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The Shoulders of Atlas: A Novel, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 9 |
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_ Chapter IX Horace was right in his assumption that the case against Lucinda Hart and Hannah Simmons would never be pressed. Although it was proved beyond a doubt that Eliza Farrel had swallowed arsenic in a sufficiently large quantity to cause death, the utter absence of motive was in the favor of the accused, and then the suspicion that the poison might have been self-administered, if not with suicidal intent, with another, steadily gained ground. Many thought Miss Farrel's wonderful complexion might easily have been induced by the use of arsenic. At all events, the evidence against Lucinda and Hannah, when sifted, was so exceedingly flimsy, and the lack of motive grew so evident, that there was no further question of bringing them to trial. Still the suspicion, once raised, grew like a weed, as suspicion does grow in the ready soil of the human heart. For a month after the tragedy it seemed as if Sylvia Whitman's prophecy concerning the falling off of the hotel guests was destined to fail. The old hostelry was crowded. Newspaper men and women from all parts of the country flocked there, and also many not connected with the press, who were morbidly curious and revelled in the sickly excitement of thinking they might be living in the house of a poisoner. Lucinda Hart sent in her resignation from the church choir. Her experience, the first time she had sung after Eliza Farrel's death, did not exactly daunt her; she was not easily daunted. But she had raised her husky contralto, and lifted her elderly head in its flowered bonnet before that watchful audience of old friends and neighbors, and had gone home and written her stiffly worded note of resignation. She attended church the following Sunday. She said to herself that her absence might lead people to think there was some ground for the awful charge which had been brought against her. She bought a smart new bonnet and sat among the audience, and heard Lucy Ayres, who had a beautiful contralto, sing in her place. Lucy sang well, and looked very pretty in her lace blouse and white hat, but she was so pale that people commented on it. Sylvia, who showed a fairly antagonistic partisanship for Lucinda, spoke to her as she came out of church, and walked with her until their roads divided. Sylvia left Henry to follow with Rose Fletcher, who was still staying in East Westland, and pressed close to Lucinda. "How are you?" she said. "Well enough; why shouldn't I be?" retorted Lucinda. It was impossible to tell from her manner whether she was grateful for, or resented, friendly advances. She held her head very high. There was a stiff, jetted ornament on her new bonnet, and it stood up like a crest. She shot a suspicious glance at Sylvia. Lucinda in those days entertained that suspicion of suspicion which poisons the very soul. "I don't know why you shouldn't be," replied Sylvia. She herself cast an angry glance at the people around them, and that angry glance was like honey to Lucinda. "You were a fool to give up your place in the choir," said Sylvia, still with that angry, wandering gaze. "I'd sung. I'd shown 'em; and I'd sung out of tune if I'd wanted to." "You don't know what it was like last Sunday," said Lucinda then. She did not speak complainingly or piteously. There was proud strength in her voice, but it was emphatic. "I guess I do know," said Sylvia. "I saw everybody craning their necks, and all them strangers. You've got a lot of strangers at the hotel, haven't you, Lucinda?" "Yes," said Lucinda, and there was an echo in her monosyllable like an expletive. Sylvia nodded sympathizingly. "Some of them write for the papers, I suppose?" said she. "Some of them. I know it's my bread-and-butter to have them, but I never saw such a parcel of folks. Talk about eyes in the backs of heads, they're all eyes and all ears. Sometimes I think they ain't nothing except eyes and ears and tongue. But there's a lot besides who like to think maybe they're eating poison. I know I'm watched every time I stir up a mite of cake, but I stir away." "You must have your hands full." "Yes; I had to get Abby Smith to come in and help." "She ain't good for much." "No, she ain't. She's thinkin' all the time of how she looks, instead of what she's doing. She waits on table, though, and helps wash dishes. She generally forgets to pass the vegetables till the meat is all et up, and they're lucky if they get any butter; but I can't help it. They only pay five dollars a week, and get a lot of enjoyment out of watching me and Hannah, and they can't expect everything." The two women walked along the country road. There were many other people besides the church-going throng in their Sunday best, but they seemed isolated, although closely watched. Presently, however, a young man, well dressed in light gray, with a white waistcoat, approached them. "Why, good-day, Miss Hart!" he said, raising his hat. Lucinda nodded stiffly and walked on. She did not speak to him, but to Sylvia. "He is staying at the hotel. He writes for a New York paper," she informed Sylvia, distinctly. The young man laughed. "And Miss Hart is going to write for it, too," he said, pleasantly and insinuatingly. "She is going to write an article upon how it feels to be suspected of a crime when one is innocent, and it will be the leading feature in next Sunday's paper. She is to have her picture appear with it, too, and photographs of her famous hotel and the room in which the murder was said to have been committed, aren't you, Miss Hart?" "Yes," replied Lucinda, with stolidity. Sylvia stared with amazement. "Why, Lucinda!" she gasped. "When I find out folks won't take no, I give 'em yes," said Lucinda, grimly. "I knew I could finally persuade Miss Hart," said the young man, affably. He was really very much of a gentleman. He touched his hat, striking into a pleasant by-path across a field to a wood beyond. "He's crazy over the country," remarked Lucinda; and then she was accosted again, by another gentleman. This time he was older and stouter, and somewhat tired in his aspect, but every whit as genially persuasive. "He writes for a New York paper," said Lucinda to Sylvia, in exactly the same tone which she had used previously. "He wants me to write a piece for his paper on my first twenty-four hours under suspicion of crime." "And you are going to write it, aren't you, Miss Hart?" asked the gentleman. "Yes," replied Lucinda, with alacrity. This time the gentleman looked a trifle suspicious. He pressed his inquiry. "Can you let us have the copy by Wednesday?" he asked. "Yes," said Lucinda. Her "yes" had the effect of a snap. The gentleman talked a little more at length with regard to his article, and Lucinda never failed with her ready "yes." They were almost at the turn of the road, where Sylvia would leave Lucinda, when a woman appeared. She was young, but she looked old, and her expression was one of spiritual hunger. "This lady writes for a Boston paper," said Lucinda. "She came yesterday. She wants me to write a piece for her paper upon women's unfairness to women." "Based upon the late unfortunate occurrence at Miss Hart's hotel," said the woman. "Yes," said Lucinda, "of course; everything is based on that. She wants me to write a piece upon how ready women are to accuse other women of doing things they didn't do." "And you are going to write it?" said the woman, eagerly. "Yes," said Lucinda. "Oh, thank you! you are a perfect dear," said the woman. "I am so much pleased, and so will Mr. Evans be when he hears the news. Now I must ask you to excuse me if I hurry past, for I ought to wire him at once. I can get back to Boston to-night." The woman had left them, with a swish of a frilled silk petticoat under a tailored skirt, when Sylvia looked at Lucinda. "You ain't goin' to?" said she. "No." "But you said so." "You'd say anything to get rid of them. I've said no till I found out they wouldn't take it, so then I began to say yes. I guess I've said yes, in all, to about seventeen." "And you don't mean to write a thing?" "I guess I ain't going to begin writing for the papers at my time of life." "But what will they do?" "They won't get the pieces." "Can't they sue you, or anything?" "Let them sue if they want to. After what I've been through lately I guess I sha'n't mind that." "And you are telling every one of them you'll write a piece?" "Of course I am. It's the only thing they'll let me tell them. I want to get rid of them somehow." Sylvia looked at Lucinda anxiously. "Is it true that Albion Bennet has left?" she said. "Yes; he was afraid of getting poisoned. Mrs. Jim Jones has taken him. I reckon I sha'n't have many steady boarders after this has quieted down." "But how are you going to get along, Lucinda?" "I shall get along. Everybody gets along. What's heaped on you you have to get along with. I own the hotel, and I shall keep more hens and raise more garden truck, and let Hannah go if I can't pay her. I shall have some business, enough to keep me alive, I guess." "Is it true that Amos Quimby has jilted Hannah on account of--?" "Guess so. He hasn't been near her since." "Ain't it a shame?" "Hannah's got to live with what's heaped on her shoulders, too," said Lucinda. "Folks had ought to be thankful when the loads come from other people's hands, instead of their own, and make the best of it. Hannah has got a good appetite. It ain't going to kill her. She can go away from East Westland by-and-by if she wants to, and get another beau. Folks didn't suspect her much, anyway. I've got the brunt of it." "Lucinda," said Sylvia, earnestly. "Folks can't really believe you'd go and do such a thing." "It's like flies after molasses," said Lucinda. "I never felt I was so sweet before in my life." "What can they think you'd go and poison a good, steady boarder like that for?" "She paid a dollar a day," said Lucinda. "I know she did." "And I liked her," said Lucinda. "I know lots of folks didn't, but I did. I know what folks said, and I'll own I found things in her room, but I don't care what folks do to their outsides as long as their insides are right. Miss Farrel was a real good woman, and she had a kind of hard time, too." "Why, I thought she had a real good place in the high-school; and teachers earn their money dreadful easy." "It wasn't that." "What was it?" Lucinda hesitated. "Well," she said, finally, "it can't do her any harm, now she's dead and gone, and I don't know as it was anything against her, anyway. She just set her eyes by your boarder." "Not Mr. Allen? You don't mean Mr. Allen, Lucinda?" "What other boarder have you had? I've known about it for a long time. Hannah and me both have known, but we never opened our lips, and I don't want it to go any further now." "How did you find out?" "By keeping my eyes and ears open. How does anybody find out anything?" "I don't believe Mr. Allen ever once thought of her," said Sylvia, and there was resentment in her voice. "Of course he didn't. Maybe he'll take a shine to that girl you've got with you now." "Neither one of them has even thought of such a thing," declared Sylvia, and her voice was almost violent. "Well, I don't know," Lucinda said, indifferently. "I have had too much to look out for of my own affairs since the girl came to know anything about that. I only thought of their being in the same house. I always had sort of an idea myself that maybe Lucy Ayres would be the one." "I hadn't," said Sylvia. "Not but she--well, she looked real sick to-day. She didn't look fit to stand up there and sing. I should think her mother would be worried about her. And she don't sing half as well as you do." "Yes, she does," replied Lucinda. "She sings enough sight better than I do." "Well, I don't know much about music," admitted Sylvia. "I can't tell if anybody gets off the key." "I can," said Lucinda, firmly. "She sings enough sight better than I can, but I sang plenty well enough for them, and if I hadn't been so mad at the way I've been treated I'd kept on. Now they can get on without me. Lucy Ayres does look miserable. There's consumption in her family, too. Well, it's good for her lungs to sing, if she don't overdo it. Good-bye, Sylvia." "Good-bye," said Sylvia. She hesitated a moment, then she said: "Don't you mind, Lucinda. Henry and I think just the same of you as we've always thought, and there's a good many besides us. You haven't any call to feel bad." "I don't feel bad," said Lucinda. "I've got spunk enough and grit enough to bear any load that I 'ain't heaped on my own shoulders, and the Lord knows I 'ain't heaped this. Don't you worry about me, Sylvia. Good-bye." Lucinda went her way. She held her nice black skirt high, but her plodding feet raised quite a cloud of dust. Her shoulders were thrown back, her head was very erect, the jetted ornament on her bonnet shone like a warrior's crest. She stepped evenly out of sight, as evenly as if she had been a soldier walking in line and saying to himself, "Left, right; left, right." _ |
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