IV

For several days things remained in statu quo. Our lives went on evenly.

The telephone was at our service, without any of its past vagaries.

Maggie's eyes ceased to look as if they were being pushed out from

behind, and I ceased to waken at night and listen for untoward signs.

Willie telephoned daily. He was frankly uneasy about my remaining there.

"You know something that somebody resents your knowing," he said, a day

or two after the night visitor. "It may become very uncomfortable for

you."

And, after a day or two, I began to feel that it was being made

uncomfortable for me. I am a social being; I like people. In the city

my neighborly instincts have died of a sort of brick wall apathy, but in

the country it comes to life again. The instinct of gregariousness is as

old as the first hamlets, I daresay, when prehistoric man ceased to live

in trees, and banded together for protection from the wild beasts that

walked the earth.

The village became unfriendly. It was almost a matter of a night. One

day the postmistress leaned on the shelf at her window and chatted with

me. The next she passed out my letters with hardly a glance. Mrs. Graves

did not see me at early communion on Sunday morning. The hackman was

busy when I called him. It was intangible, a matter of omission, not

commission. The doctor's wife, who had asked me to tea, called up and

regretted that she must go to the city that day.

I sat down then and took stock of things. Did the village believe that

Miss Emily must be saved from me? Did the village know the story I

was trying to learn, and was it determined I should never find out the

truth? And, if this were so, was the village right or was I? They

would save Miss Emily by concealment, while I felt that concealment had

failed, and that only the truth would do. Did the village know, or only

suspect? Or was it not the village at all, but one or two people who

were determined to drive me away?

My theories were rudely disturbed shortly after that by a visit from

Martin Sprague. I fancied that Willie had sent him, but he evaded my

question.

"I'd like another look at that slip of paper," he said. "Where do you

keep it, by the way?"

"In a safe place," I replied non-committally, and he laughed. The truth

was that I had taken out the removable inner sole of a slipper and had

placed it underneath, an excellent hiding-place, but one I did not care

to confide to him. When I had brought it downstairs, he read it over

again carefully, and then sat back with it in his hand.

"Now tell me about everything," he said.

I did, while he listened attentively. Afterward we walked back to the

barn, and I showed him the piece of broken halter still tied there.

He surveyed it without comment, but on the way back to the house he

said: "If the village is lined up as you say it is, I suppose it is

useless to interview the harness-maker. He has probably repaired that

strap, or sold a new one, to whoever--It would be a nice clue to follow

up."

"I am not doing detective work," I said shortly. "I am trying to help

some one who is dying of anxiety and terror."

He nodded. "I get you," he said. But his tone was not flippant. "The

fact is, of course, that the early theory won't hold. There has been a

crime, and the little old lady did not commit it. But suppose you find

out who did it. How is that going to help her?"

"I don't know, Martin," I said, in a sort of desperation. "But I have

the most curious feeling that she is depending on me. The way she spoke

the day I saw her, and her eyes and everything; I know you think it

nonsense," I finished lamely.

"I think you'd better give up the place and go back to town," he said.

But I saw that he watched me carefully, and when, at last he got up to

go, he put a hand on my shoulder.

"I think you are right, after all," he said. "There are a good many

things that can't be reasoned out with any logic we have, but that are

true, nevertheless. We call it intuition, but it's really subconscious

intelligence. Stay, by all means, if you feel you should."

In the doorway he said: "Remember this, Miss Agnes. Both a crime of

violence and a confession like the one in your hand are the products of

impulse. They are not, either of them, premeditated. They are not

the work, then, of a calculating or cautious nature. Look for a big,

emotional type."

It was a day or two after that that I made my visit to Miss Emily. I had

stopped once before, to be told with an air of finality that the invalid

was asleep. On this occasion I took with me a basket of fruit. I had

half expected a refusal, but I was admitted.

The Bullard girl was with Miss Emily. She had, I think, been kneeling

beside the bed, and her eyes were red and swollen. But Miss Emily

herself was as cool, as dainty and starched and fragile as ever. More

so, I thought. She was thinner, and although it was a warm August day,

a white silk shawl was wrapped around her shoulders and fastened with an

amethyst brooch. In my clasp her thin hand felt hot and dry.

"I have been waiting for you," she said simply. She looked at Anne

Bullard, and the message in her eyes was plain enough. But the girl

ignored it. She stood across the bed from me and eyed me steadily.

"My dear," said Miss Emily, in her high-bred voice, "if you have

anything to do, Miss Blakiston will sit with me for a little while."

"I have nothing to do," said the girl doggedly. Perhaps this is not the

word. She had more the look of endurance and supreme patience. There was

no sharpness about her, although there was vigilance.

Miss Emily sighed, and I saw her eyes seek the Bible beside her. But she

only said gently: "Then sit down, dear. You can work at my knitting if

you like. My hands get very tired."

She asked me questions about the house and the garden. The raspberries

were usually quite good, and she was rather celebrated for her lettuces.

If I had more than I needed, would I mind if Mr. Staley took a few in to

the doctor, who was fond of them.

The mention of Doctor Lingard took me back to the night of the burglary.

I wondered if to tell Miss Emily would unduly agitate her. I think I

would not have told her, but I caught the girl's eye, across the bed,

raised from her knitting and fixed on me with a peculiar intensity.

Suddenly it seemed to me that Miss Emily was surrounded by a conspiracy

of silence, and it roused my antagonism.

"There are plenty of lettuces," I said, "although a few were trampled by

a runaway horse the other night. It is rather a curious story."

So I told her of our night visitor. I told it humorously, lightly,

touching on my own horror at finding I had been standing with my hand on

the burglar's shoulder. But I was sorry for my impulse immediately, for

I saw Miss Emily's body grow rigid, and her hands twist together. She

did not look at me. She stared fixedly at the girl. Their eyes met.

It was as if Miss Emily asked a question which the girl refused to

answer. It was as certain as though it had been a matter of words

instead of glances. It was over in a moment. Miss Bullard went back to

her knitting, but Miss Emily lay still.

"I think I should not have told you," I apologized. "I thought it

might interest you. Of course nothing whatever was taken, and no damage

done--except to the lettuces."

"Anne," said Miss Emily, "will you bring me some fresh water?"

The girl rose reluctantly, but she did not go farther than the top of

the staircase, just beyond the door. We heard her calling to some one

below, in her clear young voice, to bring the water, and the next moment

she was back in the room. But Miss Emily had had the opportunity for one

sentence.

"I know now," she said quietly, "that you have found it."

Anne Bullard was watching from the doorway, and it seemed to me, having

got so far, I could not retreat. I must go on.

"Miss Bullard," I said. "I would like to have just a short conversation

with Miss Emily. It is about a private matter. I am sure you will not

mind if I ask you--"

"I shall not go out."

"Anne!" said Miss Emily sharply.

The girl was dogged enough by that time. Both dogged and frightened, I

felt. But she stood her ground.

"She is not to be worried about anything," she insisted. "And she's not

supposed to have visitors. That's the doctor's orders."

I felt outraged and indignant, but against the stone wall of the girl's

presence and her distrust I was helpless. I got up, with as much dignity

as I could muster.

"I should have been told that downstairs."

"The woman's a fool," said Anne Bullard, with a sort of suppressed

fierceness. She stood aside as, having said good-by to Miss Emily, I

went out, and I felt that she hardly breathed until I had got safely to

the street.

Looking back, I feel that Emily Benton died at the hands of her friends.

For she died, indeed, died in the act of trying to tell me what they had

determined she should never tell. Died of kindness and misunderstanding.

Died repressed, as she had lived repressed. Yet, I think, died calmly

and bravely.

I had made no further attempt to see her, and Maggie and I had taken

up again the quiet course of our lives. The telephone did not ring of

nights. The cat came and went, spending as I had learned, its days with

Miss Emily and its nights with us. I have wondered since how many nights

Miss Emily had spent in the low chair in that back hall, where the

confession lay hidden, that the cat should feel it could sleep nowhere

else.

The days went by, warm days and cooler ones, but rarely rainy ones.

The dust from the road settled thick over flowers and shrubbery. The

lettuces wilted, and those that stood up in the sun were strong and

bitter. By the end of August we were gasping in a hot dryness that

cracked the skin and made any but cold food impossible.

Miss Emily lay through it all in her hot upper room in the village, and

my attempt, through Doctor Lingard, to coax her back to the house by

offering to leave it brought only a negative. "It would be better for

her, you understand," the doctor said, over the telephone. "But she is

very determined, and she insists on remaining where she is."

And I believe this was the truth. They would surely have been glad to

get rid of me, these friends of Miss Emily's.

I have wondered since what they thought of me, Anne Bullard and the

doctor, to have feared me as they did. I look in the mirror, and I see

a middle-aged woman, with a determined nose, slightly inquisitive, and

what I trust is a humorous mouth, for it has no other virtues. But they

feared me. Perhaps long looking for a danger affects the mental vision.

Anyhow, by the doctor's order, I was not allowed to call and see Miss

Emily again.

Then, one night, the heat suddenly lifted. One moment I was sitting on

the veranda, lifeless and inert, and the next a cool wind, with a hint

of rain, had set the shutters to banging and the curtains to flowing,

like flags of truce, from the windows. The air was life, energy. I felt

revivified.

And something of the same sort must have happened to Miss Emily. She

must have sat up among her pillows, her face fanned with the electric

breeze, and made her determination to see me. Anne Bullard was at work,

and she was free from observation.

It must have been nine o'clock when she left the house, a shaken little

figure in black, not as neat as usual, but hooked and buttoned, for all

that, with no one will ever know what agony of old hands.

She was two hours and a half getting to the house, and the rain came

at ten o'clock. By half after eleven, when the doorbell rang, she was

a sodden mass of wet garments, and her teeth were chattering when I led

her into the library.

She could not talk. The thing she had come to say was totally beyond

her. I put her to bed in her own room. And two days later she died.

I had made no protest when Anne Bullard presented herself at the door

the morning after Miss Emily arrived, and, walking into the house, took

sleepless charge of the sickroom. And I made no reference save once to

the reason for the tragedy. That was the night Miss Emily died. Anne

Bullard had called to me that she feared there was a change, and I went

into the sickroom. There was a change, and I could only shake my head.

She burst out at me then.

"If only you had never taken this house!" she said. "You people with

money, you think there is nothing you can not have. You came, and now

look!"

"Anne," I said with a bitterness I could not conceal, "Miss Emily is not

young, and I think she is ready to go. But she has been killed by her

friends. I wanted to help, but they would not allow me to."

Toward morning there was nothing more to be done, and we sat together,

listening to the stertorous breathing from the bed. Maggie, who had

been up all night, had given me notice at three in the morning, and was

upstairs packing her trunk.