Part 36 (1/2)

Nothing could so injure the Howe estate as to have a poor farm next door.

Ellen of course knew that. Ah, it was a vicious doc.u.ment--that last Will and Testament of Ellen Webster.

Mr. Benton's voice broke in upon Lucy's musings.

”The deceased,” he added with a final grin of appreciation, ”appoints Mr.

Elias Barnes as executor, _he being_,” the lawyer quoted from the written page, ”_the meanest man I know_.”

Thus did the voice of the dead speak from the confines of the grave! Death had neither transformed nor weakened the intrepid hater. From her aunt's coffin Lucy could seem to hear vindictive chuckles of revenge and hatred, and a mist gathered before her eyes.

She had had no regrets for the loss of Ellen's body; but she could not but lament with genuine grief the loss of her soul.

CHAPTER XVI

LUCY COMES TO A DECISION

Slowly Lucy drove homeward, her dreams of rosy wall papers and gay chintz hangings shattered. Thrusting into insignificance these minor considerations, however, was the thought of Martin Howe and what he would say to the revelation of Ellen's cupidity.

She would not tell him about the will, on that she was determined. She would not mention it to anybody. Instead she would go promptly to work packing up her few possessions and putting the house in perfect order.

Fortunately it had so recently been cleaned that to prepare it for closing would be a simple matter.

As for herself and Martin, the dupes of an old woman's vengeance, both of them were of course blameless. Nevertheless, the present twist of Fate had entirely changed their relation to one another.

When she had defied her aunt and voiced with such pride her love for the man of her heart, it had been in a joyous faith that although he had not made similar confession, he would ultimately do so. The possibility that he was making of her affection a tool for vengeance had never come into her mind until Ellen had put it there, and then with involuntary loyalty she had instantly dismissed the suggestion as absurd. But here was a different situation. She was no longer independent of circ.u.mstances. She was penniless in the world, all the things that should have been hers having been swept away by the malicious stroke of a pen. It was almost as tragic to be married out of spite as out of pity.

She knew Martin's standards of honor. He would recognize, as she did, the justice of the Webster homestead and lands remaining in her possession; and since the will stipulated that he must personally occupy these properties and could neither sell, transfer, nor give them to their rightful owner, she felt sure he would seize upon the only other means of making her freehold legally hers. Whether he loved her or not would not now be in his eyes the paramount issue. In wedding her he would feel he was carrying out an act of justice which under the guise of affection it would be quite legitimate to perform.

This solution of the difficulty, however, cleared away but the minor half of the dilemma. Had she been willing to accept Martin's sacrifice of himself and marry him, there still remained the wall,--the obstacle that for generations had loomed between the peace of Howe and Webster and now loomed 'twixt her and her lover with a magnitude it had never a.s.sumed before.

Martin would never rebuild that wall--never!

Had he not vowed that he would be burned at the stake first? That he would face persecution, nakedness, famine, the sword before he would do it? All the iron of generations of Howe blood rung in the oath. He had proclaimed the decree throughout the county. Everybody for miles around knew how he felt. Though he loved her as man had never loved woman (a miracle which she had no ground for supposing) he would never consent to such a compromise of principles. The being did not exist for whom Martin Howe would abandon his creed of honor.

She knew well that strata of hardness in his nature, the adamantine will that wrought torture to its possessor because it could not bend. Even the concessions he had thus far made, had, she recognized, cost him a vital struggle. On the day of her aunt's seizure had she not witnessed the warfare between pity and hatred, generosity and revenge? The powers of light had triumphed, it is true; but it had been only after the bitterest travail; and ever since she had been conscious that within his soul Martin had viewed his victory with a smoldering, unformulated contempt. Even his attentions to her had been paid with a blindfolded, lethargic unwillingness, as if he offered them against the dictates of his conscience and closed his eyes to a crisis he would not, dared not face.

It was one thing for her to light-heartedly announce that she loved Martin Howe and would marry him; but it was quite another matter for him to reach a corresponding conclusion. To her vengeance was an antiquated creed, a remnant of a past decade, which it cost her no effort to brush aside.

Martin, on the contrary, was built of sterner stuff. He hated with the vigor of the red-blooded hater, fostering with sincerity the old-fas.h.i.+oned dogmas of justice and retribution. ”An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was a matter of right; and the mercy that would temper it was not always a virtue. More often it was a weakness.

To be caught in Ellen Webster's toils and own himself beaten would, Lucy well understood, be to his mind a humiliating fate.

Only a compelling, unreasoning love that swept over him like some mighty tidal wave, wrenching from its foundations every impeding barrier, could move him to surrender; and who was she to arouse such pa.s.sion in any lover? She was only a woman human and faulty. She had indeed a heart to bestow, and without vain boasting it was a heart worth the winning; she held herself in sufficient esteem to set a price on the treasure. But was it jewel enough to prompt a man to uproot every tradition of his moral world for its possession?

Sadly she shook her head. No, Martin would never be lost in a mood of such over-mastering love as this for her. If he made a proposal of marriage, it would be because he was spurred by impulses of justice and pity; and no matter how worthy these motives, he would degenerate into the laughing stock of the community the instant he began to carry out the terms of the will and reconstruct the wall. She could hear now the taunts and jests of the townsfolk. Some of them would speak in good-humored banter, some with premeditated malice; but their jibes would sting.

”So you're tacklin' that wall in spite of all you said, are you, Martin?”

”Ellen Webster's got you where she wanted you at last, ain't she, Martin?”