CHAPTER XIX

When Mr. Hartagous repaired to the library, he scarcely compared in regard to apparel with the point-device Desmond, who was still in the attire that he had worn at the somewhat formal dinner early in the evening, but the guest’s aspect was far more conventional than during the episode on the staircase. As he blew a refreshing whiff of cigar smoke from his lips and allowed a second to curl in thin tendrils through his nose, he sank deep in his easy chair and stretched out his slippered feet luxuriously to the fire. They were now encased also in natty black silk socks, which came well up under the trousers and hid the ankles, erstwhile so frankly displayed. His hair had been hastily brushed, and though he still wore no collar nor tie, his iron-gray whiskers, parted and smoothed in his swift toilet, touched the edge of a jaunty smoking-jacket, just donned, of quilted bronze silk faced with cardinal red. He was more bland now than in his demeanor hitherto; perhaps because of the genial influence of the decanter and glasses on the library table, he had reached the conclusion that suavity was the best method to enlist the good-will of the tutor, and throw his influence in the household, which might be considerable, to the advantage of the executor in effecting the sale of Great Oaks Plantation and a pacific settlement under the terms of the codicil to the will.

“Why, I had no idea that Mr. Stanlett had aged so much,—greatly broken!” he remarked confidentially. “He is practically demented. Utterly irresponsible! Did you note what he said about having hidden the codicil? I wonder how long he has had it in his possession,—might approximate the time by the duration of the tradition of the ghostly footfall at Great Oaks.”

“He couldn’t have had a nefarious intention, or he would have destroyed the paper; yet he must have known how disastrous delay in producing it would be to Mrs. Faurie’s interests,” argued Desmond, dispassionately.

“You are reasoning like a sane man, but his course is insanity,” rejoined Mr. Hartagous. “I suppose that the shock of the discovery impaired his powers of discrimination. There must have been some earlier cerebral lesion, some obscure affection of the brain, to which this incident gave expression. His delusion is very curious,—the apparition of Faurie; great verisimilitude in that character sketch,—I could almost see him myself!”

“What strikes me as amazing is that he should never have shared his secret,—that he could guard his delusion and his search for a ‘paper-writing’ through so many years with so many narrow escapes from detection,” said Desmond.

“Well, insanity is essentially abnormal.”

“He is insane in no other respect, apparently,” Desmond suggested.

“This is a case of ‘the fixed idea,’” said Hartagous. “It is a good thing that he is not legally responsible,—that is, if his possession of the codicil was not also a delusion from the beginning.”

“You think that possible?” said Desmond, with raised eyebrows.

“Anything is possible in this connection. But it doesn’t matter,—he is wholly irresponsible. Bad thing he has made out of it for Mrs. Faurie! It will leave her practically stranded for life, unless indeed she should make an advantageous second marriage, which I hope to heaven she may.”

“That is hardly likely,” said Desmond, with his eyes on the fire.

Mr. Hartagous bent his bushy gray eyebrows in insistent argument. “And why not? She is extremely beautiful, and the years literally make no impression upon her. She is as young and as handsome as she was at nineteen. And she is very fascinating, in the best sense of the word. A very charming and delightful woman! Her piteous prospects in this change have worried me no little. Indeed, that is doubtless the one hope,—an advantageous second marriage. Among us we must try and save enough to her out of the estate to put her in a position—temporary, of course—to be able to make it,—go somewhere for a while, Memphis, or New Orleans, or New York. Buried here in the woods, she will never see anybody,—unless—unless—it were somebody slying around trying to buy Great Oaks.” Mr. Hartagous paused reflectively. He was essentially a business man, and could have succeeded signally in any line to which he had devoted his energies; he was now unconsciously showing great capacities to conduct a matrimonial agency. He let off a slow, meditative whiff of smoke, holding his cigar in one hand as he looked speculatively at the ceiling. “I wonder—I _do_ wonder—whether Loring might not fill the bill! What a solution of the problem it would be, if we could capture Loring!”

“We don’t want him,” said Desmond, in evident repugnance.

“Why not?” Mr. Hartagous bent his brows in a cogitating frown as he surveyed the tutor. “Loring is a very worthy, honorable man, and agreeable, apart from his money,—and Mrs. Faurie will have absolutely nothing. He is a very brainy man, and of excellent moral character. I should think he could make himself very acceptable. You think that Mrs. Faurie would not marry him?”

“I know she would not. In fact, Mrs. Faurie has promised to marry me,” Desmond said succinctly.

In the scope of humane protection there ought to be some restraint on the administration of sudden shocks. The jerk, mental and moral, which Mr. Hartagous experienced was as if a galvanic current had thrilled through every sensibility. Even his physique was not exempt. As his hand on the arm of the chair mechanically flew up, it struck his cigar between his lips with such force as to break it in half, so that it hung bent at right angles in his mouth as he sat upright and stared at the tutor.

Desmond wondered that he should have no qualms of conscience in thus interposing an insurmountable obstacle to the fair haven to which Mr. Hartagous was desirous of steering Mrs. Faurie’s future. But he only felt elated, delighted, triumphant. He did not even resent the indignant remonstrance, deprecation, amazement, in the executor’s face.

“Did she intend really,” he demanded, in a low, tense, excited voice, “to relinquish her fine income during widowhood,—under the will,—for merely what amounts to her statute rights of dower—and _you_?”

The tutor laughed aloud, so joyously, in such gay elation, that Worldly Wisdom could but bend its brows anew. “She never had the opportunity. I could not, I would not, ask her to relinquish anything for me. It was only when she had nothing to lose that I offered my heart and hand,—only this evening, in fact.”

Mr. Hartagous leaned forward, the bent cigar still between his lips, to survey the young man who, holding his own cigar between his finger-tips, lightly touched off the ash and smilingly returned the mentor’s look. He still smiled in imperturbable good-humor when Mr. Hartagous ejaculated, as if involuntarily, from the depths of his conviction: “You—poor—fool!”

“Thank you very much,” cried Desmond, in airy nonchalance.

“My dear boy, she is ten years older than you—”

“And she looks ten years younger,—but that is neither here nor there. I am not marrying her for her beauty any more than for her money.”

“Certainly not for that,” said Mr. Hartagous, sourly. “But Mrs. Faurie’s friends will never consent to this; it would make her ridiculous in the eyes of the world.”

“If I may judge by what I have learned in my own experience of friendship, as this world goes, Mrs. Faurie’s friends will let her very severely alone as soon as they are informed of the state of her exchequer. As to ridicule,—just as it happens, we do not care in the least for that.”

“But you must consider her sons,—the very children will protest.”

“And they alone have the right,” Desmond admitted. And Mr. Hartagous made a mental note to be early at their ear with crafty counsel.

He again hesitated for a moment, with the bent cigar now in his hand. “I know that you will not thank me for my interference,” he said gravely, “but as a mutual friend,—yours as well as Mrs. Faurie’s,—a friend of the family, indeed, I must remind you of your financial position. You know that it was difficult to find foothold for yourself,—how can you support an additional burden? I should be glad to advise Keith to continue you in your present employment—”

“I am beholden to you!” laughed Desmond.

“But your common sense must show you that it would be untenable, unsuitable. You know that the learned professions are not paid in proportion to the equipment required and the talent employed. They ought to be—and, in fact, they generally are—filled by men who could at a pinch live by other resources. But what would _you_ do if you should find no other opportunity?”

“Snap my fingers in the faces of the Nine Muses and come down from Olympus! I would do whatever fell to my hand. I would not now be so choice, so exacting, so determined on pursuing the course that I had laid out. If ‘letters’ are not for me, then I am not for ‘letters.’ I will work at anything. I will dig in a ditch. I will turn wood-chopper. I will ‘run the river.’”

“You will make a success of whatever you turn your hand to; but ‘run the river’—I hope you ain’t talkin’ of leavin’ us, Mr. Desmond.” Bainbridge’s rough voice broke suddenly on the colloquy, as he entered, hearing only the last words. “I don’t know how we would get on at Great Oaks without you now.” Then, bethinking himself of his own insecure tenure of office, his face clouded and his voice fell. “Well, gents,” he continued, after a pause, “I have got old Mr. Stanlett resting easy, and I believe I’ll finish out my yerrand here and take myself home. Mr. Desmond, do you know if there was any of them sticks o’ giant powder left here at the house after we blasted that last tangle?” For a recent development of the dangers of the overflow was the approach of floating débris dislodged from the inundated forests above, now merely drift logs, and again gigantic trees, long since dead and easily overblown in the high winds that had latterly prevailed. Sometimes they came slowly slipping along the sluggish flood of the back waters, sometimes swiftly hurtling, as if flung from a catapult, down the impetuous currents of the mid-channel of the great river. Now they appeared singly, and again entangled with other growths; and these fibrous masses, difficult of disintegration, offered a menace in collision with boats or buildings, which required all the ingenuity of the skilled in “fighting water” to ward off. To climb upon the floating tree, insert a dynamite cartridge in some convenient hollow, and speed off as fast as dugout might skim and paddle ply before the explosion rent the floating mass asunder, setting it adrift in hundreds of harmless fragments, had been found an effective measure, though not without dangers of its own.

Desmond said that he had reserved a few cartridges, which he had deposited in an out-of-the-way place for safety. He laid his cigar on the edge of the ash tray on the library table, searched one of the drawers for a key, and as he left the room, he remarked that dynamite was a commodity with which Mr. Bainbridge could not be too careful.

“I ain’t going to set down on it, you can bet high on that!” the manager observed, with the kind of laugh attributed to the horse, with less than fair appreciation of equine manners. He slouched across the room in the big boots which he had resumed, having drawn them over his trousers to the knee according to his wont. His big hat was on the back of his straw-tinted hair, for since Mrs. Faurie was not present, he recognized no etiquette which required him to remove it, and he habitually wore it indoors; he sunk into a large chair of the reclining variety, furnished with a shelf at the side, which was available, turning on a pivot, for either book-rest or writing-desk. As he quietly waited, he began to eye Mr. Hartagous and his bent cigar, which was past all surgery. The lawyer discarded it into the smoking-tray, and spoke to avoid a question concerning it, for he realized that Mr. Bainbridge’s curiosity was unrestricted and his tact slight.

“They have made great changes here, Mr. Bainbridge,” he said, glancing about the room,—“and yet there is no especial difference when you come to examine,—a mere matter of rearrangement.”

“Yes, sir,—yes, sir. The kids recite here now. But Mr. Desmond has a way of putting his mark on things. This room reminds me only of him now, yet I can remember a time when it was as good as a photo of Mr. Faurie. He died here, you know,—and if I don’t forgit, it was in this very chair.”

“Yes, yes,—of heart failure. Yes,—a good while ago,” Mr. Hartagous replied, and fell silent.

The whole house had become silent, too, once more. If Desmond were astir in his search for the stick of dynamite, it was at a distance in the rambling old building, for there was no token of movement far or near. The clock on the mantelpiece was bringing the minute hand into occultation by the hour hand on the dial, and the silver tale of midnight presently rang out. The single log across the andirons, for it had been a bright fire rather than a great one, had charred through by the heat of the day’s embers below and presently fell apart, sending up jets of sparks and tendrils of pungent smoke. Mr. Bainbridge rose and nimbly kicked the ends together between the dogs, and as the flames of the dry wood flared up cheerily, he returned to his seat, and seemed disposed to moralize and favor Mr. Hartagous with his views on the mutation of sublunary affairs. “But I useter never come in this room but what I could fairly pictur’ Mr. Faurie sittin’ in this very chair. Lord! what a power o’ pains he did give himself about that will o’ his and all his papers, Mr. Hartagous. And to think! it’s all turned out as he would have liked least. Not that I blame _you_, sir.”

“No, of course not,” acceded Mr. Hartagous, promptly, conscious that his position did not commend itself to the manager’s favor.

“Being the executor, you have to do as the law requires. But little did _he_ think that he was leaving his pretty young wife a share of—river fog, to live off ’n all her days; no wonder it’s turned old Mr. Stanlett’s brain! She has been like a daughter to him. Well, well,—I don’t wonder that he thought he viewed Mr. Faurie up there amongst the old papers in the blue room. Mr. Faurie lived amongst his papers those few last weeks,—every lease, every lien, every mortgage, every promissory note, was examined in expectation of the administration of his estate. I useter look at him and wonder how he had the grit to fix and fix his papers when he warn’t able to work, so feeble as he was. He’d send for me as a subscribing witness in leases, and contracts, and such,—me and the trained nurse; we witnessed a power o’ papers in those last days. They mostly seemed short,—little matters hereabouts. The important papers had been packed and sent to you in Memphis by that time; but these were some renewals he had promised, and he canceled some obligations he held. Mr. Faurie was not what a body would call a liberal man,—he was rather strict: but he executed a release for old man Tynes, whose debt wasn’t more than half paid out, and who was likely to ha’ been sold up; and he give a quittance to old Sloper; and he acknowledged a quitclaim deed on that tract o’ swampy woodland that that Irish wood-chopper Jessop hadn’t paid scarcely any purchase money on—’tain’t worth much, but ’twas riches to old Axe-helve; and he relinquished his rights in that steamboat, the Swamp Lily, to Captain Cleek, for old acquaintance’ sake; and he remembered the old niggers variously; and he gimme my mule Lucy, finest mare mule I ever see, as good to-day as she was then, and two hundred dollars in gold in a bag,—but _he_ didn’t care to stand for liberal. He wouldn’t ha’ put such little extras into his will for the public to know—indeed, no,—not for a pretty! He just settled his gifts beforehand. And every paper was just so!—and they all held together as tight as hell, except that will that he cared for more than all the rest. Things turn out cur’ous, they do,—for a fact!” Bainbridge shook his head drearily, and looked reflectively into the fire. Great Oaks Plantation had been home to him for many a year, and he was a man of scanty resources and narrow experience. He knew naught of the world beyond, and he deprecated change.

“Of course I didn’t know the contents of the papers then,” he presently resumed his reminiscences. “I just heard about what they were in the gossip after his death, and in fact a good many were put on record in the court-house right away. I wasn’t expected to read ’em when he executed them. All I did was to witness his signature.” With his unemployed hands he drew before him the writing-shelf attached to the arm of the chair and took the position of the scribe as he meditated, drumming slightly on the wood with his fingers, that showed in their blunt, roughened tips and broken nails the hand of the toiler. “Mr. Faurie was a proud man,” he discriminated. “He didn’t openly admit that death itself could down him. He only used to remark, ‘No man can say that he will be here to-morrow, so I am setting some pressing affairs in order.’ He said that to me on that last night, just about a half hour before he died. Why, I hadn’t got home,—I was riding one of his horses,—do you remember Indian Chief, and how fast he could rack?—I hadn’t reached the willow slough when I saw the rocket go up at the landing to signal the Swamp Lily as she passed to stop and take on the orders for the funeral, you know.”

“Yes,—oh, yes,” said Mr. Hartagous, hastily, reminded of ghastly details. It was not a cheering subject; he had had a troublous day; he had been awaiting Desmond’s return that he might have an additional word with him in continuance of the discussion so suddenly sprung upon him; but the tutor was long away, scarcely sustaining his reputation for rummaging. The lawyer was about to comment with acerbity on the delay, for he felt the need of his well-earned night’s rest, when he was struck by the fidelity of the mimicry of voice and manner with which the manager was reproducing the scene so often enacted here, so replete with significance to all those whom these signatures concerned. “‘Witness my hand and seal,—witness my hand and seal,’” he repeated more than once. Then, with an imperative intonation, “‘Attest, Jeremiah Bainbridge. Sign here.’”

He glanced up with a mirthless laugh, and as he thrust the shelf away from him the elastic strap of a portfolio, attached on the under side, gave way in his rough handling and a flutter of papers slid from the receptacle to the floor.

“Look at me!” exclaimed Bainbridge, in contrition for the mischance. “What’s these?—the kids’ exercises.” He read aloud in a droning voice: “‘And when King Xerxes marched to the north he left’—a heap of confusion behind him, I reckon!” he remarked facetiously, gathering up the flying pages of writing, inscribed in a large, boyish hand, stopping now and again to peruse quizzically the inapposite theme with a sort of relish of its incongruity with the scene, the life, and the thought of to-day.

Mr. Hartagous lent his aid. The accident was of a kind peculiarly irritating to his prepossessions, and to his mind suggested the bull in the china shop. He was less animated, however, by the desire to help the worthy manager than to remove the débris and obviate thus any difficulty which might otherwise prevent Mr. Bainbridge from getting himself away immediately upon the return of Desmond with the stick of dynamite; Mr. Hartagous was capable of wishing that this might blow the manager into the Mississippi River, were there no other method of compassing his speedy withdrawal. To preserve the juvenile work from destruction, since several pages had flown within the big brass fender, he reached over it and secured them from the hearth. Then, seating himself in the chair just vacated by Bainbridge, who was now occupied in seeking fugitive papers under the table, the sofa, the globes, Mr. Hartagous addressed himself to replacing the pages in the portfolio.

An awkward, old-fashioned device of desk arrangement, he thought it, for the portfolio attached to the shelf swung beneath, leaving the upper surface free for the writer’s needs, and it could only be drawn high enough to receive or disburse papers by means of the elastic strap which Bainbridge had burst. It now showed signs of letting the pages slip as soon as restored; and saying with a note of tense vexation, “Where did these belong, anyhow?—and how the devil does this go?” Mr. Hartagous drew the despoiled receptacle up on top of the shelf to aid his disposition of the collected sheets. As in most portfolios, the two gaping pockets were obvious, but as he was about to stow the remaining briefs concerning the Persian hero therein, another paper from an inner slit in a different handwriting was brought to view. His face changed sharply as he drew it forth, all unnoticed by Mr. Bainbridge, laughing over the crude views of the boy’s work as he held a page to the lamp on the table, his big teeth a-glimmer in the midst of his straw-tinted beard, the big hat and broad shoulders thrown in a Brobdingnagian shadow on the wall.

“Will you give me your attention for a moment, sir,” Mr. Hartagous said, in a low, repressed voice. “Is this your signature?”

Bainbridge lumbered heavily forward in startled expectation. “By gum, it sure is!” he cried, excited to fever heat. “And that is the last paper which Mr. Faurie ever signed!” he added, leaning over to scan the document. “I am sure of that, because Mr. Dabney witnessed it with me,—’twas me and the trained nurse that always subscribed as witnesses together, except this once. And just before I reached the willow slough I seen the rocket go up at the landing to signal the death to the Swamp Lily, that was just rounding the point off the Arkansas shore.”

There were a few other papers with the document, a canceled note of hand, a contract for the erection of buildings, a surveyor’s plat of land, all memoranda of completed purpose, which had evidently been returned. Mr. Hartagous was running them swiftly over, while Bainbridge’s attention was focused upon his own scrawl as a subscribing witness on the sheet on the portfolio.

“I never thought of it again,” Bainbridge resumed; “and I suppose that whoever set the room to rights after he was carried out of it must have laid this away among the other papers in the portfolio and desk. He must have intended to mail it with other inclosures,—that will that Mr. Stanlett found, I reckon,—for see, here is a long, stamped envelope, with six cents postage and an immejet delivery stamp.” Bainbridge held it up to the light. “He must have weighed it with the inclosures,—but it has got no address. I remember now that after Mr. Dabney and I had said good-night to him and went out into the hall, I noticed the nigger waiting at the library door, with the bag for Mr. Faurie’s mail, ready to paddle in a dugout to the Swamp Lily just sighted nigh the point off the Arkansas shore.”

Mr. Hartagous was once more bending his bushy brows over the names of the witnesses to the document. “And who is this other party?” he asked.

“Mr. Dabney? Richard Dabney?—why, don’t you remember him? He used to run a store near Great Oaks. The land it was built on fell into the river not long after that, and he moved away. He was living in Arkansas the last I heard of him, running a sawmill. He had come to Great Oaks mansion that evening to inquire for Mr. Faurie, hearing that he had been ailing,—in fact, he was taken with a short rigor while Mr. Dabney was here. Mr. Faurie was still sitting in this chair when he wrote his name, which he did easily enough, but he seemed very faint when he called upon us to witness his signature, and pronounced the paper a little—little coddle-shell, I think he called it, to his will. I never thought of it since. I jus’ allowed it was some of his Tennessee business, because he remarked sorter mumbling to himself, ’twas situated there and that he s’posed this coddle-shell would take effect under the laws there, it being his domicile, so to say, him being a resident o’ Nashville, and a regularly qualified voter of Davidson County,—though shucks! we claimed him here in the swamp country; he had been here so much at Great Oaks in the winters, as his health declined. I haven’t thought of it since. As he was always busy with his papers in them days, I didn’t taken any special notice of the circumstance. Is it any account, particularly,—cut any ice?”

A codicil, indeed, it proved; and while affirming and republishing the main testamentary provisions of the previous codicil, the testator made the single change of giving to his widow all his personal property of whatever sort,—in lieu of one fourth of it,—stocks, bonds, and some hoards of special deposits in Tennessee banks; and though the vital importance of this bequest was altogether unforeseen by the dying man, the crucial emergency being far beyond the purview of his vicarious precautions, it was evident that it would aggregate enough to solve the refunding problem of Mrs. Faurie’s receipts from the estate.