But then came a mental picture of Annie’s calm, sweet, lightful face transfixed with speechless horror at the brutal words—and after it, close and searching, the question: “Why should I have stabbed Annie? She was always kindness itself to me. Was it not heartless to make that poor girl suffer?” And there followed in her mind, as an echo of her first exclamation to the mirror—that had gathered reverberating force from all the thoughts we have striven to trace—the haunting cry: “A wicked woman!”
Afternoon came, and the battle still went on. Bitter condemnation of her own conduct struggled with angry pleas of grievance against others, and the conflict wearied her into what threatened to be a sick headache. The idea of getting out into the open air and seeking relief in a walk, which had been dormantly in her mind all day, finally took form, and led her outside the homestead for the first time since her husband’s death.
Once outside, she walked aimlessly through the orchard—in preference to the high road, where she might meet neighbors—toward the little family graveyard. It was not until she had nearly reached this spot that she recalled having heard that Seth, too, came here on that terrible night. The recollection brought an added sense of all the wrongs she held to have been done her. She stood for a long time by the old board fence, with its coating of dry, mildew-like moss on the weather-beaten surfaces turned to the north, and its inhospitable hedging of brown, half-bare briars, and looked in reverie upon the tombs within the enclosure.
Three generations of the Fairchilds lay here under the straggling mat of withered strawberry vines. She saw the low blue-slate slabs, nearly covered now by aspiring weeds and brambles, which modestly pleaded in antique letters that the original shoemaker, Roger, and his lowly spouse might not be altogether forgotten. Rising ostentatiously above these timid, ancient memorials, as if with intent to divert attention from their humility, was the marble obelisk marking the resting-place of the family’s greatest man, the Hon. Seth Fairchild. The monument was not so white or so imposing now as it once had been, and the proud inscription setting forth how its subject had been “twice Senator of the State of New York,” was almost illegible from the storm-stains and mould on its venerable front. There were some other stones, gray and small, tipping humbly toward the central monolith, as if mutely begging at least a little share of the Senator’s greatness for his wife and sisters, and nearer were two plain modern slabs recounting the sole interesting facts of the colorless lives of Lemuel and Cicely Fair-child—that they had been alive, and now were dead.
Here still nearer her, almost at her feet, the widow saw some pegs driven in the ground, with string stretched around them to form a long rectangle. The sight brought no thrill to her. She was conscious of all its meaning, but felt herself scarcely interested. In life she had owed nothing but dislike to the man whose last coming these signs of preparation betokened. His death had shocked her at first by its fearful suddenness; it did not especially disturb her now, save at times with a furtive elation at the accompanying thought that at last she was free. Her thoughts were with the living—and their relation to those long since dead.
If these rambling thoughts could have been summarized in words they would have run in this fashion:
“What has all your family pride brought you, all your planning and manoeuvring, you dull countrymen? I wasn’t good enough for you, eh? Your breed must conspire against me, eh? and treat me like an interloper, an outsider, eh? You thought I was to be brought here too, did you, when my time arrived, and be snubbed and bullied into some back corner like the rest of your wives, while my husband, ‘the Congressman,’ had a big monument like this of your old humbug, the Senator? And you expected to patronize me, or cut me dead, as the living dolts here on the turnpike have done, did you? Well, you are fooled! I’ve escaped you! I shall never come here but once again—to bring you your ‘Congressman.’ You can have him and welcome. And that old cat of an aunt of his, she will come presently, too, and I wish you much joy of her! And perhaps you will give up your idea, then, that you amount to anything, or ever will amount to anything. The farm is going to a young man who will sell it, and who doesn’t care a cent for the whole crowd of you, and who will live in a city, and eat with his fork, and forget that there ever were such people as you. And he will forget, too, that——”
She came to a full stop in her meditations. Yes, Seth would forget her, too. She had no illusions on this point. Perhaps this was too kindly a view of it, even—he might be compelled to remember her by sheer force of his bitterness toward her. There could be no doubt, after his cruel words on the eventful forenoon—their last meeting—that he scorned and despised her. What an idiot she had been to disclose to him her thoughts—those mad fancies and beliefs of that frantic morning! She might have known that the idea of his fighting his brother, on her account, was preposterous. What did he care about her? He had been nice with her, had written her pretty, graceful letters when she asked him to do so, and had sent her books to read—that was all. There was nothing else. She had been a fool to dream that there was anything else. He would sell the farm, and go back to Tecumseh, and marry Annie—yes, marry Annie! And they, too, would refer to her now and then, and comment on her wickedness, and hope that they might never have a daughter like her. That would be all.
She turned from the little enclosure of graves, without giving them another thought. The mental picture which she conjured up of the young couple, contented by a fireside of their own, perhaps with a child, tore at her heart-strings.
In the farm-yard she was met by Mr. Ansdell, who was evidently watching for her, and who introduced himself courteously.