The Chief Legatee eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 230 pages of information about The Chief Legatee.

The Chief Legatee eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 230 pages of information about The Chief Legatee.

He forced a suffering look into his eyes, and insisting that nothing but outdoor air would help him when he had a headache, hastened down-stairs and so out.  A blinding gust seized him as he faced the hill, but he drew down his umbrella and hurried on.  He had a purpose in following her suggestion as to a walk in this direction.  Dark as the grasses were, he meant to search the cemetery for the graves of the Hazens and see what he could learn from them.

He met three persons on his way, all of whom turned to look at him.  This was in the village.  On the hillside he met nobody.  Wind and rain and mud were all; desolation in the prospect and all but desolation in his heart.  At the brow he first caught sight of the broken stone wall which separated the old burying place from the road.  There lay his path.  Happily he could tread it unnoticed and unwatched.  There was no one within sight, high or low.

He spent a half hour among the tombs before he struck the name he was looking for.  Another ten minutes before he found those of his wife’s family.  Then he had his reward.  On a low brown shaft he read the names of father and mother, and beneath them the following lines: 

Sacred to the memory of
Anitra
Died June 7, 1885
Aged 6 years and one day.
Of such is the Kingdom of heaven.

The twin!  Georgian was mad.  This record showed that her little sister lay here.  Anitra,—­yes, that was the name of her other half.  He remembered it well.  Georgian had mentioned it to him more than once.  And this child, this Anitra, had been buried here for fifteen years.

Deeply indignant at his wife’s duplicity, he took a look at the opposite side of the shaft where still another surprise awaited him.  Here was the record of the brother; the brother he had so lately talked to and who had seemingly proven his claim to the name he now read: 

Alfred Francesco
only son of
Georgian Toritti afterwards Georgian Hazen. 
Lost at sea February, 1895. 
Aged twenty-five years.

An odd inscription opening up conjectures of the most curious and interesting nature.  But it was not this fact which struck him at the time, it was the possibility underlying the simple statement, Lost at sea.  This, as the wry-necked man had said, admitted of a possible resurrection.  Here was no body.  A mound showed where Anitra had been laid away; a little mound surmounted by a headstone carved with her name.  But only these few words gave evidence of the young man’s death, and inscriptions of this nature are sometimes false.

The conclusion was obvious.  It was the brother and not the sister who had reappeared.  Georgian was not only playing him false but deceiving the general public.  In fact, knowingly or unknowingly, she was perpetrating a great fraud.  He was inclined to think unknowingly.  He began to regard with less incredulity Hazen’s declaration that the shock of her brother’s return had unsettled her mind.

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The Chief Legatee from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.