Part 46 (1/2)
Ross scowled at his sister, made a hesitating, reluctant movement toward the steps; just then Matilda and Ellen appeared. Adelaide saw that her mother had succeeded in getting through Matilda's crust of sham and in touch with her heart. At sight of her son Mrs. Whitney's softened countenance changed--hardened, Adelaide thought--and she said to him eagerly: ”Any news, any letters?”
”This,” answered Ross explosively. He jerked the letter from his pocket, gave it to his mother.
”You'll excuse me--Ellen--Adelaide,” said Matilda, as she unfolded the paper with ringers that trembled. ”This is very important.” Silence, as she read, her eager glance leaping along the lines. Her expression became terrible; she burst out in a voice that was both anger and despair: ”No will! He wasn't just trying to torment me when he said he hadn't made one. No will! Nothing but the draft of a scheme to leave everything to Tec.u.mseh--there's your Hiram's work, Ellen!”
Adelaide's gentle pressure on her mother's arm was unnecessary; it was too evident that Matilda, beside herself, could not be held responsible for anything she said. There was no pretense, no ”oversoul” in her emotion now. She was as different from the Matilda of the luncheon table as the swollen and guttered face of woe in real life is different from the graceful tragedy of the stage.
”No will; what of it?” said Ellen gently. ”It won't make the least difference. There's just you and the children.”
Adelaide, with clearer knowledge of certain dark phases of human nature and of the Whitney family, hastily interposed. ”Yes, we must go,” said she. ”Good-by, Mrs. Whitney,” and she put out her hand.
Mrs. Whitney neither saw nor heard. ”Ellen!” she cried, her voice like her wild and haggard face. ”What do you think of such a daughter as mine here? Her father--”
Janet, with eyes that dilated and contracted strangely, interrupted with a sweet, deprecating, ”Good-by, Adelaide dear. As I told you, I am leaving to-night--”
There Ross laid his hand heavily on Janet's shoulder. ”You are going to stay, young lady,” he said between his teeth, ”and hear what your mother has to say about you.” His voice made Adelaide shudder, even before she saw the black hate his eyes were hurling at his sister.
”Yes, we want you, Ellen, and you, Del, to know her as she is,” Mrs.
Whitney now raged on. ”When she married, her father gave her a dowry, bought that t.i.tle for her--paid as much as his whole fortune now amounts to. He did it solely because I begged him to. She knows the fight I had to win him over. And now that he's gone, without making a will, she says she'll have her _legal_ rights! Her _legal_ rights! She'll take _one-third_ of what he left. She'll rob her brother and her mother!”
Janet was plainly reminding herself that she must not forget that she was a lady and a marchioness. In a manner in which quiet dignity was mingled with a delicate soul's shrinking from such brawling vulgarity as this that was being forced upon her, she said, looking at Adelaide: ”Papa never intended that my dowry should be taken out of my share. It was a present.” She looked calmly at her mother. ”Just like your jewels, mamma.” She turned her clear, luminous eyes upon Ross. ”Just like the opportunities he gave you to get your independent fortune.”
Mrs. Whitney, trembling so that she could scarcely articulate, retorted: ”At the time he said, and I told you, it was to come out of your share.
And how you thanked me and kissed me and--” She stretched toward Ellen her shaking old woman's hands, made repellent by the contrasting splendor of magnificent black pearl rings. ”O Ellen, Ellen!” she quavered. ”I think my heart will burst!”
”You did _say_ he said so,” replied Janet softly, ”but _he_ never told _me_.”
”You--you--” stuttered Ross, flinging out his arms at her in a paroxysm of fury.
”I refuse to discuss this any further,” said Janet, drawing herself up in the full majesty of her black-robed figure and turning her long shapely back on Ross. ”Mrs. Ranger, I'm sure you and Del realize that mother and Ross are terribly upset, and not--”
”They'll realize that you are a cheat, a vulture in the guise of woman!”
cried Mrs. Whitney. ”Ellen, tell her what she is!”
Mrs. Ranger, her eyes down and her face expressing her agonized embarra.s.sment, contrived to say: ”You mustn't bring me in, Mattie.
Adelaide and I must go.”
”No, you _shall_ hear!” shrieked Mrs. Whitney, barring the way. ”All the world shall hear how this treacherous, ingrate daughter of mine--oh, the sting of that!--how she purposes to steal, yes, steal four times as much of her father's estate as Ross or I get. Four times as much! I can't believe the law allows it! But whether it does or not, Janet Whitney, _G.o.d_ won't allow it! G.o.d will hear my cry, my curse on you.”
”My conscience is clear,” said Janet, and her gaze, spiritual, exalted, patient, showed that she spoke the truth, that her mother's looks and words left her quite unscathed.
Ross vented a vicious, jeering laugh. His mother, overcome with the sense of helplessness, collapsed from rage to grief and tears. She turned to Mrs. Ranger. ”Your Hiram was right,” she wailed, ”and my Charles said so just before he went. Look at my daughter, Ellen. Look at my son--for he, too, is robbing me. He has his own fortune that his dead father made for him; yet he, too, talks about his legal rights. He demands his full third!”
Adelaide did not look at Ross; yet she was seeing him inside and out, the inside through the outside.
”My heartless children!” sobbed Matilda. ”I can't believe that they are the same I brought into the world and watched over and saw that they had everything. G.o.d forgive them--and me. Your Hiram was right. Money has done it. Money has made monsters of them. And I--oh, how I am punished!”
All this time Ellen and Adelaide had been gradually retreating, the Whitneys following them. When Mrs. Whitney at last opened wide the casket of her woe and revealed Ross there, too, he wheeled on Adelaide with a protesting, appealing look. He was confident that he was in the right, that his case was different from Janet's; confident also that Adelaide would feel that in defending his rights he was also defending hers that were to be. But before Del there had risen the scene after the reading of her own father's will. She recalled her rebellious thoughts, saw again Arthur's fine face distorted by evil pa.s.sions, heard again her mother's terrible, just words: ”Don't trample on your father's grave, Arthur Ranger! I'll put you both out of the house! Go to the Whitneys, where you belong!” And then she saw Arthur as he now was, and herself the wife of Dory Hargrave. And she for the first time realized, as we realize things only when they have become an accepted and unshakable basic part of our lives, what her father had done, what her father was.