I
The afternoon and evening before Nathan’s departure he spent with me. An arrangement was finally effected whereby Mrs. Forge received the money accruing from the sale of Nathan’s household goods, and with an additional sum deposited with me to keep her during his absence, she went down to start living with Edith. Her own mother had died at the time Nathan worked in the tannery and she “was on the outs” with her three brothers and their wives. So bag and baggage upon Edith she descended and mother and daughter “had words” before she’d been in Edith’s home six hours. That, however, was no concern of Nathan’s prior to his departure. He was very patient and tender with her when he saw her off on her train. But he turned to me with a philosophical smile afterward and remarked, “Of all troubles, Bill, there are no troubles quite like family troubles, are there?” Father Adam in the Garden probably originated the remark after the well-known dispossess notice. Anyhow, the afternoon and evening before Nat’s departure he spent with me.
It was a sunny day in late March and it cleared off into a beautiful starlit evening. We roamed about town and talked of many things before dinner, for deep down within both of us was the vague dread that perhaps it was our last walk and talk, that we might never see each other again. Then in the evening we sat in my living room and smoked our pipes, and the past was brought back vividly again.
I have already referred to the group of small boys we encountered interning mimic Huns for sedition and the reminiscence it called up of the afternoon back in Spanish War time when we played “Hang the Spy” and “Slaves in the Dismal Swamp.” These were only two of many anecdotes over which we had much laughter to hide the ache in our hearts.
We talked of the day we had first met in the school yard in East Foxboro; those walks homeward in the late afternoons; the day that Bernie Gridley had driven old Caleb’s mare home in terror because Nat wished to present her with a deceased rodent as a gift with which she could “trim up a room.” We lived again our early days in Paris, Bernie’s birthday party when Nathan presented the little girl with a bust of Cæsar, the “happiest day” off in the woods at the Sunday-school picnic.
“By the way,” said I suddenly, “what’s become of Bernie, anyhow? I don’t think she’s been back here to Paris since her mother died.”
“Old Caleb told me one evening, Bill, and I’ve always considered it confidential; but I guess there’s no harm in telling you—now. Most every one in Paris thinks she went abroad after school, with some friends from Springfield.”
“And didn’t she?”
“No, she didn’t. Bernie got into trouble with a man. The trip abroad was only camouflage to cover up the scandal. She never went abroad. Her baby didn’t live and I guess it hardened Bernie—the whole experience. And if the truth were known, I think that’s what killed her mother. It was a body blow to the Duchess ‘after the nice way in which Bernice-Theresa had always been brought up.’ You remember how she suddenly withdrew from her grand direction of village and church affairs under the excuse she had heart trouble. It wasn’t heart trouble. The woman’s bump of ego got the coup de grâce, Bill. It finished her!”
“Old Caleb knew?”