 | CHAPTER XIV.
AN HEIR-AT-LAW DISINHERITED. The Wetherel affair |  |
14. CHAPTER XIV.
AN HEIR-AT-LAW DISINHERITED.
After a minute of meditation, which was as terrible to bear as a nightmare,
Edward rose, with a sense of great physical labor, to his feet, uplifting,
indeed, a fearfully heavy load, the burden of his fate.
Proud, frank, and in a certain sense noble-hearted, his inmost soul rejected
the prostration of hypocrisy. Moreover, the hopefulness of youth, that joyous
came like a proclamation of good auguries to his support, and heartened him
to face his destiny. Finally, he was stubborn and pugnacious; like a true
Wetherel, he could not bear to be beaten.
“I will not be a humbug,” he declared, looking his uncle steadily in the
face. “When I do repent of my life I will frankly tell you of it. But at
present I do not see that it has been a disgraceful one. I will merely promise
this: I will take up a profession and study it hard; I will also reform my
expenses.”
The mere sound of his own voice was convincing to him, and by the time
he had finished his speech he thought that he had made a great concession
But the Judge could not thus look upon the matter; he was aware of nothing
but a burst of pride, perverseness, and wickedness.
“It is enough,” he answered, his voice even more tremulous with grief and
indiguation than with age. “It only remains for me to tell you what I must
now do. I love my own name. I could wish to see the name of Wetherel
written on the gates of prosperity. But when that name is blazoned in the
haunts of sin I will not enrich it. The wealth of which God has made me
steward shall not pave the broad way which leads to death. My estate will be
parted among objects of benevolence and between my three worthy relatives,
Mrs. Dinneford, Alice Dinneford, and Walter Lehming. You will owe me no
thanks, and you need offer me no service.”
Brave as Edward was, and enduring as he strove to be, he turned pale. He
had partially expected this threat and had tried to brace himself against it;
but no man can be fully prepared for the complete shock of ruin, and for an
instant this perverse youngster tottered. How could he ever study his proposed
profession without money? All at once, moreover, it struck him that
he had lost Nestoria; that even if he were able to meet with her again, he
could not marry her. He looked at the old man with a feeble hope that he
might not be fully in earnest; but one moment's study of that confirmed countenance
and those settled eyes dispelled the misty doubt.
“These hands,” he declared, throwing them out violently, “shall support
me.”
“It will be well for you,” replied the Judge, learning for the first time, but
without surprise, that the young man's property was gone. “In honest labor
you may find renovation.”
“Good morning, sir,” added Edward, his voice almost choked with passion.
But as he walked away he remembered Nestoria, and thought that he
might like to see her again, even under these wretched circumstances, and
perhaps all the more because of them.
“Am I to understand that you turn me out of your house?” he asked,
pausing at the door.
“God forbid,” replied the Judge. “This house is open to every human
creature. I would not assume to bar entrance to it to any one, not even though
he were my enemy. You are welcome at all times, for every decorous purpose.”
Edward already repented of his defiance, not because it had been wrong,
but because it had brought calamity. For an instant he was half disposed to
apologize for it and to try to bring about a parting on kindlier terms. But he
did not give way to this impulse for the reason that, as he believed, the attempt
would degrade him, and would also be fruitless. He cast an angry, sidelong
bowed in silence, and departed.
At the gate he turned and looked the house all over in a state of mind to
lay his malediction upon it; but suddenly the whole building became illuminated
with amiability to him; he had caught a glimpse of Nestoria at her
window.
“The blessed damozel leaned out,” he murmured. “Dear little golden-haired
innocent! Was she watching me? Had she interceded for me? Do I
owe her what little mercy was shown me by that old tyrant? I wish I could
have seen her while I was talking—I should have been more prudent, wiser.
Ah!” and he drew a deep sigh, “if religion were always like her! Ten thousand
uncle Jabezes could not convert me. But she might—and may.”
Then he resolved anew that, as soon as the vacations ended, he would
commence the study of medicine, and that he would study it furiously. For
her sake, he declared in his exaltation, he would labor terribly; he would endure,
he would vanquish, he would make for himself name and fortune; and
then he would lay his heart and all that he had at her feet. In his present
condition of penury and friendlessness she seemed almost too high a match
for him, and he began to long for her with feat, as men do for the difficult of
attainment. Indeed, before he reached his own side of the bay, he had nearly
resolved to propose to her on the first opportunity, lest some other should step
in and secure the precious prize. That he might be unworthy of her acceptance
did not occur to him distinctly, if at all. He would make himself worthy;
to please her he would do what he would not to please his uncle; he would
rule his life for love as he would not rule it for fear.
Meantime Nestoria was most anxious to know the result of the interview;
but although she got back to the Judge as soon as possible, she learned nothing.
She longed to catechise him, but could not muster courage to do it.
Duty had helped her to speak a word in favor of peace, but duty would not
back her up in inquiring whether peace had been made. Furthermore, compared
with this old gentleman she was a child, and taken in connection with
his nephew she was a young lady; and both as a child and a young lady she
was under bonds to be fastidiously modest and to withhold herself from prying
into their secrets.
The Judge might have told her something of the matter had it gone well;
but it had turned into such an ugly and seemingly permanent skeleton that he
did not wish to discourse of it to any one; and he had already acquired such
a high opinion of this devout daughter of the “great and good Doctor Bernard”
that he did not suspect her of being specially interested in his scapegrace
nephew. Once, indeed, happening to note that she was gazing at him
intently, he remembered how she had asked him to further a reconciliation;
but with a blindness as to the inner character and motives of young ladies for
which we can hardly forgive him, he only said to himself, “Benevolent nature!
She must be her father over again. No, it is not nature; it is grace.”
Meantime the thought of the perverse Edward troubled his soul, and weighed
down his prominent, sharp chin into his high stock, and filled his glassy eyes
with stagnant speculation. It was observed by the family that he was much
occupied during the rest of the day with business papers, and that he seemed
to be drawing up some important document Next morning two gentlemen,
known to be a lawyer and a banker, arrived in a buggy from New Haven, and
were closeted with him for some minutes in his study. After their departure
a long paper of a legal mien terminating in seals and signatures.
“Cousin Dorothy,” he said, addressing her exceptionally by her christened
name, for usually he called her Mrs. Dinneford—“Cousin Dorothy, this is
my will.”
Mrs. Dinneford flushed and trembled; could not help hoping that she or
Alice might get something; tried to feel ashamed of herself, and was decorously
silent.
“I have parted my raiment of lucre into four portions,” he continued tranquilly.
“One will go to religious and charitable institutions; one will go to
yourself, my good and judicious cousin; one will go to Alice on her marriage,
or at her twenty-fifth year; one will go to Walter Lehming.”
Mrs. Dinneford had quivered from head to foot with a sort of painful joy
when fortune began to pour its showers of gold in her direction; but as the
old gentleman continued his statement she gradually lost her expression of
pardonable satisfaction, and by the time he had finished her eyes were full
of trouble.
“And Edward?” she asked with an unselfishness which was worshipful.
“Edward,” returned the Judge slowly, his vitreous gaze fixed sadly on
vacuity—“Edward will have nothing.”
“Oh, Cousin Wetherel!” exclaimed Mrs. Dinneford, in honest, beautiful
distress.
“My conscience will not let me do otherwise,” declared the old gentleman,
still staring straight before him into emptiness, as if determined not to see her
imploring face.
“Don't you love your nephew at all?” pleaded the excellent lady, with
tears in her voice.
“Money is the root of all evil,” answered the Judge, so far disturbed that
he sought to evade the query.
“Yes, it is the root of all evil, but it may be a blessing in disguise,” argued
Mrs. Dinneford, who sometimes had a quick-witted though half unconscious
cleverness of speech. “What harm has it done you, Consin Wetherel, or done
through you? Providence has intrusted you with a great deal of it, and I am
sure you would be puzzled to say how you have been the worse for the gift, or
how your fellow creatures have suffered because of it.”
“I have been helped, I have been restrained, I have been guided,” said the
old man, looking upward in solemn gratitude. “But to those who cast off
grace money is always a root of evil. Money, more perhaps than any other
thing else, has ruined Edward. Because he came to his majority with fifty
thousand dollars in his hands, he has never worked, he has been a spendthrift,
and he has fallen into the pitfalls of vice.”
“I hope that Edward has not spent all his fortune,” murmured Mrs. Dinneford,
ready to cry.
“I believe that he has, and I trust that he has,” returned the Judge.
“Nothing will save him from destruction but a life of enforced labor.”
“Oh, Cousin Wetherel!” groaned the good woman again. “And he expected
to live so differently! Do give him—you know Alice and I have something
of our own—do give him my share.”
“No!” said the millionaire, almost angrily. Unworldly as he was, or
sought to be, he did not like to have his estate despised; and for a moment he
was inclined to take his kinswoman's generous proposition as a personal affront.
added in a gentle voice, “My dear Cousin Dorothy, you honor our family.
But you must not urge me to give your dues to one who dishonors it.”
“This will make such trouble!” Mrs. Dinneford sighed. “I can't help
quoting what Tupper says, severe as you may think it: `There is no greater
evil among men than a testament framed with injustice.' And I agree—”
“I deny the injustice,” interrupted the Judge with a quickness of speech
which was quite unusual with him, and which showed extreme irritation. “Is
there any justice in giving God's benefits to the perversely ungodly?”
“It will make such trouble!” repeated Mrs. Dinneford, falling back upon the
personal argument. “Edward will certainly feel that we—Alice and I—have
wronged him. He will suspect us of being selfish, mean, managing people.”
“I have stated in the will,” explained the inexorable testator, “I have
stated distinctly, that it was prepared without your knowledge or consent. I
have also stated, with as much consideration as possible, my reasons for disinheriting
my nephew. Now let me beg of you not to argue with me further.
I am very tired and must lie down.”
And, indeed, the old man looked not a little shaken, as if disinheriting his
nearest relative and the only other extant Wetherel had been a great hardship
to him, and had drawn largely upon the currents of life which still trickled in
his timeworn organism.
| CHAPTER XIV.
AN HEIR-AT-LAW DISINHERITED. The Wetherel affair | |