Once or twice Tom's father had dropped a word to the effect that if anything happened to him, Tom was to look after his sister, and Tom had always agreed, but there had never been anything definite spoken regarding the house, or what money was left, or even the life insurance. And Tom had never broken through the silence.
During that last afternoon when he had sat in the sickroom, tilted back against the wall in the shadows, clearing his throat now and then, he had been thinking about this. He had been wondering if for all their sakes he ought not to try and rouse his father and find out just what he had done, how he had left things. But Marion had stayed so close to the bedside, and somehow he could not bring himself to speak about it with Marion there. There was something about Marion's attitude that forbade any such thing.
But after his father had spoken to them about the house and about Marion, and said that he would understand, Tom had been uneasy. Perhaps after all his father had complicated things by putting Marion into the will in such a way that he would have continually to ask her advice and get her to sign papers and be always consulting her. He hoped against hope that his father had not been so foolish. Poor father! He had always been so visionary. That was the word Tom could remember hearing his mother call his father, visionary. She had said once that if father hadn't been so visionary they might all have been rich by this time, and Tom had decided then and there that he would profit by his father's mistakes and not be visionary.
But although Tom was a little worried, and thought about it quite often, he would not open the desk nor try to find out anything about matters until his father was laid to rest. It did not seem fitting and right. Tom had his own ideas of what was the decent thing to do.
He waited until his sister had gone to her room and had had time to get to sleep, too, before he went to the den. It wasn't in the least necessary for Marion to have to worry about business. She was a woman. To his way of thinking women should not be bothered about business affairs, they only complicated matters. He always tried to make Jennie understand that, too. Sometimes he talked things over with her, of course, as she was his wife, but when it came to the actual business he felt that he was the head of the family.
So he had told Jennie to go to bed, as he had some papers to look over and might not go up for an hour or so yet, and he betook himself to the father's desk, armed with his father's keys.
But Jennie was not so easily put off as Tom thought. Jennie crept to her bed with an anxious heart. She had put the little key back on the bunch with the other keys and felt that no one in the world would ever find out that she had had it, but yet she could not sleep. She could not help lying there and listening for Tom.
Jennie did not feel that she had done anything actually wrong. Of course not, her queer little conscience told her briskly. Why, she might easily have destroyed that will and nobody been any the wiser. But Jennie felt most virtuous that she had not. Of course she would not do a thing like that! It would have been a crime in a way, even though its destruction was a good thing for all concerned. But to put it away carefully was another thing. The will was there. It was like giving Providence one more chance to save the day. If anything ever came up to make it necessary it could be found of course. Why worry about it? It was safely and innocently lying where there was little likelihood of its ever being found, at least not till long after everything had been satisfactorily settled. And Marion wouldn't make a fuss after a thing was done anyway. Suppose, for instance, Tom sold the old house and put the money into another one out in the country. Jennie loved the country. But Marion was queer sometimes. She took strong attachments and one of them was this old house. She might make a lot of trouble when Tom tried to sell it. A she owned it outright, as that will made her do. It was perfect idiocy for Father ever lo have done that anyway.
It wasn't right for a man to make a distinction between his children, and when he did it he ought to be overruled.
So Jennie lay awake two hours until Tom came to bed, wondering, anxious, and beginning to be really troubled about what she had done. Suppose Tom should somehow find it out! She would never hear the last of it. Tom was so almost over conscientious! Well—but of course he wouldn't find it out!
And then Tom came tiptoeing in and knocked over a book that had been left on the bedside table, and Jennie pretended to wake up and ask what he had been doing. She yawned and tried to act indifferent but her hands and feet were like ice and she felt that her voice was not natural.
Tom, however, did not notice. He was too much engrossed in his own affairs.
"You awake, Jennie ? Queer thing! I've been looking through Dad's papers and I can't find a sign of a will. I was sure he made one. He always spoke as if he had."
"Mmmmm! " mumbled Jennie sleepily. " Will that make any trouble? Can't you get hold of the property ? "
"Oh, yes, get the property all right. Sort of makes things easier. The law divides things equally. But of course I'll look after the whole thing in any event. Marion doesn't know anything about business. Gosh, I didn't know it was so late! Let's get to sleep. Fm dead tired. Got a hard day to-morrow, too!" and Tom turned over and was soon sound asleep.
CHAPTER II
"This house ought to have a thorough cleaning," announced Jennie coming downstairs a few days after the funeral." It hasn't been cleaned right since Father has been sick. I couldn't really do it alone, and of course I knew you couldn't spare the time to help. Suppose we get at it this morning. It'll do you good to pull out of the glooms and get to work."
Marion reflected in her heart that it was not exactly lack of work from which she had been suffering, but she assented readily enough. She had not been able to do much housework for the last five years, and it probably had been hard on Jennie. So she put on an old dress and went meekly to work, washing windows vigorously, going through closets and drawers and trunks, putting away and giving away things of her father and mother. That was hard work. It took the strength right out of her to feel that these material things, which had belonged to them and been as it were a part of them, were useless now. They would never need them any more.
Of course most of her mother's things had long ago been disposed of, but there were her father's clothes, and the special things that had belonged to his dear invalidism. It was hard to put them away forever. Yet Jennie demanded that they be sent to a hospital.
"That bed table and the electric fan and the little electric heater and the hot water heater. They give me the creeps to look at them. It isn't good to have such reminders around, Marion. You want to get away from everything that belonged to the sickroom, I for one want to forget sickness and death for a while and have a little good time living."
Marion felt that Jennie was a bit heartless in the way she talked about it, but she realized that it would be better to put the things where they would be doing someone some good, so she packed them tenderly away and sent them to a poor little new hospital, in which her church was interested, and sighed as she took down the soft curtains from the invalid's windows and washed the windows and set them wide, realizing that the sunshine would not hurt tired eyes in that room any more, and could be let in freely without hindrance.
"Would you mind if Tom and I were to take Father's room now?" asked Jennie the next day. "Then Bobby and the baby could have the room you've been occupying and you can go back to the room you used to have before we came. It would change things around a little and not seem so gloomy in the house, don't you think?"
The house didn't seem gloomy to Marion the way it was, and she felt it rather sudden to tear up her father's room and give it to another use, but of course it was sensible and better in every way for the children to be next to their father and mother. So she said she didn't mind, and they set to work moving furniture and changing things from one closet to another.
And after all, Marion rather enjoyed getting back to her old sunny room at the back of the house, with the bay window her father had built for her, her own