| CHAPTER III. DEALING WITH A MAN'S WORLD
James Alvin Forrest, as the first-born of the two brothers, had enjoyed advantages which had been denied to Arthur. Not that the Forrests could not have afforded to send two children to high school and college; but the father, of English yeoman stock, had, from his experience with James, concluded that education alienated the young people from the land; and consequently, when Arthur had finished his public school grades, he had sternly set his face against any plan to let him proceed. Arthur had remained on the farm and, during his father's lifetime, taken the place of a hired man.
As often happens, the younger boy, though he never showed it, suffered greatly, at heart, from this handicap; for of the two, it was he who was the student. James Alvin had gone through high school and proceeded to college; but, at the very moment when the decision with regard to the younger boy had to be made, the older had, in some incomprehensible way completely disappeared from the horizon of his parents. This was never fully acknowledged. Questions on the part of neighbours and friends, regarding the whereabouts of the older son, were evaded; the myth was kept up that he was finishing his studies in the eastern city where he had been last known to be. Arthur, on the other hand, was fully aware of the fact that grief over this disappearance of her older son had hastened, if not caused, his mother's death. After that loss, the father had asked a cousin of his, Miss Julia Marlowe, an old maid who kept a store at Toronto, to come and keep house for him on the farm. She had accepted the offer; but the father had survived his wife by no more than two months. Miss Marlowe, aged fifty-five, had remained to take care of Arthur. Jim's whereabouts continued to be unknown.
Thus several years had gone by.
Now old Mr. Forrest had, before his death, made a strange will which he had deposited with old Mr. Thorpe, the family lawyer who resided at Fisher Landing. In this will he had made his two sons
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joint heirs of all the property of which he was possessed at the time of his death; but this inheritance was conditioned upon their arriving, within three years, on an agreement between them with regard to its division; failing such an agreement, the whole of the property was to fall to his cousin, Miss Marlowe. This will could bear only one interpretation. He had been fond of his wife; and James Alvin had been her favourite son: he had been unwilling to deprive him outright of his share. Arthur was, however, fully aware of the fact that, if the estate fell to Miss Marlowe, his aunt, he would be the ultimate heir; for Miss Marlowe had little to say for a son who had disappeared from his parents' knowledge. In that case the sum of two thousand dollars was to fall to each of the boys at the date of their majority. In either case Miss Marlowe was to be sole executrix of the will.
In conformity with these dispositions the estate had, during the last few years, been administered by Miss Marlowe; and at her direction advertisements had been inserted, at regular intervals, in the leading papers of the east, calling upon James Alvin Forrest to write to her or to Mr. Thorpe, at Fisher Landing, from either one of whom he would "hear something to his advantage". These summons had remained without result.
Then, during the spring preceding the events with which his story opens, a characteristic letter had reached Arthur who, in the meantime had continued to work the farm.
"Dear Cinderellus," the letter had read, "On my way north from California where I have been keeping myself for the last few years, chance made me run, at Chicago, into young 'Purse' Thorpe of Fisher Landing. Being a lawyer's son, he is as stupid as ever; and so he did not keep it a dark secret from me that Isaac and Rebekkah are dead. I was sorry, of course, to hear it. However, if 'purse' had not blabbed, I might have remained in total ignorance of the fact that there is probably a most welcome inheritance waiting for me. 'Purse' alone is to blame for this my knowledge. As it is, I am coming home
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to investigate. From what little 'Purse' knew, I am co-heir with you on an equal footing. Well, there should be no difficulty. I suppose the farm will have to be sold? - Your brother, loving and affectionate, I myself James Alvin."
The signature of this missive did not seem strange to Arthur, for he knew that "I Myself" had been Jim's nickname at school - indicative of the generally ruthless way in which he had asserted himself. Arthur's own memories of a childhood lived under the shadow of a brother four years his senior and reputed to be brilliant were not throughout of the happiest kind; they were vividly, almost poignantly revived in his mind as he read that signature. Characteristically, he had neither shown his aunt the letter nor told her anything of its contents beyond the mere announcement of Jim's prospective arrival.
Well, Jim had arrived; dimly Arthur had felt that the scene was set. For just what, he could not have told.
Arthur had driven down to the station at Fisher Landing to receive his brother; and, an hour after the arrival of the train, the buggy had reached the yard of the farm which, like that of the Atkinson place was, on three sides, surrounded by half-open, second-growth bush, while, straight west, the dome of a field closed it on the fourth.
To the left stood a well-built, dark-brown frame house which was in need of a coat of paint. Barn, granary, and "shop" stood to the right, along the northern margin of the roomy yard; half embedded in dense shrubs and thickets of plum, chokecherry and dogwood.
Jim, good-looking, straight-grown, exceedingly well-dressed, waited in front of the barn while his brother put the horse into the stable.
Then, together, they went to the back-stoop of the house where a washing-machine, a huge packing case, and a neat pile of split firewood flanked a narrow approach to the screen-door in front of which lay a new coconut-fibre mat which stood in striking, yellow contrast
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to the otherwise weather-beaten exterior of the house. The whole structure faced east, not north as did the Atkinson dwelling. Perhaps that was the reason why the Atkinsons invariably entered by their front door, while the Forrests had always used the backdoor for the purpose.
As the brothers ascended the steps, a shrill, high-pitched voice sounded forth unsmilingly from the interior, "Wipe your feet, please; my floors are scrubbed."
Jim preceding, the brothers entered the large room which was kitchen and dining room combined and which reached right across the rear of the house. All blinds but one - and that in the south window - being drawn, the light inside was so subdued that, by contrast with the bright, sun-lit yard, the room seemed almost dark. The south window looked into a thicket of shrubs the dense young foliage of which changed the light which entered through it into pale-green shadows with only here and there a trembling, snow-white fleck of sun-light falling on the floor. That floor was of unpainted lumber brushed to a blinding whiteness; but to the left, under the dining table, it was covered by a polished square of linoleum checked in Copenhagen blue and white. To the right stood a large, well-kept range with white panels and shining nickel trimmings. This range was flanked by two open cupboards filled with pots and pans of highly polished copper and tin-ware. In spite of a faint, acrid smell of smoke, such as arises where green wood is burned, the air inside was fresh and cool.
Between range and dining table stood the strangest figure of a woman. She was small and slim; and yet, by reason of a disproportion between upper and lower body, she made the impression of being stout: her hips were twice as wide as her narrow shoulders; and this was still further accentuated by the wide skirt of dark-blue homespun which fell in folds from her waist-band to the top of her enormous slippers made of patch-work. On her diminutive bust she wore a white blouse gathered into a frill about her desiccated neck with its deep
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skin-folds. Her face, with prominent, almost negroesque lips and protruding eyes behind large, circular glasses, was deeply wrinkled about mouth and temples; but on her cheeks the skin was smooth and remarkably fresh. Her hair was grey and severely brushed back from a low, smooth forehead; behind, it was taken up into a plain, small knot. But the whole coiffure was hidden by a grotesque array of tortoise-shell combs: flat combs which held the hair smoothly down; and fancy combs with carved and ornamented ridges. These had been among the unsalable remnants when she had given up her store on Yonge Street in Toronto.
As Jim entered, she pushed her spectacles up on the forehead, scanning him, unsmiling, through her unaided, round, and prominent eyes. Her hands were clasping her forearms. Thus she stood, scrutiny personified. She pursed her fleshy lips.
Jim smiled at her, unflinching.
"Well," Miss Marlowe said, her voice cool, almost hostile, "I see you got here at last."
Jim, with an almost charming and altogether impulsive motion, held out his hand. "I don't think you have aged since I saw you last in Toronto, Aunt Julia."
"Why should I?"
"Well, you know...The human lot..."
"You don't call yourself aged, do you?"
Jim laughed. "No, not exactly."
"Well..."
A few minutes later Arthur had led his brother through the front of the house in order to show him the room which had been prepared for him. He was carrying Jim's suitcase. In order to reach the stairway, they had to go through the parlor which, like the rest of the house, was darkened by lowered blinds. Everything, there, was almost aggressively clean and tidy; and so was the bed-room upstairs, most prominent being a stiffly-starched bed-spread of Battenburg-work.
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Across the small hall, the door to Arthur's own room stood open. This room offered a striking contrast to the rest of the house. It was the only one which looked as if it were being lived in. It held a large, folding camp-chair in front of the window, with bookshelves along the wall, and a low stool-like table, also covered with books. The bed was invisible from the corridor.
Jim took it all in and smiled at past memories. "Well," he said, "she's as crazy as ever."
Arthur replied only by "Sh!" and turned. "Come down when you've washed."
Half an hour later the two brothers and their aunt had sat down at the table in the kitchen for a cup of tea.
Jim had composed his face into a tolerant and yet ironic mask. With the easy nonchalance of a man of the world he reached for the sugar-bowl to sweeten his tea. As he took a spoonful, and a second spoonful, he became aware that his aunt, having pushed her glasses up on her forehead, was rigidly staring at him. He was on the point of helping himself to a third spoonful when she spoke.
"I'd take the whole of that sugar-bowl," she said with icy remonstrance.
Arthur laughed. "Now, auntie..." he said placatingly.
"Well," she said without a trace of embarrassment, "what's enough, is enough."
Such had been Jim's reception in the house of his childhood.
If Miss Marlowe had intended to arrive at an accurate appraisal of Jim's character, she had succeeded. The young man was tall, broad-shouldered, winning of manner. Though he resembled his younger brother, this very resemblance seemed calculated to bring out a contrast between them; for, where Arthur was frank, perhaps occasionally awkward, and always sincere, Jim was reserved, smooth, designing; he seemed to display a surface only in order to conceal what lay beneath.
Jim remained with his brother for a week. It was during this week
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that the two of them had been invited to spend an evening with the Atkinsons.
Then, the matter of the inheritance having hardly been touched upon, beyond a few remarks to the effect that he, Jim, "could not see where any difficulty should come in", he had left; and several weeks had gone by. Jim was at Stockton, "looking things over," as he wrote.
During this interval the scene between Jane and Arthur took place in the bluff along the line fence dividing the farms.
Early in August Jim was back for part of a day, coming out to the farm in a hired livery rig which he left in the yard and ordered to wait for him when he went in search of Arthur.
Arthur was in the field, loading hay from a stack in the summer-fallow, to haul it home for the loft. It was there that Jim found him.
Jim lost no time in coming to the point. "Just what," he asked, "does the whole property amount to?"
Arthur did not at once answer; instead, sitting down on his load, he slipped to the ground. There, bending low, he picked up a blade of grass. "That is hard to say."
"Why?" The two brothers were facing each other.
"Well...There is a certain amount of liquid assets, of course. How much, is easily ascertained. At father's death they came to a trifle under six thousand dollars. No trouble about that. But in order to arrive at a total, we must place a value on the farm."
"We could sell, could we not? That would settle it?"
"Perhaps," Arthur said uncertainly. "Only..."
"Well, what?"
Arthur cleared his throat and looked up, straight into his brother's face. "What do you expect me to do if we sell?"
"Anything. Move to town. Go into business. Or buy another farm."
Arthur mused.
Jim spoke off-handedly. "I know old Isaac had some notion of a family place where centuries from now the Forrests would sit and farm.
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Surely, we here in this country...Would be different in the old country, wouldn't it?"
Arthur was still musing.
Jim, seeing it, smiled. "Or if a man dreamt of a home..."
Arthur, rather suddenly, looked up again. "I do."
"You don't say so! Well, I'll be...But even at that. Of course, that enhances the value of the place. Suppose we put it down at twelve thousand dollars, all told, sight unseen?"
Arthur shrugged his shoulders. "It wouldn't bring a third of that if we were to sell."
"Well," Jim laughed, "what if we can't agree? I'll say frankly that I'm after cash. And as much of it as I can get."
"If we can't agree, Aunt Julia is the sole heir; and we get a couple of thousand each."
"Damn it," Jim exclaimed. "What did old Isaac do that for?
"He had his reasons, no doubt."
"Well, that needs to be thought over. We'll have to meet, I suppose; where?"
"Thorpe has the papers."
"All right," Jim said. "I'll let you know when I can be in."
Arthur suddenly faced his brother once more. "Listen here, Jim. I've grown up on this place. It might be different if I had had your advantages. Eight years ago, if I had had the choice, I should have chosen to go on at school. Since you went. I couldn't. I had to stay at home. I've grown used to it now. Perhaps I've changed my mind. Now, I'm going to remain on this farm. One way or the other."
Jim looked at him. Then he laughed. "Is that a threat?"
Arthur hesitated. "No...Not a threat. But that's as far as I'll go. There are the liquid assets. And I've made a little myself since I've had the farm. I don't grudge you the money. But I'll stay on the place. You don't care for it. I do."
Jim laughed. "We'll see. I must go. I'll let you know about the
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date."
"Won't you come to the house and have dinner?"
"Thanks, no. I don't care to meet the old Gorgo. Besides, Mrs. Atkinson has written to me about the boys. They're to go to high school at Stockton; and I'm to find them a boarding place. I must drop in. So long, then."
"So long." And Arthur stood by the head of his horses and looked after his brother as he strode away, handsome, elastic, immaculate in his fine clothes.
A week or so later Jim set the date for the third Thursday of the month, at the office of Mr. Thorpe in town.
There, in the midst of the harvest, the brothers met in the presence of the lawyer and their aunt. The office was a room in the rear of a small brick building in the Main Street of the small town of Fisher Landing. The greater part of the floor space was taken up by the huge, flat-top desk.
Mr. Thorpe, a bulky , elderly man with a square, greying head, sat in his swivel-chair which was tilted back. Opposite him, in the mantilla and the small basket hat fastened with black ribbons under her chin which fashion prescribed for middle-aged ladies of that day, sat Miss Marlowe. Jim and Arthur faced each other from the ends of the desk.
Mr. Thorpe was reading, from a paper, a list of bonds and shares with their market values. When he finished, he added, "The cash on hand at your father's death, as shown by the bank-book, was four hundred dollars. Remains the farm with its buildings, the stock, the machinery, and the furnishings of the house. On these we shall have to place a value."
A short silence fell.
Then, clearing his throat, Arthur said with a questioning inflection, "Eight thousand dollars."
Jim laughed. "Not enough."
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Mr. Thorpe interposed. "Suppose we brought the place under the hammer, would it bring more, Jim?"
"That isn't the point. The place is not to be put up for sale."
"This is a business deal," Mr. Thorpe said judiciously, removing his glasses and looking at Jim with the brilliant eyes of the short-sighted man. "The fact that the parties to the deal are brothers should not weigh in the balance."
"I am not talking of any value of affection, not just yet," Jim said. "We have a half section of the best agricultural land in the province, nearly all cleared. In fact, that it is not fully cleared, is an asset.
There is fuel in perpetuity if it is carefully handled. The buildings and the machinery are up-to-date and in good repair. If we sell, we don't need to expose the price to be realised to the vicissitudes of a public bidding."
"A private sale would not be considered fair, under the circumstances," Mr. Thorpe pointed out. "What is your opinion, Miss Marlowe?"
The maiden aunt looked from one to the other. "I have no opinion," she trumpeted out.
"Suppose," Arthur said, "we add another thousand?"
Jim laughed. "Suppose, instead, we agree to a public sale, and I appear as a bidder?"
Arthur blanched. But there was fighting blood in him. "Suppose," he said slowly, "I don't agree and prefer to rent?"
Jim looked at him, his eyes narrowing. "I shall lay my cards on the table," he said coolly. "Naturally, it is to my interest that we get as high a valuation as we can. Well, I have bestirred myself during the last few weeks. I have been doing a little real estate business on my own account, down there in the city. I have a buyer."
Jim looked from one to the other; he knew he had played a high card. He also knew that he was not merely engaged in a duel with his brother but that he was confronted by a conspiracy of three, determined to
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wrest from him what they considered a square deal. He pitted his wits against theirs.
"That buyer," he went on, "offers twelve thousand dollars, lock, stock, and barrel. The offer depends on one single thing imposed by the will: our agreement. And surely," he added, addressing his brother, "you can't fairly withhold your consent."
Mr. Thorpe cleared his throat. "That, of course, changes the situation materially. If this were purely a business question, it might be said that Jim, in raising the price of the farm, is working as much in the interests of his brother as in his own."
Arthur had flushed. "It won't come to a sale. I won't agree to it. I'd rather let the estate go to Aunt Julia." It was the only weapon he had.
"Very well," said Jim. "Then, there is only one way left to you. You must, in fairness, agree to my terms."
Arthur was silent. He made a mental calculation. In order to meet the offer, he would have to go three thousand dollars in debt. He would have to burden the farm with an annual interest charge of two hundred dollars. It would take him ten years to clear it. He had inherited an almost invincible disinclination for debt. Yet, it was his brother who would profit by it; it was not to be said that he had ruined his brother.
He looked up. "Let it be twelve thousand, then."
But Jim, though he had played a trump card before, had not played his ace. He knew that his game was won. "Just a moment," he said tersely. "I can offer twelve thousand dollars. If it came to an auction sale and the bid of twelve thousand dollars were made, who can tell but that the bidding might go even higher?" He looked once more from one to the other.
Mr. Thorpe held his eye fixed on the paper before him. Miss Marlowe was nervously twisting, with a gloved hand, a button of her black-satin wrap. Arthur was looking into Jim's eye.
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Jim went on. "I will lay the rest of my cards on the table. I want ten thousand dollars as my share. The liquid assets amount to roughly six thousand. If I am to agree to a private sale of the farm - for what else is this? - I must insist on a price which will bring the total of the estate up to twenty thousand. I am on the point of closing a partnership deal in the city. Ten thousand dollars is the sum which I need. I have listened to my brothers threat to throw the estate into the hands of his aunt. That threat cuts both ways. It is a weapon in my hand as well."
Miss Marlowe had risen. Indignation flashed from her eyes.
Mr. Thorpe restrained her by a motion of his hand from giving vent to it. Then, very gravely, he said, "Fourteen thousand dollars is a price never even approached for a farm in this district."
Arthur felt as if he had been away and were returning. In this duel with his brother who was ruthlessly using every weapon he could put his hand to, he was looking into an abyss. Between them, things might come to a pass where family ties would count for nothing. In his boyhood things had been at that pass before. Jim had been "I Myself", a young gentleman in town; while he, Arthur, had been a mere country lad. During certain week-ends, when Jim had been at home, Arthur had hated him. He, Arthur, had always been the underdog; and worst of all, Jim had always succeeded in seeming right, at least in the eyes of their mother. He was on the point of rising and breaking things off, saying 'It is no agreement, then,' when Jim's words about the threat which cut both ways struck home. Was his brother right? Could it be that between these two antagonists both were right? If so, then he, Arthur must give in. The difference in the debt to be assumed by him was one of a thousand dollars. Was the sum worth the thing he had been on the point of doing? He turned to the lawyer.
"Mr. Thorpe," he said, "would it be possible, and would you undertake, to secure a mortgage of four thousand dollars on the place?"
Mr. Thorpe shot a quick glance at Miss Marlowe before he answered.
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His voice had in it a vibrating note of softness as he spoke. "As for the money, Art, you don't need to worry. I can get that for you."
The brothers were standing. Miss Marlowe had sat down again.
Slowly Arthur said, "Mr. Thorpe and Aunt Julia, you are witnesses. In order
to wind up father's estate, I herewith buy the farm with its full equipment
for a sum such as to make up the total of twenty thousand dollars; and I agree
to pay my brother's share in cash."
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