A Modern Madonna. Caroline Abbot Stanley
so full of peril, of temptation.
The more she pondered it the more her soul was girded for her work. To mould a life! This was what was left her. Well! was it not enough? To find her chief happiness not in living her own, but in fashioning another life. Then to something that spoke within her she made answer, "Yes, of course, it will be lonely, but—" A fragment of a fugitive poem she had once read came to her,
"Lonely? Well, and what of that?"
She could not recall the next two lines—such scraps are so elusive—but it did not matter. The trumpet call of the thing was in the last line:
"Work may be done in loneliness. Work on!"
She bowed her head over the crib on which lay her sleeping child. She took his soft dimpled hand between her palms.
"Yes, it is lonely, little Philip," she whispered brokenly—"it will always be lonely, but—
'Work may be done in loneliness.'"
"I'll begin again, dear, and map out another life and we will live it together, you and I. And we will make it just as sweet and full a life as we can—for 'I'll have you and you'll have me.' We won't be gloomy or sad—we will not let ourselves be—nothing shall cast a shadow over this little life we are going to live—nothing! It is ours! We will make it the brightest and the best thing we can. We have a right to be happy and we will be! Nobody shall keep us from it, little Philip!"
It was in this mood of quiet exaltation that she went down stairs to the reading of the will a little later when the lawyer came.
She had not seen her brother-in-law since the funeral. To Judge Kirtley's unspeakable indignation Mr. De Jarnette had not even returned to the house with her. At this lack of civility, to say nothing of brotherly kindness, she was surprised and hurt, but she clothed herself in her impenetrable garment of silence regarding it, and made no comment.
Judge Kirtley had not been so reticent. To his wife he had said with some heat,
"He is the most incomprehensible man I ever saw. I know he is undemonstrative by nature, but up to this time he really has not been lacking in substantial kindness to Margaret. I judge so from what she tells me—particularly when Victor first went away and she most needed help. But since his death, when one would have expected him to stand by her, he has stood aloof. I can't understand it. He certainly is not an emotional man, nor an impulsive one. There is something back of this."
"Can she have offended him by anything she has said? And still she has been so very reticent—"
"No," said the Judge, "it isn't that, I am sure. I have sometimes wondered if it could be—" he was patting his foot thoughtfully and talking more to himself than to her—"that he had some suspicion that Victor's death was by his own hand—intentionally, I mean—and held Margaret responsible for it—as the result of their interview."
"And what that was we will never know," said his wife, with the tone of one airing a grievance.
"No, and never should," her husband responded, quickly. "She shows her sense there. I have wondered, I say, if he can hold such a thought as that against her. It is the only thing I can think of that would at all excuse his conduct."
"Didn't Victor make a dying statement that it was accidental?"
"Yes."
"A sworn statement?"
"No. But a dying declaration has almost as much weight."
"Then, of course, it was the truth! Wouldn't that be perjury or something like that to make a false statement at such a time?"
"Well, you see," the Judge responded, dryly, "Victor De Jarnette was going where he would be in no danger of being tried for perjury—even admitting that it would have been that—which it wouldn't." Then, feeling that he had been a little indiscreet in thus thinking aloud before the wife of his bosom, who did not enjoy quite all his confidence, he added, "I think you are right, my dear. It was a foolish thought in me."
"It certainly was," answered Mrs. Kirtley, pursuing the advantage of this concession to her superior wisdom, "foolish and wild. Of course it was an accident! Why, wasn't the rag there that he had been cleaning the pistol with?"
"It was."
"Well!" triumphantly.
"You are right again. That settles it," said the Judge, chuckling to himself. "You ought to have been a lawyer, my dear, or a detective."
"Oh, I can see a thing when it is self-evident," his wife said, modestly.
The three gentlemen, Mr. De Jarnette, Judge Kirtley, and Mr. Jarvis were in the library when Margaret entered it. The latter, being nearest the door, rose and extended his hand in grave courteous greeting. Mr. De Jarnette—the table between them—bowed; while Judge Kirtley took her affectionately by the hand and drew her to a chair beside him. She was clothed in black relieved by white at neck and wrists. There was something about her slight girlish form and youthful face that made the attorney with the legal document in his hand draw a quick deep breath and give an unnoticed movement of the head as if in protest.
"And are you well?" asked the Judge, patting her hand and smiling re-assuringly into her eyes. There is something very awe-inspiring to a novice in a visit from a lawyer with a legal document in his hand.
"Oh, yes, quite well, thank you."
Her hands were cold. He said, to give her time to recover herself, "And how is the boy?"
Her face lighted up as from a burst of sunshine. "Doing nicely, thank you. Growing every day in strength and accomplishments. Why, he actually travels around chairs faster than we want to travel after him."
"That's right. He'll lead you a merry chase when he finds out his powers."
"Yes, and he is finding them out very rapidly. He is going to be a real boy—so strong and active."
"He is great company for you," Judge Kirtley said, "and will be more as time goes on. I know how these little things creep into one's heart. You know I lost my boy." It was forty years since then, but his eyes grew moist as he thought of the son who might have been his stay, and was but a tender memory.
Her hand closed over his. "It must be very hard to lose a child," she said, softly. "I—I think I could not bear that. They come so close!"
They were talking almost in an undertone. Richard De Jarnette had left the room to speak to his driver at the door. The lawyer, a kind-hearted man with children of his own, was fumbling over the papers in his bag, saying helplessly. "Oh, Lord! Lord!"
When Mr. De Jarnette returned, Margaret released her hand gently and sat upright. Then the reading began.
The will was dated May 3, 1889, two days after their marriage. Margaret remembered Victor's coming home that day and telling her that he had made it and had left everything to her—remembered too how she had clung passionately to him in the superstitious fear of what a will might bring, and said that she did not want his money, she wanted him. Yes, the date was the same, and as the reading proceeded she saw, through all the tiresome verbiage, that it was just as he had said—all was left to his "beloved wife, Margaret." Richard De Jarnette was named as executor.
The lawyer paused as if this were the end, though he still held the paper—a little unsteadily—before him. It seemed to Judge Kirtley, watching from the depths of his leather-covered chair, that the paper shook.
Margaret's voice broke the stillness that followed the reading of the will.
"I do not know that this is the time or place to do this," she began with hesitation, "but—when this will was written there was no child. Now that there is, I wish to transfer this property to him. I have enough—"
"Margaret," the Judge interrupted, "the law takes care of that. Though there is no mention of a child, he would share with you."
"I want him to have it all," she said. "I—I could not keep this money for myself. I would not wish to use it."
She