A daughter of Jehu

by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

"The man I saw just now! He wasn't so thin or so haggard then: he wasn't ragged; but—the wild look, the burning eyes—oh, Mr. Chanter, it all comes back to me. It was the same man!"

Mr. Chanter was silent for some time: then—"And whom did you suppose the man to be, my love? Did he speak to you?"

"No! I think he might have, but we ran away. We were trespassing, of course, and I was frightened out of my wits. We supposed"—her voice dropped: "we told Father, and he said it was probably the owner of the house, and bade us say nothing about it to any one."

Mr. Chanter's face cleared a little.

"Very sound advice!" he said. "Excellent advice, my dear. Do you know, Kitty, my child, I believe you cannot do better than to follow it in this case also."

Villages as well as houses have their skeleton cupboards. The Gaylord place was Cyrus' cupboard. Built in the middle of the eighteenth century, it had been inhabited by one generation after another of Gaylords; all people of the same stripe as their neighbors, gentle, cultivated, a little passive, a little inclined to smile and let the world go by. They farmed their wide acres; they loved their books, they caught trout at one season and shot woodcock at another, they spent certain weeks or months in the City. So things went for a hundred years and more. Then one Gaylord, more enterprising than his forebears, made money: copper, I think it was, in the early Calumet days. The money did him no special harm. He refurnished the house rather more splendidly than Cyrus thought in quite good taste, but his wife came from the City, and what could one expect? He bought a good many books, and some pictures, and enjoyed himself immensely: then he died, a few weeks after his City wife, and their son inherited.

Kitty and I were babies when Russell Gaylord was running his race to perdition. In our childhood we used to hear a good deal about him; never from our parents, nor from Sarepta Darwin, but I am afraid we did listen to Cissy Sharpe, who knew all about it, or thought she did. He threw the money right and left. He drove four-in-hand through Cyrus streets with his college mates, to the scandal of the community; he held revels in the old house, with a hundred wax candles in each room, and flowers and music such as had never been dreamed of in the quiet village. People shook their heads, but indulgently: they were proud of the handsome, open-hearted boy. He had such pleasant ways! He loved to put a dime in the contribution box at church, and then slyly, after service, to pile it high with anonymous gold pieces. He loved to send preposterous Christmas boxes to everybody he knew, and to pile up loads of wood by night in lean woodsheds. People said he would learn in time; his heart was in the right place. He was the most brilliant scholar in his class, could stand at the head if he would only study; when he had sown his wild oats, he would settle down in Cyrus and be a credit to all. Even when he ran over their dogs and in a tipsy frolic smashed the post office windows, they forgave him and loved him. He was a Gaylord, and could not really do anything much out of the way.

Then came the crash. A riotous houseparty of men from the City (poor City! it had to bear the sins of many a village like Cyrus!); a quarrel over the gaming table; an insult; a blow, a knife-thrust; a young man slain in his folly, and blood on Russell Gaylord's white hands.

They had all been drinking; the verdict brought in was manslaughter, the sentence ten years' imprisonment. No sooner was the trial over than the creditors came flocking like vultures. Judge Peters—young Lawyer Peters, he was then,—who had charge of the estate, paid and paid and paid; debts of honor, so called, contracted in dishonor; bills for horses, for carriages, for rich wines and costly jewelry: he set his teeth and paid them all. The last bill took practically the last dollar; the house was closed, and for many a day Russell Gaylord's name was spoken no more in Cyrus.

It must have been soon after his release from prison that Kitty and Tom saw him. It began to be whispered about, not among the gossips, but quietly, among those who had been friends of the family, that Russell had been back; that Marshall Mallow had seen him and spoken with him; that he was a wreck of his former self, his one idea to forget his troubles in drink.