Through all that had happened, there never had been such a dreadful trial as I had borne this day without a word to any one. Danger and loss and sad dreariness of mind, from want of young companionship; mystery also, and obscurity of life, had always been my fortune. With all of these I had striven, to the best of my very small ability, having from nature no gift except the dull one of persistence. And throughout that struggle I had felt quite sure that a noble yearning for justice and a lofty power of devotion were my two impelling principles. But now, when I saw myself sprung of low birth, and the father of my worship base-born, down fell all my arduous castles, and I craved to go under the earth and die.
For every word of Mr. Goad, and every crooked turn of little things in twist against me—even the Major's last grim smile—all began to work together, and make up a wretched tumult, sounding in my ears like drums. Where was the use of going on, of proving any body's guilt or any body's innocence, if the utmost issue of the whole would be to show my father an impostor? Then, and only then, I knew that love of abstract justice is to little minds impossible, that sense of honor is too prone to hang on chance of birth, and virtue's fountain, self-respect, springs but ill from parental taint.
When I could no longer keep such bitter imaginings to myself, but poured them forth to Betsy, she merely laughed, and asked me how I could be such a simpleton. Only to think of my father in such a light was beyond her patience! Where was my pride, she would like to know, and my birth, and my family manners? However, she did believe there was something in my ideas, if you turned them inside out, and took hold of them by the other end. It was much more likely, to her mind, that the villain, the unknown villain at the bottom of all the misery, was really the son born out of wedlock, if any such there were at all, and therefore a wild harum-scarum fellow like Ishmael in the Book of Genesis. And it would be just of a piece, she thought, with the old lord's character to drive such a man to desperation by refusing to give him a farthing.
“All that might very well be,” I answered; “but it would in no way serve to explain my father's conduct, which was the great mystery of all.” Nevertheless, I was glad to accept almost any view of the case rather than that which had forced itself upon me since the opening of the locket. Any doubt of that most wretched conclusion was a great relief while it lasted; and, after so long a time of hope and self-reliance, should I cast away all courage through a mere suspicion?
While I was thus re-assuring myself, and being re-assured by my faithful nurse, sad news arrived, and drove my thoughts into another crooked channel. Mrs. Hockin, to meet my anxiety for some tidings from California, had promised that if any letter came, she would not even wait for the post, but forward it by special messenger. And thus, that very same evening, I received a grimy epistle, in an unknown hand, with the postmark of Sacramento. Tearing it open, I read as follows:
“MISS 'REMA,—No good luck ever came, since you, to this Blue River Station, only to be washed away, and robbed by greasers, and shot through the ribs, and got more work than can do, and find an almighty nugget sent by Satan. And now the very worst luck of all have come, wholly and out of all denial, by you and your faces and graces and French goings on. Not that I do not like you, mind; for you always was very polite to me, and done your best when you found me trying to put up with the trials put on me. But now this trial is the worst of all that ever come to my establishings; and to go away now as I used to think of doing when tyrannized upon is out of my way altogether, and only an action fit for a half-breed. Sawyer Gundry hath cut and run, without a word behind him—no instructions for orders in hand, and pouring in—no directions where to find him, not even 'God bless you' to any one of the many hands that looked up to him. Only a packet of dollars for me to pay the wages for two months to come, and a power of lawyer to receive all debts, and go on anyhow just the same. And to go on just the same is more than the worst of us has the heart for, without the sight of his old red face. He may have been pretty sharp, and too much the master now and then, perhaps; but to do without him is a darned sight worse, and the hands don't take to me like him. Many's the time I have seen his faults, of having his own way, and such likes, and paying a man beyond his time if his wife was out of order. And many's the time I have said myself I was fitter to be at the head of it.
“About that I was right enough, perhaps, if I had started upon my own hook; but to stand in the tracks he has worn to his own foot is to go into crooked compasses. There is never a day without some hand threatening to strike and to better himself, as if they were hogs to come and go according to the acorns; and such low words I can never put up with, and packs them off immediate. No place can be carried on if the master is to shut up his lips to impudence. And now I have only got three hands left, with work enough for thirty, and them three only stopped on, I do believe, to grumble of me if the Sawyer do come home!
“But what we all want to know—and old Suan took a black stick to make marks for you—is why the old man hath run away, and where. Young Firm, who was getting a sight too uppish for me to have long put up with him, he was going about here, there, and every where, from the very first time of your going away, opening his mouth a deal too much, and asking low questions how long I stopped to dinner. Old Suan said he was troubled in his mind, as the pale-faces do about young girls, instead of dragging them to their wigwams; and she would give him a spell to get over it. But nothing came of that; and when the war broke out, he had words with his grandfather, and went off, so they said, to join the rebels.
“Sawyer let him go, as proud as could be, though he would sooner have cut his own head off; and the very same night he sat down by his fire and shammed to eat supper as usual. But I happened to go in to get some orders, and, my heart, I would never wish to see such things again!
“The old man would never waste a bit of victuals, as you know, Miss 'Rema; and, being acquaint with Suan's way of watching, he had slipped all his supper aside from his plate, and put it on a clean pocket-handkerchief to lock it in the press till his appetite should serve; and I caught him in the act, and it vexed him. 'Ha'n't you the manners to knock at the door?' he said; and I said, 'Certainly,' and went back and done it; and, troubled as he was, he grinned a bit. Then he bowed his great head, as he always did when he knew he had gone perhaps a trifle too far with a man in my position. I nodded to forgive him, and he stood across, and saw that he could do no less than liquor me, after such behavior. But he only brought out one glass; and I said, 'Come, Colonel, square is square, you know.' 'Excuse of me, Martin,' he said; 'but no drop of strong drink passes the brim of my mouth till this gallivanting is done with. I might take too much, as the old men do, to sink what they don't want to think on.' 'You mean about bully-cock Firm,' says I; 'rebel Firm—nigger-driver Firm.' 'Hush!' he said; 'no bad words about it. He has gone by his conscience and his heart. What do we know of what come inside of him?'