One of My Sons

by Anna Katharine Green

"He may be the one true heart amongst them. Sometimes I think he is; sometimes I think his faults are blemishes upon a nature noble enough for any love and worship; then doubt comes, horrible, corroding doubt, and I see in him a fiend, a monster, a being too dreadful to contemplate, much less dream of and adore. Oh, if I did but know——"

"You shall know!" I burst forth, forgetting my own misery in hers. "I have been selfish in urging my personal wishes upon you when I should have been occupied with yours. Henceforth I shall think only of you. To see you happy, to see you at peace, shall be my joy and prove my consolation. I cannot rejoice at the task, if task it can be called, but from this day on my energies shall be devoted to the settling of that doubt which, while it exists, robs you of all peace of mind. If Alfred is the guiltless man we are fain to believe him, you shall know it. I feel that it is possible to prove him so, and my feelings have often been very reliable guides in difficult undertakings."

She was startled; she was more than startled; she was alarmed. "I don't understand you," she cried. "What can you do? If the one guilty heart among my cousins refuses to respond to the appeal made to it by my uncle, how can you hope to move so callous a soul to a sense of its duty?"

"I cannot. With the hand of the law raised in threat against him, he would be throwing away his life to proclaim his guilt to anyone now. It would be folly on our part to expect it. But there are other means by which this question may be settled. We do not gather figs of thorns or grapes of thistles. Consider, then, in which of these three breasts the thorns are found thickest; and, if uncertainty yet remains, to which of your cousins your uncle's death offered the greatest release."

"Have I not already asked myself these questions? Have I not repeated them over and over in my own mind till their ceaseless repetition has well-nigh maddened me? I think I know George, yet I dare not say he has a heart incapable of crime. I think I know Alfred and I think I know Leighton; but what certainty can this imaginary knowledge give me of the integrity of men who hide their best impulses under wild ways or cloud them with plausible hypocrisies? There is not an open soul among the three; and unless one of them consents to confess his crime, we can never feel sure of the two true men who are guiltless. That is, I never can. I should be haunted by doubts just as I am to-day, and to be doubt-haunted is misery, the depth of which you cannot judge unless you know my history."

"And that I cannot ask for—" I began.

"Yet why should I keep it from you? You have earned my confidence. You are, and are likely to remain, my only friend; then why should I hold back facts well known to those who come in daily contact with me? I am unfortunate in having a father who is no father to me. From earliest childhood till I left him to come to New York, I had never received from either parent a caress which was more than a formality. My father's lack of sympathy rose from the mortal disappointment he suffered when, of his two children, it was the girl and not the boy who survived the illness which prostrated both. My mother—but I will not talk of her; she has been dead a dozen years—only you will believe me when I say that all tokens of affection were lacking to my childhood and that the first word expressive of warmth and protection came to me from the cousin who met me at the train the day I entered upon my new life in my dear uncle's home. Do you wonder this unexpected tenderness blinded me a little to faults which I had no reason then to think would ever develop into anything worse?"

I rose to leave; my self-control was not strong enough for me to bear up against these repeated attacks. As I did so, I said:

"Miss Meredith, you have heard my promise. May I be prospered in my undertaking, for success in it means not only satisfaction to myself but great relief to you. Why do you tremble?"

"I fear—I dread your interference. Sometimes I wish never to know the truth. You will call me inconsistent, unreasonable. Indeed, I know I am; but what can you expect from a girl upon whom the blessing of God has never rested?"