Sherrington Trimm had kept Mr. Craik’s secret as well as he could, but although he had not told his wife anything positive concerning the will that had been so hastily drawn up, he had found it impossible not to convey to Totty such information about the matter as was manifestly negative. She had seen very soon that he considered the inheritance of her brother’s money as an illusion, upon which he placed no faith whatever, and she had understood that in advising her not to think too much about it, he meant to do more than administer one of his customary rebukes to her covetousness. At last, she determined to know the truth and pressed him with the direct question.
“So far as I know, my dear,” he answered, gravely, “you will never get that money, so you may just as well put the subject out of your mind, and be satisfied with what you have.”
Neither diplomacy nor cajolery nor reproaches could force anything more definite than this from Sherrington Trimm’s discreet lips, though Totty used all her weapons, and used them very cleverly, in her untiring efforts to find out the truth. Was Tom going to leave his gold to a gigantic charity? Sherry’s round, pink face grew suddenly stony. Was it a hospital or an asylum for idiots?—he really might tell her! His expression never changed. Totty was in despair, and her curiosity tormented her in a way that would have done credit to the gad-fly which tortured Io of old. Neither by word, nor look, nor deed could Sherry be made to betray his brother-in-law’s secret. He was utterly impenetrable, as soon as the subject was brought up, and Totty even fancied that he knew beforehand when she was about to set some carefully-devised trap for him, so ready was he to oppose her wiles.
150On the other hand since old Mr. Craik had recovered, his sister had shown herself more than usually anxious to please him. In this she argued as her husband had done, saying that a man who had changed his will once might very possibly change it again. She therefore spared no pains in consulting Tom’s pleasure whenever occasion offered, and she employed her best tact in making his life agreeable to him. He, on his part, was even more diverted than she intended that he should be, and he watched all her moves with inward amusement. There had never been any real sympathy between them. He had been the first child, and several others had died in infancy during a long series of years, Totty, the youngest of all, alone surviving, separated from her brother in age by nearly twenty years. From her childhood, she had always been trying to get something from him, and whenever the matters in hand did not chance to clash with his own interests, he had granted her request. Indeed, on the whole, and considering the man’s grasping character, he had treated her with great generosity. Totty’s gratitude, however, though always sincere, was systematically prophetic in regard to favours to come, and Tom had often wondered whether anything in the world would satisfy her.
Of late she seemed to have developed an intense interest in the means of prolonging life, and she did not fail to give him the benefit of all the newest theories on the subject. Tom, however, did not feel that he was going to die, and was more and more irritated by her officious suggestions. One day she took upon herself to be more than usually pressing. He had been suffering from a slight cold, and she had passed an anxious week.
“There is nothing for you, Tom,” she said, “but a milk cure and massage. They say there is nothing like it. It is perfectly wonderful——”
Her brother raised his bent head and looked keenly at her, while a sour smile passed over his face.
“Look here, Totty,” he answered, “don’t you think I should keep better in camphor?”
151“How can you be so unkind!” exclaimed Totty, blushing scarlet. She rarely blushed at all, and her brother’s amusement increased, until it reached its climax and broke out in a hard, rattling laugh.
After this, Mrs. Trimm grew more cautious. She talked less of remedies and cures and practised with great care a mournfully sympathetic expression. In the course of a week or two this plan also began to wear upon Craik’s nerves, for she made a point of seeing him almost every day.
“I say, Totty,” he said suddenly. “If anybody is dead, tell me. If you think anybody is going to die, send for the doctor. But if they are all alive and well, don’t go round looking like an undertaker’s wife when the season has been too healthy.”
“How can you expect me to look gay?” Totty asked with a sad smile. “Do you think it makes me happy to see you going on in this way?”
“Which way?” inquired Mr. Craik with a pleased grin.
“Why, you won’t have massage, and you won’t take the milk cure, and you won’t go to Aix, and you won’t let me do anything for you, and—and I’m so unhappy! Oh Tom, how unkind you are!”
Thereupon Mrs. Trimm burst into tears with much feeling. Tom Craik looked at her for some seconds and then, being in his own house, rang the bell, sent for the housekeeper and a bottle of salts, and left Totty to recover as best she might. He knew very well that those same tears were genuine and that they had their source in anger and disappointment rather than in any sympathy for himself, and he congratulated himself upon having changed his will in time.
The old man watched George Wood’s increasing success with an interest that would have surprised the latter, if he had known anything of it. It seemed as if, by assuring him the reversion of the fortune, Tom Craik had given him a push in the right direction. Since that 152time, indeed, George’s luck had begun to turn, and now, though still unconscious of the wealth that awaited him, he was already far on the road to celebrity and independence. The lonely old man of business found a new and keen excitement in following the doings of the young fellow for whom he had secretly prepared such an overwhelming surprise. He was curious to see whether George would lose his head, whether he would turn into the fatuous idol of afternoon tea-parties, or whether he would fall into vulgar dissipation, whether he would quarrel with his father as soon as he was independent, or whether he would spend his earnings in making the old gentleman more comfortable.
Tom Craik cared very little what George did, provided he did something. What he most regretted was that he could not possibly be present to enjoy the surprise he had planned. It amused him to think out the details of his future. If, for instance, George took to drinking and gambling, losing and wasting at night what he had laboured hard to earn during the day, what a moment that would be in his life when he should be told that Tom Craik was dead, and that he was master of a great fortune. The old man chuckled over the idea, and fancied he could see George’s face when, having lost more than he could possibly pay, his young eyes heavy with wine, his hand trembling with excitement, he would be making his last desperate stand at poker in the quiet upper room of a gambling club. He would lose his nerve, show his cards, lose and sink back in his chair with a stare of horror. At that moment the door would open and Sherry Trimm would come in and whisper a few words in his ear. Tom Craik liked to imagine the young fellow’s bound of surprise, the stifled cry of amazement that would escape from his lips, the doubts, the fears that would beset him until the money was his, and then the sudden cure that would follow. Yes, thought Tom, there was no such cure for a spendthrift as a fortune, a real fortune. To make a man love money, 153give it to him all at once in vast quantities—provided he is not a fool. And George was no fool. He had already proved that.
There was something satanic in Mr. Craik’s speculations. He knew the world well. It amused him to fancy George, admired and courted as a literary lion, but feared by all judicious mammas, as only young, poor and famous literary lions are feared. How the sentimental young ladies would crowd about him and offer him tea, cake and plots for his novels! And how the ring of mothers would draw their daughters away from him and freeze him with airs politely cold! How two or three would be gathered together in one corner of the room to say to each other that two or three others in the opposite corner were foolishly exposing their daughters to the charms of an adventurer, for his books bring him in nothing, my dear, not a cent—Mr. Popples told me so! And how the compliment would be returned upon the two or three, by the other two or three, with usurious compound interest. Enter to them, thought Craik, another of their tribe—what do you think, my dears? Tom Craik left all that money to George Wood, house, furniture, pictures, horses and carriages—everything! Just think! I really must go and speak to the dear fellow! And how they would all be impelled, at the same moment, by the same charitable thought! How they would all glide forward, during the next quarter of an hour, impatient to thaw with intimacy what they had lately wished to freeze with politeness, and how, a little later, each would say to her lovely daughter as they went home—you know Georgey Wood—for it would be Georgey at once—is such a good fellow, so famous and yet so modest, so unassuming when you think how enormously rich he is. Is he rich, mamma? Why, yes, Kitty—or Totty, or Dottie, or Hattie, or Nelly—he has all Tom Craik’s money, and that gem of a house to live in, and the pictures and everything, and your cousin—or your aunt—Totty is furious about it—but 154he is such a nice fellow. There would not be much difficulty about getting a wife for the “nice fellow” then, thought Thomas Craik.
And one or other of these things might have actually happened, precisely as Thomas Craik foresaw if that excellent and worthy man, Sherrington Trimm had not unexpectedly fallen ill during the spring that followed George Wood’s first success. His illness was severe and was undoubtedly caused by too much hard work, and was superinduced by a moderate but unchanging taste for canvas-backs, truffles boiled in madeira and an especial brand of brut champagne. Sherry recovered, indeed, but was ordered to Carlsbad in Bohemia without delay. Totty found that it was quite impossible for her to accompany him, considering the precarious state of her brother’s health. To leave Tom at such a time would be absolutely heartless. Sherrington Trimm expressed a belief that Tom would last through the summer and perhaps through several summers, as he never did a stroke of work and was as wiry as hairpins. He might have added that his brother-in-law did not subsist upon cryptograms and brut wines, but Sherry resolutely avoided suggesting to himself that the daily consumption of those delicacies was in any way connected with his late illness. His wife, however, shook her head, and quoting glibly three or four medical authorities, assured him that Tom’s state was very far from satisfactory. Mamie might go with her father, if she pleased, but Totty would not leave the sinking ship.
“Till the rats leave it,” added Mr. Trimm viciously. His wife gave him a mournfully severe glance and left him to make his preparations.
So he went abroad, and was busy for some time with the improvement of his liver and the reduction of his superfluous fat, and John Bond managed the business in his stead. John Bond was a very fine fellow and did well whatever he undertook, so that Mr. Trimm felt no anxiety about their joint affairs. John himself was delighted 155to have an opportunity of showing what he could do and he looked forward to marrying Grace Fearing in the summer, considering that his position was now sufficiently assured. He was far too sensible a man to have any scruples about taking a rich wife while he himself was poor, but he was too independent to live upon Grace’s fortune, and as she was so young he had put off the wedding until he felt that he was making enough money to have all that he wanted for himself without her aid. When they were married she could do what she pleased without consulting him, and he would do as he liked without asking her advice or assistance. He considered that marriage could not be happy where either of the couple was dependent upon the other for necessities or luxuries, and that domestic peace depended largely on the exclusion of all monetary transactions between man and wife. John Bond was a typical man of his class, tall, fair, good-looking, healthy, active, energetic and keen. He had never had a day’s illness nor an hour’s serious annoyance. He had begun life in the right way, at the right end and in a cheerful spirit. There was no morbid sentimentality about him, no unnecessary development of the imagination, no nervousness, no shyness, no underrating of other people and no overrating of himself. He knew he could never be great or famous, and that he could only be John Bond as long as he lived. John Bond he would be, then, and nothing else, but John Bond should come to mean a great deal before he had done with the name. It should mean the keenest, most hardworking, most honest, most reliable, most clean-handed lawyer in the city of New York. There was a breezy atmosphere of truth, soap and enterprise about John Bond.
Before going abroad Sherrington Trimm asked Tom Craik whether he should tell his junior partner of the existence of a will in favour of George Wood. Mr. Craik hesitated before he answered.
“Well, Sherry,” he said at last, “considering the uncertainty 156of human life, ............