A Secret Inheritance. Volume 1 of 3. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold

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      "Are you acquainted with the contents of this letter?" I asked.

      "Yes; your father, before he sealed it gave it to me to read. He gave me at the same time another document, addressed to myself."

      "Investing you, I suppose, with the necessary authority." She slightly inclined her head. "I shall not interfere with you in any way," I said.

      "I am obliged to you," she said, and then she re-entered my mother's apartment.

      The lawyer and I walked to my father's private room. I wished to assure myself that there was nothing else in the safe in which my father had deposited his Will, and which we had left open. There was nothing, not a book, not a scrap of paper, nor article of any kind. Then in the presence of the lawyer, I searched the writing-desk, and found only a few unimportant memoranda and letters. My unsatisfactory search at an end, I remarked to the lawyer that I supposed nothing remained to be done.

      "Except to lock the safe," he said.

      "How is that accomplished?"

      "You have merely to reverse the process by which you opened it. I have seldom seen a more admirable and simple piece of mechanism."

      I followed his instructions, and let the tapestry fall over the steel plate. Then the lawyer, saying that he would attend to the necessary formalities with respect to the Will, bade me good-day.

      CHAPTER IV

      When I told my mother that I was contented with the disposition my father had made of the property I spoke the truth, but I did not intend to imply that I was contented with the position in which I found myself after my father's death. Not with respect to money-that was the last of my thoughts; indeed, my mother placed at my disposal more than sufficient funds; but that I, who had by this time grown to manhood, should be still confined in leading strings, hurt and galled me. I chafed inwardly at the restraint, and it will be readily understood that my feelings on this matter did not bring my mother and me closer to each other. I did not, however, give expression to them; I schooled myself into a certain philosophical resignation, and took refuge in my books and studies.

      Wide as had always been the breach-I can find no other word to express the attitude we held towards each other-between Mrs. Fortress and myself, it grew wider as time progressed. We seldom addressed a word to each other. To do her justice she seemed to desire a more familiar intercourse as little as I did. Her demeanour was consistently respectful, and she did not exercise her authority obtrusively or offensively. Everything went on in the house as usual. My wants were attended to with regularity, and I may even say that they were anticipated. To all outward appearance I had nothing whatever to complain of, but the independence of spirit which develops with our manhood, the consciousness that we are strong enough to depend upon ourselves and to walk alone, the growing pride which imparts a true or false confidence in our maturing powers-all these were in silent rebellion within me, and rendered me at times restless and dissatisfied. What it might have led to is hard to say, but the difficulty was solved without action on my part. Within twelve months of my father's death I was a free man, free to go whither I would, to choose my own mode of life, to visit new lands if I cared. The chains which had bound me fell loose, and I was my own master.

      It was in the dead of a hot summer night, and I was sitting alone by the window in my favourite room. The sultry air scarcely stirred the curtains, and I saw in the sky the signs of a coming storm. I hoped it would burst soon; I knew that I should welcome with gratitude the rain and the cooler air. Such sweet, fresh moments, when an oppressively hot day has drawn to its close, may be accepted-with a certain extravagance of metaphor, I admit-as Nature's purification of sin.

      All was still and quiet; only shadows lived and moved about. Midnight struck. That hour to me was always fraught with mysterious significance.

      From where I sat I could see the house in which my mother lay. It had happened on that day, as I strolled through the woods, that I had been witness of the love which a mother had for her child. The child was young, the mother was middle-aged, and not pretty, but when she looked at her child, and held out her arms to receive it, as it ran laughing towards her with its fair hair tumbled about its head, her plain face became glorified. Its spiritual beauty smote me with pain; the child's glad voice made me tremble. Some dim sense of what had never been mine forced itself into my soul.

      I had the power-which I had no doubt unconsciously cultivated-of raising pictures in the air, and I called up now this picture of the mother and her child. "Are all children like that," I thought, "and are all mothers-except me and mine?" If so, I had been robbed.

      The door of the great house slowly opened, and the form of a woman stepped forth. It walked in my direction, and stopped beneath my window.

      "Are you up there, Master Gabriel?"

      It was Mrs. Fortress who spoke.

      "Yes, I am here."

      "Your mother wishes to see you."

      I went down immediately, and joined Mrs. Fortress.

      "Did she send you for me?"

      "Yes, or I should not be here."

      "She is very ill?"

      "She is not well."

      The grudging words angered me, and I motioned the woman to precede me to the house. She led me to my mother's bedside.

      I had never been allowed so free an intercourse with my mother as upon this occasion. Mrs. Fortress did not leave the room, but she retired behind the curtains of the bed, and did not interrupt our conversation.

      "You are ill, mother?"

      "I am dying, Gabriel."

      I was prepared for it, and I had expected to see in her some sign of the shadow of death. When the dread visitant stands by the side of a mortal, there should be some indication of its presence. Here there was none. My mother's face retained the wild beauty which had ever distinguished it. All that I noted was that her eyes occasionally wandered around, with a look in them which expressed a kind of fear and pity for herself.

      "You speak of dying, mother," I said. "I hope you will live for many years yet."

      "Why do you hope it?" she asked. "Has my life given you joy-has it sweetened the currents of yours?"

      There was a strange wistfulness in her voice, a note of wailing against an inexorable fate. Her words brought before me again the picture of the mother and her child I had seen that day in the woods. Joy! Sweetness! No, my mother had given me but little of these. It was so dim as to be scarcely a memory that when I was a little babe she would press me tenderly to her bosom, would sing to me, would coo over me, as must surely be the fashion of loving mothers with their offspring. It is with no idea of casting reproach upon her that I say she bequeathed to me no legacy of motherly tenderness.