A Woman's Reason. William Dean Howells
Читать онлайн книгу.
fortnight. They made a feint of finding nothing strange in each other, and the Captain resumed as he sat down again : "I mentioned your father's affairs because there has to be some settlement of the estate, you know; and there are circumstances that make it desirable to have an early settlement. The business was left in a little confusion; it's apt to be the case," Captain Butler added quickly.
"Yes," Helen said, "papa sometimes spoke of the perplexity he felt about his accounts."
"Did he?" asked the Captain with some relief. "Then I suppose he gave you some idea of how he stood."
"No; he merely said they worried him."
"Well, well. I don't know that there was any occasion to tell you, any occasion for alarm. There seems to have been no will; but that makes no difference. The law makes a will, and you get what there is—that is, all there is." The Captain had a certain forlorn air of disoccupation, which now struck Helen more than what he was saying.
"Would you like to smoke, Captain Butler?" she asked.
"Why, yes, if you will let me, my dear," he said, with an eager, humble gratitude, putting his hand quickly into his breast-pocket. "I didn't know—"
Helen rose, and placed the little table at his elbow, and set the ash-holder on it, as she had done that last night when he had sat there with her father. They looked at each other without speaking.
The Captain struck his match, and said apologetically between the long whiffs with which he lit his cigar, "I talk better with it, and I have some things to explain."
He paused, and sinking back into his chair with a sigh of comfort which brought a dim smile into Helen's face, presently resumed: "As there is no will, and no executor, there will have to be an administrator. Whom should you like appointed? I believe the Court appoints any one you wish."
"Oh, you, Captain Butler!" replied Helen instantly.
"I expected this," said the Captain, "and I suppose I am as fit as anyone. I'm sure that no one could care more for your father's interests and honor, and I know rather more of his affairs than anybody else. You will have to make your wishes known in form ; but that's easily managed. In the meantime, you had better be away, don't you think, while we are looking into things? I don't know what there is to do, exactly; but I suppose there's to be some sort of survey, or appraisal, and—yes, you had better be away, when we are looking into things."
"Do you mean—away from the house?" asked Helen.
"Why, yes," the Captain reluctantly assented. "It's a—form; a necessary form."
"It's quite right," said Helen positively. "And —yes,—I had better be out of the way."
"I'm glad you see it in that light, my dear," returned Captain Butler. "You're a good girl, Helen, and you make it much easier for me. Pack up everything that belongs to you, and go as if you were going to stay." The Captain made a ghastly show of heartiness, and smoked without looking at Helen. "Run over the house, and put together all the things that you would like to retain, and I'll see that they come down." Helen was trying to catch his eye, and he was keeping his gaze fixed upon the ceiling.
"I don't think I need do that," said Helen; "I should merely have to bring them back with me."
Captain Butler took his cigar from his mouth in compassion, as he now looked at her puzzled face. "We don't mean you should come back, my dear child. We want you to stay with us."
"Oh, I can't do that," said Helen quickly.
"You can't go on living here alone," retorted the Captain.
"No," Helen ruefully assented, and faced Captain Butler in touching dismay.
"You see," he said, "that you must submit. And, Helen," he said with a show of brisk, businesslike cheerfulness " I think you had better sell this house. If I were you, I should sell it at once. You'll never get more for it."
"Why, what would become of Margaret ?" gasped Helen.
"Well, Mrs. Butler has been talking of that. We want a cook, and we will take Margaret."
Helen simply looked bewildered. The Captain apparently found it better to go on while she was in this daze than await her emergence from it . "And if I were you, I would sell the furniture and pictures and all the things that you have not some particular association with; everything of that sort I should keep." Helen still made no comment, and the Captain went on. "I know all this is very painful, Helen—"
"It isn't painful," said Helen quietly. "It was papa's wish to sell the house. We were talking of it that night—the night before— He thought of building in the country."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it," said Captain Butler. "Then we can push right ahead and do it."
"It's very sudden, though," faltered Helen. "Poor Margaret! What will she say?"
"We will hear what she will say," cried the Captain, ringing the bell before Helen could stop him. Margaret answered it, drying her hands on her apron, as she came in, and then with a prescience of the coming interview, resting them folded upon that prop with which nature in process of time provides the persons of most cooks. "Margaret," said the Captain, "Miss Helen is going to break up housekeeping. She is coming to us. Mrs. Butler wished me to ask you to come too."
Margaret pursed her mouth, and bent forward so far over the natural provision as to catch sight of the toe of her neatly shod small foot. "Should you like to come ?" asked the Captain.
"I'm afraid I should feel the change," said Margaret.
"Of course," retorted the Captain shortly. "There is going to be a change, and you would feel it. We understand that. But you know me, and you know Mrs. Butler, and you know whether you would have a good place."
"It would be a good place," said Margaret, still surveying her slipper. "But I think I should feel the change more and more."
"Well," said the Captain impatiently, "do you mean yes, or no?"
"I think I should feel the change," replied Margaret.
The Captain was nonplussed by this dry response to his cordial advance, and he waited a moment before he asked: "Have you any other place in view?"
"I had arranged," said Margaret calmly, "to go to a cousin's of mine that lives in the Port; and then advertise for some small family in Old Cambridge where they only keep one girl."
Helen had felt hurt by Margaret's cold foresight in having already so far counted the chances as to have looked out for herself; but at this expression of Margaret's ruling passion, she could not help smiling.
The Captain gave an angry snort. "Very well, then," he said, "there is nothing to do but to pay you up, and let you go," and he took out his pocketbook. "How much is it?"
"There isn't anything coming to me," Margaret returned with the same tranquility; " Mr. Harkness paid me up."
"But he didn't pay you up to the present time," said the Captain.
"I should wish to consider Miss Helen my guest for the past two weeks," said Margaret, in the neatness of an evidently thought-out speech.
The Captain gave a laugh; but Helen, who knew all Margaret's springs of action, and her insuperable pride, interposed: "You may, Margaret," she said gently.
"Thank you, Miss Helen," said Margaret, lifting her eyes now for the first to glance at Helen. She turned with a little nod of self-dismissal, and went back to the kitchen, leaving the Captain hot and baffled.
It was some moments before he spoke again. "Well, then," he said; "about selling the house: do you know, Helen, I think it had better be sold at auction? It might be tedious waiting for a private sale, and real estate is such a drug, with the market falling, that you might have to lose more on it after waiting than if you forced it to a sale now. How do you feel about it?"
The finesse that the Captain was using in all the business, wreathing the hard legal exigencies