“Dolly Harden’s Secret,” by Marie S. Ladd.

Published in The Picton Gazette 1 Aug 1873:

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is taken from the damaged copy preserved on microfilm. We have made some conjectural emendations and corrections from the reprint in Demorest’s Monthly Magazine (Feb 1875). The author’s name appears in American journals (from New York, Boston and Philadelphia) from the 1850s to the 1880s.]

The neatest, sweetest, coziest little home in Amherst was the House of Tom Harden, the Smithy. In summer its white walls peeped out from the shrubbery that more than half concealed it, suggesting that something choice might be hidden away there. Tom called it his bird’s nest. This house, with 10 good acres attached, had been in the harden family for three generations. It had been greatly improved with each proprietor, for they were a progressive something though tenacious of old attachments the one man had always followed the occupation of the sire, therefore, and because it was congenial two there something, for they had all seemed to be born to the business. A powerful man was our present Smithy; large, and sinewy, and stalwart. You would think the man might have been made at his own forge. A very Vulcan was he; And yet, within this steely case, throbbed a heart soft and warm and exceedingly tender. When he had laid by his hammer, hung up his leathern apron, and shut up his shop for the night, the scales, somehow fell away from him, the sparks from his forge reflected themselves from his eye only a genial light.

There was no other man could accomplish more in his line than he; he had a certain pride in that. There was nothing he set his firm mind too that he did not beat, for and eminently earnest man was our Tom Harden. But nothing could take him above his business.

“I was born a blacksmith; I like it, and will remain one,” was the way he answered his friends who had larger ambition for him.

In this nest of Tom’s, nestled his wife Dolly and his infant son. This simple circumstance was what kept him more than an ordinarily happy individual. This wife and child was the joy and light of his work-a-day life.

A slow, plodding man he called himself, and you might believe him; but Dolly would snap her fingers at you and myth with contempt, if you repeated it to her. She always asserted that Tom was a genius; in proof of which she would count to you, on her fingers, the useful inventions he had originated, and allowed the profits to run into other men’s hands.

“Just like them, you know; such people never can make money. Now, if he would just let me manage,” and Dolly always finished by sagely shaking her little head.

For the past few years, Tom had been a very happy man; but a cloud had gathered in the sky, and at last it moved along just over his cottage, and there it obstinately stood.

Among the characteristics of our hero was that of a large and benevolent nature, that begot in him the desire to shoulder the worries and burdens of others around him. As often happens in the unselfish, it repeatedly led Tom into trouble. This time the trouble looked to him like a calamity. He had stood as bail for an old friend, who was in danger of losing his liberty in consideration of certain liabilities. The friend lurched him.

Dolly knew that something had gone wrong. He determined to keep the whole trouble to himself, and she, like the shrewd little woman she was, set about getting it out of him; and, woman-like, she met with success.

“You see, Dolly, I don’t mind; I am such a huge fellow, and can work for you and the bairn well enough. But the homestead—there is no hope for it, that must go; and it has been in the Harden family ever since it was a wilderness.”

“How much was the liability?” Dolly asked.

Tom told her. Old ’Squire Townley, he said, had paid it, and he mortgaged his little place. The ’Squire had given him several months in which to redeem it. “But he might as well take it now, Dolly; I shall be no better prepared to pay it then.”

She suggested another invention. He shook his head; he had never realized anything in that way, beside it would not give him time.

“And then, you see, I haven’t always the material on hand. It is for a long time gathering up there,” he said, striking his forehead. “But, little wife, I am not going to despair as long as I have you,” he said, kissing her.

Tom went to his work, and Dolly to ruminating. She had always been able to adapt means to ends, and supply the means too if necessary; for a wise little thinking cap she was in possession of. But this time she was sorely puzzled. All that afternoon she sat constructing and rejecting little schemes; She had never done so much hard thinking in her life at a time, and, when the whole afternoon crept away, she felt tired and defeated.

It was supper time. She heard her husband’s foot strike the graveled walk; at the same time she was struck with an idea. “Oh!” she exclaimed, and started to run out and meet him; but when she reached the door she turned back and ran into the pantry instead. There was a big look of joy in her eyes, but Tom did not see it, and he thought she was hiding away from him because she felt cast down at their misfortune.

She put his supper on the table without a word, and, instead of sitting down with him as usual, said, “Do you mind looking after the baby a while? I want to run out.”

A neighbor came in soon after and asked for Mrs. Harden. He replied that she was not in.

“It must have been her I saw going into Lawyer Sharpe’s a moment ago,” said the neighbor.

Tom did not reply, but he did not like it. Young Sharpe had once been a suitor of Dolly’s–a little wavering, at first, in his attentions, for he was a shrewd young fellow, acute in his profession and in personal matters looking always to the main chance, and Dolly had no fortune but her face.

About the time of her marriage with Tom, there was a myth about the death of an uncle in a distant part of the country, who had left her property, more or less; and her relatives there had made it to appear that she had died in childhood, and had taken possession of it all themselves. But Sharpe had lost his heart to her so effectually before this rumor, that he had proposed and had been unhesitatingly rejected, greatly to the astonishment of himself and Tom Harden. Dolly was an orphan reared by Tom’s good parents, and from continual association with him had learned to understand all the intricacies of his big heart, and knew well who reigned queen in it before he had courage to tell her. He really never could see why she had preferred a plain man like himself to one whom he thought so finished in worthy graces as young Sharpe. So Tom did not like what had transpired, and though too sensible a man to get jealous, he was not a little perplexed when Dolly made no mention of her business out, on returning.

As time sped on he came to know of her calling there at other times and once, on coming home earlier than usual, he met Sharpe at his own gate coming out. At heart, Tom Harden had perfect faith in his wife, but Fortune had begun to rack him on her wheel, and a matter that he would have thought little of, a few weeks before, now had the power to torture him.

He was grieved to see that his wife’s manner toward him was changed. It was not trouble; she never spoke now of their loss and he often found her singing as merry as a lark. There was no longer perfect confidence between them. He felt as though there was something she was keeping hid. And Dolly did have a secret, and kept it–the old adage to the contrary, notwithstanding. And yet, in honor, we must acknowledge that she had a safety valve. To baby everything was confided;–perhaps she could not have kept it else–and she would shake and toss and kiss it, and repeat to it the length and breadth of the whole matter. And baby would laugh and rub its eyes and stuff its little fat fists in its mouth, and enjoy the whole of it exceedingly.

The day finally arrived on which the date of the mortgage expired. He knew the Squire would be down that morning; for though not a hard faced man, he was an exact one.

Tom’s face had a set look. Never before had fate hastened to work against him with so determined a hand.

A great lumbering fellow he felt himself to be; always in the way, he thought, when around the house watching Dolly deftly clearing up things. Everything she touched yielded like magic; this morning she was unusually skillful. Her light feet tread the old familiar rounds with so airy a spring as they might if she were assured of reigning there forever. No trace of regret was there in that sparkling face of hers, on this morning which was to be so eventful.

Tom was woefully cast down with his accumulation of trouble. Such a reproach to her was his clouded face, that she once or twice had a hard time to keep from crying. As she past behind him once, she threw her arms out toward him, and only restrained herself by looking over toward baby and nodding, as much as to say they understood themselves and must keep cool. So she sang and kept busy until after the Squire came; then she took baby and sat down a little way off from them, keeping it pressed close in her arms.

Tom had not raised the money, and could not. He offered him an extension of time; Tom would not have it.

“It was of no use,” he said, “and they might as well be over with it at once. The little place was not worth more than the money loaned; He would make him a deal of it, and the Squire might write that the mortgage was satisfied.”

Tom produced pen and ink, looking all the time like a man about to sign his own death warrant.

Then baby was hustled unceremoniously back into his cradle; Dolly unlocked a little drawer in her husband’s writing desk, produced a package, and, placing it before the Squire, asked him to count its contents.

It covered the whole amount for which Tom had given the mortgage.

“It was left to me by my uncle Heth,” explained Dolly. “Lawyer sharp had to use all his shrewdness to straighten the matter out, but I paid him a round sum for his services.”

The Squire soon recovered his astonishment, congratulated the little woman, and bowed himself out, well pleased at the turn affairs had taken.

Tom called himself a slow man, and it did take him a little time to recover his astonishment. He had barely succeeded in comprehending the whole of it, as Dolly turned from the door where she had just shown the Squire out.

Then, for the first time, the little wife broke down. She threw herself into the strong arms that were ready to receive her.

“O, Tom! how could you–how could you be so cruel as to be jealous of me?”

He answered not at all but held her as in one of his own iron vises. Presently he fell to kissing her hair, forehead, cheeks, lips and looking up she saw what she had never seen before, on the cheeks of her Vulcan or two round, big tears.

Tom did not go to the shop that day, and baby got sadly neglected.

It was several years ago that this little event occurred, and Tom’s bird’s nest is now called a dove-cot by the observing neighbors. You could not say enough now to convince him that his wife would ever tire of him. And, for Dolly, she still holds to the belief that her husband has the strongest brain and largest heart to be found in the nation.