There will be no contest,” he said again, after Stein had laid before him all his rights and powers.
“But it would be mere child’s play. You owe it to yourself to take into account the fact that he intended altering it—that he called me up that very morning with that intention.”
“You owe it to your father,” added Daniel Willard, in a low voice.
Philip met his gaze intently. “I owe it to my father to have the will probated exactly as it stands, without comment or contest. So far as I can judge, it is a very excellent and just will.”
“Except to yourself,” interposed Stein.
“How so?”
“It is virtually an affirmation of disinheritance.”
“You misinterpret. The document merely indorses a tacit mutual understanding. I have been independent of my father’s pecuniary assistance for many years, and he did me the honor to consider me capable of always standing alone. That is all. We were the best of friends.”
“So I interpret—interpreted—when drawing it up, but—”
“It is the only interpretation. To contest the will would be to assume the contrary, which would be preposterous. He has made me, you must also remember, his executor along with Mr. Willard.”
Both pairs of eyes were directed upon his countenance, endeavoring to discover just what amount of feeling lay behind his disconcerting calm, Paul looking for a trace of justifiable disappointment, Daniel for a glance of bitterness to show he understood. But the unperturbed business-like coolness of his whole head and figure afforded them no food for speculation.
“I shall enter upon my duties as executor with the most interested co-operation, Mr. Willard,” he added, leaning back as with the intention of prolonging the interview. “Especially the hospital endowment. I have acquired some knowledge of the subject in my varied experiences, and it may enable me to ride one or two of the hobbies of which my father often heard me speak. But as to the scholarships—now that, I suppose, was an idea upon which you and he must have had some conversation.”
“It was a theory of mine—I often spoke about it to him—yes,” admitted Daniel.
“Then with Mr. Stein’s advice, after he has probated the will and adjusted the several legacies, we’ll know ‘where we’re at,’ and proceed accordingly. Both the hospital suggested and the other are to be self-supporting and non-sectarian as—the sky—I believe?”
He bent his eyes in pleasant questioning upon his father’s friend. He turned the painful occasion into an interesting business proposition.
Finally, with his knowledge of life, his thorough training, his wide outlook, his calm grasp of the struggling whole, he laid before them the result of his experiences and observations, Paul Stein, with the frank, unstinted praise of absorbed attention, leading him on with quick, intelligent eyes and questions. If, thought Paul, one could separate the strength of a man from his vanities, what a prize were here in the perfectly developed intellect thus disclosed—what education of the faculties, what culture of expression, carrying him, Stein, bodily and mentally, into the atmosphere where his own true self glowed and expanded in its just element. He remembered telling Jean Willard long before, that he awaited Dr. May’s coming as one awaits the appearance of an author’s chef d’œuvre, and how she had twitted him afterward with his easy change of opinion. But to-night, after emerging from the charm of his individuality, he found it in his heart to condone much, to acknowledge that an “all-round” gifted man, such as he undoubtedly was, had some excuse for seeking a circle other than that which he had accepted as representative of all Jewry.
When Philip returned to the sitting-room after seeing the attorney out, he found Daniel Willard standing hat in hand.
“It has been a very interesting evening to me,” the old gentleman began, hurriedly, with flushed cheek and appealing eye. “But my—my dear Philip”; his voice quavered, his hand went out imploringly.
Philip pressed it, waiting courteously.
“Ah!” Daniel exclaimed, with an effort of despair. “It is all my fault. If I had not spoken of these—these theories—which had no personal bearing upon him—none, I assure you, Philip—he might have hesitated over the distribution—it might never have been written. As it was, the idea—my idea—lay ready at his hand at the fatal moment.”
“What fatal moment?” Philip spoke in gentle sincerity.
“But no, Philip,” murmured Daniel in stifled determination, drawing his hand away, “but no. Let there be no more feigning between us. Surely, surely, you noticed the date upon which the will was drawn?”
“Certainly. February 28th of last year—the day after my return. What then?”
“Ah, you will lock yourself away from every one. Can you not come out a moment for me?”
“I think,” said Philip, in a low voice, “that I have made it quite clear that I thoroughly approve of my father’s will and shall lend my best efforts toward the execution of it. I am glad he has remembered you as he has. What more is to be said at present?”
Daniel turned from him with a sigh.
“Oh—one moment, Mr. Willard,” called the detaining voice. “About this house. I hope to leave it almost immediately. I suppose arrangements can be made as to Katie’s legacy without delay—I can arrange with her—and the furniture—”
“You have no desire to stay on?”
“No. I shall take chambers in the building where I have my office.” He stood by the table, idly rasping the leaves of a book. To Daniel it seemed like the sawing into the last cord binding him to the strongest tie of this being.
“Me—I can have nothing to object,” he said, a trifle uncertainly, with great dignity of mien. “There is Paul, your attorney, to consult. We—I shall miss you.”
“You will always be my most welcome guest,” returned Philip, somewhat dully.
Daniel’s eyes were traveling over the familiar furniture as if in farewell. Suddenly he made an excited movement toward the heavy old writing-desk in the corner.
“Of—of what are we all thinking?” he stammered, incoherently. “There—there—he often made business memoranda for me. Will you permit me, Philip—will you permit me to search the desk?”
“Anything you wish, Mr. Willard.” He walked across the room and opened the desk for him, only partly understanding the old gentleman’s disturbance. Daniel sat down, pulling out an inner drawer. Philip turned away.
He sat down at the table, and, gradually, even the sound of rustling paper was lost to him. He felt cut adrift from his surroundings, like a man ready and waiting to travel forth upon a lonely journey. Resentment or self-pity held no part in his mental attitude. He felt himself utterly devoid of the power of any sentiment for or against anybody. People—Daniel Willard, his niece Jean, as he remembered her with her last verdict of “patricide” written mercilessly in her accusing eyes—were as so many separated entities who could have no possible concern in the cold scheme of life which lay just before him.
A heavy hand upon his shoulder caused him to look up into the pallid joy of Daniel Willard’s face.
“I have found something—I knew I would,” said Daniel, agitatedly, laying a slip of fluttering paper upon the table before Philip, but keeping tight hold of it and of the shoulder upon which he leaned. “It is only the fragment of a letter written to me when I was away last summer, but never sent. It is not much. We cannot convince the outside world with it—but for you—read it.”
It was almost illegible. It lay looking up at him in helpless exposure, and he deciphered it slowly.
MY DEAR DANIEL,
Sometimes it is good when a frend goes away so you can rite him what you cannot say—Daniel I thout to myself that day when she died never I could laugh agen, but now when I look at my son my belovid only chile, Gott knows I am proud and happy—Daniel tell Jean he saved the life of a poor girl last night what evrybody said was going to die—tell Jean never was a son better to his father as my Philip to me—tell Jean
The soft breathing of the gas overhead was distinctly heard in the wide stillness.
“I am looking at it too,” came Daniel Willard’s voice in strange quietude. “It is very bad spelling.”
The face beneath gave no sign of hearing.
“And bad writing,” continued the gentle voice. “I can just make it out—even the good, loving heart.”
The fine hand beside his made as if to cover the paper. Daniel’s fingers closed vise-like over the hand.
“What! Ashamed still? See, Philip, let us examine it together and let it speak for itself and for him. He cannot speak for himself—he never could. He had no eloquence—and very poor English. He was just what the elect call ‘a little old Jew’—‘Jew-man,’ as lips that call themselves refined sometimes put it. I will paraphrase that epithet for you: Often, his voice in speaking dropped into sing-song, his speech into jargon. Sometimes he used his hands for punctuation-marks—they were the only marks of expression he knew; and—God have mercy on his memory!—I have known him, in moments of reversion, to mistake his knife for a fork. He who ran could read his faults; they were written so plain on top. But just with a short pause, the runner could have read that Joseph May never drank his manhood away; he never betrayed a friend; he never wronged another man’s wife; he never slandered a good name; he never lied himself into fortune or favor. Yet his life was not all a negation, seeing his hand was always glad to follow the promptings of his good heart. His soul was as faultless as this perfect, well-kept hand of yours over which mine rests. All his life he lived true, but he wrote and spoke in a way to make the angels of culture weep. Now weigh him.”
The gas breathed on monotonously.
“It is more bitter than death for me to have to speak in this way to you,” went on the low voice in strong intensity, “but he was my friend—and I am old, and you are young, and so you will listen to me. For when a son comes to measure his father, he must bring with him something greater than the pretty, petty scale of a conventional estheticism. The cry of blood is such a far, wistful cry, Philip. It ties us heart to heart—it understands so much. If we had not that to rely on, how many of us would be alone, lonely with an awful soul-loneliness, within this hurrying, misjudging world. There is a verse which I have read which always occurs to me as something very beautiful—always it seems to me it should be set to the most beautiful music the world can produce. It is that scene in which Bathsheba comes with a petition to her son, the great and wise King Solomon, clad then in the purple of his worldly glory. The Book says: ‘And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king’s mother; and she sat on his right hand’—ah, forgive me.”133
A woman might have been speaking to him for gentleness. Philip raised his eyes, bitter and glooming from his still white face. He cleared his throat.
“Thank you,” he said, hoarsely, and stood up.
Daniel turned for his hat. “You will present this—justification—to Paul Stein to-morrow?” he asked, his finger on the paper.
Philip’s face set like steel. “Nonsense,” he said, lightly. “There is no justification necessary to any one.” He put his hand over the paper with an excluding gesture of possession.
Daniel moved aside.
“And—you are still determined to leave this house?” he asked.
“Quite. To-morrow possibly.”
“Well, good night, Philip.”
“Good night, Mr. Willard.”
He accompanied him to the porch-door. He stood listening to his footsteps long after they had died away.