Astra\'s light form being quickly lost behind the intervening foliage, Doctor Remy turned slowly and meditatively toward his office; which, inasmuch as it had been built for the use and behoof of the late Doctor Lyte, possessed its own door of convenient communication with the garden.
Given opportunity, social equality, and a fine, unremitting tact, and it would seem that any man can marry any woman, whose affections are free. Else, it would be hard to understand how Doctor Remy could have found his way into the heart of Astra Lyte; unless indeed, as is frequently the case, their very dissimilarity should have constituted a principle of attraction; character has its own laws of effective contrast. Astra was enthusiastic, generous, affectionate, with strong religious instincts and aspirations; Doctor Remy was cold, selfish, austere, without reverential sentiment, and, in matters of faith, an utter sceptic. But these traits need not be supposed to have exhibited themselves to Astra in their naked unloveliness. To her imagination, doubtless, they took the fairer form of a calm temperament, and great force and firmness of character, allied to a keen and critical intellect; which last must needs be allowed to take its own appropriate time and road to belief (except as it seemed willing to owe something to her loving guidance). And Astra was of the age and character which are most prone to fall down and worship human intellect; failing, as yet, to understand that it is, in itself, of the earth earthy, and really noble and admirable only as it is enlightened by the spirit of God. She was dazzled and fascinated by the extent and variety of Doctor Remy\'s attainments, and the range and freedom of his ideas. To talk with him was like drawing the curtain and opening wide the window on a wintry evening, admitting free, frosty air, and giving a far outlook over bleak, white hills and leafless forests. Nor did it alarm her that the air was much too fresh and chill to be breathed long with comfort or safety, and the landscape drearily bare and skeleton-like, since the doctor was always ready, at her slightest sign, to drop window and curtain, and turn back with her to warmer precincts and gentler themes.
And so, it had come to pass that, as Doctor Remy walked up the shady garden walk, he had good reason to congratulate himself upon the success, thus far, of his plans. Not only was Astra won, but she had consented to keep silence about the wooing, for awhile. Thus he was saved from the awkwardness of having to account to Mrs. Lyte for his unwillingness to have the engagement made public. It would be difficult to invent a reason likely to commend itself to her judgment; yet it was out of the question to give her the real one,—namely, his reasonable doubt whether he should be altogether acceptable to Major Bergan as the future husband of that gentleman\'s heiress, and so, in some sense, as his heir; and his consequent fear lest the will in her favor should be set aside. Such a confession might give a mercenary tinge to his suit, in Mrs. Lyte\'s eyes, which he wisely deprecated. So far as he knew, neither she nor her daughter had ever heard of the Major\'s declaration of his gracious intentions toward the latter; or, if they had, they regarded it only as a meaningless ebullition of his rage at Bergan Arling. Such, in truth, would the doctor himself have thought it, except for certain later inquiries respecting Miss Lyte, put to himself by the Major; which seemed to show that the matter had not escaped his memory. Besides, in consideration of the Major\'s bitter resentment toward his brother and nephew,—extending, apparently, to everybody connected with either,—no more eligible heir to the Bergan estate was to be found, than Astra Lyte. If the Major had made his will, as he threatened, there was no one, in the whole Bergan connection, with so strong a claim upon his favorable consideration.
Here the doctor paused, for a moment, in his slow walk. "If!" he muttered, peevishly. "To think that the whole thing turns on a miserable \'if!\' I must contrive some way of finding out whether that will—or any will—was ever made. There must be no defective nor missing links in this chain, nothing to invite the meddling of the cursed fate which has followed me so long. The Major must not be permitted to die, one of these days,—by the interposition of Providence and delirium tremens, or something vastly like it,—and leave me with an abortive plan and a portionless fiancée. To be sure, I should not be long in getting rid of the latter, but there would be no help for the former."
His soliloquy had brought him to his office door. Suddenly bethinking himself, then, that a certain patient had been overlooked in the catalogue of the day\'s duties, he called for his horse, and set out to make good the omission.
His road led past the Bergan estate. As he was galloping swiftly onward, absorbed in his own reflections, he heard an energetic "Halloo!" Pulling up his horse, and looking back, he beheld Major Bergan leaning over a small gate, which opened into the fields near the quarter.
"Are you deaf?" was his angry salutation, duly emphasized with an oath. "Here I\'ve been hollering after you, till I\'m black in the face. I wish I had saved myself the trouble!"
"All the fault of my horse\'s hoofs," replied the doctor, good-humoredly, as he turned his horse toward the gate; "they made such a clatter under me that I could not well hear anything else. How can I serve you?"
Major Bergan hesitated. Apparently his business did not come readily to his lips.
"Perhaps you are on your way to a patient," he finally observed, as if he would be well enough suited to find an excuse for not broaching it at all.
His reluctance only stimulated the doctor\'s curiosity. "The case is not urgent," said he, carelessly; "by and by, or even to-morrow morning, will do just as well. There is no reason why I should not be entirely at your service—as I am."
"Come in, then," returned the Major, in a tone that was far from gracious; but swinging open the gate, nevertheless, for Doctor Remy\'s admission.
The latter dismounted, led his horse through, and slipping the bridle over his arm, walked by the Major\'s side to the cottage. On the way, the latter vouchsafed a brief explanation of his wishes.
"I\'ve been thinking a good deal of the advice that you gave me awhile ago," said he, "and—and—I\'ve concluded to make my will. So, seeing you riding by, just as my mind was full of the subject, it occurred to me that I might as well call you in, and have the thing over with."
"And a very sensible decision," returned Doctor Remy, as quietly as if he were not filled with unexpected delight that the information which he had hoped to gain only at cost of some deep and difficult scheming, was thus placed within easy reach. "I only wonder that you have not done it before."
"I don\'t see why I should," replied Major Bergan, sharply; "I\'ve always been strong and hearty,—what had I to do with making wills? And, now that I think of it, what have I to do with it now? I\'m not in a decline yet, by any means."
"So much the better for your work," replied Doctor Remy, composedly. "Deathbed wills are often contested. No one will question your soundness of mind, at present."
"I should think not," said the Major, decidedly. "If he did, he wouldn\'t be apt to doubt the soundness of my sinews,—I\'d horsewhip him into instant conviction."
"Are you provided with witnesses?" asked the Doctor, when the Major\'s chuckle had subsided.
"Witnesses? How many does it want?"
"Two are necessary."
The Major mused for a moment. "I can have them here by the time they are needed," said he. "My new overseer at Number Two will do for one, and I\'ll send for Proverb Dick for the other. Step into the cottage, and make yourself at home for a moment, while I see about it."
Doctor Remy flung himself into the first chair that presented itself, and sank into a fit of thought. A vague disquietude oppressed him, notwithstanding that events seemed to be shaping themselves so much in accordance with his wishes. He believed himself to be on the eve of victory, or at least of a certain measure of present success which would insure victory; but both religion and philosophy, he knew, were agreed in representing human expectations as of the nature of the flower of the field, in various danger from the frost, the knife, and the uprooting wind. To this general testimony he could add the special confirmation of his own experience. Like most men, Doctor Remy had the sobering privilege of looking back upon a career of which the successes were few, and the failures and disappointments many. The track of his earthly pilgrimage, thus far, he bitterly thought, was tolerably well strewn with wrecks and abortions.
A better man, trying to spell out the meaning and tendency of his life by the aid of a higher inspiration, might have found some comfort in the review, nevertheless. He might have discovered some evidences of harmony and design amid seeming discord and confusion, some solid foundations showing underneath abortive ruins, some steady inward growth of patience and strength and hope, in lieu of an outward harvest of earthly possessions. He might have discerned, with awe and humility, that sometimes he had builded better than he knew, because building in accordance with a certain overruling design, of which he now first began to catch faint and partial glimpses. But such consolation was not allowed to Doctor Remy. In his past, all was incomplete, confused, and unsatisfactory. He had not gained what he sought, and nothing better had come to him through its loss. For many years of time, and an uncommon measure of talent, he had scarce anything to show of what he considered life\'s highest prizes—wealth, position, influence. He set himself seriously to discover why. And, for one moment, he, too, had a chill perception of a certain unity and sequence in the debris left behind him, unperceived before; which seemed to show that, though he had served his own ends but poorly, he had none the less helped to forward some extended scheme, whereof he had known nothing at the time, and could now discern only the most fragmentary outline. But Doctor Remy quickly shook himself free of this notion, with a smile at his own absurdity.
Why, then, he asked himself, had he failed? Because of his mistakes, no doubt. Let every man bear the blame of his own acts, and not try to throw it off on his neighbors, or that convenient scapegoat, Providence. Looking back, he could discern many a point (and notably one), where he had committed a grave error. But his mistakes had been his instructors, nevertheless. He had gained from them knowledge that should stand him in good stead yet. To his former qualities of boldness, energy, perseverance, and skill, he now added the experience that could use them to better effect. It would be strange, indeed, if he could not henceforth command success.
He had just reached this conclusion when Major Bergan joined him. Ample provision of lights, paper, pens, and ink, being then placed upon the table, together with the inevitable brandy bottle, the two gentlemen sat down opposite each other, and Doctor Remy began his task of drawing up the will. He first wrote the usual legal preamble, in a clear, rapid hand, and read it aloud for Major Bergan\'s approval. Some small legacies followed, taken down nearly verbatim from the Major\'s dictation. Doctor Remy then waited, for some moments, with his pen suspended over the paper, while the Major seemed trying vainly to arrange his thoughts.
"I don\'t quite know how to word the next," said he, at length, "you must put it into shape yourself. I hold a mortgage of the place where Catherine Lyte lives; and I want it cancelled, at my death, in her favor, or, if she does not survive me, in favor of her daughter Astra."
"You surprise me," remarked Doctor Remy, as he began to write; "I have always understood that the place was free from incumbrance."
"You understood wrong, then," replied Major Bergan. "Though, for anything that I know, Catherine Lyte may think so herself. You see, Harvey got into difficulties eight or nine years ago, and I lent him money, and took a mortgage on............