Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1901-11-28
CHAPTER HI.
Rickerby's Folly.

In the days before Rickerby's Folly
received it's suggestive name-more
than a quarter of a century before this
history ~begins-it had been a place of
joy and laughter, a CHEEKY home to
which a happy man brought his bride.
An old man he was, in comparison with
his young wife; yet an old man grown
young again, for love of her. Men had
spoken of Jonas Rickerby as a man
soured and embittered; he determined
from the time of his marriage, to be
soured and embittered no more. The
world was a green and fowery place,
after all; and the house in st. Johns
Wood should be a very Paradise, set in
the midst of 1t.
The Paradise lasted for nearly two
years; and then Jonas Rickerby shat
tered It at a blow. No one ever quite
knew what the story was; whether the
suspicious old man grew Jealous OF his
wife; whether a younger lover came
on the scene; or whether May and De-
cember We're Unmatched, and merely
drifted apart. Suffice 1t to say, when
her baby boy was little more than a
year old, they took-the husband and
wife-separate sides of the house. Then
the quarrel grew, so that, for some rea-
SON, never fully explained, or for no
reason at all, they could not bear to see
each other; and the man entered upon
hat strange business which was to
give the house forever after its title.
The place was his own, and he had a
lot of land attached to 1t and inclosed
within the high wall which shut 1t off
from the outer world. He got builders
to come-men who worked, for liberal
pay, day and highland began to build
up another house, scarcely a dozen
yards from the old one, of exactly the
same shape and style; In fact, the orig
inal house was copied, brick for brick
and beam for beam. Then, when all
was finished and furnished, he sent her
into 1t.
mo man shall say" he told her,
brutally, that you fare worse than I
do: no man shall reproach me for not
giving o the house i promised you.
There Is your home; take your child
there; choose your own servants; live
your own life. Henceforward I know
as little of You as though were in a spot
thousands of miles away. You shall be
amply provided with money; the. world
shall know you as Mrs. Rickerby, but
Jonas Rickerby knows you no more.
Col"
So she went; and for ten long, un-
happy years lived the life OF a nun, eat
ing her heart away, some said, for love
Of him--raging her heart out. others
said, In hatred Of him. All that time
she brought her son up carefully: and
IL he ever saw his father at all, II was
only when he wandered-poor, solitary
baby-in the neglected garden, and saw
the old m a passing to and from be-
hind the windows OF the separate
house. In building the second house, 1t
should be mentioned, that old Jonas
Rickerby had a long covered way con
structed between the two, so that the
world might think, perhaps. that they
were still united and that the houses
were one. But the covered way was
never used. and the door of communal
cation was strictly locked and barred.
Ten long years; n at the end of the
ten years she died. Died under strange
and awful OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES almost
at his feet, as 1t were. The frightened
servants who told the story afterwards.
said that she had long been ailing; that
she had sent him pathetic little letters
across the space that divided them
letters which he had returned UNI
opened-letters In which she told him
that her end was near, and prayed him
to be mindful Of the child who would
be left alore.