The Double Barrelled Detective Story | Page 4

rich young girl--a case of love at first sight and a precipitate marriage;
a marriage bitterly opposed by the girl's widowed father.
Jacob Fuller, the bridegroom, is twenty-six years old, is of an old but
unconsidered family which had by compulsion emigrated from
Sedgemoor, and for King James's purse's profit, so everybody
said--some maliciously the rest merely because they believed it. The
bride is nineteen and beautiful. She is intense, high-strung, romantic,
immeasurably proud of her Cavalier blood, and passionate in her love
for her young husband. For its sake she braved her father's displeasure,
endured his reproaches, listened with loyalty unshaken to his warning
predictions and went from his house without his blessing, proud and
happy in the proofs she was thus giving of the quality of the affection
which had made its home in her heart.
The morning after the marriage there was a sad surprise for her. Her
husband put aside her proffered caresses, and said:
"Sit down. I have something to say to you. I loved you. That was before
I asked your father to give you to me. His refusal is not my grievance--I

could have endured that. But the things he said of me to you--that is a
different matter. There--you needn't speak; I know quite well what they
were; I got them from authentic sources. Among other things he said
that my character was written in my face; that I was treacherous, a
dissembler, a coward, and a brute without sense of pity or compassion:
the 'Sedgemoor trade-mark,' he called it--and 'white-sleeve badge.' Any
other man in my place would have gone to his house and shot him
down like a dog. I wanted to do it, and was minded to do it, but a better
thought came to me: to put him to shame; to break his heart; to kill him
by inches. How to do it? Through my treatment of you, his idol! I
would marry you; and then--Have patience. You will see."
From that moment onward, for three months, the young wife suffered
all the humiliations, all the insults, all the miseries that the diligent and
inventive mind of the husband could contrive, save physical injuries
only. Her strong pride stood by her, and she kept the secret of her
troubles. Now and then the husband said, "Why don't you go to your
father and tell him?" Then he invented new tortures, applied them, and
asked again. She always answered, "He shall never know by my
mouth," and taunted him with his origin; said she was the lawful slave
of a scion of slaves, and must obey, and would--up to that point, but no
further; he could kill her if he liked, but he could not break her; it was
not in the Sedgemoor breed to do it. At the end of the three months he
said, with a dark significance in his manner, "I have tried all things but
one"--and waited for her reply. "Try that," she said, and curled her lip
in mockery.
That night he rose at midnight and put on his clothes, then said to her:
"Get up and dress!"
She obeyed--as always, without a word. He led her half a mile from the
house, and proceeded to lash her to a tree by the side of the public road;
and succeeded, she screaming and struggling. He gagged her then,
struck her across the face with his cowhide, and set his bloodhounds on
her. They tore the clothes off her, and she was naked. He called the
dogs off, and said:

"You will be found--by the passing public. They will be dropping along
about three hours from now, and will spread the news--do you hear?
Good- by. You have seen the last of me."
He went away then. She moaned to herself:
"I shall bear a child--to him! God grant it may be a boy!"
The farmers released her by and by--and spread the news, which was
natural. They raised the country with lynching intentions, but the bird
had flown. The young wife shut herself up in her father's house; he shut
himself up with her, and thenceforth would see no one. His pride was
broken, and his heart; so he wasted away, day by day, and even his
daughter rejoiced when death relieved him.
Then she sold the estate and disappeared.

II
In 1886 a young woman was living in a modest house near a secluded
New England village, with no company but a little boy about five years
old. She did her own work, she discouraged acquaintanceships, and had
none. The butcher, the baker, and the others that served her could tell
the villagers nothing about her further than that her name was Stillman,
and that she called the child Archy. Whence she came they