The Law Breakers and Other Stories by Robert Grant

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Pneumonia, that deadly foe of hale and hearty septuagenarians, carried
Mr. Homer Ramsay off within forty-eight hours in the first week of
May. And very shortly after, Elizabeth received a letter from Mr.
Mills, the lawyer, requesting her to call on a matter of importance.
She supposed that it concerned her lease. Perhaps her enemy had bought
the roof over her head.

Mr. Mills ushered her into his private office. Then opening a
parchment envelope on his desk, he turned to her, and said: "I have
the pleasure to inform you, Miss Whyte, that my client, the late Mr.
Homer Ramsay, has left you the residuary legatee of his entire
property--some fifty or sixty thousand dollars. Perhaps," he added,
observing Elizabeth's bewildered expression, "you would like to read
the will while I attend to a little matter in the other office. It is
quite short, and straight as a string. I drew the instrument, and the
testator knew what he was about just as well as you or I."

Mr. Mills, who, as you may remember, was a student of human nature,
believed that Miss Whyte lived on her nerves, and he had therefore
planned to leave her alone for a few moments to allow any hysterical
tendency to exhaust itself. When he returned, he found her looking
straight before her with the document in her lap.

"Is it all plain?" he asked kindly.

"Yes. But I don't understand exactly why he left it to me."

"Because he liked you, my dear. He had become very fond of you. And if
you will excuse my saying so," he added, with a knowing smile, "he was
very anxious to see you well married. He said that he wished to
provide you with a suitable dowry."

"I see," said Elizabeth, coloring. She reflected for a moment, then
looked up and said, "But I am free to use it as I see fit?"

"Absolutely. I may as well tell you now as any time, however," Mr.
Mills added smoothly, "that Mr. Ramsay's cousin, Mr. Horace Barker,
has expressed an intention to contest the will. He is the next of kin,
though only a first cousin once removed."

Elizabeth started at the name, and drew herself up slightly.

"You need not give yourself the smallest concern in the matter," the
lawyer continued. "If Mr. Barker were in needy circumstances or were a
nearer relative, he might be able to make out a case, but no jury will
hesitate between a first cousin once removed, amply rich in this
world's goods, and a--a--pretty woman. I myself am ready to testify
that Mr. Ramsay was completely in his right mind," he added, with
professional dignity; "and as for the claim of undue influence, it is
rubbish--sheer rubbish."

Elizabeth sat for a few moments without speaking. She seemed to pay no
heed to several further reassuring remarks which Mr. Mills, who judged
that she was appalled by the idea of a legal contest, hastened to let
fall. At last she looked straight at him, and said with firmness, "I
suppose that I am at liberty not to take this money, if I don't wish
to?"

"At liberty? Bless my stars, Miss Whyte, anybody is at liberty to
refuse a gift of fifty thousand dollars. But when you call to see me
again, you will be laughing at the very notion of such a thing. Go
home, my dear young lady, and leave the matter in my hands. Naturally
you are overwrought at the prospect of going into court."

"It isn't that, Mr. Mills. I cannot take this money; I have no right
to it. I am no relation to Mr. Ramsay, and the only reason he left it
to me was--was because he thought it would help me to be married.
Otherwise he would have left it to Mr. Barker. I have no intention of
marrying, and I should not be willing to take a fortune under such
circumstances."

"The will is perfectly legal, my dear. And as to marrying, you are
free to remain single all your days, if you wish to," said Mr. Mills,
with another knowing smile. "Indeed, you are overwrought."

Elizabeth shook her head. "I am sure that I shall never change my
mind," she answered. "I could never take it."

Elizabeth slept little that night; but when she arose in the morning,
she felt doubly certain that she had acted to her own satisfaction.
What real right had she to this money? It was coming to her as the
result of the fancy of an eccentric old man, who, in a moment of
needless pity and passing interest, had made a will in her favor to
the prejudice of his natural heir. Of what odds was it that that heir
had ample means already, or even that he was her bitter enemy? Did not
the very fact that he was her enemy and that she despised him make it
impossible for her to take advantage of an old man's whim so as to rob
him? She would have no lawsuit; he might keep the fifty thousand
dollars, and she would go her way as though Mr. Homer Ramsay and Mr.
Horace Barker had never existed. Mr. Ramsay had left her his money on
the assumption that she would be able to marry. To have taken it
knowing that she intended never to marry would have been to take it
under false pretences.

Mr. Mills consoled himself after much additional expostulation with
the reflection that if a woman is bent on making a fool of herself,
the wisest man in the world is helpless to prevent her. He set himself
at last to prepare the necessary papers which would put Mr. Horace
Barker in possession of his cousin's property; and very shortly the
act of signal folly, as he termed it, was completed. Tongues in the
neighborhood wagged energetically for a few days; but presently the
birth of twins in the next block distracted the public mind, and
Elizabeth was allowed to resume the vocation of an inconspicuous
schoolmistress. From the object of her bounty, Mr. Horace Barker, she
heard nothing directly; but at least he had the grace to discontinue
his persecutions. And parental confidence, which, in spite of
scarlet-fever, had never been wholly lost, was manifested in the form
of numerous applications to take pupils for the coming year. For the
first time for many weeks Elizabeth was in excellent spirits and was
looking forward to the summer vacation, now close at hand; during
which she hoped to be able to fit herself more thoroughly for her
duties after a few weeks of necessary rest.

One evening, about a fortnight before the date when the school was to
close, she noticed that the print of her book seemed blurred; she
turned the page and, perceiving the same effect, realized that her
vision was impaired. On the following morning at school she noticed
the same peculiarity whenever she looked at a book. She concluded that
it was but a passing weakness, the result of having studied too
assiduously at night. Still, recognizing that her eyes were
all-important to her, she decided to consult an oculist at once. It
would be a simple matter to do, for was there not one directly
opposite in the house next to Mr. Ramsay's? The sign, Dr. James Clay,
Oculist, had daily stared her in the face. She resolved to consult him
that very day after school. To be sure she knew nothing about him
individually, but she was aware that only doctors of the best class
were to be found in Saville Street.

She was obliged to wait in an anteroom, as there were three or four
patients ahead of her. When her turn came to be ushered into the
doctor's office, she found herself suddenly in the presence of the
unknown young man whom she was accustomed to meet daily on her way
from school. Her impulse at recognizing him, though she could not have
told why, was to slip away; but before she could move, he looked up
from the table over which he was bent making a memorandum.

"Miss Whyte!" he exclaimed with pleased astonishment and some
confusion, advancing to meet her. "In what way can I be of service to
you?"

"Dr. Clay? I should like you to look at my eyes; they have been
troubling me lately."

Elizabeth briefly detailed her symptoms. He listened with gravity, and
then after requesting her to change her seat, he examined her eyes
with absorbed attention. This took some minutes, and when he had
finished there was something in his manner which prompted her to say:

"Of course you will tell me, Dr. Clay, exactly what is the matter."

"I am bound to do so," he said, slowly. "I wished to make perfectly
sure, before saying that your eyes are quite seriously affected--not
that there is danger of a loss of sight, if proper precautions are
taken--but--but it will be absolutely necessary for you to abstain
from using them in order to check the progress of the disease."

"I see," she said, quietly, after a brief silence. "Do you mean that I
cannot teach school? I am a school-teacher."

"I knew that; and knowing it, I thought it best to tell you the whole
truth. No, Miss Whyte; you must not use your eyes for at least a year,
if you do not wish to lose your sight."

"I see," said Elizabeth again, with the hopeless air of one from whom
the impossible is demanded. "I thank you, Dr. Clay, for telling me the
truth," she added, simply. "Have I strained my eyes?"

"You have evidently overtaxed them a little; but the disease is
primarily a disease of the nerves. Will you excuse me for asking if at
any time within the last few years you have suffered a severe shock?"

"A shock?" Elizabeth hesitated an instant, and replied gently: "Yes;
but it was a number of years ago."

"That would account for the case, nevertheless."

A few minutes later Elizabeth was walking along the street, face to
face with despair. She had not been able to obtain permission from the
doctor to use her eyes even during the ten days which remained before
vacation. He had said that every moment of delay would make the cure
more difficult. She must absolutely cease to look at a book for one
whole year. It would be necessary at first for her to visit him for
treatment two or three times a week. He had said--she remembered his
exact words--"I cannot do a very great deal for you; we can rely only
on time for that; but believe me, I shall endeavor to help you so far
as it lies in human power. I hope that you will trust me--and--and
come to me freely." Kind words these, but of what avail were they to
answer the embarrassing question how she was to live? She must give up
her school at least for a year; that seemed inevitable. How was she to
earn her daily bread if she obeyed the doctor's orders? Would it not
be better to use her eyes to the end, and trust to charity to send her
to an infirmary when she became blind? Why had she been foolish enough
to refuse Mr. Ramsay's property? But for a quixotic theory, she would
not now have been at the world's mercy.

It was the sting of shame which this last thought aroused, following
in the train of her bitter reasoning, that caused her to quicken her
pace and clinch her hands. That same pride, which had been her ally
hitherto, had come to her rescue once more. She said to herself that
she had done what she knew was right, and that no force of cruel
circumstances should induce her to regret that she had not acted
differently. She would prove still that she was able to make her own
way without assistance, even though she were obliged to scrub floors.
A shock? The shock of a betrayed faith which had arrayed her soul in
bitterness against mankind. Must she own that she was crushed? Not
while she had an arm to toil and a heart to strive.

The next ten days were bitter ones. Elizabeth, after disbanding her
school, began to plan and contrive for the future. Schemes bright with
prospect suggested themselves, and faded into smoke at the touch of
practicability. She had a few hundred dollars, which would enable her
to live until she had been able to devise a plan, and she determined
that the world should not think that she was discouraged. The world,
and chiefly at the moment Dr. Clay, whose kindness and earnest
attention during the visits which she paid him suggested that he felt
great pity for her. Pity? She wished the pity of no man.

One evening while she was alone in her parlor, wrestling with her
schemes, the maid entered and said that a gentleman wished to see her.
A gentleman? She could think of none who would be likely to call upon
her, but she bade the girl show him in; and a moment later she was
greeting Dr. Clay. Presently, while she was wondering why he had come,
she found herself listening to these words: "I am a stranger to you to
all intents and purposes, but you are none to me. For months I have
dogged your footsteps unknown to you, and haunted this house in my
walks because I knew that you lived here. The memory of your face has
sweetened my dreams, and those brief moments when we have passed each
other daily have been sweeter than any paradise. I know the story of
your struggle with that coward and of your noble act of renunciation.
It cut into my heart like a knife to speak to you those necessary
words the other day, and I have been miserable ever since. I said to
myself at last that I would go to you and tell you that I could not be
happy apart from you; and that your happiness was mine. This seems
presumptuous, intrusive: I wish to be neither. I have merely come to
ask that I may be free to call upon you and to try to make you love
me. I am not rich, but my practice is such that I am able to offer you
a home. Will you allow me to come to see you, at least to be your
friend?"

The silence which followed this eager question seemed to demand an
answer. Elizabeth, who had been sitting with bent head, looked up
presently and answered with a sweet smile:

"I have no friends, Dr. Clay. I think it would be very pleasant to
have one."

A few minutes later when he was gone, Elizabeth sat for some time
without moving, with the same happy smile on her lips. He had asked
nothing more and she had given him no greater assurance. Why was it
that at last she buried her face in her hands and sobbed as though her
bosom would break? Why was it, too, that before she went to bed that
night she took a handful of withered flowers, mere dust and ashes,
from the secret drawer of her work-box, and, wrapping them in the
paper which had enclosed them, held them in the flame of the lamp
until they were consumed? Why? Because love, unwatched for, unbidden
had entered her heart, which she thought sere as the rose-leaves, and
restored light to the sunshine and joy to the world.

A SURRENDER

Morgan Russell and I were lolling one day on the beach at Rock Ledge
watching the bathers. We had played three sets of tennis, followed by
a dip in the ocean, and were waiting for the luncheon hour. Though
Russell was my junior by four years, we were old friends, and had
prearranged our vacation to renew our intimacy, which the force of
circumstances had interrupted since we were students together at
Harvard. Russell had been a Freshman when I was a Senior, but as we
happened to room in the same entry, this propinquity had resulted in
warm mutual liking. I had been out of college for eight years, had
studied law, and was the managing clerk of a large law firm, and in
receipt of what I then thought a tremendous salary. Russell was still
at Cambridge. He had elected at graduation to pursue post-graduate
courses in chemistry and physics, and had recently accepted a
tutorship. He had not discovered until the beginning of the Junior
year his strong predilection for scientific investigation, but he had
given himself up to it with an ardor which dwarfed everything else on
the horizon of his fancy. It was of his future we were talking, for he
wished to take his old chum into his confidence and to make plain his
ambition. "I recognize of course," he told me, "that I've an uphill
fight ahead of me, but my heart is in it. My heart wouldn't be in it
if I felt that the best years of my life were to be eaten up by mere
teaching. Nowadays a man who's hired to teach is expected to teach
until his daily supply of gray matter has run out, and his original
work has to wait until after he's dead. There's where I'm more
fortunate than some. The fifteen hundred dollars--a veritable
godsend--which I receive annually under the will of my aunt, will keep
the wolf at a respectful distance and enable me to play the
investigator to my heart's content. I'm determined to be thorough,
George. There is no excuse for superficiality in science. But in the
end I intend to find out something new. See if I don't, old man."

"I haven't a doubt you will, Morgan," I replied. "I don't mind letting
on that I ran across Professor Drayson last winter, and he told me you
were the most promising enthusiast he had seen for a long time; that
you were patient and level-headed as well as eager. Drayson doesn't
scatter compliments lightly. But fifteen hundred dollars isn't a very
impressive income."

"It was very good of the old fellow to speak so well of me."

"Suppose you marry?"

"Marry?" Russell looked up from the sea-shells with which he had been
playing, and smiled brightly. He had a thin, slightly delicate face
with an expression which was both animated and amiable, and keen,
strong gray eyes. "I've thought of that. I'm not what is called
contemplating matrimony at the moment; but I've considered the
possibility, and it doesn't appall me."

"On fifteen hundred a year?"

"And why not, George?" he responded a little fiercely. "Think of the
host of teachers, clerks, small tradesmen, and innumerable other
reputable human beings who marry and bring up families on that or
less. Which do you think I would prefer, to amass a fortune in
business and have my town and country house and steam yacht, or to
exist on a pittance and discover before I die something to benefit the
race of man?"

"Knowing you as I do, there's only one answer to that conundrum," said
I. "And you're right, too, theoretically, Morgan. My ancestors in
Westford would have thought fifteen hundred downright comfort, and in
admitting to you that five thousand in New York is genteel poverty, I
merely reveal what greater comforts the ambitious American demands. I
agree with you that from the point of view of real necessity one-half
the increase is sheer materialism. But who's the girl?"

"There is no girl. Probably there never will be. But I'm no crank. I
like a good dinner and a seat at the play and an artistic domestic
hearth as well as the next man. If I were to marry, of course I should
retain the tutorship which I accepted temporarily as a means of
training my own perceptions, though I should try to preserve as at
present a considerable portion of my time free from the grind of
teaching. Then much as I despise the method of rushing into print
prematurely in order to achieve a newspaper scientific reputation, I
should expect to eke out my income by occasional magazine articles and
presently a book. With twenty-five hundred or three thousand a year we
should manage famously."

"It would all depend upon the woman," said I with the definiteness of
an oracle.

"If the savants in England, France, and Germany--the men who have been
content to starve in order to attain immortality--could find wives to
keep them company, surely their counterparts are to be found here
where woman is not the slave but the companion of man and is
encouraged to think not merely about him but think of him." After this
preroration Russell stopped abruptly, then raised himself on one
elbow. Attracted by his sudden interest I turned lazily in the same
direction, and after a moment's scrutiny ejaculated: "It looks just
like her."

As it was nearing the luncheon hour, most of the bathers had retired.
Two women, one of them a girl of twenty-five, in the full bloom of
youth and vigor, with an open countenance and a self-reliant, slightly
effusive smile, were on the way to their bath. They were stepping
transversely across the beach from their bath-house at one end in
order to reach the place where the waves were highest, and their
course was taking them within a few yards of where we lay. For some
reason the younger woman had not put on the oil-skin cap designed to
save her abundant hair from getting wet, but carried it dangling from
her fingers, and, just as Russell noticed her, she dropped it on the
beach. After stooping to pick it up, she waited a moment for her
friend to join her, revealing her full face.

"Yes, it's certainly she," I announced. "I spoke to her on the pier in
New York last autumn, when she was returning from Europe, and it's
either she or her double."

"You know her?"

"Yes, the Widow Spaulding."

"Widow? You mean the girl?"

There was just a trace of disappointment in the tone of Russell's
surprise.

"Yes, I mean the girl. But you needn't dismiss her altogether from
your fastidiously romantic soul merely because she has belonged to
another. There are extenuating circumstances. She married the Rev.
Horace Spaulding, poor fellow, on his deathbed, when he was in the
last stages of consumption, and two days later she was his widow."

"You seem to know a good deal about her."

"I ought to, for she was born and bred in Westford. Edna Knight was
her name--the daughter of Justin Knight, the local attorney,
half-lawyer and half-dreamer. His parents were followers of Emerson,
and there have been plain living and high thinking in that family for
three generations. Look at her," I added, as she breasted a giant wave
and jubilantly threw herself into its embrace, "she takes to the water
like a duck. I never saw a girl so metamorphosed in three years."

"What was she like before?" asked Russell.

"Changed physically, I mean, and--and socially, I suppose it should be
called. Three years ago, at the time of her marriage to Spaulding, she
was a slip of a girl, shy, delicate, and introspective. She and her
lover were brought up in adjacent houses, and the world for her
signified the garden hedge over which they whispered in the gloaming,
and later his prowess at the divinity school and his hope of a parish.
When galloping consumption cut him off she walked about shrouded in
her grief as one dead to the world of men and women. I passed her
occasionally when I returned home to visit my family, and she looked
as though she were going into a decline. That was a year after her
marriage. Solicitous sympathy was unavailing, and the person
responsible for her regaining her grip on life was, curiously enough,
a summer boarder whom old Mrs. Spaulding had taken into her family in
order to make both ends meet. Westford has been saved from rusting out
by the advent in the nick of time of the fashionable summer boarder,
and Mrs. Sidney Dale, whose husband is a New York banker, and who
spent two summers there as a cure for nervous prostration, fascinated
Edna without meaning to and made a new woman of her in the process.
There is the story for you. A year ago Mrs. Dale took her to Europe as
a sort of finishing touch, I suppose. I understand Westford thinks her
affliction has developed her wonderfully, and finds her immensely
improved; which must mean that she has triumphed over her grief, but
has not forgotten, for Westford would never pardon a purely material
evolution."

"I noticed her at the hotel this morning before you arrived, and
admired the earnestness and ardor of her expression."

"And her good looks presumably. I saw you start when she approached
just now. She may be just the woman for you."

"Introduce me then. And her companion?"

"Will fall to my lot, of course, but I have no clew as to her
identity."

Mrs. Spaulding enlightened me on the hotel piazza, after luncheon,
when, as a sequence to this persiflage I brought up my friend. The
stranger proved to be Mrs. Agnes Gay Spinney, a literary person, a
lecturer on history and literature. It transpired later that she and
Edna had become acquainted and intimate at Westford the previous
spring during a few weeks which Mrs. Spinney had spent there in the
preparation of three new lectures for the coming season. She was a
rather serious-looking woman of about forty with a straight figure,
good features, and a pleasant, but infrequent smile, suggesting that
its owner was not susceptible to flippancy. However, she naively
admitted that she had come away for pure recreation and to forget the
responsibilities of life.

Morgan and the widow were conversing with so much animation that I, to
whom this remark was addressed, took upon myself to give youth a free
field; consequently I resigned myself to Mrs. Spinney's dignified
point of view, and, avoiding badinage or irony, evinced such an
amiable interest in drawing her out that by the end of fifteen minutes
she asked leave to show me the catalogue of her lectures, a proof of
which she had just received from the printer. When she had gone to
fetch it, I promptly inquired:

"Why don't you two young people improve this fine afternoon by a round
of golf?"

A gleam of animation over Morgan's face betrayed that he regarded the
suggestion as eminently happy. But it was Edna who spoke first.

"If Mr. Russell will put up with my poor game, I should enjoy playing
immensely. But," she added smiling confidently and regarding him with
her large, steady brown eyes, "I don't intend to remain a duffer at it
long. I see," she continued after a moment, "from your expression, Mr.
Randall, that you doubt this. I could tell from the corners of your
mouth."

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