_ Chapter VI
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. _