I am sure there was no evil in either of them—Boyd Endicott or Mary Jarvis. They were rather another Mildred and Mertoun, caught in the grip of circumstance and whirled asunder, by one of those ironical tricks which fate sometimes loves to play. For, on the night of the elopement, while Boyd Endicott, leaving Princeton on the eve of his Christmas vacation, was waiting for his bride at Trenton, with every preparation made to whirl her away to a new home in the West, she was speeding away from him toward New York. She had taken the train at Fanwood and was to change at Elizabeth. There, half dazed by the noise, bewildered by the storm which was raging, tremulous with fright, confused in the tangle of tracks, she had taken the wrong train.
Boyd Endicott waited through the night, with what agony of doubt one can guess; then, when morning dawned, believing Mary Jarvis faithless—believing she loved her father more than him—hot-blooded and impetuous, he had boarded a train and journeyed alone into the West, where they had planned to build up a new home together. He was never to know the true story of that night, for there in the West, two days later, his life had been crushed out.
Meanwhile, almost paralysed with fear, the girl arrived at New York. She was ill, benumbed, chilled with the cold; darkness was coming on; she knew not where to turn, and finally, in an agony of desperation, she sought the home of Mrs. Heminway. The cause of her illness could not be long concealed; she asserted that she was married, that she had been Boyd Endicott's wife for nearly a year; but her father did not believe her. For she had no marriage lines, she did not even know the name of the minister before whom their vows had been uttered—she could tell only of a long drive through the dashing rain one night when her father had been detained in town; of a hasty ceremony; of the drive home again. It was an incoherent story, at the best, and she told it in a half-delirium which made it more incoherent still. Her father was nearly mad with rage; in his first white wrath, he was for sending her forth into the streets. But his sister reasoned with him—there was no need of a public disgrace; she would take the child, the sight of it should never offend him, nor should his daughter know aught concerning it. Doubtless they would have made some effort to verify her story, but the news of Boyd Endicott's death rendered that unnecessary. For their plan was laid.
So the child was born—a boy—and the mother lay for days and weeks hovering between life and death. When she came again to consciousness, they told her that the child was dead—had never lived, indeed. They told her, too—no doubt with a kind of fierce exulting—how Boyd Endicott had met his end—a fit punishment from the hand of God! The past was buried with him. It must be as though it had never been.
Mary Jarvis acquiesced. Life, it seemed, held nothing more for her. The future, no less than the past, was to her a dark and lifeless thing. She would have welcomed death, but it did not come. She grew slowly better, and at last she was able to go with her father to Scotland, for a long visit among his people there, while he hastened home for his revenge—his pound of flesh. Whatever fault she had been guilty of, she expiated by taking, without love—for she knew that love would never come into her life again—the husband of her father's choosing. And seemingly she had never suspected that her child was living; certainly she never dreamed that her instinctive tenderness for her daughter's lover was that of a mother for her son.
So the years passed, and cast a veil about this sorrow; not concealing it, but rendering it less sharp, less poignant. To her daughter no whisper of this secret ever came until that terrible moment when she opened the letter marked "Important—read at once." The blow, of course, must have fallen—it was right that it should fall—but oh! how it might have been tempered. Here is what she read, in that half-darkened library whither she had fled for refuge:
"Marcia Lawrence:—I suppose that you have never heard of me, yet I am your mother's only living relative, her father's sister. There are painful memories, perhaps, which have caused her to wish to forget me, and it is not to claim relationship or ask for love or sympathy that I write this letter, but to fulfil a sacred duty. A Merciful Providence turned my eyes, this morning, to an article in the Tribune, describing your approaching marriage, of which I have hitherto been kept in ignorance. From the name, age, and circumstances given concerning the bridegroom's life, I am certain he is your brother, your mother's son, born in sin in this house thirty-one years ago. So are the iniquities of the parents visited upon the children. Ex. 34:7; 20:5. See also Le. 20:10; I. Cor. 6:13; Ro. 6:23. I thank God that He has enabled me to prevent this last iniquity. If any doubt remains to you, ask your mother for the story, or come to me and I will tell it you.
"Margaret Heminway."
One can guess how this horrible letter palsied her; how this first face-to-face encounter with the world's sin and misery tortured and sickened her. But she shook the weakness off—they would be seeking her in a moment; she must flee, must hide herself, until she had time to think, to adjust herself to this new, corroding fact which had come into her life. So she sought the Kingdon cottage, the nearest, most convenient refuge, and there had written that hasty, despairing note and entrusted it to Lucy Kingdon, who had brought her a gown to replace that mockery of satin. She had remained there, hidden, during the long afternoon, secure in the knowledge that these women, whose devotion to her had a peculiar intensity which she had not quite understood, would not betray her.
Then, as soon as darkness fell, she had come to New York and sought Mrs. Heminway. She must be quite certain; she must know the whole truth. And that old, old woman, with all the grimness of her creed, told her the story bluntly and cruelly, as she told it to us. The child had not died, but had been placed with the family of the manager of her husband's estate on Long Island, who himself did not know its history; who had, in the end, adopted it and given it his name. There could be no mistaking.
I have called her merciless, for she seemed to glory in another's anguish, counting it fit retribution and a punishment from the Lord. Yet I trembled to think how more merciless she might have been had she withheld the truth!