of my death, whichever shall first happen, all my property, real and personal, except my said bin of Lafite claret, shall go to my residuary legatee; and having observed a certain tenderness existing between my said nephew, Austin May, and my said niece, May Austin, I hereby nominate and create my dear niece, May Austin, as such my residuary legatee—in the hope that as I, marrying without love, have been unhappy, they, my said niece and nephew, marrying for love alone, giving up all thoughts of worldly advantage, may enjoy the blessings of this world besides.”

The paper slipped from Austin’s hands.

“To think that I have waited eleven years!” said he. And he struck his hand against his forehead.

But May Austin looked up to him and smiled.

Of the Countess Polacca de Valska, Austin never heard. Terwilliger Dehon remarried, and, for the second time, a very pretty woman; such men always do. The Burlington Quincys have also been married; and Tom Leigh has come to stay at Brookline for this season; and Mrs. Eastman’s reign is ended; but Fides is an honored inmate of the Brookline house. And if you drive by there, some summer afternoon, you will note once more about the windows those frilled and pleated things that denote the presence of a woman’s hand.

THE END.

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T. R. Sullivan.

ROSES OF SHADOW. (12mo, $1.00.)

“The characters of the story have a remarkable vividness and individuality—every one of them—which mark at once Mr. Sullivan’s strongest promise as a novelist. All of his men are excellent. John Musgrove, the grimly pathetic old beau, sometimes reminds us of a touch of Thackeray.”—The Cincinnati Times-Star.

John T. Wheelwright.

A CHILD OF THE CENTURY. (12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.00.)

“This is one of the most thoroughly enjoyable novels that has been published for a long time. It is a story of to-day, of American life and character; a typical story of political and social life, free from cynicism or morbid realism, and brimming over with good-natured fun, which is never vulgar.”—The Christian at Work.