“We ought never to do wrong when people are looking.”
I
The first scene is in the country, in Virginia; the time, 1880. There
has been a wedding, between a handsome young man of slender means and
a rich young girl--a case of love at first sight and a precipitate
marriage; a marriage bitterly opposed by the girl's widowed father.
Jacob Fuller, the bridegroom, is twenty-six years old, is of an old but
unconsidered family which had by compulsion emigrated from Sedgemoor,
and for King James's purse's profit, so everybody said--some maliciously--
the rest merely because they believed it. The bride is nineteen and
beautiful. She is intense, high-strung, romantic, immeasurably proud of
her Cavalier blood, and passionate in her love for her young husband.
For its sake she braved her father's displeasure, endured his
reproaches, listened with loyalty unshaken to his warning predictions,
and went from his house without his blessing, proud and happy in the
proofs she was thus giving of the quality of the affection which had
made its home in her heart.
The morning after the marriage there was a sad surprise for her. Her
husband put aside her proffered caresses, and said:
“Sit down. I have something to say to you. I loved you. That was
before I asked your father to give you to me. His refusal is not my
grievance--I could have endured that. But the things he said of me to
you--that is a different matter. There--you needn't speak; I know quite
well what they were; I got them from authentic sources. Among other
things he said that my character was written in my face; that I was
treacherous, a dissembler, a coward, and a brute without sense of
pity or compassion: the 'Sedgemoor trade-mark,' he called it--and
'white-sleeve badge.' Any other man in my place would have gone to his
house and shot him down like a dog. I wanted to do it, and was minded
to do it, but a better thought came to me: to put him to shame; to break
his heart; to kill him by inches. How to do it? Through my treatment
of you, his idol! I would marry you; and then--Have patience. You will
see.”
From that moment onward, for three months, the young wife suffered all
the humiliations, all the insults, all the miseries that the diligent
and inventive mind of the husband could contrive, save physical injuries
only. Her strong pride stood by her, and she kept the secret of her
troubles. Now and then the husband said, “Why don't you go to your
father and tell him?” Then he invented new tortures, applied them, and
asked again. She always answered, “He shall never know by my mouth,” and
taunted him with his origin; said she was the lawful slave of a scion of
slaves, and must obey, and would--up to that point, but no further; he
could kill her if he liked, but he could not break her; it was not in
the Sedgemoor breed to do it. At the end of the three months he said,
with a dark significance in his manner, “I have tried all things but
one”--and waited for her reply. “Try that,” she said, and curled her lip
in mockery.
That night he rose at midnight and put on his clothes, then said to her,
“Get up and dress!”
She obeyed--as always, without a word. He led her half a mile from the
house, and proceeded to lash her to a tree by the side of the public
road; and succeeded, she screaming and struggling. He gagged her then,
struck her across the face with his cowhide, and set his bloodhounds
on her. They tore the clothes off her, and she was naked. He called the
dogs off, and said:
“You will be found--by the passing public. They will be dropping along
about three hours from now, and will spread the news--do you hear?
Good-by. You have seen the last of me.”
He went away then. She moaned to herself:
“I shall bear a child--to him! God grant it may be a boy!”
The farmers released her by-and-by--and spread the news, which was
natural. They raised the country with lynching intentions, but the bird
had flown. The young wife shut herself up in her father's house; he shut
himself up with her, and thenceforth would see no one. His pride was
broken, and his heart; so he wasted away, day by day, and even his
daughter rejoiced when death relieved him.
Then she sold the estate and disappeared.