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Updated: May 15, 2025
The weather had changed during the last hour and at the moment I emerged from the shadows of the hedge-row into the open space fronting the Ocumpaugh dock, a gleam of lightning shot across the west and by it I saw what looked like the dusky figure of a man leaning against a pile at the extreme end of the boat-house.
But the mother hardly listened. She had eaten with the child, slept with the child and almost breathed with the child for three days now, and the ecstasy of the experience had blinded her to any other claim than her own. She pitied Mrs. Ocumpaugh, pitied most of all her deceived husband, but no grief of theirs could equal that of Rachel crying for her child. Let Mrs.
I believed that in some secret but as yet undiscovered way, it offered a key to this tragedy. And I still believed this, little as I had hitherto accomplished and blind as the way continued to look before me. Nevertheless, it was with anything but a cheerful heart that I advanced that morning through the shrubbery toward the Ocumpaugh mansion. I dreaded the interview I had determined to seek.
For the three months were not up and her presence here could mean but one thing she had found temptation too much for her, and she had come back to tell me so in obedience to her promise. "I will go meet Mrs. Ocumpaugh," I said. The man stared. "I will go meet Mrs. Ocumpaugh now," I repeated, and tried to rise.
The word must come from you. I am only trying to make it possible for you to meet your husband without any additional wrong to blunt his possible forgiveness." "Oh, he will never forgive and I have lost all." And the set look returned in its full force. I made my final attempt. "Mrs. Ocumpaugh, we may never have another moment together in confidence.
And so I admitted, when after a momentary survey of the task yet before me, I ventured to remark: "Then we find ourselves once more at the point from which we started. Where shall we look for his child? Mrs. Ocumpaugh, perhaps it would aid us in deciding this question if you told me, sincerely told me, why you had such strong belief in Gwendolen's having been drowned in the river.
It was a strange act enough; but when, a few days later, it was followed by one equally mysterious, and they saw the encircling wall which had been so carefully raised by Judge Ocumpaugh ruthlessly pulled down, and every sign of its former presence there destroyed, wonder filled the highway and the curiosity of neighbors and friends passed all bounds.
I merely followed an impulse I dared not name to myself. Two weeks of this final month went by. Ocumpaugh had ridden into the gate, but that she was not ready to enter the house. Would I meet her at the pavilion? I was in the library, at my desk, with my eyes on the wall, when this was told me.
She who should have had the greatest interest in establishing this evidence was leaning on the arm of Miss Porter and directing, with wavering finger and a wild air, the movements of the men, who, in a frenzy caught from her own, dug here and dug there as that inexorable finger pointed. Sobs choked Miss Porter; but Mrs. Ocumpaugh was beyond all such signs of grief.
Doctor Pool, the cause of all this misery, was dead; and in the future, her heart being set to rest about her secret, she would be happier and make the child happier, and they could enjoy her between them, and she would be unselfish and let Gwendolen spend an hour or more every day with Mrs. Carew, on some such plea as lessons in vocal-training and music. Thus pleaded Mrs. Ocumpaugh.
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