After hesitating for a moment or two, Lefroy did put the knife down. “I didn’t mean anything, old fellow,” said he. “I only wanted to frighten you.”
“Well; you have frightened me. Now, what’s to come next?”
“No, I ain’t;—not frightened you a bit. A pistol’s always better than a knife any day. Well now, I’ll tell ye how it all is.” Saying this, he seated himself on his own bed, and began a long narration. He would not go further West than Leavenworth. Whether he got his money or whether he lost it, he would not travel a foot further. There were reasons which would make it disagreeable for him to go into California. But he made a proposition. If Peacocke would only give him money enough to support himself for the necessary time, he would remain at Leavenworth till his companion should return there, or would make his way to Chicago, and stay there till Peacocke should come to him. Then he proceeded to explain how absolute evidence might be obtained at San Francisco as to his brother’s death. “That fellow was lying altogether,” he said, “about my brother dying at the Ogden station. He was very bad there, no doubt, and we thought it was going to be all up with him. He had the horrors there, worse than I ever saw before, and I hope never to see the like again. But we did get him on to San Francisco; and when he was able to walk into the city on his own legs, I thought that, might be, he would rally and come round. However, in two days he died;—and we buried him in the big cemetery just out of the town.”
“Did you put a stone over him?”
“Yes; there is a stone as large as life. You’ll find the name on it—Ferdinand Lefroy of Kilbrack, Louisiana. Kilbrack was the name of our plantation, where we should be living now as gentlemen ought, with three hundred niggers of our own, but for these accursed Northern hypocrites.”
“How can I find the stone?”
“There’s a chap there who knows, I guess, where all them graves are to be found. But it’s on the right hand, a long way down, near the far wall at the bottom, just where the ground takes a little dip to the north. It ain’t so long ago but what the letters on the stone will be as fresh as if they were cut yesterday.”
“Does no one in San Francisco know of his death?”
“There’s a chap named Burke at Johnson’s, the cigar-shop in Montgomery Street. He was brother to one of our party, and he went out to the funeral. Maybe you’ll find him, or, anyway, some traces of him.”
The two men sat up discussing the matter nearly the whole of the night, and Peacocke, before he started, had brought himself to accede to Lefroy’s last proposition. He did give the man money enough to support him for two or three weeks and also to take him to Chicago, promising at the same time that he would hand to him the thousand dollars at Chicago should he find him there at the appointed time, and should he also have found Ferdinand Lefroy’s grave at San Francisco in the manner described.
VII
“Nobody Has Condemned You Here”
Mrs. Wortle, when she perceived that her husband no longer called on Mrs. Peacocke alone, became herself more assiduous in her visits, till at last she too entertained a great liking for the woman. When Mr. Peacocke had been gone for nearly a month she had fallen into a habit of going across every day after the performance of her own domestic morning duties, and remaining in the schoolhouse for an hour. On one morning she found that Mrs. Peacocke had just received a letter from New York, in which her husband had narrated his adventures so far. He had written from Southampton, but not after the revelation which had been made to him there as to the death of Ferdinand. He might have so done, but the information given to him had, at the spur of the moment, seemed to be so doubtful that he had refrained. Then he had been able to think of it all during the voyage, and from New York he had written at great length, detailing everything. Mrs. Peacocke did not actually read out loud the letter, which was full of such terms of affection as are common between man and wife, knowing that her title to be called a wife was not admitted by Mrs. Wortle; but she read much of it, and told all the circumstances as they were related.
“Then,” said Mrs. Wortle, “he certainly is—no more.” There came a certain accession of sadness to her voice, as she reflected that, after all, she was talking to this woman of the death of her undoubted husband.
“Yes; he is dead—at last.” Mrs. Wortle uttered a deep sigh. It was dreadful to her to think that a woman should speak in that way of the death of her husband. “I know all that is going on in your mind,” said Mrs. Peacocke, looking up into her face.
“Do you?”
“Every thought. You are telling yourself how terrible it is that a woman should speak of the death of her husband without a tear in her eye, without a sob—without one word of sorrow.”
“It is very sad.”
“Of course it is sad. Has it not all been sad? But what would you have me do? It is not because he was always bad to me—because he marred all my early life, making it so foul a blotch that I hardly dare to look back upon it from the quietness and comparative purity of these latter days. It is not because he has so treated me as to make me feel that it has been a misfortune to me to
