The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories

One day word came that “Uncle Sandy Armstrong” was dead.  Andrew could not get away, nor Polly, who was then a teacher; but Mrs. Webb hastily packed an old carpet-bag and went over to superintend her brother’s funeral.  That evening the young people discussed the death of their relative in a business-like manner, which their mother would have resented, but which was justifiable from their point of view.

“I suppose ma will have the farm,” remarked Polly, still a plump, rosy, and well-dressed Polly, albeit with an added air of importance and a slightly didactic enunciation.  “How much do you suppose it’s worth?”

Andrew, who was lying on the sofa smoking a pipe, protruded his upper lip.  “Four thousand,—­not a cent more.  The orchard’s all gone to seed, and the house too.”

“We might mortgage the land, and fit the house up for summer boarders.”

Andrew frowned heavily.  His sister was absently tapping a pile of compositions on the table beside her, and did not see the frown.  She would not have suspected the cause if she had.

“As well that as anything,” he replied, indifferently.  “No one will buy it, that’s positive, with all that marsh.”

Two days later he returned home to find the very atmosphere of the place quivering with excitement.  Bridget stood in the doorway of the kitchen, which faced the end of the narrow hallway personal to the Webb abode.  Her round eyes glittered in a purple face.  She waved her arms wildly. [Transcriber’s Note:  In the original, “She waved her alms wildly.”]

“Oh, Mr. Webb!” she began.

“Andrew, come here,” shrieked Polly from the other end of the hall.  “Come here, quick!”

It was not Webb’s habit to move rapidly; but, fearing that his mother was ill, he walked briskly to the parlor.  Mrs. Webb, trembling as from a recent nervous shock, her face flushed, a legal document in her lap, sat in an upright chair, apparently in the best of health.  Polly was on the verge of hysterics.

“What do you think has happened?” she cried.  “Tell him, ma; I can’t.”  Then she flung herself face downward on the sofa and kicked her heels together.

“We are rich, Andrew,” said Mrs. Webb, with a desperate effort at calmness.  “Your Uncle Sandy has been investing and doubling money these twenty years.  He has left one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,—­fifty thousand to each of us.”

Andrew’s knees gave way.  He sat down suddenly.  He had but one thought.  A radiant future flashed the little room out of vision.  That would be his which for five years he had desired with all the insidious force of a fixed idea.

“Say something, Andrew, for heaven’s sake!” cried Polly, “or I shall scream.  Fifty thousand dollars all my own!  No more school, no more dress-making!  We’ll all go to Europe.  Ma says it’s well invested, and we shall have four thousand a year each.  Goodness—­goodness—­goodness me!”

“I should like to fit up the old house and live there,” said Mrs. Webb.  “But—­yes—­I should like to see Europe first.  That was one of the dreams of my youth.”

“And I’ll have a sealskin!  At last!  You shall have a magnificent black silk and a pair of diamond earrings—­”

“Polly!” exclaimed her mother, “what should I do with diamonds?  A new black silk—­a rich one—­yes, I shall like that.  Poor Sandy!”

Andrew leaned forward and took the document and laid it on his knee.  He stroked it as tenderly as if it had been a woman’s head and he another man.  There was no sentiment in his nature, although he was an admirer of beauty—­New York beauty.  After a time he detached himself from his thoughts and talked the matter over with his mother and sister.  When they asked him what he should do he replied, confusedly, that he did not know.  But the plans of neither were so well defined as his.

All that night he sat on the edge of his bed staring at the worn outlines of the boy and the dog on the rug under his feet.  Fifty thousand dollars!  It seemed a great fortune to him.  Such a sum had been familiar enough in figures for many years.  But that it might represent a concrete wad of bills was a fact which had never presented itself to his imagination before.  Fifty thousand dollars!  He did not know what the objects of his idolatry were worth, merely that they were idle and luxurious.  These fifty thousand dollars would enable him to be idle and luxurious—­and to meet society at last on its own ground.