One more paragraph, and I dismiss this part of my life forever. I have given an inference that I am an only child, which is true so far as my mother is concerned, but Mrs. Tremaine, whose disappearance with your father will give you an interest in the subject, was the child of my father’s first marriage. I believe, although I do not know exactly why, that his first marriage was something like mine, and a few months after securing a divorce he was married secretly to my mother, who was but seventeen, and a member of an excellent family. While I knew where Mrs. Tremaine lived, and knew of her relation to me, I had never seen her but once or twice, which was long before I was married at all, and in my desperation when I first came to this country, I sent her a sum of money, accompanied by a letter of explanation, and entreated her to visit Bradford, and learn how the child prospered. It happened that she was widowed about that time, and instead of doing as I directed, she came out to live with me. I confess to you that I always disliked her, and was glad when she went away. Her husband was a quiet, good man, and I think he must have died of neglect, for she neglected everybody except sinners and drunkards. He was neither, and I think he died from indigestion, induced by living on food prepared by himself. That she was a failure as a woman, you and I know very well, and I have no doubt your unfortunate father admits it by this time.
I have told you, in brevity and in truth, my life, and I only ask that you destroy this immediately after you have finished the reading. If you treat me in the future as you have in the past, I shall believe that you think I was justified in my course; if your manner toward me changes, I will understand that I am censured, but do not refer to this matter in any manner in your future intercourse with me. I dismiss it forever.
Your friend,
Damon Barker.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE LIGHT GOES OUT FOREVER.
DURING the fall following the summer when Agnes went to live with her new-found father at the mill, I was so occupied with my work, and with my mother, whose health was failing more rapidly than ever, that I met my old friends in Fairview only occasionally. Several times Jo came to Twin Mounds, but it was usually at night, as if he desired to meet as few of the people as possible, dreading the glances of wonder which his changed appearance attracted. Often I transacted business for him because of his dislike to come to town during the day, and went to great trouble on his account, but I was glad to do it, as I felt that I could never repay his acts of kindness to me.
He said to me often that nothing was so distasteful to him as wrangles over business affairs, as if nothing in the world was so important as the possession of money, and that he allowed himself to be robbed rather than dispute and quarrel, which knowledge I am afraid his customers often used to their own advantage. His business remained profitable, I also heard him say, because he had to keep busy to avoid self-destruction, and that motive seemed to succeed quite as well as the nobler one of ambition.
If he came to the house, and met my mother, her painful condition had a bad effect upon him, so that he finally avoided her, usually coming to the office in the evenings when he knew I should be there. I think she never knew he was in trouble, for I never told her, and she seldom talked to any one else, though she must have wondered at the remarkable change in his manner, for he had grown nervous to a painful degree, and looked anxiously about like a hunted man. Usually when he came to Twin Mounds he had no other errand than to be with me for a few hours; at these times he would go over his painful story in detail, and, in explaining his wretchedness, try to justify himself, talking of it in such a pitiful way that I became nervous myself in trying to devise some way out of the difficulty. He talked a great deal of how the people would blame him if they knew the story; how they would say his brain was softening, or that he ought to be sent to an asylum, and then he would put the case to me again, and ask me to judge if his trouble was not justified. I always believed that it was, more because I knew that my friend, a man of promise, was in distress, than because I had impartially judged it, and so I always told him, but this gave him little satisfaction, for he said that in my friendship for him perhaps I did not do Mateel the justice she deserved.
When the weather was fine, I drove him home at night, and I think we always met Bragg driving toward the town. Except that he was more of a dog than ever, there was little change in the fellow, and he moped about in his usual listless fashion, doing nothing but mischief, and occasionally becoming maudlin from drinking out of his bottle. He probably watched Jo’s coming that he might meet him on the road as an annoyance, and I always trembled when I saw them meet, for Jo’s hatred for him was intense, and he would have been delighted with the slightest excuse to beat him.
Once when he gave so little of the road that his wheels locked in ours, Jo sprang out, and, pulling him from his buggy with one hand, hit him such a blow with the other that he reeled and fell in the underbrush beside the road. I could not leave the team, or I should have sprung between them, but Jo realized his superior strength, and did not strike him the second time, but stood over him with every muscle quivering in restraint. The vicious horse was awed by his master’s misfortune, and stood trembling in the road, as if afraid to move. When we drove on I saw Bragg pick himself up, and after wiping the blood from his face with leaves, climb into the buggy, and hurry away, and although night was coming on, I could see him on the next hill, an ugly speck on the horizon, still wiping away the blood, as though there had been a profuse flow. For several days after that when I met him I could see a livid mark on the left side of his face, and there was a cut on his lip which did not entirely heal for weeks.