When Ellen reached home that night she found no one there except her
father, who was sitting on the door-step in the north yard. Her
mother had gone to see her aunt Eva as soon as the dressmaker had
left. "Who was that with you?" Andrew asked, as she drew near.
"Abby," replied Ellen.
"So you went over there?"
Ellen sat down on a lower step in front of her father. "Yes," said
she. She half laughed up in his face, like a child who knows she has
been naughty, yet knows she will not be blamed since she can count
so surely on the indulgent love of the would-be blamer.
"Ellen, your mother didn't like it."
"They had said so many things to me about him that I didn't feel as
if I could see him, father," she said.
Andrew put a hand on her head. "I know what you mean," he replied,
"but they didn't mean any harm; they're only looking out for your
best good, Ellen. You can't always have us; it ain't in the course
of nature, you know, Ellen."
There was a tone of inexorable sadness, the sadness of fate itself
in Andrew's voice. He had, as he spoke, the full realization of that
stage of progress which is simply for the next, which passes to make
room for it. He felt his own nothingness. It was the throe of the
present before the future; it was the pang of anticipatory
annihilation.
"Don't talk that way, father," said Ellen. "Neither you nor mother
are old people."
"Oh, well, it's all right, don't you worry," said Andrew.
"How long did he stay?" asked Ellen. She did not look at her father
as she spoke.
"Oh, he didn't stay at all, after they found out you had gone."
Ellen sighed. After a second Andrew sighed also. "It's gettin'
late," said he, heavily; "mebbe we'd better go in before your mother
comes, Ellen. Mebbe you'll get cold out here."
"Oh no, I shall not," said Ellen, "and I want to hear about poor
Aunt Eva. I don't see what she is going to do."
"It's a dreadful thing makin' a mistake in marriage," said Andrew.
"Uncle Jim was a good man if he hadn't had such a hard time."
Andrew looked at her, then he spoke impressively. "Look here,
Ellen," he said, "you are a good scholar, and you are smarter in a
good many ways than father has ever been, but there's one thing you
want to remember; you want to be sure before you blame the Lord or
other men for a man's goin' wrong, if it ain't his own fault at the
bottom of things."
"There's mother," cried Ellen; "there's mother and Amabel. Where's
Aunt Eva? Oh, father, what do you suppose has happened? Why do you
suppose mother is bringing Amabel home?"
"I don't know," replied Andrew, in a troubled voice.
He and Ellen rose and hastened forward to meet Fanny and Amabel. The
child hung at her aunt's hand in a curious, limp, disjointed
fashion; her little face, even in the half light, showed ghastly.
When she saw Ellen she let go of Fanny's hand and ran to her and
threw both her little arms around her in a fierce clutch as of
terror, then she began to sob wildly, "Mamma, mamma, mamma!"
Fanny leaned her drawn face forward, and whispered to Andrew and
Ellen over Amabel's head, under cover of her sobs, "Hush, don't say
anything. She's gone mad, and, and--she tried to--kill Amabel."