Part 16 (1/2)

”Kiss me now, Hetty.”

”I could die for you, Sara,” cried Hetty, as she impulsively obeyed the command.

”I mean that you shall live for me,” said Sara, smiling through her tears. ”How silly of me to cry. It must be the room we are in.

These are the same rooms, dear, that you came to on the night we met. Ah, how old I feel!”

”Old? You say that to me? I am ages and ages older than you,” cried Hetty, the colour coming back to her soft cheeks.

”You are twenty-three.”

”And you are twenty-eight.”

Sara had a far away look in her eyes. ”About your size and figure,”

said she, and Hetty did not comprehend.

CHAPTER VI

SOUTHLOOK

Sara Wrandall's house in the country stood on a wooded knoll overlooking the Sound. It was rather remotely located, so far as neighbours were concerned. Her father, Sebastian Gooch, shrewdly foresaw the day when land in this particular section of the suburban world would return dollars for the pennies, and wisely bought thousands of acres: woodland, meadowland, beachland and hills, inserted between the environs of New York City and the rich towns up the coast. Years afterward he built a commodious summer home on the choicest point that his property afforded, named it Southlook, and transformed that particular part of his wilderness into a millionaire's paradise, where he could dawdle and putter to his heart's content, where he could spend his time and his money with a prodigality that came so late in life to him that he made waste of both in his haste to live down a rather parsimonious past.

Two miles and a half away, in the heart of a scattered colony of purse-proud New Yorkers, was the country home of the Wrandalls, an imposing place and older by far than Southlook. It had descended from well-worn and time-stained ancestors to Redmond Wrandall, and, with others of its kind, looked with no little scorn upon the modern, mushroom structures that sprouted from the seeds of trade.

There was no friends.h.i.+p between the old and the new. Each had recourse to a bitter contempt for the other, though consolation was small in comparison.

It was in the wooded by-ways of this despised domain that Challis Wrandall and Sara, the earthly daughter of Midas, met and loved and defied all things supernal, for matches are made in heaven. Their marriage did not open the gates of Nineveh. Sebastian Gooch's paradise was more completely ostracised than it was before the disaster. The Wrandalls spoke of it as a disaster.

Clearly the old merchant was not over-pleased with his daughter's choice, a conclusion permanently established by the alteration he made in his will a year or two after the marriage. True, he left the vast estate to his beloved daughter Sara, but he fastened a stout string to it, and with this string her hands were tied. It must have occurred to him that Challis was a profligate in more ways than one, for he deliberately stipulated in his will that Sara was not to sell a foot of the ground until a period of twenty years had elapsed. A very polite way, it would seem, of making his investment safe in the face of considerable odds.

He lived long enough after the making of his will, I am happy to relate, to find that he had made no mistake. As he preceded his son-in-law into the Great Beyond by a scant three years, it readily may be seen that he wrought too well by far. Seventeen unnecessary years of proscription remained, and he had not intended them for Sara ALONE. He was not afraid of Sara, but for her.

When the will was read and the condition revealed, Challis Wrandall took it in perfect good humour. He had the grace to proclaim in the bosom of his father's family that the old gentleman was a father-in-law to be proud of. ”A canny old boy,” he had announced with his most engaging smile, quite free from rancour or resentment.

Challis was well acquainted with himself.

And so the acres were strapped together snugly and firmly, without so much as a town-lot protruding.

So impressed was Challis by the farsightedness of his father-in-law that he forthwith sat him down and made a will of his own. He would not have it said that Sara's father did a whit better by her than he would do. He left everything he possessed to his wife, but put no string to it, blandly implying that all danger would be past when she came into possession. There was a sort of grim humour in the way he managed to present himself to view as the real and ready source of peril.

Among certain of the Wrandall clan there was serious talk of contesting the will. It was a distinct shock to all of them. Some one made bold to a.s.sert that Challis was not in his right mind at the time it was executed. For that matter, a couple of uncles on his mother's side were of the broad opinion that he never had been mentally adequate.

During a family conference four days after the funeral, Leslie launched forth at some length and with considerable heat, expressing an opinion that met with small favour at the outset but which had its results later on.

”Why,” he declaimed, standing before the fireplace with his hands in his pockets, ”if Sara dreamed that we even so much as contemplate making a fuss about Chal's will, she'd up and chuck the whole blooming legacy in our faces, and be glad to do it. She's got plenty of her own. She doesn't need the little that Challis left her. Then, what would we look like, tell me that? What would the world say? Why, it would say that she didn't think our money was clean enough to mix with old man Gooch's. She'd throw it in our faces and the whole town would snicker.”

”Figuratively speaking, young man, figuratively speaking,” said one of the uncles, a stockholder and director.

”What do you mean by that?”