WOMEN'S NERVES
Lucy Thomas in a cell in the Furmville jail sat on the edge of her cot
at midnight, staring into inky darkness while she tried to remember
the events of the night before. She was not of the slow-witted,
stupid-looking type of negro women. The thing against which she struggled
was not poverty of brain but the mist of forgetfulness with which the
fumes of liquor had surrounded her.
Questioned and requestioned by the police during the afternoon and early
evening, she had been able to tell them only that she and Perry had been
drinking together in her little two-room cabin. When he had left her,
what he had said, whether he had returned--these points were as
effectually covered up in her mind as if she had never had cognizance of
them.
She did remember, however, certain things which she had not imparted to
the police. One was that at some time during the night there had been a
struggle between herself and Perry. The other was that at some time,
far into the night or very early in the morning, she had heard the
clank-clank of the iron key falling on the floor of her house, a key
which she had worn suspended on a ribbon round her neck.
She rocked herself back and forth on the cot, her head throbbing, her
mouth parched, tears in her eyes. To the white people, she thought, it
did not matter much, but to her the fact that she and Perry had intended
to get married was the biggest thing in her life.
"I don't know; I don't know," her thoughts ran bitterly. "Ef Perry tuk
dat key away fum me, he mus' done gawn to dat house--an' he wuz full uv
likker. Ef he ain' done tuk dat key fum me an' den later flung it back on
de flo' uv my house, who did do it?"
She sobbed afresh.
"He is one mean nigger when he gits too much likker in him. Ain' nobody
knows dat better'n I does. An' he sayed somethin' las' night 'bout
gittin' a whole lot uv money. He--"
She moaned and flung herself backward on the cot.
"Gawd have mussy! Gawd have mussy! I done remembuhed. I done remembuhed.
He done say somethin' 'bout dat white woman's gol' an' jewelery. Gawd!
Dat's whut he done. He done it! Dat's why he wuz fightin' me. He wuz
tryin' to git dat kitchen key. An' he got it! He got it! Ef he done kilt
dat woman, de white folks goin' to git him sho'ly--sho'ly. An' him an' me
ain' nevuh gwine git married--nevuh. Dey'll kill him or dey'll sen' him
to dat pen. Aw, my Gawd! My Gawd!"
She sat up again and began to think about Mrs. Withers, how well the
slain woman had treated her, how kindly. From that, her thoughts went to
ghosts. She fell to trembling and moaning in an audible key. It was not
long before a warden, awakened by her cries of terror, had to visit her
and threaten bodily punishment if she did not keep quiet.
After a while, she relapsed into her quiet sobbing.
"I think maybe he done tuk dat key. I knows he done lef' me durin' de
night, an' I b'lieve he done come back. But I ain't gwine say nothin'.
Maybe I don' know. Maybe I is mistuk. De whole thing done got too mix' up
fuh me. Maybe he kilt her an' maybe he ain' been nigh de place. But I
wish I coul' know. My holy Lawd! I wish I done know all dat done happen.
"Dat key fallin' on de flo'. Who done drap it dar ef Perry ain' drapped
it? Dat's whut I'd like to know. Ef he ain' had dat key, ain' nobody
had it."
She lay down, weeping and sobbing from unhappiness and terror. Bristow
and Greenleaf would have given much to have known her suspicions,
suspicions which amounted to a moral certainty.
On the sleeping porch of No. 5, Manniston Road, Maria Fulton lay awake a
long time and tortured herself by reviewing again and again the thoughts
that had crushed her during the day. Miss Kelly, on a cot at the foot of
the girl's bed, heard her stirring restlessly but could not know in the
darkness how her long, slender fingers tore at the bed-covering, nor how
her face was drawn with pain.
"The overturning of that chair,"--her mind whirled the events before
her--"the sound of that whisper, that man's whisper, and the sight of
that foot! He wore rubbers. I know he did. He always wears them when it's
even cloudy. It was he! It was he!"
Her nails dug into her palms as she fought for something like
self-control.
"If it was not he? I would never have fainted--never. That's what made me
faint, the sickening, undeniable knowledge that that was who it was. And
I loved him! But--but the rubber-shod foot, the size of it! Am I sure?
Could it have been----"
She groaned so that Miss Kelly lifted her head from her own pillow and
listened intently, trying to determine whether the sufferer was asleep or
awake.
"He's not stupid," she swept on, closing mutinous lips against the
repetition of sound. "He knew Enid could do nothing--nothing more. I
don't understand. Oh, I don't understand! I wonder now why I said I heard
nothing.
"I wonder why I lay unconscious on the floor near the dining room door
all those hours--until ten o'clock this morning. It was because the
knowledge was too much for me to stand--just as it is too much now. And
I can't share it with anybody. I'll never be able to get it off my
conscience. If I did, they'd hang him--or the other one who----"
At that thought, she screamed aloud, a wild, eerie sound that chilled the
blood of even Miss Kelly, accustomed as she was to the cries of suffering
and despair. The nurse was at the hysterical girl's side in a moment,
holding her quivering body in strong, capable arms.
"What was it? What was it, Miss Fulton?" she asked soothingly.
Maria brushed the back of her hand across her forehead, which was beaded
with big, cold drops of perspiration.
"Nothing, Miss Kelly; nothing," she half-moaned. "A bad dream, a
nightmare, I guess. Give me something to make me sleep."
She drank eagerly from a glass the nurse put to her lips.
"If I begin to talk in my sleep, Miss Kelly, call me, wake me up, will
you?" she begged, the fright still in her voice.
"Yes, I will." This reassuringly while Miss Kelly smoothed the pillows
and readjusted the tumbled coverings.
Maria grasped her arm in a grip that hurt.
"But will you?" she demanded sharply. "Promise me!"
"Yes; indeed, I will. I promise."
Miss Kelly meant what she said. She was not anxious to be the recipient
of the sick girl's confidences.