The Story of a Country Town

by E. W. Howe

I have a recollection of feeling faint and sick after reading the letter, and when I started up to go home, I remember that I staggered like a drunken man, and reeled along the street in such a manner that those whom I passed surely thought I was returning from a night’s debauch. My first thought was that the best thing I could do was to give the office to Martin, and take my mother, and leave the country, too, before any one knew of the disgrace, but when I remembered the advice in the letter with reference to the business, I knew it was his deliberate judgment that I should stay and live it down; and he must have thought of it a great deal. A thousand disturbing thoughts passed through my mind as I went along, and once when I went into an old and vacant house to avoid meeting a party of people who were coming toward me, the first feeling of faintness returned so strong that I was compelled to lie down on a heap of straw and rubbish.

My greatest dread in it all was to break the news to my unhappy mother, and trying to brace myself with the thought that I was now entrusted with grave responsibilities, and no longer a boy dependent on the advice of another, I passed down the street and into the house.

After considerable search I found my mother seated in a low chair in the kitchen, as I had seen her a hundred times before, but for some reason—I could not explain it then, nor can I now—I felt that she had sat there all night, and that she knew that he had gone. There was a certain timid, frightened look in her eyes when I came in, an inexpressible grief in her manner, and so much sorrow in the tears which came afresh at sight of me, which convinced me that I had nothing to tell her, and I learned afterwards that he had told her what he had written me before leaving, and that he had shaken hands with her on parting, and begged her not to be distressed.

My first action was to pull down all the blinds at the windows and lock all the doors, for I was determined that no one should enter the house that day, and I hurriedly carried in a supply of wood and water, as though we were to live that way a good many days, or that we should live in the house forever, without seeing any one.

As the day wore away, I found my determination increasing to make the best of it, and though I tried to rally my mother, she would say nothing. Finally I gently forced her to leave the low chair, and lie down, where she covered her head, and sobbed the livelong day.

Though I read the letter over a great many times (having gone to one of the upper rooms for the purpose, where I could see the people passing, and looking wonderingly at the house to see it shut up so tight), I could make nothing out of it further than that the Rev. John Westlock had run away, taking Mrs. B. Tremaine with him, and that he had been infatuated with her for seven years, a circumstance of which I had not the remotest suspicion until that day. I knew now that on his visits to the country he met this woman at some convenient place, but beyond that, and the fear once expressed by Barker that his religion would prove an unfortunate thing for him, I was puzzled to understand it, further than the letter had explained.

I knew now that the trouble which caused him to quit preaching, and to seclude himself from callers at the office, related to the woman, but I had never suspected it before, for I had never tried to explain his thoughtfulness, believing it was simply his way, and that his father had been a thinking man before him. He was a man of such excellent sense that suspicion would not attach to him, particularly suspicion of weakness in religion or morality, and I only thought of it to become more puzzled.

Before night I came to the conclusion, though it gave me a sad heart, that the sooner the community was made aware of the matter, the sooner would its gossiping and conjecturing cease, and when night was setting in, I hailed a boy who was passing, and sent a note to Martin requesting him to come to the house. He came soon after, when I explained everything to him, and read the letter, which he heard with great surprise. I then requested him to go wherever there was a crowd that evening, and tell it, to the end that the people might discuss it through the night, as I preferred that course to a suspense of several weeks, for we could have kept it from them that long on one pretext and another.

Martin approved of this idea, though he was too much surprised to say much else, and when he went out, I saw him stop people on the street, and talk with them, and who at once looked up at the house, and seemed greatly surprised.

No lights were lit in the house that night, and I spent the hours in wandering through the vacant rooms; in wondering what the people were saying about it; how they would feel with reference to my continuing the business, and how they explained it all. Frequently I went into the room where my mother was lying down, and she was still for such a long time that I hoped she was oblivious to her trouble in sleep, but in waiting to assure myself of it before retiring, I heard her sob in such a pitiful manner that I resumed my walk through the lonely rooms, and listened again to the echoes of my own footsteps.