“Nonsense!” she panted. “May I sit down?”
Mr. Tutt waved her gallantly to the rocker, noticing as he did so the threadbare coat and cracked shoes.
“Will you have a taste of Chambertin?”
He poured her out a creaming glass and lifted his own.
“To the memory of a great and generous man,” he said reverently.
They sipped the toast in silence.
“I hope you’ll forgive my breaking in on you so unexpectedly,” she apologized. “But you were my father’s lawyer and I didn’t know to whom else to turn.”
“His attorney was Judge Fernald,” he corrected her. “I was associated with him and took over his practice when he died.”
“That explains it! I looked for his name in the telephone book and couldn’t find it anywhere. Then I thought of you. So here I am.”
“I remember the first time you came to our office,” said Mr. Tutt reminiscently. “It must have been—no, no, it couldn’t have been that long ago! You were waiting for your father in a victoria driven by an old Negro coachman. You were about twenty then, I should say, and quite the loveliest girl I’d ever seen. I made an excuse to go downstairs and speak to you.”
She flushed. “I remember. I had on my new spring dress. I’d been to the Patriarch’s the night before,” she sighed. “I sometimes wonder if those days ever could have been.”
He lit a stogie and pulled a rocker to the other side of the fire.
“You’ll never know what you did to that lanky country boy! I cut your picture out of the paper and pinned it to the mirror in my bedroom. I was always reading about you, in another world from mine entirely.”
“Why didn’t you ask if you could come to see me?” she asked almost coyly.
“I was afraid to! All the beaus in town were at your feet! I knew I hadn’t a chance!”
“I think that you’d have had a chance!”
“Then I heard you’d gone to Europe and, later, that you had married. Didn’t you have a daughter?”
“Yes, Phœbe. Her husband was killed at the Marne. By that time I’d divorced my husband, who’d spent most of my money, besides treating me rather badly in other ways. So I took Phœbe to Italy, where her baby was born. She died there soon after. When Leila was twelve, I brought her home to be educated. My income had been growing less every year, but I still had enough to put her in a good school and to live at a small hotel. Then the depression came, and I lost everything. We moved into a little flat in the upper part of town and she started looking for a job. At last she found one as a translator with the Foreign Policy Association.”
“Leila must be a great comfort to you.”
“She is. But—but now she wants to marry a young architect named Richard Bryant, and—well, he can barely get along as it is, and I—I stand in the way! I remembered that father had left a sum of money to a home for aged women, and I thought perhaps, on that account, they might be willing to take me in. The book said that Coverdale was in Westchester, so today, without her knowledge, I went out there and made an application. They sent me back to an address in New York. Where do you suppose it was? Our own old house on the river!”
“It had been converted into a home?”
“Yes. It would have been marvelous if I could have gone back there, but it was full. The superintendent said they would waive the five-hundred-dollar fee, but that I must make over my property to the institution.”
“That is customary.”
“All the same, it frightened me a little. He didn’t seem to want me to take away the paper, but I held out firmly and did.” She opened her bag. “I wonder if you’d be willing to read it over for me before I sign it.”
She handed him the typewritten document. He looked at her solicitously.
“You must be very tired if you have done all that today.”
“I am,” she admitted.
“Then this will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m going to take you right home in a taxi. It’s time for you to be in bed.”
It was eleven o’clock before Mr. Tutt got back to his library. To think of Eben Wadsworth’s only daughter living in a dump like that! He sat down before the fire and took up the agreement.
Whereas Leila Wadsworth Benton, hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part, desires to become an inmate of Home for Aged Gentlewomen, Incorporated, party of the second part, and to fulfill all the requirements governing admission to the same, now, therefore ... the said party of the first part, in consideration of the premises, hereby agrees to transfer, make over and assign all her property, both present and hereafter to be acquired, to the said party of the second part, including all right, title and interest, of whatsoever kind, both real and personal, which she may have or be held to have, in the estate of her father, Eben Wadsworth, deceased, and to execute and deliver whatever instruments or deeds may be necessary thereto.
Mr. Tutt’s shaggy eyebrows drew into a knot. Why should they ask her to do that? Was there something here that did not meet the eye? The night was young. Mr. Tutt, stuffing his pockets with stogies, hailed a cruising taxi and ordered the driver to take him to his Broadway office.
“Here it is!” said Grandma Benton two days later, as their taxi came to a stop before the iron gates of her former home. “It’s very kind of you to come with me, but I’m afraid it won’t do any good.”
“You never can tell,” Mr. Tutt grunted, noting the party of four young people playing tennis at the farther end of the lawn. “Anyhow, keep your eyes open.”
“Have you an appointment?” cautiously inquired the maid who answered their ring.
“Tell Mr. Gobbet that Mrs. Benton is here with the papers and has brought her attorney with her.”
“What name, sir?”
“Tutt—Ephraim Tutt.”
Impressed with the old man’s quiet air of authority, the maid led them into the library.
Mr. Gobbet, who, although it was nearly half after ten, was still luxuriously breakfasting in bed, learned who was below with some annoyance. He had heard of Mr. Tutt and had no wish to have the old fox nosing into his affairs. Not that he had anything to conceal. Suppose he did have a cushy job? Hadn’t the state and C. O. S. inspectors passed everything as O.K. year after year? After a testator had been dead and buried a quarter of a century, one ought to have the right to rely on his staying so. Nevertheless, he showed no perturbation as he entered briskly and shook hands.
“So you represent Mrs. Benton? Good! We want everything fully understood. ‘Open covenants, openly arrived at,’ eh?”
“Exactly, Mr. Gobbet,” nodded Mr. Tutt affably.
Through the open door of the library he could look across the hall to a dining room, where, apparently, the table had been laid for eight.
The superintendent nervously followed the lawyer’s glance. The old Paul Pry!
“Has your client signed the agreement?”
“Not yet. There are one or two details I’d like to ask you about first. Suppose we excuse Mrs. Benton while we discuss them.”
“By all means! ... Do you remember the way to the garden, Mrs. Benton?”
“Indeed I do! It’s just behind the stairs in the conservatory.”
“Charming! Charming!” murmured Mr. Gobbet, after Grandma had gone out. “Sad to think of the daughter of Eben Wadsworth having lost everything she had in the world! May I offer you a cigar?”
Mr.