Part 29 (1/2)
”You mean to say there was another woman somewheres?” asked Sol, taking the scent avidly.
The women against the wall joined Mrs. Greening in a virtuous, scandalized groan. They looked pityingly at Ollie, sitting straight and white in her chair. She did not appear to see them; she was looking at Judge Little with fixed, frightened stare.
”That is not for me to say,” answered the judge; and his manner of saying it seemed to convey the hint that he _could_ throw light on Isom's past if he should unseal his lips.
Ollie took it to be that way. She recalled the words of the will, ”My friend, John B. Little.” Isom had never spoken in her hearing that way of any man. Perhaps there was some bond between the two men, reaching back to the escapades of youth, and maybe Judge Little had the rusty old key to some past romance in Isom's life.
”Laws of mercy!” said Mrs. Greening, freeing a sigh of indignation which surely must have burst her if it had been repressed.
”This doc.u.ment is dated almost thirty years ago,” said the judge. ”It is possible that Isom left a later will. We must make a search of the premises to determine that.”
”In sixty-seven he wrote it,” said Sol, ”and that was the year he was married. The certificate's hangin' in there on the wall. Before that, Isom he went off to St. Louis to business college a year or two and got all of his learnin' and smart ways. I might 'a' went, too, just as well as not. Always wisht I had.”
”Very true, very true,” nodded Judge Little, as if to say: ”You're on the trail of his iniquities now, Sol.”
Sol's mouth gaped like an old-fas.h.i.+oned corn-planter as he looked from the judge to Mrs. Greening, from Mrs. Greening to Ollie. Sol believed the true light of the situation had reached his brain.
”Walker--Isom Walker Chase! No Walkers around in this part of the country to name a boy after--never was.”
”His mother was a Walker, from Ellinoi, dunce!” corrected his wife.
”Oh!” said Sol, his scandalous case collapsing about him as quickly as it had puffed up. ”I forgot about her.”
”Don't you worry about that will, honey,” advised Mrs. Greening, going to Ollie and putting her large freckled arm around the young woman's shoulders; ”for it won't amount to shucks! Isom never had a son, and even if he did by some woman he wasn't married to, how's he goin' to prove he's the feller?”
n.o.body attempted to answer her, and Mrs. Greening accepted that as proof that her argument was indubitable.
”It--can't--be--true!” said Ollie.
”Well, it gits the best of me!” sighed Greening, shaking his uncombed head. ”Isom he was too much of a business man to go and try to play off a joke like that on anybody.”
”After the funeral I would advise a thorough search among Isom's papers in the chance of finding another and later will than this,” said Judge Little. ”And in the meantime, as a legal precaution, merely as a legal precaution and formality, Mrs. Chase----”
The judge stopped, looking at Ollie from beneath the rims of his specs, as if waiting for her permission to proceed. Ollie, understanding nothing at all of what was in his mind, but feeling that it was required of her, nodded. That seemed the signal for which he waited. He proceeded:
”As a legal formality, Mrs. Chase, I will proceed to file this doc.u.ment for probate this afternoon.”
Judge Little put it in his pocket, reaching down into that deep depository until his long arm was engulfed to the elbow. That pocket must have run down to the hem of his garment, like the oil on Aaron's beard.
Ollie got up. Mrs. Greening hastened to her to offer the support of her motherly arm.
”I think I'll go upstairs,” said the young widow.
”Yes, you do,” counseled Mrs. Greening. ”They'll be along with the wagons purty soon, and we'll have to git ready to go. I think they must have the grave done by now.”
The women watched Ollie as she went uncertainly to the stairs and faltered as she climbed upward, shaking their heads forebodingly. Sol and Judge Little went outside together and stood talking by the door.
”Ain't it terrible!” said one woman.