Chapter 7

The uppermost question these days of monotonous speculation was how long would this ebb-tide of a tenacious life flow. She took a guilty interest in her uncle's condition, and yet she more than half wished him to live. Sometimes he would rally. Something unfulfilled troubled his mind, and once he even crawled downstairs. She found him shakily puttering over the papers in his huge davenport. He asked her to make a fire in the grate, and then, gathering up an armful of papers, he knelt down on the brick hearth, but suddenly drew back. His deep eyes gleamed hatefully at her. Holding out several stiff papers, he motioned to her to burn them. Usually she would have obeyed docilely enough, but this deviltry of merriment she resented. While she delayed, standing erect before the smouldering sticks, she noticed that a look of terror crept across the sick face. A spasm shook him, and he fainted. After that his weakness kept him in bed. She wondered what he had been so anxious to burn.

From this time her thoughts grew more specific. Just how should she attain her ends? Had he made a will? Could he not now do something for them, or would it be safer to bide their time? Indeed, for a few moments she resolved to decide all by one straightforward prayer. She began, and the old man seemed so contentedly prepared for the scene that she remained dumb.

In this extremity of doubt she longed to get aid from her husband. Yet under the circumstances she dared to admit so little. One Saturday afternoon he called at the house; she was compelled to share some of her perplexities.

"He seems so very feeble," she remarked. They were sitting on the veranda some distance from Oliphant's room, yet their conversation was furtive. "Perhaps he should see a doctor or a minister."

"No, I don't think so," Edwards replied, assuringly. "You see, he doesn't believe in either, and such things should be left to the person himself, as long as he's in his right mind."

"And a lawyer?" Mrs. Edwards continued, probingly.

"Has he asked for one?"

"No, but he seems to find it hard to talk."

"I guess it's best not to meddle. Who's that?"

A little, fat man in baggy black trousers and a seersucker coat was panting up the gentle hill to the gate. He had a puggy nose and a heavy, thinly bearded face incased about the eyes in broad steel spectacles.

"That must be Dr. Shapless," she said, in a flutter.

"What of it?" Edwards replied.

"He mustn't come in," she cried, with sudden energy. "You must see him, and send him away! He wants to see Uncle Oliphant. Tell him he's too sick--to come another day." Edwards went down the path to meet him. Through the window she could hear a low conversation, and then crunched gravel. Meantime Oliphant seemed restlessly alert, expectant of something, and with suspicious eyes intent on her.

Her heart thumped with relief when the gate clicked. Edwards had been effective that time. Oliphant was trying to say something, but the hot August day had been too much for him--it all ended in a mumble. Then she pulled in the blinds, settled the pillows nervously, and left the room in sheer fright.

The fight had begun--and grimly.

* * * * *

"I wonder what the old cove wanted?" Edwards said the next day; "he was dead set on seeing your uncle; said he had an engagement with him, and looked me up and down. I stood him off, but he'll be down again."

"Don't you know about that new fund the Methodists are raising? Uncle Oliphant has always helped the Methodists, and I suppose Dr. Shapless wanted to see him about some contributions." Edwards asked no more questions, and, in fact, got back to town on a pretext of business that afternoon. He was clearly of no use in Quogue. His wife sent for a physician that week. It was tardy justice to propriety, but it was safe then, for Oliphant had given up all attempts to talk.

The doctor came, looked at the old man, and uttered a few remarks. He would come again. Mrs. Edwards did not need to be told that the end was near. The question was, how soon?

That week had another scare. Somehow old Slocum, the local lawyer Oliphant used, had been summoned, and one morning she ran across him in the hall. She knew the man well of old. He was surprised and pleased to see her, and it was not difficult to get him out of the house without arousing his suspicions. But he would talk so boisterously; she felt her uncle's eyes aflame in anger.

"Be sure and send for me when he rallies, quick," Slocum whispered loudly in the hall. "Perhaps we can do a little something for some folks." And with a wink he went out.

Had she done the clever thing, after all, in shooing old Slocum out? Her mind went over the possibilities in tense anxiety. If there were no will, James, Jr., would get the whole, she thought. If there was a will already in the house, in that old davenport, what then? Would Shapless get the money? She grew keen in speculation. To leave her in the lurch, to give it all to that greasy Shapless, would be the most natural trick in the world for an incisive old fellow like Oliphant.

It was too much! She cried a little, and she began to hate the helpless man upstairs. It occurred to her to poke about in the papers in the adjoining room. She must do it at once, for she expected Edwards every moment.

First she ran upstairs to see if her uncle was all right. As soon as she entered, he glared at her bitterly and would have spoken. She noted the effort and failure, elated. He could not betray her now, unless he rallied wonderfully. So leaving the door ajar, she walked firmly downstairs. Now she could satisfy her desire.

If the money were _all_ left to Shapless? She might secure the will, and bargain with the old parasite for a few thousands of dollars. Her mind was full of wild schemes. If she only knew a little more about affairs! She had heard of wills, and read many novels that turned upon wills lost or stolen. They had always seemed to her improbable, mere novels. Necessity was stranger than fiction.

It did not take long to find the very articles she was after; evidently Oliphant had been overhauling them on that last excursion from his room. The package lay where he had dropped it when he fainted. There were two documents. She unfolded them on the top of the mussy desk. They were hard reading in all their legal dress, and her head was filled with fears lest her husband should walk in. She could make out, however, that Oliphant was much richer than she had ever vaguely supposed, and that since her departure he had relented toward his son. For by the first will in date she was the principal heir, a lot of queer charities coming in besides. In the second, James, Jr., received something. Her name did not appear. Several clauses had been added from time to time, each one giving more money and lands to the Methodists. Probably Shapless was after another codicil when he called.

It had taken her into the twilight to gain even a meagre idea of all this. She was preparing to fold the documents up in their common wrapper, when she felt the door open behind her. All she could see in the terror of the moment was the gaunt white arm of her uncle, and the two angry eyes in the shaking head. She shrieked, from pure nervousness, and at her cry the old man fell in a heap.

The accident steeled her nerves. Dinah came in in a panic, and as they were lifting the bony frame from the floor Edwards arrived. With his assistance they got the sick man to bed.

That was clearly the last gasp. Yet Mrs. Edwards shook in dread every time she entered the room. The look seemed conscious still, intensified malignity and despair creeping in. She was afraid and guilty and unstrung. Perhaps, with some sudden revival of his forces, he would kill her. He was lying there, too still for defeat. His life had been an expression of hates; the last one might be dreadful.

Yet she stood to her post in the sick-room, afraid, as she knew, to trust herself with her husband. Her mind was soiled with seething thoughts, and, in contrast, his seemed so fresh and pure! If she could keep him unsuspicious of her, all would be well in the end. But the task she had set herself for him was hard, so hard!

That night when all was still she crept downstairs and groped about in the davenport for the papers. They had been lying there unopened where they had fallen earlier in the evening. She struck a match, caught up the fresher document, and hugged it to her as she toiled upstairs. When she had tucked it away in her satchel the end seemed near. They must wait now.

She put her husband out of her mind. Outside, the warm summer days died away over the sea, one by one, and the grass beyond the gates grew heavier with dust. Life was tense in its monotony.

* * * * *

That had happened on a Saturday; Monday Dr. Shapless came again, his shoes dusty from his long walk from the station. He looked oiled as ever, but more determined. Mrs. Edwards daringly permitted him to see the dying man--he had been lying in a stupor--for she was afraid that the reverend doctor's loud tones in the hall might exasperate Oliphant to some wild act. Dr. Shapless shut her from the room when he went in, but he did not stay long. A restless despair had settled down on her uncle's face, there to remain for the last few hours.

Her heart sank; she longed to cry out to the poor old man on the bed that _she_ did not want his money. She remained with him all night, yet she did not dare to approach his bed. She would disturb him.

He died the next afternoon, and at the last he looked out on the world and at her with his final note of intelligence. It was pathetic, a suggestion of past tenderness defeated, and of defeat in hate, too. She shuddered as she closed his sad eyes; it was awful to meddle with a man's last purposes.

The funeral was almost surreptitious; old Dinah, the Leicesters, and the Edwardses occupied the one carriage that followed him to the graveyard across the village. They met a hay-cart or two on their way, but no curious neighbors. Old Oliphant's death aroused no interest in this village, ridden with summer strangers.

The day was impersonally suave and tender, with its gentle haze and autumn premonitions. Mr. Leicester said a few equivocal words, while Mrs. Edwards gazed helplessly into the grave. The others fell back behind the minister. Between her and her uncle down there something remained unexplained, and her heart ached.

* * * * *

They spent that night at the Leicesters', for Mrs. Edwards wearily refused to return to the Oliphant place. Edwards carried the keys over to Slocum, and told him to take the necessary steps toward settling the old man's affairs. The next day they returned to the little flat in Harlem. The Leicesters found their presence awkward, now that there was nothing to do, and Mrs. Edwards was craving to be alone with her husband, to shut out the past month from their lives as soon as possible.

These September days, while they both waited in secret anxiety, she clung to him as she had never before. He was pure, the ideal she had voluntarily given up, given up for his sake in order that he might have complete perfection. His delicate sensitiveness kept him from referring to that painful month, or to possible expectations. She worshipped him the more, and was thankful for his complete ignorance. Their common life could go on untainted and noble.

Yet Edwards betrayed his nervous anxiety. His eagerness for the mail every morning, his early return from business, indicated his troubled mind.

The news came at breakfast-time. Mrs. Edwards handed Slocum's letter across the table and waited, her face wanly eager. The letter was long; it took some half-dozen large letter-sheets for the country lawyer to tell his news, but in the end it came. He had found the will and was happy to say that Mrs. Edwards was a large, a very large, beneficiary. Edwards read these closing sentences aloud. He threw down the letter and tried to take her in his arms. But she tearfully pushed him away, and then, repenting, clasped his knees.

"Oh, Will! it's so much, so very much," she almost sobbed.

Edwards looked as if that were not an irremediable fault in their good luck. He said nothing. Already he was planning their future movements. Under the circumstances neither cared to discuss their happiness, and so they got little fun from the first bloom.

In spite of Mrs. Edwards's delicate health and her expected confinement they decided to go abroad. She was feverishly anxious for him to begin his real work at once, to prove himself; and it might be easier to forget her one vicious month when the Atlantic had been crossed. They put their affairs to rights hurriedly, and early in November sailed for France.

The Leicesters were at the dock to bid them God-speed and to chirrup over their good fortune.

"It's all like a good, old-fashioned story," beamed Mrs. Leicester, content with romance for once, now that it had arranged itself so decorously.

"Very satisfactory; quite right," the clergyman added. "We'll see you soon in Paris. We're thinking of a gay vacation, and will let you know."

Edwards looked fatuous; his wife had an orderly smile. She was glad when Sandy Hook sank into the mist. She had only herself to avoid now.

They took some pleasant apartments just off the Rue de Rivoli, and then their life subsided into the complacent commonplace of possession. She was outwardly content to enjoy with her husband, to go to the galleries, the opera, to try the restaurants, and to drive.

Yet her life went into one idea, a very fixed idea, such as often takes hold of women in her condition. She was eager to see him at work. If he accomplished something--even content!--she would feel justified and perhaps happy. As to the child, the idea grew strange to her. Why should she have a third in the problem? For she saw that the child must take its part in her act, must grow up and share their life and inherit the Oliphant money. In brief, she feared the yet unborn stranger, to whom she would be responsible in this queer way. And the child could not repair the wrong as could her husband. Certainly the child was an alien.

She tried to be tender of her husband in his boyish glee and loafing. She could understand that he needed to accustom himself to his new freedom, to have his vacation first. She held herself in, tensely, refraining from criticism lest she might mar his joy. But she counted the days, and when her child had come, she said to herself, _then_ he must work.

This morbid life was very different from what she had fancied the rich future would be, as she looked into the grave, the end of her struggle, that September afternoon. But she had grown to demand so much more from _him_; she had grown so grave! His bright, boyish face, the gentle curls, had been dear enough, and now she looked for the lines a man's face should have. Why was he so terribly at ease? The world was bitter and hard in its conditions, and a man should not play.

Late in December the Leicesters called; they were like gleeful sparrows, twittering about. Mrs. Edwards shuddered to see them again, and when they were gone she gave up and became ill.

Her tense mind relieved itself in hysterics, which frightened her to further repression. Then one night she heard herself moaning: "Why did I have to take all? It was so little, so very little, I wanted, and I had to take all. Oh, Will, Will, you should have done for yourself! Why did you need this? Why couldn't you do as other men do? It's no harder for you than for them." Then she recollected herself. Edwards was holding her hand and soothing her.

Some weeks later, when she was very ill, she remembered those words, and wondered if he had suspected anything. Her child came and died, and she forgot this matter, with others. She lay nerveless for a long time, without thought; Edwards and the doctor feared melancholia. So she was taken to Italy for the cold months. Edwards cared for her tenderly, but his caressing presence was irritating, instead of soothing, to her. She was hungry for a justification that she could not bring about.

At last it wore on into late spring. She began to force herself back into the old activities, in order to leave no excuse for further dawdling. Her attitude became terribly judicial and suspicious.

An absorbing idleness had settled down over Edwards, partly excused to himself by his wife's long illness. When he noticed that his desultory days made her restless, he took to loafing about galleries or making little excursions, generally in company with some forlorn artist he had picked up. He had nothing, after all, so very definite that demanded his time; he had not yet made up his mind for any attempts. And something in the domestic atmosphere unsettled him. His wife held herself aloof, with alien sympathies, he felt.

So they drifted on to discontent and unhappiness until she could bear it no longer without expression.

"Aren't we to return to Paris soon?" she remarked one morning as they idled over a late breakfast. "I am strong now, and I should like to settle down."

Edwards took the cue, idly welcoming any change.

"Why, yes, in the fall. It's too near the summer now, and there's no hurry."

"Yes, there _is_ hurry," his wife replied, hastily. "We have lost almost eight months."

"Out of a lifetime," Edwards put in, indulgently.

She paused, bewildered by the insinuation of his remark. But her mood was too incendiary to avoid taking offence. "Do you mean that that would be a _life_, loafing around all day, enjoying this, that, and the other fine pleasure? That wasn't what we planned."

"No, but I don't see why people who are not driven should drive themselves. I want to get the taste of Harlem out of my mouth." He was a bit sullen. A year ago her strict inquiry into his life would have been absurd. Perhaps the money, her money, gave her the right.

"If people don't drive themselves," she went on, passionately, "they ought to be driven. It's cowardly to take advantage of having money to do nothing. You wanted the--the opportunity to do something. Now you have it."

Edwards twisted his wicker chair into uncomfortable places. "Well, are you sorry you happen to have given me the chance?" He looked at her coldly, so that a suspicious thought shot into her mind.

"Yes," she faltered, "if it means throwing it away, I _am_ sorry."

She dared no more. Her mind was so close on the great sore in her gentle soul. He lit a cigarette, and sauntered down the hotel garden. But the look he had given her--a queer glance of disagreeable intelligence--illumined her dormant thoughts.

What if he had known all along? She remembered his meaning words that hot night when they talked over Oliphant's illness for the first time. And why had he been so yielding, so utterly passive, during the sordid drama over the dying man? What kept him from alluding to the matter in any way? Yes, he must have encouraged her to go on. _She_ had been his tool, and he the passive spectator. The blind certainty of a woman made the thing assured, settled. She picked up the faint yellow rose he had laid by her plate, and tore it slowly into fine bits. On the whole, he was worse than she.

But before he returned she stubbornly refused to believe herself.

* * * * *

In the autumn they were again in Paris, in soberer quarters, which were conducive to effort. Edwards was working fitfully with several teachers, goaded on, as he must confess to himself, by a pitiless wife. Not much was discussed between them, but he knew that the price of the _statu quo_ was continued labor.

She was watching him; he felt it and resented it, but he would not understand. All the idealism, the worship of the first sweet months in marriage, had gone. Of course that incense had been foolish, but it was sweet. Instead, he felt these suspicious, intolerant eyes following his soul in and out on its feeble errands. He comforted himself with the trite consolation that he was suffering from the natural readjustment in a woman's mind. It was too drastic for that, however.

He was in the habit of leaving her in the evenings of the opera. The light was too much for her eyes, and she was often tired. One wet April night, when he returned late, he found her up, sitting by the window that overlooked the steaming boulevard. Somehow his soul was rebellious, and when she asked him about the opera he did not take the pains to lie.

"Oh, I haven't been there," he muttered, "I am beastly tired of it all. Let's get out of it; to St. Petersburg or Norway--for the summer," he added, guiltily.

Now that the understanding impended she trembled, for hitherto she had never actually known. In suspicion there was hope. So she almost entreated.

"We go to Vienna next winter anyway, and I thought we had decided on Switzerland for the summer."

"You decided! But what's the use of keeping up the mill night and day? There's plenty of opportunity over there for an educated gentleman with money, if what you are after is a 'sphere' for me."

"You want to--to go back now?"

"No, I want to be let alone."

"Don't you care to pay for all you have had? Haven't you any sense of justice to Uncle Oliphant, to your opportunities?"

"Oliphant!" Edwards laughed, disagreeably. "Wouldn't he be pleased to have an operetta, a Gilbert and Sullivan affair, dedicated to him! No. I have tried to humor your idea of making myself famous. But what's the use of being wretched?" The topic seemed fruitless. Mrs. Edwards looked over to the slight, careless figure. He was sitting dejectedly on a large fauteuil, smoking. He seemed fagged and spiritless. She almost pitied him and gave in, but suddenly she rose and crossed the room.

"We've made ourselves pretty unhappy," she said, apologetically, resting her hand on the lapel of his coat. "I guess it's mostly my fault, Will. I have wanted so much that you should do something fine with Uncle Oliphant's money, with _yourself_. But we can make it up in other ways."

"What are you so full of that idea for?" Edwards asked, curiously. "Why can't you be happy, even as happy as you were in Harlem?" His voice was hypocritical.

"Don't you know?" she flashed back. "You _do_ know, I believe. Tell me, did you look over those papers on the davenport that night Uncle James fainted?"

The unexpected rush of her mind bewildered him. A calm lie would have set matters to rights, but he was not master of it.

"So you were willing--you knew?"

"It wasn't my affair," he muttered, weakly, but she had left him.

He wandered about alone for a few days until the suspense became intolerable. When he turned up one afternoon in their apartments he found preparations on foot for their departure.

"We're going away?" he asked.

"Yes, to New York."

"Not so fast," he interrupted, bitterly. "We might as well face the matter openly. What's the use of going back there?"

"We can't live here, and besides I shall be wanted there."

"You can't do anything now. Talk sensibly about it. I will not go back."

She looked at him coldly, critically. "I cabled Slocum yesterday, and we must live somehow."

"You--" but she laid her hand on his arm. "It makes no difference now, you know, and it can't be changed. I've done everything."

CHICAGO, August, 1895.

A REJECTED TITIAN

"John," my wife remarked in horrified tones, "he's coming to Rome!"

"Who is coming to Rome--the Emperor?"

"Uncle Ezra--see," she handed me the telegram. "Shall arrive in Rome Wednesday morning; have Watkins at the Grand Hotel."

I handed the despatch to Watkins.

"Poor uncle!" my wife remarked.

"He will get it in the neck," I added, profanely.