CHAPTER XXIV.
THE BAR SINISTER
Not even to Mason Rogers could Abner bring himself to mention HiramGilcrest's most insulting insinuation; but the memory of that baseepithet, bastard, cut deeper and deeper into the young man's soul."What could the vicious old man possibly have heard or imagined aboutmy history to lead him to utter so foul a charge?" he thought again andagain. "'A bastard who has no right to the name he bears,' those werehis very words. I wonder I did not throttle him then and there--if heis the father of my betrothed wife. But, by heaven, he shall apologizeand that right humbly, or else I'll--but pshaw! the old fellow was soenraged that he didn't know what he was saying. The epithet was simplya gratuitous insult which he in his anger was scarcely responsible for.But what could have turned him so completely against me?" Thus Abnertormented himself, his thoughts ever revolving about the puzzlingquestion. At times he would find some comfort in the belief that theallusion to his parentage meant nothing but that Gilcrest wassenselessly enraged when he made it. Then again, when he rememberedthat it was by accident that he himself had discovered his father'sname, or when he thought of Richard and Rachel Dudley's singularreticence, and of Dr. Dudley's evident uneasiness and reluctance whenpressed for the details of the life of Mary Hollis and John Logan, asickening foreboding of he knew not what would seize him. "There'ssomething about my father's and mother's life that Uncle Richard hasalways concealed from me," he would conclude, "and whatever it is, Imust learn it. It's no use to write; I must see uncle face to face, anddemand a full revelation. Much as I dread another long, lonely journey,it must be made, and that at once, if I am ever to know peace again.Everything is at a standstill: my hopes of Betty, my farm work, myother business. In no direction can I proceed, until I have solved thismystery. There may be nothing in it--surely there isn't, and I amtormenting myself unnecessarily. Still, if what Gilcrest said, meantnothing more, it certainly indicated most forcibly his extremeanimosity to me; and I am convinced that the solution to his altereddemeanor can best be discovered by another journey to Williamsburg."
It was getting late in the season, and farm work was pressing; butMason Rogers promised that he would superintend the two negro men Abnerhad hired from Squire Trabue for the corn-planting, and that he andHenry would do all in their power to see that affairs at the farm onHinkson Creek went on smoothly.
In addition to the facts already narrated in regard to Abner's parents,this was the story he heard the evening of his arrival in Williamsburg,as he and his uncle sat together in Dr. Dudley's office:
After an absence of several months, John Logan came to see Mary in thespring after the birth of his child. Mary had endured great privationsand had led a lonely life during the last few months. Moreover, she wasweak and nervous and broken in health. When her husband paid this briefvisit, she bitterly reproached him for having drawn her into soimprudent a marriage, and for the hardships of her lot. Logan, who wasweary and careworn, and had suffered many privations with thestruggling army during the disastrous spring campaign, was in no moodto endure patiently Mary's tears and upbraidings. Hard words wereexchanged, and he took his leave after but a partial reconciliation.She never saw him again. Late in June, she received tidings of hisdeath on the battlefield at Monmouth. The comrade who brought thistidings was by Logan's side when he fell, had received his lastmessages, and brought Mary a letter from Logan, written the nightbefore the battle. In this letter Logan acknowledged that he hadwronged Mary, asked her forgiveness, and promised that if his life wasspared he would try to atone to her and to their little son for all thewrong, assuring her that in spite of everything all the love of hisheart was hers and their babe's. He also urged her to find refuge untilthe war was over with her sister Frances at Lawsonville.
Mary wrote Frances, telling of her sad plight, and asking shelter forherself and her babe. Richard Dudley could not come for Mary, but hesent a trusty messenger with money for her journey; and he assured herof a loving welcome and a home for herself and her boy.
She left Morristown at once, and on her way to Virginia, she stopped atPhiladelphia. While there, she learned of a young woman in that cityclaiming to be the widow of a soldier, John Logan, who had been killedat Monmouth Court-house. Mary, in great foreboding, went to see thiswoman, who proved to be her cousin, Sarah Pepper. The two had heardnothing of each other during the years that had elapsed since Mary hadquitted Chestnut Hall. Sarah was not penniless, but otherwise hercondition was as pitiable as Mary's. The story she told Mary was this:She had first met John Logan in the summer of 1776. They fell in lovewith one another; and on account of her father's opposition and histhreat of disinheritance if she did not renounce her lover, she andLogan were secretly married on her seventeenth birthday, November 19,1776, at the house of Samuel and Ellen Smith, tenants on the Pepperestate. Her father was in Maryland at the time. The only one beside theSmiths, who was privy to this marriage, was Sarah's former nurse, AuntMyra, a negro belonging to Jackson Pepper.
Logan remained in the neighborhood, meeting his wife at the Smiths'until early in February, when he left to join Washington's troops atMorristown. A week after his departure, Jackson Pepper returned home,and died suddenly of apoplexy a month later.
But even before Logan left the neighborhood, poor Sarah had cause tobitterly repent the step she had taken. Logan had proven aviolent-tempered, dissolute, selfish man. He was constantly in want ofmoney, and when Sarah supplied him, he would resort to the tavern inthe village, and drink and gamble with a lot of low companions whosesociety seemed more congenial to him than that of the poor, deludedSarah.
In April, Logan returned to the neighborhood, and he and Sarah werethen quietly but openly married. Immediately afterward she quittedChestnut Hall, and went to live in Philadelphia, her husband returningto his regiment. She only saw him after that at infrequent intervalsand for a few hours at a time. His only object on these occasionsappeared to be to extort money from her. Then, in June, came tidings ofhis having fallen in the battle of Monmouth.
"Were there two John Logans?" Abner asked huskily, his lips pallid, theshadow of a great horror upon his face.
"That was what both these poor women at first thought," answered Dr.Dudley, sadly; "but they were soon convinced otherwise."
"How was that?" asked Abner, feeling as if the ground which hadhitherto seemed solid was giving way under his feet.
"Your mother," Richard continued, "had with her a miniature of yourfather. She showed it to Sarah, who recognized it as that of the manshe had married. A further description of the man tended to prove thismore conclusively--age, height, build, all corresponded. Logan,according to both women, was very tall and slender, had wavy dark hair,dark gray eyes, was a native of Kenelworth, Pennsylvania, and wastwenty-eight years old at the time of his death. Soon after your mothercame to us, I wrote to an old resident of this village, Kenelworth, andlearned from him that he knew of but one family of Logans who had everlived in the place. That was the family of Ezra Logan, who had beendead several years, and had left two daughters and one son. Bothdaughters had married and removed to a distant section of the country,and the son, John Logan, had been killed at the battle of Monmouth, inJune, 1778."
"My God, my God!" Abner exclaimed, turning faint and sick, while theperspiration stood in great drops upon his forehead and about his drawnlips. He threw himself into a chair, and buried his face in his hands.
"My poor lad! my dear son!" said his uncle, sobbingly, standing overthe stricken boy, and laying a hand tenderly on the bowed head. "Wouldthat you could have been spared this. I have tried, God knows I havetried, to hide this from you."
"Yes, yes!" muttered Abner, grasping his uncle's hand, but not lookingup, "you have done the best you could for me. You are all I have leftnow, you and Aunt Rachel. All else is gone. I a bastard! My father,whose memory I have revered as that of a brave soldier who gave hislife for his country, a dastardly libertine! And my precious youngmother--oh, my God in heaven! I can not bear this. Would that I werely
ing by your side, my poor, innocent, deceived mother; or, betterstill, that I had never been born! I have no name, no place in theworld!" and as he thought of Betty, his heart was wrung with such agonyas few can ever feel.
After a time, when the first storm of grief and horror had subsidedsomewhat, he again spoke. "Uncle Richard, if that clandestine marriagewith Sarah Pepper was valid, why the open marriage five months later?"he asked, clinging to this straw of hope.
"Your poor mother asked that, my boy," Dudley replied, "and Sarah toldher this: Several years before Sarah met Logan, her father had disownedand driven from home his son, Fletcher, on account of dishonorableconduct. The will, made soon after Sarah had been forbidden to haveanything to do with Logan, left everything to her who, as this willread, 'had been a loving and dutiful daughter, ever ready to yield herown will in obedience to her father.' When the purport of the will wasmade known, after Jackson Pepper's death, Logan urged upon Sarah thatthe clandestine marriage ceremony must never be revealed, lest FletcherPepper should try to break the will on the plea that Sarah had not beena dutiful and obedient daughter."
"But why," asked Abner, "if she had discovered in the interval betweenthe two marriages that this man Logan did not love her, and was areckless, bad man, did she still wish to have more to do with him? Why,instead, did not she still hide the fact of the clandestine marriage,and refuse to go through with the open ceremony?"
"Because," answered Dudley, "she had discovered in the meanwhile thatshe was to become a mother; and on that account, although she hadmanaged to hide her condition from every one except the negro woman,old Myra, she dared not refuse to be openly married to Logan. As soonas this second marriage ceremony was performed, she left Chestnut Hall,taking the faithful Myra with her. They went to Philadelphia, wherethey were strangers; and there, in September, 1777, Sarah gave birth toa child which, mercifully, was born dead. She told your mother allthis, and also that once Logan, in one of his rages, because she hadbeen unable to supply him money, had struck her, and had taunted herwith having been his mistress before she had become his wife, assertingthat the secret marriage was a fraud, the man who performed theceremony not having been a real clergyman. He also told her that he hadalways loved another woman, and that his only motive in marryingherself had been that he might get control of her wealth. Then, atother times, when he was in better humor--so Sarah told your mother--hewould deny all that he had asserted when angry, and would assure Sarahthat the clandestine marriage was valid. Your mother, remembering thatLogan in that last letter to herself had acknowledged that he hadwronged her, was convinced that the clandestine marriage to Sarah wasvalid; and in that case, of course, her own marriage, three monthslater, was not."
"Was no trace of the scoundrel, if scoundrel he was, who performed theclandestine marriage ceremony, ever found?" asked Abner.
"Sarah never succeeded in locating him; but, years after, I, byaccident, ascertained that without a doubt----"
"What?" eagerly asked Abner, his heavy, bloodshot eyes lighting withrenewed hope.
"I found, my boy," answered Richard, sadly, "not what you hope, but thecontrary. Thomas Baker was the man's name, and he was undoubtedly anordained clergyman when he married Sarah Pepper to John Logan, November19, 1776."
"What became of Sarah Pepper, or Sarah Logan?" Abner inquired after along, miserable pause.
Dr. Dudley did not know where she was, nor whether she was stillliving. She had written once, he said, to her cousin, just beforeMary's marriage to Page, and had said in her letter that she herselfwas on the eve of marrying again; but Dudley could not now remember, ifhe had ever heard, the name of her intended husband. "But," Richardcontinued, "the letter is no doubt in the package which your motherleft with your Aunt Frances. When you feel equal to the painful task,you should go over these papers--they are in that old oak box in thegarret--and then, perhaps, they had better be destroyed. You know," hecontinued presently, in explanation of his being unable to give anyinformation about Sarah Pepper's whereabouts, "I never saw Mary'scousin. I married your Aunt Frances, who was seventeen years yourmother's senior, at Plainfield, New Jersey, just before the death ofJohn Hollis and his wife, and before Sarah Thornton, your mother'saunt, married Jackson Pepper. I brought my bride to Lawsonville, andshe never saw her Pepper connections, who lived, as you are aware, inquite another part of the State."
"There is another fact in regard to your mother which I had better tellyou now, Abner," Dr. Dudley went on after a time. "She did not die atLawsonville, although I erected a stone there to her memory." He thenrelated to his nephew what James Drane had already learned from TomGaines; namely, that Mary Hollis and her second husband, with herlittle son, then four years of age, had emigrated to Kentucky in thespring of 1782. Dudley likewise told Abner that Marshall Page had beenkilled the following August, at Blue Licks; that Mary had died at BryanStation two days later; and that Marshall's brother had brought thelittle Abner back to the Dudleys late in that same year.