Maid Marian, and Other Stories

by Molly Elliot Seawell

"Sergeant, I read that letter. It was the dutifulest letter a woman ever wrote. But—but—don't you know a woman can marry a feller, an' be dutiful an' patient, an' all the time her heart's on fire an' eatin' itself away in grief 'cause she's married the wrong feller?" He paused a moment, and then broke out desperately: "And that's the way with Mary. She wasn't but seventeen when I married her. She was too young—she didn't know. An' here I am a mock an' a misery. I ain't fit to earn a livin' for her. She'll faint dead away when she sees this here." He struck his disfigured face savagely, and did not wince with the pain. "It's better for her, an' God knows it's better for me to die. After I got that letter I felt sorter low. The doctors kem in an' talked about my havin' flutterin's at the heart, an' givin' me brandy. Did you ever hear o' brandy curing a broken heart? Sergeant, I tell you I've got a blow worser'n that bullet that shot my jaw away. I didn't mean never to let her know I was alive unless I got cured an' made a man of again, and—and—" Kaintuck dropped weakly down on the side of the bed. The sergeant then noticed that he was of a deathly color, and scarcely able to sit up, much less to stand. But the sergeant too wore a strange look, and his strong hands clinched behind his back were trembling.

Kaintuck, fumbling in the breast of his butternut shirt, produced a little packet done up in white letter-paper, on which something was written, and took from it a tress of chestnut hair, soft and long.

"This writin' is hers," he said, with a curious accent of pride, "and her hair is as long as this all over her head—and wavy."

The sergeant could not read the words because they danced before his eyes, but he knew the handwriting, and on his own breast reposed a lock of hair that matched the one poor Kaintuck showed with such pride. Kaintuck, in the frenzy of his suppressed excitement, did not notice the sergeant's pallor and agitation. He was wrestling furiously and blindly with his fate.

"Now don't you see," he asked, "why I don't want her to come? I ain't got long to live. What's the use o' dragging her through it? An' I can tell you, sergeant, it would be a heap easier to die now than before I seen her an' the boy."

The sergeant turned quietly and walked out of the room. He went down the corridor toward the window that overlooked the court-yard, where everything was black but for occasional patches of moonlight. The grief and horror with which he was overcome had an added sting of conscience. He was an unlettered man, and was not used to arguing morals with himself. He felt oppressed with guilt at allowing Kaintuck to go to his grave without knowing how things really were. But some instinctive common sense restrained him. It would only add a last cruelty of fate to tell him that he had been forgotten and supplanted; and the sergeant, after looking at Kaintuck closely, had adopted the chaplain's opinion that Kaintuck was not long for this world. He did not know how long he had stood at the window, when he became calmer, and returned along the corridor. The lamp was turned up in Kaintuck's cell, and there were two or three men standing over the bed.

"Sinkin' spells. Doctors workin' with him," sententiously remarked the guard to the sergeant, pausing a moment in his regular tramp.

Every day after that the sergeant came to see Kaintuck, and every day Kaintuck's face grew more pinched, and his eyes larger and more pathetic. The doctors first wheedled, then grew angry and scolded Kaintuck. Sometimes he would take the food and medicine prescribed for him, and again he would not; but all the time he traveled steadily toward the grave. Occasionally he endured furious agonies of pain from his wounded jaw, which had suddenly grown violent again; and following that he would lie for hours completely free from pain, and apparently entirely at peace. But the poor sergeant was never at peace. A trouble, a shade, that took the form of an accusing spirit, walked with him all day, and lay down by his side at night. And if Mary should come! The sergeant's heart leaped up into his throat at the bare idea. Nevertheless he haunted the prison and Kaintuck's cell, even when he was not on duty. One afternoon, when Kaintuck had been feebler than usual, sitting by his bed, something like atonement seemed possible to the sergeant.

"Kaintuck," he said, "may be you're troubled in your mind about that boy?"