CHAPTER XXXI.—MILTON’S ASPIRATIONS.
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-mindedly. Then the odd nature of the question occurred to her, but she was too distrait to think consecutively, and she added no comment to her answer.
“Well, it eases me to hear yeh say thet,” he went on, with awkward deliberation, “fer they’s somethin’ I’ve be’n wantin’ to say to yeh fer a long time. I don’t s’paose you reelize haow well off I am?” She did not answer. Her mind seemed to refuse to act, and she heard only the sound of his words. He took her reply for granted and continued:
“I c’d eena’most buy up thet farm there”—pointing over to the Fairchild acres on the slope, now within sight—“’n’ I ain’t so all-fired sure yit thet I won’t, nuther! But what’s th’ good o’ money, on-less yeh kin git what yeh want with it, ay?”
The impulse of her soul-weariness was to let this aimless question pass like the other, without reply. But she was reminded of the importance of being pleasant to this tedious man, and so answered, entirely at random:
“What is it you want, Milton?”
“I dunnao—I’m kind o’ feared o’ puttin’ my foot in it; yeh won’t be mad ef I tell yeh?”
“Why no, of course not. What is it?”
“Well, then,” he blurted out, “I want yeou!” The girl looked dumbly at him, at first not realizing at all the meaning of his words, then held as in a vise between the disposition to reply to him as he deserved and the danger, the terrible danger, of angering him. There fluttered through her senses, too, a mad kind of yearning to shriek with laughter—born of the hysterical state of her long-oppressed nerves. She eventually neither rebuked nor laughed, but said vacuously:
“Want me?”
“Ef yeou’ll marry me, I’ll make one o’ th’ fust ladies o’ Dearb’rn Caounty aout o’ yeh. Yeh need never lay yer finger to a stitch o’ work agin, no more’n Is’bel did, daown yander.” He spoke eagerly, with more emotion in his strident voice than she had ever heard there before.
The difficulty of her position crushed her courage. Of course she must say no, but how do it without affronting him? The idea of reasoning him gently out of the preposterous wish came to her.
“This is some flying notion in your head, Milton,” she said, civilly. “You will have forgotten it by next week.”
“Forgott’n it, ay! Yeh think sao? What ’f I told yeh I hain’t thought o’ nothin’ else fur nigh onto ten year?”
His tone was too earnest and excited to render further trifling safe. He pulled out of an inner pocket and held up before her a little, irregularly squared tin-type—which she recognized as having been made in whimsical burlesque of her lineaments by an itinerant photographer years before.
“How did you come by that?” she asked, to gain time.
“I got it fr’m th’ man thet made it, ’n’ I paid a dollar bill fer it, tew,” he answered triumphantly, “’n’ I’ve kep it by me ever sence!”
After a pause she said, as calmly as she could: “I never dreamed that such a thought had entered your head. Of course, it—it can’t be.”
“Why not, I’d like to knaow?” he demanded. “Don’t yeh b’lieve what I’ve told yeh ’baout my bein’ well off?”
“That hasn’t anything to do with it. There are other reasons—a good many other reasons.”
“What air they?” His tone was peremptory.
“I don’t know that I can explain them to you. But truly there are so many of them—and your words took me so wholly by surprise, that—that——”
“Yeh needn’t mince matters! I knaow! Yeh hev sot yer idees on Seth! Yeh needn’t tell me yeh hain’t!”
“I won’t talk with you at all if you shout at me in that way, and contradict me flat when I assure you to the contrary.”
Milton paused for a moment, to consider the situation. They were approaching the poplars now, along the lonely turnpike, and the conversation could not be much protracted. What he had to say must be said without delay. But what was it that he wished to say? A dozen inchoate plans rose amorphously to the surface of his mind—to cajole her, to strive further to impress her with his wealth, to entreat her, to attempt to bully her. This last resource ran best with his mood, but there were difficulties. Annie was the reverse of a cowardly girl; there was nothing timid or tremulous about her; if he attempted to intimidate her, the enterprise would most probably be a ridiculous failure, for he stood too much in awe of her self-reliance and intelligence to have confidence in his own mastery.
But stay—she was fearful about Seth. Whether it was true or not that she had no idea of marrying her cousin, she was evidently solicitous for his safety. An idea born of this conclusion swiftly engrafted itself upon the hired man’s general strategy. He lifted his light, shifty eyes from the grass of the roadside path to her face, once more, and said:
“Well, ef you’re a mine to be mean, I kin be mean tew—meaner ’n’ pussly. Ef yeh think I’m goin’ to stan’ still, ’n’ let yeou ’n’ Seth hev it all yer aown way, yer mistaken. I’ve only got to open my maouth to th’ Cor’ner, ’n’ whair’d he be, ’n’ yeou tew?”
There was a certain indefinable suggestion of bravado in his tone which caught Annie’s attention. It was the barest, most meagre of shadows, but she grasped at the chance of substance behind it.
“I don’t believe you could say anything, or do anything, which would injure him,” she said, with more confidence in her words than she felt in her heart.
“Oh, yeh daon’t, ay!” he growled. “Ef yeh knaowed what I knaow, p’raps yeh’d change yer teune.”
“What do you know, then? Come now, let us hear it!” She grew defiant, with an instinctive sense that the inferior being beside her was ready to retreat, if only she could keep up her boldness of front.
“Never yeou mind what I knaow!” he answered, evasively. “It’ll be enough, I guess, to cook his geuse, when th’ time comes.”
“Ah, I thought so!” she exclaimed. “You were simply talking to hear yourself talk—to scare me. Well, you see now that you wasted your breath.”
“Oh, did I! Well, I won’t waste any more of it, then, till I talk to th’ Cor’ner. I kin tell him some things ’baout who rid th’ black mare aout thet night, after Albert’d gone. Guess thet’ll kind ’o’ fix things!”
His slow imagination, working clumsily in the mazes of falsehood, had carried Milton a step too far; his simple plan of substituting Seth for himself in the events of the fatal night miscarried in a way he could not suspect.
Annie did not answer. An exclamation had risen to her lips, but something akin to presence of mind checked it there. Her brain seemed to be working with lightning flashes. The black mare had played a part in the tragedy, then; Seth had certainly not had the animal out that evening; the rushing, almost noiseless apparition which had startled them in the moonlight must have been the mare; it was coming from the direction of Tallman’s; it had a rider; who could that rider have been? and how did Milton know about it?—so the swift thoughts ran, in a chain which seemed luminous in the relief it brought to her. These two questions she could not answer—in her joy at the apparent exculpation of Seth it did not seem specially important that they should be answered—and she had self-possession enough to ask nothing about them.
It was a nice question what she should say to her companion, who was now, without any distinct suspicions on her part, growing luridly loathsome and repugnant in her eyes. The fear of angering him had died away, but a vague sense that mischief might be done by arousing his curiosity or apprehensions had come to take its place. She spoke cautiously:
“I hope you won’t do anything rash, that you would regret afterwards.”
“They ain’t nao need o’ my doin’ nothin’, ef yeou’d only hev some sense. But if yeou’re goin’ to be agin me, ther’s nao tellin’ what I won’t dew,” he answered with sullen terseness.
They had come to the poplars, and Annie stopped at the stile under the thorns.
“I shall have to leave you here,” she said.
“Then yeh won’t hev me, ay? Yeh better think twice ’fore yeh say nao! Yeh won’t git another sich a chance—to live like a lady, ’n’ hev ev’rything yeh want. ’N’ ef yeh dew say nao, yeh kin rest ’sured yeh ain’t heerd th’ last of it, ner him nuther.” Milton’s little green-gray eyes watched her face intently, and he fingered his flaring plated watch-chain with nervous preoccupation. “What d’yeh say, yes’ ’r nao?”
“I can’t say anything more than I have said—now,” she answered, and, stepping over the stile, left him.
For a long time afterward Annie’s conscience debated the justification of that final word, the last one she ever addressed to Milton, and which was obviously intended to keep alive a hope that she knew to be absurdly without ground or reason. Sometimes even now she has momentary doubts about it—but she silences cavil by whispering to herself in unanswerable defence: “I thought then that possibly it might be needed to help Seth—perhaps even to save him.”
She had little leisure just then, however, to devote to moral introspection, for Samantha met her, half-way down the thorn-walk, to excitedly tell her that her grandmother, Mrs. Warren, was very much worse than usual.