Somehow he made me understand that the tramp who was sick at their house had kept calling out in his delirium for Gertrude and declaring he had found her, that she need not hide, for he would surely find her wherever she hid. The servants talked of it, and George knew it a day or two ago.

I do not know whether he suspected anything or not. Very likely he could hardly tell himself. Finally one of the girls told Mrs. Weston, and she acted very strangely. She wanted to have a description of the man, and at last she insisted on going herself to peep at him, to see what he was like. George happened to come home just at the time Mrs. Weston had crept up to the door of the shed-chamber. Some exclamation of hers when she saw her husband roused the sick man, who sat up in bed and screamed that he knew his wife's voice, and he would see her. George caught her by the arm, pushed the door wide open with his foot, and led her into the chamber. She held back, and cried out, and the tramp, half wild with delirium, sprang out of bed, shouting to George: "Take your hands off of my wife!"

George declares that even then he should not have believed the tramp was really speaking the truth if Gertrude hadn't confirmed it. He thought the man was out of his head, and the worst of his suspicion was that the stranger had known Mrs. Weston somewhere. As soon as the tramp spoke, however, she fell down on her knees and caught George's hand, crying over and over: "I thought he was dead! I thought he was dead!" It must have been a fearful thing for both of them; and then Gertrude fainted dead away at George's feet. The girl who had been taking care of the tramp was out of the room at the moment, but she heard George calling, and came in time to take her mistress away; while George got the tramp back to bed, and soothed him into some sort of quiet. Then he rushed over here. I urged him to go back at once, telling him his wife would want him, and that it might after all be a mistake.

"I don't want ever to set eyes on her again," he declared doggedly.

"She's cheated me. She told me I was the first man she ever cared for, and I never had a hint she'd been married. She made a fool of me, but thank G.o.d I'm out of that mess."

"What do you mean?" I asked him. "You are talking about your wife."

"She isn't my wife, I tell you," persisted he. "I'll never live with her again."

He must have seen how he shocked me, and at last he was persuaded to go home. I know I must see him to-morrow, and I have a cowardly desire to run away. I have a hateful feeling of repulsion against him, but that is something to be overcome. At any rate both he and his poor wife need a friend if they ever did, and I must do the best I can.

I cannot wonder George should be deeply hurt by finding that Mrs. Weston had a husband before and did not tell him. She can hardly have loved him or she must have been honest with him. It may have been through her love and fear of losing him that she did not dare to tell; though from what I have seen of her I haven't thought her much given to sentiment.

How dreadful it must be to live a life resting on concealment. I have very likely been uncharitable in judging her, for she must always have been uneasy and of course could not be her true self.

October 29. Some rumor of the truth has flown about the town, as I was sure when I saw Aunt Naomi coming up the walk this forenoon. Sometimes I think she sees written on walls and fences the things which have happened or been said in the houses which they surround. She has almost a second sight; and if I wished to do anything secret I would not venture to be in the same county with her.

She seated herself comfortably in a patch of sunshine, and looked with the greatest interest at the mahonia in bloom on the flower-stand by the south window. She spoke of the weather and of Peter's silliness, told me where the sewing-circle was to be next week, and approached the real object of her call with the deliberation of a cat who is creeping up behind a mouse. When she did speak, she startled me.

"I suppose you know that tramp over to the Westons' died this morning,"

she remarked, so carelessly it might have seemed an accident if her eye had not fairly gleamed with eagerness.

"Died!" I echoed.

"Yes, he's dead," she went on. "He had some sort of excitement yesterday, they say, and it seems to have been the end of him."

She watched me as if to see whether I would give any sign of knowing more of the matter than she did, but for once I hope I baffled her penetration. I made some ordinary comment, which could not have told her much.

"It's very queer a tramp should go to that particular house to die,"

observed Aunt Naomi, as if she were stating an abstract truth in which she had no especial interest.

I asked what there was especially odd about it.

"Well, for one thing," she answered, "he asked the way there particularly."

I inquired how she knew.

"Al Demmons met him on the Rim road," she continued, not choosing, apparently, to answer my question directly, "and this man wanted to know where a man named Weston lived who'd married a woman from the West called something Al Demmons couldn't remember. Al Demmons said that George Weston was the only Weston in town, and that he had married a girl named West. Then the man said something about 'that used to be her name.' It's all pretty queer, I think."

To this I did not respond. I would not get into a discussion which would give Aunt Naomi more material for talk. After a moment of silence, she said:--

"Well, the man's dead now, and I suppose that's the end of him. I don't suppose Mrs. Weston's likely to tell much about him."

"Aunt Naomi," I returned, feeling that even if all the traditions of respect for my elders were broken I must speak, "doesn't it seem to you harm might come of talking about this tramp as if he were some mysterious person connected with Mrs. Weston's life before she came to Tuskamuck? It isn't strange that somebody should have known her, and when once a tramp has had help from a person he hangs on."

She regarded me with a shrewd look.

"You wouldn't take up cudgels for her that way if you didn't know something," she observed.

After that there was nothing for me to say. I simply dropped the subject, and refused to talk about the affairs of the Westons at all. I am so sorry, however, that gossip has got hold of a suspicion. It was to be expected, I suppose, and indeed it has been in the air ever since the man came. I am sorry for the Westons.

October 30. After the earthquake a fire,--I wonder whether after the fire will come the still, small voice! It is curious that out of all this excitement the feeling of which I am most conscious after my dismay and my pity is one of irritation. I am ashamed to find in my thought so much anger against George. He had perhaps a right to think as he did about my affection for him, though it is inconceivable any gentleman should say the things he said to me last night. Even if he were crazy enough to suppose I could still love him, how could he forget his wife; how could he be glad of an excuse to be freed from her; how could he forget the little child that is coming? Oh, I am like Jonah when he was so sure he did well to be angry! I am convinced I can have no just perception of character at all, for this George Weston is showing himself so weak, so ungenerous, so cruel, that he has either been changed vitally or I did not really know him. I was utterly deceived in him. No; I will not believe that. We have all of us possibilities in different directions. I wish I could remember the pa.s.sage where Browning says a man has two sides, one for the world and one to show a woman when he loves her. Perhaps one side is as true as the other; and what I knew was a possible George, I am sure.

He came in yesterday afternoon with a look of hard determination. He greeted me almost curtly, and added in the same breath:--

"The man is dead. She's confessed it all. He was her husband, and she was never my wife legally at all. She says she thought he was dead."

"Then there's only one thing to do," I answered. "You can get Mr.

Saychase to marry you to-day. Of course it can be arranged if you tell him how the mistake arose, and he won't speak of it."

He laughed sneeringly.

"I haven't any intention of marrying her," he said.

"No intention of marrying her?" I repeated, not understanding him. "If the first ceremony wasn't legal, another is necessary, of course."

"She cheated me," he declared, his manner becoming more excited. "Do you suppose after that I'd have her for my wife? Besides, you don't see. She was another man's wife when she came to live with me, and"--

I stared at him without speaking, and he began to look confused.

"No man wants to marry a woman that's been living with him," he blurted out defiantly. "I suppose that isn't a nice thing to say to you, but any man would understand."

I was silent at first, in mere amazement and indignation. The thing seemed so monstrous, so indelicate, so cruel to the woman. She had deceived him and hidden the fact that she had been married, but there was no justice in this horrible way of looking at it, as if her ignorance had been a crime. I could hardly believe he realized what he was saying. Before I could think what to say, he went on.

"Very likely you think I'm hard, Ruth; and perhaps I shouldn't feel so if it hadn't come about through her own fault. If she'd told me the truth"--

"George!" I burst out. "You don't know what you are saying! You didn't take her as your wife for a week or a month, but for all her life."

"She never was my wife," he persisted stubbornly.

I looked at him with a feeling of despair,--not unmixed, I must confess, with anger. Most of all, however, I wanted to reach him; to make him see things as they were; and I wanted to save the poor woman. I leaned forward, and laid my fingers on his arm. My eyes were smarting, but I would not cry.

"But if there were no question of her at all," I pleaded, "you must do what is right for your own sake. You have made her pledges, and you can't in common honesty give them up."

"She set me free from all that when she lied to me. I made pledges to a girl, not to another man's wife."

"But she didn't know. She thought she was free to marry you. She believed she was honestly your wife."

"She never was, she never was."

He repeated it stubbornly as if the fact settled everything.

"She was!" I broke out hotly. "She was your wife; and she is your wife!

When a man and a woman honestly love each other and marry without knowing of any reason why they may not, I say they are man and wife, no matter what the law is."

"Suppose the husband had lived?" he demanded, with a hateful smile. "The law really settles it."