Horace was right in his assumption that the case against Lucinda Hart
and Hannah Simmons would never be pressed. Although it was proved
beyond a doubt that Eliza Farrel had swallowed arsenic in a
sufficiently large quantity to cause death, the utter absence of
motive was in the favor of the accused, and then the suspicion that
the poison might have been self-administered, if not with suicidal
intent, with another, steadily gained ground. Many thought Miss
Farrel's wonderful complexion might easily have been induced by the
use of arsenic.
At all events, the evidence against Lucinda and Hannah, when sifted,
was so exceedingly flimsy, and the lack of motive grew so evident,
that there was no further question of bringing them to trial. Still
the suspicion, once raised, grew like a weed, as suspicion does grow
in the ready soil of the human heart. For a month after the tragedy
it seemed as if Sylvia Whitman's prophecy concerning the falling off
of the hotel guests was destined to fail. The old hostelry was
crowded. Newspaper men and women from all parts of the country
flocked there, and also many not connected with the press, who were
morbidly curious and revelled in the sickly excitement of thinking
they might be living in the house of a poisoner. Lucinda Hart sent in
her resignation from the church choir. Her experience, the first time
she had sung after Eliza Farrel's death, did not exactly daunt her;
she was not easily daunted. But she had raised her husky contralto,
and lifted her elderly head in its flowered bonnet before that
watchful audience of old friends and neighbors, and had gone home and
written her stiffly worded note of resignation.
She attended church the following Sunday. She said to herself that
her absence might lead people to think there was some ground for the
awful charge which had been brought against her. She bought a smart
new bonnet and sat among the audience, and heard Lucy Ayres, who had
a beautiful contralto, sing in her place. Lucy sang well, and looked
very pretty in her lace blouse and white hat, but she was so pale
that people commented on it. Sylvia, who showed a fairly antagonistic
partisanship for Lucinda, spoke to her as she came out of church, and
walked with her until their roads divided. Sylvia left Henry to
follow with Rose Fletcher, who was still staying in East Westland,
and pressed close to Lucinda.
"How are you?" she said.
"Well enough; why shouldn't I be?" retorted Lucinda.
It was impossible to tell from her manner whether she was grateful
for, or resented, friendly advances. She held her head very high.
There was a stiff, jetted ornament on her new bonnet, and it stood up
like a crest. She shot a suspicious glance at Sylvia. Lucinda in
those days entertained that suspicion of suspicion which poisons the
very soul.
"I don't know why you shouldn't be," replied Sylvia. She herself cast
an angry glance at the people around them, and that angry glance was
like honey to Lucinda. "You were a fool to give up your place in the
choir," said Sylvia, still with that angry, wandering gaze. "I'd
sung. I'd shown 'em; and I'd sung out of tune if I'd wanted to."
"You don't know what it was like last Sunday," said Lucinda then. She
did not speak complainingly or piteously. There was proud strength in
her voice, but it was emphatic.
"I guess I do know," said Sylvia. "I saw everybody craning their
necks, and all them strangers. You've got a lot of strangers at the
hotel, haven't you, Lucinda?"
"Yes," said Lucinda, and there was an echo in her monosyllable like
an expletive.
Sylvia nodded sympathizingly. "Some of them write for the papers, I
suppose?" said she.
"Some of them. I know it's my bread-and-butter to have them, but I
never saw such a parcel of folks. Talk about eyes in the backs of
heads, they're all eyes and all ears. Sometimes I think they ain't
nothing except eyes and ears and tongue. But there's a lot besides
who like to think maybe they're eating poison. I know I'm watched
every time I stir up a mite of cake, but I stir away."
"You must have your hands full."
"Yes; I had to get Abby Smith to come in and help."
"She ain't good for much."
"No, she ain't. She's thinkin' all the time of how she looks, instead
of what she's doing. She waits on table, though, and helps wash
dishes. She generally forgets to pass the vegetables till the meat is
all et up, and they're lucky if they get any butter; but I can't help
it. They only pay five dollars a week, and get a lot of enjoyment out
of watching me and Hannah, and they can't expect everything."
The two women walked along the country road. There were many other
people besides the church-going throng in their Sunday best, but they
seemed isolated, although closely watched. Presently, however, a
young man, well dressed in light gray, with a white waistcoat,
approached them.
"Why, good-day, Miss Hart!" he said, raising his hat.
Lucinda nodded stiffly and walked on. She did not speak to him, but
to Sylvia. "He is staying at the hotel. He writes for a New York
paper," she informed Sylvia, distinctly.
The young man laughed. "And Miss Hart is going to write for it, too,"
he said, pleasantly and insinuatingly. "She is going to write an
article upon how it feels to be suspected of a crime when one is
innocent, and it will be the leading feature in next Sunday's paper.
She is to have her picture appear with it, too, and photographs of
her famous hotel and the room in which the murder was said to have
been committed, aren't you, Miss Hart?"
"Yes," replied Lucinda, with stolidity.
Sylvia stared with amazement. "Why, Lucinda!" she gasped.
"When I find out folks won't take no, I give 'em yes," said Lucinda,
grimly.
"I knew I could finally persuade Miss Hart," said the young man,
affably. He was really very much of a gentleman. He touched his hat,
striking into a pleasant by-path across a field to a wood beyond.
"He's crazy over the country," remarked Lucinda; and then she was
accosted again, by another gentleman. This time he was older and
stouter, and somewhat tired in his aspect, but every whit as genially
persuasive.
"He writes for a New York paper," said Lucinda to Sylvia, in exactly
the same tone which she had used previously. "He wants me to write a
piece for his paper on my first twenty-four hours under suspicion of
crime."
"And you are going to write it, aren't you, Miss Hart?" asked the
gentleman.
"Yes," replied Lucinda, with alacrity.
This time the gentleman looked a trifle suspicious. He pressed his
inquiry. "Can you let us have the copy by Wednesday?" he asked.
"Yes," said Lucinda. Her "yes" had the effect of a snap.
The gentleman talked a little more at length with regard to his
article, and Lucinda never failed with her ready "yes."
They were almost at the turn of the road, where Sylvia would leave
Lucinda, when a woman appeared. She was young, but she looked old,
and her expression was one of spiritual hunger.
"This lady writes for a Boston paper," said Lucinda. "She came
yesterday. She wants me to write a piece for her paper upon women's
unfairness to women."
"Based upon the late unfortunate occurrence at Miss Hart's hotel,"
said the woman.
"Yes," said Lucinda, "of course; everything is based on that. She
wants me to write a piece upon how ready women are to accuse other
women of doing things they didn't do."
"And you are going to write it?" said the woman, eagerly.
"Yes," said Lucinda.
"Oh, thank you! you are a perfect dear," said the woman. "I am so
much pleased, and so will Mr. Evans be when he hears the news. Now I
must ask you to excuse me if I hurry past, for I ought to wire him at
once. I can get back to Boston to-night."
The woman had left them, with a swish of a frilled silk petticoat
under a tailored skirt, when Sylvia looked at Lucinda. "You ain't
goin' to?" said she.
"No."
"But you said so."
"You'd say anything to get rid of them. I've said no till I found out
they wouldn't take it, so then I began to say yes. I guess I've said
yes, in all, to about seventeen."
"And you don't mean to write a thing?"
"I guess I ain't going to begin writing for the papers at my time of
life."
"But what will they do?"
"They won't get the pieces."
"Can't they sue you, or anything?"
"Let them sue if they want to. After what I've been through lately I
guess I sha'n't mind that."
"And you are telling every one of them you'll write a piece?"
"Of course I am. It's the only thing they'll let me tell them. I want
to get rid of them somehow."
Sylvia looked at Lucinda anxiously. "Is it true that Albion Bennet
has left?" she said.
"Yes; he was afraid of getting poisoned. Mrs. Jim Jones has taken
him. I reckon I sha'n't have many steady boarders after this has
quieted down."
"But how are you going to get along, Lucinda?"
"I shall get along. Everybody gets along. What's heaped on you you
have to get along with. I own the hotel, and I shall keep more hens
and raise more garden truck, and let Hannah go if I can't pay her. I
shall have some business, enough to keep me alive, I guess."
"Is it true that Amos Quimby has jilted Hannah on account of--?"
"Guess so. He hasn't been near her since."
"Ain't it a shame?"
"Hannah's got to live with what's heaped on her shoulders, too," said
Lucinda. "Folks had ought to be thankful when the loads come from
other people's hands, instead of their own, and make the best of it.
Hannah has got a good appetite. It ain't going to kill her. She can
go away from East Westland by-and-by if she wants to, and get another
beau. Folks didn't suspect her much, anyway. I've got the brunt of
it."
"Lucinda," said Sylvia, earnestly. "Folks can't really believe you'd
go and do such a thing."
"It's like flies after molasses," said Lucinda. "I never felt I was
so sweet before in my life."
"What can they think you'd go and poison a good, steady boarder like
that for?"
"She paid a dollar a day," said Lucinda.
"I know she did."
"And I liked her," said Lucinda. "I know lots of folks didn't, but I
did. I know what folks said, and I'll own I found things in her room,
but I don't care what folks do to their outsides as long as their
insides are right. Miss Farrel was a real good woman, and she had a
kind of hard time, too."
"Why, I thought she had a real good place in the high-school; and
teachers earn their money dreadful easy."
"It wasn't that."
"What was it?"
Lucinda hesitated. "Well," she said, finally, "it can't do her any
harm, now she's dead and gone, and I don't know as it was anything
against her, anyway. She just set her eyes by your boarder."
"Not Mr. Allen? You don't mean Mr. Allen, Lucinda?"
"What other boarder have you had? I've known about it for a long
time. Hannah and me both have known, but we never opened our lips,
and I don't want it to go any further now."
"How did you find out?"
"By keeping my eyes and ears open. How does anybody find out
anything?"
"I don't believe Mr. Allen ever once thought of her," said Sylvia,
and there was resentment in her voice.
"Of course he didn't. Maybe he'll take a shine to that girl you've
got with you now."
"Neither one of them has even thought of such a thing," declared
Sylvia, and her voice was almost violent.
"Well, I don't know," Lucinda said, indifferently. "I have had too
much to look out for of my own affairs since the girl came to know
anything about that. I only thought of their being in the same house.
I always had sort of an idea myself that maybe Lucy Ayres would be
the one."
"I hadn't," said Sylvia. "Not but she--well, she looked real sick
to-day. She didn't look fit to stand up there and sing. I should
think her mother would be worried about her. And she don't sing half
as well as you do."
"Yes, she does," replied Lucinda. "She sings enough sight better than
I do."
"Well, I don't know much about music," admitted Sylvia. "I can't tell
if anybody gets off the key."
"I can," said Lucinda, firmly. "She sings enough sight better than I
can, but I sang plenty well enough for them, and if I hadn't been so
mad at the way I've been treated I'd kept on. Now they can get on
without me. Lucy Ayres does look miserable. There's consumption in
her family, too. Well, it's good for her lungs to sing, if she don't
overdo it. Good-bye, Sylvia."
"Good-bye," said Sylvia. She hesitated a moment, then she said:
"Don't you mind, Lucinda. Henry and I think just the same of you as
we've always thought, and there's a good many besides us. You haven't
any call to feel bad."
"I don't feel bad," said Lucinda. "I've got spunk enough and grit
enough to bear any load that I 'ain't heaped on my own shoulders, and
the Lord knows I 'ain't heaped this. Don't you worry about me,
Sylvia. Good-bye."
Lucinda went her way. She held her nice black skirt high, but her
plodding feet raised quite a cloud of dust. Her shoulders were thrown
back, her head was very erect, the jetted ornament on her bonnet
shone like a warrior's crest. She stepped evenly out of sight, as
evenly as if she had been a soldier walking in line and saying to
himself, "Left, right; left, right."