"But you have a young relative! Is she not to be included in this part.i.tion of your property?"
A hush. Then a smile came to life on her stiff lips, such as is seldom seen, thank G.o.d, on the face of any woman, and I heard:
"The young relative of whom you speak, is in the room. She has known for some time that I have no intention of leaving anything to her. There is, in fact, small chance of her ever needing it."
The latter sentence was a muttered one, but that it was loud enough to be heard in all parts of the room I was soon a.s.sured. For a quick sigh, which was almost a gasp, followed from a corner I had hitherto ignored, and upon glancing that way, I perceived, peering upon us from the shadows, the white face of a young girl in whose drawn features and wide, staring eyes I beheld such evidences of terror, that in an instant, whatever predilection I had hitherto felt for my client, vanished in distrust, if not positive aversion.
I was still under the sway of this new impression, when Mrs.
Postlethwaite"s voice rose again, this time addressing the young girl:
"You may go," she said, with such force in the command for all its honeyed modulation, that I expected to see its object fly the room in frightened obedience.
But though the startled girl had lost none of the terror which had made her face like a mask, no power of movement remained to her. A picture of hopeless misery, she stood for one breathless moment, with her eyes fixed in unmistakable appeal on mine; then she began to sway so helplessly that I leaped with bounding heart to catch her. As she fell into my arms I heard her sigh as before. No common anguish spoke in that sigh. I had stumbled unwittingly upon a tragedy, to the meaning of which I held but a doubtful key.
"She seems very ill," I observed with some emphasis, as I turned to lay my helpless burden on a near-by sofa.
"She"s doomed."
The words were spoken with gloom and with an attempt at commiseration which no longer rang true in my ears.
"She is as sick a woman as I am myself," continued Mrs. Postlethwaite.
"That is why I made the remark I did, never imagining she would hear me at that distance. Do not put her down. My nurse will be here in a moment to relieve you of your burden."
A tinkle accompanied these words. The resolute woman had stretched out a finger, of whose use she was not quite deprived, and touched a little bell standing on the tray before her, an inch or two from her hand.
Pleased to obey her command, I paused at the sofa"s edge, and taking advantage of the momentary delay, studied the youthful countenance pressed unconsciously to my breast.
It was one whose appeal lay less in its beauty, though that was of a touching quality, than in the story it told,--a story, which for some unaccountable reason--I did not pause to determine what one--I felt it to be my immediate duty to know. But I asked no questions then; I did not even venture a comment; and yielded her up with seeming readiness when a strong but none too intelligent woman came running in with arms outstretched to carry her off. When the door had closed upon these two, the silence of my client drew my attention back to herself.
"I am waiting," was her quiet observation, and without any further reference to what had just taken place under our eyes, she went on with the business previously occupying us.
I was able to do my part without any too great display of my own disturbance. The clearness of my remarkable client"s instructions, the definiteness with which her mind was made up as to the disposal of every dollar of her vast property, made it easy for me to master each detail and make careful note of every wish. But this did not prevent the ebb and flow within me of an undercurrent of thought full of question and uneasiness. What had been the real purport of the scene to which I had just been made a surprised witness? The few, but certainly unusual, facts which had been given me in regard to the extraordinary relations existing between these two closely connected women will explain the intensity of my interest. Those facts shall be yours.
Arabella Merwin, when young, was gifted with a peculiar fascination which, as we have seen, had not altogether vanished with age.
Consequently she had many lovers, among them two brothers, Frank and Andrew Postlethwaite. The latter was the older, the handsomer, and the most prosperous (his name is remembered yet in connection with South American schemes of large importance), but it was Frank she married.
That real love, ardent if unreasonable, lay at the bottom of her choice, is evident enough to those who followed the career of the young couple. But it was a jealous love which brooked no rival, and as Frank Postlethwaite was of an impulsive and erratic nature, scenes soon occurred between them which, while revealing the extraordinary force of the young wife"s character, led to no serious break till after her son was born, and this, notwithstanding the fact that Frank had long given up making a living, and that they were openly dependent on their wealthy brother, now fast approaching the millionaire status.
This brother--the Peruvian King, as some called him--must have been an extraordinary man. Though cherishing his affection for the spirited Arabella to the point of remaining a bachelor for her sake, he betrayed none of the usual signs of disappointed love; but on the contrary made every effort to advance her happiness, not only by a.s.suring to herself and husband an adequate income, but by doing all he could in other and less open ways to lessen any sense she might entertain of her mistake in preferring for her lifemate his self-centred and unstable brother. She should have adored him; but though she evinced grat.i.tude enough, there is nothing to prove that she ever gave Frank Postlethwaite the least cause to cherish any other sentiment towards his brother than that of honest love and unqualified respect. Perhaps he never did cherish any other. Perhaps the change which everyone saw in the young couple immediately after the birth of their only child was due to another cause. Gossip is silent on this point. All that it insists upon is that from this time evidences of a growing estrangement between them became so obvious that even the indulgent Andrew could not blind himself to it; showing his sense of trouble, not by lessening their income, for that he doubled, but by spending more time in Peru and less in New York where the two were living.
However,--and here we enter upon those details which I have ventured to characterize as uncommon, he was in this country and in the actual company of his brother when the accident occurred which terminated both their lives. It was the old story of a skidding motor, and Mrs.
Postlethwaite, having been sent for in great haste to the small inn into which the two injured men had been carried, arrived only in time to witness their last moments. Frank died first and Andrew some few minutes later--an important fact, as was afterwards shown when the latter"s will came to be read.
This will was a peculiar one. By its provisions the bulk of the King"s great property was left to his brother Frank, but with this especial stipulation that in case his brother failed to survive him, the full legacy as bequeathed to him should be given unconditionally to his widow. Frank"s demise, as I have already stated, preceded his brother"s by several minutes and consequently Arabella became the chief legatee; and that is how she obtained her millions. But--and here a startling feature comes in--when the will came to be administered, the secret underlying the break between Frank and his wife was brought to light by a revelation of the fact that he had practised a great deception upon her at the time of his marriage. Instead of being a bachelor as was currently believed, he was in reality a widower, and the father of a child. This fact, so long held secret, had become hers when her own child was born; and const.i.tuted as she was, she not only never forgave the father, but conceived such a hatred for the innocent object of their quarrel that she refused to admit its claims or even to acknowledge its existence.
But later--after his death, in fact--she showed some sense of obligation towards one who under ordinary conditions would have shared her wealth.
When the whole story became heard, and she discovered that this secret had been kept from his brother as well as from herself, and that consequently no provision had been made in any way for the child thus thrown directly upon her mercy, she did the generous thing and took the forsaken girl into her own home. But she never betrayed the least love for her, her whole heart being bound up in her boy, who was, as all agree, a prodigy of talent.
But this boy, for all his promise and seeming strength of const.i.tution, died when barely seven years old, and the desolate mother was left with nothing to fill her heart but the uncongenial daughter of her husband"s first wife. The fact that this child, slighted as it had hitherto been, would, in the event of her uncle having pa.s.sed away before her father, have been the undisputed heiress of a large portion of the wealth now at the disposal of her arrogant step-mother, led many to expect, now that the boy was no more, that Mrs. Postlethwaite would proceed to acknowledge the little Helena as her heir, and give her that place in the household to which her natural claims ent.i.tled her.
But no such result followed. The pa.s.sion of grief into which the mother was thrown by the shipwreck of all her hopes left her hard and implacable, and when, as very soon happened, she fell a victim to the disease which tied her to her chair and made the wealth which had come to her by such a peculiar ordering of circ.u.mstances little else than a mockery even in her own eyes, it was upon this child she expended the full fund of her secret bitterness.
And the child? What of her? How did she bear her unhappy fate when she grew old enough to realize it? With a resignation which was the wonder of all who knew her. No murmurs escaped her lips, nor was the devotion she invariably displayed to the exacting invalid who ruled her as well as all the rest of her household with a rod of iron ever disturbed by the least sign of reproach. Though the riches, which in those early days poured into the home in a measure far beyond the needs of its mistress, were expended in making the house beautiful rather than in making the one young life within it happy, she never was heard to utter so much as a wish to leave the walls within which fate had immured her. Content, or seemingly content, with the only home she knew, she never asked for change or demanded friends or amus.e.m.e.nts. Visitors ceased coming; desolation followed neglect. The garden, once a glory, succ.u.mbed to a riot of weeds and undesirable brush, till a towering wall seemed to be drawn about the house cutting it off from the activities of the world as it cut it off from the approach of sunshine by day, and the comfort of a star-lit heaven by night. And yet the young girl continued to smile, though with a pitifulness of late, which some thought betokened secret terror and others the wasting of a body too sensitive for such unwholesome seclusion.
These were the facts, known if not consciously specialized, which gave to the latter part of my interview with Mrs. Postlethwaite a poignancy of interest which had never attended any of my former experiences. The peculiar att.i.tude of Miss Postlethwaite towards her indurate tormentor awakened in my agitated mind something much deeper than curiosity, but when I strove to speak her name with the intent of inquiring more particularly into her condition, such a look confronted me from the steady eye immovably fixed upon my own, that my courage--or was it my natural precaution--bade me subdue the impulse and risk no attempt which might betray the depth of my interest in one so completely outside the scope of the present moment"s business. Perhaps Mrs. Postlethwaite appreciated my struggle; perhaps she was wholly blind to it. There was no reading the mind of this woman of sentimental name but inflexible nature, and realizing the fact more fully with every word she uttered I left her at last with no further betrayal of my feelings than might be evinced by the earnestness with which I promised to return for her signature at the earliest possible moment.
This she had herself requested, saying as I rose:
"I can still write my name if the paper is pushed carefully along under my hand. See to it that you come while the power remains to me."
I had hoped that in my pa.s.sage downstairs I might run upon someone who would give me news of Miss Postlethwaite, but the woman who approached to conduct me downstairs was not of an appearance to invite confidence, and I felt forced to leave the house with my doubts unsatisfied.
Two memories, equally distinct, followed me. One was a picture of Mrs.
Postlethwaite"s fingers groping among her belongings on the little tray perched upon her lap, and another of the intent and strangely bent figure of the old man who had acted as my usher, listening to the ticking of one of the great clocks. So absorbed was he in this occupation that he not only failed to notice me when I went by, but he did not even lift his head at my cheery greeting. Such mysteries were too much for me, and led me to postpone my departure from town till I had sought out Mrs. Postlethwaite"s doctor and propounded to him one or two leading questions. First, would Mrs. Postlethwaite"s present condition be likely to hold good till Monday; and secondly, was the young lady living with her as ill as her step-mother said.
He was a mild old man of the easy-going type, and the answers I got from him were far from satisfactory. Yet he showed some surprise when I mentioned the extent of Mrs. Postlethwaite"s anxiety about her step-daughter, and paused, in the dubious shaking of his head, to give me a short stare in which I read as much determination as perplexity.
"I will look into Miss Postlethwaite"s case more particularly," were his parting words. And with this one gleam of comfort I had to be content.
Monday"s interview was a brief one and contained nothing worth repeating. Mrs. Postlethwaite listened with stoical satisfaction to the reading of the will I had drawn up, and upon its completion rang her bell for the two witnesses awaiting her summons, in an adjoining room.
They were not of her household, but to all appearance honest villagers with but one noticeable characteristic, an overweening idea of Mrs.
Postlethwaite"s importance. Perhaps the spell she had so liberally woven for others in other and happier days was felt by them at this hour. It would not be strange; I had almost fallen under it myself, so great was the fascination of her manner even in this wreck of her bodily powers, when triumph a.s.sured, she faced us all in a state of complete satisfaction.
But before I was again quit of the place, all my doubts returned and in fuller force than ever. I had lingered in my going as much as decency would permit, hoping to hear a step on the stair or see a face in some doorway which would contradict Mrs. Postlethwaite"s cold a.s.surance that Miss Postlethwaite was no better. But no such step did I hear, and no face did I see save the old, old one of the ancient friend or relative, whose bent frame seemed continually to haunt the halls. As before, he stood listening to the monotonous ticking of one of the clocks, muttering to himself and quite oblivious of my presence.
However, this time I decided not to pa.s.s him without a more persistent attempt to gain his notice. Pausing at his side, I asked him in the friendly tone I thought best calculated to attract his attention, how Miss Postlethwaite was to-day. He was so intent upon his task, whatever that was, that while he turned my way, it was with a glance as blank as that of a stone image.
"Listen!" he admonished me. "It still says No! No! I don"t think it will ever say anything else."
I stared at him in some consternation, then at the clock itself which was the tall one I had found run down at my first visit. There was nothing unusual in its quiet tick, so far as I could hear, and with a compa.s.sionate glance at the old man who had turned breathlessly again to listen, proceeded on my way without another word.
The old fellow was daft. A century old, and daft.
I had worked my way out through the vines which still enc.u.mbered the porch, and was taking my first steps down the walk, when some impulse made me turn and glance up at one of the windows.
Did I bless the impulse? I thought I had every reason for doing so, when through a network of interlacing branches I beheld the young girl with whom my mind was wholly occupied, standing with her head thrust forward, watching the descent of something small and white which she had just released from her hand.
A note! A note written by her and meant for me! With a grateful look in her direction (which was probably lost upon her as she had already drawn back out of sight), I sprang for it only to meet with disappointment.
For it was no billet-doux I received from amid the cl.u.s.tering brush where it had fallen; but a small square of white cloth showing a line of fantastic embroidery. Annoyed beyond measure, I was about to fling it down again, when the thought that it had come from her hand deterred me, and I thrust it into my vest pocket. When I took it out again--which was soon after I had taken my seat in the car--I discovered what a mistake I should have made if I had followed my first impulse. For, upon examining the st.i.tches more carefully, I perceived that what I had considered a mere decorative pattern was in fact a string of letters, and that these letters made words, and that these words were:
IDONOTWANTTODIEBUTISURELYWILLIF
Or, in plain writing:
"I do not want to die, but I surely will if--"
Finish the sentence for me. That is the problem I offer you. It is not a case for the police but one well worth your attention, if you succeed in reaching the heart of this mystery and saving this young girl.
Only, let no delay occur. The doom, if doom it is, is immanent. Remember that the will is signed.