IC-NRLF 
 

AN INHERITANCE 
 
THE IVORY SERIES 
 
 Each, 16mo, gilt top, 75 cents 
 
 AMOS JUDD. By J. A. Mitchell 
 Editor of " Life " 
 
 IA. A Love Story. By Q 
 [Arthur T. Quiller-Couch] 
 
 THE SUICIDE CLUB 
 
 By Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 IRRALIE S BUSHRANGER 
 By E. W. Hornung 
 
 A MASTER SPIRIT 
 
 By Harriet Prescott Spofford 
 
 MADAME DELPHINE 
 By George W. Cable 
 
 ONE OF THE VISCONTI 
 By Eva Wilder Brodhead 
 
 A BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 By Cornelia Atwood Pratt 
 
 A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH 
 By E. W. Hornung 
 
 THE MAN WHO WINS 
 By Robert Herrick 
 
 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 By Harriet Prescott Spofford 
 
 Other Volumes to be announced 
 
, fv & ? 
 
 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 1897 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 t RINTINO AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
AN INHERITANCE 
 
 IT is not at all an- unpleasant thing to 
 come into a little property when it is at 
 tended by no personal loss. And there was 
 really no personal loss, as people said, that 
 could attend Miss Barbara Camperdoun s 
 inheritance from a cousin who, it was 
 thought, had wished a number of years ago 
 to be something nearer than a cousin, but 
 had been promptly discouraged by that 
 worthy lady. It was not that Miss Bar 
 bara, as her sister-in-law once said, had no 
 idea of marrying anything less than a 
 prince of the blood royal, and as no prince 
 was proposing, had therefore remained sin 
 gle ; but as she herself said, whatever ulti 
 mate reason she kept unspoken, she pre 
 ferred to be no one in particular in Boston, 
 
 M174941 
 
.-, ?; ,: .-:.-. -AN INHERITANCE 
 
 , , t t c * * * . . t , . . 
 
 so far as a Camperdoun could be no one in 
 particular, to being the first lady in a 
 mountain village. 
 
 Besides, she might not have been first lady, 
 had she gone. The minister s wife no, a 
 country minister s wife, Miss Barbara assured 
 herself, could hardly take precedence of her, 
 with the minister more or less dependent on 
 her good will. But the doctor s wife ah ! 
 everyone was dependent on the good will of 
 the doctor, that viceroy of life and death ; 
 and Dr. Donner was a man of power. She 
 remembered seeing him when breaking a 
 horse for her uncle, a vast black brute of a 
 Bellerophon, while she was a girl visiting at 
 Woodsedge. Someone said that now he was 
 content with horses other people had broken, 
 for driving about the country on his prac 
 tice that went far and wide among the hills. 
 She had seen him occasionally since then, at 
 her brother s house when he had come down 
 about her cousin s affairs, or about his own, 
 from time to time. 
 
 Miss Barbara had gone up to Woodsedge 
 
AN INHERITANCE 3 
 
 now, a day and night s journey, to take pos 
 session of her house, bringing with her Luisa, 
 her exceedingly pretty niece. It was at the 
 close of a long and gay season, through 
 which Luisa had danced and dined and 
 lunched, gone to theatre and opera and pri 
 vate views and five-o clock teas and dinner 
 dances, posed in living pictures and assisted 
 in skirt-dances given for charity to a femi 
 nine audience, and Miss Barbara said the 
 mountain air would bring Luisa back to 
 a normal standard of health and morals. 
 And besides, she was not going alone, any 
 way ! 
 
 Luisa was certainly below normal stand 
 ard now, sleepless by night, and languid 
 and listless by day, and in danger of losing 
 that wonderful bloom, softer than the tint 
 on the petal of the sweetbrier rose, that 
 flushed the oval of her cheek, and bright 
 ened the lustre of the dark eye under its 
 drooping lid and shadowy lashes, and deep 
 ened the red of the tender, pulpy mouth. 
 Miss Barbara had thought, apropos of her 
 
4 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 sister-in-law s speech, and when she looked 
 at Luisa s lithe and slender shape, the 
 abundance of her dark hair, the modelling 
 of every feature, that if royal princes were 
 really an question, here was a girl to be 
 mentioned ! But although, of course, that 
 was idle talk, Miss Barbara gave it to be 
 understood that what money she had and 
 it was not inconsiderable was going to 
 Luisa Camperdoun, Luisa being the one 
 thing in this world that the imperious lady 
 loved better than no, no, as well as her 
 self; about as well, at any rate, as her own 
 way. 
 
 No ; Miss Barbara s fortune was not by 
 any means inconsiderable, as she had said. 
 It had been a fair share of her father s 
 accumulations in the beginning ; and she 
 had always lived with her brother, spend 
 ing but little, saying to people who ap 
 pealed for charity that she had charities of 
 her own, and telling the children on birth 
 days and holidays that she was doing better 
 for them in the future than if she gave them 
 
AN INHERITANCE 5 
 
 gifts now. Of course, all the connection 
 and acquaintance spoke of Barbara s parsi 
 mony ; and the amount of her savings and 
 well-turned-over investments was put at va 
 rious large figures. 
 
 The only deviation from her quiet way 
 of holding her own was when she saw the 
 charm that Luisa was going to develop. 
 Then she had more expensive masters than 
 the father thought he should afford, paying, 
 however, only the difference in price ; and 
 she had taken her a short European journey. 
 When in her nineteenth year Luisa came 
 out, Miss Barbara had supplied her with a 
 half score of bouquets, lest she should not 
 have enough, although, as it happened, she 
 had too many ; she had given the girl every 
 thing which could adorn her beauty; she 
 had bought Symphony tickets at nameless 
 prices, and a box at the horse-show; and 
 furbishing up her own old gowns, some of 
 which might well have been heirlooms, she 
 had chaperoned her at the opera ; had sat 
 out tiresome germans Mrs. Camperdoun s 
 
6 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 delicate health making her unequal to such 
 fatigues and had done her best as a dragon 
 to keep off the youths who danced on a 
 small capital, and to see that beauty had its 
 rights. 
 
 The youth who gave her the most trouble 
 was Penny Gower, an attractive but impe 
 cunious young artist, who danced so fault 
 lessly that it left him with an exhausted air, 
 as if he would really be quite unable to stand 
 if he did not lean back upon past genera 
 tions, an air that was often found irresisti 
 ble. 
 
 To tell the truth, the persistency with 
 which Penrose Gower loitered about her 
 was one of the reasons that made Miss 
 Barbara so resolved upon Luisa s going up 
 into the hill country with her. Penny had 
 been painting Luisa s portrait the work 
 well under way before Miss Barbara knew 
 of it. And as it had gone so far, and was 
 supposed to be a labor of love, Miss Bar 
 bara, on her well-worn principle of getting 
 something for nothing, had allowed the 
 
AN INHERITANCE 7 
 
 sittings to proceed, herself accompanying 
 Luisa, however, in the place of the maid, 
 or of Helen Reynolds, or other victim of 
 the hour. But the presence of Miss Bar 
 bara had brought back the old exhaustion 
 to Penny s manner, and the picture s prog 
 ress had been too slow for Miss Barbara s 
 impatient habit. 
 
 "That young man," she said, "must 
 have the tired feeling you read of in the 
 patent medicine advertisements." 
 
 " She has the stony stare of the gorgon, 
 when she puts up her glass," said Penny, 
 as he was walking on the avenue with 
 Luisa. "She simply paralyzes me; I 
 can t have her coming to the studio, don t 
 you know. I shall find the picture turning 
 into a likeness of her." 
 
 "Do it ! " exclaimed Luisa. "Do it ! 
 It will make your fortune ! Composite 
 picture of a Boston family! Hereditary 
 
 traits coming to the top " 
 
 "Well, I didn t suppose you cared," 
 declared Penny. " But I care." 
 
8 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 "Pshaw! " said Luisa. 
 
 " A man with a heart in his body," said 
 Penny, flicking a pebble out of the way 
 with his stick, as they swept on past the 
 congregated nurses and luxurious babies 
 who monopolize that way, " ought to keep 
 at a distance from you ! 
 
 "Then you are all right," said Luisa, 
 gayly. 
 
 "You know the only reason I haven t a 
 heart is 
 
 "Oh, Penny, Penny!" cried Luisa. 
 "Why will you talk of what you know 
 nothing ! And didn t you learn in your 
 anatomy class that the heart is a delicate 
 organ and will never endure being bandied 
 about so ? It runs a risk of being broken ; 
 and then what will it be good for ? " 
 
 "To dangle at your belt," he said, 
 moodily. 
 
 " How you mix metaphors ! One would 
 think I carried scalps at my belt ! " 
 
 " When you are out on the love-path. 
 But " 
 
AN INHERITANCE 9 
 
 " Oh, I forgot to tell you ! I am going 
 away. Going with Aunt Barbara 
 
 " Going away ! " said Penny, blankly. 
 
 " Yes, into the wilderness." 
 
 11 And the portrait? " 
 
 "Oh, turn it to the wall." 
 
 " Luisa ! The lovely thing why, my 
 whole heart is in it !" 
 
 "There you go again! Well, let your 
 heart stay in it, and it will be perfectly safe." 
 
 1 I believe you have no more heart your 
 self than there is in that picture ! 
 
 "You just said there was a heart in it. 
 Yours, I believe. So you re wrong there, 
 you see. But I m coming home. At least 
 I suppose I m coming home," said Luisa, 
 rather ruefully. " When one is in Aunt 
 Barbara s hands one is never sure of any 
 thing. She has come into some property 
 up there ; an old family place, and all that. 
 And she will have me go with her and it s 
 very provoking just now, and that s the 
 truth!" 
 
 " Well, then," said Penny, brightening. 
 
10 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 " Well, then. It s Woodsedge. Up back 
 of the mountains, a perfectly lovely place for 
 a painter to recreate." And Luisa s face 
 was the color of a carnation. " Now you ll 
 say I haven t any heart ! " she said. " Oh, 
 dear! " pausing a moment at the crossing, 
 bending forward, and looking over to the 
 river, "isn t that Helen and Anne? Yes, 
 it is ; they are going down the alley. Oh, 
 the crews are out ! " 
 
 " I don t care anything about the crews ! " 
 exclaimed Penny. 
 
 "Good-by, then; I do." 
 
 And the naughty coquette was hurrying 
 away through Gloucester Street, a little 
 afraid, a little ashamed, a little amused, and 
 leaving Penny disconsolate Penny who was 
 madly in love with her color and her out 
 lines, her eyes and her dimples, and thought 
 he was in love with her ; Penny whom she 
 liked very well, whose devotion she liked 
 very well, whom she found it pleasant to 
 keep in evidence, but whom she knew it 
 would never do in the world for her to 
 
AN INHERITANCE II 
 
 marry, even if she had wished, which she 
 didn t. Very few men, to be sure, had such 
 eyes as Penny black as a gypsy s, and that 
 sometimes seemed to strike sparks. But then 
 man cannot live on eyes alone, Luisa had 
 said. He was a handsome fellow, with his 
 dark, smooth skin ; although, to be sure, his 
 nose was large. But, there, he hadn t a 
 cent ; so what was the use ? 
 
 She had reached the corner, when she 
 stopped to gather up her skirt and glance 
 over her shoulder. Penny was standing 
 where she left him, leaning back a little on 
 his stick ; but the girl who had accosted 
 him those nodding plumes, the chinchilla 
 capes, that bright plaid of the silken skirt- 
 lining blowing out on the wind that eddied 
 all about the wearer Luisa murmured to 
 herself that she never could imagine what 
 Penny Gower saw to flirt with in that ab 
 surd Fanny Fairfield ! 
 
 So Miss Barbara had come up to Woods- 
 edge, her nerves very much racked by the 
 day and night s travel; and after resting 
 
12 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 another day and night, had proceeded to ex 
 plore the house and feel herself in possession 
 of her new property. 
 
 The commercial value of the property here 
 was, of course, nothing at all to her in com 
 parison with its sentimental value. She went 
 over the house with Luisa, somewhat to the 
 disgust of old Martha, who had been undis 
 puted mistress, servant, nurse, and friend, 
 and who now had to learn that there was 
 but one mistress where Miss Barbara was; 
 and she pointed out its family features the 
 room where her grandfather was born, the 
 room where his mother used to sit in state 
 and receive homage of the lesser people, 
 their pictures it was no wonder that Miss 
 Barbara was an imperious person. There 
 was still much of the beautiful French 
 porcelain about, a couple of hundred years 
 old, perhaps, that had been brought up into 
 the wilderness on the backs of men who 
 knew what a misstep meant, and some of 
 the antique silver. 
 
 "It s a real find," said Miss Barbara. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 13 
 
 " To think of Launce eating with a gold 
 spoon up here in the Ultima Thule every 
 day of his silly life, and taking pleasure in 
 it! " 
 
 " They will be lovely for afternoon teas," 
 said Luisa. 
 
 "This old Martha must be a very care 
 ful person ; perhaps she will do to keep on 
 with some others. I don t know but we 
 shall have to turn the place into a summer 
 mansion, after all, and bring up your father 
 and mother and Bob and the boys. It has 
 every requisite, you see ancestral quality, 
 numberless rooms, plenty of land Good 
 ness, what a gardener can make of these 
 grounds! mountain air and, bless my 
 soul, what scenery ! " lifting her lorgnon to 
 look out, a little patronizingly, at the great 
 mountains veiled with sunshine and purple 
 that seemed to be offering her their hospi 
 tality. 
 
 " We can have golf links " 
 
 1 If you want. Croquet is good enough 
 for me, though." 
 
14 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 "Well, as you never play either, Aunt 
 Barbara " 
 
 "To be sure, the boys will cry havoc 
 and let loose the dogs of war here and get 
 into that old bog," said Miss Barbara, pur 
 suing her own thoughts. "I don t know 
 if I will have them this year, at any rate. 
 You and I can be very comfortable here 
 without them for one summer " 
 
 The whole summer ? cried Luisa, in 
 dismay. 
 
 "The whole summer. You are run 
 down, and need a good rest from dancing 
 and flirting." 
 
 " Well, I sha n t build up if I am bored 
 to death with nothing to do and no one to 
 see." 
 
 "You shall have a horse. And here is 
 this great Bursar for protector. I never did 
 like a mastiff before ; but he seems to have 
 taken quite a fancy to us. And you can 
 roam the country with him, and be out 
 doors most of the time. 
 
 "I shall simply die ! " 
 
AN INHERITANCE 15 
 
 " Oh, no. There s a very good doctor 
 here, I believe. Yes, we might do worse. 
 And we 11 try it." 
 
 " Aunt Barbara, you look exactly like 
 that old portrait, the last one in the lower 
 hall." 
 
 " I ? We used to call her the Iron Lady. 
 She was a grandmother or a great-grand 
 mother somewhere. 
 
 11 That s what it means then your iron 
 will. Wouldn t Penny have a fine time 
 with these portraits ! " 
 
 "Oh! Penny!" 
 
 " The strange old masks ! It seems as if 
 we either had more ancestors than other 
 people and a queer lot, too or else that 
 they had a furious habit of hanging them 
 selves " 
 
 " Luisa ! " said Miss Barbara. " How you 
 do let your tongue run away with you ! " 
 
 "Why, what earthly harm in hanging 
 themselves on the wall in gilt frames? No, 
 some of them are old carved wood, aren t 
 they ? Why, what of it ? They never any 
 
I( 5 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 of them paid the penalty of their crimes at 
 the rope s end, did they ? " 
 
 "I never knew they committed any 
 crimes," said Miss Barbara, coldly. But 
 she was quite white for a few moments. 
 She alone, perhaps, a keeper of traditions, 
 knew who they were in every generation of 
 the Camperdouns that had themselves pulled 
 down the eternal shadows about them, as 
 her young sister Lona had done, with her 
 own hands. She had always tried to keep 
 
 the whole subject out of her thoughts it 
 
 was never spoken of before the children 
 and her iron will held her in good stead 
 there. She pulled herself together now. 
 " Well, there were a good many of them," 
 she said. " I suppose travelling portrait- 
 painters happened along 
 
 " The very thing for Penny ! I ll write 
 him how to turn his summer to account ! 
 "Oh, let Penny rest! " 
 "Aunt Barbara, you are dangerously near 
 slang. Penny could take his brush and turn 
 those ogres, with their eyes looking all ways 
 
AN INHERITANCE 17 
 
 of a Sunday, into really valuable antiquities. 
 I m sure that going through the upper halls 
 at midnight here I shall have to run. I 
 shall know the house is haunted. What 
 if a moonbeam suddenly lights up that pale 
 girl whose eyes look as if she were out of 
 her head they are, anyway " 
 
 " There, there, Luisa, don t cultivate 
 ridiculous notions ! You will be very proud 
 of these old portraits some day. Yes, the 
 more I see the house and place, the better 
 I think of it all and its possibilities. And 
 as for Penny there, Luisa, don t let me 
 hear anything more about him. He bored 
 me to death before I left town, and I should 
 like to have one place free from him. Now, 
 you take Bursar and run along. I am go 
 ing through the papers in Cousin Launce s 
 desks. I mean to do the thing up thor 
 oughly, and know just where I stand, and 
 all about it." 
 
 "Poor Aunt Barbara! It s an awful 
 task. Can t I help you? Let me have 
 some of them 
 
1 8 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 " Didn t you hear me say I was going 
 through them myself? What good would 
 it do me to have you read them ? Besides, 
 if Launce had not left them here I shouldn t 
 feel as if he were willing I should read 
 them. To be sure, he may have forgotten 
 to destroy them. He he was not per 
 fectly well in his last years. However," 
 said Miss Barbara, in a more sprightly 
 manner, "I should have had the freedom 
 of everything if he had had his way. So 
 I sha n t hesitate. But I know he did 
 not mean you should overlook his papers, 
 at any rate." 
 
 "All right, then," said Luisa. "I am 
 sure I don t want to." And she pursed 
 her pretty lips in a whistle that Bursar, 
 suffering from loneliness, bounded to hear, 
 and was off with him into the overrun 
 and long-neglected garden, where the spring 
 was just beginning to pout in leaf and bud 
 of the old primroses and sweetbriers and 
 spice-buds and honeysuckles. "I suppose," 
 said Luisa, touching the long, red sprays 
 
AN INHERITANCE 19 
 
 of the bare climbing roses half tenderly, 
 " that the women imprisoned here in their 
 lonely lives loved every inch of you. I 
 dare say there was some poor sweet girl 
 I will trim you now and help you for 
 their sakes. I shall really feel as if I were 
 doing something for them. I must have 
 had, all told, so much gayer a life than 
 they." 
 
 And she began to disentangle the stems, 
 and went searching for a trowel to open 
 the earth around their roots, old Martha 
 looking at her askance from the kitchen 
 window. But at that, Bursar wanted a 
 frolic, or perhaps he recognized Brow trot 
 ting along after the doctor s gig, for he 
 was over the wall like a ball, and Luisa, 
 running to the gate and throwing it open, 
 rushed almost into the arms of a young 
 girl, into whose face an apple-blossom color 
 had just mounted a lovely young girl with 
 a sort of ivory fairness on her perfect feat 
 ures, and with eyes like stars in midnight 
 blue, and pale blonde hair in great masses, 
 
20 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 and a smile like sunshine, as superbly 
 straight and tall a young girl as Botticelli s 
 Flora. 
 
 "Oh, I beg your pardon," said Luisa; 
 " I was afraid the dog would run away." 
 
 " He has," said the young girl, smiling. 
 " He won t come back to-day. He loves 
 to go with Brow and the doctor. But he s 
 all right. I suppose I suppose," she said, 
 hesitatingly, and looking at Luisa a little 
 wistfully, " that you are Miss Camperdoun. 
 And I am Mary Swann. My father is the 
 minister, you know. You are working in 
 the garden. Don t you want to let me 
 help you ? I am a famous gardener." 
 
 "I was going to work in the garden," 
 said Luisa, "and I should have been de 
 lighted to have you help me. But now 
 we will sit down on this bench and have 
 Martha bring us some lemonade and sweet 
 cakes. Poor old Martha ! She thinks I am 
 the woman of Babylon now ; but she is go 
 ing to adore me before the summer is over. 
 And you shall tell me about this place, 
 
AN INHERITANCE 21 
 
 so that I can find my way I mean among 
 the people. As for these mountains, did 
 you ever know anything like them? I 
 never did. They look as if they were made 
 of sunshine and purple chiffon. I suppose 
 they can be ugly enough when it rains, 
 though." 
 
 " No, never, never ! " 
 
 " Oh, you love them, I see, just as I love 
 Boylston Street, and the milliners windows, 
 and Englander s and the Common, and the 
 Back Bay fens, and all. Well, you are the 
 minister s daughter," leaning forward, her 
 elbows on her knees, and surveying her. 
 "I suppose you are awfully good. Who 
 was that youth I saw then tall, blonde, 
 with black eyebrows, going up the road ? 
 There he is, looking round now," said 
 Luisa, half turning to peer through the 
 crack of the open, back -garden gate. 
 
 " That is John Donner," said Mary 
 Svvann, and the apple-blossom color became 
 that of a damask rose. 
 
 1 That is John Donner, is it?" said 
 
22 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 Luisa, looking at her with a bubbling laugh. 
 "And now, tell me all about John Don- 
 ner." And the two girls were on the way 
 to be friends without more ado. 
 
 It was at the same moment that Luisa 
 had run for the trowel that a similar sensa 
 tion of pity for cribbed and cabined lives 
 passed here touched Miss Barbara with the 
 shiver that people say you have when some 
 one is stepping on your grave. 
 
 "This is nonsense," said Miss Barbara, 
 and then she wiped her reading-glasses and 
 adjusted herself to her task. 
 
 It was not a very interesting task at first 
 Miss Barbara s. There were copies of vari 
 ous old wills and decrees of court; the 
 Camperdouns had been a litigious race. 
 There were deeds of land and woodland, 
 which she examined carefully; and there 
 were old account-books, which she handled 
 more cursorily; and there were some dia 
 ries brief, threadbare statements of the 
 days of dull and simple lives ; and then 
 there were old letters. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 23 
 
 They were yellow, and falling apart in 
 folds, these letters. Here was one a love- 
 letter ? Yet, in what stilted phrase ! But 
 out of it dropped a pressed and faded rose, 
 and all the pride and passion hidden in the 
 stately words were revealed in the flower. 
 A tear sprang in Miss Barbara s eye ; they 
 were her own people. She felt how precious 
 the pompous and sounding old letter once 
 had been. Here was the epistle her grand 
 father had sent from the Indies, whither he 
 had sailed, beginning, "Esteemed Wife." 
 And, yes, here was the reply, " My Hon 
 ored Husband." Were they really alive 
 then, these people ? Did their hearts beat ? 
 A still shining little lock of a dead baby s 
 hair, that she had sent him as if he must 
 have something to touch of the child born 
 and dead in his absence, fell from the next 
 letter and answered her. 
 
 Here were her own letters to her Cousin 
 Launce, among them the one in which she 
 had refused to marry him. " We are cous 
 ins," she had said in it, "and that might 
 
24 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 be bad enough if we were all as other 
 people, we Camperdouns. But with the 
 dark possibility that hangs over every one 
 of us, it would be inviting ruin. Perhaps 
 we would better not see each other often, 
 if ever. I shall not marry." 
 
 His answer had been brief and to the 
 point: "Neither shall I." 
 
 Plainly, he had lived up to his determi 
 nation. There were no love-letters from 
 other women. There were a few business 
 letters, on the backs of which he had noted 
 memoranda, a passing thought, an extract 
 of something he had been reading, one or 
 two letters from friends one where the 
 signature caught her eye first, John Donner, 
 the same name as that at the foot of the 
 letter lately announcing her cousin s death 
 and her inheritance; Dr. Donner telling 
 her she was the executor of Mr. Camper - 
 doun s will, made many years ago. 
 
 " I don t know now whether I am eaves 
 dropping or not," said Miss Barbara. 
 "He s alive but it s part of the business, 
 
AN INHERITANCE 25 
 
 I suppose. All the same " and she 
 
 smoothed out the old letter, as she had done 
 the others, and read : 
 
 " Thanks to you, dear boy, the work is 
 over, and he that was Rusticus salutes you 
 Medicus. Nor shall I be so long as I had 
 feared in paying what it cost. I am paying 
 what it cost now. 
 
 " I am bringing a wife to Woodsedge. 
 That surprises you. It did me. 
 
 "Of course, you know, remembering the 
 nights we had in Egypt, that it was no 
 thought of mine. But while I was at work, 
 some good friends saw the chance and 
 smoothed the way. And I simply fell in 
 with their suggestion. She has let me tell 
 you a little pot of money. With that I 
 shall look up my debts, and buy old Pil- 
 cott s place and practice in Woodsedge ; I 
 always liked that house. I shall turn the 
 place into a stock-farm, and start a new 
 breed of horses do what I must in the 
 way of my profession, and no more. And 
 
26 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 for the rest, there shall be marauding of the 
 hills with you, and all the pleasures of our 
 youth so long as youth lasts. 
 
 "The only trouble is that she may wish to 
 make a man walk too straight a line. Her 
 own lines are very straight a girl who 
 never was young, and who looks at life 
 through the narrow chink of the church 
 door. Oh, well, it s a hard world, and 
 very few of us get out of it alive. But when 
 I remember your flashing Cousin Barbara, 
 when I remember the pretty girls across the 
 hills and far away 
 
 " There it is, old fellow. I had to pour 
 it out or die, and you are all I have. But 
 keep it to yourself. It is Mrs. Donner, you 
 know. And Mrs. Donner shall be treated 
 with respect. But a wife is not the end of 
 the world, my boy. A hard world ? No 
 it isn t, no it isn t ! It s a good, gay world ! 
 And with many a bout before us yet, I am 
 yours to command, ")OHN DONNER." 
 
 Miss Barbara read the letter again. Some- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 27^ 
 
 how it made her heart stand still with a 
 sense of the tragedy in it. 
 
 " Was the man writing about his wife ? " 
 she said, as she folded it up and put it back 
 into the desk with the rest of the papers. 
 "Was he writing of a woman who had 
 given him not only her money but herself? 
 What incredible baseness ! The lout the 
 scoundrel ! I could not have believed a 
 man capable of it ! What a contemptible 
 thief! Can it be it is impossible! It 
 can t be But it is! The man who 
 wrote me of Launce s death ; he has always 
 been close to the poor fellow. But I don t 
 understand. That man who met us at the 
 station, and drove us over here with what 
 he called his lightning-shod team; that 
 silent man with his rugged face, his eyes 
 that were set in his head like wells and 
 seemed to reflect the very blue of heaven 
 and all its beneficence why, that man 
 looked as if he might be a messenger of 
 God ! Dear me it is the greatest mystery 
 I ever came across. But there were never 
 
28 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 two John Donners here, and he is the one 
 I saw breaking in that great black brute 
 and looking like a centaur, nearly forty 
 years ago, for I reminded him of it. Yes ; 
 and he had a sort of blind worship of 
 Launce, I remember. Well, the longer you 
 live the more you know," said Miss Bar 
 bara. "I wouldn t have thought," she 
 presently began again, " I wouldn t have 
 thought any one out of state s prison 
 could He ought to be in state s prison 
 now ; that s where he ought to be ! That 
 poor girl, that poor woman he married 
 I wonder what became of her ? " And 
 Miss Barbara s eyes wandered dreamily to 
 the window of the west parlor where she 
 sat. " Dear me! " she cried. "Do they 
 have countesses up here in the woods? 
 Who is that, I wonder ? And she sur 
 veyed with an admiring interest the figure 
 moving slowly up the path, and bearing a 
 parcel in her hands as if it were a crown 
 upon a cushion ; a tall and slender person, 
 a small, white shawl upon her shoulders, 
 
AN INHERITANCE ^ 29 
 
 carrying herself and her napkin-covered dish 
 with a gentle, high-bred air. " I declare," 
 said Miss Barbara, aloud, " I should think 
 a Copley had stepped out of a portrait, if 
 her dress were silk and satin instead of hod 
 den gray. Who is it, Martha?" as pres 
 ently that dame opened the door, holding 
 a platter of golden butter-balls set in great 
 green leaves and bunches of scarlet blos 
 som. 
 
 " She wouldn t come in, then," said 
 Martha, " seein s you wuz jes come, an 
 tired, she ses. She s jes fetched this over 
 in the way of you feelin among friends. 
 Ye needn t set nothin in pertickler by it, 
 though; she s doin ez much fer ev ybuddy. 
 She keeps the keys fer the poor o this 
 perrish, an it s a wide an along one," said 
 Martha, a little defiantly, as if Miss Barbara 
 had challenged her. " I do know w at 
 she ll do in heaven with no poor nor sick 
 nor dyin ter be seen ter. She s been a-tend- 
 in the wounded feet o the Lord ever sence 
 she set her own in this place an come here 
 
30 ;: AN INHERITANCE 
 
 for its best blessing, arter the doctor him 
 self. It s Mis Dr. Donner, ma am." 
 
 " Oh, Aunt Barbara," cried Luisa, as she 
 came into the west parlor, where Miss Bar 
 bara was still sitting, speechless, " I ve fallen 
 in with the loveliest girl a real wild rose of 
 a girl, if she wasn t so white an exquisite 
 creature ! But there must be something in 
 the air here that makes people charming, for 
 I met the most beautiful creature at the gate. 
 She wasn t young ; she was she was 
 
 "All of my age, Luisa. Say it," said 
 Miss Barbara. 
 
 "And she wasn t handsome; she wasn t 
 pretty. She was simply heavenly looking. 
 Oh, one of the angels bearing the Grail 
 might have looked just so. A middle-aged 
 angel, you know." 
 
 " She was bearing butter in a lordly dish," 
 said Miss Barbara, in reply. But to herself 
 she said, " And that was Dr. Donner s wife. 
 The woman with a pot of money. Well, 
 there s an old song I ve heard that says, 
 They went up through much tribulation. 
 Perhaps she knows what it means." 
 
II 
 
 IT had been a very unhappy woman that 
 came so long ago to Woodsedge, a month s 
 bride, the wife of John Donner. 
 
 Always a silent woman, now she was 
 stricken dumb. In the month she had dis 
 covered what her pot of money meant. If 
 she were not absolutely sure in the matter, 
 her suspicion was as sad as certainty. 
 
 She had lived the quiet life of her native 
 seaport more than ordinarily quiet, perhaps, 
 owing to the long illness of her mother, 
 whose death had been followed by that of 
 her father with few other pleasures than 
 that of church-going, an eventless walk with 
 a friend, an afternoon sail, maybe a lecture. 
 Her temperament had been attuned to the 
 calm and even tenor of the sick-room if 
 the sky were blue and the sun shone the 
 pitch was rather higher than if the rain 
 
32 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 poured in a gray torrent ; but when the rain 
 poured, a little more effort was given to 
 maintain the tone. 
 
 When she first saw John Donner, who had 
 come down with a fellow-student from the 
 medical school for a Sunday, something 
 stirred in her heart which she had never felt 
 before. She did not fairly know what it 
 was; but perhaps under its stress her gaze 
 rested on the young man a little longer than 
 she was aware. When he lifted his own 
 eyes and their glance happened to catch 
 hers, a color dyed her face that made him 
 look again, and the gray eyes under their 
 straight black brows fell as swiftly. His 
 friend saw the glance and the color, made 
 a jest, and mentioned her money a small 
 enough sum of money, but riches to the 
 young student helped to his profession by 
 the kindness of Launce Camperdoun and 
 others and the rest was easy. He found 
 that much warmth of expression was not 
 needed ; Nancy had been bred in the ways 
 where still waters run deep, and her life 
 
AN INHERITANCE 33 
 
 took the fresh force and swung over into its 
 new channel, and flowed along there with 
 the strength and depth of a great river. 
 
 It was all the sweetest surprise to her. 
 Her plain, immobile face and tall, gaunt fig 
 ure, her silence, her shyness, her ignorance 
 of the social arts, had hindered admiration 
 and attention; she had never supposed she 
 would have a lover. And suddenly heaven 
 had opened to her. Certainly, in those 
 bright days she did not feel as if she walked 
 the earth. Yet no one would have dreamed 
 from her serious demeanor that she was oc 
 cupied with anything but a business agree 
 ment. She loved the taking, handsome 
 scamp with her whole heart. She was glad 
 that she had money to give him ; she gave it 
 all, and at once. She wished that she had 
 beauty for him; but what did it signify 
 when he was so high-minded that he did not 
 heed its absence, and looked for an inner 
 beauty in her soul ? He imagined it there, 
 she said in her humility ; but for his sake 
 she would make it grow there the desert 
 
34 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 should blossom as the rose. She made few 
 confidences to those about her she hardly 
 made a confidant of heaven; but into her 
 formal prayer would sometimes escape his 
 name as she implored the Lord s best bless 
 ing for him, with every fibre of her being 
 trembling. She little dreamed the fiery 
 path they must tread together to reach that 
 blessing. 
 
 And then they were married and went 
 away. He had a fancy to know a little of 
 the wider world before going back among 
 the hills. He had never had the means to 
 do so before. He wanted to see some races, 
 some great stables, to buy some Kentucky 
 horses. She was a sort of necessary adjunct 
 to the journey. He was not unkind to her ; 
 he was even kind, after a fashion now and 
 then. As for her, she asked nothing more ; 
 she did not know there was anything more 
 to ask ; she was his ; they were to be to 
 gether all their lives. Perhaps her admiring 
 worship was not unpleasing, at first ; it made 
 him think that he was not wholly a bad fel- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 35 
 
 low, when he thought of it at all. Then he 
 didn t care. Then he forgot it. 
 
 But everything was so novel, she had no 
 time to consider herself; the great world 
 was slipping by her like the scenes of a 
 panorama. Instead of caresses, she con 
 tented herself with his masterful air of cool 
 proprietorship. She was a part of this 
 world, she no longer stood outside ; she 
 had entered into its broad currents ; she was 
 a wife, the wife of a man built on the scale 
 of great men, noble, fine, past her imagin 
 ing alas, as yet, ail of her imagining ! 
 
 She lived a month in her fool s paradise. 
 And she awoke one night in her room at 
 the cheap hotel where he had left her 
 while he pursued his pleasures, to see Dr. 
 Donner sitting in a chair in the middle 
 of the floor, his coat off and his hat on, 
 and with other disarrangements of undress, 
 his feet outstretched, his head hanging for 
 ward, and the gas blazing over him, lost 
 in a drunken doze. 
 
 He woke with a start at her exclamation, 
 
3 6 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 looked about in a bewildered way, and then 
 his head fell forward again. " Sold out! " 
 he was muttering to himself, in a thick 
 undertone, with now and then an oath. 
 "Thass so, Donner. Gone for a shil n , 
 gone! Go the price, though," he mum 
 bled again, fetching himself up from another 
 doze, with a lurch on his chair. " Sma 
 price. Saddled with cumbrance. Good 
 woman good woman s ever was my Nan 
 nie O," with a tipsy laugh; and one foot 
 went up in a jig-step, to the danger of his 
 equilibrium on the seat. " Lock self in an 
 los key," he was babbling, presently again. 
 "Go a jailer damn fool! Plain s they 
 make em. Worse n a scarecrow," he ex 
 claimed, angrily, at that. "Puts me in 
 mind stock-farm horses pot o money," 
 and he was nodding off again. "Treat her 
 with respec ," he gurgled then, with another 
 start. Mis Donner no foolin no foolin 
 ith Mis Donner hear wha I say ? Pot o* 
 money blamed cumbrance, all the same ! 
 Married her money, didn t marry her! " 
 
AN INHERITANCE 37 
 
 For half an instant she supposed it was 
 some sudden attack of illness. With the 
 next breath she knew all about it. But it 
 was as if a thunderbolt had struck her. She 
 lay cold and stiff, unable to move hand or 
 foot, a breath out of the very iciness of 
 death blowing over her as she gazed at him. 
 And then her eyes grew hot with scalding 
 tears, and she was trembling like a leaf her 
 idol, her idol ! Everything was shattered 
 with that, every hope, every joy. Her 
 heart was lead. The world had come to 
 an end. She gathered her senses with pain, 
 to wish wildly that she were dead, that he 
 that he, her love, her husband, had died 
 before this evil chance. And while she lay 
 there half lifeless, now and again a long 
 shudder sweeping her from top to toe, she 
 heard these dreadful words. 
 
 To tell the truth, they affected her but 
 little at the time. His love of her, or the 
 contrary, was of small consequence now. 
 That went down in all the other ruin. 
 
 But something must be done. She slipped 
 
38 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 out of bed as soon as she could command 
 her movements, and went to him, taking his 
 hat, unbuttoning his collar, half holding her 
 head away from his hideous breath, trying 
 to remove his boots. He slowly opened 
 and rolled his fiery eyes upon her. 
 
 " Lemme lone!" he said. "Lemme 
 lone cat ! " And then, as if possessed of 
 a sudden fury, he clenched his fist and lifted 
 it to strike her, but paused with it doubled 
 in the air. "No," he said. "Mis Don- 
 ner. Treat her with respec . All the 
 same, cumbrance." And he rose, swing 
 ing and steadying himself, stepped off with 
 dignity on his heels, and fell forward on 
 the side of the bed in a stupor. 
 
 With all her strength and all the knowl 
 edge she had gained in her long experience 
 of handling the sick, she at last got off a 
 portion of his clothes, had a cold-water 
 compress on his head, covered him up, put 
 the room in order, and throwing on her 
 own wrapper, sat down for her dreadful vigil 
 with her dead happiness. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 39 
 
 It was in the gray of the morning when 
 he awoke, with his brain emerging from the 
 fervors that had obscured it, pushed away 
 the compress from his aching head and saw 
 her kneeling at the window, her hair drop 
 ping round her poor, bent face, her hands 
 folded in an intensity of prayer, the curtain 
 up, a great silver star shining over her in 
 the whitening east. He looked at her a 
 moment curiously. 
 
 " Damned rascal ! " he said then to him 
 self. "Don t deserve her. Looks like a 
 Saint Something. Who ever heard of a 
 Saint Nancy?" And he laughed and 
 turned over into sleep again. 
 
 When he once more awoke, in the middle 
 of the afternoon this time, she sat heating 
 over a spirit-lamp a bowl of broth that she 
 had ordered to the room. He watched her 
 in silence. He was faint and dizzy it 
 seemed good to have some one caring for 
 him. As she turned and met his eyes, he 
 saw what havoc he had wrought in her. 
 "Made a beastly fool of myself last 
 
40 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 night, Nancy!" he said. "Never hap 
 pened before. And sha n t happen again," 
 with which two lies he meant to comfort 
 her. And he did. 
 
 She ran to his side and threw her arms 
 round him, and forgave him everything. 
 And then, before he could lift his hand to 
 caress her as he had intended, she remem 
 bered those words of his, those deadly bru 
 tal betraying words of his, and rose quickly 
 and drew back out of his reach, frozen half 
 to marble. 
 
 "No, "she said, "I will believe you. 
 It was an accident. A man like you will 
 not let himself down to a lower level. You 
 will not throw away your future. 
 
 He had expected reproaches and beseech- 
 ings and implorations for her sake. She 
 had put it all for his own sake. She didn t 
 cry out when she was hurt. Well, she was 
 something of a thoroughbred, after all. 
 
 He asked her, as soon as he was on his 
 feet, what she would like for some last en 
 joyment before going home, expecting, of 
 
AN INHERITANCE 41 
 
 course, she would take a gala night in all 
 the stir and light and color of the play. 
 But she chose instead to hear a preacher 
 who had a way of searching men s souls, 
 and he went along with her. It was a good 
 while since he had been in any church. 
 He was rather amused with himself. He 
 looked about at the people, expecting to be 
 amused by them, also. But whether it was 
 the personality of the preacher, or his mes 
 sage, a light seemed to flash out of darkness 
 upon John Dormer, and although it was 
 gone again directly, he had it to remember. 
 He had also to remember the look in his 
 wife s face as the great music of choir and 
 organ rolled over them a look in the gray 
 eyes that startled him with the might of 
 something beyond his ken. "She shall 
 have a pew of her own," he promised him 
 self. 
 
 And the next day they started for home. 
 Home ! She half wondered at herself that 
 she let him call it so, and that she went 
 with him there. But in the long sleepless 
 
42 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 night of her first misery she had chosen her 
 way. She could not go back to the place 
 she had left ; nor had she the money to do 
 so ; all her money was in his hands. To 
 be sure, she could go to work she was 
 well and strong. " But I promised," she 
 said, "for better, for worse. I will not 
 break my vow because his was false. He 
 needs me, too. I must help him. And 
 oh, I cannot, I cannot leave him ! Oh, 
 no oh, no; I love him still!" She had 
 resolved before, that as he was unaware of 
 his revelation on that drunken night, she 
 would never let him know of it, or guess 
 that she understood what he had done, or 
 knew of his feeling of repugnance to her. 
 She would appear to take things for granted. 
 She had no expectation of ever changing 
 his feeling. That was a thing impossible, 
 she said, with her hopeless face, her stiff 
 manner, her lack of the pretty graces of 
 pretty women. In a day and night at a 
 grand hotel she had seen beautiful ladies in 
 beautiful toilets with a sort of alarm; if 
 
AN INHERITANCE 43 
 
 she had had their gowns she could not have 
 worn them so ; she would not have had a 
 notion how to dress her thin, sleek hair in 
 the bewildering way of theirs. She com 
 prehended that there was a fine art of dress 
 of which she was ignorant. She saw, too, 
 that her husband was so indifferent to her 
 that he was not even ashamed of her poor, 
 home-made finery. She felt as if she would 
 like to put on black, the deepest crape of 
 mourning, and wear it the rest of her life ; 
 she never did wear anything again but 
 sombre tints and the gray and white which 
 afterward became a sort of lovely fashion of 
 her own. She had seen his glance follow 
 ing those women she would be willing to 
 be boiled in oil if she might become beau 
 tiful enough to be followed in that way by 
 those eyes ! Wild fancy, hopeless thought ! 
 And there was work to do. All that night 
 in the rush and jolt of the cars through 
 the defiles and up the grades of the hills, 
 she prayed for John Donner s soul, and a 
 passion leaped into her prayer like the 
 
44 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 fresh blood to a wound, giving it life that it 
 seemed must bring its answer. 
 
 And so she took up the days at Woods- 
 edge, in the old-fashioned white house upon 
 the green, that John had always wanted and 
 had now bought, with its paddocks and 
 pastures up the hill behind it, on which he 
 soon had a notable knot of horses wild, 
 lovely creatures, that gave a new life to the 
 dark mountain on whose slope they gal 
 loped. 
 
 It was well for Mrs. Donner that she had 
 her household duties to attend to, a house 
 wife by nature and training, for otherwise 
 she could not have endured, with all her 
 other trouble, and the confronting of the 
 strange women who called upon her, the 
 presence of the dark and unfamiliar moun 
 tains. She wanted to push them off; they 
 worried and saddened and oppressed her ; 
 she longed so for a sight, a sound, a smell 
 of the sea, that sometimes her soul was sick 
 within her. 
 
 But she knew that she must put a stop to 
 
AN INHERITANCE 45 
 
 all that, for the little life that was coming 
 must not be clouded by the mother s 
 gloom ; and she tried to think of everything 
 that was bright and beautiful, and to go 
 singing about her work all the glad, sweet 
 hymns she knew. She hung out bits of 
 string and wool for the building birds, and 
 felt as if she had friends with the other 
 mothers when they took them. But she 
 had hard work to keep her cheer. 
 
 She saw very little of her husband. She 
 began to be sure that he was not obeying 
 half the calls that she so laboriously an 
 swered at the door, and that when he came 
 home late at night it was not because he had 
 been with the sick or dying. She did not 
 exactly know where he had been, of course. 
 But in snatches of talk that she overheard 
 when Launce Camperdoun was about, and 
 in other ways, she was vaguely aware of the 
 existence of the tavern in between the hills, 
 of the race-course and trotting-park on the 
 intervale beyond Loon Mountain, of Daw- 
 lish s on the other side of the quaking 
 
46 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 heath, and the roystering companions, the 
 betting and card-playing there. As for the 
 events that made the life of those places 
 gay, she had no power of imagination to 
 picture them, and she did not even conject 
 ure them. But she had such a reverence 
 for her husband s profession, as something 
 that stood guard at the gates of life and 
 death and waited on the will of God, that 
 he was himself involved in it in a measure, 
 even when she knew he was doing wrong ; 
 he had received a consecration ; he must in 
 the end come out right, and she ignored all 
 but the end. 
 
 In the meantime, as far as she could, she 
 made up for his deficiencies by her own 
 presence, and with little gifts out of the 
 pantry-stores that had been sent from her 
 old home when broken up, and out of 
 her abundance of jellies ; and with delicate 
 tisanes and broths from her kitchen, too, 
 Mrs. Donner made herself welcome in many 
 a sick-room long distances apart ; and being 
 there, it was she, who had closed her moth- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 47 
 
 er s and her father s eyes, who made it easier 
 for these others to go out of life. 
 
 One night when John came home from a 
 long bout, he found that a patient whom he 
 had neglected and forgotten had been taken 
 home by her where she herself could do the 
 nursing, and where the doctor must needs be 
 on hand more or less. 
 
 * You are a good woman, Nancy," he 
 said, after a moment. 
 
 " I thought you would prefer it," she re 
 plied, as if it had been not his suggestion 
 but his wish. 
 
 "But I am not going to have the house 
 turned into a hospital for every acquain- 
 tance-in-law, with you for head nurse," he 
 said. 
 
 "You shall if you like." 
 
 And with half an idea that it had been 
 his wish, and with an interest that sur 
 prised himself, be bent all his skill to the 
 cure ; and Dr. Donner s resources were not 
 small. 
 
 The people who had wondered at Dr. 
 
48 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 Dormer when he brought his wife to Woods- 
 edge were beginning now to wonder at 
 themselves. 
 
 And then the long winter was at hand, 
 with the snows borne on whistling winds, 
 flying down the mountain passes and drift 
 ing deep in gorges and ravines, making it 
 seem as if one were in a dead world. But 
 although she could not always hinder the 
 feeling of something near despair creeping 
 over her, she never yielded to any longing 
 to be dead herself. No, she desired to live 
 whether he wanted her or not, she had to 
 live for John s sake. But he had observed 
 her so little that he was unaware of her con 
 dition till lately, and she was alone with 
 the nurse who had happened in the doctor 
 off on a carouse at Dawlish s the night the 
 little boy was born. 
 
 It was a stinging piece of her mind that 
 Martha, the nurse, gave Dr. Donner when 
 he came home. 
 
 " That is right," he said, laughing, " and 
 well deserved. And then it would do you 
 
AN INHERITANCE 49 
 
 harm to keep that to yourself too much 
 venom in it ! Do you know," he said, 
 quite with the air of saying a pleasant 
 thing, "if it was a hundred years ago you 
 would be treated to the ducking-stool " 
 
 " A hundred years ago or now, I know 
 w at you d orter be treated to!" said 
 Martha. 
 
 " Now," he went on, " we will see if you 
 are as good a doctor as you are a scold." 
 And he satisfied himself that all was right. 
 " You have done me a good turn, Martha," 
 he said, "and I sha n t forget it," and 
 then he went to bed. 
 
 But the sight of that white, patient face 
 upon the pillow had sobered him more than 
 Martha s words had done ; and he had 
 kissed his wife and told her she had a son 
 that was worth it all. 
 
 He never seemed to feel that he had any 
 share in the boy a long, thin starveling of 
 a child. He hardly ever looked at him ex 
 cept when his ailing required it. He never 
 liked to see suffering ; he was too pleasure- 
 
50 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 loving for that. But something sent a thrill 
 through him one night after his wife was 
 about, as he saw her sitting by the fire with 
 the child on her arm, a look of the rapture 
 of love shining on her countenance. He 
 stopped a moment and came back, and 
 lifted the blanket away from the little face. 
 
 " Nancy," he said, again, " you are a 
 good woman ! 
 
 It was all he had to say, when a month 
 later the little weakling was laid away in a 
 span-long grave, that the snows had been 
 hollowed out to make, and she had swal 
 lowed her tears, and taken home the child 
 of a neighbor to lie in her child s place till 
 the mother should be well of a blasting 
 fever. "It is our little son who is giving 
 all he had to the baby," she said, looking 
 up with the sorrow still in her eyes. 
 
 " Nancy always had beautiful eyes," the 
 doctor thought. 
 
 And neither cock-main, nor dog-fight, 
 nor a dance at Dawlish s called Dr. Donner 
 off till the baby s mother was well enough 
 
AN INHERITANCE 51 
 
 to take him back and leave Nancy s arms 
 empty again. 
 
 There came to the door, not long after 
 ward, a worthless-looking woman, with her 
 child in the bundle she carried, and followed 
 by a dog. She wanted help to get back to 
 her own parish, where she would go upon 
 the town. 
 
 " What are you doing with that trollop ? " 
 the doctor asked, as he saw his wife take 
 her in. 
 
 "I thought perhaps we could help her," 
 she replied. And she bathed the woman s 
 sore feet and put her to bed ; and she gave 
 the dog a bone ; and she washed the baby, 
 a fine, crowing boy, and then went to the 
 closet where her own baby s clothes had 
 been put away. She could not help the 
 tears nor the kisses she gave the dear, soft 
 wool and cambric things, she who had noth 
 ing left to kiss. But she dressed the lucky 
 little stranger out in them from top to toe. 
 
 " That was hard for you to do, Nancy," 
 said the doctor, seeing her. 
 
52 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 " I wanted our little boy to take his part 
 in helping in the world," she replied. 
 
 " He is still alive to you, in a way." 
 He was drinking coffee, and Nancy s coffee 
 was a cordial. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! Even if not here. And do 
 you know," she said, timidly, and half 
 under her breath, " does it does it not 
 strike you do you never feel a sort of 
 oh not pride to think you are the 
 father of an angel ? 
 
 "I?" roared John, with a clatter of 
 laughter. "I? I never felt I was the 
 father of a child. You and he are too good 
 for me, I guess." 
 
 But it was, perhaps, a new wonder he 
 felt concerning his wife, when he found 
 that Sally with her boy and the dog Brow 
 stayed on in Nancy s kitchen. They were 
 staying there many a long year after. 
 
 Lonely or longing or sorry now, Nancy 
 could not let herself be cast down. The 
 house must be kept cheerful for its master s 
 sake. And then there was so much ready 
 
AN INHERITANCE 53 
 
 for her hand to do. In those days, and in 
 that remote region, nurses were not to be 
 had for the asking, and friends and neigh 
 bors helped out the need of every family 
 when sickness came; the squire s wife and 
 the minister s served their turn, and already 
 there was no one in all the township who 
 had such a name for a good watcher as Mrs. 
 Donner had. But often in the dead waste 
 and middle of the night she drew aside the 
 curtain of the sick-room to look out on the 
 snowy wilderness and the white hillside 
 where her baby lay. It was so hard that 
 the cold snow should cover him, her little 
 darling, when her heart yearned so to warm 
 him on her breast ! But she said to herself 
 that God hides His flowers in the bosom of 
 the earth till summer shines again ; and she 
 remembered pictures she had seen where 
 the clouds about heaven were full of chil 
 dren s faces. Sometimes she saw the full 
 moon hang over that little grave like a great 
 presence of brooding motherliness ; and she 
 grew to love the solemn encampment of the 
 
54 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 hills round about it, and the dark -green firs 
 that now and then shook down an avalanche 
 of crusted snow with a far sweet thunder; 
 and the stars seemed to come and go be 
 tween the great purple crests, like spirits 
 keeping watch about that one little spot. 
 Occasionally, when some member of the 
 family rose early, that she might go home 
 and have a short rest herself before it was 
 yet light, she met her husband coming in 
 the dawn from Dawlish s, or from some of 
 the cabins beyond Loon Mountain. If he 
 were any way ashamed, he was still suffi 
 ciently master of himself to be a little en 
 tertained by the situation ; and it was a 
 curious glance he gave her then out of the 
 corner of his eyes, as something he could 
 not make out or understand. But he knew 
 perfectly well that she was supplementing 
 his work sometimes supplying its absence. 
 
 It happened that once or twice in a way 
 Dr. Donner, for some reason or other, 
 whether compassion or a divine curiosity, 
 had warmed to his work, had searched out 
 
AN INHERITANCE 55 
 
 many inventions to serve a patient, faithful 
 by night and day with a faithfulness that 
 fatigued his unwonted spirit, leaving no 
 power of his will or secret of his art unused ; 
 but nature being too strong for him, or the 
 abuse of nature, the case had lapsed into 
 failure ; and then the people whom he had 
 attended were bitter about his methods and 
 slandered his skill, and took care that he 
 should know it. And I must spend my 
 life and waste my youth and be made a 
 target for these blunderbusses!" he cried. 
 " Oh, you know their calibre, Launce, but 
 you can t know their bore! " It used to 
 cut him to the quick, however, as the re 
 proaches he had deserved had never cut 
 him, and his wife s resentment and fellow- 
 feeling then were a balm to his heart. 
 They gave him a kindlier mood in her re 
 gard, that desired her sympathy and for 
 bearance, and did more for her with him 
 than all her simple goodness did. 
 
 If people were often indignant with Dr. 
 Donner, they were, on the whole, patient. 
 
56 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 There was no one else very near ; they 
 regarded his talent as prodigious, his heal 
 ing power as something special to himself. 
 Now and then, if rarely, an interest in some 
 malady seemed to take him and absorb 
 him ; now and then he wrought some mira 
 cle. They fell into a way of saying that 
 when the need was great enough Dr. Don- 
 ner was always there. 
 
 "The merest nonsense ! " he said to his 
 wife once, when he felt some extenuation 
 necessary, a thing that a short time since 
 would not have occurred to him. " Brown- 
 bread pills and a phial of clear water will 
 work half the cures, and when I let them 
 alone I am only helping nature do her own 
 work." 
 
 " But there is more," she said, a little 
 surprised at herself, yet perhaps taking 
 courage because Launce Camperdoun was at 
 the table. To be a physician is to make 
 a promise that one would give " 
 
 " Everything required of a physician. 
 Well, I do," he said, in high good humor. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 57 
 
 " I give them you. I do one part, you do 
 the other. But look here, old lady, take 
 care you don t encroach." 
 
 "Encroach ! " she exclaimed, before she 
 thought. "I should as soon think of en 
 croaching on the work of heaven ! Oh, 
 you know," she said, setting down her 
 cup, "a. doctor s work is the work of 
 heaven. He holds so many hearts in his 
 hand. He gives life or death. He gives 
 hope, comfort, relief. The people feel safe 
 thinking of him. They lean on him. They 
 love him. He brings them into the world, 
 he makes the way easy for them going out. 
 Even pain obeys him. He forgets himself. 
 The weather doesn t hinder him. Sick or 
 well, storm or shine, he is all the time 
 doing the work of his Master. Oh," she 
 added, looking up across the table, her face 
 aglow, " I didn t mean to say so much, but 
 it seems to me that there is no one in the 
 world stands so near the Lord as he 
 does " 
 
 " Hold on, hold on ! " cried John, with 
 
58 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 a slightly difficult laugh. " Is it possible 
 that I am all this?" 
 
 You must be. You are under doctors 
 vows." 
 
 "By George, Nancy! You are enough 
 to put the spirit of it into a man ! " 
 
 "You builded better than you knew 
 when you married that woman," said 
 Launce, as they went out together. 
 
 "By God, I did ! " said John. 
 
 He did not think it was encroaching 
 when, a few weeks later, having left a pa 
 tient in extremity and forgotten how the 
 time passed, he came back to find the 
 mother resting comfortably with the new 
 born baby beside her, and his wife in at 
 tendance, she having gone when the third 
 summons for him came, feeling she must 
 risk everything both for the woman and in 
 his behalf. 
 
 There was not room for two in the gig, 
 and he walked home in the thick night 
 beside her, the horse s head over his 
 shoulder. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 59 
 
 "How did you know how?" he asked, 
 presently. 
 
 11 1 didn t," she said. " But I had been 
 with three or four cases, you know. And I 
 had my own experience. I was expecting 
 Martha every minute, and she came at the 
 very last. And Mrs. Janes had to be taken 
 care of. And oh, John, you had to be pro 
 tected, too ! And I just prayed God to help 
 me. And it was life, and not death, you 
 know, and that helped, too." 
 
 "That is the way God helped," said 
 John, in a low voice. " Well, Nancy, you 
 have saved me this time ! 
 
 She went for the lantern, that he might 
 put up the horse. He took it, and stooped 
 and lifted her hand to his lips. She 
 laughed, with a kind of childish pleasure. 
 He swung the ray of the lantern up across 
 her face. 
 
 "You are growing prettier every day, 
 Nan," he said. 
 
 1 No, she answered, suddenly pale and 
 cold again, "I am growing an old woman. 
 
60 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 But we are very good friends, I think, 
 John." 
 
 It happened that the next day was Sun 
 day. Nancy always went to meeting, and 
 would have done so even had it not been 
 expected that everyone in that community 
 should regard the day as one of solemn 
 ceremony, except the doctor, who in a 
 measure was excused by reason of his du 
 ties. Save for the Sunday, now so long ago, 
 when he brought her home, Dr. Donner 
 had taken advantage of his privileges. 
 
 "See Mis Donner," said Deacon Ashly 
 to his wife, as they jogged home together, 
 " w en the doctor come inter meetin ter- 
 day? She looked sif twouldn t take much 
 to make her drop. Kinder took by s prise, 
 mebbe." 
 
 " Sho ! I guess nothin he could du d 
 take her by s prise. She s jest all tuckered 
 out, being th Mis Janes overnight. Miry 
 Dean was tellin me between meetin s. 
 He s be n tendin out on her, an I s pose 
 she thought Mis Janes was gone. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 61 
 
 " He tol me himself Mis Janes wuz 
 right as a trivet. So twarn t thet. But 
 I ll tell ye what I think, Mis Ashly; I 
 think Dawlish s ll hev seen the last o Dr. 
 Donner afore long ! 
 
 "I ll believe it w en I see it," said Mrs. 
 Ashly, grimly. 
 
 A good wife goes a great way to the 
 makin of a good man, Mis Ashly," said 
 the deacon. 
 
 " Good or bad, Deacon Ashly," said the 
 worthy dame, with decision, " there s never 
 be n a doctor here between the hills that 
 was Donner s beat. Old Dr. Pilcott was 
 well enough w en he knowed jes w at ailed 
 ye, but Donner looks right inter the marrer. 
 I do know s I d like to trust myself in his 
 han s w en that black horse o his n takes 
 him home cause he can t drive himself. 
 But if I did, he d fetch me thru ! " 
 
 " P r aps so, p r aps so," said the deacon. 
 " But fer my part, I like the man thet hes 
 ter tend my mortle body or my immortle 
 sperrit ter hev all his wits about him. 
 
62 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 " Wai, part o Dr. Dormer s wits is 
 more n most men-folks hes. Ef he allus 
 bed the hull on em about him we shouldn t 
 keep him long up here tween the hills. 
 They d be a-wantin of him down ter Bos 
 ton quicker n scat. I do know es it s very 
 profitable talk we re a-havin , Deacon Ash- 
 ly. Did you see Miry s new shawl? I 
 noted the fringe warn t es long es mine by 
 an inch. Hm. That s a cur us text the 
 preacher hed this mornin . I allus thought 
 it was a pretty varse. Woe unto the 
 drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beau 
 ty is a fading flower. Twas a good sar- 
 mon, though." 
 
 "S archin ," said the deacon, " s arch- 
 in 1 ! " 
 
 Whether Dr. Donner found it searching 
 or not, the next Sabbath his wife, who had 
 hitherto been the guest of the often empty 
 Camperdoun pew, sat in a pew of her own, 
 carpeted and cushioned in a way to allevi 
 ate that mortification of the flesh for which 
 the village congregation had apparently ar- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 63 
 
 ranged the straight backs and narrow seats, 
 and on which they would have looked with 
 disfavor had it been for any one but Mrs. 
 Donner. 
 
Ill 
 
 IT was at about this time that the epi 
 demic of fatal influenza broke out in Wood- 
 sedge. There was no loitering possible 
 then, no time, if it were wished, for any life 
 at Dawlish s, for any running of horses, for 
 any meeting of sports between the hills ; 
 the calls were too frequent, too urgent, the 
 need was too apparent. But Dr. Donner 
 rose to the moment. He had forty cases on 
 his hands at once. If he lost very few, it 
 was due as much to his wife as to himself, 
 he said to someone afterward. " I hate to 
 tell you," she would say, when he came 
 home from a round of calls on patients des 
 perately ill, at midnight, wet through, per 
 haps, and tired to the ends of his fingers, 
 " but there are three other calls for you, and 
 they all seem to need you so. There are 
 your dry clothes hanging by the fire for 
 64 
 
AN INHERITANCE 65 
 
 you to change. And you must take this 
 thick, hot soup first. Mrs. Ashly is doing 
 nicely. And I left the minister an hour 
 ago sleeping like a baby." And while he 
 was gone she kept the fire alive, getting her 
 naps only on the sofa, and was bright and 
 ready for him, sometimes with a hot break 
 fast, when he came back. 
 
 "It is dreadful," she sighed. "I am 
 afraid you will be down yourself. But it 
 seems as if you must go. I feel oh, I hope 
 it isn t wicked ! I almost feel as if you had 
 only to say Talitha cumi, and they rise and 
 walk." 
 
 "Not I! Not I!" said John. "So 
 far from it that when I come to the bed 
 sides of the people, with nothing but my 
 small skill between them and the power of 
 the pest, I feel like a worm with a foot 
 hanging over me. And when I have made 
 a cure, if I have made it, I only feel like 
 the same worm that the foot has failed to 
 tread on ! " 
 
 Fortunately, the epidemic had passed, and 
 
66 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 the mild spring weather had brought hope 
 and cheer, before Launce Camperdoun fell 
 ill. 
 
 Whether the letter from his Cousin Bar 
 bara had had anything to do with his con 
 dition or not, the fever that presently ap 
 peared increased, with symptoms involving 
 the brain that gave the doctor a great deal 
 of alarm. He had the more alarm that he 
 knew the idiosyncrasy of the Camperdouns, 
 and the danger there when the brain was 
 called in question. For Launce Camper 
 doun had been his friend from long ago, his 
 intimate even when he was employed on the 
 big farm breaking the Camperdoun colts, 
 his companion afterward in all those times 
 when they had heard the chimes at mid 
 night, the strength, the daring, the fresh 
 earthiness of the one feeling the subtlety and 
 delicacy of a failing race in the other with 
 almost a passionate sensibility. When 
 Launce came into the property, knowing 
 John Donner s parts, he had helped him to 
 his profession, often going down for a wild 
 
AN INHERITANCE 67 
 
 beat together about the town, where John 
 always lost his way. "It takes heredity to 
 know the Boston streets," John used to say. 
 And he had seen with Launce now and then 
 at the Camperdoun cousin s house what 
 lovely women and gracious manners are. 
 Now the doctor called up all he knew, 
 cursed the time that he had been playing 
 instead of learning more, bent to use every 
 energy he had, sent for older doctors in 
 consultation, let other patients get along as 
 they could, lost no moment and no en 
 deavor in the struggle with this devouring 
 fire, and hardly left the house by day or 
 night unless upon compulsion of some more 
 exacting or pitiable demand, worn and weary 
 himself to exhaustion, every throb of that 
 tortured brain striking like a sharp blow 
 upon his own sensation. 
 
 Martha, the nurse, came to help him, and 
 stayed afterward the remainder of the man s 
 life. But he had sent her to rest that day, 
 and it seemed to the doctor as if a minister 
 of light had come into the room when his 
 
68 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 wife closed the door behind her and said, 
 softly, " They have sent for you to go down 
 to Three Rivers the Judge s child. The 
 ride in the wind will help you. I can keep 
 on the ice-cap and the warm applications, 
 and give the drops and attend to the nour 
 ishment. I am not afraid of his delirium. 
 I am strong. You can trust me." And 
 he went, with a sort of preknowledge that 
 on returning he should find Camperdoun 
 better for that calm and cooling presence. 
 And he did. There was something about 
 Nancy that carried healing in its wake. 
 
 I don t know why it occurred to Dr. Don- 
 ner to do as he did just then, except for a 
 freak of light -heartedness at his patient s 
 improvement. " He does not look as I 
 expected," he said, beckoning her into the 
 next room. " Has he had the drops from 
 the blue phial? If you have forgotten I 
 told you to give them I wouldn t give that 
 for his life ! " as he snapped his fingers. 
 
 "Oh! It isn t possible!" whispered 
 Nancy, clasping her hands. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 69 
 
 "What isn t possible? Do you mean 
 to tell me you forgot them?" flashing on 
 . her a strange glance from those keen blue 
 eyes. 
 
 "Yes," she said, pale even in the half- 
 light of the curtained place. 
 
 "Think a moment. You may not re 
 member now. Perhaps you did give them 
 at half-past three," closing the door as he 
 spoke. 
 
 "No," she said, with white lips. "I 
 did not. Oh, do something ! Oh, save 
 him, John ! " 
 
 "Save him?" he repeated, laughing, 
 taking her hand and leading her to a seat. 
 " You have saved him ! He doesn t look as 
 I expected he looks a great deal better. 
 And, of course, you haven t forgotten be 
 cause I never told you to remember ! 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, pressing her fingers on 
 her eyes to keep the tears from spurting. 
 "It has startled me so." 
 
 "You mean I have. It was cruel," said 
 John, still looking at her steadily. " But I 
 
70 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 wanted to try you. To see if you would 
 tell a lie " 
 
 "No, no! oh, no! " 
 
 " You will not, I see, to help yourself. I 
 wonder if you would to help me. 
 
 "Oh, don t you, don t you ask me ! " 
 
 "But if I were in difficulty about 
 Well, I will put it to you. If I am called 
 into court for malpractice that broken arm 
 of Miss Turpey s and your testimony 
 would clear me, testimony about which I 
 would instruct you " 
 
 "And not true? " 
 
 " Not true, of course." 
 
 " Oh, don t let me be summoned ! " she 
 cried, her hand over her mouth the next 
 moment. " Oh, John, don t let me be 
 tried so ! I could not ; oh, I could not ! " 
 
 " You would rather I went to prison, 
 then! " 
 
 " Oh, no, no, no ! I would not testify 
 against you. I would be silent " 
 
 " That would be contempt of court ; and 
 you would go to prison yourself." 
 
AN INHERITANCE 7* 
 
 " I could go. I could be as happy there 
 as anywhere. But, oh, if you could spare 
 me that ! " she half sobbed. " I have tried 
 to be a good wife a helpmeet to do my 
 duty " 
 
 < A good wife ! You are my good 
 angel ! People call you Dr. Donner s good 
 angel ! And he leaned forward and kissed 
 off the two great tears rolling down her face. 
 " By George ! but tears are salt," he said, 
 laughing. " There, there, I m a hardened 
 villain, very like, but there s no such case. 
 I only wanted to see what is this stuff you 
 are made of. I never saw anyone just like 
 you, Nancy. I believe you are descended 
 from one of the children Christ laid his 
 hands on ! " and although she knew it was 
 profane she felt that it was pleasant. 
 
 If she were a little angry, she was also 
 a little glad. She never forgot, though, 
 that he had no love for her the sense of 
 those old, wicked words of his was seldom 
 out of her consciousness. But she was glad 
 that he felt not unkindly toward her. She 
 
72 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 alternated the watches with him after that, 
 till the immediate danger was over. And 
 when the doctor was going on his daily 
 rounds again, she came across the green with 
 her little tempting dish, or her kindly pleas 
 ant talk, and let Martha off for an hour ; an 
 hour in which she made the weak and sad 
 man feel as if he had a home, and envy 
 the other man who had married the girl of 
 straight lines for her money. 
 
 It was Mrs. Donner who detected first 
 in Camperdoun s melancholia symptoms of 
 the degeneration that the doctor had dread 
 ed. There is only one thing to do," 
 said John, "and that is to reduce him 
 to an animal, feed, and overfeed, cush 
 ion these rasped nerves in fat, and send 
 new red blood to enrich the exhausted 
 brain." 
 
 "Yes," said Nancy. "And he will 
 always be subject to attack ? 
 
 " You will have it to see to as long as he 
 lives," said the doctor, looking at her care 
 fully. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 73 
 
 "It is very little to do," she said. " I 
 am glad to do it." 
 
 " My poor wife ! " he said, " you mar 
 ried into trouble. But if there is any way 
 known under heaven among men to hinder 
 his becoming a victim to the family curse 
 But there isn t; no, there isn t! And, 
 N anc y somehow it hurts me if I had 
 been a better man he might have gone up 
 with me instead of down God knows ! 
 But what s done is done, and what s to do 
 is still to do. Possibly Camperdoun would 
 have been much the same, anyway. 
 
 " I understand," said Mrs. Donner. 
 
 " But I could give myself in his place," 
 the doctor went on, more as if to himself 
 than to her, "and that s a fact ! I never 
 had anyone very near me since I was in 
 boots. I think I have loved Camperdoun 
 more than any living thing. You care for 
 him, too, Nancy. By mighty ! he thinks 
 well of you ! 
 
 It was like a cold hand on her heart 
 when he said he loved Camperdoun so dear- 
 
74 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 ly. But why be foolish ? She knew that 
 already. And it was something that he 
 made her so kindly his confidante and 
 then he had called her his wife ! 
 
 The doctor came in one twilight when 
 she had been with Camperdoun, as usual, an 
 hour or two. He had been inclined to vio 
 lence, and she had soothed him, singing. 
 She sat beside the brooding man, and sang, 
 
 44 Art thou weary, art them languid, 
 
 Art thou sore distressed ? 
 Come to me, saith One, and coming, 
 Be at rest." 
 
 It was not much of a voice, hardly more 
 than a sweet and gentle sigh set to tune. 
 
 4t If I ask him to receive me, 
 
 Will he say me nay ? 
 Not till earth, and not till heaven 
 Pass away ! " 
 
 But as Dr. Donner paused and flung him 
 self into an arm-chair in the shadow, and 
 saw her singing, the light on her face, 
 white and wan, with a something pathetic 
 about the mouth, but with lifted eyes that 
 
AN INHERITANCE 75 
 
 seemed looking into heaven, he understood 
 that she was doing her work neither for love 
 of him now nor for love of the sufferer, but 
 for the love of God, and only the love of 
 them in him. " And I might have had the 
 heart of that woman," he thought ; for he 
 knew his deserts too well to suppose she 
 could be caring for him now after the life 
 he had led her these three years. And then, 
 in a greater humility, the soul within him 
 cried, "But what am I, that such a spirit 
 bearing such a light walks through my life 
 at all ? " and he stole out as softly as he had 
 entered. Opening his door that night, he 
 was for the first time struck by the differ 
 ence between the interior of his house and 
 that of the old Camperdoun mansion. He 
 had bought the place of the Pilcott heirs, as 
 it stood, bare but comfortable, and what 
 pleasant look it had was owing only to 
 Nancy s home-making qualities. " It isn t 
 fit for her ! " he exclaimed to himself. And 
 when she came home from some of her calls 
 of mercy one night, a print of Guercino s 
 
76 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 Aurora hung over the fire in the parlor, and 
 Murillo s Madonna, with the moon beneath 
 her feet, was looking down from the mantel 
 of the sleeping-room. And after that, bit 
 by bit, a vase, a cast, a lovely book, ap 
 peared in the house. " He likes pleasant 
 things about him," thought Nancy. He 
 had married her so viciously, he had neg 
 lected her so long, he could not tell her 
 they were for her. > 
 
 One evening, when Camperdoun was 
 quite himself again, Dr. Donner found his 
 wife reading, as often before, to the con 
 valescent, and talking in the intervals in the 
 confidential way that had grown up be 
 tween them. He waited a moment in the 
 adjoining room. She was not a woman, as 
 you know, of much culture or of more than 
 average mental quality, but she had far 
 more than the average capacity for loving. 
 
 It was a little volume of Wordsworth she 
 was holding ; she had been reading some 
 of the ballads that she felt had a kinship 
 with the life of this hill country. " We 
 
AN INHERITANCE 77 
 
 used to parse this in school," she said, 
 " The Happy Warrior. I wonder if you 
 will understand how it makes me think of 
 my husband." 
 
 Of John ! " cried Camperdoun. 
 
 "I don t mean altogether what he is 
 though he is so much," she said, a little 
 timidly, "but of what he might be will 
 be. I think of him," she said, opening 
 the book again and reading, " as one 
 
 " 4 Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, 
 And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train ! 
 Turns his necessity to glorious gain, 
 
 " And then 
 
 " More able to endure 
 As more exposed to suffering and distress ; 
 Thence, also, more alive to tenderness. 
 
 "And you yourself must see," she said, 
 
 turning the leaf, " that his 
 
 1 powers shed round him in the common strife, 
 Or mild concerns of ordinary life, 
 A constant influence, a peculiar grace. 
 
 "And he never goes out in the night but I 
 say to myself, 
 
78 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 " Or if an unexpected call succeed, 
 
 Come when it will, is equal to the need. 
 
 "Yes, yes," she said, still running her 
 eye along the page, "it is true of him all 
 through ! And I know, I know, that when 
 the end comes he will be the man who, 
 
 " While the mortal mist is gathering, draws 
 
 His breath in confidence of Heaven s applause. " 
 
 " But, man alive," said Mr. Camperdoun, 
 " that is about a soldier." 
 
 "And John is a soldier. You know 
 if he if he has anything to encounter in 
 himself and his surroundings," said Nancy, 
 hesitatingly. " And there are the forces of 
 nature he has to fight as he goes about the 
 hills in sun and storm and wind and rain, 
 by night and day. And there are the 
 forces of evil in pain and suffering and sor 
 row that he fights with," she exclaimed. 
 "And sometimes he fails, and so much 
 more often they go down ! 
 
 "Well, well, then, you are an eloquent 
 little cuss I mean customer. I beg your 
 
AN INHERITANCE 79 
 
 pardon, Mrs. Donner. John Donner is a 
 lucky dog! " 
 
 But as John Donner stood up and groped 
 his way out, he was not so sure of that. 
 And it was something very like a hoarse 
 sob one might have heard if walking home 
 behind him. How could he, who had mar 
 ried and abused this woman so, tell her 
 now the truth? He trembled before the 
 thought of it. 
 
 He went out on another call presently, 
 however. The profession he had chosen 
 was compelling him to recognize its power. 
 He found himself feeling as deep an interest 
 in his cases as if he saw the action of a 
 drama with mighty agents on the board. 
 It began to make him melt among his kind, 
 as if he were to be poured out and spent in 
 their service. He had never been quite the 
 same since the night Janes broke down, 
 when he told him his wife would win 
 through, and had cried, and, greatly to his 
 embarrassment, kissed both his hands, sur 
 prising him as much as if a side of sole 
 
8o AN INHERITANCE 
 
 leather had suddenly showed human feeling. 
 It was directly afterward that he had been 
 called to the little girl scalded past help, the 
 only child left to her mother, a gay-hearted 
 Irish woman, shut into a dark hut in the 
 notch of the hills. " Mother of God ! " the 
 woman was wailing, "you saw your own 
 child suffer, so you did. But he was a man 
 grown, more betoken ! Whist now, Biddy, 
 darlint, it s tearing the harrt out of me, ye 
 are!" 
 
 The child s eyes, pools of darkness and 
 pain, turned on him with a look that filled 
 his own with tears; and the sight of her 
 torment, the clenching of her little hand on 
 his, broke up all the fountains of his pity. 
 
 " Bridget, I would bear it for her if I 
 could ! " he said, with a sudden persuasion 
 that he would, and had gently put the little 
 child into her last sleep ; and the love that 
 could die for another on the cross itself had 
 for the first time a personal reality in his 
 thought. The reality of it grew stronger 
 when he saw Mrs. Morris, in the throes of 
 
AN INHERITANCE 81 
 
 an agony that was taking her into her grave, 
 murmuring hymns and verses that had given 
 her comfort, leaning on the divine assurance 
 as if upon a bed of roses, and herself inspir 
 ing his terrible knife with courage. At the 
 beginning he had been used to say that in 
 the presence of any such anguish there could 
 be no omnipotent power that was not also a 
 malignant one ; but now he had a vision of 
 the strength given and the heights scaled by 
 suffering. 
 
 But while he was gone to his patient, on 
 the night when he had heard his wife read 
 ing from the " Happy Warrior " to Cam- 
 perdoun, Nancy came home and saw her 
 crab-cactus in its full flush of pendulous 
 bloom, and although the early November 
 dark had fallen, she threw on her shawl 
 again to take the pot, as it had often gone 
 before, a little missionary flower, to the 
 house of a sick person who had so much 
 that all she could give her was the blossom 
 ing of this plant. 
 
 When she came out of the house again, 
 
82 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 having done her errand, a bright light 
 streaming through the mist from a knoll ap 
 parently not far away attracted her; and 
 thinking of forest fires and their dangers, 
 she walked on a little way in their direction 
 outside the village, without remembering 
 that it was the night the boys up there built 
 their Guy Fawkes bonfires, according to the 
 custom still surviving in a few towns, their 
 fathers taking advantage of the frolic to get 
 their brush and rubbish burned. 
 
 She was not unhappy as she went; the 
 constant undercurrent of her feeling was that 
 she had boundless goodness to be grateful 
 for in the growing change in her husband s 
 life and in his different manner toward her. 
 She never suffered herself to be misled by 
 that ; he was naturally a kind man; but she 
 had heard the truth from his own lips. All 
 the more she yearned in her affection and in 
 spite of herself longed for his love. When 
 ever she had looked at any pretty girl upon 
 the way, she had felt as if there were no 
 physical pain, no other possible disaster, she 
 
AN INHERITANCE 83 
 
 would not be glad to undergo, if she might 
 come out as fair as that and have her hus 
 band regard her as the minister regarded the 
 rosy, beaming thing he had brought home. 
 
 She was not thinking of any of this, 
 however, but that she ought to turn back 
 now ; when suddenly a score of bonfires 
 sprang out of the darkness on the ledges of 
 the neighboring hills, shadowy figures run 
 ning before them with a gypsy-like sugges 
 tion. She paused, turning from one to an 
 other, and then, starting to retrace her steps, 
 found herself bewildered as to the way, for 
 there was neither moon nor star, and the 
 November mists gave a sort of weirdness to 
 the fires. She went on presently in what she 
 supposed the right direction, hesitating at 
 last with a strange sense of unacquaintance 
 even in the gloom. She was not one, how 
 ever, that often allowed herself to fear, and 
 she went on again, sure that she must pres 
 ently come upon some way-mark, and sud 
 denly stopped with one foot in water and 
 the other on yielding moss, and found that 
 
84 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 in some incomprehensible way she had 
 taken the wrong turn, and had reached the 
 first edge of the great quaking heath, on the 
 border of the town, the terror of the mothers 
 in the place, but where the more daring 
 went for blueberries in the summer-time, 
 the heath which was only a bed of moss and 
 peat lying on a subterranean lake. She 
 stood still then, for it would not do to move 
 and plunge into she knew not what, and 
 after a minute or two she began to call for 
 help, nothing answering her but the echoes 
 of her voice beating from hill to hill with 
 airy music that had no sound of music to 
 her. 
 
 Still, there was not any danger, unless a 
 wildcat, or something of the sort, came 
 down from the mountains. She stooped and 
 groped with her hands for a hummock, found 
 one directly beside her that seemed dry and 
 firm, and sat down and waited, every now 
 and again calling, and experiencing a kind 
 of awe of the flapping echoes. She was not 
 afraid ; she was usually not at all afraid of 
 
AN INHERITANCE 85 
 
 death in the abstract. If it had not been 
 for feeling that John must not be left, she 
 would never, in these years of her marriage, 
 have closed her eyes at night without a wish 
 that she might not unclose them in the morn 
 ing. But the loneliness and darkness now 
 filled her with vague horror, and she left off 
 calling and began singing softly to herself 
 the hymns she loved best, as if she sur 
 rounded herself with their sacred power, 
 and with perhaps some of the same feeling 
 as that which once used certain rites and ob 
 servances to keep evil spirits at bay. 
 
 But when Dr. Donner returned, as the 
 nine-o clock bell was ringing, and found his 
 wife neither awaiting him, as usual, nor 
 coming in presently, he made inquiry of 
 Sally, and was concerned to find that she 
 was already concerned, as there was no very 
 sick person for Mrs. Donner to forget herself 
 over, and, moreover, she had said she would 
 be back directly. He went once or twice to 
 the window, shielding it from the bright 
 firelight that, painting upon the outer dark- 
 
86 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 ness the scene within, gave him a fleeting 
 thought of life itself as something unreally 
 painted on the darkness. Tea had been wait 
 ing a long while. He went to the door, and 
 looked up and down into the night. He 
 remembered how not long since he would 
 have laughed at the thought of this anxiety, 
 and he hated the man that he had been. 
 
 But after a while he had found it impos 
 sible to wait, and he sallied forth again to 
 find her and come home with her ; and by 
 eleven o clock he had called at every door 
 in the east end of the village, growing more 
 and more alarmed with his own alarm, and 
 shortly finding himself surrounded by the 
 lanterns of fifty people following the high 
 way, separating down this and that lane, 
 coming together again, men and women 
 alike, calling her name, listening for a hal 
 loo, full of excitement and fear, he him 
 self silent, and as if he had in him the re 
 pressed force of a whirlwind. 
 
 Suddenly Sally darted past him, following 
 Brow, the dog, with his nose down. And 
 
AN INHERITANCE 87 
 
 the doctor then was after them breathlessly, 
 all the lanterns dancing and sparkling be 
 hind him, and in their light, before she 
 caught sight of him, he saw Nancy sitting on 
 the hummock in the marsh, white and calm, 
 as she sang her hymn and stopped quickly 
 at Brow s baying and leaping and caressing. 
 In an instant he had sprung across and 
 reached her and clasped her in his arms. 
 " Oh, my wife, my darling! " he was ex 
 claiming. And she looked up in amaze 
 ment, for his tears were streaming over her 
 cheek. 
 
 Mrs. Donner had never expected to be so 
 happy, in all her life before, she never ex 
 pected then to be so happy again as she was 
 that night when, friends and neighbors gone 
 after their glad entertainment, her husband, 
 kneeling on the rug before her, as she sat by 
 the fire, drew her face down and kissed her 
 on the mouth the long, deep, silent kiss of 
 perfect love. 
 
 "I thought I had lost you, Nancy," he 
 half sobbed in pity of himself. " I never 
 
88 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 knew life could be such a desert. Oh, you 
 must teach me to be good as you are, half as 
 good as you are, and to deserve the mercy I 
 have had, my wife, my wife ! " 
 
 But in his arms out there on the edge of 
 the morass, half a flashing thought with her 
 had been followed by remembrance that he 
 was never to dream she knew he had married 
 her as he did. And here in this ecstatic mo 
 ment, while her transfigured face glowed in 
 the firelight almost like a thing of beauty, 
 unaware of change and development in him 
 self the consciousness possessed him that this 
 precious being was never to be so hurt as to 
 be allowed to dream that her marriage had 
 been desecration, that he loved her more 
 now than he had always loved her, other 
 than in the knowledge that love grows and 
 increases as the flower grows from the bud, as 
 the flame swells from the well-fanned fire, as 
 the world grows from shapeless nebula to star. 
 
 But it was only to John Donner s eyes 
 that beauty blossomed in this pale face. To 
 the rest of the small village world there was 
 
AN INHERITANCE 89 
 
 no change in Mrs. Donner; they wanted 
 none, indeed. Pure goodness and the light 
 of a great happiness made that face fair 
 enough for them. 
 
 Life then began again for John Donner. 
 He knew that he had been delivered from 
 evil. He felt that it was for a purpose. All 
 along of late he was aware that he had been 
 taking this in hand and taking that to please 
 Nancy. Suddenly, whether he had caught 
 the habit from life with her, from growing 
 sympathy, or whether a miracle had been 
 wrought, his endeavor was to please a higher 
 power. It was Nancy who had said a doctor 
 did God s work in the world, and here he 
 was doing it with an eager, silent joy ; do 
 ing it all the more that his life with Nancy 
 seemed a part of it. Sickness and suffering 
 and sorrow loomed before him so appallingly 
 that he felt as if threescore and ten years 
 would be too few for his share of the work. 
 Although he still bred and sold his horses, 
 the race-course beyond Loon Mountain knew 
 him no more. The Break o Day house 
 
90 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 forgot him. He went over to Dawlish s 
 when they sent for him, and helped a man 
 there wallowing in abject fear back to life 
 again. He was friendly as before ; he had no 
 right to be otherwise, he said ; he had been 
 one of them only the Lord had given him 
 Nancy. But they all knew the difference 
 there; they excused him. "A man ain t 
 any business foolin ith dead an dyin , and 
 ith us, too," they said. 
 
 " It s the same Johnny," said one of the 
 girls, " only he s gittin his fun out n the 
 other thing." 
 
 " I guess a man ain t seen fer long the 
 misery a doctor has, to be as light as Johnny 
 Donner uster be," said an older woman. 
 " That night he took the mortal pain ofFn 
 my baby I says to myself, says I, That 
 man won t be settin em up long at Daw 
 lish s, says I." 
 
 " Tut, tut, tut, then," remarked the old 
 white-headed crone sucking her pipe in 
 the corner. " Ain t you got eyes ? Johnny 
 Donner has gone on." 
 
AN INHERITANCE 9 1 
 
 "He s hed his part ith publishers an 
 sinners, I guess," said the woman with 
 the baby. " Granny s right ; he s gone 
 
 on." 
 
 He was driving home one night from 
 behind Loon Mountain, where he had done 
 some surgical work, while the people there 
 were in their turn discussing him. 
 
 " Don t see much o Johnny Donner 
 now," one said. "They say he s got re 
 ligion. But he s got the same twinkle into 
 his eye, fer all I see." 
 
 "P r aps it s religion," argued another, 
 whittling his tobacco ; "but w en I see him 
 do that lightning act ith his knives an ban 
 dages, it looked the leastestest mite sif he d 
 sold his soul to the Old Boy, it did ! " 
 
 "Wai," drawled the patient from his 
 cot, " I do no w ether he s got religion or 
 religion s got him ; but ef you d ben whar I 
 were this time yesterday, you d a thought 
 twas the han s o the livin Lord a-draggin 
 of you out o hell ; you d a wanted them 
 to hold on their grip. You d a knowed 
 
92 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 that man s made fer suthin* else than the 
 nights at the Break o Day." 
 
 Perhaps in less coarse phrase this was 
 presently the sentiment of all Woodsedge 
 and its dependencies. 
 
 One year followed another, and you 
 would have said that Dr. Donner had for 
 gotten there was anything in the world but 
 sickness and suffering, except for the joy 
 within his own doors for all around his 
 wife in her deep happiness now there was 
 the calm of perfect peace. And when little 
 John was born, he seemed himself to enter 
 a sacrament with God and his wife and his 
 son. He had not greatly loved at the time 
 the little motherling who lay on the hill 
 side ; he loved him now with a reflex 
 love he was Nancy s child ; he was the 
 brother of little John. He had the figure 
 of a small, sculptured angel set up there 
 in shining stone, and took Nancy to see it, 
 with the new baby in her arms, turning 
 the corner of dark cedars to come suddenly 
 upon it. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 93 
 
 You knew the pulse of Woodsedge pres 
 ently as you met the doctor. There was 
 fine weather and but slight ailing when you 
 saw him in the chaise with Nancy and the 
 baby. There was little or nothing the mat 
 ter with people when you saw him, a year 
 or two later, with the boy in the chaise, 
 and Brow sitting upright on guard beside 
 him. Things were not so very serious with 
 the health of the hills when you saw 
 him plodding along, with Brow following. 
 But when you saw him alone in his gig, his 
 head bent down, his face brooding, driving 
 the successor of Satan as if his namesake 
 were after him, you knew there was work to 
 do, and that Dr. Donner was doing it. 
 
 Time and work, watching and waiting 
 and weather made his features rugged, and 
 powdered hair and beard, but his forehead 
 kept its whiteness, his eyes their keen glow. 
 There was no house or hearth for twenty 
 and more miles around where the dwellers 
 had not grown to regard him as they would 
 a direct vicegerent of heavenly power. 
 
94 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 Here, as the long day broke with its stretch 
 of pain, he was sure to come and fill the 
 morning with hope. Here, as the dark 
 drew on with its awful shadow and dread, 
 he brought help to bear it, courage for 
 these, and blessed sleep and surcease of pain 
 for those. Here, when the need was bitter, 
 he had given not only such science and ef 
 fort as he had, but he gave himself, staying 
 night and day and night again, lost in the 
 fight with pain and grief, with despair and 
 death, with dark and terrible destinies. 
 The people felt as if there were life-giving, 
 health-compelling power in his touch, that 
 those eyes of his could penetrate to the root 
 of hidden evil ; they had been born into his 
 hands, their dead had died in his arms. 
 Some of the older ones said there had been 
 wild stories of Dr. Donnerin his youth ; but 
 they seemed to have forgotten what they 
 were. The younger ones had the more con 
 fidence in him it may be because of that ; 
 they remembered no time when he had not 
 been there, possessing all their trust; they 
 
AN INHERITANCE 95 
 
 felt as they would had he been a figure up 
 holding the sky that the sky would fall 
 without him. One and all, when he went 
 by, said, "There goes a good man," the 
 feeling so fervent that it burned away all but 
 the simplest phrase. 
 
 He had prospered, too, as the world goes. 
 For, although Dr. Donner had collected but 
 little money, what was left of Nancy s had 
 increased in his care ; a stretch of forest 
 on the north of the hills, that he had al 
 ways owned, had brought him revenues 
 which, with a mica mine he opened in con 
 nection with others, had made him rich. 
 With the years his boy had grown to man 
 hood, perhaps not brilliant, but on the 
 whole satisfactory, stalwart and sturdy, a 
 handsome youth, who came home from 
 Dartmouth to have a run through Europe. 
 Death had not knocked at his door, and he 
 had been able to keep Camperdoun in a fair 
 measure of content and cheer till the end 
 came. The very vagaries of his youth had 
 deepened his knowledge and influence and 
 
96 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 sympathy. Now past his fiftieth year, if 
 the serious side of life had subdued some of 
 the old gayety of nature, a tenderness had 
 grown into the seldom smile ; and the bent 
 head, the broad shoulders, made one who 
 gazed at him think of Titanic strength and 
 intensity of power. 
 
 And while all this was accomplishing, 
 and the people had grown in their devotion 
 to him, he had grown through his devotion 
 to his wife. He remembered well the day 
 when driving alone in the deep gloom of 
 overhanging woods he had climbed the nar 
 row green way and come out upon a burst 
 of light, and as if he had received some 
 spiritual revelation, thinking of Nancy he 
 had passed to the worship of that which 
 Nancy worshipped. It was something that 
 never left him. As he went his way in the 
 starry nights, the hollows of the midnight 
 blue were full of a divine presence; going 
 between the high hill pastures where the 
 skies stretched long wastes of lonely light, it 
 was with him ; and he felt its companion- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 97 
 
 ship in the solitary drives from hill to hill 
 in moonless nights, wrestling with wild 
 snow-storms and whistling winds. And yet 
 perhaps he never had any sweeter and loftier 
 moment than when in the meeting-house, 
 with the blue sky shining through the bare 
 windows on the white walls, and glittering 
 on white cloth and silver tankard, in his 
 place as deacon, a place his other duties 
 seldom allowed him to fill, he passed the 
 bread and wine to his wife, and entered 
 with her into the presence of God. 
 
 And this was the man, this was the wom 
 an, round about whose happiness Miss Bar 
 bara Camperdoun encamped with all her 
 forces. 
 
IV 
 
 " IF I had had any idea it was like this 
 I wouldn t have made Aunt Barbara s life 
 such a burden to her before we came up 
 here," said Luisa, when she had found her 
 breath again after the climbing, still feeling 
 as though her lungs were made of red-hot 
 brass, and had thrown herself upon the flat 
 rock of the summit. 
 
 "Why, what did you think it was like? " 
 said the young man standing beside her and 
 looking over the distance. 
 
 " Oh cows and stubbly pastures and 
 people who say heouw. 
 
 " You were not very wrong. There are 
 cows and pastures here. And there are 
 people who say heouw. So there are in 
 Virginia, and in Iowa, and in Texas. It 
 seems to be one consentaneous point of 
 national dialect. But you see there is some- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 99 
 
 thing more. My father says that if the view 
 of the promised land was as fine as this, the 
 prophet ought to have been satisfied with 
 that." 
 
 She glanced up at the young man as he 
 stood there at his ease, leaning slightly on 
 his long staff, but no more fatigued than if 
 he had strolled down a lane, and gazing off 
 at the sea of hills below them, a vast welter 
 of green and purple melting into the hori 
 zon s azure, with every here and there out 
 of cloud or shower sudden rainbows spring 
 ing, flaming, disappearing. There was 
 something in young John Donner s face 
 that held Luisa s glance, notwithstanding 
 the marvel beneath them, as if it were the 
 light of a sun she had never seen, a gladness 
 of gazing where the very soul shone through 
 in beauty. 
 
 "What is it you see?" she cried. "I 
 never see anything like that ! " 
 
 "Why not?" said he, turning a little 
 and smiling down at her. "You have 
 eyes." 
 
ioo AN INHERITANCE 
 
 ; i 
 
 But I see not," said Luisa. "What 
 were you thinking of then ? " 
 
 "I? Oh, but that doesn t matter." 
 
 " What were you thinking of ? " 
 
 " Must I say? I was thinking of a 
 temptation in a high mountain, and wonder 
 ing if heaven were so beautiful that the 
 kingdoms of the earth paled before them ; 
 such a kingdom as this scene, for in 
 stance." 
 
 "And what else ? " as he paused. 
 
 "Well, I was gathering a hint of the 
 Lord s city out of the golden mists over 
 there in the east, and thinking that after all 
 they belonged to earth, and I, too, and that 
 if earth was to be transfigured into heavenly 
 likeness I must do my share 
 
 " Do you know, if you were in Boston I 
 should call you a prig ! You are very re 
 ligious, are you not ? said Luisa, still 
 looking up at him gravely. 
 
 " As you are," he said. 
 
 "I religious?" cried Luisa. "Well! 
 I m the dancingest girl in Boston ! " 
 
AN INHERITANCE ib< 
 
 He laughed. " Perhaps you might be 
 that, and religious, too," he said. 
 
 " No, indeed ! " she replied, turning away 
 and gathering the broken pebbles about her. 
 To be religious for me means to go down 
 to North Street and the South Cove, you 
 know, and over the other side of the hill 
 generally. No time for dancing, or for 
 anything but picking up sick old women 
 and dirty babies." 
 
 "That is one way, truly. But there are 
 a great many paths to heaven, and travellers 
 on the way those who see the city and 
 hearten others as they go ; those who dream 
 
 dreams and have visions Well, perhaps 
 
 you are right," abandoning himself to the 
 confidential moment. "You can t be con 
 scious of the great joy and not want to help 
 others up to its experience." 
 
 "Oh, I hate the whole thing!" she 
 cried. "It means death and dying and 
 after death. I don t want to think of it; I 
 don t want to hear about it ! " 
 
 He looked at her and laughed again. 
 
fC2 .AN INHERITANCE 
 
 "You are a brand to be snatched from the 
 burning," he said. "You can t live long 
 in the same town with my mother and feel 
 that way." 
 
 "But I like here." 
 
 "So do I." 
 
 "And this life, this earth, are good 
 enough for me. 
 
 " She will show you how to live on earth, 
 and in heaven, too." 
 
 " Do you ? " she exclaimed. 
 
 "I am not as good as my mother. 
 Hardly anyone could be," he said, gently. 
 
 " Your mother ! Oh, what a horrible 
 time your wife will have ! " 
 
 "I don t think so," he said. "Al 
 though, to be sure, the lot of a country doc 
 tor s wife is not cast in velvet ease." 
 
 "A country doctor ! Are you going to 
 persist in that ? I can t talk you out of it ? " 
 
 "Why should you?" 
 
 "But why?" exclaimed Luisa. "I 
 mean that is I know it is no affair of 
 mine ! " 
 
AN INHERITANCE 103 
 
 " I did have other views " 
 
 "Of course you did. Why, just think 
 what you could do at the bar ! And you 
 
 would be in politics 
 
 11 Politics ! " 
 
 "Yes, indeed; you would be senator; 
 
 you would " 
 
 "No. I wished to study for the min 
 istry." 
 
 " Oh ! " and she struck a spark of fire 
 from two flints in her hand, and then tossed 
 them away. 
 
 "And my mother wished it, too," said 
 John, unobservantly. "But my father 
 thought otherwise. He thinks I am adapt 
 ed for his work. And he says it is the Mas 
 ter s work. And when my mother remem 
 bers what it has done for my father, she says 
 she cannot ask more for me, and there you 
 have it," he added, seating himself on an 
 edge of the bowlder behind her. " And so 
 I am studying with him for the present. 
 But I shall go down to the medical school, 
 as I told you, and after that, perhaps again 
 
104 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 across the water for Vienna, and to walk the 
 Dublin Hospital " 
 
 To come back and practise up here 
 among the hills ! But to be sure. What 
 am I thinking of?" opening her eyes. 
 " You will be a great city physician. You 
 will be the fashion. You will have an in 
 come of forty thousand a year ! 
 
 " There is quite as much to do here 
 among the hills." 
 
 " You don t mean to say you would really 
 settle here? To take care of boors and 
 bumpkins ? To waste yourself on clods ? 
 
 " There is no such thing as waste, you 
 know see that rainbow ! And as for that, 
 my father is a country doctor. 
 
 " I should think it was enough, then, to 
 have one such power thrown away. 
 
 "We don t look at it so. There are 
 bodies and souls of value here. My father 
 thought it worth while, when Mr. Morris 
 died, to bring here a preacher of as rare 
 gifts as there was to be had " 
 
 "Yes, I know. Mary told me herself. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 105 
 
 And he pays him out of his own pocket a 
 big salary. She told me not to speak of it. 
 But then, of course, you knew." 
 
 " No, I didn t. And, excuse me " 
 
 "I should have minded Mary, and my 
 own business," said Luisa, laughing. " I 
 was never taken up so shortly and so fre 
 quently in my life. There is something in 
 the atmosphere of these hills very condu 
 cive to frankness." 
 
 " I beg your pardon." 
 
 " No, indeed. But you see my excuse is 
 that you are all so different here, and you 
 interest me." 
 
 " Thanks," said the young man. 
 
 "And now you are offended. But you 
 are like the people in a book. Mary is so 
 white and fair and Blessed Damozel seem 
 ing. St. Paul or St. John, or some of 
 them, Luke, perhaps, would have looked 
 exactly like the doctor. And as for your 
 mother those old Hebrews and Arabs 
 didn t think much of women, did they ! or 
 there would have been a seraph of their 
 
106 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 naming to compare your mother with ! Oh 
 and, of course," she cried, "I ve made 
 another blunder now ! You call it playing 
 with sacred things." 
 
 " If you say nothing worse than that," 
 said he, "I fancy you will be forgiven." 
 And the smile that played round his lips 
 and kindled the rather severe outlines, as he 
 looked down at her, who gazed up at him 
 with the light sparkling in her gypsy-like 
 eyes, and the color glowing in her velvet 
 cheek, was all that was needed to send the 
 dimples dancing over Luisa s face again. 
 
 " Well," she said, " when I see you gal 
 loping by as if you had a lariat coiled on 
 the saddle-bow, I must say you don t look 
 as if the future of a country parson or a 
 country doctor was the one you had chosen 
 for yourself ! 
 
 " I really don t know why either of those 
 people should not ride a good horse. 
 
 "All the same, I believe. I shall go into 
 Tucson, or another such spot, some day yet, 
 and see you with a cowboy s hat and car- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 107 
 
 tridge-belt, speaking with your gun for all 
 it s worth." 
 
 " May your prophetic powers increase." 
 "I suppose you mean to say they never 
 can be less. Well, Mary ought to be tired 
 holding the horses," she said. "And I m 
 sure I m tired. Hills are all very well to 
 look at. But I never could live on scenery. 
 I want people, too, and all the touch and 
 go of life. I can t have the go without the 
 touch. And yet, who knows?" she said. 
 " I think if I lived long among such people 
 as you are here, I might be in time just 
 a fraction as good. What they call not half 
 bad, you know." And she lifted her hand 
 for him to help her up and forfend her in 
 the scramble down to the hollow, where 
 Mary had waited with the horses. 
 
 "Oh, I rode all one fall with the Myo 
 pias," said Luisa, as they mounted and 
 went on, " but it was nothing like this ! I 
 feel every instant as if I were going to slip 
 over the edge of the earth. Mary, what 
 possesses you to sit up in your saddle that 
 
Io8 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 way? You ride like one of the Wild 
 Ladies ! " And John had to dismount and 
 give Mary his bridle-rein, and lead Luisa s 
 horse himself, to the accompaniment of 
 shrieks and laughter and blushes and great 
 gayety. And it was early dusk when they 
 reached the village and found Miss Barbara 
 at the Camperdoun gate with old Martha, 
 just properly disquieted and no more. 
 
 "Oh, no," said Miss Barbara, with sus 
 picious sweetness, " I felt you must be per 
 fectly safe with Mr. John. He knows every 
 cleft of the hills, Martha says. Thanks ! 
 Thanks!" to the young man. "Good 
 night ! Good -night ! " and she turned with 
 her charge. 
 
 "Well, I hope, Luisa," she added, after 
 the door was closed, " you are not going to 
 treat this one as you have treated all the 
 young men at home let him get interested 
 in you and then drop him " 
 
 "Into nether blackness," said the girl. 
 "Aunt Barbara, I should think you consid 
 ered me a perfectly hopeless flirt." 
 
AN INHERITANCE 109 
 
 " I do," said Miss Barbara. 
 They went in and sat in the old parlor, 
 just where the light of the hall lamp fell on 
 the portrait of the girl that Luisa used to 
 say would drive her wild if she met her in 
 the dark. 
 
 "If these people weren t crazy," she 
 said, expecting some expostulation, and 
 thinking to ward it off, "they got them 
 selves up for the part. They ll drive me 
 crazy some dark night yet. Aunt Barbara, 
 we must put some netting over them, and 
 have it thick " 
 
 " When I came up here," said Miss Bar 
 bara, paying no attention to the new issue, 
 " it was to arrange a matter of property. 
 And I brought you along to be rid of love- 
 making, not to plunge into more. And as 
 for this young man, Luisa, he is the only 
 child of his father and mother, and I can t 
 have you playing with him." 
 
 "I am not playing with him," said 
 Luisa. 
 
 "I don t dispute that he is, all things 
 
no AN INHERITANCE 
 
 considered, eligible. Yes, eligible, and pre 
 sentable an only son, idolized. Dr. Don- 
 ner, I understand, is a very wealthy man 
 now, and with a large income besides from 
 mica mines and wood-lots and what not. 
 And money grows there s no doubt of 
 that. And if you are in earnest about 
 young John Donner," said Miss Barbara 
 slowly, "and if he chooses to come down 
 and settle in town, we could soon fetch him 
 a practice. He has seen the world ; is col 
 lege-bred ; is serious it would give you 
 stability; yes, indeed, I think well of it." 
 
 "Aunt Barbara!" shrieked Luisa, from 
 the lounge, "what in the world are you 
 talking about ? You are all out. You are 
 just as much mistaken as if you had torn 
 your gown. My goodness ! what do I want 
 of him ? He is dead in love with Mary." 
 
 "So was Romeo with Rosaline. It was 
 before he had seen you. When I said I 
 would die a bachelor I did not think I 
 should live till I were married, said Bene 
 dick. He isn t dead in love with Mary 
 
AN INHERITANCE in 
 
 now." And at that Luisa caught up her 
 hat in a fine temper and rushed to her room 
 and locked the door, and flung herself on 
 her bed in a passion of tears. 
 
 "Oh!" she sobbed, "I don t care a 
 scrap ! And I know he doesn t care a scrap. 
 He is in love with Mary ; he ought to be, 
 I want him to be ! Oh, to think I ve only 
 been here six weeks, and am in all this 
 trouble ! Oh, what was I born for ? I will 
 go home ; I will go right home ; the house 
 is there whether the family is or not. 
 And oh, I don t know ! I don t know 
 how I can go away ! And then she 
 pulled the other pillow over her head in a 
 whirl of pride and shame the handsome, 
 haughty Luisa, who had been so long in the 
 habit of breaking hearts with her black eyes 
 and her damask cheeks and her bewildering 
 smiles and her silver voice, that she never 
 knew she had a heart of her own to break ! 
 
 And while Luisa was crying in her pillow, 
 and rising and walking the floor, and bath 
 ing her eyes, and beginning to cry again, 
 
112 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 Mary leaned over the gate with John and 
 watched the moon float up full over the 
 crest of Benbow, and John watched its sil 
 ver glorying of her face and her fair hair 
 and her great night-blue eyes. 
 
 "I am so sorry," she was saying, " that 
 I was born anywhere but here. I love it 
 all so. I should like to feel I was its very 
 own." 
 
 "You would not advise me, then, to go 
 down and open my practice in the city?" 
 he asked after a moment. 
 
 "I? Oh, John, never! To be sure," 
 she added, with rather a regretful intona 
 tion, " you might become more famous 
 there ; have more opportunity 
 
 "There is all the opportunity in the 
 world here," he said, quickly. "And I 
 must be with my father." 
 
 She turned in a little surprise, as if she 
 saw he had been weighing a point about 
 which there was no question. The minister, 
 who had no more wisdom, despite his gifts, 
 than to step down just then and join them, 
 
AN INHERITANCE 113 
 
 thought he had never seen anything so 
 beautiful as his daughter standing there in 
 the moonlight like a statue that has just 
 melted into a woman. Perhaps John 
 thought so, too. But as he gazed, a thin 
 cloud drifted across the moon, and in the 
 place of that innocent white still beauty 
 swam a little dark face, all blush and smile 
 and sparkle, glancing, laughing, flashing, 
 living, and dazzled and dimmed his eyes. 
 
 But old Martha was, on the whole, some 
 thing wiser than the minister. She had 
 seen John dashing off the next morning, in 
 his saddle, for a long ride up and down hill. 
 " Ye needn t go horseback riding," she 
 muttered to herself, although apparently 
 addressing him as he galloped by, " to work 
 it off. It s only time cools hot blood an 
 ye come rightly by it ! But ye re yer 
 mother s son, ez well ez his n, an ye ve got 
 the stuff in ye ter overcome ten tation. 
 Ye ve got princerple, John Donner ! An 
 ef this little minx o ourn ain t tew much fer 
 ye, ye 11 clap it right on now ! " 
 
H4 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 Apparently John had no sympathetic way 
 of taking the unheard advice to heart, for he 
 came up the yard the evening of that day, 
 scattering with his stick the petals of the 
 poppies by the path. 
 
 But before he could drop the knocker, 
 Martha, who had been on the watch, came 
 out and closed the door behind her. 
 
 " She s ben to bed all day ith the head 
 ache, an you can t see her," she said. " An 
 ez for you, John Donner, you jes put me in 
 min of a fly t can t keep away frum the 
 honey, pizon in it or not ! I ve hearn tell 
 of men t was in love ith two women ter 
 oncet, but I didn expec ter see em in a 
 Christian Ian . Now, you better go home 
 tell ye know yer own mind. What ! Oh, 
 ye ain t no need to look glowering to me ! 
 I ain t a gal, an I don t mind yer looks the 
 leastestest mite. Ye d be ez harnsome as 
 the Archangel Gabriel as ye be an I 
 shouldn t see it, an ye can stan* up as big 
 an forbiddin as Mount Pisgeh, an I 
 shouldn t be afraid of ye. I should only see 
 
AN INHERITANCE 115 
 
 the little boy thet uster run acrosst the green 
 ter old Marthy fer her hot gingerbread. 
 Wai , I m takin better care o my hot 
 gingerbread now " 
 
 "What in the world are you talking 
 about, Aunt Martha ? said the young 
 man, impatiently, looking up at the house. 
 
 But Martha took a step nearer, and laid 
 her old seamy hand on his arm. " Now, 
 John," said she. " I give ye the fust kiss ye 
 ever hed yes, I did ! I was yer mother s 
 nuss. Mr. Camperdoun, he lent me an 
 I d a gone ef he hedn t. An I ve ben 
 fond o ye sence ye were so high. An I ve 
 watched out on ye, an prayed for ye, an 
 ben proud of ye. 
 
 " Yes, Aunt Martha, I know it," said the 
 young man. " And I recognize and return 
 all your friendship. I don t know just what 
 you are driving at now." 
 
 " Yes, ye do. I ain t ben all the same s 
 own folks to ye all yer life fer nothin , an 
 ye know me well enough ter know w at I 
 mean. Cause I m fond o you ain t the 
 
n6 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 reason I m willin ter see ye go straight ter 
 destruction." 
 
 "Well, look here," said the young man, 
 laughing now, " if this is all you have to 
 say 
 
 " Tisn t. An you needn t laugh. On- 
 less you want ter laugh t other side yer 
 mouth. Tain t no laughin matter. Fond 
 ez I be of you, John Donner, I ve ben jes 
 ez fond o Mary Swann, ever sence she 
 lighted in this town like a little white bird. 
 It seemed ez ef she was too good ter stay, 
 an I vum I do no but she be ! She s a 
 sight too good fer ye, anyway, playin fast 
 an loose ez ye be. Now, maybe," said 
 Martha, with half a wheedling emphasis 
 " you ain t jes so s ter say engaged to 
 Mary, but ye know ye ain t eyther of ye 
 expected ter marry anybody else. Ye know 
 she s cut out for ye, an there ain t nobody 
 else in this breathin world that s fit ter 
 be yer blessed mother s darter, an twould 
 nigh about break her heart to hev Mary s 
 heart broke." 
 
AN INHERITANCE 117 
 
 " Come, come, Aunt Martha," said the 
 young man, " you will have to let me pass." 
 
 " Wen I m ready. I ain t said my say 
 yet. I m yer mother s an yer father s 
 friend. I knowed em afore ye did. An 
 that s one side of it. The other is," and 
 Martha s little pale eyes flashed at him, 
 " I ve been hired help in the Camperdoun 
 fambly this thirty year come nex month. 
 Their fortins hes ben mine. I ve ben true 
 to em, an I mean ter be. Where the 
 Camperdouns is consarned, I m a Camper 
 doun," and there Martha choked a little, 
 but not at all with any fear of the disdain 
 of the landed gentry among whom she had 
 taken her place, and reached up and pulled 
 the comb out of her hair and gave the gray 
 wisp a stronger twist, as if the tension 
 tightened her control over her feelings. 
 "An so ye see," she began again, after 
 thrusting in the comb more firmly, " I can t 
 hev no playin ith this here little minx. 
 She may be a poppet," said Martha, " but 
 she s a Camperdoun. An she s a dear, 
 
n8 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 pooty, coaxin little cat, an I m fond o 
 her, tew. An that s all they is about it. 
 An I tell ye, ef ye don t let her alone, John 
 Donner, I ll go toyer father. An then we ll 
 see. Hev ye forgot," she exclaimed, her 
 voice rising, " that she s got w at yer father 
 calls the Camperdoun inheritance, jes ez 
 much ez the worst of em ? Don t ye know 
 this girl s got the thing in her blood, jest 
 ez strong ez Launce Camperdoun hed, ef 
 there s anythin wakes the sleepin beast? 
 Ef that there Miss Barb ry s name warn t 
 Camperdoun I wouldn t hev one mite o 
 respec for her," cried the old woman, with 
 fervid inconsequence. " Fer ef I know 
 black an w ite w en I see it, it was her give 
 him his death notice w en she sent him 
 word they was cousins, and t warn t no use 
 doublin crazy blood, or words to that ef- 
 fec . I come an nussed him through brain- 
 fever, an arter that he jes wilted down. I 
 s pose she done right, though. In the end, 
 that is. But she d orter thought o thet in 
 the uptake. An ye see that ye do right, 
 
AN INHERITANCE 119 
 
 John Dormer ! I won t hev this Loizy o* 
 ourn tampered with. Let sleepin dogs lie. 
 She ll do well enough ef thar don t nothin 
 pertic lar come acrost her hawse, ez they say. 
 But she sha n t be upset by a feller thinkin 
 he s in love with her w en he knows in his 
 soul he s agoin ter marry another gal." 
 
 A blind slammed open on the second 
 floor, a head where the sunset glinted in 
 points of light on every dark ring of hair 
 was thrust through the open window, a 
 laughing face looked down at him. " I ve 
 had a headache," said Luisa. "I m all 
 right now. Stay a moment. I ll be down 
 directly." 
 
 Mary waited, leaning on the garden-gate 
 alone that night, and went in when the nine- 
 o clock bell rung, with a sort of chill at her 
 heart that she had never felt before. She 
 didn t know why it was that, as she copied 
 out her father s sermon for him the next 
 day, she listened for a sound the morning 
 long with a painful eagerness ; the sound of 
 a familiar foot on the gravel that did not 
 
120 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 come ; and that when she put the little chil 
 dren to bed for her mother, and sat singing 
 to them in the twilight, the beating of her 
 heart made her voice tremble so that the 
 boy reached from his bed and put an arm 
 about her neck and whispered, " Buvver 
 loves Mawy." 
 
 Buvver was ill next day, and when Luisa 
 ran down for Mary to join them on a tramp 
 up the Weathergauge, Buvver would not 
 hear of Mary s leaving him ; and, of course, 
 Mary would not cross the sick child s whim, 
 and she stayed at home, but with the heart 
 going out of her and up the mountain-side 
 where the party scrambled. She contented 
 herself as she could by thinking of the high 
 pasture where she and John had sat while 
 the sun revealed the mysteries in the front 
 of old Blue opposite, the long descending 
 slope between peopled with the wild horses 
 of the doctor s upper farm, and Blue Moun 
 tain rising with layers and lines of pine 
 forest, into which presently wound veils of 
 smoke, while the forest as it climbed became 
 
AN INHERITANCE 121 
 
 deep violet glooms suddenly smitten and 
 parted by rifts of sunshine, disclosing, still 
 above, bare, scarred precipice and leaping 
 torrent and misty caverns ; and the heights 
 beyond, swathed in deep, impenetrable 
 azure, seemed, she had said to John, to be 
 both the throne and the high altar of Power. 
 She wondered if John would not remember 
 her there. And as she sat beside the bed 
 where Buvver was now asleep she was 
 ashamed of herself that her breath went and 
 came so eagerly ; that she found it so hard 
 to sit still ; that the unreasonable tears 
 would start and drop upon her work. 
 
 Perhaps John would have remembered 
 her there, if he had gone there for the un 
 spoken words that had trembled on his lips 
 as they had rested there were like those 
 strains that " pipe to the spirit ditties of no 
 tone," and they had both known what the 
 presence of others hindered from further 
 expression. But to-day the party wound 
 round the Weathergauge by another path ; 
 and after luncheon he had been sitting with 
 
122 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 Luisa, a little apart from the rest, looking 
 at quite a different view the view of a 
 rosy face where dimple chased dimple, 
 where white eyelids drooped their dark 
 lashes over dark eyes and lifted them with 
 flashes of laughing light, and little teeth 
 glittered, and the corners of a pretty mouth 
 curved bewilderingly ; the face of a woman 
 like those he had read of, a woman of the 
 great outer world with its dash and life and 
 sparkle, such as he had seen but not ap 
 proached in Paris perhaps ; a woman fit for 
 the life of courts, and smiling now on him. 
 And they had risen and strolled away, fol 
 lowing a track John knew, now under 
 arches of green boughs where he had to 
 clear the tangle; now pausing to look at 
 the world through open spaces while they 
 discussed their young experiences and opin 
 ions ; now resting before starting to go 
 down and find the others ; and at last 
 wrapped in a cloud that came up about 
 them and played its lightnings to and fro 
 under their feet. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 123 
 
 11 I think we will climb a little higher 
 and get out of these mists," said John. 
 " And if we keep to the left there s a path 
 down. I have heard my mother say that 
 when it is dark where we are it is best to 
 climb higher and into the light." 
 
 1 That is one of the good things," said 
 Luisa, with a little sigh. " It isn t my way. 
 I should just shut my eyes and fight on." 
 
 "There isn t much fighting here," said 
 John. 
 
 " No ; only marching and countermarch 
 ing. And I have my marching orders. I 
 shall be going home so soon now," she 
 said, with another little sigh. 
 
 "Going home!" And he stood still 
 with sudden consternation. 
 
 " Yes. They are all settled on the Shore 
 by this." 
 
 " I thought I hoped " 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Barbara is going to stay," 
 said Luisa, demurely. 
 
 " What in the name of wonder " 
 
 "Do you care whether Aunt Barbara 
 
124 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 stays or not, I suppose you want to say. 
 Well, she will have the place ready for the 
 family by another season." 
 
 " Another season. It might as well be 
 another life." 
 
 " Exactly," said Luisa. And then she 
 stopped and looked behind her. " I 
 thought the others would be somewhere 
 here," she said. " Oughtn t we to go back? 
 Sha n t we lose them?" 
 
 " What do we want of the others? " he 
 asked, roughly. 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "You said there were no bears in these 
 woods," she said, with a side glance. 
 
 He laughed then. "You make no al 
 lowances," he began. 
 
 "What nonsense!" interrupted Miss 
 Luisa. 
 
 " To be sure, it is impossible for you to 
 see, to know I don t imagine a rose blow 
 ing all alone would have any idea of what 
 the world would be without it." 
 
 "I m sure I don t know how roses feel. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 125 
 
 I hardly think science has gone so far. 
 Though I always did believe flowers felt it 
 when you picked them. But just now," 
 she exclaimed, coming to a halt, "have 
 you really any idea where we are? It 
 doesn t seem to me that this is even a 
 bridle-path. Chaperones do have their 
 uses, don t they ? If there were such things 
 at Woodsedge, we could have lost our 
 selves on Weathergauge just the same." 
 John started and looked about him. 
 "I thought I knew every twig on the 
 Weathergauge," he replied. " We we 
 really must wait where we are till the sky 
 lifts." And he began to break off some 
 hemlock boughs for her to sit upon. 
 
 As she waited, watching his movements, 
 something of her thought concerning his 
 splendid young stature and strength shot so 
 swiftly into her face that he cast down his 
 eyes. 
 
 "Yes," he exclaimed, suddenly, "the 
 first man might have been breaking boughs 
 for the first woman, as I am doing " 
 
126 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 "But she wouldn t have worn a bicycle 
 suit from Ballard s," said Luisa. "Why 
 are you cutting so many boughs ? 
 
 "It may come up cold," looking away 
 after a quick glance. "I may have to 
 cover you, while I go up on the ledge and 
 build a fire to tell them where we are." 
 
 "You don t mean to say how roman 
 tic ! How Penny Gower would enjoy this ! 
 Are we really lost ? 
 
 " Not exactly," he said, piling the plumy 
 boughs. " There," he continued, seating 
 her on the soft, fragrant heap, and throwing 
 himself down beside her. "When the sun 
 sets I think it will open the clouds below, 
 and we shall see our way. There is nothing 
 to be afraid of. I have an idea," he said, 
 " that we have wound round the mountain, 
 and that the shaking heath is some hundreds 
 of feet below us. That shaking heath is 
 like a piece of the Debatable Land. The 
 common people used to declare it was pos 
 sessed by spirits, for it is ubiquitous ; a 
 piece of it comes almost into town, and it 
 
AN INHERITANCE 127 
 
 encircles the base of Weathergauge ten 
 miles away, except for the causeway by 
 which we crossed. I suppose Weather- 
 gauge was some old volcano, rising from 
 the lake once." 
 
 " Adam and Eve and the beginning of 
 the world," said Luisa. "Quite genea 
 logical." 
 
 It grew dusky, and the wind, sweeping by, 
 freshened. 
 
 "Do you know," she said at last, look 
 ing up gravely, "if we only were lost, and 
 were never to be found, and it were the 
 
 real end of all things here for us 
 
 She stopped, her voice trembling. He 
 took her hand and kept it ; it fluttered a 
 moment like a bird, and then lay still in 
 his. She was so near that her breath 
 fanned warm on his cheek. 
 
 "There is no such fortune," he said, 
 "good or bad. And I had rather live 
 with you, than die with you! " And the 
 next moment his arms were about her and 
 he had kissed her on the mouth. 
 
128 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 They neither of them spoke for a long 
 while. The moment was enough ; alone, 
 above the world, in each other s arms ! 
 They had no idea if it were a moment or 
 an hour that they lingered, with murmurs, 
 with caresses, with simple silence of rapture. 
 There is nothing by which to measure time 
 in Paradise. And then it began to grow 
 light about them, and out of a great golden 
 glamour the friendly face of the moon 
 looked through. 
 
 "Oh! " cried Luisa, "that is the end. 
 There is the light and the world and life 
 again ! " 
 
 " This is life/ said John. " And there 
 is the heath, as I thought. Now our way is 
 clear and safe. My mother told me the 
 happiest night of her life was on the edge of 
 that heath, where once she was lost and had 
 abandoned herself to the love and care of 
 heaven, and my father came and found her 
 and snatched her back to the love here. 
 And here, just above, Luisa, has been and 
 is the happiest night of my life, too." 
 
AN INHERITANCE 129 
 
 And for answer, Luisa burst into tears, 
 sobbing vehemently, uncontrollably. 
 
 "What is it? Oh, what is it?" cried 
 John. 
 
 "Nothing, nothing!" she sobbed. 
 " Only I have been so happy, and life is so 
 short, and things things are so cruel. Oh, 
 how could Paolo and Francesca have been 
 in hell when they were together ! And 
 he held her, and she clung to him, till the 
 tears stopped, and hand in hand, with 
 whispered words of endearment, as if they 
 feared the very trees should hear, they took 
 their way down. 
 
 It was that forenoon that Mrs. Donner 
 had come across the green to Mary. 
 
 "Buvver is better," she said. "Noth 
 ing really ailed him, the doctor says. He 
 does not need you, indeed, dear soul, and I 
 do. Your mother is willing, Maida is pack 
 ing your trunk, and we are going on a little 
 journey together, you and I. The doctor 
 thinks the salt air will be good for both of 
 us. And he can t go; and I can t go 
 
130 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 alone, and you haven t seen the sea for 
 years, Mary. John will come and bring us 
 home, I hope. And there isn t a half hour 
 to spare." 
 
 An hour before that the doctor had said 
 to his wife, as he saw the young people go 
 ing by the gate with their baskets, and tak 
 ing the Weathergauge lane, " I suppose 
 you haven t noticed Master John s fancy for 
 the little Camperdoun puss? " 
 
 "Yes, I have," she said, somewhat de 
 jectedly. " I am afraid I have. And I had 
 so wished for something else, you know." 
 
 " You will have something else," he said, 
 smiling at" her, as she sat folding and un 
 folding the white Liberty scarf round her 
 shoulders. " It is only a fancy, an infatua 
 tion, if I know the signs. It will pass pres 
 ently, like any phase of the moon. Yes, I 
 have seen and heard too much of the Cam 
 perdoun taint to have my son s life ruined 
 by it. While he is waiting for my consent 
 he will outgrow it. This part of him is my 
 son," he said, still looking at her and won- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 131 
 
 dering, without knowing that he did so, 
 what further loveliness heaven could add 
 to her. " But if history repeats itself it is 
 on the upward spiral here. And I haven t 
 any fear for your son, my wife. He will 
 come out all right." 
 
 "It troubles me to think," she said, 
 " that he will make me his confidante when 
 he is ready. And it will be the first time 
 he has not had my sympathy. 
 
 "Then he shall not make you his confi 
 dante. It will be best for him not to do so. 
 To confide a thing is to cement it, in a way. 
 You shall go off somewhere. I suppose I 
 can live while you are gone. To come 
 home at night and not find you it is a 
 sacrifice. Nancy, I never dreamed youth 
 would last so long. What is the rhyme the 
 children were saying, Monday s child is 
 fair in the face, Tuesday s child is full of 
 grace, you must have been born between 
 the two, for you are as fair to me to 
 day " 
 
 "There, there," she 3aid, smiling, and 
 
132 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 taking his knotty hand and passing it 
 across her lips. "I was never fair, you 
 know." 
 
 "The years have moulded your soul into 
 your face ! " he said. "Yes, I know how 
 it will be ; the moment you are gone I shall 
 begin to quake lest it is a delusion that you 
 care for your old man still." 
 
 "One would think it was a superior be 
 ing. I am only your old wife." 
 
 " There is no wife so beautiful as an old 
 wife." 
 
 " I hope John will think so when his time 
 comes," as she laid her cheek upon the hand 
 she still held. 
 
 " Ah ! John, yes well," he paused a mo 
 ment. " What do you say to the Shoals? " 
 he asked then. 
 
 "It seems like running away in the face 
 of danger. 
 
 " It is best for John. I might be able to 
 run down by and by. And I think a little 
 toning up with the open sea will do you no 
 harm." 
 
AN INHERITANCE 133 
 
 "I will take Mary with me," said Mrs. 
 Dormer. 
 
 And so it happened, as John wound down 
 the mountains, threading the narrow green 
 wood ways, lifting the rain - drenched 
 branches, scaring the wild bird from her 
 nest, climbing round bowlders, and coming 
 out of the shadow down the long wet past 
 ures into the glory of the moonlight, his feet 
 upon the earth, his head in a cloud of joy, 
 that his mother and Mary were speeding 
 away in a sleeping-car, with the iron echoes 
 beating round them as they clanged along, 
 like an everlasting resonance of bolts and 
 chains shot home and barring them out of 
 happiness. 
 
 But when there is a disturbance in the at 
 mosphere for one or two people, there is apt 
 to be at the same time a disturbance for 
 several. As Miss Barbara Camperdoun at 
 her door was surveying the clouds, just be 
 fore the thunder-storm burst over the valley, 
 she hardly saw the carriage taking Mrs. 
 Donner to the station, for at the same mo- 
 
134 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 ment she saw a figure strangely familiar 
 coming along the dusty road yellow um 
 brella and camp-stool and other fine artistic 
 belongings under his arm, and a generally 
 weary air about him, as he also looked at 
 the clouds, not to be mistaken. 
 
 "My gracious! " she exclaimed, as she 
 went in quickly and shut the door. "Was 
 there ever anything more unfortunate? 
 There isn t a moment to lose. I shall speak 
 to Dr. Donner at once, and tell him what I 
 propose to do for Luisa, if she marries to 
 please me. And I really think she might 
 go further and fare worse. He can t do less 
 for John. He will do more. Yes, I think 
 the house will be on the Avenue. But the 
 nail must be clinched now, for Luisa s as 
 changeable as the day. What in the name 
 of goodness sent Penny Gower to Wood- 
 sedge now ? 
 
THE thunder-storm that had swept through 
 the valley while the party of young people 
 rested on the ledges of Weathergauge had left 
 the air next morning more light and nimble 
 than that round Macbeth s castle, and Miss 
 Barbara Camperdoun had recovered from 
 the fright into which thunder always cast 
 her, sufficiently to remember the look on 
 Luisa s face as John had parted from her at 
 the gate, and she had darted past her aunt 
 and old Martha and up to her own room, 
 something disordered, something flushed 
 Miss Barbara could not tell if that look were 
 one of purpose, of joy, or of agony. 
 
 " It is all settled ! " said Miss Barbara to 
 herself. " And, of course, it has excited 
 her. She is such a little free and inde 
 pendent spirit, she does not take kindly to 
 the idea of being mastered, and it is plain 
 that love has mastered her at last. Well, 
 135 
 
136 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 I m glad things have declared themselves 
 before Penny Gower, with his ridiculous at 
 tractions, came upon the scene to make a 
 diversion. And as I said this noon, the 
 very first thing I ll do to-morrow is to see 
 Dr. Donner and have the thing made irrev 
 ocable. With what the doctor is able to 
 allow, and I am convinced that is something 
 extraordinarily handsome, and with what I 
 can do," said Miss Barbara, counting off 
 imaginary sums on her fingers, " few young 
 people have a better start in life than they 
 will have. Yes, it is decidedly the best 
 chance Luisa has had, or is likely to have. 
 I m sure I don t know who there is and I 
 want her settled ! We will get him a Back 
 Bay practice, with the kind of people that 
 go out of town from May to October, so 
 that they can come up here for four months 
 in the year at least. And the more I see of 
 this ideal village and this ancestral place of 
 ours, the more fit I think it all is ! And, 
 for my part, I shall have a load off my mind 
 when Luisa is married and tied down to some 
 
AN INHERITANCE 137 
 
 duties, for I never know what in the world 
 the little brimstone is going to do next ! It 
 certainly is a misfortune to be an only daugh 
 ter and a beauty, and have a spirit and a 
 will, and lovers, and all that. Dear, dear 
 me, it is nearly midnight now ! I wonder 
 if they have such storms here frequently 
 thunder does always string me up so ! " 
 
 So it was early in the morning when a 
 note, written in Miss Barbara s most mannish 
 hand, but sealed with her most ladylike wax, 
 and asking his presence for a brief interview, 
 was put into Dr. Donner s hand. 
 
 The doctor was breakfasting by himself, 
 and feeling exceedingly lonesome. He 
 missed the face opposite him for so many 
 mornings of so many years for even when 
 his wife had been up all night with the sick 
 she had always made shift to pour his coffee ; 
 and he felt as if there were something gone 
 wrong in the relation of things without it 
 the face that might be old and plain, but in 
 which the sweetness of the spirit, as he had 
 told her, had wrought a loveliness that to 
 
138 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 him was more than beauty, and that of late 
 years it had never crossed his mind to doubt 
 was beautiful to all the world besides. He 
 was thinking of her as he slowly sipped his 
 coffee. A bitterness of sudden remem 
 brance of those early days, and what now 
 seemed to him her divine patience in endur 
 ing them, made even his cup taste bitter. 
 He thanked heaven, as he bent his head in 
 the silent grace, that she had never known 
 his baseness in marrying her as he did. He 
 felt as he thought of it afterward while fill 
 ing his phials that he could not have borne 
 her righteous contempt. He felt, too, that 
 he could even less well have borne the sting 
 of anguish it would have been to her. He 
 thanked heaven for another thing as in his 
 practice he had noticed that the son, al 
 though he might have the father s physical 
 resemblance, was. almost invariably the 
 moral and mental and spiritual child of his 
 mother that John was his mother s son ; 
 and as he thought of it, John seemed to him 
 to have an immense advantage, a tremen- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 139 
 
 dous spring-board for his work in the fact 
 that he was his mother s son. It was al 
 ready a consecration for the Master s work. 
 " And there is need of him," thought the 
 doctor. " Here, it may be, too. For 
 where there was one Break o Day with all 
 its miseries, one Dawlish s when I was a 
 lad, there are five now farther off, to be 
 sure," for neither of those places existed 
 now in Woodsedge, " but still within reach, 
 and fermenting evil, needing the strength of 
 his mighty young frame and the purity of 
 his principle." And then it flashed over 
 him, not for the first time, the conviction of 
 the boy s feeling if he knew of the early life 
 of his father. And he groaned in spirit. 
 " Well, well," he said. " We are forgiven 
 a sin when we have reached a point where 
 we could by no possibility commit it again. 
 And if I have the Lord s forgiveness, I 
 think I must rely on the boy s. And in all 
 probability he will never have a dream of it. 
 For who would have the temerity to speak 
 of it to him ? there is not a creature in the 
 
140 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 world so cruel, so ignoble. Come, come, 
 this is a poor beginning of a day s work ! 
 And the young fellow on his horse half-way 
 up Weathergauge already I wish he hadn t 
 to have this pain that I fear may be coming 
 but it would be worse pain by and by. 
 Somehow the best we have comes through 
 pain. His mother will make it all right, 
 though." As he went out, he saw lying 
 on the table in the hall the white Liberty 
 scarf that his wife had worn the day before ; 
 he took it up and kissed it ; it had lain in 
 one of her old sandal-wood boxes, and car 
 ried the delicate scent, sweet and evanes 
 cent, that was always about her garments, 
 and he put it in his breast-pocket before 
 reading the note from Miss Barbara that 
 Sally handed him. 
 
 It was but a short distance across the 
 green to the Camperdoun house under its 
 great oak-trees. Not waiting for his gig, 
 the doctor strolled over, his hands in his 
 pockets, except when he took them out to 
 put them on the curly heads of two children 
 
AN INHERITANCE 141 
 
 running along on either side of him a little 
 way, Brow, the grandson of old Brow, fol 
 lowing at his heels in the hope of a frolic 
 with Bursar, and he paused at the Camper- 
 doun gate for a draught of the fresh, dewy 
 fragrance that blew down from the mountain 
 side and curled about the valley, and seemed 
 to fill it with strength and courage, and all 
 the deliciousness of life besides. The doc 
 tor had need of that long draught of brac 
 ing air and vigor before he turned and went 
 up the path to meet Miss Barbara at the 
 door. 
 
 She took him into the west parlor, a cool 
 and shadowy place in the morning, with its 
 heavy damask curtains, whose moss-green 
 hues had long since faded to a silver-olive 
 sheen, and among whose old spider-legged 
 mahogany and dark imprisoning portraits 
 Launce Camperdoun had been wont to 
 spend his sunsets and long evenings. It 
 was all the same as it had been, except for 
 the great jars of fresh flowers that stood 
 about here and there. But it gave Dr. 
 
142 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 Donner a more than passing mood of sad 
 ness to recall the life that had been lived 
 and had gone out here in its mild mad 
 ness ; and as he stood looking at the pict 
 ure of Camperdoun in his youth, in the 
 niche over the fireplace, he found tears in 
 his eyes. 
 
 Luisa had not yet come down ; the little 
 maid who helped Martha had been told to 
 bring her toast and tea to her room some 
 time ago. So Miss Barbara felt herself at 
 perfect liberty. Not that she anticipated 
 any difficulty of course she was doing the 
 Donners an honor which they would rec 
 ognize and acknowledge ; but still she pre 
 ferred to have the doctor by himself. 
 
 " Pray be seated, doctor," she said. 
 And she could not have told you why she 
 felt a slight sensation of awe, as if in the 
 presence of majesty, when this man, who 
 used to break her uncle s horses, took the 
 great arm-chair near her own and laid his 
 arm along the ebony table there. 
 
 I hope you are not very much occupied 
 
AN INHERITANCE 143 
 
 this morning, she said, blandly ; for I 
 want your counsel and agreement concern 
 ing our young people." 
 
 "Our young people?" inquired Dr. 
 Donner. 
 
 " Yes Luisa and your son. They are 
 as, to be sure, you are aware very much 
 interested, I may say, in each other," 
 said Miss Barbara, hesitating a little at the 
 calm unsuspiciousness of the doctor. " I 
 had supposed they had a warm mutual in 
 terest," she said, hurriedly, "and with very 
 good reason. And I had thought of bring 
 ing the affair to your attention before. But 
 last night when they came down from the 
 mountain Weathergauge, do you call it? 
 I was quite sure from Luisa s face that 
 they had arrived at a happy understand- 
 ing " 
 
 " I hope not," said the doctor, gravely. 
 
 "You hope not? " 
 
 " I mean that with every wish for their 
 happiness so much so, indeed, that it is 
 absurd to speak of it," said the doctor, 
 
144 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 "yet anything such as you imply would be 
 very unfortunate." 
 
 "Very unfortunate? " 
 
 "I think so." 
 
 "Not at all," said Miss Barbara, re 
 mounting the heights from which she had 
 been startled. " Not at all, when it is with 
 my full approval." 
 
 "What," began the doctor, in his deep 
 est tones, "what " 
 
 "Has that to do with it?" said Miss 
 Barbara, so affable and sprightly that she 
 was half astonished at herself. "Why, 
 everything ! 
 
 "I really fail to see " 
 
 " I hardly expected you would. And of 
 course I am conscious that, looking at it 
 from the point of view of the last genera 
 tion," said Miss Barbara, with much sweet 
 condescension, " something might be said 
 about a misalliance. But we are living in 
 this generation. And you have become so 
 eminent in your profession, Dr. Donner, 
 and have accumulated such wealth " 
 
AN INHERITANCE 145 
 
 " Who knows anything about my wealth? 
 said the doctor, stoutly. 
 
 "And John being your only child," 
 continued Miss Barbara, not allowing her 
 self to falter, although feeling the ground 
 less firm beneath her feet, " that why, all 
 that puts a very different face upon the af 
 fair. 
 
 "Miss Barbara," said the doctor, more 
 gently, " wiser people than we have made 
 mistakes 
 
 " Oh, no, indeed, not in the least ! " she 
 exclaimed with assurance. " There is no 
 mistake about it ! I have not lived in the 
 world of men and women for nearly sixty 
 years not to know love, and first love, par 
 parenthese, when I see it. Trust a woman 
 for that ! Luisa is a girl of strong feelings, 
 and no one of her lovers has ever touched 
 them before. I must admit that there is 
 something something very compelling 
 about this young man his face, his figure, 
 his manner and then, brought up as he 
 has been, his mother s companion " 
 
146 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 The doctor bowed. 
 
 "Ah! I thought you would see it as I 
 
 " By no means," said the doctor. " This 
 is all a mistake, Miss Barbara, as I said be 
 fore " 
 
 " And as I said before, there is no mis 
 take about it ! " exclaimed Miss Barbara. 
 "My niece, who is a belle and a beauty, 
 and your son, who has a future before him, 
 have chosen each other, for better, for 
 worse." 
 
 "It would be decidedly for worse if they 
 had done so," said the doctor, moving his 
 fingers impatiently on the table. 
 
 " I don t know what you mean ! " cried 
 Miss Barbara. " What insufferable breed 
 ing the man has ! " she thought. " Drum 
 ming his fingers ! And really it is quite too 
 much mock humility. Of course, it s a 
 great thing for his son but he needn t 
 pretend to misunderstand me so altogether 
 abjectly! " 
 
 She used her smelling-salts a moment. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 147 
 
 "I am told," she said then, "that your 
 son is to follow your profession. With our 
 family connection and friends, it will be 
 easy to build up for him a good Back Bay 
 practice very rapidly. With his talents he 
 will soon make it a fine one. The Back 
 Bay in Boston affords opportunities " 
 
 " My son will practise his profession in 
 and about Woodsedge," said Dr. Donner. 
 
 " Oh, I know you would not like to part 
 with him a son like that ! But you would 
 not have to do it. For at least four months 
 of every year he would return, if he chose, 
 and you and his mother would have him 
 here. I should surrender to Luisa all my 
 right and title to this house for their sum 
 mer home, and to the whole of my cousin s 
 property, indeed, as well as to some other 
 a few thousands, but enough to keep the 
 wolf from the door," said Miss Barbara, 
 with a genial laugh. " There will be some 
 thing handsome, too, for Luisa on her fa 
 ther s death, but festina lente, we will not 
 count on such contingencies," she said, 
 
148 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 gayly. " You, of course, are able to do 
 much more on your side of the bargain 
 such are the revanches of fate but, of 
 course, Luisa s family and social relations 
 count for a good deal." Miss Barbara had 
 never been troubled by too much delicacy 
 in her life. " Excuse me," she said, how 
 ever. "It is not a time for sensitiveness in 
 the weighing of advantages, and we are all 
 going to be one family so soon it hardly 
 signifies. And so," said Miss Barbara, "I 
 sent for you this morning, Dr. Donner, to 
 ask what settlement you would be willing 
 to make on the young couple. I suppose 
 Commonwealth Avenue would be the best, 
 but a house on the water side of Beacon 
 Street, between Berkeley and Exeter, has 
 much in its favor. And there should be a 
 certain yearly allowance to keep it up, of 
 course, as Luisa s dress and her brougham 
 and coachman would probably absorb the 
 greater part of her own income, and she 
 
 would be providing the house up here " 
 
 " Miss Barbara ! " exclaimed the doctor, 
 
AN INHERITANCE 149 
 
 as soon as he had the chance, raising his 
 voice the least in the world, " you are going 
 altogether too fast. Allow me the opportu 
 nity of saying that I should give nothing to 
 my son in such an event. Nothing at all. 
 Not even my consent. 
 
 Miss Barbara looked at him with a puzzled, 
 almost a bewildered, air. " You would give 
 nothing in such an event not even con 
 sent," she repeated. " I I don t think I 
 understand you." 
 
 " It is very simple," he said. " I tried 
 to spare you, Miss Camperdoun, when I 
 divined the drift of your thought " 
 
 YOU spare me ! " cried my Lady Dis 
 dain. " What in the world do you mean?" 
 
 "That I am unwilling to countenance 
 any such agreement as that you mention," 
 he said, looking at her steadily. "And 
 for reasons of which you must be perfectly 
 well aware." 
 
 The sun fell on Miss Barbara s face, and 
 he rose to adjust the curtain, giving a nod 
 and smile as he did so to the pretty creature 
 
150 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 standing by the althea-bush in the yard with 
 a young man beside her there Luisa, who 
 had come down and was amusing herself 
 with Penny Gower. 
 
 Do I comprehend you?" said Miss 
 Barbara. "Is it possible? Are you de 
 clining for your son an alliance with my 
 brother s daughter?" 
 
 " She is a charming child, a lovely girl," 
 said the doctor. " I could take her delight 
 edly for my daughter, but not for my son s 
 wife." 
 
 Miss Barbara waited a moment, looking 
 at the table, and beginning to draw figures 
 there with the blunt point of a paper-knife. 
 It was very annoying. But then for Luisa s 
 sake some diplomacy. " For what rea 
 sons?" she said, leaning forward, a little 
 breathlessly. 
 
 The doctor looked up ; his eye swept, one 
 after another, the old portraits. He moved 
 his hand with a slight, quick motion toward 
 them. " The best of reasons," he said. 
 * There they are. I cannot you must for- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 151 
 
 give me I cannot give my son any share in 
 the Camperdoun inheritance." 
 
 " Speak more plainly ! " commanded Miss 
 Barbara, with flashing eyes. 
 
 " There is no need of that," he replied. 
 " You know very well the traditions con 
 cerning every pictured person in this room, 
 from your cousin Launce up. Is there one 
 of them who did not suffer from the family 
 taint? " 
 
 She waited a moment. 
 
 " I cannot believe," she said then, throw 
 ing down the ivory plaything, " that a man 
 of your scientific acquirements can attach 
 any importance to those old notions of he 
 redity." 
 
 "I attach importance," he said, angrily 
 at last in his turn, " to the Camperdoun in 
 sanity, which has gone from mother to son, 
 and from father to daughter, for a hundred 
 and fifty years, and I will not have my son 
 made its victim." 
 
 "But they love each other," said Miss 
 Barbara. 
 
152 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 " They think they do, possibly. Two 
 months ago my son was of a different opin 
 ion," said the doctor, a light shooting across 
 the steel-blue eyes. " Your pretty Luisa 
 came, a charming novelty very like he 
 swerved aside. I regret that he could be 
 swayed but it is pardonable. When she is 
 gone, the fascination will be gone, too, and 
 he will marry and be happy with the lovely 
 girl who is fitted for him, has grown up with 
 him, has my heart and his mother s, as well 
 as his own yes, under this infatuation, his 
 own." 
 
 Miss Barbara was wondering at herself 
 and her forbearance. Still, it might be 
 worth while 
 
 But you really make too much of the 
 matter," she said. "We do not regard it 
 so seriously in society. A bar to marriage ! 
 At home one would be thought out of his 
 head who entertained such an idea ! " 
 
 " You entertained it once yourself, Miss 
 Barbara. 
 
 There were two of us," said Miss Bar- 
 
AN INHERITANCE 153 
 
 bara, with a slight start. "And really I 
 don t know that it advances matters to use 
 personalities." 
 
 "I beg your pardon; you have sought 
 this interview and opened this conversation 
 on nothing but personalities. You have 
 compelled me to state plain facts and to use 
 plain language." 
 
 And the doctor leaned back in his chair 
 as if tired of the subject. 
 
 "Well, do you know," began Miss Bar 
 bara again, after another confidential mo 
 ment with the paper-knife, "it seems to me 
 you are fighting shadows. I think the 
 trouble, such as it is, has died out." 
 
 " A thing never dies out by multiplying." 
 
 " But healthier blood I will not say 
 better blood there is no better blood than 
 the Camperdouns ! " 
 
 She paused ; but the doctor said nothing. 
 
 " There has been only my cousin Launce 
 of all this generation. For, of course, my 
 brother s epileptic seizures " 
 
 " Do not count, you would say. Excuse 
 
154 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 me, they count for what they are worth. All 
 insanity is not of the madhouse. Half the 
 crimes of the world, and most of the crimes 
 of what you call society, are but forms of 
 insanity. Once the infection does its deadly 
 work, those of the descendants who do not 
 share its poison as madmen are the drunk 
 ards, the kleptomaniacs, the epileptics, the 
 slaves of the senses, the women who abandon 
 
 their children " 
 
 11 How you talk ! That comes of living 
 in the country with no companions but your 
 own notions. I don t know anyone who 
 would agree with you. Why, I won t say it 
 is a patent of nobility, because I m not 
 claiming any merit on account of it, al 
 though it does imply a highly wrought and 
 delicately sensitive organization, does it not? 
 But upon my word, you won t find twenty 
 families in our State, who think well of them 
 selves who have blue blood, you know 
 who haven t some member, near or far, in 
 a retreat." 
 
 " My son s children," said Dr. Donner, 
 
AN INHERITANCE 155 
 
 bending forward and gazing at her gravely, 
 " will not be added to the number." 
 
 " Do you mean to say," cried Miss Bar 
 bara, all restraint giving way, "that you 
 persist in such folly, that you are going to 
 obstruct instead of assist this marriage ? Do 
 you know who you are, John Donner ? Do 
 you forget the time when you were my 
 uncle s hired man " 
 
 " I was hired to break your uncle s horses. 
 I broke them well. I have never been afraid 
 of wild rage in any form. I shall not sacri 
 fice my son to it now," said the doctor, 
 rising. 
 
 "Well," said Miss Barbara, " perhaps I 
 ought not to have spoken exactly that way. 
 
 "Certainly you ought not!" said the 
 doctor, turning on her. "Your uncle was 
 my benefactor. Your cousin was my friend. 
 I, also, I was his friend. You should have 
 remembered the long years in which I 
 shielded him from himself and the world 
 while he suffered under the black spell of his 
 inheritance " 
 
156 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 She was not listening to him. Some 
 thing had flashed across her recollection and 
 was gone. What was this he said? He 
 had been her cousin s friend. Of course he 
 had ! Why, there were those letters there 
 was that letter ! 
 
 " Wait a moment ! " she cried. " Wait 
 a moment ! " and she added to herself, " I 
 have not done with you yet, Dr. Donner ! " 
 
 She swept across the room to the old 
 escritoire. The key stuck in the lock a 
 second ; she had time to reconsider, if she 
 would. Reconsider ! She had opened the 
 matter out of pure goodness, she said to her 
 self, as her thought flashed along the points. 
 She remembered admiring John Donner, 
 more than thirty years ago, as a splendid 
 specimen of a man. She had thought now 
 that an infusion of this strong blood into the 
 tired Camperdoun race might be a good 
 thing. She had been willing to overlook 
 the social inequality. She had been very 
 much afraid that Luisa would marry that 
 Penny Gower, with nothing but his brush 
 
AN INHERITANCE i$7 
 
 and palette to his name. She had always 
 been afraid Luisa would do something ec 
 centric, and she had thought that the 
 sooner she should be tied fast in happy 
 fetters, with husband and children, the bet 
 ter. She had, to be sure, been rather star 
 tled when she saw Luisa showing favor to 
 young John Donner, and then she had 
 thought, why not? "There is health, 
 strength, virtue, wealth, all that is requisite 
 the very thing," she said. And she was 
 fond of Luisa ; the girl had always been her 
 pet and darling; and now that her affec 
 tions were engaged Still, if the man here 
 were going to oppose it, there was not much 
 use in talking ! Very likely that wife of his 
 had her mind set on something else Mary, 
 the minister s daughter, of course. She 
 would like to put a spoke in that wheel ! 
 And the man presuming to stand in her way 
 she a Camperdoun he who had sprung 
 from the clods of the valley ! Miss Bar 
 bara s blood was up. There was nothing she 
 had liked more than a fight all her life. She 
 
158 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 was not going under in this one, if she could 
 help it, fair means or foul. Contest the 
 point with her ! Decline an alliance with her 
 niece ! He would, would he? " I will see 
 about that ! " she said. It was not for Luisa 
 now that she strove. It was not for love or 
 happiness or anything of the sort. It was 
 simply to carry her point, to overcome John 
 Donner ! And her heart burned within her 
 with revulsion from the certainty that he 
 would accept her condescension, with anger 
 that he should have dared oppose her, 
 with determination to have her own way, 
 now while she turned the key, took a bundle 
 of papers from a pigeon-hole, fluttered her 
 fingers to and fro among them and drew one 
 out, and went back to the table where the 
 doctor had again seated himself, and spread 
 the yellow old sheet out before him. 
 
 " Do you remember that ? " she asked. 
 
 It was the letter in which he had an 
 nounced his marriage to Launce Camper- 
 doun. Dr. Donner arranged his glasses to 
 look at it. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 159 
 
 " If you do not withdraw all opposition 
 and give your full consent and assistance to 
 this marriage as I propose it," she said, " I 
 will show this letter to your wife ! 
 
 As Dr. Donner began to read, it was 
 with an entirely impersonal sense. Even 
 his handwriting had changed so much in the 
 course of years that he did not at first recog 
 nize this script as his own. And that life 
 was so far away, he had so utterly and en 
 tirely outlived it, that it was a moment or 
 two before he quite comprehended where he 
 was. 
 
 " The cad ! " he said, presently. 
 
 And then Miss Barbara s long, thin, yel 
 low hand on the table, with its great emer 
 ald sparkling upon the lean, pointed finger 
 that detained the sheet, caught his eye, and 
 he saw that she was holding the sheet down 
 to prevent his taking it ; and the whole 
 truth smote him that this shameful letter he 
 had written himself, of his wife, and it was 
 her purpose to let Nancy see it. He sprang 
 to his feet with a cry. Nancy see this letter ? 
 
160 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 His face grew red as he thought of it grew 
 purple. He bent over the table, the veins 
 all but bursting on his forehead, and the 
 sweat beaded it in great drops. Not for all 
 the wealth of all the Indies would he have 
 Nancy see that letter ! Not for the greatest 
 joy of earth or the highest hope of heaven ! 
 Have Nancy know he was capable of such a 
 villainy ? There was a grossness of rascality 
 in it that appalled him even now. To have 
 Nancy know that he had been that das 
 tardly wretch, to have her despise him as 
 she must to have her loathe him? Oh, 
 no ! no ! He put up his hands before his 
 face, from which the color fled, and sat 
 down and leaned back in the chair, white as 
 the dead. 
 
 His pure-hearted, innocent Nancy ! The 
 beautiful soul, who believed in him so and 
 in all the pain he might have given her, 
 he had given her, during those first years 
 had never known that he had not loved her, 
 had never dreamed she had been subjected 
 to such insult, such outrage ! To have his 
 
AN INHERITANCE 161 
 
 dear wife so hurt, so irretrievably, so irrepa 
 rably hurt he cringed at the thought of the 
 blow, the pain and his the hand to deal it ! 
 His eyes as he looked up were like those of 
 some great wounded wild creature, blood 
 shot, and full of anguish and bewildered im 
 ploring. 
 
 "Have you no mercy?" he stammered, 
 with his stiff, white lips. 
 
 " Not the least particle," said Miss Bar 
 bara. "It isn t a case for mercy; it is a 
 mere matter of business. You have to take 
 care of your family. I am taking care of 
 
 Through the open window came a pleas 
 ant hum of voices. It was Luisa, who knew 
 she looked particularly well standing among 
 the scarlet blossoms of the trumpet-flower 
 trellis for Penny Gower to admire. They 
 might have strolled away presently ; it was 
 as still outside as it was in the west parlor. 
 The sound of the voices only made Miss 
 Barbara set her teeth more firmly. 
 
 It was very warm. The doctor wiped his 
 
1 62 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 forehead and tried to think again. The 
 odor of the new lilies came curling into the 
 room ; the balsam-branch in the great fire 
 place oppressed him with its fragrance ; he 
 heard a cat-bird drop its shower of melody 
 from the bough outside, and it struck him 
 like a sound of pain ; the murmur of the 
 bees in the warm sunshine seemed to be 
 buzzing in his brain. No, no, thrice no ! 
 He himself could endure the shattering of 
 all his earthly happiness ; he could endure 
 anything, everything, but his wife should 
 never have that cruel hurt, she should never 
 know the dishonor she had suffered, she 
 should never know there was a time he had 
 not loved her. 
 
 Miss Barbara s long hand still lay across 
 the paper, and her cruel, mocking eyes sur 
 veyed him. 
 
 "Well?" she demanded. 
 
 "You have no business with it," he said. 
 "It is mine." 
 
 "No, it was my cousin s. He be 
 queathed me all he had. It is mine. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 163 
 
 Simply as his executor it would be mine. 
 You can have it, though, on the conditions 
 named. What are you going to do about 
 it?" 
 
 His boy, then, was the price of that let 
 ter. He could save himself his wife s scorn, 
 he could save his wife the misery of that 
 knowledge and that was the thing ! He 
 could endure the scorn, but he could not en 
 dure her misery. It could all be spared by 
 giving his boy what was now the desire of 
 his heart, and would presently be fire under 
 his feet and ashes in his mouth. He could 
 save himself, he could save his wife, but 
 then the boy s life must be ruined. As he 
 sat there, that yellow sheet of paper seemed 
 to rise and hang in the air between him and 
 the sunshine. It was dark all around him ; 
 he heard the rustling of the boughs sweeping 
 against one another in the soft summer wind 
 as if it were the murmur of another planet. 
 He fumbled for his handkerchief again, and 
 the Liberty scarf fell out, with its delicate 
 perfume, bringing his wife s presence almost 
 
1 64 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 about him. Someone lifted a latch; he 
 could not have told if the sound were 
 leagues away or striking on his breast. But 
 he stood up, supporting himself with both 
 hands on the table, drenched to the skin and 
 trembling. He knew what to do now. 
 
 He would not spare himself for the 
 boy. 
 
 Neither would the mother spare herself 
 for the boy. 
 
 It was all clear. 
 
 "Do as you please with the letter," he 
 said. " But I will never give my consent 
 to the ruin of my son by means of the Cam- 
 perdoun inheritance." 
 
 At that moment the door that Miss Bar 
 bara had so carefully closed flashed open, 
 and Luisa stood in the sunshine that burst 
 through from the hall, as if she were radiant 
 with it. 
 
 " I was under the window with Penny," 
 she said, in a high, shrill tone. " Perhaps 
 I have not heard all you have been saying, 
 but I have heard enough ! And that letter ! 
 
AN INHERITANCE 165 
 
 I don t know what is in it, but I know 
 where it belongs!" and she snatched it 
 from under her aunt s hands, tossed it on 
 the balsam-boughs in the fireplace, and be 
 fore Miss Barbara could hinder, scratched 
 a match and sent bough and letter blazing 
 and roaring up the big chimney. 
 
 Then she turned and faced the two again. 
 1 You are quite right," she said to the 
 doctor, her hands hanging before her, tightly 
 clasped, and her face pallid. "I will not 
 see your son again. I understand about the 
 Camperdoun inheritance now. It is some 
 thing not to be shared. I may never come 
 to my own," she said, with a light and bit 
 ter laugh then, "but I will make no one 
 else wretched with a peradventure. I will 
 go down with Penny there and we will rub 
 
 along " 
 
 " Penny ! " shrieked Miss Barbara. " Are 
 you mad already, Luisa! Marry Penny 
 
 when " 
 
 Goodness gracious, Aunt Barbara ! 
 said Luisa, in a perfectly matter-of-fact 
 
1 66 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 key. You seem to think of nothing but 
 marrying ! I shall not marry anyone, now 
 or ever. I shall not join the St. Margaret 
 sisterhood, either," she added. "Helen 
 Reynolds, Fanny Fairfield, and I are a sis 
 terhood by ourselves. I shall just loiter 
 along as I have been loitering, with Penny 
 for a pis aller. He can t afford to marry. 
 I can t afford to marry with a difference. 
 He will go on with his pictures that never 
 sell. I shall go on with my flirtations that 
 always sell. 
 
 The doctor looked up at her suddenly, as 
 if roused from a stupor. 
 
 "No, no," she said, with a swift, depre 
 catory gesture. " I am all right. There is 
 nothing the matter now. I am no more 
 feather-brained than I always was. It hasn t 
 broken out yet ! " 
 
 " My dear child," said the doctor, trem 
 ulously, " it never may. In all probability 
 it never will. Only, for my son s sake, I 
 cannot accept the the possibility." 
 
 "And I suppose you think I ought to 
 
AN INHERITANCE 167 
 
 love God, who has given me such a horrible 
 inheritance ! 
 
 "All the more, my poor little girl, you 
 will have need of such a comfort and of its 
 shield," he murmured, in a voice that 
 sounded a long way off. 
 
 " I never knew about it," she said, wist 
 fully, twisting a lock of her loosened hair, 
 " till I heard Martha talking to him. And 
 then I didn t wholly understand. And I 
 didn t want to understand ! I felt I was 
 sure I knew it must all come to nothing. 
 But I wanted to know what it was just to 
 be to be oh, oh, so happy for one mo 
 ment ! " and she hid her face in her arms 
 with a great sob. 
 
 "Luisa," said the doctor, trying to move 
 toward her. And then his knees bent un 
 der him, he tottered and swayed, and 
 slipped heavily to the floor. 
 
 Sitting by his father s side that night, 
 holding his wrist, watching every pulse, 
 every breath, John Donner read the note 
 
1 68 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 that Sally put into his hands, almost as un- 
 comprehendingly as if it had been written to 
 someone else, while the last echoes of the 
 night - train went throbbing between the 
 hills. 
 
 "It was all a mistake," the note ran. 
 "Think of me as having been a little mad 
 up there on Weathergauge, and forget me. 
 
 It dropped from his fingers as if it were a 
 dead leaf, and seemed to have no more re 
 lation to him than if it had belonged to a 
 previous life. All his being just then was 
 centred in the beating of his father s heart, 
 all his new skill was put to proof in keeping 
 him alive, the physician from the other side 
 of the hills having gone to lie down, and 
 there was nothing in his consciousness but 
 the love for his father, the fear for his 
 mother. 
 
 The night had been hot ; the windows 
 were all wide open ; the sunrise was in the 
 room at last, luminous, purple, shot through 
 and through with gold, and in the won 
 drous glow the great, dark peaks swam out 
 
AN INHERITANCE 169 
 
 like giants couched about the bed and wait 
 ing on the sick man s breath. The rising 
 wind blew in a riot of fragrance and fresh 
 ness, when the doctor opened his eyes and 
 lifted first one hand and then the other. 
 
 "Nothing but a vertigo," he said. 
 " Your mother must not know," and sank 
 away again. 
 
 And the weeks of effort, of suspense that 
 followed, with the endeavor to keep his 
 mother unaware, gave John so small time to 
 think of himself that when, in clearing off 
 some papers, he came across that little note 
 which cost Luisa such a heart-break, he was 
 aware only of a sense of relief. 
 
 He had a vague idea of what had hap 
 pened. Had there been something wild 
 and wrong in his father s youth that his 
 mother was not to know ? All the more he 
 loved him, and he held him in a passion of 
 tenderness. He would not let Martha or 
 Sally do a thing now that he could do him 
 self, nor would he let the friends and coun 
 try people who held their breath and would 
 
1 70 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 gladly have risked their lives, perhaps have 
 given them, for him who had been Provi 
 dence to them, and had brought them and 
 their dear ones up from the power of the 
 grave. 
 
 At length then he took his father down, 
 well again, if still weak, to his mother by 
 the sea, having written to her constantly as 
 if from his father too busy at first to write 
 himself. At the last she had known some 
 thing of the doctor s illness, but also that 
 he was coming to her, and wished her to 
 await him; and his wish had always been 
 obeyed by her. 
 
 When the doctor waked in the late even 
 ing, in the soft, delicious dark, full of salt 
 smells and of the wide singing of the sea, 
 his head upon his wife s breast, her arms 
 about him, (t We are old people now," he 
 said, " but, O my wife, not too old for 
 love." 
 
 " With our whole heart ! " she answered 
 him. 
 
AN INHERITANCE 171 
 
 " And are you sure I always loved you? " 
 
 " Why, what ails you?" she said. 
 You are weak. You are so tired, and 
 she kissed his forehead and his mouth. 
 
 "And you forget the dark and evil 
 days ? " he whispered. 
 
 "There never were any," she said. 
 "The people offered thanks in all the 
 churches of all the mountain-side for you, 
 the day before yesterday, but I thank God 
 for you every hour I live ! 
 
 And while his father slipped back into 
 purple dreams again, John was sitting high 
 in a cleft above the sea with Mary, forefeel- 
 ing the coming of the moon across the 
 water, through the silvered dusk, watching 
 some far-off, lonely breaker leap to catch the 
 light, hearing the deep, melodious thunders 
 plunge about them and fall away in stillness 
 and come in again borne on the dripping 
 winds from the midsea hollows. And 
 when, in answer to his sigh, Mary laid her 
 hand gently on his, he felt that there was 
 health where she was, and that, at some time, 
 
172 AN INHERITANCE 
 
 life was going to be good again with this 
 fair, white woman, whose beauty he could 
 not see in the shadow. And his sigh was 
 only for the sweetness of it all the night, 
 the sea, the returning love the sigh of the 
 finite in the presence of the Infinite. 
 
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M174941 
 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRA i 
 
 GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 BDDDS7E7M C 1