After a time, when the first storm of grief and horror had subsided somewhat, he again spoke. "Uncle Richard, if that clandestine marriage with Sarah Pepper was valid, why the open marriage five months later?" he asked, clinging to this straw of hope.
"Your poor mother asked that, my boy," Dudley replied, "and Sarah told her this: Several years before Sarah met Logan, her father had disowned and driven from home his son, Fletcher, on account of dishonorable conduct. The will, made soon after Sarah had been forbidden to have anything to do with Logan, left everything to her who, as this will read, 'had been a loving and dutiful daughter, ever ready to yield her own will in obedience to her father.' When the purport of the will was made known, after Jackson Pepper's death, Logan urged upon Sarah that the clandestine marriage ceremony must never be revealed, lest Fletcher Pepper should try to break the will on the plea that Sarah had not been a dutiful and obedient daughter."
"But why," asked Abner, "if she had discovered in the interval between the two marriages that this man Logan did not love her, and was a reckless, bad man, did she still wish to have more to do with him? Why, instead, did not she still hide the fact of the clandestine marriage, and refuse to go through with the open ceremony?"
"Because," answered Dudley, "she had discovered in the meanwhile that she was to become a mother; and on that account, although she had managed to hide her condition from every one except the negro woman, old Myra, she dared not refuse to be openly married to Logan. As soon as this second marriage ceremony was performed, she left Chestnut Hall, taking the faithful Myra with her. They went to Philadelphia, where they were strangers; and there, in September, 1777, Sarah gave birth to a child which, mercifully, was born dead. She told your mother all this, and also that once Logan, in one of his rages, because she had been unable to supply him money, had struck her, and had taunted her with having been his mistress before she had become his wife, asserting that the secret marriage was a fraud, the man who performed the ceremony not having been a real clergyman. He also told her that he had always loved another woman, and that his only motive in marrying herself had been that he might get control of her wealth. Then, at other times, when he was in better humor—so Sarah told your mother—he would deny all that he had asserted when angry, and would assure Sarah that the clandestine marriage was valid. Your mother, remembering that Logan in that last letter to herself had acknowledged that he had wronged her, was convinced that the clandestine marriage to Sarah was valid; and in that case, of course, her own marriage, three months later, was not."
"Was no trace of the scoundrel, if scoundrel he was, who performed the clandestine marriage ceremony, ever found?" asked Abner.
"Sarah never succeeded in locating him; but, years after, I, by accident, ascertained that without a doubt——"
"What?" eagerly asked Abner, his heavy, bloodshot eyes lighting with renewed hope.
"I found, my boy," answered Richard, sadly, "not what you hope, but the contrary. Thomas Baker was the man's name, and he was undoubtedly an ordained clergyman when he married Sarah Pepper to John Logan, November 19, 1776."
"What became of Sarah Pepper, or Sarah Logan?" Abner inquired after a long, miserable pause.
Dr. Dudley did not know where she was, nor whether she was still living. She had written once, he said, to her cousin, just before Mary's marriage to Page, and had said in her letter that she herself was on the eve of marrying again; but Dudley could not now remember, if he had ever heard, the name of her intended husband. "But," Richard continued, "the letter is no doubt in the package which your mother left with your Aunt Frances. When you feel equal to the painful task, you should go over these papers—they are in that old oak box in the garret—and then, perhaps, they had better be destroyed. You know," he continued presently, in explanation of his being unable to give any information about Sarah Pepper's whereabouts, "I never saw Mary's cousin. I married your Aunt Frances, who was seventeen years your mother's senior, at Plainfield, New Jersey, just before the death of John Hollis and his wife, and before Sarah Thornton, your mother's aunt, married Jackson Pepper. I brought my bride to Lawsonville, and she never saw her Pepper connections, who lived, as you are aware, in quite another part of the State."