Tim found Julie still limp upon the sofa when he came home. She opened
her eyes and stared up at him. He knew at once that something was the
matter, and came quickly and knelt down beside her, laying his hands on
hers.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
“Elizabeth’s been here,” she answered, still lying helplessly on the
sofa and looking at him.
“_Elizabeth?_”
She told him then all about it. “I fell down under the window--I
couldn’t seem to stand up--but I would have stood up if she’d come
in--I would have, Tim--but she didn’t come.”
“She didn’t come? Then she didn’t see you--she doesn’t know we’re here?”
“No: it wasn’t for us she came. She’s Miss Fogg’s niece--the one she’s
always talked about. Oh, Tim, did you know? Did you know Elizabeth had
an old aunt?”
He stared away out of the window a moment, searching his mind. “Yes,
she did speak once or twice of an aunt--but not often. She hadn’t seen
her for years. I never heard her right name. She called her by a baby
name.”
“She called her ‘Tannie,’” Julie said. “It was short for ‘Aunt Annie.’”
“Yes, that was it,” he nodded.
They were silent, their eyes fixed upon each other’s face.
“Oh, Tim, I did it!” Julie broke out. “I brought her right here. It was
me made Miss Fogg send the letter. I never rested ’til I got her to. I
worked and worked at her ’til I got it sent. I did it.”
“Never mind, never mind, honey. You couldn’t know. How could you? It
was my fault, not recollecting. But she didn’t see you?”
“No, she didn’t see me.”
“Then it’s all right. We’ll leave here right away.”
“Leave here?” Julie looked around the little room blankly.
“Why, yes, honey. We got to leave. She’ll be coming back again.”
“She won’t be back for a little bit,” Julie said.
“How’s that? How do you know she won’t be back?”
“Mrs. Watkins heard her say she was going away for a day or so.”
“Going away? Where’s she going? Did she hear where she was going?”
She was silent, looking at him.
“Did she hear where she was going?” he persisted.
“Camp Lee,” she answered at length.
“_Camp Lee?_”
She nodded.
He turned his head away, a sudden spasm constricting his mouth.
“Oh, my honey!” she broke out with a little sob, “I know--I understand
how you feel.”
But this time he silenced her, turning her head against his shoulder
and pressing it there. “There! It’s all right. It’s all right. There
now.” He held her fast. And after a moment he said, “We’ll see about
moving right away.”
“Oh, Tim, our home! Our little rooms where we’ve been so happy!”
“I know--I know! But we’ll find another place,” he comforted her.
She raised her head presently, and held him off. “But Tim, think of her
being Miss Fogg’s niece! Oh, I _hate_ that! Miss Fogg’s mine: she’s my
child. I made her. Elizabeth’s never done one thing for the poor old
woman; but I worked over her with all my heart. It’s true what Mrs.
Watkins said about my blowing the breath of life into her. That’s what
God did in the Bible for Adam. Oh, I oughtn’t to think such things--but
that’s the way I felt--something right out of myself went into that old
soul an’ gave her life. And all the time--all the time, she was _her_
aunt!” She paused, but in a moment she spoke abruptly. “Tim, she was
crying when she went down the steps. What could have made her cry?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Again they were silent, looking into one another’s faces questioningly.
They were suddenly at sea in the wine-dark waters of life, swept from
all their moorings, confused and uncertain, and they looked at each
other in search of some fresh anchorage. The shadows were gathering in
the room now; it was almost dark; and at length he rose and lighted the
gas.
“There! Now what about a little bite to eat?”
It was an inspiration on his part. It brought her back to the reality
of the moment, comforting and restoring her as nothing else could have
done. In the simple preparations for the meal, their familiar happy
life flowed back upon them as though, after all, it was to continue.
They both clutched at it eagerly. It had seemed to be broken and gone;
but now in the laying of the table, the setting forth of the knives
and forks and dishes, here it was again, come back more alive, more
poignant than ever, as though some worker in the ground who thought
his mine exhausted had stumbled unexpectedly upon a vein of metal more
pure than all the rest. It was soul-restoring for them both. He helped
her, and she laughed a little with a shaken tender mirth at his way of
doing things. Together they placed Julie’s best cups upon the table,
the cups that he had given her, that had pink rosebuds flecked all
over them, and which meant more to her and to him than any other cups
could ever mean. The food, the daintily spread table, the knives and
forks, the little cups particularly, seemed all to embody and make real
their companionship, as though what was in their hearts, that vivid
and beautiful essence of their life together, had poured itself forth
materialized before their eyes in these familiar creatures, small and
endearing. But when the meal was all prepared, and the table spread,
Julie and Tim stood, hesitating.
“I can’t go up and get her: I can’t go now,” Julie faltered. He knew
she meant Miss Fogg, for whom the party had been planned.
“Oh, well, maybe she’ll come down of herself,” he answered.
She brightened. “That’s so. Maybe she will. Let’s wait a little bit and
see.”
They stood for a time with their hands on the backs of their chairs,
and surveyed the dainty repast. But nothing happened.
“No, she won’t come by herself,” Julie said forlornly, at length. “I
know she won’t.”
He caught the falling note in her voice, and his love hurried toward
her with words of protective tenderness.
“Well, she’d come quick enough if she could just see how nice you’ve
got everything fixed for her,” he cried. “Just give a person one look
at this table, an’ I’ll bet you couldn’t drive ’em away from it with a
stick.”
She looked up quickly and gratefully, a little laugh trembling on
her lips, and about to reply, when a sudden faint noise at the door
arrested her. Her nerves were on edge, and any noise now was startling.
“Oh, Tim!” she breathed faintly, and wavered toward him. He was beside
her in a moment, his arm fast about her. So they faced the door and
waited. The sound came again, and with a little catch of breath Julie
whispered, “Look!” and pointed. A bit of white paper was creeping in
under the door-sill. They stood and watched it with fixed eyes. It came
in slowly, uncertainly, making a little scratching sound as it came.
A long black hairpin was being used to push it in: they saw the sharp
wire line of it dark against the white of the paper. Slowly, thoroughly
it came creeping under the door. Then with a final poke the hairpin was
withdrawn, and the paper lay there white upon the floor. A faint pause
followed, and then footsteps creaked away down the hall.
Tim stooped quickly and snatched the paper up. It was a flimsy half
sheet, and was folded into a note.
“What is it?” Julie faltered. Some words were scrawled on the outside.
It took a little time to puzzle them out. “Don’t read till I say when,”
they deciphered finally.
“Oh, it’s Miss Fogg!” Julie cried with an unsteady laugh of relief.
“But what does she mean? How are we to know when she says ‘when’?”
As the question died on her lips she was answered by the sudden
explosion of a pistol-shot. An instant of caught silence followed, and
then doors were banged open and people began to run through the house.
“_Miss Fogg!_” Julie screamed. She and Tim ran also, down the hall and
up the stairs. When they reached the place, the room was crowded full
of people. The locked drawer in her bureau was pulled open, and old
Miss Fogg lay on the floor, a pistol beside her, slipped out of her
dead hand.
The people were talking disjointedly, crowding in, and one was stooping
down touching her. Their words came in confused ejaculation. “She’s
dead--just as dead as a nit!” “My Lord! what a sight!” “She done it
with that pistol.” “Don’t touch her. Don’t touch her, I say! She’s
dead, all right.” “But she wa’n’t dead when I got here; she give a
kind of a flop or two just as I got to the door.” “Well, she’s dead
now. The poor crazy old soul!” “She’s killed herself all right!” “Don’t
touch her, I say! Don’t! You got to let her lay like she is till the
coroner comes.” “Mind! you’re gettin’ your hands all into it.” “_My
Lord! What a sight!_”
Julie took one look at the figure on the floor, at the old face, at the
gray hair that she had sometimes brushed, at the muslin waist she had
pressed so carefully, all streaked now--and something crashed within
her. She reeled against Tim. “Take me away--downstairs,” she panted.
He supported her down the narrow steps, and back into their own rooms.
She sank on a chair.
“Read her letter,” she commanded.
He took the twist of paper and, unfolding it, puzzled over it for a
time in silence. “It’s mighty hard to read; it’s written so funny;
she’s left out a lot of words, and written some twice over, an’ all
running down on the paper,” he hesitated.
“Read it, read it!” she cried. She was sitting bowed over, her elbows
on her knees, her face hidden in her hands.
He read, picking the words out with difficulty.
“It commences, ‘Dear’--just that: she forgot to put the rest, I reckon.
‘Dear, I can’t stand no more. My niece, my baby--baby,’ (she’s got
that twice over) ‘to see me to-day.’ (She’s left out something here)
‘trouble. She’s in awful trouble. Her husband’s left an’ gone with
another woman. She’s all broke up by it. My baby she cried and cried.’”
He paused.
“Don’t leave out anything: read it all--_all_,” she breathed from
behind her hands.
He went on again: “‘An’ now the law’s lookin’ for him. My poor little
baby child! All I had. I can’t stand up against this trouble--disgrace.
People talk, always peeking and spying at you, an’ talk. I ain’t got no
more to live for now, an’ I don’t want to live--’”
He hesitated.
“All, Tim, _all_!” she cried out again.
“‘Don’t want to live if there’s bad people in the world like what
took my baby’s husband. She was all I had to set my heart on. You
understand. You been good--good to me.’ (She’s got ‘good’ written twice
over, Julie.) ‘I take my pen in hand--these few lines. Don’t let any
one be blamed. Nobody to blame but that woman. You been good to me. I
thank you, an’ so no more at present from your poor old friend, Eliza
Annie Fogg.’”
He dropped the paper, and turned to her. “Julie! Honey!” he cried.
“Julie, _don’t_ take it so hard! She was just a crazy old woman:
anything would have made her do it!”
Julie raised her ghastly face, staring at him. “She was my child,” she
said, “and I’ve killed her. Oh, you don’t know; but she was like my own
child. She was in the dark, an’ sufferin’. I had so much happiness--I
thought it would give her life. Instead--”
“Julie, she was crazy!” he pleaded.
Her eyes, though she still stared at him, were remote, fixed upon an
inward picture.
“Tim,” she said. “It was all over the clean waist I pressed for
her--all over it. I’ve killed her. And--and Elizabeth too, she was
crying.”
“Elizabeth! _Her_ tears--” he broke in violently, but she silenced him.
“No, don’t speak now; don’t. Let me alone. I’ve got to be by myself and
think it all out alone. I’ve got to think.” She rose unsteadily.
She stood looking at him one moment more, dumbly, uncertainly, groping
perhaps to find something for his consolation, but she found nothing,
and in the end she evaded his outstretched arms, murmured blindly,
“I got to be alone--I got to think it all out,” and passed from the
kitchen and through to the dark of the sitting-room, where she shut the
door fast behind her.
He sank down in a chair and sat on all alone in the room, where the
lights were bright and the supper still waited upon the table in
festive expectancy. Every now and then his eyes traveled around the
room with its air of frozen gayety, but always they returned to the
floor, and so he remained, his legs stretched out in front of him, his
hands driven into his pockets, and his head bowed.
He sat there a long time until his legs grew stiff and went to sleep.
Then he stirred uneasily, drawing them in, and looking again at the
waiting meal.
“I reckon I better eat something; it’s gettin’ late,” he whispered
to himself. He turned to the table and helped himself to some food
tentatively, but as he did so he caught sight of Julie’s apron where
it had fallen to the floor from its accustomed hook.
“Honey, your apron’s on the floor,” he said. He rose stiffly and going
over picked up the checked gingham, but when he thought it was secure
on the hook it fell down in soft folds against him, and he clutched it
suddenly to his breast. “Honey! Julie! _Don’t_ take it so hard!” he
cried. After the apron was once more restored, he came back and looked
at the table and knew that it was impossible to eat.
“I reckon I better clear things away,” he thought drearily.
He began moving very quietly and carefully about the room, doing
everything as nearly as Julie would have done it as he could. He put
all the food away in the ice-box, folded up the linen, and set the
china in its place. But his hands were not very steady, and as he
picked up one of the rosebud cups, a sudden noise upstairs made him
start, and it fell out of his hands and crashed to the floor. “Aw--Oh!
I’ve broken your cup,” he cried in dismay. He stooped, and gathering
up all the pieces tried ineffectively to fit them together. “One of
your best cups, honey, you thought so much of: I’ve broke it,” he
confessed. Suddenly the edges he was trying to fit together blurred
in a dazzled line and the tears rushed into his eyes. He laid the
shattered pieces in a desolate pile on the table, and stumbling into a
chair, buried his head in his arms beside them.
Later on, there was a knock at the door and the coroner came in to
ask for evidence. Tim gave him the note Miss Fogg had written Julie,
and the coroner, a rather sombre dark man with a sallow face and
outstanding ears set wide as though to catch every note of horror that
the world held, read it, holding it beneath the gas jet that made
shining lights on his hair, pausing every now and again to say, “What
do you make of that word?”
“Well,” he said when he had puzzled it all out, “it’s suicide all
right, no question about that. Everybody in the house says the old soul
was more’n half cracked, anyhow. I reckon she’s had that pistol loaded
an’ handy for some time.”
“She had it in that drawer she always kep’ locked,” Tim told him.
“Julie said there was one drawer she was always mighty oneasy about.”
“Is that so?” said the other.
“Yes, Julie said so.”
“Who’s she? Is that your wife?” the coroner demanded.
Tim hesitated. It seemed impossible even to say the little word,
“Yes.” But the coroner, busy folding up Miss Fogg’s note, labeling it
and tucking it away in his wallet, where no doubt it found itself in
company with many another pitiful disaster, appeared not to notice his
silence.
“I’ve heard ’bout your wife,” he said. “Everybody says she was mighty
good to the old woman--seemed to put new life into her. Can I speak to
her?”
“She’s feeling bad,” Tim hesitated. “She’s mightily upset. She ran
upstairs with everybody, and saw the poor old soul layin’ on the floor.”
“Yes,” the coroner nodded, “right much of a mess, wa’n’t it? Liable to
upset anybody not used to viewin’ all kinds of remains, like I am.”
“It was all over her clean waist,” Tim explained earnestly. “Julie just
ironed that waist for her--just a little bit before.”
“I see,” said the coroner. “Perfectly natural she’s upset. Well, no
need to disturb her if she’s feeling bad. This note gives plenty of
evidence.”
He turned to go, but Tim detained him with an eager hand upon his arm.
“A crazy old woman like--like she was, would be mighty apt to commit
suicide, wouldn’t she? It would take less to make her do it than it
would for a person in good health?” he begged. “She’d do it easier than
most folks, wouldn’t she?”
“Oh, yes, any little thing’d be liable to tip her over,” the
other assented. “This trouble now, what she speaks of here in the
letter--that other woman goin’ off with the niece’s husband--that was
all she needed: that did the trick for her, poor old soul. Well,” he
turned again to go, “no need to trouble your wife if she’s feelin’ bad.
Tell her she ought to feel good to think she was able to do so much for
the old lady.”
With that he went, and Tim turned and saw Julie standing in the open
door with the dark of the sitting-room behind her, and knew that she
had heard what the coroner said.
“Julie!” he cried.
But she put up her hands, motioning him away as before, and without a
word turned back into the dark room, shutting the door between them.
Tim sat on alone in the kitchen. As the hours passed slowly away, he
went on tiptoe several times to listen at the sitting-room door, and at
last, late in the night, as there was no sound, he turned the handle
and pushed the door open cautiously. But instantly she cried out in the
dark, “No, Tim, no!”
So he shut the door again as softly as he had opened it, and after a
moment’s hesitation, stretched himself out upon the floor in front of
it. But after all, if she opened the door suddenly to come out, there
was danger that she might stumble over him and get a fall; so he rose
and at last went lonesomely into the bedroom and slipping off his
shoes, flung himself, all dressed as he was, upon the bed.