The lamps were lighted in the little partitioned-off square which served as the editorial room of the Banner when John returned. He found Seth weakly striving to write something for the editorial page, and in substance laid the situation before him. He was not feeling very amiably toward his young brother at the moment, and he spoke with cold distinctness. The tone was lost upon Seth, who said wearily:
“I don’t see that it makes much difference—her refusing. What good would it have done, if she had gone to Annie? She could only tell her that she had abandoned such and such ideas. That isn’t what counts. The fact of importance is that she ever entertained them, that they ever existed. To my notion, there’s nothing to do but to wait and see what comes of Beekman’s suspicions. What do you think of them, anyway? I have been trying to imagine what he is aiming at, but it puzzles me? What do you think?”
“To tell the truth, I haven’t been thinking of that. My mind has been occupied with the female aspects of the thing. I’m not impatient. Evidently Beekman and Ansdell think they have got hold of something. They are not the men to go off on a wild-goose chase. Very good: I can wait until they are ready to explain. But what I can’t wait for—or bear to think about—is poor Annie, suffering as she must be suffering to have written that letter.”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that, too, but I’m helpless. I can’t think of anything: I can’t do anything.”
“You don’t seem to be of much use, for a fact,” mused the brother. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if you think best. To-morrow afternoon, after I’ve seen Ansdell, or before that if he doesn’t come, I will go over and see Annie myself. I can go over to the school-house by the back road, and walk home with her. Perhaps by that time, too, I shall have something tangible to explain to her. Until then, I suppose she must continue in suspense. It is the penance she ought to do, I dare say—” the brother added this in mildly sarcastic rebuke—“for the luxury of being in love with such a transcendant genius as you are.”
Something like an hour before this, Annie had dismissed her classes and locked up the school-house for the night. As she did so, she mentally wondered if she should ever have the strength to walk home.
The day had been one long-drawn out torture from its first waking moments—indeed there seemed to have been nothing but anguish since her interview with Isabel the previous day, not even the oblivion of sleep. Her impulse, and her grandmother’s advice, had been to remain at home; but she had already left the school unopened on the fatal Tuesday, in the shock of the news of Albert’s death: to absent herself a second day might prejudice the trustees against her. Besides, the occupation might serve to divert her thoughts.
Perhaps the trustees were satisfied, she said to herself now, locking the door, but there certainly had been no relief in the day’s labor. The little children had been unwontedly stupid and trying; the older boys, some of them almost of her own age, had never before seemed so unruly and loutishly impertinent. Even these experiences alone would have availed to discourage her; as it was they added the stinging of insects to her great heartache. With some organizations, the lesser pain nullifies the other. She seemed to have a capacity for suffering, now, which took in, and made the most of, every element of agony, great and small. She turned from the rusty, squat little old building and began her journey homeward, with hanging head and a deadly sense of weakness, physical and spiritual, crushing her whole being.
Milton Squires had been watching for her appearance for some time, from a sheltering ridge of berry-bushes and wall beyond the school, and he hurried now to overtake her, clumsily professing surprise at the meeting.
“I jes happened up this way,” he said, “Dunnao when I be’n up here on this road b’fore. Never dreampt o’ seein’ yeou.”
She made answer of some sort, as unintelligible and meaningless to herself as to him. She did not know whether it was a relief or otherwise that he was evidently going to walk home with her. Perhaps, if she let him do all the talking, the companionship would help her to get over the ordeal of the return less miserably. But she could not, and she would not, talk.
“I kind o’ thought mebbe you’d shet up schewl fer a week ’r sao,” he proceeded, ingratiatingly, “but then agin I said to m’self ‘no siree, she ain’t thet kine of a gal. Ef she’s got any work to dew, she jes’ does it, rain ’r shine’. Thet’s what I said. Pooty bad business, wa’n’t it, this death of yer cousin?”
“Dreadful!” she murmured, wishing he would talk of something else.
“Yes, sir, it’s about’s bad’s they make ’em. Some queer things ’baout it tew. I s’pose yeh ain’t heerd no gossup ’baout it, hev yeh?”
“No,” she whispered with a sinking heart; a real effort was needed to speak the other words: “What gossip? Is there gossip?”
“Dunnao’s yeh kin call it real gossup. P’raps nobuddy else won’t ’spicion nothin’. But to me they’s some things ’baout it thet looks darned cur’ous. Of caourse, it ain’t none o’ my business to blab ’baout the thing.”
“No, of course.”
These little words, spoken falteringly, confirmed all that Milton had wished to learn the truth about. Over night a stupendous scheme had budded, unfolded, blossomed in his mind. Originally his primitive intellect had gone no further than the simple idea of committing homicide under circumstances which would inevitably point to an accident. The plan was clever in its very nakedness. But through some row among the women, probably out of jealousy, the hint of murder had been raised, and coupled with Seth’s name. If this hint ripened into a suspicion and an inquiry, a new situation would be created, but Milton could not see any peril in it for him, for Seth would obviously be involved. But it would be better if no questions of murder were raised at all, and matters were allowed to stand. This would not only place Milton’s security beyond peradventure, but it would give him a tremendous grip upon Annie. It was in this direction that his mind had been working steadily since he heard of Annie’s suspicions. The opportunity seemed to have come for placing the cap-stone of acquisition upon the edifice of desire he had so long and patiently been rearing.
As for the poor girl, she had reasoned herself out of the suspicion of Seth’s guilt a thousand times, only to find herself hopelessly relapsing into the quagmire. Milton’s hints came with cruel force to drag her back now, this time lower than ever. Even he seemed to know of it, but he proposed to maintain silence. Of course, he must be induced to keep silent. Oh! the agony of her thoughts!
“You’n’ Seth was allus kine o’ frenly,” he proceeded. “Way back f’m th’ time yeh was boys ’n’ gals.”
“Yes, we always were.”
“’N’ they used to say, daown to th’ corners, that yeou two was baoun’ to make a match of it.”
“There wasn’t anything in that at all!” She spoke decisively, almost peremptorily.
“Oh, they wa’n’t, ay?” There was evident jubilation in his tone. “Never was nothin’ in that talk, ay?”
“No, nothing.”
The pair walked along on the side of the descending road silently for some moments. A farmer passed them, hauling a load of pumpkins up the hill, and exchanged a nod of salutation with Milton. This farmer remarked at his supper-table an hour later, to his wife: “I’d bet a yoke o’ oxen thet Milton Squires is a’makin’ up to the schewl-teacher. I seed ’em walkin’ togither daown th’ hill to-night, ’n’ he was a lookin’ at her like a bear at a sap-trough. It fairly made me grit my teeth to see him, with his broadcloth cloze, ’n’ his watch-chain, ’n’ his on-gainly ways.” To which his helpmeet acidulously responded: “Well, I dunnao’s she c’d dew much better. She’s gittin’ pooty well along, ’n’ fer all his ongainly ways, I don’t see but what he comes on, ‘baout’s well’s some o’ them thet runs him daown. A gal can’t jedge much by a man’s ways haow he’ll turn aout afterwards. I thought I’d got a prize.” Whereupon the honest yeoman chose silence as the better part.
The red sun was hanging in a purplish haze over the edge of the hill as the two descended, and the leaves from Farmer Perkins’s maples rustled softly under their feet. Milton drew near his subject:
“I’ve be’n gittin’ on in th’ world sence yeou fust knew me, hain’t I?”
“Yes, everybody says so.”
“’N’ yit everybody don’t knaow half of it. I ain’t no han’ to tell all I knaow. Ef some folks c’d guess th’ speckle-ations I be’n in, ‘n’ th’ cash I’ve got aout in mor’giges ’n’ sao on, it’d make ’em open their eyes. It’s th’ still saow thet gits th’ swill, as my mother use’ to say, ’n’ I’ve be’n still enough abaout it, I guess.”
His coarse chuckle jarred on the girl’s nerves, but the importance of placating him was uppermost in her mind, and she answered, as pleasantly as she could:
“I’m sure I’m glad, Milton. You have worked hard all your life, and you deserve it.”
“Yeh air glad, reely naow?”
“Why yes! Why shouldn’t I be? It always pleases me to hear of people’s prosperity.”
“But me purtic’ly?” he persisted, earnestly.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, absent............