IN THE performance of her secretarial duties, May Thurston duly drummed on her machine the remarkable letter to Saxe Temple, in which the old miser made known his intended disposition of a golden treasury. Because she possessed an excellent New England conscience, the girl maintained silence, despite the urgings of a feminine desire to share the secret. This reticence on her part was the more admirable inasmuch as, just at this time, her affections were becoming strongly engaged by a suitor. Hartley Masters, the man in the case, was a civil engineer employed in the neighborhood with a survey for an electric road. On one occasion, he had stopped at Abernethey’s cottage for a glass of water from the well. The master of the house was absent at the time, but the secretary was present, and, by some chance, out of doors that pleasant May morning. Conventions seemed rather absurd in that remote region. The young[29] engineer admired the charming face and slender form, and hastened to engage her in conversation. She responded without reluctance, rather with pleasure in this diversion from the monotony of her days. Afterward, a considerable intimacy developed between the two. May Thurston had much of her time free, and Masters contrived so to arrange his work as to take full advantage of her leisure. That his heart was touched seriously may be doubted, but his courtship lacked nothing in the evidences of intensity and sincerity. He made a deep impression on the girl, who was both ingenuous and tender. Masters was the first to whom she had given more than the most casual heed, and, almost at the outset, she found her affections engaged. She regarded him as astonishingly handsome—as, in truth, he was—in a melodramatic fashion of his own, with huge dark eyes, long-lashed and glowing, a sweep of black mustache, and thick, clustering hair, which was always artistically tousled. In fact, the whole appearance of the man was blatantly artistic, in the bohemian acceptation of the word, and he was[30] scrupulous to wear on all occasions a loose bow of silk at his throat. He was tall, too, and broad enough, but there was too much slope to his shoulders, his neck was too long, his head bulked too large for harmony. His voice was agreeable, his manners were suave, quickened by a jauntiness, which was perhaps assumed to harmonize with the insouciant air of the cravat. May Thurston, who had read her Byron, thought of him as The Corsair, and her heart fluttered.
It is easily understood that the secretary’s keeping silence concerning her employer’s remarkable testamentary plans showed her the possessor of some strength of character, as well as a sense of honor. She even managed to keep her own counsel after Masters openly declared his love, and besought her to become his wife—at some vague time in the future, when he should have arrived at a position of independence. She yielded readily to his ardor, and had plighted troth, all a-tremble with maidenly confusion and womanly raptures. Then, a few days later, Abernethey died. She felt now that she was at liberty to reveal the circumstances of the[31] will to her lover. As they strolled on the lake shore, the evening of the day after the miser’s death, May told the story, to which Masters listened with absorbed attention.
“Mad as a hatter!” he ejaculated, contemptuously, as the girl brought her narrative to a close. Yet, though his voice was mocking, there was manifest in his expression an eagerness that puzzled the girl.
She would not permit his comment to go unrebuked:
“No,” she declared firmly, “Mr. Abernethey was not mad. He was eccentric, of course—very! That was all, however. He wasn’t crazy—unless every miser is crazy. He had a sense of humor, though, and he didn’t quite know what to do with his money. So he finally worked out the scheme I’ve told you of.”
“Then, he really did it as a sort of joke,” Masters suggested eagerly.
“As much that as anything else,” May answered, and her tone was thoughtful. “There was sentiment on account of Saxe Temple’s mother and the old love-affair. And, of course, this young man’s interest in[32] music made it seem like a good disposal of the money. But I have a suspicion, too, that Mr. Abernethey really enjoyed hiding the money—making it hard for anyone else to get hold of it, you know. That idea appealed to his miserly instincts, I think. How he hated to leave it! ‘No pockets in a shroud!’ I’ve heard him mutter a hundred times. It was horrible—and pitiful.”
“Yes, miserliness is an awful vice,” Masters agreed. His tone was perfunctory, although his inflections were energetic enough.
There fell a little silence between the lovers. Where they sat on the west shore, beneath the rampart of wooded hills, it was already deep dusk, but out on the open space of water shone a luminous purple light, shot over with rose and gold, a reflected sunset glow over the eastern mountains. May Thurston stared happily at the wide, dancing path over the water that led to the newly risen full moon, and she dreamed blissfully of the glory of life that was soon to come to her beside the man who had chosen her as his mate. Masters, on the contrary, while[33] equally enthusiastic in his musings, was by no means sentimental, as he gazed unseeingly across the lake’s level, now wimpling daintily at touch of the slow breeze. The young engineer’s thoughts were, truth to tell, of a sort sordid, even avaricious, covetous; and, at last, after a period of profound reflection, he uttered his thought:
“May, dearest,” he said softly, with a tender cadence, “what a shame it is that that old miser didn’t think of us!”
The girl faced her companion with a movement of shocked surprise.
“Think of us!” she repeated, confusedly. “Whatever can you mean?”
Masters turned, and regarded May with intentness, a fond smile showing beneath the curve of his mustache. His voice, as he spoke now, was softer than usual:
“Why,” he said, “I was just thinking on the hardness of fate—sometimes. Here was this old man, with more money than he knew what to do with, and here are we without a penny. There was nothing money could do for him, except gratify a vice—the madness of the miser; and money could do everything[34] for you and me, sweetheart. The thought of it made me say it was a shame the old man didn’t think of us!”
“Well, after all, we couldn’t expect him to,” the girl said placidly, with the sober sense characteristic of her. “Of course, it would have been nice to have his fortune, but we must be patient, Hartley.” She turned her face again to the east, and looked out into the deeper purples of the distance, beholding again fair visions of the happiness to come.
The man’s tones were somber, as he replied:
“I tell you, May, it seems to me like no man’s money.”
The girl aroused herself from dreaming, and for the second time regarded her lover with puzzled inquiry.
“What do you mean by that, Hartley?” she demanded.
“I mean,” came the deliberate answer, “that this hidden fortune of Abernethey’s doesn’t really belong to anyone at this moment.”
“Nonsense!” the secretary exclaimed[35] briskly, confident as to the fact out of her stores of business experience. “The money belongs to the estate. By due course of law, it will go to Saxe Temple, if he fulfills the condition under which it has been left him. If he fails, it will go to the girl and the musicians’ home.” She smiled contentedly, pleasantly conscious of her own erudition, and looked out over the lake again, watching idly the frolicing dance of the swallows to the movement of the waves.
“On the contrary,” Masters continued argumentatively, “at this very moment, the ownership of that gold is problematical. Nobody exactly owns it, although theoretically the title to it is vested in the surrogate’s court, or whatever they call it in this wilderness. As a matter of strict fact, that gold has become hidden treasure. To be sure, the old man has left directions as to who shall have it if found, and who shall have it if it’s not found. But, suppose now, someone else were to find it—not Saxe Temple?” The girl uttered an ejaculation, and faced her lover with startled surprise, meeting the fire of his gaze bewilderedly. “Suppose I[36] were to find it?”
May Thurston sprang to her feet, and regarded the speaker with an expression of sheer amazement, which swiftly changed to one of dismay. The softly-tinted rose of her cheeks flamed suddenly to scarlet; her luminous eyes, usually so gentle, sparkled dangerously. She stared fixedly at the man for a few seconds. At first, he encountered her gaze steadily enough, smiling. But, presently, under the accusation in her look, the smile passed from his lips, and his eyes fell. The girl continued to observe him indignantly for a few moments more. Then, at last, she spoke; and now there was more of sorrow than of anger in her voice:
“Hartley!”
The exclamation was a reproach, and as such the young man recognized it. He rose quickly, caught May’s hands in his, and spoke tenderly in justification of himself, his eyes again meeting hers boldly.
In the days that followed, Masters showed a wily patience. He recurred to the subject of the miser’s gold again and yet again. The girl’s reluctance slowly grew less, as she[37] found herself unable to combat the ingenuities of his reasoning. Finally, she reached a point where she no longer opposed his wishes, although she still held to her own conviction as to the wrongfulness of that which he proposed. The man felt that he could trust to her neutrality, so reluctantly conceded. With this for the time being, he rested content.