I HAVE heard that dreams go by contraries; whether they do or not Jo was in my mind a great deal that night, and he was once more free to go where he pleased, without the restraint of cruel stone walls and iron doors. I thought of him as I had seen him during the first year of his apprenticeship at Damon Barker’s, when he was full of hope for the future, and tender as a child because of his love for Mateel, and we were happy together again, without knowledge of the unhappiness in both our lives.
I slept until rather a late hour, and was awakened by the sheriff from the jail, who came up to my bed in great excitement, holding a letter in his hand. I did not know how he got into the room, but supposed Barker was up before me, and had admitted him.
The letter was addressed to me, and, hurriedly opening it while yet in bed, I read:—
My Dear Old Friend,—When this shall fall into your hands, the plan I spoke to you about will have been carried into effect, and I shall be dead.
After several months of careful consideration—for I thought about it long before Bragg was killed—I determined to do myself a kindness by taking my own life, and I write this an hour before I carry that resolution into effect.
To a friend who has been as true as you have been, it is only necessary for me to say that I have fully justified myself in this course. Next to the horror I have of escaping from this jail, I have a horror of a public execution, which would certainly befall me, for I am guilty, and take so much pleasure in my guilt that I cannot deny it.
Since the first thought of taking my own life came into my mind, it has never been a horrible one, and when I first knew that Bragg was to marry Mateel, I resolved to kill him, and then myself. The first part of the resolve I carried out as I intended; the second will have been accomplished when this falls into your hands.
As I wrote just now I laid down my pen to consider whether I had any regrets in leaving the world. I found there was one; your sorrow when you read this, but beyond that, nothing. There is no reason why I should care to live, and there are a great many why I wish to die, the principal one being oblivion of my disgrace and crime. Whether the religion we were taught is true or not, I shall probably peacefully sleep a long time before I am judged, and I am almost willing to submit to a future of torture for a period of forgetfulness, for my trouble comes to me in my sleep of late, and I have no rest. My head is such a trouble to me now that I have feared that it will not die with my body, but after that I am buried it will still ache and toss about.
If I have a hope of the future at all—I don’t know that I have—it is that when the Creator is collecting the dead for the judgment, He will shed a tear on my grave, and, knowing my unhappy life, permit me to sleep on. If this cannot be, my fate cannot be much worse elsewhere than it is here, and for the chance of oblivion I am willing to take the risk. In any event, my judge will be a just one, and I am willing to appear before Him.
I once told you that I hoped none of my friends would be permitted to look upon my dead face, therefore I request that you do not look at me when you visit the jail to arrange for my burial. I prefer that you remember my face as you saw it last night, when you went away, for you said it looked natural again. I am sure that when last you looked into my face I was smiling, and I want your recollection to be that of me. If you should see me dead, the horror would so fasten on your mind that you would always think of my eyes as set and staring, and of my face as pale and ghastly. Therefore I ask that you do not look at me, or permit any one else who has ever been my friend to do so.
You will find me ready for burial, as I shall dress for that purpose before taking the draught which will end my life. When I feel death approaching, I intend to fix in a position I have seen dead bodies lie in, so that I shall have to be disturbed as little as possible. It may please you to know that I died without pain; that I went to sleep, and never wakened. Among the books I had access to at Barker’s was one on chemistry, and on pretence of illness I procured a drug which first put me into a pleasant sleep, and then killed me.
I want you to bury me in Fairview churchyard, near the path that leads toward our old home. Theodore Meek has three children buried near it, and there was so much sorrow when they died, and there was always so much love and kindness in that family, that I should like to be in their company. You and I always chose that path on our way to and from the church, and I shall think of two pairs of little feet forever travelling up and down it, spirits of the past, keeping vigil over my grave.
I am sure that you and Agnes will frequently visit it, and talk tenderly of me, and I hope that grim and honest Damon Barker will stop there when he passes the church, and go away in deep reflection. I have never imagined that Mateel will visit it, but if she should—if it should ever appear that I was in any way mistaken in this unhappy business—I hope you will come upon her while she is there, and say that Jo Erring loved her so much that he laid down his life for her sake.
Only say to the people with reference to me that I took life in a wicked moment, and gave my own to avenge it, and that I died in the full possession of all my faculties. They may be unable to understand why my life has been such a tragedy, but they can understand that I have made all the reparation possible for a crime which I could not help committing.
I have only to say now that if you could realize how unhappy I am, you would freely forgive my action, and feel that it was for the best, as I made you say before you went away. For your numberless acts of kindness to me I can only thank you, which is a small return, but I have nothing else.
It is now eleven o’clock; in half an hour I shall be dead, and I find that I am stronger in my purpose than ever before. There is but one sad duty yet before me; that is to write good-by.
Jo Erring.
Barker and the sheriff were sitting beside me when I had finished reading the letter aloud, and while I was hurriedly dressing, I heard the sheriff say to Barker that after I left the jail the evening before, Jo fell in a heap on the floor, where he remained a long while, but at length recovered his composure, and stood looking out of the window in the direction I had taken until long after the night had come on. Later in the evening he pitied his lonely condition so much that he went in to sit awhile with him, but he had little to say, and showed a disposition to retire early. In the morning he remembered his strange agitation of the night before, and, opening the cell door soon after, he saw him lying on his bed, covered with a white sheet. Going in he found him dead, and dressed for burial, lying on his back, with his hands, in which was clutched the letter addressed to me, folded across his breast. He had not even told his wife of the discovery, so that in the minds of the people Jo Erring was still alive.
We went to the jail together, and, admitting ourselves to the room where the body lay, decided what to do. It was agreed that a coroner’s jury should be summoned from among Jo’s friends, who would hold an inquest immediately, after which we would take the body to Fairview for burial. Fortunately we found a number of his friends in town, among them Theodore Meek and Lytle Biggs, and, summoning them to the jail, they first heard of the death there. After we were all inside, I read the letter to them, and as none of them wished to look at the face after listening to what Jo had written, it was agreed that the coroner, who was a physician, should examine the body alone, and that the verdict should be in accordance with his discoveries. The verdict was death from poison, administered by his own hands, and we all signed it.
By the middle of the afternoon the Sheriff and his assistant had the body arranged in a neat burial case which Barker and I had procured, and, a messenger having been sent ahead to dig the grave and notify Agnes, at three o’clock the little procession left the jail yard for Fairview. Barker and I led the way with a light wagon, in which was the coffin, and a half dozen other vehicles followed, carrying a few people from town, and those of the Fairview men who had been on the jury. There was a great crowd present when we drove away, and as we passed down the street, a great many women and children came out of the different doors with offerings of flowers, which they either tossed to me or laid on the casket.
Owing to the slow pace at which we travelled, we did not come in sight of Fairview church until near dark, and just as the steeple appeared, there was a single stroke of the great bell. This continued at intervals until twenty-six strokes had been tolled, when it ceased entirely, which was quite right, as the deceased would not have been twenty-seven years old for several months.
We had halted in front of the gate by this time, and I saw that a great many people were present; that some of them carried lanterns, and that they respectfully uncovered their heads as they gathered about the wagon in which the coffin lay. Six stout young men appearing, they carried the casket to the grave by the path, where all the people followed, and it was put down on two sticks laid across it. If ever I felt an unfriendliness for the people there, it vanished as I stood sobbing by the grave of my only relative and best friend. Many of the women were softly crying, as I remembered them when they told of their heavy crosses and burdens at the experience meetings, and when some one of the number began singing a hymn full of hope and forgiveness, I thought I never could thank them enough for the kindness. I had expected that only a few idlers would attend; but all the neighborhood was there, and they showed that they loved Jo, and respected him, in spite of his crime. I had not shed a tear until I saw the open grave—my grief was so great that I could not find even that poor relief—but I could not control myself then, and wept as I never had before. I shuddered when I remembered that I had often sung in mockery the hymn the people were singing—how I hoped Jo had not!—but I am sure it was not intended for mockery, and that we did not think what we were doing.
There was a slight pause just before the straps were put under the coffin to lower it into the grave, and greatly to the surprise of every one, Rev. Goode Shepherd came pushing his way through the crowd. I saw in one glance that he was poorly dressed, and pale, and distressed, and, taking a place at the head of the grave, he delivered an address which I have never heard surpassed in tenderness, and paid a tribute to the dead which started the tears of the tired, sorrowing women afresh. When he had finished he raised his trembling hands to heaven, and prayed fervently for the peace and rest of all weary men beyond the grave. He then stepped aside to make room for the young men who were to lower the coffin, and though we looked for him afterward, he could not be found.
When the grave was filled up, I remember sitting down upon the mound, and sobbing afresh, and that the women who had known my mother—some of them had heard my first cry when I came into the world—put their hands tenderly on my head, and tried to comfort me. I could not thank them, or speak, and one by one they went away, until I was alone with my dead. But there was a figure which came to me then whose touch I could not mistake; oh, Agnes, how welcome to-night.
WHETHER Jo left a message with me for Mateel I do not now remember, it seems so long ago, but it must have been an unimportant one if he did, for, from the time of their separation to his death, he talked of her only as one who had deliberately meditated and agreed to his disgrace. Although he always loved her, he believed that his memory must have passed entirely out of her mind during the time they lived apart, and was ashamed to confess it, even to me, in the face of her contemplated marriage to Clinton Bragg, which she must have known was the greatest humiliation to which she could subject him, and if he left any word at all, it was only a regret that their lives had been mutually so unhappy. I had not seen her, or talked with any one who had, since the dreadful night when I carried her moaning into her father’s house, and I knew nothing of her except occasional rumors which came to me from people who passed that way that she was very ill, and that but few went to the Shepherds’, and that none of those who did ever saw Mateel.
But the appearance of her father at Jo’s grave, and his tender tribute to the memory of my dead friend, affected me so much that I felt it my duty to call at their house before I slept. I cannot explain this determination further than that I was anxious to appear among them; it may have been that I wanted to tell them how good and brave Jo had always been, and how much he loved his wife to the last, or it might have been that I was convinced there was some terrible mistake on our part, for the appearance of Mr. Shepherd as we stood around the grave implied that he had one friend among them, although we had always imagined that they were all against him. However it was, I could not resist the impulse to call at their house that night, and when we arrived at the mill after the burial, I informed Barker and Agnes of my determination. They offered no objection, if they said anything at all, and I still remember that both bade me good-night tenderly when I drove away into the darkness, leaving them standing at their door.
There was a road from Barker’s to the home of the Shepherds’ which followed the river a distance, and then led up on to the divide where their house was built, and I was very familiar with it, having travelled it many times. It was the road which Jo had used on his visits to Mateel when he was an apprentice at Barker’s, and part of it the road which Clinton Bragg had travelled on his fatal journey the night he was married to Mateel, and if I saw one spectre in the darkness around me, I saw a thousand. The story I have written was produced in white lines etched on the darkness of the night—Jo returning from the minister’s house, young and hopeful; Jo going to his own home, with Mateel by his side, a little older, and looking careworn, but still hopeful; Jo coming toward Barker’s after the separation from Mateel, with a frown upon his face so fierce and distressed that I could not tell whether his enemy should pity or fear him; Jo skulking behind the trees, and watching up the road; Jo carrying Mateel in his arms, and clambering up the hill which led from the mill to his house; Jo in jail, with the white shroud about him, under which none of us was to look, and wherever I turned my eyes, upward or downward, to the right or to the left, ahead or behind, was his grave, which I had just left at Fairview. Clinton Bragg was lying under every tree, first as I had seen him dead in the woods, and then as he lay surrounded by the crowd in the town, and walking wearily in front of me was my father, bending low under a heavy burden which he carried. If I whipped up the horses, and hurried on, the spectre disappeared for a moment, but after I had slowed up again, and had almost forgotten it in feeling my way through the trees, it appeared ahead of me as before, only that the load he carried was heavier, and that he pursued his journey with more difficulty. This fancy took such hold upon my imagination that I thought of the distant light which finally appeared as the lamp which always burned in my mother’s room, toward which the bending figure was always travelling, and when it turned out to be a light in Mr. Shepherd’s window, I looked about for the man with the load on his back, but he had disappeared, with Jo, and Bragg, and the rest of them.
My timid knock at the door was answered by Mr. Shepherd himself, who carried a light in his hand, as he did on the night when I had seen him last, and he seemed as much surprised as when I had stood on the same steps a few months before, bearing his moaning child in my arms, for he started back, and, throwing his unoccupied hand to his head, looked first at me and then around the room, as though he ought to recollect, but somehow could not. When he recovered himself, which he did apparently on discovering that I carried no insensible form in my arms, he set down the light he carried to the door, and asked me to be seated, which I did, feeling uncertain whether, after all, I had not better have remained away, not knowing what to say my errand was should he ask the question.
He put his hand to his head again, as if he always felt a pain there now, and could only forget it in moments of excitement, and then, resting his arm on the table at which he had seated himself, looked at the floor in the piteous, helpless way which was common to him. I thought if he had spoken it would have been that he was very sorry, but really he could not help it. He brushed the tears out of his eyes with his sleeve, as my father did when I had seen him last, and as though he had been warned not to cry, and for the first time in my life I thought the two were much alike; perhaps all men are alike when they are old, and poor, and broken. I knew now for the first time that he was distressed as much on Jo’s account as on Mateel’s; that there was equal pity in his heart for them both, for his manner indicated it as much as if he had made the declaration.
“My poor children,” he said, as if they both stood before him, “how you both have suffered! And neither to blame. Both of them were always doing what they thought to be for the best, but always wrong. My poor children!”
I had never thought of this before; neither to blame, and always wrong, but I felt now that it was true. In my own mind I had accused Mateel, but her good old father called them both his unhappy children, and said neither was to blame, and in my heart I could not think less.
“When Mateel came home after the unfortunate separation,” Mr. Shepherd continued, timidly looking about the room, as if to assure himself that no ghosts were present to accuse him, “although I thought it was but a temporary affair, I regretted it no more on account of the one than the other, and through it all—during the long months which have brought nothing to this house but bruised and broken hearts—I have had this sentiment, and no one has spoken ill of him here any more than they have spoken ill of Mateel. This is as true as that I have spoken it, for with the graves filling up around me so rapidly, I could not give reason for a wrong inference, even if I were anxious to excuse a mistaken action. Jo has always had justice done him here the same as Mateel.”
I was surprised to hear this, for I had felt that Mrs. Shepherd and Bragg had upbraided Jo to Mateel, to induce her to take the step she did, and that her father held his peace, if he did not approve of it. We never talked about it, but this was the understanding Jo and I had, and I think we accepted it so thoroughly that we blamed Mateel that she permitted it. We thought she had little regard for her husband that she allowed her mother and Clinton Bragg to counsel her against him, and I began to realize that in this we had been cruel and unjust.
“I allowed them to do what they pleased,” he went on again slowly and painfully, “hoping and praying it would all turn out for the best, but I always thought of Jo as one of my children, and have been tempted to call on him in his lonely home and tell him how sorry I was it had happened. I knew how unhappy a man of his fine ability must have been under such unfortunate circumstances, but my pride kept me from it. I see now that there has been too much pride all around in this affair; I have known it all the time, but—” I knew what he was going to say—“but I could not help it; really, I could not; I have done the best I could, but it has gone wrong in spite of me.”
He was always saying that; everything went wrong in spite of him, which has been the experience of so many thousands before him, but I felt with a keen pang of conscience that he had done more than I, for while I was secretly blaming Mateel, he did not blame Jo; that while I had never thought of aiding a reconciliation, unless Mateel should ask it, that had been his one prayer and hope.
“I see now, after it is too late,—somehow I never see anything in time to be of use to others or to myself,—that this is all a dreadful mistake. You have not said it, but your coming here tells me that what I think is true; that he was always waiting for Mateel to come to him, and I know so well that she was always praying that he would come to her; not to ask forgiveness, but to say he missed her, and loved her, and that his home and heart were lonely. She was waiting for him to write her just a line—what a little thing to have prevented all this—that she must see him or die, as she will die now without it. He was expecting a simple request from his wife to come to her, and had it been sent, my brave Jo would have come though a thousand Braggs blocked the way.”
He got up from his chair, and walked up and down the room, wringing his hands helplessly, and repeating: “My poor children; my poor children! How they have suffered!”
“We thought in our pride—how unjust it was I now see, though you have not said a word—that he was determined to live without her, and that he had steeled his heart against a reconciliation, and you believed that we were determined she should not go back to him except upon promises and conditions, but I swear to you my belief that she would have crawled on her knees to her old home had she believed he would have admitted her. From what has happened since, I know he loved her all the time, and that he was expecting a summons to come to her every moment of the day and night. What a little thing would have prevented all this; a word from you or me and it would have been done, but we have kept apart from the beginning until the end. We shall have to answer for it, I fear, and I shall not know what to say at the judgment.”
I thought I knew what he would say: “I could not help it,” but what would my own answer be? Perhaps only what millions of other trembling men will say: “I did the best I could; I did not think.”
In looking toward him to make reply, and assure him that he was right in his generous surmise, I became aware that some one was standing just inside the door which led into the other room, and taking a quick glance I saw it was Mateel, dressed in a long white night-robe; that she waited rather than listened, and that she was much agitated. From the half-open door came the odor of a sick room, and in that one glance I saw that she was very pale, and very weak, and very ill.
Instinctively I moved in my chair, to get my face away from the door, instead of turning it, and betraying that I had seen her, and as I did this I heard her light step enter the room. I saw her father look up in wonder, and knew that her mother followed in a frightened way, and gently laid hands on her, entreating her to return, but she put them off, and came on toward me. I had only a side glance, but I could see that her eyes were riveted on me, and that she leaned forward in a supplicating way.
“Jo, my husband,” she said timidly, and pausing to put her hands to her head, as her father had done, “why have you delayed coming so long?”
She fell on her knees when I did not reply, and looked at me with a pitiful face indicating that she would shortly burst out crying. I turned in my chair that she might see that I was not her husband, but her mind was troubled and she did not realize it. Indeed, when I looked steadily into her eyes, she seemed to take it as an accusation from Jo of neglect and dishonor, and she staggered to her feet again, as if determined to tell her story. There was a look of mingled timidity, sorrow, and sickness in her face which comes to me yet when I am alone, and which I can never forget.
“I was afraid you might not understand that I always wanted you to come,” she said, coming near to me, and gently stroking my hand, as if hoping to thus induce a fierce man to listen until she had concluded, “but I thought you would, and night and day since I have been away from home—such a long time it has been; oh, such a very long time—I have expected you every moment. Every noise I have thought your step, and when I found it was not, I listened and hoped again. You have never been out of my thoughts for a moment, but my prayers have been answered, for I was always praying for you to come. I wanted to tell you how truly I have always loved you, and how unhappy and ill I have been without you.”
It was turning out as I had expected after the appearance of Mr. Shepherd at the grave, but how distressed I was to realize that the explanation came after Jo was dead, and Mateel hopelessly ill, I am not competent to write; I could say nothing then, as I can write nothing now, of the horror I felt when I knew that all this misery had been unnecessary. As Mateel stood before me she staggered in her weakness, and her mother hurried to her side, but again she put her off, and stood erect with an effort.
“I must tell you, to relieve my own mind, if for nothing else, that I have always been true to you, and that I only consented to receive Clinton Bragg in this house in the hope that you would rescue me. I was afraid it might be wrong, but I did not know what else to do. I hoped that when you heard that he was coming here, you would walk in like the brave man that you are, and demand to know what it meant; then you would give me opportunity to explain, and I hoped you would praise me for making us happy again.”
I thought that her father and mother were surprised at this, for they looked curiously at each other, and Mr. Shepherd’s hand went to his head again—I thought to upbraid it for not discovering the secret sooner.
“I am sorry it has offended you, Jo, but I could think of nothing else, and I desired to see you so much. I was always weak and helpless, and perhaps I did wrong, but I felt that I must do something. When still you did not come, I let it be said that I intended to marry him, but it was all for love of my husband; God is my witness and I appeal to Him! I had no more thought of marrying him than I had of forgetting you, but because you still delayed, I let the time be set, believing that you would not allow it to go on, and give me opportunity to explain. When the day arrived, I determined to let it go on, and if you did not rescue me from him before I passed our home on the way to town, I would take one fond look at the place where I was once so happy, and kill myself, so that I might be carried dead where I was refused admission alive. I was very firm in this purpose, and would have carried it out. See, I have the knife yet.”
She took from her bosom a dirk knife of peculiar pattern, which Barker had given Jo and me when we were boys, and we had sharpened it so often that the blade was very thin and delicate. She tested its sharpness by passing her finger across its edge, and, holding it toward me, asked me to see how keen it was.
“When you sprang out from among the trees on that dreadful night (I had been expecting you to spring out just as you did every moment during the ride), my joy was so great that I fainted, and when I awoke it was with such a strange feeling in my head; but I will recover soon and then we shall be happy once more. I can’t remember when it happened; yesterday, maybe, but not long ago, and when I asked for you, mother said you had gone out, but would return presently if I waited patiently. After I had waited a long while I wanted to go to you, for I knew you loved me, and wanted me to come, but they said I must wait. I did whatever they told me, for they said I must or you would not come at all. But won’t you speak to me now, since I have explained it all?”
She was again on her knees before me, and looking earnestly into my face; at first entreatingly, but suddenly I saw a change, and there was alarm in her pale face. She recognized me I thought, and I steadily looked at her that she might realize her mistake.
Hurriedly rising to her feet, she walked to the other side of the room, and stood beside her mother, with an arm on her shoulder, still looking at me in alarm and fright.
“Oh, mother,” she said hesitatingly, “maybe it is not Jo. What if he should be dead and never know! Wouldn’t that be terrible!”
She was so much exhausted now that she started wearily to return to her bed, still looking at me as she went, apparently better convinced than ever that I was not Jo, and her father and mother tenderly supported her as she walked. They slowly passed through the door and into her room, and I saw them gently lay her down, where she asked again in a weak but excited voice if it wouldn’t be terrible if Jo were dead and would never know. I looked again, and saw Mr. Shepherd and his wife kneeling at the foot of the bed, convulsively sobbing, each one trying to comfort the other, and both of them trying to comfort Mateel. I noticed then that the minister and his wife were poorly dressed; that the furniture of the rooms was threadbare and old, and it came to my mind that they were very poor, and had been cruelly neglected by those around them. All these circumstances affected me so much that I stepped out at the front door to recover myself, and was surprised to find Agnes and Barker at the gate.
They explained that they had been oppressed with the same fear that oppressed me, and could not resist the temptation to drive over. I hurriedly told them that it was as I feared, and gave them as many particulars as I could before we went into the house. They were visibly affected, and as I pointed around at the general evidences of decay, in whispering the fear that during Mateel’s illness, and while both were busy in caring for her, they had suffered from poverty, I became aware that Barker had been a friend to them during the time, sending them money and such comforts as the country afforded, although they never knew who befriended them. I cannot remember what it was he did to convince me of this, but I was certain of it, and the opinion was afterwards confirmed, for Agnes knew of it and told me.
It must have been an hour after midnight when we went into the house, and though the minister and his wife were surprised to see Barker and Agnes, they were pleased as well, and somehow seemed to think that matters would get on better now, for they were more cheerful than before, as though the neglect of their friends had been very humiliating.
Mateel had fallen into a light sleep soon after lying down, but she wakened in the course of an hour, and still talked of how long, how patiently, she had waited for Jo and how terrible it would be if he were dead and could never know. At times she seemed to realize that he would never come, when she remained silent a long while, as if to think it all over, but she would soon forget this, and say that while she was patient, and would wait as long as she could, she hoped he would hurry, as she was growing weak so fast, and was so anxious to see him and explain it all.
We were all very quiet, occasionally walking carefully from one room to another as a relief after sitting a long time in one position, and it so happened that we were all standing around Mateel’s bed when she asked:—
“Father, do you believe Jo is in heaven?”
The good man was startled by the question, not knowing how to reply, but, after thinking a moment, he answered, speaking with an effort:—
“It is my hope of the future that when I enter the beautiful gates I shall find Jo Erring waiting for me, where I can explain away all that has seemed mysterious here. As I believe in the mercy of God, I expect to meet him and enjoy his intelligence and friendship, both of which I have always esteemed. As I believe in my wife and child, as I believe in my religion, I believe in Jo Erring.”
The invalid seemed much pleased with this assurance, and simply said:—
“I am glad he will know that I was not fickle or false; for I will explain it to him.”
She closed her eyes then, and we all stepped softly out of the room to allow her to sleep, but when her mother went back a few moments later she found that the unhappy woman was dead.
IT has been ten years since we buried Mateel beside her husband in Fairview churchyard, and built monuments over their graves. I have been rid of my tiresome business so many years that I seem never to have been in it at all, and I can scarcely remember the time when Agnes was not my wife. Damon Barker lives with us in the stone house in Twin Mounds, which has been rebuilt and remodelled so often that it, too, enjoys a new condition, and I sometimes fear we do not think so much of Jo and Mateel as we ought, or of the Rev. John Westlock and the poor woman who died of a broken heart; for somehow we cannot help thinking of them all as having lived a long while ago, so many changes have taken place since they were among us. Many of the people who lived in Fairview and Twin Mounds when they did are dead; others have moved away, and so many strangers have arrived that it seems like a new country, and one in which those who occupy our graves never lived.
In looking through Jo Erring’s room at the jail after his death, we found a will bequeathing his property to me, a certain amount to be paid yearly to Mateel, and the mill I have since leased to such advantage that it has been the source of a great deal of profit. If I have not mentioned it before, it may be interesting to know that my father’s wild land, of which he owned a large quantity, has greatly increased in value, and I was thinking only a few days ago that I was worth considerable money, and that my income was ample to support me without work of any kind. In addition, Mrs. Deming died possessed of some property, which came into the possession of Agnes, and with Barker’s money we are quite an aristocratic family.
Big Adam operates the mill on Bull River, under lease, and I have understood that in a few years he will be in condition to buy it outright. I am sincerely glad of this, for he is a very worthy man, and has had a wife and children of his own these five or six years. It is said of Big Adam and his wife that they are the happiest couple in all that country, and I often go there to witness how contented and fortunate the good fellow is after his hard life. Not long ago I was sitting with him in the mill after dark, and when I told him how much satisfaction his happiness afforded me, he made the old reply of pulling an imaginary cork, and pouring out liquor in distinct gurgles. His bandit father was killed a few years ago in attempting to rob a railroad train, but Big Adam still occasionally tells that his father gave up his life in the early settlement of the West; in short, that he was killed by the Indians.
There has been little change in Mr. Biggs, or Smoky Hill, except that both have grown older, and improved a little. I drove over to that country not long ago in quest of a servant girl, remembering that Mr. Biggs had said that it produced good ones, and learned that two or three of his sons were very idle and bad, and made their mother and their neighbors a great deal of trouble. Mr. Biggs himself is a great deal in town, as he has opened a kind of office there for the sale of land, although I suspect that it is no more than an excuse to keep away from home. I hear from him frequently with reference to the management of children, for there have been several occasions to mention the subject; but for all that it is notorious that he has not the slightest control of his own. I have heard that his oldest son beat him on one of his visits to the farm, for he is much larger than his father, and of a very ugly disposition, in spite of the circumstance that he wore braid on his clothes until he was seven or eight years old.
I have never yet seen Mrs. Biggs, for her husband appealed to me a good many years ago never to visit his house if I respected him, as it did not correctly represent him. Agnes goes out occasionally to quell an insurrection among the children, who have the greatest respect for her, and she tells me that I may hope to see Mrs. Biggs soon, as she cannot possibly live much longer, and that we shall be expected to attend the funeral.
I think at least a half dozen of Theodore Meek’s boys have married, and settled around him on the Fairview prairie, and their children are as much at home in the old house as in the new ones. When I was last there I could scarcely get into the house for them, and my impression was that the boys had married well, for they were all very prosperous and very contented. Their nearest neighbors were the Winter boys, who have developed into honorable and worthy citizens. Their father has been in heaven some years, and they seem to be very proud of the reputation he left in Fairview, and take good care of their mother, who manages their house, as they have never married.
The Rev. John Westlock has never been heard of since the stormy night when I saw him turn a corner in a Twin Mounds street and disappear; and if he is alive this night I do not know it, no more than I know he is dead. I have published advertisements in a great many widely circulated newspapers, asking him to let me know of his whereabouts, and soliciting information of an old and broken man of his description; I have made several journeys in answer to these advertisements, but the men I found were not at all like him, and I have come to believe that he is dead; but if he is not, and this should meet his eye, I trust that his stubborn heart will relent, and that he will consent to finish his days in peace under my roof.
Rev. Goode Shepherd and his wife returned to their old home in the East a few months after the death of their child, and twice since they have journeyed to Fairview to visit her grave. Their devotion to her memory is very touching, and it has always been a comfort to me to know that the minister still believes that Jo has been forgiven, and that the blessed Saviour blotted out with a tear the record of his desperate crime at the ford.
I hope the place where Jo and Mateel are buried is very pretty, for I have spent a great deal of time in attempts to make it quietly attractive, and my heart has always been in the work. While everything else has changed, Fairview church is just the same, and every night when the wind blows furiously, I imagine that the great bell is tolling a muffled requiem for their unfortunate history from the rickety tower; every bright day I think that the birds are singing softly over their graves, and in their quiet corner of the yard, close by the path leading toward the old house where they first met, there is a willow that weeps for them in summer, and tenderly covers their graves with its leaves in winter. I think it was planted by Theodore Meek, in whose family there was always so much love and content; and I am sure that whenever the good man visits his own dead, he sends a message upward for Jo Erring and Mateel.
| Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: |
|---|
| Mateel and Joe had retired=> Mateel and Jo had retired {pg 140} |
| am sorry this has happened=> I am sorry this has happened {pg 254} |
| thoughful=> thoughtful {pg 285} |
| drive another away=> drive another way {pg 317} |
| he continuued=> he continued {pg 332} |