University of Virginia Library

36. XXXVI.
HOME.

They stopped in town to get some presents for
Ebby, then took the train, and reached home the same
evening.

Alighting at the village, they looked in at the post-office,
and found a letter for Eliza. Whence and from
whom it came, both knew. Abel was deeply moved;
and Eliza, it must be owned, felt heavy misgivings as
she pressed it unopened into her pocket.

It was late; the fire was nearly out in the kitchen;
the candle burned low in its socket; Melissa had fallen
asleep over her knitting; Ebby was dreaming and
smiling in the cushioned arm-chair; and old Turk lay in
the corner.

Suddenly the scene changed. Melissa jumped up,
rubbed her eyes, and, at the summons of a well-known
voice, ran to open the door. Turk bounced from the
hearth, and madly welcomed his master. Ebby also
awoke, and saw his mamma (as he always persisted in
calling Eliza), and his father who had come home with
her, and the playthings they had brought him, and was
the gladdest boy the round world then contained.

There are kisses, and questions, and supper for the
new-comers; and again the scene changes. Melissa is
sent to put Ebby to bed. Then Abel and Eliza alone,—
the clock telling the minutes of midnight; the long,
earnest, tender, sorrowful talk; — she, yielding to him
one all too sympathetic trembling hand, while with the
other she clasps the still unopened letter in her pocket,
as if that alone could keep her true to the absent one;
there parting at last, in anguish, after all the joy and
triumph of the day, — he lonely and bereft, she faithful
still in purpose to her affianced, despite her most unfaithful
heart; the sound of the door that closed between
them, and the utter silence and solitude of the
night that followed; — at which closing scenes of our
drama we can only hint, for were we to relate in detail
all that passed,

Early the next morning, Abel, “wrapped in dismal
thinkings,” having vainly endeavored to sleep,
sat alone by the fire, in the home to which he had
been restored, only, as it seemed, to feel its vacancy, —
Faustina lost, his mother gone, Eliza about to go. No
doubt Eliza was fast asleep, and dreaming of her distant
lover, to whom she was so soon to return. So
Abel thought, disconsolately enough; reflecting ungratefully
that even his saddest night in prison had been

happier than this; when he heard the door softly open,
and, looking up, saw Eliza. She smiled faintly.

“Darling!” he cried; — “I knew you could not!
I knew you would come back to me!” — though, poor
fellow, he certainly knew no such thing, or else, as he
sat there, the world would have looked to him somewhat
less dreary.

But Eliza, although she smiled, was shivering, and
very pale; and he knew not yet whether to hope, or
still to keep company with despair.

“There is something here — which I thought you
ought to know of” — she said, in a voice shaking with
the cold. And the letter of her betrothed, which, after
much unhappy delay, she had summoned the resolution
to read, she placed in Abel's hand. Ah, different now
the times from those long ago, when he placed in her hand
the letter of his love, the beautiful Faustina, and she could
not read it for the wrong that was wringing her heart!

Perhaps, by this time, that wrong had been amply
avenged; as all wrongs are, soon or late, in this world
or the next.

Abel read with interest, which darkened into pain as
he proceeded, then kindled into surprise, and brightened
at last into a blaze of triumph.

The devoted lover, the generous, disinterested friend,
had grown at length impatient. Eliza's letters had
not satisfied him; that she cared more for Abel in
prison than for him in the home he had offered her, was
but too evident; and so, without penning a single reproach

(for, indeed, she had dealt truly with him from
the first, as he acknowledged), but not without profound
regret on his part, he begged leave to release
her from her engagement.

“But, Abel!” suddenly exclaimed Eliza, disengaging
herself from his arms; and a shadow fell upon her
glowing, suffused face.

“What is it?” Abel asked, starting from the dream
that their bliss was perfect now.

“I owe that dear man three hundred dollars!”

“Phew!” whistled Abel, pursing up his brows; for
he knew this debt had been incurred for his sake, and
that she had impoverished herself to fee his lawyers,
and could not pay it, and that he had never a cent.

“He must be paid,” said Eliza.

“Certainly, he must be paid,” Abel muttered, plunged
in thought, “but how? All my property is mortgaged.
I can't borrow. I've sold even my tool-chest. I can
go to work, — and if ever I worked with a will, I shall
now, — but that is a debt that should be paid at once.
He is a noble man: he certainly deserved you, 'Liza,
better than I do, I'm afraid, — I know!” feeling with
deep humility how selfishly he had acted towards her
from the first.

They sat talking until the morning was well advanced,
— Abel's mind still perplexed.

There came a knock at the door, and, Melissa opening
it, in walked John Apjohn the cooper, and Prudence

Apjohn his wife; who, having heard of Abel's return,
had hastened to be the first to congratulate him.

Prudence was radiant, and John was gay and smiling,
all his melancholy having been dissipated by the
glad tidings of Abel's release from prison.

“And if ever I heerd a bit o' news that done my soul
good,” said Prudence, all smiles and tears, “it was when
old Mr. Smith come to our house jest now for a firkin,
and said you was seen gittin' out o' the stage, you and
'Lizy, up to the square, last night.”

“And, I was a goin' for to say,” said John, with boyish
eagerness, — “knowin' as how you was put to't for
money 'fore the trial, — I was a goin' for to say,” —

“Fact is,” — Prudence snatched the thread of his
discourse, — “me and my husband here has got three or
four hunderd dollars a comin' in jest about this time, —
money we've lent in years past, — an' as we've no
'airthly use for it right away,” —

“An' knowin' 't you sold off everything,” struck in
the cooper, — “an' you must stand in need o' somethin'
for to give ye a start,” —

“An' if 'twould be any sort o' 'commodation to you,”
resumed Prudence, “to have the use o' that money,
'thout interest, for a year or so, or as long as ye want,
till ye git a little 'forehanded agin, — 'thout interest,”
she repeated, emphatically, — “why, you're welcome to
it, you're welcome to it, Abel Dane, as much as if you
was my own son!”

“To be sure, to be sure,” assented the cooper.

“O Abel! how we are provided for!” exclaimed
Eliza.

Abel shook his neighbors heartily by the hand, and
thanked them with deeper joy and gratitude than he
could express, and of course consented to relieve them
of their superfluous hundreds; sending them home
rejoicing.

The debt was paid, and Abel began life anew.

And so all things came duly round at last: the circle
grew complete, — Abel obtaining without long delay a
divorce from his already divorced wife, and entering
with Eliza the path of blessedness into which the devious
ways of difficulty and the sometimes dark ways of
duty had led them.

It remains to add only a word. Faustina never saw
husband or child again. But while Abel consoled himself,
and Ebby found indeed a mother in Eliza, she, the
beautiful one, married a second time, and lives, as I
learn, a gay life.

And so poetical justice is not done? Very well;
divine justice is done, nevertheless. I am not aware
that either she or Tasso Smith ever received for their
misdeeds what the world calls punishment. But that
any one is permitted to live on, unrepentant and unchecked,
a life of selfishness, is perhaps, in the sight of
a higher Wisdom, the greatest punishment of all.