"And the youngest life might drop, the day after your own. You can"t take it out of G.o.d"s hand."
"I must either let it go by law, or will it--here and there. I know enough whom it would help; but I want to invest, not spend it; to invest it in a life--or lives--that will carry it on from where I leave it. How shall I know?"
"He giveth it a body as it pleaseth Him," quoted Marmaduke Wharne, thoughtfully. "I am English, you know, Oldways; I can"t help reverencing the claims of next of kin. Unless one is plainly shown otherwise, it seems the appointment. How can we set aside his ways until He clearly points us out his own exception?"
"My "next" are two women whom I don"t know, my niece"s children. She died thirty years ago."
"Perhaps you ought to know them."
"I know _about_ them; I"ve kept the run; but I"ve held clear of family. They didn"t need me, and I had no right to put it into their heads they did, unless I fully meant"--
He broke off.
"They"re like everybody else, Wharne; neither better nor worse, I dare say; but the world is full of just such women. How do I know this money would be well in their hands--even for themselves?"
"Find out."
"One of "em was brought up by an Oferr woman!"
The tone in which he _commonized_ the name to a satiric general term, is not to be written down, and needed not to be interpreted.
"The other is well enough," he went on, "and contented enough.
A doctor"s widow, with a little property, a farm and two children,--her older ones died very young,--up in New Hampshire. I might spoil _her_; and the other,--well, you see as I said, I _don"t know_."
"Find out," said Marmaduke Wharne, again.
"People are not found out till they are tried."
"Try "em!"
Mr. Oldways had been sitting with his head bent, thoughtfully, his eyes looking down, his hands on the two stiff, old-fashioned arms of his chair. At this last spondaic response from Marmaduke, he lifted his eyes and eyebrows,--not his head,--and raised himself slightly with his two hands pressing on the chair arms; the keen glance and the half-movement were impulsively toward his friend.
"Eh?" said he.
"Try "em," repeated Marmaduke Wharne. "Give G.o.d"s way a chance."
Mr. Oldways, seated back in his chair again, looked at him intently; made a little vibration, as it were, with his body, that moved his head up and down almost imperceptibly, with a kind of gradual a.s.senting apprehension, and kept utterly silent.
So, their talk being palpably over for this time, Marmaduke Wharne got up presently to go. They nodded at each other, friendlily, as he looked back from the door.
Left alone, Mr. t.i.tus Oldways turned in his swivel-chair, around to his desk beside which he was sitting.
"Next of kin?" he repeated to himself. "G.o.d"s way?--Well! Afterwards is a long time. A man must give it up somewhere. Everything escheats to the king at last."
And he took a pen in his hand and wrote a letter.
V.
HOW THE NEWS CAME TO HOMESWORTH.
"I wish I lived in the city, and had a best friend," said Hazel Ripwinkley to Diana, as they sat together on the long, red, sloping kitchen roof under the arches of the willow-tree, hemming towels for their afternoon "stent." They did this because their mother sat on the shed roof under the fir, when she was a child, and had told them of it. Imagination is so much greater than fact, that these children, who had now all that little Frank Shiere had dreamed of with the tar smell and the gravel stones and the one tree,--who might run free in the wide woods and up the breezy hillsides,--liked best of all to get out on the kitchen roof and play "old times," and go back into their mother"s dream.
"I wish I lived in a block of houses, and could see across the corner into my best friend"s room when she got up in the morning!"
"And could have that party!" said Diana.
"Think of the clean, smooth streets, with red sidewalks, and people living all along, door after door! I like things set in rows, and people having places, like the desks at school. Why, you"ve got to go way round Sand Hill to get to Elizabeth Ann Dorridon"s. I should like to go up steps, and ring bells!"
"I don"t know," said Diana, slowly. "I think birds that build little nests about anywhere in the cunning, separate places, in the woods, or among the bushes, have the best time."
"Birds, Dine! It ain"t birds, it"s people! What has that to do with it?"
"I mean I think nests are better than martin-boxes."
"Let"s go in and get her to tell us that story. She"s in the round room."
The round room was a half ellipse, running in against the curve of the staircase. It was a bit of a place, with the window at one end, and the bow at the other. It had been Doctor Ripwinkley"s office, and Mrs. Ripwinkley sat there with her work on summer afternoons.
The door opened out, close at the front, upon a great flat stone in an angle, where was also entrance into the hall by the house-door, at the right hand. The door of the office stood open, and across the stone one could look down, between a range of lilac bushes and the parlor windows, through a green door-yard into the street.
"Now, Mother Frank, tell us about the party!"
They called her "Mother Frank" when they wished to be particularly coaxing. They had taken up their father"s name for her, with their own prefix, when they were very little ones, before he went away and left n.o.body to call her Frank, every day, any more.
"That same little old story? Won"t you ever be tired of it,--you great girls?" asked the mother; for she had told it to them ever since they were six and eight years old.
"Yes! No, never!" said the children.
For how _should_ they outgrow it? It was a sunny little bit out of their mother"s own child-life. We shall go back to smaller things, one day, maybe, and find them yet more beautiful. It is the _going_ back, together.
"The same old way?"
"Yes; the very same old way."
"We had little open-work straw hats and muslin pelisses,--your Aunt Laura and I,"--began Mrs. Ripwinkley, as she had begun all those scores of times before. "Mother put them on for us,--she dressed us just alike, always,--and told us to take each other"s hands, and go up Brier and down Hickory streets, and stop at all the houses that she named, and that we knew; and we were to give her love and compliments, and ask the mothers in each house,--Mrs. Dayton, and Mrs. Holridge (she lived up the long steps), and Mrs. Waldow, and the rest of them, to let Caroline and Grace and f.a.n.n.y and Susan, and the rest of _them_, come at four o"clock, to spend the afternoon and take tea, if it was convenient."
"O, mother!" said Hazel, "you didn"t say that when you _asked_ people, you know."
"O, no!" said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "That was when we went to stop a little while ourselves, without being asked. Well, it was to please to let them come. And all the ladies were at home, because it was only ten o"clock; and they all sent their love and compliments, and they were much obliged, and the little girls would be very happy.
"It was a warm June day; up Brier Street was a steep walk; down Hickory we were glad to keep on the shady side, and thought it was nice that Mrs. Bemys and Mrs. Waldow lived there. The strings of our hats were very moist and clinging when we got home, and Laura had a blue mark under her chin from the green ribbon.
"Mother was in her room, in her white dimity morning gown, with little bows up the front, the ends trimmed with cambric edging. She took off our hats and our pelisses,--the tight little sleeves came off wrong side out,--sponged our faces with cool water, and brushed out Laura"s curls. That was the only difference between us. I hadn"t any curls, and my hair had to be kept cropped. Then she went to her upper bureau drawer and took out two little paper boxes.
""Something has come for Blanche and Clorinda, since you have been gone," she said, smiling. "I suppose you have been shopping?" We took the paper boxes, laughing back at her with a happy understanding. We were used to these little plays of mother"s, and she couldn"t really surprise us with her kindnesses. We went and sat down in the window-seat, and opened them as deliberately and in as grown-up a way as we could. Inside them were two little lace pelerines lined with rose-colored silk. The boxes had a faint smell of musk. The things were so much better for coming in boxes! Mother knew that.