Flower of the Gorse

"John, how could I have left you?"

"That is all passed now – merged in the mists of long years. You will be made happy here. I mean what I say. You are in Yvonne's care, and in mine, and always in God's. Believe that, and you will soon be restored to health and to such happiness as life can bring."

She sobbed convulsively, and he called Yvonne in haste, thinking that perhaps he had done more harm than good. However, the invalid rallied after he had gone, and seemed to gain strength, though slowly. Next day she was wracked by the first symptoms of pneumonia.

When Bennett arrived she was conscious and free from pain. He had not been seated by the bedside many minutes before he put a curious question.

"Do you feel able to sign a will?" he said.

She smiled wistfully. "Have you not been told?" she said. "I shall lose everything. My second marriage can be proved illegal."

"I am not quite sure of that. I only want you to pull through this present illness. But it is well to prepare against all eventualities. Would you wish to constitute your daughter your sole heiress?"

She was beyond the reach of surprise, and contented herself with a fervent yes.

"I have prepared the necessary documents. Listen now, while I read," and the woman's weary, puzzled eyes dwelt on the lawyer's grave face as he recited the testamentary clauses by which "Stella Ingersoll, otherwise known as Stella Carmac," left all her real and personal estate to "her daughter, Yvonne Ingersoll."

"Now we'll get witnesses, and remember that you sign your name Stella Ingersoll," said the lawyer, with a cheerful and businesslike air. "Mr. Tollemache will be one witness, my clerk another, and little Barbe Pitou a third; so you need not worry at all because of the change of signature."

Forthwith, in the presence of Lorry and Bennett's clerk, and the scared Barbe, Mrs. Carmac signed her name in a way that was strangely familiar, though she had not seen it written that way during two decades. A precisely similar will was executed in the name of "Stella Carmac."

Bennett had not erred in his judgment. The pneumonia developed a high temperature that night, and Yvonne's mother died without recovering consciousness. She was buried at Nizon. To silence gossip, and by her husband's emphatic wish, she was described on the monument erected to her memory and to that of Walter Carmac as "Stella, wife of the above-named Walter Carmac, and formerly known as Stella Ingersoll."

The lawyer's extraordinary haste and anxiety with regard to the two wills was explained after the funeral.

"I have always had reason to believe that the validity of the marriage might be questioned," he said, when he had drawn Ingersoll, Yvonne, and Tollemache into the privacy of the studio. "When Mr. Carmac executed the will which may now, under advice, be set aside, he caused two copies to be made with blank spaces for names and dates. A few days later he lodged a sealed envelope with me and another with his bankers, and each bore the superscription:

"'This document is to be kept always in its present condition, and never opened unless my wife's succession to my estate shall be disputed. In that event the document must be produced and acted on.'

"I broke the seal yesterday, soon after Mr. Ingersoll's telegram came to hand, and was not surprised to find a will, properly filled in, signed, and attested, leaving Carmac's estate to 'Stella Ingersoll, formerly wife of John Ingersoll, artist, at one time resident in the Rue Blanche, Paris,' and dated subsequently to that already in existence. So, you see, all these tragic happenings might have been averted. Rupert Fosdyke could never have touched a penny of his uncle's money beyond the provision made for him in both wills."

But a white-faced girl looked at her father, and their eyes met, and each knew that a Power not to be controlled by any human agency had brought about the horrors that had agitated their beloved village during that memorable month.

And, when the clouds disappeared, and the sun shone on a Brittany pink with apple blossom, Yvonne herself had to ask that absurd fellow Lorry whether or not he really wanted to marry her, because he was hanging back shamefacedly, for no better reason apparently than the ridiculous one that he had no right to woo and wed a girl so rich as she. At least if she didn't exactly say "Will you marry me?" she did the next thing to it by telling him that she and her father had decided to regard themselves merely as trustees of the Carmac millions for the benefit of their fellows. They would touch little, if any, of the money for personal needs. The notion was thoroughly distasteful to both, and they would help each other to find the best and wisest means of getting rid of the incubus.

"So, you see, Lorry, with the exception of some of my mother's jewelry, which I know she would wish me to keep and wear, I shall be quite poor," said Yvonne demurely.

That settled matters completely. They were in a secluded part of the Bois d'Amour. How could locality be better named? The wedding took place before the summer, and they roamed through Switzerland in June.

Madeleine? Madeleine is a certificated nurse in a big Paris hospital, very smart in her nice uniform, and thoroughly devoted to her profession.

Peridot? What French jury would convict Peridot of murder when his story was told? His advocate almost moved the judge to righteous indignation against the iniquitous Fosdyke, and Peridot was let off with a light sentence. He came back to Pont Aven, was received with open arms by the village, and sailed away in his own vague to pursue the elusive sardine. Last year he married little Barbe. So Mère Pitou's views anent fishermen as husbands must have been modified by Peridot's ownership of a fine boat and good money invested in French rentes.

Pont Aven, save for the riotous month of August, is still unchanged. A new house springs up here and there, and rumor has it that sometime soon, maybe when the gorse is in flower next summer, a new launch will replace the old one which has to be coaxed daily to Port Manech and back during the season.

But that is all – nothing to make a song about. Mademoiselle Julia, ever busy, growing younger each year, still cracks jokes and encourages art; though, to be sure, her opinion of cubism and futurist pictures is distinctly unfavorable to both forms of excess. She is always ready with a smile and the right word. If, for instance, anyone asks her if she knew Yvonne, and Ingersoll, and Lorry, and where Mere Pitou's cottage stands, you should see the way she jerks her head on one side, and hear her rattle out, with a merry twinkle in her eyes:

"Qu'est-ce que tu veux que je te dise, moi?"