A PAINFUL INTERVIEW.
Truly, Katharine Allen had sprung to her feet, and was wringing her
hands in wild, bitter grief, at the news of her half-brother's death,
for such she considered the account Thrasher gave her. True, she had
never seen Rice since she was a little girl, and he was scarcely known
in the neighborhood, as Mrs. Allen had moved to her present home with
her second husband, and her son had gone to sea long before that. In her
second widowhood, he had sometimes sent her money and warm-hearted
letters, written in a great, cramped hand, which no one but a mother
could have read. In her retired life, Mrs. Allen, who was a middle-aged
woman when Katharine was born, had looked forward to news from her son
as the great event of her life. With only her house, a few acres of
land, and her pretty daughter's labor to depend on for a livelihood, the
twenty and thirty dollars which came to her from this son, at the end of
each voyage, was a great help. Without it, the widow and her beautiful
daughter must have come to want, especially when sickness was in the
house.
Now he was dead--the brave, generous man, whom Katharine had been taught
to love like a father; and even while Thrasher told his own story, and
her loving heart was almost given up to fond credulity, she was not
quite satisfied that Rice might not have been saved. To leave him on the
wreck even at his own request, seemed to her a terrible cruelty.
"He was my brother," she said; "the only support we had. He was so
generous--so good to us both! Oh, Nelson, you should have saved him!"
"How did I know he was your brother, Katharine? He never told me a word
about it; and if I ever heard the name, it had escaped me."
"But he was a human being; a mother waited for him, somewhere. You
should have remembered that."
"It is useless talking in this way, Katharine," replied Thrasher,
striving to pacify her grief. "I could only have saved him by violence.
He would not come with us, but stuck to the wreck, under some wild idea
that she might yet be taken into port. I could have died with him, but
nothing beyond that was possible."
"Oh, my mother! my poor mother! must I tell her this?" moaned Katharine.
"Perhaps it would have pleased you better had I gone down with him?"
"You!--you! Oh, that would have completed our desolation! The news would
have killed me dead!"
"Then don't attempt to make me out a murderer."
"I haven't--I haven't!"
"Sit down, Katharine. These wild gestures will be seen from
the house, and the old people won't know what to make of it. Sit down
and compose yourself. This is not the only subject we have to talk
about."
"I know it--I know it; but the thought of carrying the grief to my
mother kills me."
"This is childish--I will submit to it no longer," cried Thrasher,
beginning to lose patience. "Sit down, I say, and control yourself!" He
took hold of her hands, grasping them till they burned with pain, and
drew her forcibly to the rock. She looked at him breathlessly; the
expression of his face frightened her.
"Now that you can be still," he said, sternly, "I have a great deal to
say about our conversation last night. Will you try and listen like a
rational creature?"
She was sobbing bitterly, and could only give an assent by a motion of
the head.
"Well, regarding the senseless event which you make so much of----"
"Senseless, Nelson!" She looked up, as the words left her lips, and
gazed at him reproachfully through her tears.
"Yes, senseless! What else could an act like that be considered? I was a
man--and should have known better. What good has it done to be in such
desperate haste?"
"What good?--what good? Did we not love each other?"
Something like a sneer came to Thrasher's lip. He longed to tell her the
truth. It seemed the surest means of putting her out of the way.
"You don't speak, Nelson. You look strange when I say, 'Did we not love
each other?'"
"No wonder, Katharine--why should you ask the question? If to make a
fool of one's self is a proof of love, you have it!"
"To make a fool of one's self?" The poor girl turned white to the lips
as she repeated these insulting words. "What does this mean, Nelson?"
"It means that you and I went off, like a couple of dunces, and got
married!"
Katharine stopped crying. Surprise, for a moment, kept her mute; but
directly there came into her eyes a proud, almost fierce determination,
that Thrasher had never witnessed before.
"Do you mean this?" she said at last, in a low, clear voice, that made
him start.
"Mean what?"
"That you are sorry for having married me."
There was something in her face that startled him--that woman's
character had a depth and strength which he had not dreamed of until
then. It was not his habit to evade or equivocate much, but now he saw
the necessity.
"I haven't said that, and did not mean it, my sparrow-hawk. How could
I?"
"Then, what did you say?--what did you mean?"
"Nothing, except that it was a great folly--but a very pleasant
one--when we got married in that private way. It would have been better
to have waited."
"But it was you that urged me."
"To the marriage, but not the secrecy, that was your own doings
entirely, Kate. I wanted you to go at once and live with the old folks,
while I went this voyage, but you begged and pleaded to stay with your
mother, and what could I do but consent. Of course, as my wife, you must
have lived with my family, so you preferred secrecy and your mother. It
was a foolish arrangement altogether."
"My poor mother was so sad and lonely then, I could not bear to leave
her; besides, I did not dare tell her about it while she was in poor
health--she would have taken on dreadfully--for somehow----"
"Yes, I know she hated me."
"No, not that; but mother has strange prejudices."
"I should think she had. I have not forgotten her forbidding me the
house; but for that----"
"What were you saying, Nelson? your voice is very husky."
"I was saying that we should not have been led into the weakness of this
concealment if she had been more reasonable."
"Well, if it was a weakness or a sin I have suffered for it keenly
enough, Nelson. While my mother had those hard feelings I could not tell
her. Oh, Nelson, it seemed as if I should die when the time for your
return came and we heard nothing of the brig. If you had been lost, what
would have become of me? No one would have believed that I had ever been
married, no matter what I had said."
"But you had the certificate?"
"Yes, but the people here don't understand those things. They're used to
a publishment and all that. They never would see the difference between
Connecticut and York State. Then, if they had sent to my uncle he knew
nothing about it, you remember, and could not have helped me. Besides, I
didn't even know where to find the people that stood up with us."
"Why, child, all these fears are nonsense. The certificate is enough."
"But it's all of no consequence now. You are here and we can speak out.
It isn't like a poor girl being all alone without knowing any thing of
the law."