As I came up upon the landing her voice rose again. “Oh that I should have to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!” She dropped her head again, and a fresh gust of tears swept all further words away.
I said nothing, I was too astonished; but I drew nearer to her, and waited. . . .
I never saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her dripping handkerchief abides with me to this day.
“That I should have lived to see this day!” she wailed. “I had rather a thousand times she was struck dead at my feet.”
“Mrs. Stuart,” I said, clearing my throat; “what has become of Nettie?”
“That I should have lived to see this day!” she said by way of reply.
There came a lull. I forgot the weapon in my pocket. I said nothing, and suddenly she stood erect before me, wiping her swollen eyes. “Willie,” she gulped, “she’s gone!”
“Gone! . . . Run away. . . . Run away from her home. Oh, Willie, Willie! The shame of it! The sin and shame of it!”
She flung herself upon my shoulder, and clung to me, and began again to wish her daughter lying dead at our feet.
“There, there,” said I, and all my being was a-tremble. “Where has she gone?” I said as softly as I could.
But for the time she was preoccupied with her own sorrow, and I had to hold her there, and comfort her with the blackness of finality spreading over my soul.
“Where has she gone?” I asked for the fourth time.
“I don’t know—we don’t know. And oh, Willie, she went out yesterday morning! I said to her, ‘Nettie,’ I said to her, ‘you’re mighty fine for a morning call.’ ‘Fine clo’s for a fine day,’ she said, and that was her last words to me!—Willie!—the child I suckled at my breast!”
“Yes, yes. But where has she gone?” I said.
She went on with sobs, and now telling her story with a sort of fragmentary hurry: “She went out bright and shining, out of this house for ever. She was smiling, Willie—as if she was glad to be going. (“Glad to be going,” I echoed with soundless lips.) ‘You’re mighty fine for the morning,’ I says; ‘mighty fine.’ ‘Let the girl be pretty,’ says her father, ‘while she’s young!’ And somewhere she’d got a parcel of her things hidden to pick up, and she was going off—out of this house for ever!”
“Let the girl be pretty,” she repeated; “let the girl be pretty while she’s young. . . . Oh! how can we go on _living_, Willie? He doesn’t show it, but he’s like a stricken beast. He’s wounded to the heart. She was always his favorite. He never seemed to care for Puss like he did for her. And she’s wounded him—”