THE TRAGEDY.
“Next mornin’, about eight o’clock, Mari come to the tarvern to know
where Mr. Dalton was, that he didn’t come home.
“‘He did go home,’ says Dot’s ancestor.
“‘He didn’t come home,’ says Mari, ‘and Miss Dalton is dreadfully
worried for fear he’s sick. Never slep’ a wink, and kep’ a candle
burnin’ all night.’
“I don’t know what put it into his head to think somethin’ was wrong,
but he did,—Dot’s ancestor, I mean, and why the plague can’t I think of
his name! I know it as well as I do my own. Here, Jeff, you rascal, come
here,” he called, as the boy came leaping across the end of the piazza
like a young deer. “Go and ask Miss Taylor the name of her ancestor who
kep’ the tavern when Mr. Dalton was killed.”
Jeff disappeared with a bound and summersault, while his master
continued: “Queer boy that, but smart as a steel trap. He’s descended
from Mari, who lived with Miss Dalton. A good boy, but queer
motioned,—never stands still. Jumps round like a grasshopper,—turns
summersets, one after another, till it makes you dizzy to see him. Reads
all the trash he can git hold of about pirates and Injuns runnin’
through the bushes. Told the parson, when he asked him what he was goin’
to be when he grew up, that he s’posed he or’to be a minister, but he’d
rather be a robber. Dot thrashed him for that and shut him up in the
back chamber without his supper. But, my land, he was out in no time.
Clum’ out of the winder,—slid down the lightnin’ rod and went rollin’
off like a hoop on the grass. Here he comes. What did she say, Jeff?”
“She said his name was Joel Butterfield, and she didn’t see what you was
borin’ Mr. Mason with that story for,” was Jeff’s reply, as he went
hippy-te-hopping away.
“Be I borin’ you?” Uncle Zacheus asked, and Craig replied: “Not in the
least. I’m greatly interested, and shall be more so when you get to the
pith of the matter. Pray, go on. Mari had come to ask why Mr. Dalton
didn’t come home, and Mr. Butterfield, your wife’s ancestor, suspected
something wrong. That’s where you left off.”
“Jess so; Joel Butterfield; funny I couldn’t remember his name. I did
think of _cheese_. Wall, he was wonderful for smellin’ a rat, jess like
Dot; she’s allus smellin’ things when there’s nothin’ to smell. Says
he,—that’s Joel, I mean,—says he to Mari, says he, ‘Was anybody to your
house last night?’ First she said there wasn’t; then she said there was,
but she didn’t see ’em. ’Twas Monday, washin’ day, and Miss Dalton’s
washin’s was big; allus wore white gowns in the summer. Had two in the
wash that day, and four white skirts, and Mari was tired and went to bed
early and dropped asleep at once. Bimeby she waked up and heard a man’s
voice speakin’ to Miss Dalton, low like. Thinkin’ it was Mr. Dalton, she
went to sleep agin, and didn’t wake till mornin’, but had bad dreams, as
of a scuffle of some kind. When she asked Miss Dalton who was talkin’ if
’twasn’t Mr. Dalton, Miss Dalton said ’twas a stranger who wanted to see
Mr. Dalton. She didn’t know his name, but sent him to the tarvern, where
she s’posed her husband was, sayin’ he was to tell him to come right
home, for she was afraid in the storm. This looked queer, and Joel and
the bartender started post haste for the Dalton House.
“It was a beautiful mornin’, but it had rained so hard the night afore
that the road in the lane was soft as putty, and they see plain the mark
of wheels and horses’ feet which went up to the house, turned round,
went out of the lane and off toward East Ridgefield. Joel noticed it and
p’inted it out to the bartender, whose name I don’t know, and it don’t
matter,—he was no kin to Dot. They went into the house,—Joel and the
bartender,—and found Miss Dalton fresh as a pink in a white gown, with a
blue ribbon round her waist and a rose stuck in it, and she a workin’ a
sampler. Know what that is?”
Craig confessed his ignorance, and Uncle Zach explained: “They used to
work ’em years ago in school, and at home on canvas with colored yarn or
silk. Sometimes the Lord’s Prayer; sometimes a verse of scripter, but
oftenest the names of the family, and when they was born. Dot’s got one,
but she hid it away after she got to be forty. Wall, Miss Dalton set in
a rockin’ chair, workin’ Mr. Dalton’s name, and when he was born, and
lookin’ as innocent as the baby playin’ on the floor. I forgot to tell
you there was a little boy two years old, with eyes like his mother.
That’s Mark’s grandfather. When Miss Dalton see Mari, who came in fust,
she asked as chipper like, ‘Did you find him? Was he there?’
“‘No,’ says Mari. ‘It’s mighty curis, too, for he started for home about
eleven o’clock.’
“‘Yes,’ says Joel and the bartender, comin’ in behind her. ‘He started
home at eleven o’clock. I’m afraid there’s been foul play somewhere.’
“‘Foul play,’ Miss Dalton gasped, and her face began to grow white, and
there was a scared look in her eyes, which rolled round as if lookin’
for some place to hide.
“‘Yes, marm,’ says Joel. ‘Foul play of the wust kind. Whose buggy track
is that up to the door and back, and off to the east? Who was here last
night? They didn’t come to the tarvern.’
“Then she turned whiter, and wanted a glass of water, and told of the
strange actin’ man who had asked for Mr. Dalton, and began to wonder if
anything could have happened to her John. The bartender had gone into
the yard, and was lookin’ round near the well,—one of them old-fashioned
kind, with a curb and sweep and bucket. It is there now,—the well, I
mean. Of course, there’s been a new curb and bucket.
“‘Great Scott’ says ’ee, faint like and sick at the pit of his stomach.
“All round the well in the mud and grass was the tracks of men’s feet,
as if there had been a hard scuffle.
“‘Come here, for Lord’s sake,’ he called to Joel, and Joel come and seen
the tracks all aimin’ for the well, and on the curb the muddy print of a
hand as if some one had clung there fitin’ for life, and right under the
curb what do you think was hangin’ on a nail?”
Zacheus was very dramatic and eloquent by this time, and pointed his
forefinger at Craig, who was himself a good deal shaken, and answered
under his breath, “Mr. Dalton’s hat!”
“Oh, my land,” Zacheus ejaculated, in some disgust. “A stovepipe hat on
a broken nail! No, _sir_! The hat was found on the head of the vally’s
brother, and on the nail was a piece of Mr. Dalton’s linen coat that
everybody knew, and in the well stickin’ up out of the water and kinder
lodged on the stones was one of his boots with his foot in it! Joel was
that faint when he seen it that the bartender had to hold on to him to
keep him from pitchin’ head fust inter the well.
“‘Here’s murder,’ says ’ee. ‘Mari, come here.’
“She come, with her knees knockin’ together and a lump in her throat as
big as a goose aig.
“‘Mari,’ says ’ee, ‘where did you git water for breakfast?’
“‘From the spring, over there,’ pointin’ to the orchard. ‘Miss Dalton
said she’d rather have the water from there, ’cause that in the well was
low,’ says Mari, her tongue so thick she could hardly talk.
“‘Have you often got water from there,’ says Joel.
“‘No,’ says Mari, and ‘Yes, very often,’ says Miss Dalton.
“She had come out to where the tracks was in the mud, and was white now
as her gown and leanin’ on to Mari.
“‘Miss Dalton,’ says Joel, ‘your husband is in the well.’
“Then she screeched so loud that some of the neighbors heard her and
come runnin’ to see what was the matter, while she made as if she’d
throw herself over the curb, but Joel catched her by her clothes and
pulled her back.
“‘Oh, John, John. Is he dead? Get him out, somebody,’ she cried.
“‘That’s what we are goin’ to do. Who’ll go down after him?’ Joel said,
and, as no one offered, he pulled off his shoes and stockin’s, and,
tyin’ a rope round his waist, went down himself, clingin’ to the
slippery stones, and got him up dead as a door-nail, with the marks of
two big hands round his throat, as if he had been seized and choked till
the life was out of him, and then been chucked into the well as the
nearest place to hide him.”
At this point Uncle Zacheus became so excited and agitated that he was
obliged to wait a few minutes before describing more of the terrible
scenes which shook the little village of Ridgefield to its depths that
summer morning, when the dead man lay upon the grass in his dripping
garments, a bruise on his forehead where he must have struck a stone in
his fall, and a look of horror in his wide-open eyes as he lay with his
face upturned to the sky.
“Oh, John, who could have done this?” Mrs. Dalton moaned, as she knelt
beside him, her arms across his chest and her long curls falling over
his swollen features.
Unnoticed by any one, the little boy, Robbie, had crept down the
doorsteps and came toddling across the yard to the group by the well.
“Papa, mam-ma,” he said, laying one hand on his mother’s head and the
other on his father’s wet hair. “Papa, wake up. I’s ’f’aid,” he said,
shaking the drops of water from his fingers and beginning to cry.
“’Twas awful,” Uncle Zach said, resuming the story and dwelling at
length upon the picture of the little boy stooping over his dead father
and trying to wake him up. “Yes, ’twas awful, and, though I’ll bet I’ve
told the story over a hundred times, if I have once, I can never get
over that part without somethin’ stickin’ in my throat and thinkin’ what
if it had been Johnny and me, with Dot makin’ b’lieve. Oh—h,” and he
groaned aloud;—then continued: “‘Oh, please somebody find the
murderers,’ Miss Dalton said; and Joel answered: ‘You bet we will. We
know ’em,’ and he winked at the bartender.
“They’d got the coroner there and half the town come with him, for the
news flew like lightnin’, and the yard was full, and the fence was
full,—the folks fightin’ to git sight of the tracks in the mud, and the
well and the mark of a hand on the curb and the piece of his coat on a
nail, and when they couldn’t do that they went and looked at the wheel
tracks where the buggy turned in the lane, and then went back and fit
agin to see the well. The women was mostly in the house where Miss
Dalton sat wringin’ her hands soft as wool and covered with rings, her
white gown bedraggled with mud and her hair flyin’ over her face, makin’
her look like a crazy critter. I tell you she stimulated grief so well
that she could almost have deceived the very elect, and folks at fust
didn’t know what to think. That Mr. Dalton had been killed was sure, and
the verdict was wilful murder by somebody, and in less than ten minutes
a posse of men with Joel and the constable started full run for
Worcester. At a livery stable there they heard that a hoss driv’ nearly
to death had come in towards mornin’. Who brought him the stable man
didn’t know. It wa’n’t the one who hired him the afternoon before, but
he paid the bill,—a big one, too,—the hoss was so used up, and he wore a
stovepipe hat. That was Mr. Dalton’s, and the man was the vally’s
brother. I b’lieve I could have planned better than they did, for they
left their tracks so plain behind ’em that before sundown they was all
three under arrest and an officer on the way to Ridgefield to keep an
eye on Miss Dalton and Mari. They found Mr. Dalton’s gold watch in the
vally’s pocket and his wallet and twenty-five dollars in the pocket of
the vally’s brother. St. John was at a hotel with a cigar in his mouth,
readin’ a paper as cool as you please and mighty indignant at being
suspected of murder. He pretended to be awfully shocked at the news.
Dalton was his best friend, he said, and he’d no more harm him than he
would himself. He knew nothing about the movements of the vally or his
brother. He was at the hotel all night and could prove it. This was
true, but the vally’s brother gin him away by sayin’ to him low, but so
as to be heard, ‘We sink or swim together; that was the bargain, and
I’ve papers to prove it.’ They found ’em on him, too, and the three was
clapped into jail, and Joel and his men and the officer got back some
time in the night to Ridgefield, which next mornin’ was all up in arms
wus than the day before.
“My grandmother lived here, and she said half the women was runnin’ the
street bareheaded, and some with their sleeves up and their kitchen
aprons on, tellin’ the news of the arrest to them who hadn’t heard it,
and then makin’ a bee line for the Dalton house, where Miss Dalton still
set in her muddy white gown, with her hair streamin’ down her back, and
she as cold and white as a block of marble. She’d set up all night; they
couldn’t make her go to bed, and when the men got back and she heard St.
John was took, she turned blue, but never spoke nor stirred. In the room
with her was the officer watchin’ her and Mari, who was in hysterics
most of the time. They’d laid Mr. Dalton out beautiful in his best
clothes, and Miss Dalton had been in to see him. They tried to shet his
eyes, but couldn’t, and they was wide open, starin’ at you, and when
Miss Dalton see ’em she cried: ‘Oh, John, John, don’t look at me like
that,’ and fell down in a swound, and they didn’t know for a spell but
she was dead.
“They made him the biggest funeral Ridgefield ever seen, and folks come
for miles and miles around. Why, Joel took in for drinks and keepin’
horses more’n he’d took for months. ’Twas better than general trainin’,
or a cattle show for him. Miss Dalton sat like a stone with folks
starin’ at her as if they’d never seen her before, and that strange man
always close to her. When she got back from the grave she was that
wilted they had to carry her into the house and put her on the bed,
where she lay, never movin’, nor speakin’, only moanin’, like some dumb
critter in pain.
“They took her next day, and the screetch she gin when they told her she
was arrested was so awful that folks in the road heard it; then she
froze up ag’in, except when she looked at her little boy. They say ’twas
touchin’, and made ’em all cry when she bid him good-bye, with him a
sayin’, ‘Take, mam-ma; take me,’ and clingin’ to her dress she had
on,—the silk one Mr. Dalton had bought her and the gold beads round her
neck.”
Here Uncle Zacheus’ feelings so overcame him a second time that he could
scarcely finish the story, and tell of Mrs. Dalton’s farewell to her
baby and home and Maria, against whom there did not seem sufficient
evidence to warrant her arrest. She would be needed as a witness later,
and was left with the child whom Mrs. Dalton entrusted to her, saying,
as she took his little hands from her dress and put them in Maria’s, “It
is preposterous to believe they can find me guilty. But if the worst
happens, and I never come back, take good care of Robbie, and tell him
all the good you know of his mother.”
Then like some tragic queen she turned to the officer, and, with a proud
toss of her head, said to him, “Sir, I am ready.”
She was all in black, with no color about her except the beads and her
luxuriant golden hair, which showed under her widow’s bonnet like a
gleam of yellow sunshine as she was driven away from the home she was
never to see again. The trial which came on quickly did not last long.
There were not many witnesses, and few were needed, the case was so
plain. Maria was on the stand until she lost her wits entirely, and what
she said one minute she contradicted the next. Only one point of any
importance was brought out by her evidence. Mrs. Dalton’s name was
Christina, which her husband shortened into ’Tina, and Maria testified
that on the night of the murder, after she heard a man’s voice speaking
to Mrs. Dalton, she thought she heard, or dreamed that she did, some one
call “’Tina, ’Tina,” in what she described “a gugglin’” voice, like one
in distress or choking.
Up to this point Mrs. Dalton had sat with her face unveiled, her
youthful beauty enhanced by her widow’s weeds and her bright hair,
telling upon the sympathy of the spectators. But when Maria repeated the
name “’Tina,” as it must have been called that awful night by her dying
husband, she covered her face with her hands and moaned, “Oh, Maria, in
mercy stop before I go mad.”
Then Maria broke down and was taken from the room for a time, nor could
any amount of questioning afterwards wring from her a confession that
she ever observed anything wrong between Mrs. Dalton and St. John. He
liked her,—she liked him,—and they played and sang together a good deal
when Mr. Dalton was home, and more, perhaps, when he wasn’t. There was,
however, sufficient evidence to convict Mrs. Dalton without Maria’s. The
papers referred to by the man called by Uncle Zacheus the “vally’s
brother,” and whose real name was Davis,—a recent convict from state’s
prison,—contained a promise from St. John to pay Davis and his comrade,
Brown, another convict, one thousand dollars to get Mr. Dalton out of
the way. Davis, who, in spite of his unprepossessing appearance, was the
least hardened of the two men, confessed that several plans had been
suggested and talked over and abandoned, until he was getting tired and
would have given up but for the thousand dollars, five hundred of which
Mrs. Dalton had agreed to pay. The visit to Ridgefield that night was an
accident. The horse had been hired to go to an intermediate town. On
reaching it Brown had suggested going to Ridgefield to see how the land
lay, as he expressed it. On hearing from Mrs. Dalton that her husband
was at the hotel, and that she was expecting him home when the storm was
over, they decided that this was their opportunity, as no one knew they
were in town, and, waiting in the darkness and rain, they accomplished
their work. Taken as he was by surprise, Mr. Dalton uttered no cry as
they grasped his throat, except the words “’Tina, ’Tina,” while the
’Tina called for gave no sign if she heard it.
She said she didn’t, but few believed her. The evidence against her as
an accessory to the murder was sufficient to convict her, and with the
three men she was sentenced to be hung. Efforts were made to commute her
punishment to imprisonment for life, but public opinion was strong
against her, and with her coadjutors in the crime she suffered the
penalty of the law.
After the execution, which was public and which hundreds attended, a
half brother of Mr. Dalton came to look after the property in the
interest of his nephew. In accordance with Mrs. Dalton’s request
repeated to Maria, who visited her once in her cell, the latter took
charge of the little boy during his childhood, and for some time lived
alone with him in the house, bravely fighting her nervous dread of the
room where the body had lain, and her terror on wild, rainy nights when
she fancied she heard her master’s voice calling “’Tina, ’Tina” through
the storm,—the sound of a scuffle near the well, and the wheels on the
grass as the murderers drove away. At last, overmastered by her fear,
she left the house and the town, taking the child with her and going to
Canada where her friends were living.
Gradually the tragedy ceased to be talked about, except when revived by
stories that the house was haunted. It was rented at first, then sold by
Robbie, who, after attaining his majority, came once to Ridgefield and
was described as a fine looking young man, much like his father. There
had been a stone placed at his father’s grave, but none at his mother’s,
nor did he order one. He was there to sell his property, and he sold it
and went away, while family after family occupied the house. If they did
not believe in the supernatural they heard nothing. If they did believe
in it they heard a great deal; a struggle by the well at midnight when
the rain was falling heavily and the sky was inky black; a sound of
wheels upon the grass; a choking call for ’Tina; stealthy footsteps
across the floor, as if in response to that call ’Tina had gone to the
window and looked out; and a child’s cry for papa and mamma, which came
at any time, day or night. The mamma lay in her unmarked sunken grave
and the papa under the shadow of the south wall in Ridgefield cemetery.
Robert became a husband, a father and a grandfather, and he, too, died.
Years passed and every actor in that tragic scene was dead, but its
memory was kept alive by the house fast going to decay. For a long time
it was unoccupied, and “For Sale” nailed upon the door, while the storms
and the boys played havoc with it, inside and out. Then Mark Hilton, the
clerk at the Prospect House, and great-grandson of Mr. Dalton, bought it
for a song. He called it his ancestral hall, and said when he married he
should bring his bride there and quiet ’Tina’s ghost, which still
haunted it, clad in a soiled white dress, with her long curls down her
back. He straightened up her grave and put a plain headstone to it with
just her name, Christina Dalton, upon it. Some people censured him for
this, and twice he found the stone lying upon the ground face down,
where it had been thrown by some malicious or mischievous person.
Without a word of comment he put it in its place, and whatever pain or
humiliation he felt for his ancestor he made no sign, and held his head
as high as if, through the vista of nearly a hundred years, no dark
crime was looming which could in any possible way touch his good name.
He had come to Ridgefield as a teacher from Amherst College, where he
had been for two years, and had taken his place among the best people of
the town. Once or twice, after correcting an unruly boy, he found a
chalk picture of a gallows on the blackboard in the morning, and,
instead of rubbing it out, he drew a fair likeness of the boy artist
dangling by the rope and left it there all day. There were no more
insulting pictures upon the board, and his pupils treated him with great
respect. But school teaching was not to his taste, and he finally gave
it up and hired to Mr. Taylor, who was never tired of eulogizing him,
and who finished his story of the Dalton house by saying: “There’s no
more hereditary in Mark than there is in me. No, sir! His folks lived in
New Bedford. Father was a sea captain and drowned; mother died a natural
death, and left him a little money; not much, and he’s willin’ to do
anything for an honest livin’. If there’s anything in envirymen’ he’s
got it strong. Mari brought up his grandfather Robert and had him go to
college. He was here once. The Daltons was high bloods and never took
much notice of him on account of his mother. But, bless your soul, he
wasn’t to blame for her any more than Mark is. Mari, who married in
Canada, was a good woman, and great-great-grandmother to Jeff, who acts
at times as if possessed with the devil; has some habits I don’t like,
but he’ll git over ’em, for he’s a good boy on the whole,—well meanin’
and friendly. His name is Jefferson Wilkes. His folks is all dead and he
was jest a wafer on the streets in Boston, turnin’ somersets for a penny
a turn and sleepin’ in a big hogshead on the wharf at night when Mark
found him. He’d kep’ track of Mari’s pedigree, tracin’ ’em down to the
boy and was huntin’ for him. He asked Dot to take him, and said if he
didn’t earn his board he’d pay the rest. He’ll get plenty of envirymen’
here, for Dot makes him toe the mark, especially Sundays, learnin’ the
catechism and verses in the Bible, and boxes his ears when he don’t
behave. Mark laughs and gives him a stick of candy for every box. Pays
for it, though. He’s honesty itself. I’d trust him with all I own.
“Yes, Dotty. I’ll be there,” he added, as there came ’round the corner a
call to which he always paid attention. “I’ll be back in a few minutes
and tell you the rest,” he said, as he hurried away in the direction of
the call.