Perhaps, after all, we have been a bit hard on Payson, Jr. He was fundamentally, as his father had perceived, good stuff, and wanted to do the right thing. But what is the right thing? Really it isn't half as hard to be good as to know how.
As the orphaned Payson, ensconced in lonely state in one of the funeral hacks, was carried at a fast trot down Broadway towards the offices of Tutt & Tutt, he consoled himself for his loss with the reflection that this was, probably, the last time he would ever have to see any of his relatives. Never in his short life had he been face to face with such a gathering of unattractive human beings. He hadn't imagined that such people existed. They oughtn't to exist. The earth should be a lovely place, its real estate occupied only by cultured and lovely people. These aesthetic considerations reminded him with a shock that, just as he had been an utter stranger to them, so he had been a stranger to his father—his poor, old, widowed father. What did he really know about him?—not one thing! And he had never tried to find out anything about him,—about his friends, his thoughts, his manner of life,—content merely to cash his checks, under the unconscious assumption that the man who drew them ought to be equally content to be the father of such a youth as himself. But those rusty relatives! They must have been his father's! Certainly his mother's wouldn't have been like that,—and he felt confident he took after his mother. Still, those relatives worried him! Up at Harvard he had stood rather grandly on his name—"Payson Clifford, Jr.,"—with no questions asked about the "Senior" or anybody else. He now perceived that he was to be thrown out into the world of fact where who and what his father had been might make a lot of difference. Rather anxiously he hoped the old gentleman would turn out to have been all right;—and would have left enough of an estate so that he could still go on cashing checks upon the first day of every month!
It was one of the unwritten laws of the office of Tutt & Tutt that Mr. Tutt was never to be bothered about the details of a probate matter, and it is more than doubtful whether, even if he had tried, he could have correctly made out the inventory of an estate for filing in the Surrogate's Court. For be it known that, while the senior member of the firm was long on the philosophy of the law and the subtleties of "restraints on alienation," "powers," "perpetuities" and the mysteries of "the next eventual estate," he was frankly short on the patience to add and subtract. So while Mr. Tutt drew their clients' wills, it was Tutt who attempted to probate and execute them. Then, if by any chance, there was any trouble or some ungrateful relative thought he hadn't got enough, it was Mr. Tutt who reluctantly tossed away his stogy, strolled over to court and defended the will which he had drawn,—usually with success.
So it was the lesser Tutt who wrung the hand of Payson Clifford and gave him the leathern armchair by the window.
"And now about the will!" chirped Tutt, as after a labored encomium upon the virtues of Payson, Senior, deceased, he took the liberty of lighting a cigarette before he commenced to read the instrument which lay in a brown envelope upon the desk before him. "And now about the will! I suppose you are already aware that your father has made you his executor and, after a few minor legacies, the residuary legatee of his entire estate?"
Payson shook his head mutely. He felt it more becoming to pretend to be ignorant of these things under the circumstances.
"Yes," continued Tutt cheerfully, taking up the envelope, "Mr. Tutt drew the will—nearly fifteen years ago—and your father never thought necessary to change it. It's lain right there in our 'Will Box' without being disturbed more than once,—and that was seven or eight years ago when he came in one day and asked to be allowed to look at it,—I think he put an envelope containing a letter in with it. I found one there the other day."
Payson languidly took the will in his hand.
"How large an estate did he leave?" he inquired.
"As near as I can figure out about seventy thousand dollars," answered Tutt. "But the transfer tax will not be heavy, and the legacies do not aggregate more than ten thousand."
The instrument was a short one,—drawn with all Mr. Tutt's ability for compression—and filling only a single sheet. Payson's father had bequeathed seventy-six hundred dollars to his three cousins and their children, and everything else he had left to his son. Payson rapidly computed that after settling the bills against the estate, including that of Tutt & Tutt, he would probably get at least sixty thousand out of it. At the current rate he would continue to be quite comfortable,—more so in fact than heretofore. Still, it was less than he had expected. Perhaps his father had had expensive habits.
"Here's the letter," went on Tutt, handing it to Payson who took out his pen-knife to open it the more neatly. "Probably a suggestion as to the disposal of personal effects—remembrances or something of the sort. It's often done."
The envelope was a cheap one, ornamented in the upper left hand corner with a wood cut showing a stout goddess in a night dress, evidently meant for Proserpina—pouring a Niagara of grain out of a cornucopia of plenty over a farmland stacked high with apples, corn, and pumpkins, and flooded by the beams of a rising sun with a real face. Beneath were the words:
"If not delivered in five days return to
Clifford, Cobb & Weng,
Grain Dealers and Produce
597 Water Street,
N.Y. City,
N.Y."
Even as his eye fell upon it Payson was conscious of its coarse vulgarity. And "Weng"! Whoever heard of such a name? He certainly had not,—hadn't even known that his father had a partner with such an absurd cognomen! "—& Weng!" There was something terribly plebeian about it. As well as about the obvious desire for symmetry which had led to the addition of that superfluous "N.Y." below the entirely adequate "N.Y. City." But, of course, he'd be glad to do anything his father requested in a letter.
He forced the edge of the blade through the tough fiber of the envelope, drew forth the enclosed sheet and unfolded it. In the middle of the top was a replica of the wood cut upon the outside, only minus the "If not delivered in five days return to." Then Payson read in his father's customary bold scrawl the simple inscription, doomed to haunt him sleeping and waking for many moons:—
"In case of my sudden death I wish my executor to give twenty-five thousand dollars to my very dear friend Sadie Burch, of Hoboken, N.J.
"PAYSON CLIFFORD."
For a brief—very brief—moment, a mist gathered over the letter in the son's hand. "My dear friend Sadie Burch!" He choked back the exclamation of surprise that rose unconsciously to his lips and endeavored to suppress any facial evidence of his inner feelings. "Twenty-five thousand!" Then he held out the letter more or less casually to Tutt.
"Wee-e-ll!" whistled the lawyer softly, with a quick glance from under his eyebrows.
"Oh, it isn't the money!" remarked Payson in a sickly tone—although of course he was lying. It was the money.
The idea of surrendering nearly half his father's estate to a stranger staggered him; yet to his eternal credit, in that first instant of bewildered agony no thought of disregarding his father's wishes entered his mind. It was a hard wallop, but he'd got to stand it.
"Oh, that's nothing!" remarked Tutt. "It's not binding. You don't need to pay any attention to it."
"Do you really mean that that paper hasn't any legal effect?" exclaimed the boy with such a reaction of relief that for the moment the ethical aspect of the case was entirely obscured by the legal.
"None whatever!" returned Tutt definitely.
"But it's part of the will!" protested Payson. "It's in my father's own handwriting."
"That doesn't make any difference," declared the lawyer. "Not being witnessed in the manner required by law it's not of the slightest significance."
"Not