Thomas Furlong was a grizzled and sour bachelor of fifty who lived solitary and alone in a log house which stood remote and lonely in the middle of a great cornfield at the base of the rising spurs of the mountains. At two o’clock on a certain morning he came in out of a drizzling rain, lit his tallow dip, pulled down the cheap oiled shade of the single window, punched up his fire, took off his steaming coat, hung it before the fire to dry, sat down, spread his damp hands in front of the blaze, and said to himself—
“It’s a puzzle. I wonder what ever did become of her. Seven hours. Maybe she ain’t as much of a fool as people think.” He sat silently considering the puzzle for some moments, then added, with energy, “Damn her! damn her whole tribe!”
The wooden latch clicked, the door opened and closed softly, and a fresh and comely young girl, clothed in the sunbonnet and the linsey woolsey of the region, stood before him. The man exhibited amazement. He bent a hostile eye upon her and said—
“You here! I just this minute said you warn’t a fool. I take it back.”
He rose and made [a] step toward the door. The girl motioned him back.
“Leave it alone,” she said, “I’m not going to run away.”
She sat down and put her feet to the fire. The man hesitated a moment, then resumed his seat with the air of one who has encountered another puzzle.
“You never had much sense, Nancy Jackson,” he growled; “I reckon you’ve lost what you had.”
“You think so, do you? What makes you think so?”
“What makes me?” He flung it out with vexed impatience. “Would anybody but a goose come to a sworn enemy’s house when he is being hunted for his life?”
The girl did not seem overcome by the argument.
“Did they go to our house?”
“Of course.”
“And didn’t find me. Are they hiding around it, waiting to catch me when I come?”
“Of course—any fool could guess that.”
“I am one of the fools; I guessed it. Have they hunted all the farmsteads for me for miles around—you and the others?”
“For seven hours. Yes. We’ve searched every one of them.”
“Every one?”
“Yes, every one.”
The girl gave a satisfied toss of the head and said—
“No you haven’t. You didn’t search this one.”
The man seemed puzzled again, and said—
“I don’t get your idea. Would anybody in his right mind ever think of coming here to find a cussed Jackson?”
Nancy laughed.
“I judged you’d all be in your right minds,” she said; “so I came straight here.”
“Great Scott, you can’t mean it!”
“I’ve been sitting safe and comfortable by the embers in the dark of your kitchen six hours and a half.”
Furlong gazed at her in silence a while, then shook his head and said—
“Well, it beats me. Of course it was the only place they wouldn’t search, come to think.” He turned the matter over in his mind a moment or two, then said, reluctantly, “You ain’t the fool you look.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I can return the compliment.”
“Er—what do you mean by that?”
“Oh, take it as you please—you people. My idea was, that you are not just the kind of fools you look.”
Furlong started an angry sentence or two, dropped them in the middle, then brushed the dispute aside with a wave of his hand, and said—
“Come down to business. What are you here for? What’s your game?”
The girl’s face grew grave. She did not answer at once; after a little she began to word it, carefully, heedfully, and she seemed to watch for effects as the words fell.
“No one—saw me—shoot him—but you.” The man’s face betrayed nothing. If the girl was fishing for a confirmation of this statement, the project failed. She paused a moment, and seemed a trifle fluttered; then she pulled herself together and began to speak with what looked like good confidence. “Maybe one witness can hang me—I don’t know, but I reckon not—it can’t be law.” A pause; no response from the man. She resumed. “Well, let that be as may be. If I hang, I hang; but I want my chance—I don’t want to be lynched. That is why I took the risk and came here, where they’ll never look for me. You hate me, and you hate all of my name, Thomas Furlong, but a man that’s a man couldn’t turn a dog out that fled to him for help when it was hunted for its life—hide me three days till the lynching fever’s over, and I’ll go and stand my trial!”
There was no change in Furlong’s face. It had been implacably resentful before; it remained so.
“Did you kill Jim Bradley in self-defence?”
“Ye—s,” hesitatingly.
“You did, did you?”
A nod of the head.
“It’ll get you off unhung, you think?”
“I—I—it is my hope.”
The man slowly crushed a dried tobacco leaf in his hand, loaded his pipe, emptied some embers on it with the shovel, gave a whiff or two, then said with calm conviction—
“Drop the idea. You’ll hang, for sure.”
“Why?” and the girl shrunk together and her face paled.
“I’ll tell you, when I come to it. Didn’t you know there’d be blood when Jim Bradley and your brother Floyd met?”
“Quite likely. Everybody knew it, you knew it, your mother knew it. How did you come to be at the cross roads with Floyd just as dark was coming on and Jim was likely to come by?”
No answer.
“You was there to help. You can’t deny it. And when Jim got the drop of Floyd and killed him and broke for the woods, you grabbed Floyd’s gun and chased him a hundred yards and sent a bullet through his temple when he turned to look back. He shot Floyd when Floyd stepped from behind the tree raising his gun—and it was self-defence. Yourn wasn’t, my girl. What do you say to that?”
Nancy was very white. She put up her hands appealingly, and said—
“Oh, oh, have some pity, Mr. Furlong! You can save me—you are the only witness—”
“There was two others!”
“Two? Oh—”
“And they don’t love the Jacksons. I name no names, but when the trial comes off I can’t save you—couldn’t if I wanted to.”
Nancy was sobbing now, and wringing her hands miserably.
“Oh, what shall I do! what shall I do!” she said. “My mother’s heart will be broken.”
At the mention of the mother the anger in Furlong’s eyes blazed up fiercely, and he said—
“Let it break! let it break, I say! On the very morning of the day set for our wedding she flung me over and married that low-grade fool your father; humiliated me, made me the joke of the countryside; spoiled my life and made it bitter and lonely and a burden; and the children that should have been mine—but damn these histories, they—look here! Do you want to live?”
“Oh, I do, I do. Let me live!”
“Then you shall! And I’ll make it so hard for you, and for her, that—”
“Oh, make it anything you like, only let me live, and I will be thankful and she—”
“Then these are the terms. Now listen. You will leave this region, and go far away—for good and all.”
“I shall be glad to, God knows. And she may go with me?”
“No.”
The word smote like a blow. The girl said faintly—
“Not go with me?”
“I said it.”
Nancy rocked her head from side to side, as one in physical pain, and said—
“Oh, it is hard—never to see her again—she never to see me again—oh, she could not bear it, it would kill her—I will not go!”
“As you please. Stay here and hang, if that would suit her better.”
“Oh, no, no, no!—I didn’t mean it, I didn’t indeed; I will go! To know that I am alive will be a comfort to her. She will know it, won’t she?”
“You will write her every week—in a disguised hand; and for your own safety, see to it that you send the letters under cover to me, who will not be suspected of corresponding with a Jackson. A letter every week, do you understand? If you fail once, I set the dogs of the law on your track.”
“I will not fail; oh, I shall be glad to write her and take some of the aches out of her heart.”
“Another detail. To-night you are wearing women’s clothes for the last time in your life.”
“What!”
“For the last time—it is what I said.”
“Ah, be merciful; do not require this—say you will not, Mr. Furlong. I—”
“You can’t get away from here without a disguise; you can’t risk living where you are going without a disguise—”
“But I can dress as a—”
“You will dress as a man—that is what you will do. It suits my humor. Say no more about it. Do you agree?”
“I do. There is no help.”
“On your honor, now: will you never leave off your male dress nor reveal your real sex under any pressure whatever? Promise.”
“Oh, must it be—be—always?”
“Absolutely. Promise!”
“Oh, if any other—if—.”
“Promise! If in ten seconds you have not pr—”
“I promise! On my honor I promise!”
“Very well, then. Go up in the garret and go to bed. The clothes of the young negro I used to have three years ago before they lynched him on suspicion of stealing two dollars from Jake Carter, who never had two dollars that he got honestly, are up there, and they’ll fit you. Put them on in the morning, and hide your own or burn them; you won’t need that kind anymore. I’ll trim your head and make a young fellow of you. Every day you’ll practice, and I’ll help you; and by and by when you’re letter perfect and can walk and act like a male person and the lynch-fever has blown over, I’ll take you out of this region some night and see you safe over the border and on your way. You will call yourself Robert Finlay.”
After the girl was gone to the garret, Furlong smoked and thought, and listened to the peaceful patter of the rain on the shingles for half an hour; then he muttered—
“Two of them are dead, two of them are miserable from this out. My chance was a long time coming, but it was worth waiting for. I’ve drunk a lot of bitter in these twenty years, but there’s sugar in this.”
He was very happy, and smiled the smile of a contented fiend.
Roughly stated, it was like this.
Jacob Wilson was a farmer who owned a hundred acres of good land, and raised hogs, mules and corn for the southern market. He lived half a mile from the village of Hackley, which had a population of three hundred persons, young and old, and had also a store, a blacksmith shop and a small square church which was without steeple or other gaud. Wilson was of middle age, and had a wife and three children—two young boys and a girl. The girl was well along in her eighteenth year, and was trim and pretty, and carried herself in an independent fashion and upon occasion exhibited a masterful spirit. Her name was Catherine, and she was called Kate. For more than two years, now, she had been of marriageable age, and the young fellows of the farmsteads and the village had been paying awkward court to her, but her heart was still untouched. She was quite willing to flirt with them, and she did it, and got great pleasure out of it, encouraging each of the youths in turn to think she was taking him seriously, then discarding him and laughing at him when she was tired of him. She made some sore hearts, and for it she got many reproaches, from her mother, and from other mothers concerned; but she was not troubled, she only tossed her head and curled her lip and baited her traps again. Her mother tried to warn her, tried to reason with her, and feared that a judgment would overtake her; but she laughed a gay laugh and said that on the contrary the judgments seemed to be overtaking those others. The mother was grieved, and asked her if she had no heart. The girl said maybe she had, maybe she hadn’t; but if she had, it was her intention to market it to her satisfaction or not at all; meantime perhaps there was no great harm in amusing herself with it.
Then came a stranger along, in the early June days, and he had fine manners, and eastern ways, and tailor-made clothes, and was easy, and at home, and bright in his talk, and the village took him to its heart and was happy in his possession. He soon found his way to the Wilson farm; and Kate rejoiced, and straightway she set a trap for him. He came often, then oftener, and he and the girl roamed the primeval woods and the hills hour by hour in the soft gloaming and the moonlight.
If there had been a doubt as to whether Catherine Wilson had a heart or not, that doubt had now vanished. She had one, and she gave it in its absolute entirety to this young stranger, Alfred Hamilton, and was deeply, passionately, unspeakably happy. She walked on air, she thought herself in heaven. There was a week of this delicious trance, this delirium, then Hamilton bade the family good-bye and left for the east to richly prepare and make beautiful a home for his back-settlements bride. He would telegraph, every day, on his journey, to keep his Kate comforted and enable her to bear the separation, and with every opportunity he would write a letter.
All the countryside were talking about the engagement. The Wilsons did not deny it, but that was as far as they went. However, they looked happy, and that was considered equivalent to a confession.
That first telegram did not come!
Had Hamilton met with an accident? was he sick? The family were in great tribulation, Kate was in a state of pitiable terror. She could not sleep that night, but counted the slow hours and waited for next day’s news.
It did not come. There was no telegram.
The third day the same.
Kate could not endure the heart-breaking suspense. Should she telegraph Mr. Hamilton’s family for tidings? There was a family consultation over this question. It was finally judged best not to indulge in privacies over the wire; to write would be more judicious. So the letter went, to the Hamilton family’s Boston address.
A blank week followed—a wretched week for the Wilsons. No answer came. What did the silence mean? Suspicions began to rise in the minds of those poor people. They did not voice them; out of charity for each other each kept his own counsel and suffered in silence.
But this could not go on so; something must be done. What should it be? Apparently there was no choice, there was but one thing to do. Mr. Wilson did it. He wrote the Boston police.
There was another blank week. Then came news which the sufferers had been trying hard not to expect: no Hamiltons had ever lived at that address. Kate Wilson swooned away and was carried to her bed. The mother went to the village and visited among her friends, and talked as pleasantly and cheerfully as she could about all sorts of things, waiting meanwhile for the topic of supreme interest to drift into the conversation; then she smiled and said—
“Oh, that girl, she is incurable! We did hope, for a while, that this time she would stick; but no, what’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh, as the saying is. She’s flung him over, just as usual.”
“It’s too bad.”
“Yes, it is. She made him promise to keep still and wait a month for his answer, and now she’s sent it ahead of time. I’ve told her time and again she’ll bring a judgment on herself some day, but she always laughs and says the judgments seem to fall to the others. What nice weather we’re having. Well, good-bye, I must be going.”
So, with a shamed spirit and an aching heart she went her rounds under a cheery mask and distributed her pride-saving and excusable lie.
Kate Wilson kept her bed only a day; then she pulled her courage together and went about her affairs as in former days. Exteriorly she seemed unchanged, but her gayeties were not real; she was entertaining a volcano inside. She wanted revenge for the insult which had been put upon her; she had taken a medicine which she had often administered, and had not found it to her taste. Had the others found it to their taste? That was a question of no importance; it did not interest her, perhaps it did not even suggest itself. She wanted revenge. How could she get it? Well, on the whole the old way was good enough. She would resume, at the old stand. She would never marry, for she could not love again, but she would break every heart that came in her way, and try to imagine it was Hamilton’s.
When she had been out of bed a couple of days her father brought home at eventide a waif whom he had found wandering the country roads a mile from the house—a comely young fellow of nineteen or twenty. He said his name was Robert Finlay. He was worn out and famishing. They fed him to his stomach’s content, then he was palleted for the night on the floor, and promised a home if he was willing to work for it. He was very grateful, and said he would prove himself worthy.
There was an unoccupied log cabin in the edge of the forest a half mile from the house, and next day the Wilsons fitted this up and installed him in it. As the days went by he won his way with the family and they all liked him and were glad he fell to their share. He was not good for very heavy work, but he did all kinds of light work well and handily, and was a willing and diligent soul.
He was very gentle, and very winning in his ways, but inclined to sadness. Mrs. Wilson pitied him, mothered him, loved him, and the gratefulness that shone in his kind eyes and fell caressingly from his tongue was her sufficient reward. He seemed to shrink a little from talking about himself, but a fleeting word dropped here and there and now and then revealed in time a kind of outline of his history. Thus it was perceived that he had come from far away; that his liberty, if not his life, had been in danger because of a crime plausibly laid to his charge but which he said he had not committed; that he could never go back whence he came. If he could stay where he was now he should be safe, and in this house he could be happier than anywhere else in the world. Several times he said, pressing mother Wilson’s hand and looking up worshipingly in her good face—
“You cannot know what you are doing for me; my life was a terror and a misery to me, and you have taken all that away and made it dear to me and beautiful. I kiss your hands—I could kiss your feet! Do you believe there is any sacrifice I would not make for you and yours? Any sacrifice! The harder the better. I wish I could show you. If a time ever comes you shall see, oh, you shall see!”
The only fault papa Wilson could find in him was these outbursts. He was a plain man and destitute of “gush,” and these things discomforted him. He kept his thought to himself for a time, but at last, with caution—feeling that the ice was thin—he took a risk and privately suggested to his wife that the young fellow protested too much. It fired a mine! He did not make that venture a second time. He continued to hold his opinion, but he did not air it any more.
Before Robert had been on the place four days Kate had set her trap for him. But there was no result; Robert responded to her advances, and was evidently pleased by them, but he did not respond in the usual way; he radiated gratified friendliness, but nothing warmer. Kate was surprised, dissatisfied, and privately indignant. But she was not troubled; he was human; a few days would change the complexion of things—there was no hurry.
She was soon deeply interested in her enterprise, and found it unusually attractive because it was difficult; which was a new thing in her experience. She got to happening upon Robert accidentally in the fields and all about; she double-charged the batteries of her eyes and let him have the whole load; she sweetly weaned him from calling her Miss Wilson, and beguiled him to call her Kate; she rewarded him by calling him—timorously—Robert, then she watched for the effect—and was vexed to see that there wasn’t any.
When Sunday came around she happened by his cabin and took him for a walk through the sweet solitudes of the wooded hills, and talked sentiment and romance and poetry to him; she allowed her elbow to touch his, but could not discover that it communicated a thrill; she gave a little scream at an imaginary snake, and put her hand upon his arm, and forgot it and left it there a while; then took it away with inviting reluctance and slowly, but he did not try to retain it. Finally she said she was weary, and he offered to turn back homeward, “like a fool,” she said to herself; but she said a little rest would restore her; so they sat down on a mossy bank and she worked along up to the subject of love, and said, dreamily—
“It may be beautiful—it would be, no doubt—if one could find the right and loyal heart, a heart that could feel and return a deep and sincere affection—but I—I—something tells me I shall never find it.”
She paused, to give Robert an opportunity. After reflection, he said, sympathetically—
“Do not say that. You will find it.”
“Oh, do you think so—do you?”
“Why, yes—I think it must happen.”
“How good of you! And you are always so good. So good and so—so—affectionate, if you will let me say it and not think me bold. You have an affectionate nature, haven’t you?”
“Why—I hope I have—I—”
“Oh I know you have! It is in your eyes, Robert—I love to look in your eyes; do you love to have me?” She laid her warm soft hand upon his with a gentle pressure. “You do, don’t you, Robert?”
“Why, yes, I—I’m sure I—”
Her pouting lips were near to his; languidly she whispered, “Kiss me, Robert,” and closed her eyes.
She waited. Nothing happened. She unclosed her eyes; they were spouting anger. He began to explain humbly that she had misunderstood him; that he liked her—liked her ever so much, but—
“I hate you!” she burst out, and gathered up her skirts and strode away without looking backward.
The next day she sat brooding over the humiliation which he had put upon her, and over her yesterday’s failure to avenge that wrong upon another member of his detested sex. Was this defeat to stand? Well, no. Her resentment against Robert flamed up, and she said she would find a way somehow to make him sorry that he had ever crossed her path. She began to form a plan; as she proceeded with it she grew enamored of it. She finished it to her content, and said it would answer—now let him look to himself.
After a little a new thought came drifting into her brain—and it stopped her breath for a moment. Her lips fell apart; she moistened them with her tongue; her face blenched, her breath began to come in gasps; she muttered a frightened ejaculation, her head drooped, her chin sank upon her breast.
Two days later mother Wilson went to the village and made another house-to-house visitation with news to deliver. Happy news this time: her daughter was engaged to Robert Finlay. She was snowed under with enthusiastic congratulations everywhere she went, and as soon as her back was turned the friends discussed the matter and pitied the bridegroom. They agreed that although he was a tramp and unknown he was manifestly a simple and honest good creature and a better man than Kate Wilson deserved. In their opinion a judgment had fallen again—and on the wrong person, as usual. A few cautious conservatives said it was too early, as yet, to be locating the judgment; Kate could back out before the wedding day, and it was an even bet that she would do it. There was wisdom in this remark, and it sensibly cooled the general joy produced by the prospect of the exasperating flirt’s early retirement from her professional industries.
There was a fortnight’s suspense, then all doubts and all questionings were put to rest: Kate and Robert were married. The wedding took place at the farm at noonday, and was followed by a barbecue and a dance. It was noticed that Robert, in his wedding clothes, was a surprisingly handsome person; also that fleeting glimpses of his accustomed sadness were catchable through chance rifts in his new happiness; also that Kate’s exuberant joy seemed a little overdone, at times; also that there was a haunting and pathetic something in mother Wilson’s face that took the strength out of one’s congratulations and made them sound almost like words of comfort and compassion; also that papa Wilson’s manner was grave, austere, almost gloomy; that when he gave his daughter a deed of half his farm as a wedding present from her parents he did not look at his son-in-law, and did not grace the gift with a speech of any kind; that he then excused himself and took his leave with a general bow and some mumbled words which nobody heard, and was seen no more.
The guests departed at six in the afternoon, observing privately to each other that there was “something wrong there—what can the matter be?” Arrived at their several homes, they reported to their households that they had been at a funeral, they didn’t know whose—maybe Kate’s, maybe Robert’s, maybe the whole family’s.
The company gone, the bride, the groom and the mother found themselves sitting together—with liberal spaces between—moody, distraught, silent, each waiting for the others to begin. It was the groom who began, finally. He said—
“You commanded, mother Wilson; I have obeyed. Against my will. I obeyed because I could not help myself; I obeyed because there was no possible way out, and I had to do it; if there had been a way out, I never would have obeyed. I—”
Mother Wilson interrupted him, in a tone of gentle reproach.
“Ah, Robert, you could not honorably and humanely do otherwise than obey. You denied the charge, but obeying was confession, Robert.”
The young man rejoined, with almost a groan in his voice—
“Oh, the deadly logic of it! I know it looks like that, and there’s no answering it; it is unanswerable, and yet I say again, the charge is not true. It is my misfortune that I cannot at this time explain why I was obliged to obey; and so—”
“Yes, it is unfortunate,” the bride remarked, tauntingly; “shall you ever be able to explain?”
“That is the worst of it—no! But you! how do you dare to speak? You who sit smirking there—you, Catherine Wil—Finlay—you know I never did you harm. You—”
“I say it again. The charge I made was true.”
Finlay tugged at his collar to loosen it; tried to retort; the words choked in his throat. Mother Wilson said, in gentle rebuke—
“You are a stranger, Robert; we love you, but we do not know you yet. It is not reasonable to expect us to believe you against our daughter’s word.”
“Oh, I know it, I know it! My case is weaker than water; and all because I cannot explain, I cannot explain! You believe her; papa Wilson believes her, and both of you are justified—I were a fool to deny it. Papa Wilson thinks me an ungrateful cur, and despises me—and in the circumstances he is right, though I have never done harm to any member of this family, nor meditated it.”
“Ah well,” said mother Wilson, soothingly, “things are as they are, and we must accept them; they may be blessings in disguise—we cannot know. Let us let bygones be bygones, and think no more about them, resolving to begin a new life and a happy and righteous one. Put your fault behind you, dear and beloved son; it is forgiven, it shall be forgotten. My child will make you a good and loving wife—”
“No—no—no! She is no wife of mine, and never shall be, except in name.”
“My dear son! You—”
“You commanded, mother; I have obeyed—because I could not help myself. I have saved your daughter’s good name from gossip and wreck—let the sacrifice stop there. I will never live with her—not even so much as a single day.”
“My son, oh, my son! What are you saying! Oh—”
“Let him alone, mother,” said the new wife, with a serene confidence born of old experience; “if I shall ever desire his society, trust me I shall know how to acquire it.”
After supper the new husband betook himself at once to his lonely cabin and sat down and wrote a long letter; sealed it in an envelop directed to “Mrs. Sarah Jackson”; sealed that envelop in a larger one; directed this one to an obscure village in a distant State, and addressed it to “Mr. Thomas Furlong.” Then he went to bed and to sleep.
The letter was several days on its road. Mr. Furlong took it from the village postoffice and carried it to his ancient log cabin three or four miles in the country. He was expecting the letter; one came from the same source punctually every week. Furlong stirred up his fire, lit his cob pipe, and made himself comfortable. He exhibited the strong and lively interest of a person who is expecting exhilarating tidings and is proposing to get a deal of enjoyment out of them. Yet he knew that the letter was not for him. He settled himself in his chair and opened both envelops. The letter began—
“DEAR MOTHER: To-day I was married to the girl I have already spoken of.”
Furlong put down pipe and letter and threw back his head and delivered himself of crash after crash, gust after gust of delighted laughter; then, middle-aged man as he was, got up, mopping the happy tears from his leathery cheeks, and expended the remaining remnant of his strength in a breakdown of scandalous violence, and finally sank into his chair, heaving and panting, limp and exhausted, and said with what wind he had left—
“Lord, it’s just good to be alive!”
He resumed his pipe and Mrs. Jackson’s letter, now, and read the latter through to the end, making comments as he proceeded. The story of the marriage, and what brought it about, and what happened after it, was detailed and complete—all the facts, just as we already know them—and they gave Mr. Furlong high satisfaction and amusement, particularly where poor Finlay broke into pathetic lamentations over his miseries and wrongs and humiliations. At these places Furlong slapped his thigh and said with evil glee—
“It’s great, it’s grand, it’s lovely! It couldn’t suit me better if I had planned it myself.”
The letter closed with—
“And so, as you see, I am married, yet have no wife; for, as I told them at the end of that wretched talk, I shall never live with her for even so much as a single day. Dear mother, pity your poor son. ROBERT FINLAY.”
“He’s keeping his word,” was Furlong’s comment. “And damn him he’d better, if he knows what’s good for him!”
He put the letter in his pocket without re-enveloping it, and left his cabin, remarking to himself—
“His mamma must have it straight off. Her head’s turning gray; I reckon this will help.”
At the Wilson farm the months dragged drearily along. The four members of the family ate their meals together, and sometimes they took their food in silence, sometimes they talked, but it was in a constrained and colorless way, and papa Wilson’s share in it was exceedingly small, and was confined to the two women as a rule; it was but rarely that he included “Mr. Finlay”—as he called him—in his remarks, and when he did it was not in order to pay him compliments. The young couple called each other “Mr.” and “Mrs.” Mother Wilson and Robert remained affectionate toward each other, and she continued to call him Robert and “son,” and he continued to call her Mother Wilson. The good lady made many attempts to soften and sweeten this arid life, but she got no encouragement and had no success. She mourned much, and shed many tears.
After the free ways of the country, visitors came often—uninvited—and stopped to a meal, to spy out the conditions. On these occasions efforts were made by all the family to seem friendly and content, but those made by papa Wilson were so lame and poor that they spoiled the game and no visitor went away deceived.
Evenings at eight o’clock the family met at family worship for half an hour. Papa Wilson read and prayed, and he always wanted to ignore Robert, and would have done it but for his wife’s anguished appeals. Through their influence a compromise was effected—such as it was—and nightly a prayer went up for “mercy” for “the stranger within our gates”; a prayer which always came from the cold-storage closet in the supplicant’s heart and changed the temperature of the room. Mother Wilson tried hard to get a blessing put in the place of mercy, but the embittered old man would not have it so. He said—
“I loved this cur and was kind to him; and for pay he . . . drop the subject, I will not listen to it!”
Nightly, after prayers, [Robert] withdrew promptly from the house’s depressing atmosphere and betook him to the refuge of his cabin, and was not seen again until morning. Sundays he rode by his wife’s side to the village, along with her parents, and by her side he sat through the forenoon service. The keeping up of appearances in public went little or no further than this. All the world knew that the pair did not live together; all the world wondered at it and discussed it, and tried to guess the reason; a former schoolmate of Kate’s carried her curiosity so far as to leave hinting and boldly put the straight question—
“If the old friends ask me why things are as they are, what shall I say?”
Kate reflected; seemed to search warily for a safe and diplomatic answer, then laid her hand on the woman’s knee, gazed into her face with yearning simplicity and said—
“How would it do to say it is none of their business?”
At last the child was born—a boy.