I was like a family physician
to my animals; and wise in their days and generations. Rowena was
explained to me in a flash of lightning by my every-day experiences;
she was swept within the current of my knowledge.
"Rowena," said I, "you are in trouble."
She knew what I meant.
I hope never again to see any one in such agony. Her face flamed, and
then turned as white as a sheet. She looked at me with that distressful
expression in her eyes, rose as if to go away, and then came back and
sitting down again on the stone, she buried her head on my breast and
wept so terribly that I was afraid. I tried to dry her tears, but they
burst out afresh whenever I looked in her face. The poor thing was
ashamed to look in my eyes; but she clung to me, sobbing, and crying
out, and then drawing long quivering breaths, which seemed to be worse
than sobs. When she spoke, it was in short, broken sentences, sometimes
unfinished, as her agony returned upon her and would not let her go on.
I could not feel any scorn or contempt for her; I could as soon have
looked down on a martyr burning at the stake for an act in which I did
not believe. She was like a dumb beast tied in a burning stall, only
able to moan and cry out and endure.
I have often thought that to any one who had not seen and heard it, the
first thing she said might seem comic.
"Jacob," she said, with her face buried in my breast, "they've got it
worked around so--I'm goin' to have a baby!"
But when you think of the circumstances; the poor, pretty, inexperienced
girl; of that poor slack-twisted family; of her defenselessness in that
great house; of the experienced and practised and conscienceless
seducer into whose hands she had fallen--when you think of all this, I
do not see how you can fail to see how the words were wrung from her as
a statement of the truth.
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