Abigail was truly my friend, wise and sympathetic. Her clear-cut thinking sheared away accidental things, fringes of irrelevancy. I was so glad to get her opinion on the various things that perplexed me. She advised me to make the best fight I could against Fortescue. After that come to Chicago whatever the result. We parted with a clasp of the hand. Then I went to find Douglas.
CHAPTER XXVI
At times afterward I reproached myself for not doing more to fix the guilt of Zoe's death upon Fortescue. Particularly as it became clear to me that his freedom from that responsibility energized his descent upon me for Zoe's interest in the farm. What had my generosity, foolish and boyish, come to after all?
But on this trip to Chicago, whatever our resolutions were on the way, they melted or scattered when we found the half-breed had confessed; also when we talked to the witnesses. Douglas, too, though he had not slackened his interest in my behalf, had politics to occupy his mind. The presidential campaign was on. He was the leader of his party in Illinois; and his presence in Chicago was opportune.
The half-breed was quickly tried, convicted, and hanged. And before I was scarcely ready Fortescue had come to Jacksonville with his witnesses to prove the marriage. I tried to engage Douglas as my counsel, but he was deep in campaigning. Accordingly I turned again to Mr. Brooks. There was nothing left of defense to us but the cross-examination of these unknown persons who came to swear that they were witnesses to the wedding. That Zoe and Fortescue had lived together as husband and wife there was little doubt. Had I not seen them together on the lake front in Chicago? Had not Zoe then hidden herself behind a suspicious reticence? These things corroborated the witnesses.
Mr. Brooks' cross-examination was not very acute. Perhaps there was not much to ask. But we had no witnesses with whom to rebut Fortescue's claim. I could not conceive how I could find any such witnesses; but I had gone to Chicago and left without trying to do so. And neither Douglas nor Mr. Williams had suggested it.
If some six men and two women were willing to swear that they were present to hear, and did hear, Zoe and Fortescue pledge themselves to each other, what could break the evidentiary effect? Fortescue had paid the expenses of these witnesses to Jacksonville; there was no attempt to hide that. But why not a formal marriage? They did not wish it that way. Was not this marriage as valid as any? To be sure. Then the ring! We made little of a defense. Mr. Brooks seemed overcome by the emphatic answers. We lost. And Fortescue came into my life as a co-tenant, a brother-in-law.
Of course I inherited from Zoe too; but here was Fortescue, sharing in every acre, in every piece of timber in my house. Only a division by a court could set off to him his share and leave me in individual possession of mine.
He came to Jacksonville to live. He went into possession of the hut. Whether I would or no, I had to confer with him about various things, fences, taxes, road service. He knew nothing of farming. He often came to ask me what to do, and I could not rebuff him. He brought strange characters about him, particularly some of the witnesses who had helped him to sustain his claim. He sent to borrow utensils, household necessities. He visited with my workmen, wasting their time, putting disturbing ideas into their minds. He was a consummate nuisance. And as usual I had much to do and to think of, and I spent lonely evenings when I did not see Reverdy and Sarah or the old fiddler.