COUSIN Seth—There are reasons why I cannot come to the house again, even to the funeral; and why I shall not see you again during your stay. I think you will understand them. If you explain to Aunt Sabrina that I am ill, it will not be a falsehood. I have been and am suffering—terribly. But nobody can help me, save by leaving me to myself. I am trying to forget, too, everything that was said when we last talked together, and I shall succeed. Never fear, I shall succeed. A.
It was this note, scrawled in a hand very unlike Miss Annie’s customary prim, school-teacher’s writing, which Samantha had borne over from the Warren house. Seth had studied it, perplexedly, for a long time on the evening of its arrival. He ruminated now again upon it, as he walked along the road toward Thessaly, the following forenoon. The temptation to confide the thing to John, who had stayed over night with him at the homestead, and now was walking silently by his side toward the village, wavered in his mind. Perhaps John could assist him to comprehend it; but then, it would be necessary to explain so much to him first. Finally the arguments in favor of confession triumphed, and with a “Here, old man; this is a letter from Annie. I want you to help me guess what it means,” he made the plunge.
John read the note carefully. “What was it you talked about on this occasion she refers to, and when was it?” he asked.
“It was night before last, the night, and I asked her to marry me.”
“And what was her answer?—I’ll tell you afterward how glad I am to hear what you’ve just told me.”
“Well, it wasn’t decisive—but she admitted that it made her very happy.”
“And you haven’t seen her since?”
“No—or yes! I did. I met her just for a moment yesterday forenoon, as I was starting out from the house after hearing—the news. We only exchanged a word or two, though.”
“Did she seem angry with you then?”
“Not at all!”
“Well, what can have happened since? Try and think! She has reasons, she says, which she thinks you will understand. When a woman says she has ‘reasons’ she means that some mischief-maker has told her something disagreeable. Now——”
“Oh, my God! I see it now!” Seth stopped short in the road, and clenched his fists.
“Well, what is it?”
“She went into the house, and saw Isabel!” Seth continued, as if talking to himself.
“What has that got to do with it?”
Seth looked up at his brother with a blanching face, in which fright and amazement blended. “What is that line of Congreve’s about Hell having no fury like a woman scorned?” he asked mechanically.
It was John’s turn to stare. Gradually a light began to spread in his mind, and make things visible whose existence he had not suspected before. “Well, you are a simpleton!” he said.
“Don’t I know it?” was the pained, contrite response.
The brothers walked on a few yards in silence. Then John said “Of course, you needn’t tell me any more of this than you want to—but at least I can ask you—how much of a fool have you made of yourself up at the farm?”
“That’s hard to say. Just now I’m inclined to think that I am the champion ass of the world.”
“Well, you’re displaying some sense now, anyway. What have you done?”
“I haven’t done anything. That’s the foolish part of it all.”
John stopped in turn, and looked his brother’s face attentively over. “Go on, now,” he said, “and tell me what there is of it. There’s no use in my butting my brains out against a stone wall, guessing at such an inscrutable mess as this seems to be.”
“It’s hard to tell—there isn’t anything specially to tell. I simply got sort of sentimental about Isabel, you know—she was lonely and disappointed in life, and my coming to the farm was about the only chance for company she got, and all that—and then I found the thing might go too far and so I stopped it—and to clinch the thing, asked Annie to marry me. That’s what there is of it.”
“That’s good as far as it goes. Go on, youngster; out with the rest of it!”
“I tell you that is all.”
“Humbug! Annie never wrote this letter on the strength of such philandering nonsense as that. You say Isabel must have told her something. What was that something? Do you know?”
“Yes!” The answer was so full of despondent pain, that John’s sympathy rose above his fraternal censariousness.
“Come, my boy,” he said, “you’d better make a clean breast of it. It won’t seem half so bad, once you’ve told me. And if I can help you, you know I will.”
“Well, I will tell you, John. Night before last, Monday night, I had hard words with Albert, up at the house. You know how he sent for me, insisted on my coming, and what he wanted. Of course I could only say no, and we quarreled. Toward the end we raised our voices, and Isabel, who was upstairs, overheard us. Just then he began about me and her—it seems he had noticed or heard something—and she, hearing her name, took it for granted the whole quarrel was about her. I went upstairs, and presently he drove out of the yard with the grays. I couldn’t sleep, I was so agitated by the idea of our rupture, and I went out to walk it off. It was while I was out that I met Annie and had the talk I have told you about. Then I came home, went to bed, and slept till after ten—long after everybody else had heard the news. I heard of it first from Isabel, and she—she——”
He came to an abrupt halt. The duty of saying nothing which should incriminate the woman rose before him, and fettered his tongue.
“And she—what?” asked John.
“Well, she somehow got the idea that I had followed Albert out and—and—was responsible for his death! Now. you have it all!”
There was a long silence. They were nearing the four corners, and walking slowly. Finally John, with his eyes on the ground, said: “And so that’s what she has told Annie, you think?”
“That’s the only way I can explain the note.”
“But Annie couldn’t possibly believe such a thing as that!”
“No—but there’s an explanation for that too. Come to think of it, I must have said a lot of things to her, that night, which seem now to her to fit in with this awful theory. Poor girl! I don’t blame her.”
John answered, after a pause, “There’s no use of my saying anything to show you what a situation you are in, or to scold you for it. I suppose you realize it fully enough. What’s more to the purpose, we must consider what is to be done. It is safe enough to assume that if Isabel thinks this and has said it to one person, either some one else will think it, or she will hint about it to another. The thing is too terrible to have even one person, even if she were silent as the grave, think about it. The obvious thing, I should think, would be to have a postmortem examination.”
“I thought they always had them at inquests.”
“No, the Coroner can dispense with one if he and the jury agree that it isn’t necessary. Timms sent me word that he had decided to dispense with one, in this case, ‘out of consideration for the feelings of the family.’ That means, of course, that he wants the Banner to help re-elect him next year. But now out of ‘consideration for the family’ we’ll have to have one. Don’t be so down in the mouth about it, boy; it will all come right, never fear!”
The brothers had reached the solitary building at the corners—a low, dingy store, with its sloping roof turned to the road, and a broad platform and steps stretching along its entire front. A horse and vacant buggy stood at the hitching-post. John proposed to go in and get some cigars, if Turner had any fit to smoke.
Their surprise was great at meeting on the steps Mr. Beekman of Jay County, who was coming out. After terse salutations had been exchanged, Beekman said:
“Lucky you fellows come daown jest ez yeh did. I come over this mornin’ a-purpose to see yeh, ’n’ yit I didn’t quite like to go up to th’ farm. I’ve got ever so many things I want to ask yeh, ’n’ say to yeh.” He led the way over to the farther end of the steps, and, following his example of sitting down on the platform, they waited curiously for him to proceed:
“Fust of all, I was daown to Tecumsy last night, ’n’ saw Workman. He said you”—turning to Seth—“needn’t worry yerself ’baout comin’ back till yeh was ready. They kin keep th’ paper runnin’ for a week or sao, while you stay up here ’n’ dew yer duty like a Christian.”
Seth said he was much obliged, and then asked how it happened that Beekman had posted off to Tecumseh—over seventy miles—and returned so soon.
“Well, there was some things I wanted to see abaout daown there, ’n’ more thet I’m interested in keepin’ an eye on up here. So I kind o’ humped myself.”
“I’m glad to see you taking such an interest in Ansdell’s campaign,” said John.
Mr. Beekman’s gaunt visage relaxed for a second: “So yeh calc’late thet’s what I’m buzzin’ ’raoun’ th’ State fur, do yeh? Yeh never’s more mistaken in yer life. I’ve heerd reports circ’latin’ ’raoun’ thet ther’d be an election a fortni’t or so from naow, ’n’ thet Ansdell ’n’ I was concerned in it, but yeh can’t prove it by us. We ain’t s’ much as give a thought to politics sence th’ Convention ended. We’ve got somethin’ else to occupy aour minds with b’sides politics. I got a telegraph dispatch from him, sent from New York this mornin’, thet I want to talk to yeh ’baout presently, but fust——”
“Ansdell in New York?” asked Seth, all curiosity-now.
“Yes, he went on daown, while I got off at Te-cumsy, ’n’ I sh’d jedge from his telegraph thet he’d be’n on the go some sence he got there. But what I want to ask yeh ’baout is this: Do yeh knaow haow much money yer brother hed on him night ‘fore last, when he was—when he met his death?”
The brothers looked at each other, then at, the speaker, “No,” answered Seth, finally. “We haven’t the least idea. Why do you ask?”
“I’ll come to that bimeby. Naow next, do you knaow where he was th’ day b’fore th’ Convention?—thet is, Monday.”
“Yes, I can tell you that. He was in New York. He only got back Monday evening.”
“Pre-cisely. Well, naow, do yeh knaow what he went there for?”
“No. Something connected with politics, I suppose, but I can’t say for certain. He had business there very often, you know.”
“Yes, I knaow. But he hed very special business this last time. Naow look at this telegram.”
The two took the oblong sheet, and read:
“New York—Oct. 21. 942 A.M. Unexpectedly easy sailing. Found clue to money almost without looking. Fancy now must been sixteen instead ten. Hope return to-night. Ansdell.”
“Well, still I am in the dark,” John said, after reading and re-reading the dispatch. “What is it all about? I suppose you understand it.”
“I’m beginnin’ to see a leetle ways threw th’ millstone, I think, myself,” replied Beekman. “But it’s all so uncert’n yit, I don’t want to say nothin’ thet I can’t back up later on.”
Seth too had been busily pondering the dispatch, and he said now, with a flushing face: “I know what you think! You and Ansdell have got an idea there was foul play!”
“Well, yes, it ain’t much more’n an idee, yit;” assented Beekman.
“What do you base your idea on?” demanded John, full of a nameless, growing fright lest there might be something further which Seth’s confession had not revealed.
“Jest you wait one day more,” said the Boss of Jay County, grimly, “one day more ’ll dew. Then I miss my guess ef we ain’t in shape to tell yeh. Fust of all, there’s got to be a post-mortem.”
John’s impulse was to say that he and Seth had already agreed upon this, but a second thought checked his tongue.
“’N’ it’ll hev to be on th’ quiet. Everything depends on thet—on keepin’ it dark. There’s some folks might get skeered, ’n’ complicate things, ef it ain’t kep’ mum. ’N’ thet’s what I wanted to ask yeh ’baout. I’ve thought of Dr. Bacon, over at Thessaly, ’n’ Dr. Pierce daown at the Springs. They’re both good men, ’n’ got level heads on ’em. What d’yeh say to them?”
“I’ve no objection to them in the world, but the Coroner——”
“Oh, I know ’bout him. He’s th’ blamedest fool in th’ caounty. Over in Jay we wouldn’t elect sech a dumb-head to be hog-reeve. But you ’n’ Ansdell kin fix it with him to-morrow, ’n’ I’ll drive to-day ’n’ see both doctors, ’n’ put ’em straight. ’N’ naow yeh must prommus me, both of yeh, thet yeh won’t breathe a word of this to any livin’ soul.”
They promised, and he climbed into his buggy, and gathered up the reins. “Oh, there’s one thing more,” he said, on reflection. “P’raps you wonder why I’m takin’ so much on myself. I’ll tell yeh bimeby. I’ve got my reasons. I’m mixed up in it, more’n you’d think.”
He turned about, and drove off briskly toward Thessaly. The brothers stood in perplexed silence by the roadside for some minutes. There was surely enough to think about.
At last, with a frank gesture, John stretched his hand out to Seth:
“Old boy,” he said, “I don’t know how this thing is coming out, but we’ll see it through together. You go down to the office and wait for me. You might do some things to fill up the paper this week if you’ve got nerve enough. I’m going back to the farm.”
While Seth tried to divert his thoughts at the Banner office by going over the freshly-arrived batch of morning dailies, and fastening his attention upon their political editorials and reports of speeches instead of their displayed and minute reports of the sensational tragedy in Tallman’s ravine—John Fairchild retraced his steps toward the farm. He had a definite purpose in his mind—to confront and silence Isabel—and he strove hard as he went along to plan how this should be done, and what he should say.
He felt that his dominant emotion was wrath against this sister-in-law of his, and he said to himself as he strode along that he had never liked her. He could recall the summer a dozen years before when she came to the farm as a visiting cousin. He had been civil to her then, even companionable, for she was bright, spirited, in a word good company, but it seemed to him now that even then he had suspected the treachery ingrained in her nature—that he had been instinctively repelled by those hateful qualities, dormant in her girlhood, which were later to plot infidelity to one of his brothers, and lure into trouble, shame, perhaps even crime, the other.
This latter phase of her work was peculiarly abominable in John’s eyes. He was not going to get up any special indignation on the first count of the indictment; a bachelor of nearly forty who marries a sentimental young girl does it at his own risk, John felt, and Albert had invited just this sort of thing by exiling her to a farm, and forcing her romantic mind to feed on itself. But that she should have selected Seth—her own husband’s brother, the Benjamin of the flock, a veritable child in such matters—to practise her arts upon, was grievously unpardonable. To be sure, Seth ought to have had more sense. But then John, habitually thinking of him as “the youngster,” thought he could see how he had been led on, step by step, never realizing the vicious tendency of it all, until he had all at once found himself on the brink of a swift descent. Then, to do the boy justice, he seemed to have stopped short, turned his back upon the siren, and for the sake of further security, irrevocably committed himself to Annie. He had been sadly weak in the earlier stages of the affair, no doubt; but this last course appeared manly and sensible—and wholly incompatible, too, with any idea of malice or crime on Seth’s part. What fault there was belonged-to the woman, and she should be told so, too, straight and sharp.
Thus John’s thoughts ran as he entered the house, and bade the Lawton girl tell her mistress he wished to speak with her. He had not seen Isabel since her husband’s death—she having kept her room constantly—nor for a long time previous. They had, indeed, scarcely met more than half-a-dozen times since she came to live at the homestead, and then with considerable formality on both sides. As he stood by the stove in the living-room, awaiting her coming, he knitted his brows and framed some curt, terse words of address.
She entered, clad in the same black and dark-gray wrapper which his memory associated with his mother’s funeral, and which gave the effect of height and slender dignity to her figure. Her face was pale and pathetic in expression, and the ghost of a smile which flitted in greeting over it for a second accentuated its stamp of suffering. She offered him her hand, and said, in a low mournful voice:
“It was good of you to come to me, John. I have been expecting, hoping you would. Won’t you take off your coat and sit down?”
He had shaken hands with her, loosened his overcoat and taken a seat before he had time to reflect that he ought to have ignored her greeting and her proffered hand. The sharp words, too, that he had arranged in his mind seemed too brusque now to utter to a weak, lone woman who was so evidently suffering.
“Yes,” he said, “I thought I ought to talk things over with you. You’ve got nobody else.”
“No—not a soul! I couldn’t be more wholly alone if I were at the North Pole, it has seemed to me this last day. I have eaten nothing; I haven’t slept an hour. So you must make allowances for me,” she said, with a weak shadow of a smile, “if I seem nervous or incoherent. My mind goes all astray, sometimes now, and I seem unequal to the task of controlling it.”
He had thought at last of a question which might introduce the desired subject without wounding her feelings. “Do you happen to know,” he asked, gently, “whether Albert brought a large sum of money with him from New York Monday?”
“I haven’t the least idea, I am sure. In fact, I only saw him for a moment after his return. And besides, you know, he never told me a syllable about his business arrangements. No one could be in more complete ignorance of his affairs than I have always been.” There was the tone of resigned regret in her voice which a wife might rightly use. “I do indeed—there is one exception—know about his will. He told me that, not by way of confidence, but because it came out—in some words we once had about property of mine in New York. I might as well tell you. The will gives everything except my third to you and your aunt and—your brother. He has the lion’s share. Don’t think I am complaining, John. I wouldn’t have had it altered if I could. I am more than independent, you know, apart from right of dower. If I had had the making of the will, it would have been just the same. It is only right that his money should go to his family.”
John reflected for some moments before he answered. “I am almost sorry you told me,” he said then. “It makes me wretched and ashamed to think of the injustice I have done him in my mind. It sounds brutal, in the light of what you have told me,—but I am going to confess it to you—I suspected all along that he intended to come some game over us about the farm; and now, instead——. Oh, it’s too bad. I wish he could hear me!” John continued, with a glance toward the folding doors of the parlor, once more the chamber of death. “I wish he could know how I despise myself for having wronged him in my mind.”
Isabel said nothing, but her responsive eyes seemed to express appreciation and sympathy. John lost all sense of wrath toward her as he went on:
“Yes, from the very start we wronged him. We didn’t understand him. He was different from us—he was a man of the world, and we were countrymen, and we thought all the while that he held himself outside the family. I never gave him credit for good motives when he came to the farm; neither did Seth. We both thought he was playing his own game, for himself, and nobody else. And here, by George! he turns out to have had more brotherly feeling, more family feeling, than we ever had. It makes me miserable to think of it. It’ll break Seth’s heart, too; he’ll always torture himself with the thought that the last time he ever saw Albert alive they parted in anger.”
The words were out before he realized their significance. He stopped short, and felt himself changing color as he looked at her to see whether she too was thinking about that terrible night.
She made a motion as if to rise from her chair; then dropped back again and returned his inquiring glance with a fixed, intent look.
“So you know something about that,” she said.
“Did Seth tell you?”
“Yes!” he answered, falteringly. “Seth told me. We had a long talk this forenoon. I think he told me about every thing there was to tell. In fact, that is mostly why I’ve come back now to see you.”
She was silent, but her eyes seemed to John to be saying disagreeable things.
He began again to realize that it was his duty to be indignant in attitude and peremptory in tone, but he was also conscious of feeling very sorry for Isabel. The village editor often described himself, and was uniformly characterized by others, as being “no hand for women.” His own brief career as a married man—it seemed almost a dream now, and a very painful dream, with a short period of great happiness, then a slightly longer season of illness, poverty, debt, despair, and then the rayless gloom of death in his scarcely established home—had taught him next to nothing of the sex, and inclined him against learning more. The impressions of womankind which clustered about the memories of his girl-wife were, however, all in the direction of gentleness and softness. As he reflected, it grew increasingly difficult for him to put on a harsh demeanor toward his sister-in-law. She might deserve it well enough, but it was not in his heart to speak ugly words to a pretty and troubled woman at such a time. He stumbled on:
“Yes, the youngster is fearfully cut up about the whole thing, and he had to talk to somebody. He’s always been used to telling me everything. He is not a tattler, though, and I’m bound to say he only told me because I questioned him, and insisted on his making a clean breast of it. Then I sent him down to the office, and I came back here, thinking it might be best for all concerned to have a frank talk with you about it.”
She had a course mapped out now in her mind. “I am sure that your motives are good, John,” she said, “and that you will be fair and candid. I confess I don’t see what there is to be gained, specially, but you no doubt know best. What is it you wanted to talk over?”
“Well, it isn’t easy to state it, off hand. Perhaps I might as well begin by speaking of motives, as you did. I own that when I came in I wasn’t so sure that your motives were good, as you say you are about mine.”
“That is candid, at all events.”
“I want to be perfectly open and above-board with you, Isabel. You seem to have got into your head yesterday—I won’t say you have it now—some horrible and ridiculously wild suspicion of Seth——”
“I know what you mean,” she interposed, with nervous haste. “You mustn’t think of that at all! You mustn’t blame me for it! I was simply distracted—mad—out of my senses. I don’t know what awful thing my fancy didn’t conjure up. Don’t pay any attention to that!”
“But the mischief of it is that you seem to have spoken of this to—to somebody else. It would have been unimportant otherwise. This complicates it badly. Don’t you see it does?”
She made no answer, and kept her eyes on the figures in the carpet.
“Don’t you see it does?” he repeated.
“How do you know that I spoke of it to anybody?” she asked, after a pause, and still with downcast eyes.
“That has nothing to do with it, Isabel. It’s true, isn’t it, that you did speak of it?”
To his surprise and embarrassment she began weeping, and hid her face in her handkerchief. He sat mutely watching her, wishing that she would stop, and perplexed at encountering on the very threshold of his inquiries and argument this un-meetable demonstration of a woman’s resources.
She presently sobbed out, from behind the perfumed cambric: “You can’t hold me accountable for what I did yesterday, or what I said! I was beside myself! I scarcely know what I thought, or what I said! I acted like a crazy woman—and felt like one, too! It is easy enough for you to be cool and collected about the thing. You are a man!”
“Yes, I know, Isabel,” he said, kindly, “I understand all that, and I can make all the allowances in the world for you, in your position. But still that doesn’t alter the fact that the thing has been said, and the harm done. To be sure, I suppose, the harm will be only temporary, but as it stands it affects the prospects of more than one person—of two persons, in fact, near to us—very materially. You know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what can be done to remedy it? That is the question. I am not going to blame you, but still the fault was yours, and the steps to set it right ought to be yours, too, oughtn’t they?”
“What do you mean?” She looked up now, forgetting her tears.
“I am not quite sure what I do mean. I haven’t thought over details. There is simply a given situation, with the question how to get out of it, and the onus of action on you. I want you to help me think what the best way will be.”
“How logically you state it! Suppose I disavowed the whole thing, ignored it, refused to do anything or say anything. What then?”
“I won’t consider that at all. You couldn’t be so unfair as that—so ungenerous.”
“Unfair! Ungenerous!” Isabel rose to her full height, and frowned down at her brother-in-law, without a trace of tears in her eyes. “Fine fairness, distinguished generosity, have been shown to me, haven’t they! There has been so much delicacy in regarding my feelings! I ought to leap at the opportunity of smoothing over matters between Mr. Seth and his lady-love. My husband’s awful death, my position here, alone in the world, the shock and suffering of it all—these are mere trifles compared with the importance of seeing that their love affairs are uninterrupted! Perhaps I might get a chance at the funeral to have them kiss and make up—or would you prefer me to leave my dead now and go——”
“Your dead!”
The brother had risen also, and taken his hat. The exclamation carried in its tone all the bitterness with which his mind had stored itself on his walk back to the farm. Pity for the woman, perhaps something too of innate susceptibility to beauty and grace, had restrained and covered up this bitterness, so that he had supposed it gone. It flamed forth now, in wrathful satire.
As she put her handkerchief up again to her eyes, as a token of more tears, he went on, in a cold kind of excitement:
“You talk very cleverly—more so than any other woman I ever knew. But you should pick your strong phrases with more discrimination. For instance, when you want to produce a really striking effect upon me, it is unwise to use an expression which recalls to me at once things that you would rather I didn’t think about. I wouldn’t say ‘my dead ’ if I were you, especially when you are talking to his brother. It may do for outsiders, but here in the family it is a bad waste of words.”
Her only answer was a gust of sobs. They failed to move him and he went on:
“I don’t know that I have any means of forcing you to do anything, or say anything, against your will. If you take that position, perhaps it won’t be necessary. The wicked, ridiculous thing you thought, or pretended to think, and said to that poor girl, can be straightened out very easily. We can’t prevent the pain it has already caused, but we can stop its causing more. But if you lisp it to another human being—well, I don’t know what to threaten you with. It isn’t easy to guess what considerations will weigh with a woman who has your ideas of wifely duty, and of her responsibilities towards young and foolish members of her husband’s family, and——”
“How can you be so cruel, so mean, John? What right have you to talk to me like that? Everybody attacks me like an enemy. You never have been decent to me since I was married. Your whole family has treated me like an outsider, almost a criminal, since I came here. Your old cat of an aunt never looked at me except to wish me evil. Your brother—yes, if he could hear me now, from where he lies, I would say it!—never was fond of me, never tried to make a companion of me, never treated me as a wife should be treated, or even as his intellectual equal. You avoided me as if I were poison. The neighborhood disliked me, gossiped about me, and I hated them. Only one there was of you all who was pleasant with me, and good to me—and now that you have turned him against me, too, you come and insult me because I was pleased and grateful for his friendship. That is manly isn’t it?”
John had listened to the beginning of this impassioned speech with a callous heart. But he was a just man, and he had in almost unmeted degree that habit of mind which welcomes statements of both sides of a controversy. He might have been a wealthier man, and the owner of a more thriving paper, if he had had more of the partisan spirit. But to be strictly fair was the rule of his being. He would not criticise political opponents for doing things which in his heart he approved, and, on the same principle he would not condemn unheard even this woman, if she had any justification. As she went on, he began to feel that there was considerable force in her argument. She certainly had been most disagreeably situated, connubially and socially, and her definition of the Seth episode was plausible, if that were all there was of it. He softened perceptibly in tone as he answered:
“No, I am sorry if you think I wanted to insult you. Perhaps I did speak too strongly. I apologize for it. But I feel very earnestly on this subject. I’ve always been a sort of father and big brother combined to Seth, and the idea of his getting into a mess, or doing foolish or discreditable things, cuts me to the quick. You can see my position in the matter. I am anxious not to hurt your feelings, but my first duty is to him. Perhaps the two need not come into conflict. After all, no real harm has been done, I fancy, except in this one case of repeating your hysterical suspicion of him. That was inexcusable; can’t you see that it was? I’m sure that if you’ll think it over calmly, you’ll be disposed to do what is fair and right. I’m not blaming you particularly for the other thing. You might have remembered that you were older than Seth, to be sure, but then I realize that you were not at all pleasantly placed——”
“Never mind what you realize! We won’t discuss that at all. There is nothing to discuss. You and your aunt seem bound to make yourselves ridiculous about me. I won’t demean myself by answering—or no! I will say this much to you. There has never a word passed between Seth and me that every soul of you might not have heard, and welcome. He was simply pleasant and friendly to me—and I was grateful to him and fond of him, as I might be of a brother. Where was the harm? In no decent state of society would any one ever have dreamed of suspecting wrong. But here—why, people live and breathe suspicion! It is the breath of their nostrils.”
“I thought you used to correspond,” John said, tentatively.
“Correspond! There it is again! What of it, I should like to know? Why shouldn’t my cousin, my brother, write to me? I have all the letters;—you may see them every one. They gave me a great deal of pleasure. They represented my sole point of contact with civilization, with fine feelings and pretty thoughts. But you can go over them all, if you like. You won’t find a single whisper of proof of your aunt’s mean suspicion. I am almost ashamed of myself for having stooped to defend myself—but it is just as well to let you know the truth.”
“Yes!” John breathed a sigh which was not altogether of relief, but carried a fair admixture of bewilderment. This ingenious explanation did not at all points tally with the inferences drawn from Seth’s confession. Perhaps it was true enough in the letter, but he felt that as a revelation of the spirit it left much to be desired. He added:
“Well, I am sorry if I misjudged you. Probably I did. However, even if Seth had come near getting into a scrape, he’s safe out of it now.”
This complaisant conclusion nettled-the woman. She went on, as if her explanation had not been interrupted:
“Of course, we had what you might call a community of grievance to talk about, and draw us together. It wouldn’t be fitting in me to say more now than that my life here was not congenial: you won’t mind my saying that much? I had dreamed of a very different kind of married existence. Seth, too, had his trouble. In his boyhood, when it seemed assured that he was to remain the farmer of the family, his mother had planned a marriage for him. It isn’t for me to say a word against Annie. She is a good enough girl, in her way. But when Seth got out of his chrysalis, and learned what there really was in him, the thought that he was committed in a sense to marrying a farm girl made him very gloomy. He used to talk with me about it, not saying anything against Annie, mind you, but——”
“That’ll do!” said John, curtly. “We won’t go into that. Evidently there was no limit to Seth’s asininity. Let that pass. Whatever he said, or didn’t say, during his vealy period, he’s going to marry Annie now. There never was a time, and I fear there never will be one, when I would not call her his superior. The question is: Are you going to retract before her the false, cruel things you have said?”
“I am going upstairs again,” she said. “I think I will lie down awhile,” and moved towards the stair-door.
The brother looked at her, amazed, pained, indignant. She had her hand on the latch by the time his emotions found words:
“I’ve wasted my time in pitying you. God forbid that any of our family, young or old, should ever fall in with such a woman as you are again!” He pulled on his hat and left the house.
The lamps were lighted in the little partitioned-off square which served as the editorial room of the Banner when John returned. He found Seth weakly striving to write something for the editorial page, and in substance laid the situation before him. He was not feeling very amiably toward his young brother at the moment, and he spoke with cold distinctness. The tone was lost upon Seth, who said wearily:
“I don’t see that it makes much difference—her refusing. What good would it have done, if she had gone to Annie? She could only tell her that she had abandoned such and such ideas. That isn’t what counts. The fact of importance is that she ever entertained them, that they ever existed. To my notion, there’s nothing to do but to wait and see what comes of Beekman’s suspicions. What do you think of them, anyway? I have been trying to imagine what he is aiming at, but it puzzles me? What do you think?”
“To tell the truth, I haven’t been thinking of that. My mind has been occupied with the female aspects of the thing. I’m not impatient. Evidently Beekman and Ansdell think they have got hold of something. They are not the men to go off on a wild-goose chase. Very good: I can wait until they are ready to explain. But what I can’t wait for—or bear to think about—is poor Annie, suffering as she must be suffering to have written that letter.”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that, too, but I’m helpless. I can’t think of anything: I can’t do anything.”
“You don’t seem to be of much use, for a fact,” mused the brother. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if you think best. To-morrow afternoon, after I’ve seen Ansdell, or before that if he doesn’t come, I will go over and see Annie myself. I can go over to the school-house by the back road, and walk home with her. Perhaps by that time, too, I shall have something tangible to explain to her. Until then, I suppose she must continue in suspense. It is the penance she ought to do, I dare say—” the brother added this in mildly sarcastic rebuke—“for the luxury of being in love with such a transcendant genius as you are.”
Something like an hour before this, Annie had dismissed her classes and locked up the school-house for the night. As she did so, she mentally wondered if she should ever have the strength to walk home.
The day had been one long-drawn out torture from its first waking moments—indeed there seemed to have been nothing but anguish since her interview with Isabel the previous day, not even the oblivion of sleep. Her impulse, and her grandmother’s advice, had been to remain at home; but she had already left the school unopened on the fatal Tuesday, in the shock of the news of Albert’s death: to absent herself a second day might prejudice the trustees against her. Besides, the occupation might serve to divert her thoughts.
Perhaps the trustees were satisfied, she said to herself now, locking the door, but there certainly had been no relief in the day’s labor. The little children had been unwontedly stupid and trying; the older boys, some of them almost of her own age, had never before seemed so unruly and loutishly impertinent. Even these experiences alone would have availed to discourage her; as it was they added the stinging of insects to her great heartache. With some organizations, the lesser pain nullifies the other. She seemed to have a capacity for suffering, now, which took in, and made the most of, every element of agony, great and small. She turned from the rusty, squat little old building and began her journey homeward, with hanging head and a deadly sense of weakness, physical and spiritual, crushing her whole being.
Milton Squires had been watching for her appearance for some time, from a sheltering ridge of berry-bushes and wall beyond the school, and he hurried now to overtake her, clumsily professing surprise at the meeting.
“I jes happened up this way,” he said, “Dunnao when I be’n up here on this road b’fore. Never dreampt o’ seein’ yeou.”
She made answer of some sort, as unintelligible and meaningless to herself as to him. She did not know whether it was a relief or otherwise that he was evidently going to walk home with her. Perhaps, if she let him do all the talking, the companionship would help her to get over the ordeal of the return less miserably. But she could not, and she would not, talk.
“I kind o’ thought mebbe you’d shet up schewl fer a week ’r sao,” he proceeded, ingratiatingly, “but then agin I said to m’self ‘no siree, she ain’t thet kine of a gal. Ef she’s got any work to dew, she jes’ does it, rain ’r shine’. Thet’s what I said. Pooty bad business, wa’n’t it, this death of yer cousin?”
“Dreadful!” she murmured, wishing he would talk of something else.
“Yes, sir, it’s about’s bad’s they make ’em. Some queer things ’baout it tew. I s’pose yeh ain’t heerd no gossup ’baout it, hev yeh?”
“No,” she whispered with a sinking heart; a real effort was needed to speak the other words: “What gossip? Is there gossip?”
“Dunnao’s yeh kin call it real gossup. P’raps nobuddy else won’t ’spicion nothin’. But to me they’s some things ’baout it thet looks darned cur’ous. Of caourse, it ain’t none o’ my business to blab ’baout the thing.”
“No, of course.”
These little words, spoken falteringly, confirmed all that Milton had wished to learn the truth about. Over night a stupendous scheme had budded, unfolded, blossomed in his mind. Originally his primitive intellect had gone no further than the simple idea of committing homicide under circumstances which would inevitably point to an accident. The plan was clever in its very nakedness. But through some row among the women, probably out of jealousy, the hint of murder had been raised, and coupled with Seth’s name. If this hint ripened into a suspicion and an inquiry, a new situation would be created, but Milton could not see any peril in it for him, for Seth would obviously be involved. But it would be better if no questions of murder were raised at all, and matters were allowed to stand. This would not only place Milton’s security beyond peradventure, but it would give him a tremendous grip upon Annie. It was in this direction that his mind had been working steadily since he heard of Annie’s suspicions. The opportunity seemed to have come for placing the cap-stone of acquisition upon the edifice of desire he had so long and patiently been rearing.
As for the poor girl, she had reasoned herself out of the suspicion of Seth’s guilt a thousand times, only to find herself hopelessly relapsing into the quagmire. Milton’s hints came with cruel force to drag her back now, this time lower than ever. Even he seemed to know of it, but he proposed to maintain silence. Of course, he must be induced to keep silent. Oh! the agony of her thoughts!
“You’n’ Seth was allus kine o’ frenly,” he proceeded. “Way back f’m th’ time yeh was boys ’n’ gals.”
“Yes, we always were.”
“’N’ they used to say, daown to th’ corners, that yeou two was baoun’ to make a match of it.”
“There wasn’t anything in that at all!” She spoke decisively, almost peremptorily.
“Oh, they wa’n’t, ay?” There was evident jubilation in his tone. “Never was nothin’ in that talk, ay?”
“No, nothing.”
The pair walked along on the side of the descending road silently for some moments. A farmer passed them, hauling a load of pumpkins up the hill, and exchanged a nod of salutation with Milton. This farmer remarked at his supper-table an hour later, to his wife: “I’d bet a yoke o’ oxen thet Milton Squires is a’makin’ up to the schewl-teacher. I seed ’em walkin’ togither daown th’ hill to-night, ’n’ he was a lookin’ at her like a bear at a sap-trough. It fairly made me grit my teeth to see him, with his broadcloth cloze, ’n’ his watch-chain, ’n’ his on-gainly ways.” To which his helpmeet acidulously responded: “Well, I dunnao’s she c’d dew much better. She’s gittin’ pooty well along, ’n’ fer all his ongainly ways, I don’t see but what he comes on, ‘baout’s well’s some o’ them thet runs him daown. A gal can’t jedge much by a man’s ways haow he’ll turn aout afterwards. I thought I’d got a prize.” Whereupon the honest yeoman chose silence as the better part.
The red sun was hanging in a purplish haze over the edge of the hill as the two descended, and the leaves from Farmer Perkins’s maples rustled softly under their feet. Milton drew near his subject:
“I’ve be’n gittin’ on in th’ world sence yeou fust knew me, hain’t I?”
“Yes, everybody says so.”
“’N’ yit everybody don’t knaow half of it. I ain’t no han’ to tell all I knaow. Ef some folks c’d guess th’ speckle-ations I be’n in, ‘n’ th’ cash I’ve got aout in mor’giges ’n’ sao on, it’d make ’em open their eyes. It’s th’ still saow thet gits th’ swill, as my mother use’ to say, ’n’ I’ve be’n still enough abaout it, I guess.”
His coarse chuckle jarred on the girl’s nerves, but the importance of placating him was uppermost in her mind, and she answered, as pleasantly as she could:
“I’m sure I’m glad, Milton. You have worked hard all your life, and you deserve it.”
“Yeh air glad, reely naow?”
“Why yes! Why shouldn’t I be? It always pleases me to hear of people’s prosperity.”
“But me purtic’ly?” he persisted, earnestly.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, absent-mindedly. Then the odd nature of the question occurred to her, but she was too distrait to think consecutively, and she added no comment to her answer.
“Well, it eases me to hear yeh say thet,” he went on, with awkward deliberation, “fer they’s somethin’ I’ve be’n wantin’ to say to yeh fer a long time. I don’t s’paose you reelize haow well off I am?” She did not answer. Her mind seemed to refuse to act, and she heard only the sound of his words. He took her reply for granted and continued:
“I c’d eena’most buy up thet farm there”—pointing over to the Fairchild acres on the slope, now within sight—“’n’ I ain’t so all-fired sure yit thet I won’t, nuther! But what’s th’ good o’ money, on-less yeh kin git what yeh want with it, ay?”
The impulse of her soul-weariness was to let this aimless question pass like the other, without reply. But she was reminded of the importance of being pleasant to this tedious man, and so answered, entirely at random:
“What is it you want, Milton?”
“I dunnao—I’m kind o’ feared o’ puttin’ my foot in it; yeh won’t be mad ef I tell yeh?”
“Why no, of course not. What is it?”
“Well, then,” he blurted out, “I want yeou!” The girl looked dumbly at him, at first not realizing at all the meaning of his words, then held as in a vise between the disposition to reply to him as he deserved and the danger, the terrible danger, of angering him. There fluttered through her senses, too, a mad kind of yearning to shriek with laughter—born of the hysterical state of her long-oppressed nerves. She eventually neither rebuked nor laughed, but said vacuously:
“Want me?”
“Ef yeou’ll marry me, I’ll make one o’ th’ fust ladies o’ Dearb’rn Caounty aout o’ yeh. Yeh need never lay yer finger to a stitch o’ work agin, no more’n Is’bel did, daown yander.” He spoke eagerly, with more emotion in his strident voice than she had ever heard there before.
The difficulty of her position crushed her courage. Of course she must say no, but how do it without affronting him? The idea of reasoning him gently out of the preposterous wish came to her.
“This is some flying notion in your head, Milton,” she said, civilly. “You will have forgotten it by next week.”
“Forgott’n it, ay! Yeh think sao? What ’f I told yeh I hain’t thought o’ nothin’ else fur nigh onto ten year?”
His tone was too earnest and excited to render further trifling safe. He pulled out of an inner pocket and held up before her a little, irregularly squared tin-type—which she recognized as having been made in whimsical burlesque of her lineaments by an itinerant photographer years before.
“How did you come by that?” she asked, to gain time.
“I got it fr’m th’ man thet made it, ’n’ I paid a dollar bill fer it, tew,” he answered triumphantly, “’n’ I’ve kep it by me ever sence!”
After a pause she said, as calmly as she could: “I never dreamed that such a thought had entered your head. Of course, it—it can’t be.”
“Why not, I’d like to knaow?” he demanded. “Don’t yeh b’lieve what I’ve told yeh ’baout my bein’ well off?”
“That hasn’t anything to do with it. There are other reasons—a good many other reasons.”
“What air they?” His tone was peremptory.
“I don’t know that I can explain them to you. But truly there are so many of them—and your words took me so wholly by surprise, that—that——”
“Yeh needn’t mince matters! I knaow! Yeh hev sot yer idees on Seth! Yeh needn’t tell me yeh hain’t!”
“I won’t talk with you at all if you shout at me in that way, and contradict me flat when I assure you to the contrary.”
Milton paused for a moment, to consider the situation. They were approaching the poplars now, along the lonely turnpike, and the conversation could not be much protracted. What he had to say must be said without delay. But what was it that he wished to say? A dozen inchoate plans rose amorphously to the surface of his mind—to cajole her, to strive further to impress her with his wealth, to entreat her, to attempt to bully her. This last resource ran best with his mood, but there were difficulties. Annie was the reverse of a cowardly girl; there was nothing timid or tremulous about her; if he attempted to intimidate her, the enterprise would most probably be a ridiculous failure, for he stood too much in awe of her self-reliance and intelligence to have confidence in his own mastery.
But stay—she was fearful about Seth. Whether it was true or not that she had no idea of marrying her cousin, she was evidently solicitous for his safety. An idea born of this conclusion swiftly engrafted itself upon the hired man’s general strategy. He lifted his light, shifty eyes from the grass of the roadside path to her face, once more, and said:
“Well, ef you’re a mine to be mean, I kin be mean tew—meaner ’n’ pussly. Ef yeh think I’m goin’ to stan’ still, ’n’ let yeou ’n’ Seth hev it all yer aown way, yer mistaken. I’ve only got to open my maouth to th’ Cor’ner, ’n’ whair’d he be, ’n’ yeou tew?”
There was a certain indefinable suggestion of bravado in his tone which caught Annie’s attention. It was the barest, most meagre of shadows, but she grasped at the chance of substance behind it.
“I don’t believe you could say anything, or do anything, which would injure him,” she said, with more confidence in her words than she felt in her heart.
“Oh, yeh daon’t, ay!” he growled. “Ef yeh knaowed what I knaow, p’raps yeh’d change yer teune.”
“What do you know, then? Come now, let us hear it!” She grew defiant, with an instinctive sense that the inferior being beside her was ready to retreat, if only she could keep up her boldness of front.
“Never yeou mind what I knaow!” he answered, evasively. “It’ll be enough, I guess, to cook his geuse, when th’ time comes.”
“Ah, I thought so!” she exclaimed. “You were simply talking to hear yourself talk—to scare me. Well, you see now that you wasted your breath.”
“Oh, did I! Well, I won’t waste any more of it, then, till I talk to th’ Cor’ner. I kin tell him some things ’baout who rid th’ black mare aout thet night, after Albert’d gone. Guess thet’ll kind ’o’ fix things!”
His slow imagination, working clumsily in the mazes of falsehood, had carried Milton a step too far; his simple plan of substituting Seth for himself in the events of the fatal night miscarried in a way he could not suspect.
Annie did not answer. An exclamation had risen to her lips, but something akin to presence of mind checked it there. Her brain seemed to be working with lightning flashes. The black mare had played a part in the tragedy, then; Seth had certainly not had the animal out that evening; the rushing, almost noiseless apparition which had startled them in the moonlight must have been the mare; it was coming from the direction of Tallman’s; it had a rider; who could that rider have been? and how did Milton know about it?—so the swift thoughts ran, in a chain which seemed luminous in the relief it brought to her. These two questions she could not answer—in her joy at the apparent exculpation of Seth it did not seem specially important that they should be answered—and she had self-possession enough to ask nothing about them.
It was a nice question what she should say to her companion, who was now, without any distinct suspicions on her part, growing luridly loathsome and repugnant in her eyes. The fear of angering him had died away, but a vague sense that mischief might be done by arousing his curiosity or apprehensions had come to take its place. She spoke cautiously:
“I hope you won’t do anything rash, that you would regret afterwards.”
“They ain’t nao need o’ my doin’ nothin’, ef yeou’d only hev some sense. But if yeou’re goin’ to be agin me, ther’s nao tellin’ what I won’t dew,” he answered with sullen terseness.
They had come to the poplars, and Annie stopped at the stile under the thorns.
“I shall have to leave you here,” she said.
“Then yeh won’t hev me, ay? Yeh better think twice ’fore yeh say nao! Yeh won’t git another sich a chance—to live like a lady, ’n’ hev ev’rything yeh want. ’N’ ef yeh dew say nao, yeh kin rest ’sured yeh ain’t heerd th’ last of it, ner him nuther.” Milton’s little green-gray eyes watched her face intently, and he fingered his flaring plated watch-chain with nervous preoccupation. “What d’yeh say, yes’ ’r nao?”
“I can’t say anything more than I have said—now,” she answered, and, stepping over the stile, left him.
For a long time afterward Annie’s conscience debated the justification of that final word, the last one she ever addressed to Milton, and which was obviously intended to keep alive a hope that she knew to be absurdly without ground or reason. Sometimes even now she has momentary doubts about it—but she silences cavil by whispering to herself in unanswerable defence: “I thought then that possibly it might be needed to help Seth—perhaps even to save him.”
She had little leisure just then, however, to devote to moral introspection, for Samantha met her, half-way down the thorn-walk, to excitedly tell her that her grandmother, Mrs. Warren, was very much worse than usual.