THE PACKAGE OF OLD LETTERS
"I think you once told me, Uncle Richard," Abner said, later in the
conversation with his uncle, "that Andrew Hite visited Lawsonville
while my mother was living with you."
"Yes, he did," Dudley replied, "a week or so before she and Page were
married."
"Did he learn of the cruel deception of which she was the victim?"
"Yes, I told him that, and of her approaching marriage and intended
removal to Kentucky. She was in poor health, and I feared a decline,
but she and Page thought her best chance for recovery was to marry, and
to find a new home far from anything that could remind her of her
connection with your father."
"This," said Abner, "explains Andrew Hite's will. He thought that my
mother, being his nearest relative, had the first claim upon him; but,
in case she died before he did--which doubtless appeared probable,
owing to her frail health--he preferred that his property should go to
his half-sister's child, rather than to me, the bastard son of a
dastard father. I have, therefore, morally no claim whatsoever to this
inheritance, and I will never touch a farthing of it. Oh, why," he went
on bitterly, "was I not told, years ago, my true history? Had I always
known it, the burden of shame which is my only lawful inheritance would
have gradually adjusted itself to my strength, and would not now have
such crushing weight. It is the contrast between what I thought I was
and what I am that is the bitterest ingredient in my cup of misery."
"I deserve your reproaches, my poor boy," said Richard Dudley,
sorrowfully; "but Heaven is my witness that my only motive in keeping
this from you was to spare you shame and sorrow."
"Ah, I know that," cried Abner, "and it is ungrateful and cowardly to
reproach you, my more than father. It was the suddenness of the shock
that made me utter that unmanly plaint. Forgive me. I know you have
been actuated in all that you have done by your regard for me."
"As to this inheritance," said Dudley presently, "it is lawfully yours.
It was left to your mother, and you inherit it, not directly from
Andrew Hite, but from her."
"No, no! The whole tenor of the will was to cut me out of all share in
the estate. It would be infamous in me, knowing what I do, to claim it.
Besides, my mother died before coming into possession of this property.
How, then, could I inherit through her, when it was never actually
hers?"
"Who, then, is heir under the will?" argued Dudley. "Not Sarah Pepper;
for it is clearly set forth in the document that she inherits only
under the condition that your mother be dead, leaving no legitimate
heirs, before the date of the will."
"Then, the will must be declared null and void," firmly asserted the
young man. "It is a mad will, anyway."
"In that case," retorted the doctor, "you being the only child of your
mother, the next of kin, are, as you once pointed out, the rightful
heir--at least, you are co-heir with Sarah Pepper."
But Abner stoutly adhered to his determination to have nothing to do
with the property. It, therefore, became imperative to ascertain the
whereabouts of Sarah Jane Pepper, or her heirs, if any.
That night Abner looked through his mother's papers. He found several
letters beginning, "My Darling Wife:--" or, "My Own Mary:--." The
signature to each of these epistles was, "Your affectionate husband,
John Logan." The tone of each letter was thoughtful tender, solicitous.
"These do not read like the letters of a villain," Abner thought, a
momentary gleam of hope penetrating the thick gloom; "but then, the
evidence to the contrary is conclusive. I must not allow myself to
hope. I do not wonder, though, that my poor mother was deceived; for
such words as these would mislead any simple, trusting heart like hers.
He did love her, I suppose, as well as his craven, selfish nature would
admit of his loving any one."
The last letter in the package gave the young man, alone in the low
attic room, a shock of amazement. It was dated "Chestnut Hall, February
1, 1782," and was signed, "Your affectionate cousin, Sarah." It stated
that the writer had returned to Chestnut Hall, after the death of the
faithful Myra, and that she was now living alone with the negro
attendants, in the home of her childhood; that she was betrothed to a
man who held the rank of major in the Continental army. This man, she
wrote, had been badly wounded the spring before in a skirmish with
Arnold's raiders, near her home. He had been carried to the Hall, and
she had nursed him back to complete recovery; and he was now in
Kentucky looking for a suitable location for their future home. He
intended to return in the course of a year, marry her, and remove to
the new home across the mountains. The name of this man was Hiram
Gilcrest. The letter likewise said that Major Gilcrest knew her to be a
widow Logan, whose husband had fallen in battle, but that she had told
her future husband none of the miserable details of her connection with
John Logan except that he had treated her with great cruelty. She had
extracted a promise from Major Gilcrest that no one in their new home
in Kentucky should know that she had been a widow, and in order that
this fact of her widowhood might the more easily be concealed, she had
induced him to agree that if ever the question arose as to her maiden
name, it was to be given as Jane Temple. Another motive, Sarah wrote,
for this change of name from Pepper to Temple, was in order to prevent
anybody knowing of her relationship to Fletcher Pepper, who had
rendered the name of Pepper odious to all who had ever heard it, by his
desertion of the patriot army to join the traitor Arnold.
[Illustration:
GENEALOGICAL TABLE
Showing Abner Logan's and Mrs. Gilcrest's Claims
to Andrew Hite's Estate
+---------------------------------------------------+
| |
Abner Hite and Jane Temple Daniel Thornton and Jane Temple
| (widow of Abner Hite)
+---------------+--------------+ +-----------+----------------+
| | | | | |
Silas Andrew Mary Sarah
(d. in (inherits (m. John (m. Jackson Pepper)
childhood) estate) Hollis) |
| | |
+---------------+----------------------+ +----+----------------+
| | | | | |
Frances 6 other children Mary Belle Sarah Jane
(m. Richard (d. in (m. 1. John Logan (m. 1. John Logan
Dudley) infancy) 2. Marshall Page) 2. Hiram Gilcrest)
| |
+------+---------+ +--------+---+
| | | | | |
Abner Dudley Logan | Betsey
| John Calvin
| Martin
| Silas
| Philip
| Matthew]
Until he read that letter, Abner had, half unconsciously, clung to the
hope that even though his father had been a dastardly villain who had
wrecked the happiness of two trusting women, it might still be possible
to establish his own legitimacy. Now, even that shadowy hope must be
abandoned. "What!" he thought despairingly, "prove my right to wear my
father's name at the cost of the fair repute of Betty's mother! Never,
never! Rather will I accept the bar sinister for my own escutcheon."
He could bear no more. Thrusting the papers roughly aside, he rushed
down the stairs and out into the darkness. Here, throwing himself face
downward upon the ground, his hands dug into the sod, he cursed the day
upon which he was born. But at last the soft serenity of the starry
June night soothed him into a better mood. He arose, and, with a prayer
for strength and guidance, re-entered the house.
"My first duty must be to write to Major Gilcrest and Betty," was his
first waking thought next morning. "My precious, loving Betty, I must
give you up; for even should you, after knowing my history, be willing
to marry me, I love you too well to allow one so sweet and pure, so
high in worldly position, to link her fate with a base-born earthworm
such as I am. O Father in heaven, give me strength to do the right!
Uncle Richard must take the necessary steps toward establishing Mrs.
Gilcrest in possession of the Hite estates," he concluded after more
reflection. "Not that she has any claim under the will, but because she
(barring myself) is Andrew Hite's next of kin. However, all this is
Uncle Richard's affair, not mine; but I hope the business can be
accomplished without revealing to any one that dark page in Jane
Gilcrest's early life. Betsy, at any cost, must be spared the
knowledge."
Abner wrote to Major Gilcrest, renouncing all claim to Betsy, and
enclosing a note for her, which he requested her father to give to her.
After this duty was performed, the young man fell into a state of dull
despair which benumbed every faculty. Holmes has said, "A great
calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It
stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book
of life, before its blot of tears and of blood is dry upon the page we
are turning." For weeks after Abner had learned the secret of his
birth, it seemed to him that this blighting, blackening misery which
had laid low his pride, and killed every hope, permeated, not only all
his past, but all his future. He seemed to have been born for nothing
else but to experience this agony of loss and shame. He could make no
plans. The future stretched out before him a desert waste; for, with
the downfall of family pride and the loss of Betty, his ambition
likewise had perished.
He was finally aroused by a communication from James Anson Drane. This
communication stated that, owing to certain facts which had recently
come into the writer's possession, he must decline to act any longer as
"Mr. Logan's" agent. These facts, as Mr. Drane wrote, were as follows:
The Mary Belle Hollis Page named in the will of the late Colonel Andrew
Hite, of Crestlands, Sterling County, Virginia, had died and been
buried at the village of Centerton, Virginia, March 9, 1782, nearly two
months prior to the execution of the will; she had left no legitimate
issue; and, therefore, Sarah Jane Pepper, daughter of Sarah Thornton,
and now the wife of Hiram Gilcrest, of Cane Ridge, Bourbon County,
Kentucky, was the sole lawful heir to the estates of the said Colonel
Andrew Hite, deceased.
Mr. Drane then went on to give an account of the manner of Mary Page's
death, and to explain that it was not until immediately after her
burial at Centerton that her husband, Marshall Page, accompanied by his
brother and sister-in-law and his little stepson, had gone on into
Kentucky. Enclosed in Drane's letter was a loose slip of paper
containing a copy of the half-effaced inscription upon the oak slab
which marked the grave at Centerton. The slip was headed "Copied at
Centerton by James Anson Drane, from the slab marking the grave of Mary
Belle Hollis Page."
This communication served to awaken Abner from his apathy; for the
statement conveyed in it respecting the time and place of Mary Page's
death, if not proven false, would tend to very seriously reflect upon
the integrity of Richard Dudley, executor of the Hite will, and would
probably render him liable to arrest and trial on the charge of being
party to a fraud.
Abner was thoroughly convinced that the statement in Drane's letter,
concerning Mary's death, was false. He had full confidence in Richard
Dudley's clear-sightedness and uprightness. Moreover, his own intuition
and his faint recollection of episodes in his own early life made him
sure that his mother had died that August night in the stockade
fortress of Bryan Station. These dim, tantalizing recollections which
had been first partially aroused that November night by Gilcrest's and
Rogers' recital of the horrors of the famous Indian uprising of 1782,
had been kindled into stronger life by what his uncle had recently told
him of the attack upon the cabin of the Pages, the flight to Bryan's,
the death there of Mary Page, and the return of her little orphaned boy
to his Lawsonville people. But, although his faith in his uncle's honor
and in his own intuitions and memories were to himself "confirmation
strong as Holy Writ," they would not be accepted as evidence in a court
of law. Hence it now behooved him and Dr. Dudley to learn something
more of Marshall Page's brother.
Neither Richard nor Rachel Dudley knew anything of the man--not even
his Christian name.
"This Page and his wife did not start for Kentucky from Lawsonville,"
Dr. Dudley said. "They came from Maryland, and joined Marshall and Mary
at some appointed place--I do not now recall--on the road, many miles
from Lawsonville."
"But when the man returned with me," asked Abner, "did you not then
learn his full name, and something of his history?"
"I did not see him," was Dudley's reply. "I was away from home, and he
stayed only an hour or so after committing you into your aunt's care.
She was too shocked by the tidings he brought and by her pity and care
for you, cold, sick, half starved, and bewildered as you were by the
long, rough travel, to think of anything else."
"Could it be possible," thought Abner, "that the man deceived the
Dudleys in regard to the woman who had died at Bryan's, and that it was
his own wife instead of Marshall's? No, that could not be," he
concluded; "he could have had no possible motive for the deception.
Surely, there must be numbers of persons still living who were in the
siege of Bryan Station, or the battle of Blue Licks, and who could not
only remember this man's full name, but other circumstances that will
be of service to us now. Mason Rogers can, I'm certain, find some
person or persons who can give the evidence we need. I will communicate
with him; and, in the meanwhile, I will go to Centerton."
Abner returned from Centerton without having gleaned any information
that would throw additional light upon the mystery. He was further
perplexed that no reply to his letter to Rogers had reached
Williamsburg.
"I suppose I will have to go to Cane Ridge for information," he
concluded when another month had passed bringing no word from Rogers,
"although my soul revolts against revisiting the place of my lost
happiness. But go I must, unless I soon hear from Mr. Rogers. I will
tell everything to dear Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. They are noble-hearted,
discreet and sympathetic, and they will still be my staunch friends. I
will also while there make some disposition of my farm--I think I can
easily find a buyer or a renter for it. Afterwards, I do not know what
I shall do, nor does it matter much, either, what becomes of a
nameless, baseborn--no, no!" he broke off, ashamed of his momentary
weakness. "I will not let such unworthy sentiments master me. It is
unmanly to give way like this, and is a wrong to my noble, unselfish
foster mother and father. And even if they were not still left me, I
must still be true to myself, and rise above the shameful circumstances
which would pull me down. It would not do for me to return permanently
to Cane Ridge. It would try my strength too far, to be daily in the
neighborhood of my lost darling; nor would it be kind to her and her
family for me to do so; and it would be a source of embarrassment and
trouble to the Rogers family, and would perhaps estrange them still
more from their old neighbors at Oaklands. But I will not hide my head
in some far-away, obscure corner where my birth and antecedents are
unknown. No! Here is my battleground. Here, where I received the blow
which bereft me of my love and my position, will I fight the fight, and
attain the victory. I will take up the study of the law, as Uncle
Richard always wanted me to do; and I will strive to become useful and
honored in my profession. I can nevermore be happy; but I can, and I
will, make the name of Logan an honored one, in spite of all."