Chapter 25

THE BAR SINISTER

Not even to Mason Rogers could Abner bring himself to mention Hiram Gilcrest's most insulting insinuation; but the memory of that base epithet, bastard, cut deeper and deeper into the young man's soul. "What could the vicious old man possibly have heard or imagined about my history to lead him to utter so foul a charge?" he thought again and again. "'A bastard who has no right to the name he bears,' those were his very words. I wonder I did not throttle him then and there--if he is the father of my betrothed wife. But, by heaven, he shall apologize and that right humbly, or else I'll--but pshaw! the old fellow was so enraged that he didn't know what he was saying. The epithet was simply a gratuitous insult which he in his anger was scarcely responsible for. But what could have turned him so completely against me?" Thus Abner tormented himself, his thoughts ever revolving about the puzzling question. At times he would find some comfort in the belief that the allusion to his parentage meant nothing but that Gilcrest was senselessly enraged when he made it. Then again, when he remembered that it was by accident that he himself had discovered his father's name, or when he thought of Richard and Rachel Dudley's singular reticence, and of Dr. Dudley's evident uneasiness and reluctance when pressed for the details of the life of Mary Hollis and John Logan, a sickening foreboding of he knew not what would seize him. "There's something about my father's and mother's life that Uncle Richard has always concealed from me," he would conclude, "and whatever it is, I must learn it. It's no use to write; I must see uncle face to face, and demand 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, my other business. In no direction can I proceed, until I have solved this mystery. There may be nothing in it--surely there isn't, and I am tormenting myself unnecessarily. Still, if what Gilcrest said, meant nothing more, it certainly indicated most forcibly his extreme animosity to me; and I am convinced that the solution to his altered demeanor can best be discovered by another journey to Williamsburg."

It was getting late in the season, and farm work was pressing; but Mason Rogers promised that he would superintend the two negro men Abner had hired from Squire Trabue for the corn-planting, and that he and Henry would do all in their power to see that affairs at the farm on Hinkson 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 the spring after the birth of his child. Mary had endured great privations and had led a lonely life during the last few months. Moreover, she was weak and nervous and broken in health. When her husband paid this brief visit, she bitterly reproached him for having drawn her into so imprudent a marriage, and for the hardships of her lot. Logan, who was weary and careworn, and had suffered many privations with the struggling army during the disastrous spring campaign, was in no mood to endure patiently Mary's tears and upbraidings. Hard words were exchanged, and he took his leave after but a partial reconciliation. She never saw him again. Late in June, she received tidings of his death on the battlefield at Monmouth. The comrade who brought this tidings was by Logan's side when he fell, had received his last messages, and brought Mary a letter from Logan, written the night before the battle. In this letter Logan acknowledged that he had wronged Mary, asked her forgiveness, and promised that if his life was spared he would try to atone to her and to their little son for all the wrong, assuring her that in spite of everything all the love of his heart was hers and their babe's. He also urged her to find refuge until the war was over with her sister Frances at Lawsonville.

Mary wrote Frances, telling of her sad plight, and asking shelter for herself and her babe. Richard Dudley could not come for Mary, but he sent a trusty messenger with money for her journey; and he assured her of a loving welcome and a home for herself and her boy.

She left Morristown at once, and on her way to Virginia, she stopped at Philadelphia. While there, she learned of a young woman in that city claiming to be the widow of a soldier, John Logan, who had been killed at Monmouth Court-house. Mary, in great foreboding, went to see this woman, who proved to be her cousin, Sarah Pepper. The two had heard nothing of each other during the years that had elapsed since Mary had quitted Chestnut Hall. Sarah was not penniless, but otherwise her condition 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 love with one another; and on account of her father's opposition and his threat of disinheritance if she did not renounce her lover, she and Logan were secretly married on her seventeenth birthday, November 19, 1776, at the house of Samuel and Ellen Smith, tenants on the Pepper estate. Her father was in Maryland at the time. The only one beside the Smiths, who was privy to this marriage, was Sarah's former nurse, Aunt Myra, 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 at Morristown. 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 to bitterly repent the step she had taken. Logan had proven a violent-tempered, dissolute, selfish man. He was constantly in want of money, and when Sarah supplied him, he would resort to the tavern in the village, and drink and gamble with a lot of low companions whose society seemed more congenial to him than that of the poor, deluded Sarah.

In April, Logan returned to the neighborhood, and he and Sarah were then quietly but openly married. Immediately afterward she quitted Chestnut Hall, and went to live in Philadelphia, her husband returning to his regiment. She only saw him after that at infrequent intervals and for a few hours at a time. His only object on these occasions appeared to be to extort money from her. Then, in June, came tidings of his having fallen in the battle of Monmouth.

"Were there two John Logans?" Abner asked huskily, his lips pallid, the shadow 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 had hitherto seemed solid was giving way under his feet.

"Your mother," Richard continued, "had with her a miniature of your father. She showed it to Sarah, who recognized it as that of the man she had married. A further description of the man tended to prove this more 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 was twenty-eight years old at the time of his death. Soon after your mother came to us, I wrote to an old resident of this village, Kenelworth, and learned from him that he knew of but one family of Logans who had ever lived in the place. That was the family of Ezra Logan, who had been dead several years, and had left two daughters and one son. Both daughters had married and removed to a distant section of the country, and the son, John Logan, had been killed at the battle of Monmouth, in June, 1778."

"My God, my God!" Abner exclaimed, turning faint and sick, while the perspiration stood in great drops upon his forehead and about his drawn lips. He threw himself into a chair, and buried his face in his hands.

"My poor lad! my dear son!" said his uncle, sobbingly, standing over the stricken boy, and laying a hand tenderly on the bowed head. "Would that you could have been spared this. I have tried, God knows I have tried, to hide this from you."

"Yes, yes!" muttered Abner, grasping his uncle's hand, but not looking up, "you have done the best you could for me. You are all I have left now, 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 his life for his country, a dastardly libertine! And my precious young mother--oh, my God in heaven! I can not bear this. Would that I were lying by your side, my poor, innocent, deceived mother; or, better still, that I had never been born! I have no name, no place in the world!" and as he thought of Betty, his heart was wrung with such agony as few can ever feel.

After a time, when the first storm of grief and horror had subsided somewhat, he again spoke. "Uncle Richard, if that clandestine marriage with 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 told her this: Several years before Sarah met Logan, her father had disowned and driven from home his son, Fletcher, on account of dishonorable conduct. The will, made soon after Sarah had been forbidden to have anything to do with Logan, left everything to her who, as this will read, 'had been a loving and dutiful daughter, ever ready to yield her own will in obedience to her father.' When the purport of the will was made known, after Jackson Pepper's death, Logan urged upon Sarah that the clandestine marriage ceremony must never be revealed, lest Fletcher Pepper should try to break the will on the plea that Sarah had not been a dutiful and obedient daughter."

"But why," asked Abner, "if she had discovered in the interval between the two marriages that this man Logan did not love her, and was a reckless, 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 that she was to become a mother; and on that account, although she had managed to hide her condition from every one except the negro woman, old Myra, she dared not refuse to be openly married to Logan. As soon as this second marriage ceremony was performed, she left Chestnut Hall, taking the faithful Myra with her. They went to Philadelphia, where they were strangers; and there, in September, 1777, Sarah gave birth to a child which, mercifully, was born dead. She told your mother all this, and also that once Logan, in one of his rages, because she had been unable to supply him money, had struck her, and had taunted her with having been his mistress before she had become his wife, asserting that the secret marriage was a fraud, the man who performed the ceremony not having been a real clergyman. He also told her that he had always loved another woman, and that his only motive in marrying herself had been that he might get control of her wealth. Then, at other times, when he was in better humor--so Sarah told your mother--he would deny all that he had asserted when angry, and would assure Sarah that the clandestine marriage was valid. Your mother, remembering that Logan in that last letter to herself had acknowledged that he had wronged her, was convinced that the clandestine marriage to Sarah was valid; and in that case, of course, her own marriage, three months later, was not."

"Was no trace of the scoundrel, if scoundrel he was, who performed the clandestine marriage ceremony, ever found?" asked Abner.

"Sarah never succeeded in locating him; but, years after, I, by accident, ascertained that without a doubt----"

"What?" eagerly asked Abner, his heavy, bloodshot eyes lighting with renewed hope.

"I found, my boy," answered Richard, sadly, "not what you hope, but the contrary. Thomas Baker was the man's name, and he was undoubtedly an ordained clergyman when he married Sarah Pepper to John Logan, November 19, 1776."

"What became of Sarah Pepper, or Sarah Logan?" Abner inquired after a long, miserable pause.

Dr. Dudley did not know where she was, nor whether she was still living. She had written once, he said, to her cousin, just before Mary's marriage to Page, and had said in her letter that she herself was on the eve of marrying again; but Dudley could not now remember, if he had ever heard, the name of her intended husband. "But," Richard continued, "the letter is no doubt in the package which your mother left 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 the garret--and then, perhaps, they had better be destroyed. You know," he continued presently, in explanation of his being unable to give any information about Sarah Pepper's whereabouts, "I never saw Mary's cousin. I married your Aunt Frances, who was seventeen years your mother's senior, at Plainfield, New Jersey, just before the death of John Hollis and his wife, and before Sarah Thornton, your mother's aunt, married Jackson Pepper. I brought my bride to Lawsonville, and she never saw her Pepper connections, who lived, as you are aware, in quite another part of the State."

"There is another fact in regard to your mother which I had better tell you now, Abner," Dr. Dudley went on after a time. "She did not die at Lawsonville, although I erected a stone there to her memory." He then related to his nephew what James Drane had already learned from Tom Gaines; namely, that Mary Hollis and her second husband, with her little son, then four years of age, had emigrated to Kentucky in the spring of 1782. Dudley likewise told Abner that Marshall Page had been killed the following August, at Blue Licks; that Mary had died at Bryan Station two days later; and that Marshall's brother had brought the little Abner back to the Dudleys late in that same year.