News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1913-09-10
A MAN i'm
the Open
By
Roger Pocock
Illustrations by
Ellsworth Young
Copyright, 1912, the Bobhs- Merrill Company
CHAPTER XIV.
The Locked House.

JeSSe's Memoir.
The book of our adventures which
we began together, was to go on
through all our years. We were too
young to think how it must some time
finish at our parting, that one of us
two was to be left with only the bro
ken end, the pity of Christ and every
word stabbing memory.
Since / lost Kate is four years to-
night, and in all that time now, never
dared to enter the house wnere once
she lived with me, her poor fool Jesse
Today | unlocked the door. The sun
light, glinting through chinks in the
boarded windows, fell in long dust
streaks on rat-eaten furniture, gray
cobWeb, scattered ashes. There was
the puppy piano, green with mold, her
work basket, half eaten, her writing
table Uttered with rat-gnawed paper
The pages are yellow, the ink is rusty
brown, but the past is alive in every
line, the living past, the sunny warm
scented land of memory, all full OF
love and glory and delight, and agony
which cannot be taken from me.
How wonderful it is to think that
great lady, and this ignorant callous
brute shown up in the rotted manu-
script, should ever have been man and
wife together! When think of what !
was-illiterate, slovenly, lazy selfish,
brutal, meanly jealous, ignorantly
cruel, | see how it was right that she
should leave me. 1t has taken me
bitter lonely years to realize that l
was unworthy to be her servant while
she tanned me. So much the greater
mystery is the love which made
amends for my shortcomings, made
her think me better than l was,
something for which she sacrificed her
self, and in self sacrifice became like
the great angels which she saw in
dreams.
Then came the letter from Polly her.
self, which sent me crazy, so that my
lady read every word of it, without
being warned.
Opium, Jesse, an overdoSe of opium
did the trick and paint to make me
took like a corpse, and blood from the
butchers shop poured over my face as
| laid there. You was no husband for
such as me with Brooke around, the
man I'd kept. Shucks, did We think I'd
be such puke as to set, with yer
dead-line round me, screaming if men
came near. with all Abilene grinning,
q MI lynn II
way to treat a lady. That was no
cinch for me as could buy cowboys, all
I'd a mind to. Pshaw, it makes me
sick at the stummick to think | mar
ried you. l only done 1t for joke
"But you jest mark my words on the
dead thieving, no foreign woman from
London, England, shall have you
while you're mine. | heerd of this Mrs. |
Trevor daring to call you her husband. |
She's not your wife, she's not Mrs. |
Jesse Smith, she's not a married wom-
an, but a poor thing, and her child, |
what's he? I've had my revenge on |
her. and you, and I'm coming to rub it |
n. I'm at Ashcroft, l am, coming on
he same coach as this letter, coming
o live in your home. If l don't love
you, no other woman shall. It's Fancy
Brooke, the man you calls Bull Dur
lam, what give you dead away, he, and
he news he got by mail, since you let
lin get off alive, you fool. That
ought to splash yer.
"And if 1 didn't love, dye reckon
hat I'd care?
Your deserted true wife,
POLLY SMITH.
"P. Sill be to your ranch Mon
lay"