The Bondboy Read online

  No matter how hard a woman’s life with a man has been, when he dies she is expected to mourn. That was the standard of fealty and respect in the neighborhood of Isom Chase, as it is in more enlightened communities in other parts of the world. A woman should weep for her man, no matter what bruises on body his heavy hand may leave behind him, or what scars in the heart which no storm of tears can wash away. Custom has made hypocrites of the ladies in this matter the wide world through. Let no man, therefore, lying bloodless and repellent upon his cooling-board, gather comfort to his cold heart when his widow’s tears fall upon his face. For she may be weeping more for what might have been than was.

  Isom Chase’s widow could not weep at all. That was what they said of her, and their pity was more tender, their compassion more sweet. Dry grief, they said. And that is grief like a covered fire, which smolders in the heart and chars the foundations of life. She ought to be crying, to clear her mind and purge herself of the dregs of sorrow, which would settle and corrode unless flushed out by tears; she ought to get rid of it at once, like any other widow, and settle down to the enjoyment of all the property.

  The women around Ollie in her room tried to provoke her tears by reference to Isom’s good qualities, his widely known honesty, his ceaseless striving to lay up property which he knew he couldn’t take with him, which he realized that his young wife would live long years after him to enjoy. They glozed his faults and made virtues out of his close-grained traits; they praised and lamented, with sighs and mournful words, but Isom’s widow could not weep.

  Ollie wished they would go away and let her sleep. She longed for them to put out the lamps and let the moonlight come in through the window and whiten on the floor, and bring her soft thoughts of Morgan. She chafed under their chatter, and despised them for their shallow pretense. There was not one of them who had respected Isom in life, but now they sat there, a solemn conclave, great-breasted sucklers of the sons of men, and insisted that she, his unloved, his driven, abused and belabored wife, weep tears for his going, for which, in her heart, she was glad.

  It was well that they could not see her face, turned into the shadow, nestled against the pillow, moved now and then as by the zephyr breath of a smile. At times she wanted to laugh at their pretense and humbug. To prevent it breaking out in unseemly sound she was obliged to bite the coverlet and let the spasms of mirth waste themselves in her body and limbs.

  When the good women beheld these contractions they looked at each other meaningly and shook dolefully wise heads. Dry grief. Already it was laying deep hold on her, racking her like ague. She would waste under the curse of it, and follow Isom to the grave in a little while, if she could not soon be moved to weep.

  Ollie did not want to appear unneighborly nor unkind, but as the night wore heavily on she at last requested them to leave her.

  “You are all so good and kind!” said she, sincere for the moment, for there was no mistaking that they meant to be. “But I think if you’d take the lamp out of the room I could go to sleep. If I need you, I’ll call.”

  “Now, that’s just what you do, deary,” said red-faced Mrs. Greening, patting her head comfortingly.

  The women retired to the spare bedroom where Joe had slept the night before, and from there their low voices came to Ollie through the open door. She got up and closed it gently, and ran up the window-blind and opened the window-sash, letting in the wind, standing there a little while drawing her gown aside, for the touch of it on her hot breast. She remembered the day that Joe had seen her so, the churn-dasher in her hand; the recollection of what was pictured in his face provoked a smile.

  There was a mist before the moon like a blowing veil, presaging rain tomorrow, the day of the funeral. It was well known in that part of the country that rain on a coffin a certain sign that another of that family would die within a year. Ollie hoped that it would not rain. She was not ready to die within a year, nor many years. Her desire to live was large and deep. She had won the right, Isom had compensated in part for the evil he had done her in leaving behind him all that was necessary to make the journey pleasant.

  As she turned into her bed again and composed herself for sleep, she thought of Joe, with a feeling of tenderness. She recalled again what Isom had proudly told her of the lad’s blood and breeding, and she understood dimly now that there was something extraordinary in Joe’s manner of shielding her to his own disgrace and hurt. A common man would not have done that, she knew.

  She wondered if Morgan would have done it, if he had been called upon, but the yea or the nay of it did not trouble her. Morgan was secure in her heart without sacrifice.

  Well, tomorrow they would bury Isom, and that would end it. Joe would be set free then, she thought, the future would be clear. So reasoning, she went to sleep in peace.

  Ollie’s habit of early rising during the past year of her busy life made it impossible for her to sleep after daylight. For a while after waking next morning she lay enjoying that new phase of her enfranchisement. From that day forward there would be no need of rising with the dawn. Time was her own now; she could stretch like a lady who has servants to bring and take away, until the sun came into her chamber, if she choose.

  Downstairs there were dim sounds of people moving about, and the odors of breakfast were rising. Thinking that it would be well, for the sake of appearances, to go down and assist them, she got up and dressed.

  She stopped before the glass to try her hair in a new arrangement, it was such bright hair, she thought, for mourning, but yet as somber as her heart, bringing it a little lower on the brow, in a sweep from the point of parting. The effect was somewhat frivolous for a season of mourning, and she would have to pass through one, she sighed. After a while, when she went out into Morgan’s world of laughter and chatter and fine things. She smiled, patting her lively tresses back into their accustomed place.

  Ollie was vain of her prettiness, as any woman is, only in her case there was no soul beneath it to give it ballast. Her beauty was pretty much surface comeliness, and it was all there was of her, like a great singer who sometimes is nothing but a voice.

  Sol Greening was in the kitchen with his wife and his son’s wife and two of the more distant neighbor women who had remained overnight. The other men who had watched with Sol around Isom’s bier had gone off to dig a grave for the dead, after the neighborly custom there. As quick as her thought, Ollie’s eyes sought the spot where Isom’s blood had stood in the worn plank beside the table. The stain was gone. She drew her breath with freedom, seeing it so, yet wondering how they had done it, for she had heard all her life that the stain of human blood upon a floor could not be scoured away.

  “We was just gettin’ a bite of breakfast together,” said Mrs. Greening, her red face shining, and brighter for its big, friendly smile.

  “I was afraid you might not be able to find everything,” explained Ollie, “and so I came down.”

  “No need for you to do that, bless your heart!” Mrs. Greening said. “But we was just talkin’ of callin’ you. Sol, he run across something last night that we thought you might want to see as soon as you could.”

  Ollie looked from one to the other of them with a question in her eyes.

  “Something–something of mine?” she asked.

  Mrs. Greening nodded.

  “Something Isom left. Fetch it to her, Sol.”

  Sol disappeared into the dread parlor where Isom lay, and came back with a large envelope tied about with a blue string, and sealed at the back with wax over the knotted cord.

  “It’s Isom’s will,” said Sol, giving it to Ollie. “When we was makin’ room to fetch in the coffin and lay Isom out in it last night, we had to move the center table, and the drawer fell out of it. This paper was in there along with a bundle of old tax receipts. As soon as we seen what was on it, we decided it orto be put in your hands as soon as you woke up.”

  “I didn’t know he had a will,” said Ollie, turning the envelope in her hands, not k
nowing what to make of it, or what to do with it, at all.

  “Read what’s on the in-vellup,” advised Sol, standing by importantly, his hands on his hips, his big legs spread out.

  Outside the sun was shining, tenderly yellow like a new plant. Ollie marked it with a lifting of relief. There would be no rain on the coffin. It was light enough to read the writing on the envelope where she stood, but she moved over to the window, wondering on the way.

  What was a will for but to leave property, and what need had Isom for making one?

  It was an old envelope, its edges browned by time, and the ink upon it was gray.

  My last Will and Testament. Isom Chase.

  N. B.–To be opened by John B. Little, in case he is living at the time of my death. If he is not, then this is to be filed by the finder, unopened, in the probate court.

  That was the superscription in Isom’s writing, correctly spelled, correctly punctuated, after his precise way in all business affairs.

  “Who is John B. Little?” asked Ollie, her heart seeming to grow small, shrinking from some undefined dread.

  “He’s Judge Little, of the county court now,” said Sol. “I’ll go over after him, if you say so.”

  “After breakfast will do,” said Ollie.

  She put the envelope on the shelf beside the clock, as if it did not concern her greatly. Yet, under her placid surface she was deeply moved. What need had Isom for making a will?

  “It saves a lot of lawin’ and wastin’ money on costs,” said Sol, as if reading her mind and making answer to her thought. “You’ll have a right smart of property on your hands to look after for a young girl like you.”

  Of course, to her. Who else was there for him to will his property to? A right smart, indeed. Sol’s words were wise; they quieted her sudden, sharp pain of fear.

  Judge Little lived less than a mile away. Before nine o’clock he was there, his black coat down to his knees, for he was a short man and bowed of the legs, his long ends of hair combed over his bald crown.

  The judge was at that state of shrinkage when the veins can be counted in the hands of a thin man of his kind. His smoothly shaved face was purple from congestion, the bald place on his small head was red. He was a man who walked about as if wrapped in meditation, and on him rested a notarial air. His arms were almost as long as his legs, his hands were extremely large, lending the impression that they had belonged originally to another and larger man, and that Judge Little must have become possessed of them by some process of delinquency against a debtor. As he walked along his way those immense hands hovered near the skirts of his long coat, the fingers bent, as if to lay hold of that impressive garment and part it. This, together with the judge’s meditative appearance, lent him the aspect of always being on the point of sitting down.

  “Well, well,” said he, sliding his spectacles down his nose to get the reading focus, advancing the sealed envelope, drawing it away again, “so Isom left a will? Not surprising, not surprising. Isom was a careful man, a man of business. I suppose we might as well proceed to open the document?”

  The judge was sitting with his thin legs crossed. They hung as close and limp as empty trousers. Around the room he roved his eyes, red, watery, plagued by dust and wind. Greening was there, and his wife. The daughter-in-law had gone home to get ready for the funeral. The other two neighbor women reposed easily on the kitchen chairs, arms tightly folded, backs against the wall.

  “You, Mrs. Chase, being the only living person who is likely to have an interest in the will as legatee, are fully aware of the circumstances under which it was found, and so forth and so forth?”

  Ollie nodded. There was something in her throat, dry and impeding. She felt that she could not speak.

  Judge Little took the envelope by the end, holding it up to the light. He took out his jack-knife and cut the cord.

  It was a thin paper that he drew forth, and with little writing on it. Soon Judge Little had made himself master of its contents, with an Um-m-m, as he started, and with an A-h-h! when he concluded, and a sucking-in of his thin cheeks.

  He looked around again, a new brightness in his eyes. But he said nothing. He merely handed the paper to Ollie.

  “Read it out loud,” she requested, giving it back.

  Judge Little fiddled with his glasses again. Then he adjusted the paper before his eyes like a target, and read:

  I hereby will and bequeath to my beloved son, Isom Walker Chase, all of my property, personal and real; and I hereby appoint my friend, John B. Little, administrator of my estate, to serve without bond, until my son shall attain his majority, in case that I should die before that time. This is my last will, and I am in sound mind and bodily health.

  That was all.

  * * *

  CHAPTER X

  LET HIM HANG

  The will was duly signed and witnessed, and bore a notarial seal. It was dated in the hand of the testator, in addition to the acknowledgment of the notary, all regular, and unquestionably done.

  “His son!” said Sol, amazed, looking around with big eyes. “Why, Isom he never had no son!”

  “Do we know that?” asked Judge Little, as if to raise the question of reasonable doubt.

  Son or no son, until that point should be determined he would have the administration of the estate, with large and comfortable fees.

  “Well, I’ve lived right there acrost the road from him all my life, and all of his, too; and I reckon I’d purty near know if anybody knowed!” declared Sol. “I went to school with Isom, I was one of the little fellers when he was a big one, and I was at his weddin’. My wife she laid out his first wife, and I dug her grave. She never had no children, judge; you know that as well as anybody.”

  Judge Little coughed dryly, thoughtfully, his customary aspect of deep meditation more impressive than ever.

  “Sometimes the people we believe we know best turn out to be the ones we know least,” said he. “Maybe we knew only one side of Isom’s life. Every man has his secrets.”

  “You mean to say there was another woman somewheres?” asked Sol, taking the scent avidly.

  The women against the wall joined Mrs. Greening in a virtuous, scandalized groan. They looked pityingly at Ollie, sitting straight and white in her chair. She did not appear to see them; she was looking at Judge Little with fixed, frightened stare.

  “That is not for me to say,” answered the judge; and his manner of saying it seemed to convey the hint that he could throw light on Isom’s past if he should unseal his lips.

  Ollie took it to be that way. She recalled the words of the will, “My friend, John B. Little.” Isom had never spoken in her hearing that way of any man. Perhaps there was some bond between the two men, reaching back to the escapades of youth, and maybe Judge Little had the rusty old key to some past romance in Isom’s life.

  “Laws of mercy!” said Mrs. Greening, freeing a sigh of indignation which surely must have burst her if it had been repressed.

  “This document is dated almost thirty years ago,” said the judge. “It is possible that Isom left a later will. We must make a search of the premises to determine that.”

  “In sixty-seven he wrote it,” said Sol, “and that was the year he was married. The certificate’s hangin’ in there on the wall. Before that, Isom he went off to St. Louis to business college a year or two and got all of his learnin’ and smart ways. I might ’a’ went, too, just as well as not. Always wisht I had.”

  “Very true, very true,” nodded Judge Little, as if to say: “You’re on the trail of his iniquities now, Sol.”

  Sol’s mouth gaped like an old-fashioned corn-planter as he looked from the judge to Mrs. Greening, from Mrs. Greening to Ollie. Sol believed the true light of the situation had reached his brain.

  “Walker–Isom Walker Chase! No Walkers around in this part of the country to name a boy after–never was.”

  “His mother was a Walker, from Ellinoi, dunce!” corrected his wife.

  “
Oh!” said Sol, his scandalous case collapsing about him as quickly as it had puffed up. “I forgot about her.”

  “Don’t you worry about that will, honey,” advised Mrs. Greening, going to Ollie and putting her large freckled arm around the young woman’s shoulders; “for it won’t amount to shucks! Isom never had a son, and even if he did by some woman he wasn’t married to, how’s he goin’ to prove he’s the feller?”

  Nobody attempted to answer her, and Mrs. Greening accepted that as proof that her argument was indubitable.

  “It–can’t–be–true!” said Ollie.

  “Well, it gits the best of me!” sighed Greening, shaking his uncombed head. “Isom he was too much of a business man to go and try to play off a joke like that on anybody.”

  “After the funeral I would advise a thorough search among Isom’s papers in the chance of finding another and later will than this,” said Judge Little. “And in the meantime, as a legal precaution, merely as a legal precaution and formality, Mrs. Chase––”

  The judge stopped, looking at Ollie from beneath the rims of his specs, as if waiting for her permission to proceed. Ollie, understanding nothing at all of what was in his mind, but feeling that it was required of her, nodded. That seemed the signal for which he waited. He proceeded:

  “As a legal formality, Mrs. Chase, I will proceed to file this document for probate this afternoon.”

  Judge Little put it in his pocket, reaching down into that deep depository until his long arm was engulfed to the elbow. That pocket must have run down to the hem of his garment, like the oil on Aaron’s beard.

  Ollie got up. Mrs. Greening hastened to her to offer the support of her motherly arm.

  “I think I’ll go upstairs,” said the young widow.

  “Yes, you do,” counseled Mrs. Greening. “They’ll be along with the wagons purty soon, and we’ll have to git ready to go. I think they must have the grave done by now.”