University of Virginia Library

18. XVIII.
“HE ENTERED IN HIS HOUSE, HIS HOME NO MORE.”

Later in the night, when the village streets were
silent, and the village lights mostly extinguished, a man
appeared briskly walking across the common, in the
moonlight.

It was Abel Dane. He was softly whistling a lively
air, to which his feet kept time. He had not yet seen
the inside of the big stone jug, as the jail was called,
and didn't think now that he ever would. He had had
the good fortune to gain a hearing before the magistrate
that night, and to get admitted to bail. Deacon
Cole himself had volunteered to be his surety. Everybody
was inclined to take a jocular view of the charge
against him. And Abel was happy; congratulating
himself that Mrs. Apjohn's malice was baffled, and enjoying,
in pleasant anticipation, Faustina's surprise and
delight at his unexpected return.

For Abel, poor fellow, was so eager to snatch at every
bubble of circumstance in which his hope of fancy saw
glimmer some floating, unsubstantial image of domestic
happiness! He was rushing to grasp a very large and
extremely flattering bubble of this description now. His

wife's distress, on seeing him torn from her embrace
and dragged away to jail, — so to speak, — had moved
him greatly. “After all,” he thought, “she loves me. A
change is taking place in her character, I sincerely hope.
She never manifested so much concern for my welfare before.
And she said she could forgive me, even if I had
taken money! Such charity, such affection, I did not
expect to find in her. Who knows but the faults of her
spoiled girlhood and false education may be cured, and
she may prove a true wife and mother after all? God
grant it!” he murmured aloud, his eyes upturned mistily
to the moonbeams, his features glowing and surcharged
with the emotion of his prayer.

He hurried on. He saw a light in his own house.
“Poor girl! she is too anxious to sleep! She could
not go to bed and rest while I was supposed to be
locked up in stone walls. Foolish child! But I am
glad she is wakeful; I wouldn't have her make light of
my arrest, though I do. I can imagine how lonesome
she is, sitting up, thinking of me. I'll go softly to the
door, and surprise her. Now I shall know, — I'll take
her behavior as a sign, — whether she really loves me.”

He drew near. He heard — what? Laughter! That
did not please him so well.

“Who has she got there?” He listened. “Tasso
Smith!”

He went to the kitchen door; it was unfastened. He
entered, and closed it after him. The moon lighted his
steps, and he advanced, stepping noiselessly, to the

sitting-room door. His purpose to afford Faustina a
surprise had become a dark and deadly purpose, and
the blackness of darkness clothed his soul. He waited;
for, in that first terrible revulsion, he felt that Tasso
could not fall into his hands without danger, and he
feared the violence of his own rage in confronting
Faustina. He was determined to be calm; yet it was
not easy to get his wrath under control, with the intolerable
tittering from within irritating it like sputters
of vitriol.

When his hand was quite steady, he found the doorknob,
touched it warily, turned it charily, opened it
with silence and caution, and laid bare the scene within.

Do you think this dishonorable in Abel? No matter.
In his place you would very likely have acted dishonorably
too.

The scene: A table, with the tools of intoxication
upon it; beside it two chairs, unsuitably near together.
In that nearest the door you saw the nice youth, Tasso
Smith, — one hand encircling a glass which rested on
the edge of the table, the other resting familiarly on
the back of the chair beyond, — his countenance, like
silly cream, wrinkled up with the last inanity of tipsy
merriment.

In that other chair sat Faustina, her eyes swimming
with an unmistakable tendency to double-vision, and
her lovely head so tipsy that she could hardly resist its
proclivity to rest on Tasso's shoulder. A pretty picture
for a husband!

One minute, — two minutes, the petite comedy went
on; two unconscious actors playing their parts with
perfect naturalness and abandonment, such as you seldom
see on the stage, before an intensely interested
audience of one.

Then you might have heard a fall. Mr. Smith heard
it as soon as anybody. Indeed, something had happened
to that individual. He had tumbled, in a most
astonishingly sudden and mysterious manner, under the
table. Over him stood Abel, and in Abel's hand was
the chair which had been jerked from beneath him.
And there was danger in the atmosphere, as the sagacious
youth sniffed readily when once he put out his
head carefully from under the table and carefully drew
it back again. He had done curing the toothache, and
done tittering, too, for that night.

But Faustina laughed on, not perceiving the spectre
of wrath that had stalked in behind her, and now stood
holding her companion's tilted chair. She looked down
by the table, and was presently aware of a pair of perpendicular
legs, not Tasso's. Or was Mr. Smith double,
and had he four legs? He appeared to be rapidly crawling
off with a horizontal pair, and, at the same time, to
be standing firmly on the two at her side.

She looked up, and was shocked into something like
sobriety by the apparition of her husband.

“Abel! — why — where — I thought you — is it morning?”
And she winked to see if it was day, thinking
he had passed the night in jail and come home and
caught her carousing.

Abel stood motionless and white, still clinching the
chair, as if diabolically tempted to break it over the
head of Tasso, rising from behind the table and retreating,
with the grimace of a scared monkey, to the door.
But with extraordinary self-control, he neither spoke
nor stirred until Mr. Smith had slunk out; then he
kicked his hat after him, — for that young gentleman
had quite forgotten that he was bareheaded, — broke
the cane that stood in the corner, and threw the splinters
into the retiring face. Then, having closed and
locked the door, he turned and confronted Faustina.