From the Housetops Part 30

"And why not?" demanded Simmy, in surprise. "You are his only blood relation, aren't you? Why the deuce should he leave everything away from you? Of course we'll make a fight for it. I've never heard of a more outrageous piece of-"

"You don't understand, Simmy," Braden interrupted, suddenly realising that his position would be a difficult one to explain, even to this good and loyal friend. "We'll drop the matter for the present, at any rate."

"But why should Mr. Thorpe have done this rotten, inconceivable thing to you, Brady?" demanded Dodge. "Good Lord, that will won't stand a minute in a court of-"

"It will stand so far as I'm concerned," said Braden sharply, and Simmy blinked his eyes in bewilderment.

"You wouldn't be fighting Anne, you know," he ventured after a moment, a.s.suming that Braden's att.i.tude was due to reluctance in that direction.

"She is provided for outside the will, she tells me."

"Are you her attorney, Simmy?"

"Yes. That is, the firm represents her, and I'm one of the firm."

"I don't see how you can represent both of us, old chap."

"That's just what I'm trying to get into your head. I couldn't represent you if there was to be a fight with Anne. But we can fight these idiotic charities, can't we?"

"No," said Braden flatly. "My grandfather's will is to stand just as it is, Simmy. I shall not contest for a cent. And so, if you please, there's no reason for my going down there to listen to the reading of the thing. I know pretty well what the doc.u.ment says. I was in Mr. Thorpe's confidence.

For your own edification, Simmy, I'll merely say that I have already had my share of the estate, and I'm satisfied."

"Still, in common decency, you ought to go down and listen to the reading of the will. Judge Hollenback says he will put the thing off until you are present, so you might as well go first as last. Be reasonable, Brady. I know how you feel toward Anne. I can appreciate your unwillingness to go to her house after what happened a year ago. Judge Hollenback declares that his letter of instruction from Mr. Thorpe makes it obligatory for him to read the doc.u.ment in the presence of his widow and his grandson, and in the library of his late home. Otherwise, the thing could have been done in Hollenback's offices."

In the end Braden agreed to be present.

When Judge Hollenback smoothed out the far from voluminous looking doc.u.ment, readjusted his nose gla.s.ses and cleared his throat preparatory to reading, the following persons were seated in the big, fire-lit library: Anne Thorpe, the widow; Braden Thorpe, the grandson; Mrs.

Tresslyn, George Tresslyn, Simmy Dodge, Murray, and Wade, the furnace-man.

The two Tresslyns were there by Anne's request. Late in the day she was overcome by the thought of sitting there alone while Braden was being dispossessed of all that rightfully belonged to him. She had not intended to ask her mother to come down for the reading. Somehow she had felt that Mrs. Tresslyn's presence would indicate the consummation of a project that had something ign.o.ble about it. She knew that her mother could experience no other sensation than that of curiosity in listening to the will. Her interest in the affairs of Templeton Thorpe ended with the signing of the ante-nuptial contract, supplemented of course by the event which satisfactorily terminated the agreement inside of a twelve-month. But Anne, practically alone in the world as she now found herself to be, was suddenly aware of a great sense of depression. She wanted her mother. She wanted some one near who would not look at her with scornful, bitter eyes.

George's presence is to be quickly explained. He had spent the better part of the week with Anne, sleeping in the house at her behest. For a week she had braved it out alone. Then came the sudden surrender to dread, terror, loneliness. The shadows in the halls were grim; the sounds in the night were sinister, the stillness that followed them creepy; the servants were things that stalked her, and she was afraid-mortally afraid in this home that was not hers. She had made up her mind to go away for a long time just as soon as everything was settled.

As for the furnace-man, Judge Hollenback had summoned him on his arrival at the house. So readily had Wade adapted himself to his new duties that he now felt extremely uncomfortable and ill-at-ease in a room that had been like home to him for thirty years. He seemed to feel that this was no place for the furnace-man, notwithstanding the scouring and polis.h.i.+ng process that temporarily had restored him to a more exalted office,-for once more he was the smug, impeccable valet.

Braden was the last to arrive. He timed his arrival so that there could be no possibility of an informal encounter with Anne. She came forward and shook hands with him, simply, unaffectedly.

"You have been away," she said, looking straight into his eyes. He was conscious of a feeling of relief. He had been living in some dread of what he might detect in her eyes. But it was a serene, frank expression that he found in them, not a question.

"Yes," he said. "I was tired," he added after a moment.

She hesitated. Then: "I have not seen you, Braden, since-since the twenty- first. You have not given me the opportunity to tell you that I know you did all that any one could possibly do for Mr. Thorpe. Thank you for undertaking the impossible. I am sorry-oh, so sorry,-that you were made to suffer. I want you to remember too that it was with my sanction that you made the hopeless effort."

He turned cold. The others had heard every word. She had spoken without reserve, without the slightest indication of nervousness or compunction.

The very thing that he feared had come to pa.s.s. She had put herself definitely on record. He glanced quickly about, searching the faces of the other occupants of the room. His gaze fell upon Wade, and rested for a second or two. Something told him that Wade's gaze would s.h.i.+ft,-and it did.

"I did everything, Anne. Thank you for believing in me." That was all. No word of sympathy, no mawkish mumbling of regret, no allusion to his own loss. He looked again into her eyes, this time in quest of the motive that urged her to make this unnecessary declaration. Was there a deeper significance to be attached to her readiness to a.s.sume responsibility? He looked for the light in her eye that would convince him that she was taking this stand because of the love she felt for him. He was immeasurably relieved to find no secret message there. She had not stooped to that, and he was gratified. Her eyes were clouded with concern for him, that was all. He was ashamed of himself for the thought,-and afterwards he wondered why he should have been ashamed. After all, it was only right that she should be sorry for him. He deserved that much from her.

An awkward silence ensued. Simmy Dodge coughed nervously, and then Braden advanced to greet Mrs. Tresslyn. She did not rise. Her gloved hand was extended and he took it without hesitation.

"It is good to see you again, Braden," she said, with the bland, perfunctory parting of the lips that stands for a smile with women of her cla.s.s. He meant nothing to her now.

"Thanks," he said, and moved on to George, who regarded him with some intensity for a moment and then gripped his hand heartily. "How are you, George?"

"Fine! First stage of regeneration, you know. I'm glad to see you, Brady."

There was such warmth in the repressed tones that Thorpe's hand clasp tightened. Tresslyn was still a friend. His interest quickened into a keen examination of the young man who had p.r.o.nounced himself in the first stage of regeneration, whatever that may have signified to one of George's type.

He was startled by the haggard, sick look in the young fellow's face.

George must have read the other's expression, for he said: "I'm all right,-just a little run down. That's natural, I suppose."

"He has a dreadful cold," said Anne, who had overheard. "I can't get him to do anything for it."

"Don't you worry about me, Anne," said George stoutly.

"Just the same, you should take care of yourself," said Braden. "Pneumonia gets after you big fellows, you know. How are you, Wade? Poor old Wade, you must miss my grandfather terribly. You knew him before I was born. It seems an age, now that I think of it in that way."

"Thirty-three years, sir," said Wade. "Nearly ten years longer than Murray, Mr. Braden, It does seem an age."

The will was not a lengthy doc.u.ment. The reading took no more than three minutes, and for another full minute after its conclusion, not a person in the room uttered a word. A sort of stupefaction held them all in its grip,-that is, all except the old lawyer who was putting away his gla.s.ses and waiting for the outburst that was sure to follow.

In the first place, Mr. Thorpe remembered Anne. After declaring that she had been satisfactorily provided for in a previous doc.u.ment, known to her as a contract, he bequeathed to her the house in which she had lived for a single year with him. All of its contents went with this bequest. To Josiah Wade he left the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, to Edward Murray ten thousand dollars, and to each of the remaining servants in his household a sum equal to half of their earnings while in his service.

There were bequests to his lawyer, his doctor and his secretary, besides substantial gifts to persons who could not by any chance have expected anything from this grim old man,-such as the friendly doorman at his favourite club, and the man who had been delivering newspapers to him for a score of years or more, and the old negro bootblack who had attended him at the Brevoort in the days before the Italian monopoly set in, and the two working-girls who supported the invalid widow of a man who had gone to prison and died there after having robbed the Thorpe estate of a great many thousands of dollars while acting as a confidential and trusted agent.

Then came the astounding disposition of the fortune that had acc.u.mulated in the time of Templeton Thorpe. There were no bequests outright to charity, contrary to all expectations. The listeners were prepared to hear of huge gifts to certain inst.i.tutions and societies known to have been favoured by the testator. Various hospitals were looked upon as sure to receive splendid endowments, and specific colleges devoted to the advancement of medical and surgical science were also regarded as inevitable beneficiaries. It was all cut and dried, so far as Judge Hollenback's auditors were concerned,-that is to say, prior to the reading of the will. True, the old lawyer had declared in the beginning, that the present will was drawn and signed on the afternoon of the day before the death of Mr. Thorpe, and that a previous instrument to which a codicil had been affixed was destroyed in the presence of two witnesses. The instrument witnessed by Wade and Murray was the one that had been destroyed. This should have aroused uneasiness in the mind of Braden Thorpe, if no one else, but he was slow to recognise the significance of the change in his grandfather's designs.

With his customary terseness, Templeton Thorpe declared himself to be hopelessly ill but of sound mind at the moment of drawing his last will and testament, and suffering beyond all human endurance. His condition at that moment, and for weeks beforehand, was such that death offered the only panacea. He had come to appreciate the curse of a life prolonged beyond reason. Therefore, in full possession of all his faculties and being now irrevocably converted to the principles of mercy advocated by his beloved grandson, Braden Lanier Thorpe, he placed the residue of his estate in trust, naming the aforesaid Braden Lanier Thorpe as sole trustee, without bond, the entire amount to be utilised and expended by him in the promotion of his n.o.ble and humane propaganda in relation to the fate of the hopelessly afflicted among those creatures fas.h.i.+oned after the image of G.o.d. The trust was to expire with the death of the said Braden Lanier Thorpe, when all funds remaining unused for the purposes herein set forth were to go without restriction to the heirs of the said trustee, either by bequest or administration.

In so many words, the testator rested in his grandson full power and authority to use these funds, amounting to nearly six million dollars, as he saw fit in the effort to obtain for the human sufferer the same mercy that is extended to the beast of the field, and to make final disposition of the estate in his own will. Realising the present hopelessness of an attempt to secure legislation of this character, he suggested that first of all it would be imperative to prepare the way to such an end by creating in the minds of all the peoples of the world a state of common sense that could successfully combat and overcome love, sentimentality and cowardice! For these three, he pointed out, were the common enemy of reason. "And in compensation for the discharge of such duties as may come under the requirements of this trustees.h.i.+p, the aforesaid Braden Lanier Thorpe shall receive the fees ordinarily allotted by law and, in addition, the salary of twenty-five thousand dollars per annum, until the terms of this instrument are fully carried out."

Anne Tresslyn Thorpe was named as executrix of the will.

CHAPTER XVIII

Simmy Dodge was the first to speak. He was the first to grasp the full meaning of this deliberately ambiguous will. His face cleared.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, without respect for the proprieties. He slapped Braden on the back, somewhat enthusiastically. "We sha'n't have to smash it, after all. It's the cleverest thing I've ever listened to, old man.

What a head your grandfather had on his-"

Braden leaped to his feet, his face quivering. "Of course we'll smash it,"

he stormed. "Do you suppose or imagine for an instant that I will allow such a thing as that to stand? Do you-"

"Go slow, Brady, go slow," broke in his excited, self-appointed lawyer.

"Can't you see through it? Can't you see what he was after? Why, good Lord, man, he has made you the princ.i.p.al legatee,-he has actually given you _everything_. All this rigmarole about a trust or a foundation or whatever you want to call it amounts to absolutely nothing. The money is yours to do what you like with as long as you live. You have complete control of every dollar of it. No one else has a thing to say about it.

Why, it's the slickest, soundest will I've-"

"Oh, my G.o.d!" groaned Braden, dropping into a chair and covering his face with his hands.