want to provoke scorn or envy or jealousy. It is a great and fine
distinction which has been born to you, and I am glad; but you will keep
it a secret, for mamma’s sake, won’t you?”
The child promised, without understanding.
All the rest of the day the mother’s brain was busy with excited
thinkings; with plans, projects, schemes, each and all of them uncanny,
grim, and dark. Yet they lit up her face; lit it with a fell light of
their own; lit it with vague fires of hell. She was in a fever of
unrest; she could not sit, stand, read, sew; there was no relief for her
but in movement. She tested her boy’s gift in twenty ways, and kept
saying to herself all the time, with her mind in the past: “He broke my
father’s heart, and night and day all these years I have tried, and all
in vain, to think out a way to break his. I have found it now–I have
found it now.”
When night fell, the demon of unrest still possessed her. She went on
with her tests; with a candle she traversed the house from garret to
cellar, hiding pins, needles, thimbles, spools, under pillows, under
carpets, in cracks in the walls, under the coal in the bin; then sent the
little fellow in the dark to find them; which he did, and was happy and
proud when she praised him and smothered him with caresses.
From this time forward life took on a new complexion for her. She said,
“The future is secure–I can wait, and enjoy the waiting.” The most of
her lost interests revived. She took up music again, and languages,
drawing, painting, and the other long-discarded delights of her
maidenhood. She was happy once more, and felt again the zest of life.
As the years drifted by she watched the development of her boy, and was
contented with it. Not altogether, but nearly that. The soft side of
his heart was larger than the other side of it. It was his only defect,
in her eyes. But she considered that his love for her and worship of her
made up for it. He was a good hater–that was well; but it was a
question if the materials of his hatreds were of as tough and enduring a
quality as those of his friendships–and that was not so well.
The years drifted on. Archy was become a handsome, shapely, athletic
youth, courteous, dignified, companionable, pleasant in his ways, and
looking perhaps a trifle older than he was, which was sixteen. One
evening his mother said she had something of grave importance to say to
him, adding that he was old enough to hear it now, and old enough and
possessed of character enough and stability enough to carry out a stern
plan which she had been for years contriving and maturing. Then she told
him her bitter story, in all its naked atrociousness. For a while the
boy was paralyzed; then he said:
“I understand. We are Southerners; and by our custom and nature there is
but one atonement. I will search him out and kill him.”
“Kill him? No! Death is release, emancipation; death is a favor. Do I
owe him favors? You must not hurt a hair of his head.”
The boy was lost in thought awhile; then he said:
“You are all the world to me, and your desire is my law and my pleasure.
Tell me what to do and I will do it.”
The mother’s eyes beamed with satisfaction, and she said:
“You will go and find him. I have known his hiding-place for eleven
years; it cost me five years and more of inquiry, and much money, to
locate it. He is a quartz-miner in Colorado, and well-to-do. He lives
in Denver. His name is Jacob Fuller. There–it is the first time I have
spoken it since that unforgettable night. Think! That name could have
been yours if I had not saved you that shame and furnished you a cleaner
one. You will drive him from that place; you will hunt him down and
drive him again; and yet again, and again, and again, persistently,