[XX]
Jessie Ogden's supposition with regard to Mary Brainard was justified by events; the poor exile was allowed to come back to town to attend her mother's funeral, and, thanks to a providential escort, she was enabled to bring her child with her. The two arrived under the charge of a distant relative by marriage of the Centralia Brainards, who was understood to be on the point of visiting the city anyway, for the purpose of "buying goods." He was presented by the name of Briggs.
He was a somewhat uncouth and slovenly man of thirty-five—a fair specimen of the type evolved by the small towns of southern Illinois. But he had a bright and capable way with him, and it seemed likely enough that if he were to transfer himself and his business to Chicago, as he once spoke of doing, he might work himself up into pretty fair shape. He was a widower.
He showed some fitting sense of the solemnity of the occasion that had brought him to the house; but it was fair to surmise from various tokens that his usual treatment of the subdued young mother was in the line of familiar kindness, which only genuine solicitude kept apart from semi-jocularity—a jocularity that had almost the effect of an understanding. He seemed to have about the same understanding with the baby; he had held it part of the time on the train, and he had shown a willingness to be useful in the same direction subsequently.
Brainard saw the child once. He looked at the boy's dark hair and eyes and vented a dreadful oath, and signified that while he and his mother were in the house the infant must be kept out of sight and out of sound.
Abbie Brainard made no effort towards further mediation between her father and her sister. The present status was endurable, and there was little to be gained by additional appeal to the irascible old man; it was irascibility rather than sorrow which now possessed him. Nothing irritated him more than an address to the deeper emotions, and the passing of his life-long partner was an address of this character. And this irascibility had risen to a pitch of fury on account of the unfortunate resemblance of Mary Vibert's child to its father.
Abbie was still leading her old life in her old way. She had her reading, her accounts, her church-work; but she went at these with less energy than she had shown a year ago. She had lost something in flesh and something in spirits, but nothing was slighted. She had no confidants and she made no moan.
"What is the matter with her?" Cornelia would now and then ask herself. "If she would only rip out and say something; but I never saw a girl who was so mum. I'll get her out of this place, though, if anybody can. She has got to come up there and live with me. I'll fetch that, if I have to pull her up by the roots."
And then, putting generalization in the place of any tangible particulars, "I believe she's just starving"—which was not altogether wrong.