“He didn’t mean to do it. He didn’t know you were there. He will explain it when he comes back. He had to go to your funeral first with Clarice,” she said, apostrophizing the pistol as if it were really Jack, and not at first hearing the voice calling to her from below.
“Miss Hansford, Miss Hansford, we want to see you.”
It was the man who had picked up the revolver, and Miss Hansford’s teeth chattered as she dropped it into the chest, heaped the clothes over it, closed the lid and sat down upon it with a determination that nothing should make her give it up.
“Well, what do you want? I’m busy,” she called back.
“Want to see you,” and Seth Walker came up the stairs with the bold familiarity of the people of his class. “They’ve got to have that revolver,” he said in a whisper. “Somebody seen me pick it up and give it to you. I never told nobody but my wife, and she told nobody but her mother and sister. It couldn’t of got out that way. They will have the pistol, they say, if they send a constable for it. Better give it up peaceable.”
The word constable had a bad sound to Miss Hansford. For one to cross her threshold would be a disgrace, no matter what his errand might be. Her resolve to fight over the murderous weapon began to give way before the dreaded law. She must give it up, and very slowly she opened the chest, lifted the articles in it one by one, took up the revolver, examined it carefully, and poor, half-crazed woman that she was, tried to rub off the “P. R.” with her apron.
“They won’t come off,” Seth said, understanding her meaning, “and they are kind-er damagin’, with the other stuff that’s told; but he ain’t guilty. None of us will ever think so. It was a mistake,—manslaughter is the wust they can make of it, if they do anything.”
He took the revolver and went down the stairs, while Miss Hansford, not knowing what she was doing, sat down in the middle of the deep chest, with the lid still open and the linen sinking under her weight, until her feet scarcely touched the floor. It was not a very comfortable position, but she did not mind it, and as she could not well rock back and forth, she rocked from side to side, repeating to herself, “At the most, manslaughter!” That meant imprisonment for Paul for a longer or shorter period. Her boy,—her Paul,—whom, until she knew Elithe, she loved better than any one in the world. She couldn’t bear it. God wouldn’t allow it; if he did, she’d——
Here she stopped, appalled at her defiance of her Maker. “Forgive me; I don’t know what I’m saying, nor how I’m to get out of this pesky place,” she moaned, as she sank deeper into the chest. Elithe solved the last difficulty by coming to the rescue and laughing in spite of herself as she saw her aunt’s doubled-up position.
“I don’t see how you can laugh,” she said, as she got upon her feet. “I don’t feel as if I should ever laugh again. Somebody has blabbed. They’ve got the pistol, with his name on it. Nothing will save him now. It’ll be manslaughter, at least, and that means hair shaved off and striped clothes and prison fare for I don’t know how long.”