Chapter II: The Reading of the Will

Under a light shower of sudden April rain three carriages rolled in through the broad gates of Castellane bearing Barrington’s relations and the lawyer who was to remain for the reading of the will that afternoon.

Much interest centered in that important event, for with successive years Barrington had grown richer and richer, fairly piling up gold, which he hoarded with almost miserly greed, and all his neighbors declared that he had never in his life been known to do but one charitable deed.

That was when he went to see some California gold-mines in which he owned large shares and brought back with him the little daughter of a miner who had died without achieving the success he had vainly courted through weary years. The motherless child, so pretty and winsome, had touched Barrington’s heart, and he could not refuse her father’s dying plea to adopt her as his daughter.

When Maisie Van Allyn came to Castellane she was ten years old, a bright-eyed, fearless little beauty, and Delmar was a handsome, spirited lad of fourteen, while Byrd, his elder brother, was twenty-five, and the pride of his father’s heart.

And, needless to say, he had kept faith with his dead mother in his secret, untiring persecution of Delmar, who in the neighborhood was called the unloved son, so small a place had he in his father’s heart, thanks to the machinations of Byrd.

Indeed, the younger son could scarcely be said to enjoy the really intimate acquaintance of his father, so little time had they passed together from the boy’s infancy till now, when he stood and listened to the clods rattling down on the grave of one whom he could remember only as a stern, censorious parent, finding always naught to praise but all to blame in the child of his second wife.

From nurses and tutors he had passed to college, and vacations by the sea or in the country, Byrd always managing to keep the two apart while encouraging Delmar in all boyish extravagance.

Now the last act in the drama of hate was to be played in the reading of the will, and as the family assembled in the darkened library that afternoon a grim smile played on Barrington’s fair mustached lips as he recalled his mother’s adjuration:

“Swear that not a dollar of the gold your father wrested from me shall ever be left to a second wife or her children!”

In the years while Delmar was kept at college Byrd had had ample time to perfect his schemes.

His younger brother, open-handed and warm-hearted, taking his nature from the generous Delmars, was painted to his father as dissolute and spendthrift, unworthy to be trusted with money that he would only squander in dissolute pleasures.

So in time the seed he had planted bore its natural fruit.

Though the father could not repress a thrill of pride when Delmar graduated at twenty-five with the highest honors of his Alma Mater, the triumph could not undo Byrd’s long work of misrepresentation. It worked well with the leaven of his resentment toward the beautiful girl who had married him for his money and learned to hate him afterward for his parsimony. It never came home to him that he was reaping what he had sown. He only remembered with humiliation and bitterness that the woman he had loved had not returned his passion, while the one he had slighted had been his devoted slave. With the flight of years he began to realize that the best of his love was due to her son, thus doing a tardy justice to her memory.

While much of this had been guessed at by the curious outside world, and by the group of relations who awaited the reading of the will, yet not one dreamed of the startling finale except Byrd, who sat with grim smile at the corners of his lips and that hard light in his cold blue eyes so like those of his dead mother, whose vengeance he had brought to pass.

Lawyer Munsey opened the seals of the will, cleared his throat, and began the reading.

Barrington had generously remembered his few country relatives with small bequests, the largest amount, ten thousand dollars, going to his sister, Mrs. French, in grateful acknowledgment of her services as chatelaine of his home during the years of his widowerhood. A smile of satisfaction dawned on all those faces at finding their names remembered in the will of their rich relation.

Next came the name of Maisie Van Allyn, whom the testator complained he had treated for eight years as a daughter, only to be rewarded by ingratitude, of which he now reminded her by cutting her off with fifty dollars that would pay her way until she could find a situation to support herself.

Maisie’s dewy rosebud of a mouth parted in a startled “Oh,” and she flashed a quick, resentful glance at Byrd Barrington’s calm, impassive face, then dropped the dark curly fringe of her lashes almost to her cheek, listening in silence to the lawyer’s monotonous voice droning on in the next paragraph which disposed of Delmar Barrington’s expectations.

The testator put on record that he was exceedingly wroth with his younger son by reason of his low tastes and spendthrift habits, and felt that the inheritance of a fortune would only help him to go to the dogs faster. Having toiled hard to amass a large fortune, he objected to having it dissipated in riotous living, hence Delmar’s portion would be the monthly interest of fifty dollars accruing from stocks set aside for that purpose, and a home at Castellane for life. Perhaps Delmar would thus learn by this needful lesson the virtues of thrift and economy.

You might have heard a pin drop at that moment.

It seemed as if every one forgot to breathe through sheer astonishment, and in the breathless silence the lawyer resumed his reading of the will, which named last of all Byrd Barrington as the sole inheritor of his father’s vast wealth--in stocks, bonds, and real estate, over five millions of money. A final clause stated that the beginnings of his wealth having come from Byrd’s mother, it was but just to restore it to her son.

Delmar’s great dark eyes blazed with disappointment and anger. He sprang to his feet, facing his elder brother accusingly:

“You have done me this foul wrong, Byrd! It is your cursed malice! You told lies of me to my father, and set his heart against me!” he cried scathingly.

Maisie Van Allyn sprang to his side with a second accusation:

“It was spite work, too, that turned his love from me! I have always been dutiful and obedient to my adopted father--I never crossed his wishes in but one thing!”--she hesitated a moment, then added bitterly: “He wished me to marry that snake in the grass, his elder son! Bah, I would not have him with all his five millions thrown in!” and she stamped her foot at him in superb rage.

Mrs. French reprimanded her curtly:

“Fie, Maisie, this behavior is unseemly. Do not forget that you are simply Byrd’s guest now!”

“I am not forgetting it, I shall leave here as soon as I can pack my clothes!” beautiful Maisie retorted, flying from the room in a passion.

Thus through “the long slow years that bring us all things ill,” the dead cold hand of the wronged wife had stretched forth from the grave and taken vengeance through her devoted son for all the sufferings of her wedded life.

Would she rest any easier in her grave now that innocent lives had been sacrificed to her memory? Would the restless dead lie still now that her husband had come at last to sleep by her side beneath the churchyard grass? For it was an open secret among the more credulous of the servants at Castellane that Barrington’s first wife “walked,” in approved ghost fashion, gowned in white, with streaming hair, wringing her hands in distress, and wailing, “Woe is me! Woe is me!” till she won the name: “The Mad Lady!”