The marriage of old Wilbur Nieson’s daughter Elisabeth to young Jack Fuller had been talked of in our town for a month and a day. Richard Fuller, son of Dashing Captain Jack, had grown to manhood, made considerable money and died, leaving it to his boy, whereupon the lad started straight for the devil.
Before he had come into his inheritance, he had been “keeping company” with little Betty Nieson, who worked in the box-factory and lived with her derelict father in the scrubby old Nieson place out Cedar Street on the edge of town. The boy drank considerably and the rumor found its way into our newspaper office that, despite his money, Betty would not marry him until he had conquered the habit.
A town’s mind is a child’s mind and it readily sympathized with the struggle that the Nieson girl was making in her poor blind handicapped way to climb out of the environment which she had always known, and make something of herself. Then suddenly one day Jack Fuller sold his racy automobile. He and Betty were married and they furnished a modest home on Pleasant Street. One-half of the town said it was because Jack had gone through his inheritance. The other half said that it was his wife’s influence over him. Certainly to all appearances the girl was making a desperate and commendable struggle not only to raise herself up but to compel Jack to be a man. Then the half of the home-folks which had claimed the way Jack squandered his money had been at the bottom of his marriage, were apparently in the right. For shortly after the pitiful little marriage the boy was seen frequenting the Whitney House bar as much as ever.
Now came this additional sorrow into the girl’s life. She had married the lad trying to get away from the hereditary taint of the Nieson blood. It had come to her now that there appeared to be a taint also in the Fuller blood. She had lost her baby. The Hods said that there was a light burning in the Fuller tenement all that night.
The baby was buried the next day. It was a pathetic little funeral, just a prayer or two by Doctor Dodd of the Methodist Church, and then Blake Whipple, the undertaker, took care of the interment.
The evening of the day that the poor little shaver was laid underground, Mrs. Hod entered the tenement to console the bereaved girl. She entered without knocking. She paused at the threshold, made rigid by the sight before her.
For Jack Fuller was down on his knees before the girl he had married. His finely-shaped head was buried in her lap. He was sobbing freakishly, for men do not know how to weep. And the girl seated there on the sofa was staring into unseeing space with a holy look upon her beautifully plain face; her slender shapely fingers toying with the boy’s wavy hair.
“Never, never, never—will I touch a drop of the stuff as long as I live, Betty,” he choked between his tears. “I don’t care—what the provocation is—I won’t ever do it. I’ve been a cad, Betty. I haven’t been a Fuller at all—but I’ll show you I can be. I’ll make up for this. We’ve lost the baby, Betty—but it’s brought me to my senses. I’m—done! I swear it before God, Betty. I’m—done!”
The girl never knew a neighbor was looking on, unable to withdraw without disclosing her presence.
“If that’s the price, Jack,” she replied softly, divinely, “—if that’s the price—and you’ll keep your word—I’ll pay it! Jackie dear—I love you. I’ve loved you all along. But this has always been the way with me. There was Dad. Rum got him—rum stole him away from me. When he was himself he was all right. But he drank and then beat me—he made me want to kill myself just because I was a Nieson—because his blood half saturated with rum—was in my veins. I married you, Jackie—because I hoped to pull myself up from being a Nieson. I hoped to show folks what I wanted to be—what I tried so hard to be. Every one knows the Niesons are worthless trash, the scum of the town. And I thought—being your wife—the wife of a Fuller—things would be different. The liquor seemed robbing me of you too, Jack. But if this—has given you back to me—yes—I’ll pay the price. It’s all right, Jack. I’ll take your word that you’ll never, never take a drop of the stuff again.”