There was no bank in East Westland, none nearer than Alford, six miles away, and poor Albion was at his wit's end to keep his daily receipts with safety to them and himself. He had finally hit upon the expedient of leaving them every night with Sidney Meeks, who was afraid of nothing. “If anything happens to your money, Albion,” said Sidney, “I'll make it good, even if I have to sell my wine-cellar.” Albion was afraid even to keep a revolver. His state of terror was pitiable, and the more so because he had a fear of betraying it, which was to some extent the most cruel fear of all. Sidney Meeks was probably the only person in East Westland who understood how it was with him, and he kept his knowledge to himself. Sidney was astute on a diagnosis of his fellow-men's mentalities, and he had an almost womanly compassion even for those weaknesses of which he himself was incapable.
“Good; I'll keep what you have in your till every night for you, and welcome, Albion,” he had said. “I understand how you feel, living in the hotel the way you do.”
“Nobody knows who is coming and going,” said Albion, blinking violently.
“Of course one doesn't, and nobody would dream of coming to my house. Everybody knows I am as poor as Job's off ox. You might get a revolver, but I wouldn't recommend it. You look to me as if you might sleep too sound to make it altogether safe.”
“I do sleep pretty sound,” admitted Albion, although he did not quite see the force of the other man's argument.
“Just so. Any man who sleeps very sound has no right to keep a loaded revolver by him. He seldom, if ever, wakes up thoroughly if he hears a noise, and he's mighty apt to blaze away at the first one he sees, even if it's his best friend. No, it is not safe.”
“I don't think it's very safe myself,” said Albion, in a relieved tone. “Miss Hart is always prowling around the house. She doesn't sleep very well, and she's always smelling smoke or hearing burglars. She's timid, like most women. I might shoot her if I was only half awake and she came opposite my door.”
“Exactly,” said Sidney Meeks. When Albion went away he stared after his bulky, retreating back with a puzzled expression. He shook his head. Fear was the hardest thing in the world for him to understand. “That great, able-bodied man must feel mighty queer,” he muttered, as he stowed away the pile of greasy bank-notes and the nickels collected at the soda-fountain in a pile of disordered linen in a bureau drawer. He chuckled to himself at the eagerness with which Albion had seized upon the fancy of his shooting Miss Hart.
Lucinda Hart kept the hotel. She had succeeded to its proprietorship when her father died. She was a middle-aged woman who had been pretty in a tense, nervous fashion. Now the prettiness had disappeared under the strain of her daily life. It was a hard struggle to keep the East Westland House and make both ends meet. She had very few regular boarders, and transients were not as numerous as they had been in the days of the stage-coaches. Now commercial travellers and business men went to Alford overnight instead of remaining at East Westland. Miss Hart used the same feather-beds which had once been esteemed so luxurious. She kept them clean, well aired, and shaken, and she would not have a spring-bed or a hair mattress in the house. She was conservatism itself. She could no more change and be correct to her own understanding than the multiplication table.
“Feather-beds are good enough for anybody who stays in this hotel, I don't care who it is,” she said. She would not make an exception, even for Miss Eliza Farrel, the assistant teacher in the high school, although she had, with a distrust of the teacher's personality, a great respect for her position. She was inexorable even when the teacher proposed furnishing a spring-bed and mattress at her own expense. “I'd be willing to accommodate, and buy them myself, but it is a bad example,” she said, firmly. “Things that were good enough for our fathers and mothers are good enough for us. Good land! people ain't any different from what they used to be. We haven't any different flesh nor any different bones.”
Miss Hart had a theory that many of the modern diseases might be traced directly to the eschewing of feather-beds. “Never heard of appendicitis in my father's time, when folks slept on good, soft feather-beds, and got their bones and in'ards rested,” she said.
Miss Hart was as timid in her way as Albion Bennet. She never got enough control of her nervous fears to secure many hours of sound sleep. She never was able to wholly rid herself of the conviction that her own wakefulness and watchfulness was essential to the right running of all the wheels of the universe, although she would have been shocked had she fairly known her own attitude. She patrolled the house by night, moving about the low, uneven corridors with a flickering candle—for she was afraid to carry a kerosene lamp—like a wandering spirit.
She was suspicious, too. She never lodged a stranger overnight but she had grave doubts of his moral status. She imagined him a murderer escaped from justice, and compared his face with the pictures of criminals in the newspapers, or she was reasonably sure that he was dishonest, although she had little to tempt him. She employed one chambermaid and a stable-boy, and did the cooking herself. Miss Hart was not a good cook. She used her thin, tense hands too quickly. She was prone to over-measures of saleratus, to under-measures of sugar and coffee. She erred both from economy and from the haste which makes waste. Miss Eliza Farrel often turned from the scanty, poorly cooked food which was place before her with disgust, but she never seemed to lose an ounce of her firm, fair flesh, nor a shade of her sweet color.
Miss Eliza Farrel was an anomaly. She was so beautiful that her beauty detracted from her charm for both sexes. It was so perfect as to awaken suspicion in a world where nothing is perfect from the hand of nature. Then, too, she was manifestly, in spite of her beauty, not in the first flush of youth, and had, it seemed, no right to such perfection of body. Also her beauty was of a type which people invariably associate with things which are undesirable to the rigidly particular, and East Westland was largely inhabited by the rigidly particular.
East Westland was not ignorant. It read of the crimes and follies of the times, but it read of them with a distinct and complacent sense of superiority. It was as if East Westland said: “It is desirable to read of these things, of these doings among the vicious and the worldly, that we may understand whatweare.” East Westland looked upon itself in its day and generation as a lot among the cities of the plain.
It seemed inconceivable that East Westland people should have recognized the fact that Miss Farrel's beauty was of a suspicious type, but they must have had an instinctive knowledge of it. From the moment that Miss Farrel appeared in the village, although she had the best of references, not a woman would admit her into her house as a boarder, and the hotel, with its feather-beds and poor table, was her only resource. Women said of her that she was made up, that no woman of her age ever looked as she did and had a perfectly irreproachable moral character.
As for the men, they admired her timidly, sheepishly, and also a trifle contemptuously. They did not admit openly the same opinion as the women with regard to the legitimacy of her charms, but they did maintain it secretly. It did not seem possible to many of them that a woman could look just as Eliza Farrel did and be altogether natural. As for her character, they also agreed with the feminine element secretly, although they openly declared the women were jealous of such beauty. It did not seem that such a type could be anything except a dangerous one.
Miss Eliza Farrel was a pure blonde, as blond as a baby. There was not a line nor blemish in her pure, fine skin. The flush on her rounded cheeks and her full lips was like a baby's. Her dimples were like a baby's. Her blond hair was thick and soft with a pristine softness and thickness which is always associated with the hair of a child. Her eyebrows were pencilled by nature, as if nature had been art. Her smile was as fixedly radiant as a painted cherub's. Her figure had that exuberance and slenderness at various portions which no woman really believes in. She looked like a beautiful doll, with an unvarying loveliness of manner and disposition under all vicissitudes of life, but she was undoubtedly something more than a doll.
Even the women listened dubiously and incredulously when she talked. They had never heard a woman talk about such things in the way she did. She had a fine education, being a graduate of one of the women's colleges. She was an accomplished musician and a very successful teacher. Her pupils undoubtedly progressed, although they did not have the blind love and admiration which pupils usually have for a beautiful teacher. To this there was one exception.
Miss Farrel always smiled, never frowned or reprimanded. It was said that Miss Farrel had better government than Miss Florence Dean, the other assistant. Miss Dean was plain and saturnine, and had no difficulty in obtaining a good boarding-place, even with the mother of a marriageable daughter, who had taken her in with far-sighted alacrity. She dreamed of business calls concerning school matters, which Mr. Horace Allen, the principal, might be obliged to make, and she planned to have her daughter, who was a very pretty girl, in evidence. But poor Miss Farrel was thrown back upon the mercies of Miss Hart and the feather-beds and the hotel.
There were other considerations besides the feather-beds and the poor fare which conspired to render the hotel an undesirable boarding-place. Miss Farrel might as well have been under the espionage of a private detective as with Miss Hart. If Miss Hart was suspicious of dire mischief in the cases of her other boarders, she was certain in the case of Eliza Farrel. She would not have admitted her under her roof at all had she not been forced thereto by the necessity for money. Miss Hart herself took care of Miss Farrel's room sometimes. She had no hesitation whatever in looking through her bureau drawers; indeed, she considered it a duty which she owed herself and the character of her house. She had taken away the keys on purpose, and had told miss Farrel, without the slightest compunction, that they were lost. The trunks were locked, and she had never been able to possess herself of the keys, but she felt sure that they contained, if not entire skeletons, at least scattered bones.
She discovered once, quite in open evidence on Miss Farrel's wash-stand, a little porcelain box of pink-tinted salve, and she did not hesitate about telling Hannah, her chambermaid, the daughter of a farmer in the vicinity, and a girl who was quite in her confidence. She called Hannah into the room and displayed the box. “This is what she uses,” she said, solemnly.
Hannah, who was young, but had a thick, colorless skin, nodded with an inscrutable expression.
“I have always thought she used something on her face,” said Miss Hart. “You can't cheatme.”
Hannah took up a little, ivory-backed nail-polisher which was also on the wash-stand. “What do you suppose this is?” she asked, timidly, in an awed whisper.
“How do I know? I never use such things myself, and I never knew women who did before,” said Miss Hart, severely. “I dare say, after she puts the paint on, she has to use something to smooth it down where the natural color of the skin begins. How do I know?”
Hannah laid the nail-polisher beside the box of salve. She was very much in love with the son of the farmer who lived next to her father's. The next Thursday afternoon was her afternoon off. She watched her chance, and stole into Miss Farrel's room, applied with trembling fingers a little of the nail-salve to her cheeks, then carefully rubbed it all off with the polisher. She then went to her own room, put on a hat and thick veil, and succeeded in getting out of the hotel without meeting Miss Hart. She was firmly convinced that she was painted, and that her cheeks had the lovely peach-bloom of Miss Farrel's.
It seems sometimes as if one's own conviction concerning one's self goes a long way towards establishing that of other people. Hannah, that evening, when she met the young man whom she loved, felt that she was a beauty like Miss Eliza Farrel, and before she went home he had told her how pretty she was and asked her to marry him, and Hannah had consented, reserving the right to work enough longer to earn a little more money. She wished to be married in a white lace gown like one in Miss Farrel's closet. Miss Hart had called Hannah in to look at it one morning when Miss Farrel was at school.
“What do you suppose a school-teacher can want of a dress like this here in East Westland?” Miss Hart had asked, severely. “She can't wear it to meeting, or a Sunday-school picnic, or a church sociable, or even to a wedding in this place. Look at it. It's cut low-neck.”
Hannah had looked. That night she had, in the secrecy of her own room, examined her own shoulders, and decided that although they might not be as white as Miss Farrel's, they were presumably as well shaped. She had resolved then and there to be married in a dress like that. Along with her love-raptures came the fairy dream of the lace gown. For once in her life she would be dressed like a princess.
When she told Miss Hart she was going to be married, her mistress sniffed. “You can do just as you like, and you will do just as you like, whether or no,” she said; “but you are a poor fool. Here you are getting good wages, and having it all to spend on yourself; and you ain't overworked, and you'll find out you'll be overworked and have a whole raft of young ones, and not a cent of wages, except enough to keep soul and body together, and just enough to wear so you won't be took up for going round indecent. I've seen enough of such kind of work.”
“Amos will make a real good husband; everybody says he's the best match anywhere around,” replied Hannah, crimson with blushes and half crying.
Miss Hart sniffed again. “Jump into the fire if you want to,” said she. “I hope you ain't going before fall, and leave me in the lurch in hot weather, and preserves to be put up.”
Hannah said she would not think of getting married before November. She did not say a word about the white lace gown, but that evening the desire to look at it again waxed so strong within her that she could not resist it. She was sitting in her own room, after lighting the kerosene lamp in the corridor opposite Miss Farrel's room, which was No. 20, and she was thinking hard about the lace gown, and wondering how much it cost, when she started suddenly. As she sat beside her window, her own lamp not yet lit, she had seen a figure flit past in the misty moonlight, and she was sure it was Miss Farrel. She reflected quickly that it was Thursday evening, when Miss Hart always went to prayer-meeting. Hannah had a cold and had stayed at home, although it was her day off. Miss Hart cherished the belief that her voice was necessary to sustain the singing at any church meeting. She had, in her youth, possessed a fine contralto voice. She possessed only the remnant of one now, but she still sang in the choir, because nobody had the strength of mind to request her to resign. Sunday after Sunday she stood in her place and raised her voice, which was horribly hoarse and hollow, in the sacred tunes, and people shivered and endured. Miss Hart never missed a Sunday service, a choir rehearsal, or a Thursday prayer-meeting, and she did not on that Thursday evening.
Hannah went to her door and listened. She heard laughter down in the room which had been the bar but was now the office. A cloud of tobacco smoke floated from there through the corridor. Hannah drew it in with a sense of delicious peace. Her lover smoked, and somehow the odor seemed to typify to her domestic happiness and mystery. She listened long, looking often at the clock on the wall. “She must be gone,” she thought, meaning Miss Hart. She was almost sure that the figure which she had seen flitting under her window in the moonlight was that of the school-teacher. Finally she could not resist the temptation any longer. She hurried down the corridor until she reached No. 20. She tapped and waited, then she tapped and waited again. There was no response. Hannah tried the door. It was locked. She took her chambermaid's key and unlocked the door, looking around her fearfully. Then she opened the door and slid in. She locked the door behind her. Then straight to the closet she went, and that beautiful lace robe seemed to float out towards her. Hannah slipped off her own gown, and in a few moments she stood before the looking-glass, transformed.
She was so radiant, so pleased, that a flush came out on her thick skin; her eyes gleamed blue. The lace gown fitted her very well. She turned this way and that. After all, her neck was not bad, not as white, perhaps, as Miss Farrel's, but quite lovely in shape. She walked glidingly across the room, looking over her shoulder at the trail of lace. She was unspeakably happy. She had a lover, and she was a woman in a fine gown for the first time in her life. The gown was not her own, but she would have one like it. She did not realize that this gown was not hers. She was fairly radiant with the possession of her woman's birthright, this poor farmer's daughter, in whom the instincts of her kind were strong. She glided across the room many times. She surveyed herself in the glass. Every time she looked she seemed to herself more beautiful, and there was something good and touching in this estimation of herself, for she seemed to see herself with her lover's eyes as well as her own.
Finally she sat down in Miss Farrel's rocker; she crossed her knees and viewed with delight the fleecy fall of lace to the floor. Then she fell to dreaming, and her dreams were good. In that gown of fashion she dreamed the dreams of the life to which the women of her race were born. She dreamed of her good housewifery; she dreamed of the butter she would make; she dreamed of her husband coming home to meals all ready and well cooked. She dreamed, underneath the other dreams, of children coming home. She had no realization of the time she sat there. At last she started and turned white. She had heard a key turn in the lock. Then Miss Farrel entered the room—Miss Eliza Farrel, magnificent in pale gray, with a hat trimmed with roses crowning her blond head. Hannah cowered. She tried to speak, but only succeeded in making a sound as if she were deaf and dumb.
Then Miss Farrel spoke. There was a weary astonishment and amusement in her tone, but nothing whatever disturbed or harsh. “Oh, is it you, Hannah?” she said.
Hannah murmured something unintelligible.
Miss Farrel went on, sweetly: “So you thought you would try on my lace gown, Hannah?” she said. “It fits you very well. I see your hands are clean. I am glad of that. Now please take it off and put on your own dress.”
Hannah stood up. She was abject.
“There is nothing for you to be afraid of,” said Miss Farrel. “Only take off the gown and put on your own, or I am afraid Miss Hart—”
Miss Hart's name acted like a terrible stimulus. Hannah unfastened the lace gown with fingers trembling with haste. She stepped out of the shimmering circle which it made; she was in her own costume in an incredibly short space of time, and the lace gown was in its accustomed place in the closet. Then suddenly Miss Hart opened the door.
“I thought I saw a light,” said she. She looked from one to the other. “It is after eleven o'clock,” she said, further.
“Yes,” said Miss Farrel, sweetly. “I have been working. I had to look over some exercises. I think I am not quite well. Have you any digitalis in the house, Miss Hart? Hannah here does not know. I was sorry to disturb her, and she does not know. I have an irritable heart, and digitalis helps it.”
“No, I have not got any digitalis,” replied Miss Hart, shortly. She gave the hard sound to theg, and she looked suspiciously at both women. However, Miss Farrel was undoubtedly pale, and Miss Hart's face relaxed.
“Go back to your room,” she said to Hannah. “You won't be fit for a thing to-morrow.” Then she said to Miss Farrel: “I don't know what you mean by digitalis. I haven't got any, but I'll mix you up some hot essence of peppermint, and that's the best thing I know of for anything.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Farrel. She had sank into a chair, and had her hand over her heart.
“I'll have it here in a minute,” said Miss Hart. She went out, and Hannah followed her, but not before she and Miss Eliza Farrel had exchanged looks which meant that each had a secret of the other to keep as a precious stolen jewel.
The next morning Henry was very quiet at the breakfast-table. He said good-morning to Horace in almost a surly manner, and Sylvia glanced from one to the other of the two men. After Horace had gone to school she went out in the front yard to interview Henry, who was pottering about the shrubs which grew on either side of the gravel walk.
“What on earth ailed you and Mr. Allen this morning?” she began, abruptly.
Henry continued digging around the roots of a peony. “I don't know as anything ailed us. I don't know what you are driving at,” he replied, lying unhesitatingly.
“Something did ail you. You can't cheat me.”
“I don't know what you are driving at.”
“Something did ail you. You'll spoil that peony. You've got all the weeds out. What on earth are you digging round it that way for? What ailed you?”
“I don't know what you are driving at.”
“You can't cheat me. Something is to pay. For the land's sake, leave that peony alone, and get the weeds out from around that syringa bush. You act as if you were possessed. What ailed you and Mr. Allen this morning? I want to know.”
“I don't know what you are driving at,” Henry said again, but he obediently turned his attention to the syringa bush. He always obeyed a woman in small matters, and reserved his masculine prerogatives for large ones.
Sylvia returned to the house. Her mouth was set hard. Nobody knew how on occasions Sylvia longed for another woman to whom to speak her mind. She loved her husband, but no man was capable of entirely satisfying all her moods. She started to go to the attic on another exploring expedition; then she stopped suddenly, reflecting. The end of her reflection was that she took off her gingham apron, tied on a nice white one trimmed with knitted lace, and went down the street to Mrs. Thomas P. Ayres's. Thomas P. Ayres had been dead for the last ten years, but everybody called his widow Mrs. T. P. Ayres. Mrs. Ayres kept no maid. She had barely enough income to support herself and her daughter. She came to the door herself. She was a small, delicate, pretty woman, and her little thin hands were red with dish-water.
“Good-morning,” she said, in a weary, gentle fashion. “Come in, Mrs. Whitman, won't you?” As she spoke she wrinkled her forehead between her curves of gray hair. She had always wrinkled her forehead, but in some inscrutable fashion the wrinkles had always smoothed out. Her forehead was smooth as a girl's. She smiled, and the smile was exactly in accord with her voice; it was weary and gentle. There was not the slightest joy in it, only a submission and patience which might evince a slight hope of joy to come.
“I've got so much to do I ought not to stop long,” said Sylvia, “but I thought I'd run in a minute.”
“Walk right in,” said Mrs. Ayres, and Sylvia followed her into the sitting-room, which was quite charming, with a delicate flowered paper and a net-work of green vines growing in bracket-pots, which stood all about. There were also palms and ferns. The small room looked like a bower, although it was very humbly furnished. Sylvia sat down.
“You always look so cool in here,” she said, “and it's a warm morning for so early in the season.”
“It's the plants and vines, I guess,” replied Mrs. Ayres, sitting down opposite Mrs. Whitman. “Lucy has real good luck with them.”
“How is Lucy this morning?”
Mrs. Ayres wrinkled her forehead again. “She's in bed with a sick headache,” she said. “She has an awful lot of them lately. I'm afraid she's kind of run down.”
“Why don't you get a tonic?”
“Well, I have been thinking of it, but Dr. Wallace gives such dreadful strong medicines, and Lucy is so delicate, that I have hesitated. I don't know but I ought to take her to Alford to Dr. Gilbert, but she doesn't want to go. She says it is too expensive, and she says there's nothing the matter with her; but she has these terrible headaches almost every other day, and she doesn't eat enough to keep a sparrow alive, and I can't help being worried about her.”
“It doesn't seem right,” agreed Mrs. Whitman. “Last time I was here I thought she didn't look real well. She's got color, a real pretty color, but it isn't the right kind.”
“That's just it,” said Mrs. Ayres, wrinkling her forehead. “The color's pretty, but you can see too plain where the red leaves off and where the white begins.”
“Speaking about color,” said Mrs. Whitman, “I am going to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Do you really think Miss Farrel's color is natural?”
“I don't know. It looks so.”
“I know it does, but I had it real straight that she keeps some pink stuff that she uses in a box as bold as can be, right in sight on her wash-stand.”
“I don't know anything about it,” said Mrs. Ayres, in her weary, gentle fashion. “I have heard, of course, that some women do use such things, but none of my folks ever did, and I never knew anybody else who did.”
Then Sylvia opened upon the subject which had brought her there. She had reached it by a process as natural as nature itself.
“I know one thing,” said she: “I have no opinion of that woman. I can't have. When I hear a woman saying such things as I have heard of her saying about a girl, when I know it isn't true, I make up my mind those things are true about the woman herself, and she's talking about herself, because she's got to let it out, and she makes believe it's somebody else.”
Mrs. Ayres's face took on a strange expression. Her sweet eyes hardened and narrowed. “What do you mean?” she asked, sharply.
“I guess I had better not tell you what I mean. Miss Farrel gives herself clean away just by her looks. No living woman was ever made so there wasn't a flaw in her face but that there was a flaw in her soul. We're none of us perfect. If there ain't a flaw outside, there's a flaw inside; you mark my words.”
“What was it she said?” asked Mrs. Ayres.
“I don't mean to make trouble. I never did, and I ain't going to begin now,” said Sylvia. Her face took on a sweet, hypocritical expression.
“What did she say?”
Sylvia fidgeted. She was in reality afraid to speak, and yet her very soul itched to do so. She answered, evasively. “When a woman talks about a girl running after a man, I think myself she lives in a glass house and can't afford to throw stones,” said she. She nodded her head unpleasantly.
Mrs. Ayres reddened. “I suppose you mean she has been talking about my Lucy,” said she. “Well, I can tell you one thing, and I can tell Miss Farrel, too. Lucy has never run after Mr. Allen or any man. When she went on those errands to your house I had to fairly make her go. She said that folks would think she was running after Mr. Allen, even if he wasn't there, and she has never been, to my knowledge, more than three times when he was there, and then I made her. I told her folks wouldn't be so silly as to think such things of a girl like her.”
“Folks are silly enough for anything. Of course, I knew better; you know that, Mrs. Ayres.”
“I don't know what I know,” replied Mrs. Ayres, with that forceful indignation of which a gentle nature is capable when aroused.
Mrs. Whitman looked frightened. She opened her lips to speak, when a boy came running into the yard. “Why, who is that?” she cried, nervously.
“It's Tommy Smith from Gray & Snow's with some groceries I ordered,” said Mrs. Ayres, tersely. She left the room to admit the boy at the side door. Then Sylvia Whitman heard voices in excited conversation. At the same time she began to notice that the road was filled with children running and exclaiming. She herself hurried to the kitchen door, and Mrs. Ayres turned an ashy face in her direction. At the same time Lucy Ayres, with her fair hair dishevelled, appeared at the top of the back stairs listening. “Oh, it is awful!” gasped Mrs. Ayres. “It is awful! Miss Eliza Farrel is dead, and—”
Sylvia grasped the other woman nervously by the arm. “And what?” she cried.
Lucy gave an hysterical sob and sank down in a slender huddle on the stairs. The grocer's boy looked at them. He had a happy, important expression. “They say—” he began, but Mrs. Ayres forestalled him.
“They say Lucinda Hart murdered her,” she screamed out.
“Good land!” said Sylvia. Lucy sobbed again.
The boy gazed at them with intense relish. He realized the joy of a coup. He had never been very important in his own estimation nor that of others. Now he knew what it was to be important. “Yes,” he said, gayly; “they say she give her rat poison. They've sent for the sheriff from Alford.”
“She never did it in the world. Why, I went to school with her,” gasped Mrs. Ayres.
Sylvia had the same conviction, but she backed it with logic. “What should she do it for?” she demanded. “Miss Farrel was a steady boarder, and Lucinda ain't had many steady boarders lately, and she needed the money. Folks don't commit murder without reason. What reason was there?”
“School ain't going to keep to-day,” remarked the boy, with glee.
“Of course it ain't,” said Sylvia, angrily. “What reason do they give?”
“I 'ain't heard of none,” said the boy. “S'pose that will come out at the trial. Hannah Simmons is going to be arrested, too. They think she knowed something about it.”
“Hannah Simmons wouldn't hurt a fly,” said Sylvia. “What makes them think she knew anything about it?”
“Johnny Soule, that works at the hotel stable, says she did,” said the boy. “They think he knows a good deal.”
Sylvia sniffed contemptuously. “That Johnny Soule!” said she. “He's half Canadian. Father was French. I wouldn't take any stock in what he said.”
“Lucinda never did it,” said Mrs. Ayres. “I went to school with her.”
Lucy sobbed again wildly, then she laughed loudly. Her mother turned and looked at her. “Lucy,” said she, “you go straight back up-stairs and put this out of your mind, or you'll be down sick. Go straight up-stairs and lie down, and I'll bring you up some of that nerve medicine Dr. Wallace put up for you. Maybe you can get to sleep.”
Lucy sobbed and laughed again. “Stop right where you are,” said her mother, with a wonderful, firm gentleness—“right where you are. Put this thing right out of your mind. It's nothing you can help.”
Lucy sobbed and laughed again, and this time her laugh rang so wildly that the grocer's boy looked at her with rising alarm. He admired Lucy. “I say,” he said. “Maybe she ain't dead, after all. I heard all this, but you never can tell anything by what folks say. You had better mind your ma and put it all out of your head.” The grocer's boy and Lucy had been in the same class at school. She had never noticed him, but he had loved her as from an immeasurable distance. Both were very young.
Lucy lifted a beautiful, frightened face, and stared at him. “Isn't it so?” she cried.
“I dare say it ain't. You had better mind your ma.”
“I dare say it's all a rumor,” said Sylvia, soothingly.
Mrs. Ayres echoed her. “All a made-up story, I think,” said she. “Go right up-stairs, Lucy, and put it out of your head.”
Lucy crept up-stairs with soft sobs, and they heard a door close. Then the boy spoke again. “It's so, fast enough,” he said, in a whisper, “but there ain't any need for her to know it yet.”
“No, there isn't, poor child,” said Sylvia.
“She's dreadful nervous,” said Mrs. Ayres, “and she thought a lot of Miss Farrel—more, I guess, than most. The poor woman never was a favorite here. I never knew why, and I guess nobody else ever did. I don't care what she may have intimated—I mean what you were talking about, Sylvia. That's all over. Lucy always seemed to like her, and the poor child is so sensitive and nervous.”
“Yes, she is dreadful nervous,” said Sylvia.
“And I think she ate too much candy yesterday, too,” said Mrs. Ayres. “She made some candy from a recipe she found in the paper. I think her stomach is sort of upset, too. I mean to make her think it's all talk about Miss Farrel until she's more herself.”
“I would,” said Sylvia. “Poor child.”
The grocer's boy made a motion to go. “I wonder if they'll hang her,” he said, cheerfully.
“Hang her!” gasped Mrs. Ayres. “She never did it any more than I did. I went to school with Lucinda Hart.”
“Why should she kill a steady boarder, when the hotel has run down so and she's been so hard up for money?” demanded Sylvia. “Hang her! You'd better run along, sonny; the other customers will be waiting; and you had better not talk too much till you are sure what you are talking about.”
The boy went out and closed the door, and they heard his merry whistle as he raced out of the yard.
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.
Sylvia gave a hurried glance at her hair in the glass. It shone like satin with a gray-gold lustre, folded back smoothly from her temples. She eyed with a little surprise the red spots of excitement which still remained on her cheeks. The changelessness of her elderly visage had been evident to her so long that she was startled to see anything else. “I look as if I had been pulled through a knot-hole,” she muttered.
She took off her gingham apron, thrust it hastily into a bureau drawer in the next room, and tied on a clean white one with a hemstitched border. Then she went down-stairs, the starched white bow of the apron-strings covering her slim back like a Japanese sash. She heard voices in the south room, and entered with a little cough. Horace and the new-comer were standing there talking. The moment Sylvia entered, Horace stepped forward. “I hardly know how to introduce you,” he said; “I hardly know the relationship. But, Mrs. Whitman, here is Miss Fletcher—Miss Rose Fletcher.”
“Who accepts your hospitality with the utmost gratitude,” said Miss Rose Fletcher, extending a little hand in a wonderful loose gray travelling glove. Mrs. Whitman took the offered hand and let it drop. She was rigid and prim. She smiled, but the smile was merely a widening of her thin, pale, compressed lips. She looked at the girl with gray eyes, which had a curious blank sharpness in them. Rose Fletcher was so very well dressed, so very redolent of good breeding and style, that it was difficult at first to comprehend if that was all. Finally one perceived that she was a very pretty girl, of a sweet, childish type, in spite of her finished manners and her very sophisticated clothes. Sylvia at first saw nothing except the clothes, and realized nothing except the finished manner. She immediately called to the front her own manners, which were as finished as the girl's, albeit of a provincial type. Extreme manners in East Westland required a wholly artificial voice and an expression wholly foreign to the usual one. Horace had never before seen Sylvia when all her manners were in evidence, and he gazed at her now in astonishment and some dismay.
“Her mother was own sister to Miss Abrahama White, and Abrahama White's mother and my mother were own cousins on the mother's side. My mother was a White,” she said. The voice came like a slender, reedy whistle from between her moveless, widened lips. She stood as if encased in armor. Her apron-strings stood out fiercely and were quite evident over each hip. She held her head very high, and the cords on her long, thin neck stood out.
Poor Rose Fletcher looked a little scared and a little amused. She cast a glance at Horace, as if for help. He did not know what to say, but tried manfully to say it. “I have never fully known, in such a case,” he remarked, “whether the relationship is second cousin or first cousin once removed.” It really seemed to him that he had never known. He looked up with relief as Henry entered the room, and Sylvia turned to him, still with her manners fully in evidence.
“Mr. Whitman, this is Miss Abrahama White's niece,” said she.
She bowed stiffly herself as Henry bowed. He was accustomed to Sylvia's company manners, but still he was not himself. He had never seen a girl like this, and he was secretly both angry and alarmed to note the difference between her and Sylvia, and all women to which he had been used. However, his expression changed directly before the quick look of pretty, childish appeal which the girl gave him. It was Rose's first advance to all men whom she met, her little feeler put out to determine their dispositions towards her. It was quite involuntary. She was unconscious of it, but it was as if she said in so many words, “Do you mean to be kind to me? Don't you like the look of me? I mean entirely well. There is no harm in me. Please don't dislike me.”
Sylvia saw the glance and interpreted it. “She looks like her mother,” she announced, harshly. It was part of Sylvia's extreme manners to address a guest in the third person. However, in this case, it was in reality the clothes which had occasioned so much formality. She immediately, after she had spoken and Henry had awkwardly murmured his assent to her opinion, noticed how tired the girl looked. She was a slender little thing, and looked delicate in spite of a babyish roundness of face, which was due to bone-formation rather than flesh.
Sylvia gave an impression of shoving the men aside as she approached the girl. “You look tired to death,” said she, and there was a sweet tone in her force voice.
Rose brightened, and smiled at her like a pleased child. “Oh, I am very tired!” she cried. “I must confess to being very tired, indeed. The train was so fast. I came on the limited from New York, you know, and the soft-coal smoke made me ill, and I couldn't eat anything, even if there had been anything to eat which wasn't all full of cinders. I shall be so very glad of a bath and an opportunity to change my gown. I shall have to beg you to allow your maid to assist me a little. My own maid got married last week, unexpectedly, and I have not yet replaced her.”
“I don't keep a hired girl,” said Sylvia. She looked, as Henry had, both angry and abashed. “I will fasten up your dress in the neck if that is what you want,” said she.
“Oh, that is all,” Rose assured her, and she looked abashed, too. Even sophistication is capable of being daunted before utterly unknown conditions. She followed Sylvia meekly up-stairs, and Henry and Horace carried the trunk, which had been left on the front walk, up after them.
Leander Willard was a man of exceeding dignity. He was never willing to carry a trunk even into a house. “If the folks that the trunk belongs to can't heft it in after I've brought it up from the depot, let it set out,” he said. “I drive a carriage to accommodate, but I ain't no porter.”
Therefore, Henry and Horace carried up the trunk and unstrapped it. Rose looked around her with delight. “Oh, what a lovely room!” she cried.
“It gets the morning sun,” said Sylvia. “The paper is a little mite faded, but otherwise it's just as good as it ever was.”
“It is perfectly charming,” said Rose. She tugged at the jewelled pins in her hat. Sylvia stood watching her. When she had succeeded in removing the hat, she thrust her slender fingers through her fluff of blond hair and looked in the glass. Her face appeared over the bunch of flowers, as Sylvia had thought of its doing. Rose began to laugh. “Good gracious!” she said. “For all I took such pains to wash my face in the lavatory, there is a great black streak on my left cheek. Sometimes I think the Pullmans are dirtier than the common coaches—that more soft-coal smoke comes in those large windows; don't you think so?”
Sylvia colored, but her honesty was fearless. “I don't know what a Pullman is,” she said.
Rose stared for a second. “Oh, a parlor-car,” she said. “A great many people always say parlor-car.” Rose was almost apologetic.
“Did you come in a parlor-car?” asked Sylvia. Rose wondered why her voice was so amazed, even aggressive.
“Why, of course; I always do,” said Rose.
“I've seen them go through here,” said Sylvia.
“Do you mind telling me where my bath-room is?” asked Rose, looking vaguely at the doors. She opened one. “Oh, this is a closet!” she cried. “What a lovely large one!”
“There ain't such a thing as a bath-room in this house,” replied Sylvia. “Abrahama White, your aunt, had means, but she always thought she had better ways for her money than putting in bath-rooms to freeze up in winter and run up plumbers' bills. There ain't any bath-room, but there's plenty of good, soft rain-water from the cistern in your pitcher on the wash-stand there, and there's a new cake of soap and plenty of clean towels.”
Rose reddened. Again sophistication felt abashed before dauntless ignorance. She ran to the wash-stand. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” she cried. “Of course this will do beautifully. What a charming old wash-stand!—and the water is delightfully soft.” Rose began splashing water over her face. She had taken off her blue travelling-gown and flung it in a heap over a chair. Sylvia straightened it out carefully, noting with a little awe the rustle of its silk linings; then she hung it in the closet. “I'll hang it here, where it won't get all of a muss,” said she. Already she began to feel a pleasure which she had never known—the pleasure of chiding a young creature from the heights of her own experience. She began harshly, but before she had finished her voice had a tender cadence.
“Oh, thank you,” said the girl, still bending over the wash-basin. “I know I am careless with my things. You see, I have always been so dependent upon my maid to straighten out everything for me. You will do me good. You will teach me to be careful.”
She turned around, wiping her face, and smiling at Sylvia, who felt her very soul melt within her, although she still remained rigidly prim, with her stiff apron-strings standing out at right angles. She looked at the girl's slender arms and thin neck, which was pretty though thin. “You don't weigh much, do you?” she said.
“A little over a hundred, I think.”
“You must eat lots of fresh vegetables and eggs, and drink milk, and get more flesh on your bones,” said Sylvia, and her voice was full of delight, although now—as always, lately—a vague uneasiness lurked in her eyes. Rose, regarding her, thought, with a simple shrewdness which was inborn, that her new cousin must have something on her mind. She wondered if it was her aunt's death. “I suppose you thought a good deal of my aunt who died,” she ventured, timidly.
Sylvia regarded her with quick suspicion. She paled a little. “I thought enough of her,” she replied. “She had always lived here. We were distant-related, and we never had any words, but I didn't see much of her. She kept herself to herself, especially of late years. Of course, I thought enough of her, and it makes me feel real bad sometimes—although I own I can't help being glad to have so many nice things—to think she had to go away and leave them.”
“I know you must feel so,” said Rose. “I suppose you feel sometimes as if they weren't yours at all.”
Sylvia turned so pale that Rose started. “Why, what is the matter? Are you ill?” she cried, running to her. “Let me get some water for you. You are so white.”
Sylvia pushed her away. “There's nothing the matter with me,” she said. “Folks can't always be the same color unless they're painted.” She gave her head a shake as if to set herself right, and turned resolutely towards Rose's trunk. “Can you unpack, yourself, or do you want me to help you?” she asked.
Rose eyed the trunk helplessly, then she looked doubtfully at Sylvia. A woman who was a relative of hers, and who lived in a really grand old house, and was presumably well-to-do, and had no maids at command, but volunteered to do the service herself, was an anomaly to her.
“I'm afraid it will be too much trouble,” she said, hesitatingly. “Marie always unpacked my trunk, but you have no—”
“I guess if I had a girl I wouldn't set her to unpacking your trunk,” said Sylvia, vigorously. “Where is your key?”
“In my bag,” replied Rose, and she searched for the key in her dark-blue, gold-trimmed bag. “Mrs. Wilton's maid, Anne, packed my trunk for me,” she said. “Anne packs very nicely. Mr. Wilton and her sister, Miss Pamela Mack, did not know whether I ought to put on mourning or not for Cousin Eliza, but they said it would be only proper for me to wear black to the funeral. So I have a ready-made black gown and hat in the trunk. I hardly knew how much to bring. I did not know—” She stopped. She had intended to say—“how long I should stay,” but she was afraid.
Sylvia finished for her. “You can stay just as long as you are a mind to,” said she. “You can live here all the rest of your life, as far as that is concerned. You are welcome. It would suit me, and it would suit Mr. Whitman.”
Rose looked at Sylvia in amazement as she knelt stiffly on the floor unlocking her trunk. “Thank you, you are very kind,” she said, feebly. She had a slight sensation of fear at such a wealth of hospitality offered her from a stranger, although she was a distant relative.
“You know this was your own aunt's house and your own aunt's things,” said Sylvia, beginning to remove articles from the trunk, “and I want you to feel at home here—just as if you had a right here.” The words were cordial, but there was a curious effect as if she were repeating a well-rehearsed lesson.
“Thank you,” Rose said again, more feebly than before. She watched Sylvia lifting out gingerly a fluffy white gown, which trailed over her lean arm to the floor. “That is a tea-gown; I think I will put it on now,” said Rose. “It will be so comfortable, and you are not formal here, are you?”
“Eh?”
“You are not formal here in East Westland, are you?”
“No,” replied Sylvia, “we ain't formal. So you want to put on—this?”
“Yes, I think I will.”
Sylvia laid the tea-gown on the bed, and turned to the trunk again.
“You know, of course, that Aunt Abrahama and mamma were estranged for years before mamma died,” said Rose. She sat before the white dressing-table watching Sylvia, and the lovely turn of her neck and her blond head were reflected in the glass above the vase of flowers.
“Yes, I knew something about it.”
“I never did know much, except that Aunt Abrahama did not approve of mamma's marriage, and we never saw her nor heard of her. Wasn't it strange,” she went on, confidentially, “how soon after poor mamma's death all my money came to me?”
Sylvia turned on her. “Have you got money?” said she. “I thought you were poor.”
“Yes, I think I have a great deal of money. I don't know how much. My lawyers take care of it, and there is a trustee, who is very kind. He is a lawyer, too. He was a friend of poor Cousin Eliza's. His name is McAllister. He lives in Chicago, but he comes to New York quite often. He is quite an old gentleman, but very nice indeed. Oh yes, I have plenty of money. I always have had ever since mamma died—at least, since a short time after. But we were very poor, I think, after papa died. I think we must have been. I was only a little girl when mamma died, but I seem to remember living in a very little, shabby place in New York—very little and shabby—and I seem to remember a great deal of noise. Sometimes I wonder if we could have lived beside the elevated road. It does not seem possible that we could have been as poor as that, but sometimes I do wonder. And I seem to remember a close smell about our rooms, and that they were very hot, and I remember when poor mamma died, although I was so young. I remember a great many people, who seemed very kind, came in, and after that I was in a place with a good many other little girls. I suppose it was a school. And then—” Rose stopped and turned white, and a look of horror came over her face.
“What then?” asked Sylvia. “Don't you feel well, child?”
“Yes, I feel well—as well as I ever feel when I almost remember something terrible and never quite do. Oh, I hope I never shall quite remember. I think I should die if I did.”
Sylvia stared at her. Rose's face was fairly convulsed. Sylvia rose and hesitated a moment, then she stepped close to the girl and pulled the fair head to her lean shoulder. “Don't; you mustn't take on so,” she said. “Don't try to remember anything if it makes you feel like that. You'll be down sick.”
“I am trying not to remember, and always the awful dread lest I shall comes over me,” sobbed the girl. “Mr. McAllister says not to try to remember, too, but I am so horribly afraid that I shall try in spite of me. Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela don't know anything about it. I never said anything about it to them. I did once to Mr. McAllister, and I did to Cousin Eliza, and she said not to try, and now I am telling you, I suppose because you are related to me. It came over me all of a sudden.”
Rose sobbed again. Sylvia smoothed her hair, then she shook her by the slender, soft shoulders, and again that overpowering delight seized her. “Come, now,” she said, “don't you cry another minute. You get up and lay your underclothes away in the bureau drawers. It's almost time to get supper, and I can't spend much more time here.”
Rose obeyed. She packed away piles of laced and embroidered things in the bureau drawers, and under Sylvia's directions hung up her gowns in the closet. As she did this she volunteered further information.
“I do remember one thing,” she said, with a shudder, “and I always know if I could remember back of that the dreadful thing would come to me.” She paused for a moment, then she said, in a shocked voice: “Mrs. Whitman.”
“What is it?”
“I really do remember that I was in a hospital once when I was little. I remember the nurses and the little white beds. That was not dreadful at all. Everybody petted me, but that was when the trying not to remember began.”
“Don't you think of it another minute,” Sylvia said, sternly.
“I won't; I won't, really. I—”
“For goodness' sake, child, don't hang that heavy coat over that lace waist—you'll ruin it!” cried Sylvia.
Rose removed the coat hurriedly, and resumed, as Sylvia took it out of her hand: “It was right after that Cousin Eliza Farrel came, and then all that money was left to me by a cousin of father's, who died. Then I went to live with Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela, and I went to school, and I went abroad, and I always had plenty, and never any trouble, except once in a while being afraid I should remember something dreadful. Poor Cousin Eliza Farrel taught school all the time. I never saw her but twice after the first time. When I grew older I tried to have her come and live with me. Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela have always been very nice to me, but I have never loved them. I could never seem to get at enough of them to love.”