Ghosts of the Past [ RDR2 - Arthur Morgan ]

Chapter 4 - The Lake

Word count - 3266
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1899

Sun warmed the faces of all those in Horseshoe Overlook. It was yet another glorious day but Arthur didn't notice. Mrs Grimshaw's shouts and orders to the women made for a kind of background music as she told them what to do, how to do and when to do anything and everything. Arthur sat in his cot with a brown leather bound journal open over his lap and a pencil in his hand. He had shut off the world for a whole day, ignoring all those who would come to speak to him.

Rosemary Levenson. Daughter of a farmer. Lived west of Blackwater. She was and always will be the one that got away, the biggest regret I ever made. Now I find her so innocently in Strawberry. She is as beautiful as the day I left her. I wonder if she might remember me as I do her, or if I am just a distant face from a lifetime ago. And why is she so far East when her daddy's farm is so far west? This can't change anything. I left her behind for a reason. This is not a life for her.

The barman said she was a doctor of sorts. Or at least she wanted to be. She always tended me so well, I could see that life for her.

Next to his writing was a shockingly detailed drawing, the intricacies of Rosemary's features sketched out by a delicate hand. It captured her beauty in many ways, but not well enough. The sparkle of her eyes did not come through. This was what Arthur was staring at as he laid his head back against his pillow. He had been staring at it for quite some time before a voice broke his trance "You done sleeping yet, Morgan?" John Marston's quib came from behind his head as the man walked up with two cups of coffee in hand.

He was younger than Arthur, by ten years or so. A handsome face scared by two long old white cuts across his cheek and fresher scars across his forehead. These two had been running together for a long time now, and as Arthur had just remembered - John had been the only one who knew about Rosemary. Sure, Hosea and Mrs Grimshaw had their ideas of what he had been taking up Arther's time those many nights, but Dutch had been almost entirely in the dark for his month-long love affair with the farmer's daughter. "What d'you want, John?" Arthur asked grumpily, kicking his feet off his cot and closing the journal with a snap.

The younger man offered a cup to Arthur, who took it and drank deeply "You've been sulking in this bed for the best part of a day now, Morgan. The hell's wrong with you?"

"Fuck off, John. You've been sulking for... what age is Jack now? Four years?" Arthur shot back, putting the now empty coffee cup on his nightstand with a slam.

"Clearly, I have touched a nerve." John announced, holding his hand up in mock surrender "You don't wanna talk, that's fine. But idle hands, Morgan. Grimshaw's gonna kick up a storm if you keep lazing about."

John and Arthur had grown up like brothers. Dutch Van Der Linde had taken them both in when they were young. Arthur was fifteen when he was adopted into the gang, and six years later a young eleven year old John was brought in too. To Arthur, John was like a little brother and he loved him just as one.

Then John got his lover pregnant, and he disappeared for a year.

Miss Abigail had loved the young man with all her heart and soul, his disappearance on her pregnancy announcement had left her wounded and bitter. The task of raising the baby boy had fallen to the remaining members of the Van Der Linde gang, all of whom had very little experience in the way of raising children. Abigale took solace in the support from the growing gang, but her open wound left behind by John did not heal with time.

When John eventually found his way back to his family, there was open resentment from Arthur, who saw the man's abandonment of his responsibilities as a personal betrayal. Leaving poor Miss Abigail in the dirt when John claimed to love her felt like the honest kid Arthur had watched grow up was no longer with them. It made him think of how he had left Rosemary without so much as an explanation. Not even a spoken goodbye. But he had his reasonings, he didn't leave her out of selfish fear. His cause was just. John's, in Arthur's eyes, was not.