Signing the Contract and What it Cost
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“Nor I, Jane; and if she’s going to be such a fool as to publish the thing and give up the property that she knows, and we all know, was intended for her, why – I’ll withdraw my consent – ”
“Oh, now, Nathan, don’t say that!” hastily interrupted his wife, knowing that he was an obstinate man and prided himself on keeping his word. “You might come to wish you hadn’t, for she’s a nice girl, and we’re all fond of her – you as well as the rest of us. There, now, I must go and see about supper,” she added, making an excuse to leave him before he had had time to commit himself.
Worn out with grief, excitement, and over-exertion, Floy went to bed that night with a raging headache, and for the next two or three days was able to do little but lie on the sofa.
Espy was with her almost constantly, saving her as much as possible from every annoyance, and comforting her with his sympathy and love.
They were not days of mirth and gladness, but of much heaviness of heart, yet often looked back upon in after years with tender regret, a mournful sweetness lingering about their memory.
As by mutual consent both Floy and Espy avoided the subject of the missing papers and her future action in regard to the property. It frequently obtruded itself upon Floy’s thoughts, but she refused to consider it for the time being; it must wait until she had strength for the struggle which she foresaw was before her if she would follow the dictates of an enlightened conscience.
Mr. Alden grew impatient.
“Espy,” he said at length, “what is Floy going to do?”
“She has not told me, sir; the subject has not been mentioned between us.”
“Then it’s high time it was; I hope you’ll talk to her about it to-day, and try to convince her of the reasonableness of the course I have recommended.”
“I should rather not undertake it, sir. I am not at all sure that hers is not the right view of the matter.”
“Come, now, don’t be a fool, Espy!” returned his father angrily. “You’d be standing amazingly in your own light, if you mean to marry the girl; it’s a fine property, and would give you just the start in life you need. Why, you might give up studying for a profession and devote yourself at once to your beloved art,” he added, with an unpleasant laugh.
The young man flushed deeply. “I should despise myself, sir, if I could act from such motives,” he said, forcing himself to speak quietly, though the hot blood coursed through his veins.
“Your father doesn’t mean that he wants you to marry for money, or to do anything dishonest to get it,” interposed Mrs. Alden. “All he asks is that you will persuade Floy not to throw away what we all know was meant for her.”
“No, I’ll take back that request,” said the elder gentleman. “Leave her to me; that’s all I ask.”
“I shall not try to influence her one way or the other,” said Espy. “But, father, be patient with her if she can’t see things just as you do. She’s almost heart-broken already, poor child!”
This conversation had taken place at the breakfast-table, and immediately on the conclusion of the meal Espy hastened to Floy to learn how she was in health, determined to save her from an encounter with his father until she felt quite equal to it.
He found her free from pain, calm and quiet in manner, though with an expression of deep sadness in her large dark eyes and about the lines of her mobile mouth. She was strangely changed from the careless, light-hearted creature of a week ago. Sorrow and bereavement had done the work of years, and the child of yesterday had become a self-poised, self-reliant woman.
She had spent some hours that morning in earnest thought, asking wisdom and strength from Him who has declared Himself in a peculiar sense the “Father of the fatherless,” and in searching His Word for direction; and now her mind was fully made up.
Espy told her of his father’s intended call, and asked if she would see him, adding, “Don’t hesitate to decline, Floy. You can guess his errand.”
“Yes,” she said, sighing slightly, “and I cannot follow his wishes, because it would be doing violence to my conscience. But I will hear all he has to say. Ah,” she added, tears filling her eyes, “it is hard to be compelled to do what vexes and angers those you love and would fain please rather than yourself! Espy, will you turn against me?”
“Never, never, my poor child! I will stand by you through everything.”
The door opened, and the elder Mr. Alden came in.
“Ah, good-morning, my dear child,” he said, taking Floy’s hand. “Glad to see you about again! should have been here before, but Espy insisted that you were better let alone.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Please be seated.”
He was not long in introducing the real object of his visit, but approached the subject with more caution than before. He spoke of Mr. Kemper’s great fondness for her and his fatherly pride in her, and the determination he had been frequently heard to express, that if he could prevent it his darling should never know what it was to want for the comforts and even luxuries of life.
“Yes,” murmured Floy, the tears stealing down her pale cheeks, “father loved me very dearly, and was always tenderly careful of me.”
“And can you believe that he would want the property he accumulated to be enjoyed by some one else, and you left to struggle with poverty?” asked Mr. Alden.
“No; oh no, no!”
“Ah!” There was a world of meaning in the slight exclamation. It said, “So you are coming to your senses at last! you see now that I was right, and I’m delighted that such is the case.”
“Do not mistake me, Mr. Alden,” said the girl, sighing. “I am certain father would have preferred to leave me well provided for, but he may have finally concluded that it would be more just to leave his property to those who were related to him by ties of blood.”
Emotion stopped her utterance; she had not yet learned to think and speak calmly of the fact that there was no natural tie between herself and those who had been as the dearest of parents to her.
“Nonsense!” was the angry exclamation that rose to Mr. Alden’s lips; but checking himself, he said in a tone of mild expostulation, “I am sure, my dear child, you need not trouble yourself with any such fears. He made every cent of his money, and certainly had a perfect right to leave it as he pleased. And there is not the least doubt in my mind that you would be following out his wishes in retaining possession of it. Indeed I think it would be very wrong as well as foolish to do otherwise.”
“Why wrong?”
“Because it would be disposing of his property as he would not have wished it to be disposed of.”
“Ah, Mr. Alden, suppose you were his next of kin, would you not see this matter differently?”
“Well – possibly our own interests are very apt to blind us to the rights of others.”
Floy smiled faintly, thinking how nearly akin to a man’s own interest was that of his son.
“Yes,” she said, “that is human nature; we are naturally selfish, I as well as others; so much so that if I knew the property was lawfully mine I should never think of giving it away.”
“Then don’t.”
“Ah, it is not mine to give or to keep, but must go to the rightful heirs.”
Mr. Alden bit his lips with vexation, rose and paced the room for some moments; then, having recovered control of himself, came and sat down by Floy.
“I know you want to do right,” he said pleasantly, “and I have only to convince you that the course I wish you to take is right to induce you to take it.”
“I cannot tell you how gladly I should do so,” she answered.
At this moment Espy, who had taken no part in the conversation, though a deeply interested listener, was, much to his discontent, summoned away by a message from his mother.
Mr. Alden did most of the talking for the next hour, going over the old arguments again and again, but bringing forward little that was new except that Mr. and Mrs. Kemper, in adopting her as their own child, had given her all the rights of a child, and therefore, will or no will, she was the proper heir.
“Is that according to the law of the land?” she asked, a gleam of hope shining in her eyes.
He evaded the question. “Human laws are very faulty; we need not always be bound by them.”
“No, not when they come in collision with the higher law of God; but that is not the case in this instance.”
After a moment’s thought and stroking of his beard, he began on another tack, speaking of Espy and his plans, and dwelling at considerable length upon the great advantage it would be to the young man if his wife had sufficient means to give him a start in life.
Floy heard him to the end in unbroken silence, her hands tightly clasped in her lap, a look of pain more than once crossing her features, while the color came and went on her cheek.
He seemed to have finished, but she neither moved nor spoke.
“Well,” he said, rising and taking up his hat from the table where he had placed it on entering, “I’ll leave you to think it all over. Good-morning!”
“Stay!” she said, suddenly rising and standing before him, her hands still clasped, a look of anguish in her eyes as she lifted them to his, her voice tremulous with emotion, not from any faltering of purpose. “I need no further time for deliberation. I have thought and prayed over this matter, and my duty has been made very clear to me. Right and justice must be done, at whatever cost to me or to – ”
The last word was lost in a bitter, choking sob.
Mr. Alden turned abruptly on his heel and left the house.
CHAPTER VIII
MRS. ALDEN AN ABETTOR
“A settled virtueMakes itself a judge: and satisfied within,Smiles at that common enemy, the world.” —Dryden.“What is it, Nathan?”
Mrs. Alden had come upon her husband pacing the front porch of their dwelling with angry strides.
“That girl!” he said between his shut teeth. “I wash my hands of her and her affairs, and Espy shall never marry her with my consent, mark that, Jane!” and he brought down his clenched fist with emphasis upon the open palm of the other hand.
His wife looked disturbed, but after a moment’s thought said cheerfully, “She’ll come round yet, Nathan, and you don’t mean that to stand if she does?”
“No, of course not; but she isn’t going to come round; she hasn’t the sense to understand and appreciate an argument, and has somehow got her head full of Quixotic notions. I suppose she thinks she’ll make a grand heroine of herself by giving up everything to Kemper’s relations, and that they’ll generously hand back a share of it, or maybe the whole; but she’ll find out when it’s too late that she’s made a wonderful mistake.”
Mrs. Alden had her own opinion regarding Floy’s sense, but was far too wise to contradict her husband.
“I haven’t lived with him forty years for nothing,” she sometimes said. “I’ve found out that the only way to manage him is to seem to give in to all his notions. So I never cross him, and I generally contrive in the end to have things pretty much as I want them.”
Seeing she made no reply to his remark, Mr. Alden went on to give her a detailed account of his interview with Floy, winding up with, “There, now, what do you think of that?”
“Poor young thing!” sighed his wife, “it’s really dreadful to think what she’s gone through in the last two weeks, and perhaps she couldn’t quite put her mind on what you were saying so as to take it all in. Give her a little time; she may come around yet to your way of thinking. I must go and see about dinner now.”
“Yes,” he answered absently. “Suppose you go over after dinner; coaxing will move a woman sometimes when argument won’t.”
“I’ll try,” she said as she hurried away. It was what she had intended, though she had not thought it best to say so.
Mr. Alden’s departure had left Floy alone, for Espy had not yet returned. Sinking down upon the sofa, she wept convulsively for some minutes. Presently she grew calmer, and, wiping away her tears, rose and went to her father’s writing-desk.
Seating herself before it, she selected a sheet of note-paper, took up a pen, and was in the act of dipping it in the ink, when Susan, the maid of all work, put her head in at the door, saying, “Mr. Crosby’s in the parlor, Miss Floy, asking to see you.”
“Thank you very much for coming,” Floy said when she had shaken hands with her visitor. “I was just about to write a note asking you to call.”
“I shall be glad if I can be of service to you,” he said. “I should have called sooner, but returned only last night from a pleasure-trip, the first I have taken in years. Now what can I do for you?”
Mr. Crosby, the first lawyer in the place, had been Mr. Kemper’s legal adviser.
At first Floy seemed unable to speak. She rose, and motioning Mr. Crosby to follow her, led the way to the room she had just left. They were closeted together there for an hour, in which Mr. Crosby learned the whole story of Mrs. Kemper’s death-bed revelations, and the unsuccessful search for the deed of gift and the will.
“I am extremely sorry to hear all this,” he said. “I was pretty certain there was no will, because Mr. Kemper had spoken to me about drawing one up for him, telling me that he intended leaving the bulk of his property to his wife and daughter, but not going sufficiently into particulars to enable me to write out the instrument without further instructions. These he delayed giving me from time to time, being always so much occupied with his business. If you were, as I always believed till now, his own child, the omission would make little or no difference; but as it is, it leaves you quite unprovided for. If I had known the truth I should have urged him strongly to attend to the matter without delay. It’s a bad business, a very bad business for you, Miss Floy! I feel for you from the bottom of my heart, and I would do anything in the world I could to help you.”
“I believe it, Mr. Crosby,” she said with emotion, “and if you will undertake – ”
“To communicate with the heirs at law? Certainly; and I shall try to induce them to allow your claim to a share in the property you have so generously resigned to them – ”
“Not generously, Mr. Crosby,” she interrupted, “only justly.”
“Ah, well, if you will have it so; but Miss Floy, you might have kept the secret revealed by your mother locked up in your own breast, and retained the property without the least danger of interference from any one. Did you know that?”
She gave a silent assent.
“And even leaving the inheritance of the estate out of the question, you would have been glad to keep the secret?”
“Yes; oh, yes!” she said, covering her face with her hands, while the tears trickled between her fingers.
He looked at her with undisguised admiration.
“You are a noble girl!” he exclaimed; and rising, paced the floor to and fro.
“Oh!” he cried, “the mischief that simple neglect will do! It has been the ruin of thousands, and through it men have, in multitudes of instances, frustrated their own most cherished plans and purposes. Mr. Kemper schemed and toiled to provide for the old age of himself and wife, and that he might have wealth to bestow upon you, the darling of his heart; and now, through his own omission, it will pass to others, one or two of whom, I happen to know, are spendthrifts, who will probably speedily waste their shares in riotous living. It’s a thousand pities! If we could but bring proof of your formal adoption, making you his legal heir – ”
“There is none,” she sighed, “and perhaps they are very needy – those heirs – and may do better with this than you expect, Mr. Crosby. We will not blame poor dear father. How ungrateful it would be in me to do so after all that he and mother did for me – after all the love and care they bestowed on me for so many years! I had not the slightest claim on them, yet they clothed, fed, educated me – made my childhood and youth so bright and happy. Oh, never did poor little waif fall into hands so kind and tender!”
“Your sentiments do you honor, Miss Floy,” said Mr. Crosby, “and now I will return to my office and attend to this matter at once. I shall write the heirs, letting them know how entirely they are indebted to you for this accession of property, and urge upon them the justice of allowing you a share in it.”
He shook hands with her, said a few encouraging, hopeful words, and departed.
“Glad he’s gone at last,” said Susan, putting her head in at the door again. “Thought he never would go, and your dinner is drying up over the fire till ’tain’t hardly fit to eat. Come, Miss Floy, I’ll have it on the table by the time you can get out to the dining-room.”
Floy brought little appetite to her meal, and ate mechanically, scarcely knowing what the viands were.
She had just risen from the table when Mrs. Alden came in. Floy flushed slightly on seeing her. She knew that Mr. Alden had gone away very angry, and was doubtful how far his wife would be in sympathy with him.
But the greeting of the latter was kind and motherly as usual.
“I’m so glad the poor head is better again,” she said, kissing the girl affectionately. “You must forgive me for calling Espy away this morning. I had to get him to drive out to the country for butter and eggs, for there were none to be had in town, and I’d nobody else to send. He hasn’t got back yet, or you may be sure he’d have been in again.”
Talking on, with hardly a pause for a reply, Mrs. Alden gradually approached the subject of the morning’s conversation between her husband and Floy.
“I honor you for your intentions, my dear,” she said. “I know they are altogether good and right, but you’re very young and inexperienced, and I think have a morbid conscientiousness that blinds you to your own interests, and, if you’ll allow me to say it, to Espy’s too, because if you’re going to be man and wife you can’t have separate interests.”
“Dear Mrs. Alden,” said Floy, with a patient sigh, “you cannot surely think it is ever right to do evil that good may come, or that ill-gotten wealth will be of real benefit to its possessor?”
“No, child, certainly not,” she answered with some annoyance, “but those questions don’t apply in this case. You needn’t be afraid that anything my husband does or advises could be wrong, because he’s too good a man.”
It probably did not occur to the loyal wife that she was reversing the Bible test – judging of the fruit by the tree, instead of the tree by its fruit.
“I do not think he would do or advise anything that he thought wrong,” returned Floy gently; “but you know each of us must act according to his or her own conscience, and mine absolutely refuses to see this matter as Mr. Alden does.”
“Well, I mostly let him judge for me,” said Mrs. Alden. “I find it’s the only way to have peace, and I can’t live in a constant broil; not that he’s particularly ill-natured, but he naturally thinks he ought to be master in his own house. Another thing, Floy: if he once sets his foot down there’s no getting him to lift it again, and he vows that if you persist in giving up this property Espy shall never marry you with his consent. So, you see if you can’t be persuaded there’ll be endless trouble for us all.”
Floy’s cheek crimsoned and her eye flashed, while the pretty head was thrown haughtily back as she drew herself up with an air of wounded pride.
“It was your son who sought me, Mrs. Alden, not I him; nor shall I ever thrust myself into a family where I am not wanted and should be made an element of discord.”
Mrs. Alden was thoroughly dismayed.
“My dear child,” she hastened to say, “I did not mean to hurt your feelings, and I can’t bear the thought of losing you. But Espy will never give you up; he’d break with his father and all of us first, and – ”
“He can’t marry me against my will,” interrupted Floy; “so pray dismiss all anxiety on that score. I would no more rob you and Mr. Alden of your son than – than I would steal the inheritance of the heirs at law of this property.”
“Oh, Floy, Floy, to make you break with Espy is the very last thing I intended; don’t do it; he’d never forgive me; but oh! if I only could persuade you to keep this secret of your birth and – ”
“It is already too late,” answered the girl in a low, quiet tone, “the deed is done.”
CHAPTER IX
WHAT ESPY SAID ABOUT IT
“Dost thou deemIt such an easy task from the fond breastTo root affection out?” —Southey.“What shall I do? what shall I do?” Mrs. Alden asked herself again and again as, in great perturbation of spirit, she awaited Espy’s return. “How angry and distressed he’ll be, poor boy!”
She was at a loss to determine whether it would be best to break the news to him herself, or to let him hear it first from Floy or his father.
But circumstances decided for her. As she sat at the window watching the lengthening shadows as the sun drew near his setting, and saying to herself that Espy was very late – it was nearly tea-time, and she almost began to fear that he had met with some accident – she heard the gate swing, and turning her head saw him coming up the gravel walk that led from it to the house.
He moved with rapid strides, and there was an angry flush on his cheek, an indignant light in his eye, which told her at once that he had already been made aware of the unfortunate turn affairs had taken.
In a moment more he stood before her with folded arms, firmly-set mouth, and stern eyes.
“Espy, my son! Oh, I am so sorry!”
“Yes, mother,” he said, “my father and I have had a quarrel; he called me into his office as I passed, and ordered me to give up all thoughts of Floy – my little Floy that I’ve loved from my very infancy!”
“And what did you say, Espy?” she asked tremulously, feeling as if the very unreasonableness and tyranny of the command must have of itself almost deprived him of the power of speech.
“Say, mother? that he might as well ask me to shoot myself through the heart, and that I’d never give her up; I’d die first.”
“But – but, Espy, what – what if she gives you up?” gasped his mother, fairly frightened by his vehemence.
He staggered back as if struck by a heavy blow, while a deathly pallor overspread his face for an instant.
“But she will not!” he said hoarsely; “she has pledged herself to me, and she’ll never prove false to her word.”
“But she is very proud, Espy – too proud, I think, to come into a family where she’s not wanted; and she’s a good girl, and will see that it’s your duty to obey your father.”
He dropped into a chair, and for a moment seemed lost in thought; then with a sigh, “My father may have a right to control me even in this while I am a minor; but, as you know, mother, in six months I shall have reached my majority, and then I’ll be my own master, and shall consider that in a matter which will affect my happiness so much more nearly than his, and probably for my whole life, I have a right to follow my own wishes. Besides, there is Floy’s happiness to be taken into account. She says she loves me; we’ve pledged ourselves to each other, my father consenting to it at the time – and could he ask me to play so base a part as to forsake the dear girl merely because she has become poor and friendless? I think even he would despise me if I could be guilty of such meanness; and most assuredly I should despise myself!”
He had risen to his feet with the last sentence, and now, as he stood erect before her, with kindling eye and glowing cheek, he looked so noble and manly that his mother’s heart swelled with pride in her son.
“No, you’ll never do anything mean or dishonorable, Espy,” she said, smiling up at him.
Then growing suddenly grave, and an anxious, troubled look stealing over her face at the recollection of her husband’s anger, which she knew must have waxed hot at his son’s resistance to his demand: “But there’ll be no peace between your father and you if you go against his will; so if Floy chooses to break the engagement herself, you needn’t feel called upon to try to hold her to it.”
“Mother,” he said, “you are keeping something back; tell me all. You have spoken to her – told her what father says?”
His eyes were gazing steadily into hers, and there was a mingling of grief and suppressed wrath that made her fear to answer him. She hesitated, then said hastily:
“You’d better go to her. She can tell you what she likes.”
He turned without a word, caught up his hat, and went.