The sun, forcing its way through the clouds, touched the dark brown paneling with golden light. In the silence of the cabin the voices on deck were distinctly audible. “He was that cruel to his wife!” some one was saying. “All of us was glad enough to see him left.” But only a fragment of the narrative came to the little group below.
The woman, oblivious to all but Donald Hastings, raised herself on her elbow:
“I waited—oh, so long! And you never came!”
“Don’t! I came—too late.” He dropped on his knees beside the berth in which she had been laid. “I will! I will marry you!”
Again she laughed that strange, low laugh. The captain of the bark, his medicine chest open before him, shook his head. “You’ll not marry her,” he muttered. “It’ll not be allowed. You’ve but to hear her to know that.”
“I will,” Hastings cried, wildly. “There’s little enough a man can do to atone for great wrong.”
“You’re overwrought, sir. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
And Christine Widmer laughed again.
There was indeed no wedding. Not often is the path of atonement made broad and easy. Instead, the story of my old New England town came to pass, the story of a man who provided for his enemy’s wife as if she were his own. For in the years to come there sailed with Donald Hastings a woman who laughed strangely at times, and talked of something other people pretended to have forgotten. And Donald Hastings, the marriage forbidden, gave her the rest of his life, covering her lapses of speech by quick wit and ever-remembering kindness, making her seem almost like other women, and placing out of his own reach forever the fellowship of those who called themselves honest folk.
It all happened a hundred years ago. Stories, good and bad,—mostly bad,—were told of them then, and have been told ever since. Such is the world’s way. And of Amos Widmer it was known only that he was lost at sea when the Winnemere went down. Who of us can say what accountings are to be made on that day when the good and evil are balanced, when things forgotten are remembered, and things unknown are brought to light?