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The Shoulders of Atlas: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 7 |
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_ Chapter VII Sylvia Whitman, walking home along the familiar village street, felt like a stranger exploring it for the first time. She had never before seen it under the glare of tragedy which her own consciousness threw before her eyes. No tragedy had ever been known in East Westland since she could remember. It had been a peaceful little community, with every day much like the one before and after, except for the happenings of birth and death, which are the most common happenings of nature. But now came death by violence, and even the wayside weeds seemed to wave in a lurid light. Now and then Sylvia unconsciously brushed her eyes, as if to sweep away a cobweb which obstructed her vision. When she reached home, that also looked strange to her, and even her husband's face in the window had an expression which she had never seen before. So also had Horace Allen's. Both men were in the south room. There was in their faces no expression which seemed to denote a cessation of conversation. In fact, nothing had passed between the two men except the simple statement to each other of the news which both had heard. Henry had made no comment, neither had Horace. Both had set, with gloomy, shocked faces, entirely still. But Sylvia, when she entered, forced the situation. "Why should she kill a steady boarder, much as she needed one?" she queried. And Horace responded at once. "There is no possible motive," he said. "The arrest is a mere farce. It will surely prove so." Then Henry spoke. "I don't understand, for my part, why she is arrested at all," he said, grimly. Horace laughed as grimly. "Because there is no one else to arrest, and the situation seems to call for some action," he replied. "But they must have some reason." "All the reason was the girl's (Hannah Simmons, I believe her name is) seeming to be keeping something back, and saying that Miss Hart gave Miss Farrel some essence of peppermint last night, and the fact that the stable-boy seems to be in love with Hannah, and jealous and eager to do her mistress some mischief, and has hinted at knowing something, which I don't believe, for my part, he does." "It is all nonsense," said Sylvia. "Whatever Hannah Simmons is keeping to herself, it isn't killing another woman, or knowing that Lucinda Hart did it. There was no reason for either of those women to kill Miss Farrel, and folks don't do such awful things without reason, unless they're crazy, and it isn't likely that Lucinda and Hannah have both come down crazy together, and I know it ain't in the Hart family, or the Simmons. What if poor Lucinda did give Miss Farrel some essence of peppermint? I gave some to Henry night before last, when he had gas in his stomach, and it didn't kill him." "What they claim is that arsenic was in the peppermint," said Horace, in an odd, almost indifferent voice. "Arsenic in the peppermint!" repeated Sylvia. "You needn't tell me Lucinda Hart put arsenic in the peppermint, though I dare say she had some in the house to kill rats. It's likely that old tavern was overrun with them, and I know she lost her cat a few weeks ago. She told me herself. He was shot when he was out hunting. Lucinda thought somebody mistook him for a skunk. She felt real bad about it. I feel kind of guilty myself. I can't help thinking if I'd just looked round then and hunted up a kitten for poor Lucinda, she never would have had any need to keep rat poison, and nobody would have suspected her of such an awful thing. I suppose Albion Bennet right up and told she'd bought it, first thing. I think he might have kept still, as long as he'd boarded with Lucinda, and as many favors as she'd showed him. He knew as well as anybody that she never gave it to Miss Farrel." "Now, Sylvia, he had to tell if he was asked," Henry said, soothingly, for Sylvia was beginning to show signs of hysterical excitement. "He couldn't do anything else." "He could have forgot," Sylvia returned, shrilly. "Men ain't so awful conscientious about forgetting. He could have forgot." "He had to tell," repeated Henry. "Don't get all wrought up over it, Sylvia." "I can't help it. I begin to feel guilty myself. I know I might have found a kitten. I had a lot on my mind, with moving and everything, but I might have done it. Albion Bennet never had the spunk to do anything but tell all he knew. I suppose he was afraid of his own precious neck." "Ain't it most time to see about dinner?" asked Henry. Then Sylvia went out of the room with a little hysterical twitter like a scared bird, and the two men were left alone. Silence came over them again. Both men looked moodily at nothing. Finally Henry spoke. "One of the worst features of any terrible thing like this is that burdens innumerable are either heaped upon the shoulders of the innocent, or they assume them. There's my poor wife actually trying to make out that she is in some way to blame." "Women are a queer lot," said Horace, in a miserable tone. Then the door opened suddenly, and Sylvia's think, excited face appeared. "You don't suppose they'll send them to prison?" she said. "They'll both be acquitted," said Horace. "Don't worry, Mrs. Whitman." "I've got to worry. How can I help worrying? Even if poor Lucinda is acquitted, lots of folks will always believe it, and her boarders will drop away, and as for Hannah Simmons, I shouldn't be a mite surprised if it broke her match off." "It's a dreadful thing," said Henry; "but don't you fret too much over it, Sylvia. Maybe she killed herself, and if they think that Lucinda won't have any trouble afterwards." "I think some have that opinion now," said Horace. Sylvia sniffed. "A woman don't kill herself as long as she's got spirit enough to fix herself up," she said. "I saw her only yesterday in a brand-new dress, and her hair was crimped tight enough to last a week, and her cheeks--" "Come, Sylvia," said Henry, admonishingly. "You needn't be afraid. I ain't going to talk about them that's dead and gone, and especially when they've gone in such a dreadful way; and maybe it wasn't true," said Sylvia. "But it's just as I say: when a woman is fixed up the way Miss Eliza Farrel was yesterday, she ain't within a week of making way with herself. Seems as if I might have had forethought enough to have got that kitten for poor Lucinda." Sylvia went out again. The men heard the rattle of dishes. Horace rose with a heavy sigh, which was almost a sob, and went out by the hall door, and Henry heard his retreating steps on the stair. He frowned deeply as he sat by the window. He, too, was bearing in some measure the burden of which he had spoken. It seemed to him very strange that under the circumstances Horace had not explained his mysterious meeting with the woman in the grove north of the house the night before. Henry had a certainty as to her identity--a certainty which he could not explain to himself, but which was none the less fixed. No suspicion of Horace, as far as the murder was concerned--if murder it was--was in his mind, but he did entertain a suspicion of another sort: of some possibly guilty secret which might have led to the tragedy. "I couldn't feel worse if he was my own son," he thought. He wished desperately that he had gone out in the grove and interrupted the interview. "I'm old enough to be his father," he told himself, "and I know what young men are. I'm to blame myself." When he heard Horace's approaching footsteps on the stair he turned his face stiffly towards the window, and did not look up when the young man entered the room. But Horace sat down opposite and began speaking rapidly in a low voice. "I don't know but I ought to go to Mr. Meeks with this instead of you," he said; "and I don't know that I ought to go to anybody, but, hang it, I can't keep the little I know to myself any longer--that is, I can't keep the whole of it. Some I never will tell. Mr. Whitman, I don't know the exact minute Miss Hart gave her that confounded peppermint, and Miss Hart seems rather misty about it, and if the girl knows she won't tell; but I suspect I may be the last person who saw that poor woman alive. I found a note waiting for me from her when I arrived yesterday, and--well, she wanted to see me alone about something very particular, and she--" Horace paused and reddened. "Well, you know what women are, and of course there was really no place at the hotel where I could have been sure of a private interview with her. I couldn't go to her room, and one might as well talk in a trolley-car as that hotel parlor; and she didn't want to come here to the house and be closeted with me, and she didn't want to linger after school, for those school-girls are the very devil when it comes to seeing anything; and though I will admit it does sound ridiculous and romantic, I don't see myself what else she could have done. She asked me in her note to step out in the grove about ten o'clock, when the house was quiet. She wrote she had something very important to say to me. So I felt like a fool, but I didn't go to bed, and I stole down the front stairs, and she was out there in the grove waiting for me, and we sat down on the bench there and she told me some things." Henry nodded gravely. He now looked at Horace, and there was relief in his frowning face. "I can tell you some of the things that she said to me," continued Horace, "and I am going to. You are connected with it--that is, you are through your wife. Miss Farrel wasn't Miss at all. She was a married woman." Henry nodded again. "She had not lived with her husband long, however, and she had been married some twenty years ago. She was older than she looked. For some reason she did not get on with him, and he left her. I don't myself feel that I know what the reason was, although she pretended to tell me. She seemed to have a feeling, poor soul, that, beautiful as she was, she excited repulsion rather than affection in everybody with whom she came in contact. 'I might as well be a snake as a woman.' Those were just her words, and, God help her, I do believe there was something true about them, although for the life of me I don't know why it was." Henry looked at Horace with the eyes of a philosopher. "Maybe it was because she wanted to charm," he said. Horace shot a surprised glance at him. He had not expected anything like that from Henry, even though he had long said to himself that there were depths below the commonplace surface. "Perhaps you are right," he said, reflectively. "I don't know but you are. She was a great beauty, and possibly the knowledge of it made her demand too much, long for too much, so that people dimly realized it and were repelled instead of being attracted. I think she loved her husband for a long time after he left her. I think she loved many others, men and women. I think she loved women better than a woman usually does, and women could not abide her. That I know; even the school-girls fought shy of her." "I have seen the Ayres girl with her," said Henry. Horace changed color. "She is not one of the school-girls," he replied, hastily. "I think I have heard Sylvia say that Mrs. Ayres had asked her there to tea." "Yes, I believe she has. I think perhaps the Ayres family have paid some attention to her," Horace said, constrainedly. "I have seen the Ayres girl with her a good deal, I know," said Henry. "Very possibly, I dare say. Well, Miss Farrel did not think she or any one else cared about her very much. She told me that none of her pupils did, and I could not gainsay her, and then she told me what I feel that I must tell you." Horace paused. Henry waited. Then Horace resumed. He spoke briefly and to the purpose. "Miss Abrahama White, who left her property to your wife, had a sister," he said. "The sister went away and married, and there was a daughter. First the father died, then the mother. The daughter, a mere child at the time, was left entirely destitute. Miss Farrel took charge of her. She did not tell her the truth. She wished to establish if possible some claim upon her affection. She considered that to claim a relationship would be the best way to further her purpose. The girl was told that Miss Farrel was her mother's cousin. She was further told that she had inherited a very considerable property from her mother, whereas she had not inherited one cent. Miss Farrel gave up her entire fortune to the child. She then, with the nervous dread of awakening dislike instead of love which filled her very soul, managed to have the child, in her character of an heiress, established in a family moving in the best circles, but sadly in need of money. Then she left her, and began supporting herself by teaching. The girl is now grown to be a young woman, and Miss Farrel has not dared see her more than twice since she heaped such benefits upon her. It has been her dream that some day she might reveal the truth, and that gratitude might induce love, but she has never dared put it to the test. Lately she has not been very well, and the thought has evidently come to her more than once that she might die and never accomplish her purpose. I almost think the poor woman had a premonition. She gave me last night the girl's address, and she made me promise that in case of her death she should be sent for. 'I can't bear to think that nobody will come,' she said. Of course I laughed at her. I thought her very morbid, but--well, I have telegraphed to the girl to come in time for the funeral. She is in New York. She and the people with whom she lives have just returned from the South." "She must come here," Henry said. "I could think of no other place," said Horace. "You think Mrs. Whitman--" "Of course," Henry said. He started up to speak to Sylvia, but Horace stopped him. "I forgot," he said, quickly. "Miss Farrel asked me to promise that I should not tell the girl, in case of her death before she had an opportunity of doing so, of what she had done for her. 'Let her come just because she thinks I am her relative,' she said, 'and because she may possibly feel kindly towards me. If I can have no comfort from it while I am alive, there is no need for her to know her obligation.'" "It sounds like a mighty queer story to tell Sylvia," Henry said. Then he opened the door and called, and Mrs. Whitman immediately responded. Her hands were white with flour. She had been making biscuits. She still looked nervous and excited. "What is to pay now?" said she. Henry told her in few words. "You mean that Abrahama's niece was taken care of by Miss Farrel when her mother died, and Miss Farrel got a place for her to live with some New York folks, and you mean Miss Farrel was related to her mother?" said Sylvia. She looked sharply at Henry. "Yes," he replied, feebly. Horace stood looking out of the window. "She wa'n't," said Sylvia. "Now, Sylvia." "If that poor woman that's gone wanted the girl to think she was her relation enough to lie about it I sha'n't tell her, you can depend on that; but it's a lie," said Sylvia. "Miss Farrel wa'n't no relation at all to Susy White. She couldn't have been unless she was related to me, too, on my mother's side, and she wa'n't. I know all about my mother's family. But I sha'n't tell her. I'm glad Miss Farrel got a home for her. It was awful that the child was left without a cent. Of course she must come here, and stay, too. She ought to live with her folks. We've got enough to take care of her. If we can't do as much as rich folks, I guess it will be full as well for the girl." Henry opened his lips to speak, but a glance from Horace checked him. Sylvia went on talking nervously. The odd manner and tone which Henry had noticed lately in everything she said and did seemed intensified. She talked about what room she should make ready for the girl. She made plan after plan. She was very pale, then she flushed. She walked aimlessly about gesturing with her floury hands. Finally Henry took her firmly by the shoulder. "Come, Sylvia," he said, "she won't be here until night. Now you had better get dinner. It's past twelve." Sylvia gave a quick, frightened glance at him. Then she went silently out of the room. "Mrs. Whitman does not seem well," Horace said, softly. "I think her nerves are all out of order with what she has gone through with lately," said Henry. "It has been a great change that has come to us both, Mr. Allen. When a man and woman have lived past their youth, and made up their minds to bread and butter, and nothing else, and be thankful if you get that much, it seems more like a slap than a gift of Providence to have mince-pie thrust into their mouths. It has been too much for Sylvia, and now, of course, this awful thing that has happened has upset her, and--" He stopped, for Sylvia opened the door suddenly. "If she wa'n't dead and gone, I wouldn't believe one word of such a tomfool story," said she, with vicious energy. Then she shut the door again. At dinner Sylvia ate nothing, and did not talk. Neither Henry nor Horace said much. In the afternoon Horace went out to make some arrangements which he had taken upon himself with regard to the dead woman, and presently Henry followed him. Sylvia worked with feverish energy all the afternoon setting a room in order for her expected guest. It was a pretty room, with an old-fashioned paper--a sprawling rose pattern on a tarnished satin ground. The room overlooked the grove, and green branches pressed close against two windows. There was a pretty, old-fashioned dressing-table between the front windows, and Sylvia picked a bunch of flowers and put them in a china vase, and set it under the glass, and thought of the girl's face which it would presently reflect. "I wonder if she looks like her mother," she thought. She stood gazing at the glass, and shivered as though with cold. Then she started at a sound of wheels outside. In front of the house was Leander Willard, who kept the livery-stable of East Westland. He was descending in shambling fashion over the front wheels, steadying at the same time a trunk on the front seat; and Horace Allen sprang out of the back of the carriage and assisted a girl in a flutter of dark-blue skirts and veil. "She's come!" said Sylvia. _ |
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