University of Virginia Library

16. XVI.
THE ARREST.

Abel, flattering himself that his pecuniary difficulties
were ended, sat down that evening to enjoy himself.

“Thank Providence, I've weathered this storm.
Though I thought I was going to have another little
squall this afternoon. I had a lawyer's letter, — from
Mr. Parker, — and what do you think he wanted?”

Fancy Faustina's alarm at hearing that name, and
seeing Abel's honest eyes look over the tea-table at her,
as he put the question.

“You needn't be so frightened,” he laughed. “I was
a little bit startled myself, though, till I ran up to
Parker's office and found out what the trouble was. It
seems Mrs. Apjohn is determined to be revenged on me
for an offence I never dreamed of committing. She
won't believe it possible that anybody else could see what
was done in our garden last Sunday, and contrive a
sorry joke to remind her of it; but I must have done it!
And how do you suppose she has gone to work to pay
me?”

“I can't imagine!” said Faustina.

“I laughed in Parker's face when he told me. She

accuses me of a robbery. At least she claims that a bill
I gave Hodge last night was stolen from her!”

“Who ever heard of such a thing?” said Faustina.

“Ridiculous, isn't it? I told Parker I wasn't going to
submit to any annoyance from that source. I referred
him to Deacon Cole, from whom I had all the large bills
that I paid to Hodge. But what is curious,” added
Abel, “I can't remember receiving that particular bill,
though I noticed it when I was settling with Hodge last
night. Here! hello! you're making my cup run over!”

“What was I thinking of?” And the trembling woman,
to make matters worse, instead of pouring the
superfluous liquid into the bowl, turned it into the
cream-pitcher.

“I should think you had been accused of stealing, and
might be guilty,” Abel jestingly said. Then, as he
watched her, a grave suspicion crossed his mind, — that,
notwithstanding her positive denial of the fact in the
morning, it might be through some complicity or indiscretion
on her part that the affront for which vengeance
was now threatened had been put upon the Apjohns,
and that her agitation arose from the consciousness of
having thus brought him into danger.

“Faustina,” said he, with deep seriousness and kindliness,
“if we are aware of having committed any fault
by which our neighbors are aggrieved, we ought to
acknowledge it, and, if possible, make reparation for it.
The honestest course is the wisest. A word of frank
avowal now may save a world of vexation and vain

regret hereafter. At least, do not keep anything from
me; but, I beg of you, if you have anything on your
mind that I ought to know, speak it now.”

It seemed that Faustina could not resist this earnest
appeal. She felt that her husband was, after all, her
best, her only friend; and she longed to confess to him,
and throw herself upon his generosity and mercy. But
she remembered her last interview with Tasso, who had
counselled her by no means to avow her misdeed to her
husband or to any one, but persistently to deny it,
whatever happened.

“That's the only way when you've once got into a
scrape,” said Tasso. “It's bad; but you must lie it
out.”

These words she recalled, and again the dread of
Abel's condemnation dismayed her, and Tasso's prediction,
that the Apjohns, though they should try, could
prove nothing, comforted her; and the false wife, in an
evil moment, looked up at her deceived husband with
feigned wonder, and replied, —

“I can't think of anything I've done, Abel. Why do
you ask?”

“Well, then, never mind,” said Abel. “I'm not
suspicious; but I feel extreme anxiety to be entirely
free from offence toward my neighbors, and I put as
strict questions to my own heart as I put to you. Consciousness
of being in the wrong makes me a perfect
coward; but let me be assured of the righteousness of
my course, and I can face any misfortune. The longer

I live, the better I know what a precious refuge truth
is, and what a den of serpents is falsehood.”

“Oh, yes! I know it!” assented Faustina, with the
accent and the aspect of a saint, and with her soul in
that den, amidst the writhing and the hissing, at the
moment.

Abel was convinced; for that creature could assume
a seeming that might have deceived even the elect; and,
shoving back his chair with satisfaction, he called to
Melissa, who showed her face at the door with Ebby in
her arms.

“Come to your supper. Give me the young gentleman.
Did you leave mother comfortable? Ho, you
Goliath of babies!” — tossing the delighted Ebby.
“Ha, you fat pig!” — tickling him. “Ebby has no
cares yet to work down his flesh. Care is a jack-plane,
that takes thick shavings from the breast and ribs.
You little sultan!” — standing him up on his knees
in a royal attitude; for he was a proud and splendid
child. “Wonder if my little fairy will ever be a man,
and have whiskers, and a little boy to pull 'em, — a real,
plump, loving little boy, to make him forget all his
troubles when he comes home at night?” And, with a
sense of his own blessedness, and with a gush of affection,
he clasped the happy boy to his heart. “Come,
now let's go and see grandma.”

“Poor thick ga'ma!” said Ebby, with his chubby fingers
in the paternal hair.

“Yes, poor sick grandma; and we'll go and make her
well.”

Abel had risen, and was carrying Ebby gayly on his
arm, when, as they passed the door, there came a rap
upon it. Faustina, at the sound, grew pale, — more apprehensive,
now, of fateful visitors, than Cooper John
himself. But Abel, joyous of countenance, and free of
soul, feeling, like Romeo, “his bosom's lord sit lightly
in his throne,” — ignorant that the gleam, which illumined
that moment in his life, was not sunshine, but a
flash out of the gathering thunder-cloud, — the young
father, holding up his boy with one hand, threw open
the door with the other, and met the sheriff face to face.

The sheriff was a kind-hearted man, and, at sight of
the happy domestic scene, which it was his thankless office
to disturb, no doubt his feelings were touched. He
shook hands with Abel, — for they were well acquainted,
— and gave a hard finger to the fat little hand which, at
the paternal instigation, Ebby bashfully stuck out to him.

“Come in, won't you?” cried Abel, thinking of him
only as friend Wilkins, and not once connecting him
with his commission.

“Perhaps you'd better step out a minute,” answered
Wilkins. “I've a disagreeable errand to do.”

“Here, mamma! take baby!” cried Abel. But baby
did not want to go to mamma. And mamma had no
word or look for baby, in the consternation of thinking
the sheriff was there to arrest some one, — it might be
Abel, — it might be herself! “Well, then, where's his
little shawl? and papa's hat? We'll go out and see the
man. Hurrah!”

“Co-ah!” crowed Ebby, throwing up his arms with
delight. He liked papa best of anybody at all times;
and now he and papa were going to have an adventure.

Sheriff Wilkins was sorry to see the boy come riding
out in triumph on his father's arm. He felt it would be
easier to do his errand out of sight of wife and child.
“He has such a pretty wife! and such a beautiful
child!” thought sheriff Wilkins.

It was a moonlight evening; and there, in the quiet
and white shine, with the shadows of the pear-tree mottling
the ground at their feet, spotting old Turk's
shaggy back, as he snuffed suspiciously at the officer's
shins, and flinging an impalpable shadow-crown upon
King Ebby's head, — in low voices, friendly and business-like,
the two men talked, and the errand was done;
Faustina, meanwhile, peering eagerly from the kitchen-window,
and those other witnesses, the stars, looking
placidly down through the misty skylight of heaven.

Then Abel, bearing the babe, returned into the house;
and Faustina, like the guilty creature she was, started
back from the window, and stood, white and still as
the moonlight without, waiting to hear the worst.

Abel came up to her, with a curious expression of
amusement and disgust, — a smile married to a scowl.

“It grows interesting!” he said.

“How? what?” whispered Faustina.

“I am arrested!” growled Abel.

“Arrested!” Faustina tried to echo; but her voice
refused to articulate.

“Don't be alarmed, — I am not!” added Abel, with
mocking levity. “It's such a neat revenge! Mrs. Apjohn
is welcome to all she can make out of it. Wonder
how it will seem to go to jail? How would you like to
go with me?”

For an instant, Faustina thought she was arrested
too, and that this was his mild way of breaking it to her.

“Fudge, child!” he laughed; “don't take it so seriously.
I thought it would be a good joke for you to
insist on keeping me company, and to take Ebby along
with us. I guess we could enjoy ourselves as well in
jail as the Apjohns out of it.”

“Ebby go!” cooed the enterprising infant, thinking
some pleasant journey was contemplated.

“No, Ebby can't go; he must stay at home with
mamma, to take good care of grandma. She may as
well not know it,” continued Abel, the smile dying, and
leaving the scowl a grim widower. “It would disturb
her too much. I almost wish Turk had finished Mrs.
Apjohn when he was about it. I shall get off, or, at all
events, get bail in the morning; but to-night I may have
to sleep in jail.”

“In jail! O Abel!” said Faustina, relieved to learn
that it was he, and not herself, who must go, yet terrified
at the consequences of her folly.

“There! don't be childish!”

Abel put his right arm about her tenderly, still holding
Ebby with the other.

“I don't care a cent on my own account. I'd just as

lief go to jail as not. You and I are not to blame, and
why should we be disturbed? Mrs. Apjohn, or whoever
is to blame, will get the worst of it. Or perhaps you
think we shall be disgraced? Villain of a husband, to
put his innocent young wife to such a trial! You forgive
me?”

“Oh, yes!” — Very magnanimous in Faustina. —
“But what — what proof is there?”

“Proof!” exclaimed Abel. “Do you think there is any
proof? Do you — heavens and earth, Faustina! — do
you imagine I am a scoundrel?”

“No, Abel! But if you had — taken money,” she
gasped out, — “I could forgive you.”

“I should despise you if you could!” he answered,
haughtily. “I could never forgive myself.”

“But — you forgave Mrs. Apjohn,” she reminded him,
almost pleadingly.

“That's another thing. A few tomatoes. But
money! — I could no more take my neighbor's cash
than I could take his life; and I don't suppose anybody
really thinks I could. Deacon Cole has no recollection
of paying me the bill Mrs. Apjohn says was stolen from
her; and they have got up an absurd story about finding
the envelope of one of my letters in their house, — proof
positive that I got in and lost it there when I stole the
money! That's the proof, as you call it. Come, be
yourself, Faustina, and let me see a hopeful smile on
your face when I go. What's a clear conscience good
for, if it can't sustain us at such times?”

“Oh, I am sustained!” Faustina tried the hopeful
smile, but it was a failure. “I know my dear, noble
husband is innocent!” And she put her lovely arms
about his neck and kissed him.

“Good-by,” he said, more convinced than ever of late
that she loved him. “I am on parole, and Wilkins is
waiting for me. Tell mother I have business, and put
her to bed. And, Faustina, whatever occurs, let us be
true to each other and to our own consciences, and all
will be well.”

“We will! we will!” she murmured, kissing him
again with lips as chill as dew.

“Now, mamma, take Ebby,” said Abel, with moist
eyes.

“No! no! Ebby go! Ebby go!”

“Oh, Ebby can't go with papa to-night. Mamma take
him.”

“No! no! no!” remonstrated the child, stoutly.
And he flirted his ungrateful hands, and kicked his unfilial
feet, when she reached to receive him; and lamented,
and screamed “Ebby go! Ebby go!” with ungovernable
persistence.

“What shall I do?” said Abel, with strong parental
emotion. “It would almost seem that his wise little
spirit foresees some greater wrong than we suspect.
The instincts even of babes are so wonderful. See! he
won't let me go without him!”

And Abel looked proud and gratified, though perplexed,
when the subtle-sensed child, shunning the guilty

parent with all his might, put his arms about the neck of
the innocent, and hugged him with all his heart and
strength.

“He knows!” cried Abel, with laughter and tears, little
guessing how much more there was in the divine instincts
of the infant than even his words had expressed.
“There now, Ebby, be papa's good boy. Melissa, take
him.”

Then Ebby loosed his hold, stayed only to kiss the
father he loved, one long kiss over his whiskers, put out
his hands to Melissa, and, without a murmur, only the
corners of the little serious mouth drawn down, went
to her unresistingly, though he still refused the hospitality
of the maternal bosom.

Faustina was cut to the heart. For, though she had
never loved her beautiful boy too well, she was jealous
of his affection; and to feel, at this time, when she was
conscious of having forfeited her husband's esteem, that
neither had she any part in her child's love, made her
seem to herself worse than a widow and childless.

“'By-'by, Ebby! — Keep good heart, Faustina!”
These were Abel's parting words; and, rejoining the
sheriff, he walked off gayly with him to the magistrate's.
But Faustina, with an indescribable sense of heaviness,
loneliness, and guilt, — wishing herself dead, wishing
herself where she might never see husband, or child,
or any face she ever knew, again, — shrank back into
the house, with the long night of remorse and dread
before her.