By the next morning all the city was in a commotion over little
Ellen's disappearance. Woods on the outskirts were being searched,
ponds were being dragged, posters with a stare of dreadful meaning
in large characters of black and white were being pasted all over
the fences and available barns, and already three of the local
editors had been to the Brewster house to obtain particulars and
photographs of the missing child for reproduction in the city
papers.
The first train from Boston brought two reporters representing great
dailies.
Fanny Brewster, white-cheeked, with the rasped redness of tears
around her eyes and mouth, clad in her blue calico wrapper, received
them in her best parlor. Eva had made a fire in the best parlor
stove early that morning. "Folks will be comin' in all day, I
expect," said she, speaking with nervous catches of her breath. Ever
since the child had been missed, Eva's anxiety had driven her from
point to point of unrest as with a stinging lash. She had pelted
bareheaded down the road and up the road; she had invaded all the
neighbors' houses, insisting upon looking through their farthest and
most unlikely closets; she had even penetrated to the woods, and
joined wild-eyed the groups of peering workers on the shore of the
nearest pond. That she could not endure long, so she had rushed home
to her sister, who was either pacing her sitting-room with
inarticulate murmurs and wails of distress in the sympathizing ears
of several of the neighboring women, or else was staring with
haggard eyes of fearful hope from a window. When she looked from the
eastern window she could see her mother-in-law, Mrs. Zelotes
Brewster, at an opposite one, sitting immovable, with her Bible in
her lap, prayer in her heart, and an eye of grim holding to faith
upon the road for the fulfilment of promise. She felt all her
muscles stiffen with anger when she saw the wild eyes of the child's
mother at the other window. "It is all her fault," she said to
herself--"all her fault--hers and that bold trollop of a sister of
hers." When she saw Eva run down the road, with her black hair
rising like a mane to the morning wind, she was an embodiment of an
imprecatory psalm. When, later on, she saw the three editors
coming--Mr. Walsey, of _The Spy_, and Mr. Jones, of _The Observer_,
and young Joe Bemis, of _The Star_, on his bicycle--she watched
jealously to see if they were admitted. When Fanny's head
disappeared from the eastern window she knew that Eva had let them
in and Fanny was receiving them in the parlor. "She will tell them
all about the words they had last night, that made the dear child
run away," she thought. "All the town will know what doings there
are in our family." Mrs. Zelotes made up her mind to a course of
action. Each editor was granted a long audience with Fanny and Eva,
who entertained them with hysterical solemnity and displayed Ellen's
photographs in the red plush album, from the last, taken in her best
white frock, to one when she was three weeks old, and seeming weakly
and not likely to live. This had been taken by a photographer
summoned to the house at great expense. "Her father has never spared
expense for Ellen," said Fanny, with an outburst of grief. "That's
so," said Eva. "I'll testify to that. Andrew Brewster never thought
anything was too good for that young one." Then she burst out with
a sob louder than her sister's. Eva had usually a coarsely
well-kempt appearance, her heavy black hair being securely twisted,
and her neck ribbons tied with smart jerks of neatness; but to-day
her hair was still in the fringy braids of yesterday, and her cotton
blouse humped untidily in the back. Her face was red and her lips
swollen; she looked like a very bacchante of sorrow, and as if she
had been on some mad orgy of grief.
Mr. Walsey, of _The Spy_, who had formerly conducted a paper in a
college town and was not accustomed to the feminine possibilities of
manufacturing localities, felt almost afraid of her. He had never
seen a woman of that sort, and thought vaguely of the French
Revolution and fish-wives when she gave vent to her distress over
the loss of the child. He fairly jumped when she cut short a
question of his with a volley of self-recriminatory truths,
accompanied with fierce gesturing. He stood back involuntarily out
of reach of those powerful, waving arms. "Do I know of any reason
for the child to run away?" shrieked Eva, in a voice shrilly hideous
with emotion, now and then breaking into hoarseness with the strain
of tears. "I guess I know why, I guess I do, and I wish I had been
six foot under ground before I did what I did. It was all my fault,
every bit of it. When I got home, and found that Fan had been making
that precious young one a dress out of my old blue one, I pitched
into her for it, and she gave it back to me, and then we jawed, and
kept it up, till Andrew, he grabbed the dress and flung it into the
fire, and did just right, too, and took Ellen and run over to old
lady Brewster's with her; then Ellen, she see him cryin', and it
scared her 'most to death, poor little thing, and she heard him say
that if it wasn't for her he'd quit, and then she come runnin' home
to her mother and me, and her mother said the same thing, and then
that poor young one, she thought she wa'n't wanted nowheres, and she
run. She always was as easy to hurt as a baby robin; it didn't take
nothing to set her all of a flutter and a twitter; and now she's
just flown out of the nest. Oh my God, I wish my tongue had been
torn out by the roots before I'd said a word about her blessed
little dress; I wish Fan had cut up every old rag I've got; I'd go
dressed in fig-leaves before I'd had it happen. Oh! oh! oh!"
Young Joe Bemis, of _The Star_, was the first to leave, whirling
madly and precariously down the street on his wheel, which was
dizzily tall in those days. Mrs. Zelotes, hailing him from her open
window, might as well have hailed the wind. Her family dissensions
were well aired in _The Star_ next morning, and she always kept the
cutting at the bottom of a little rosewood work-box where she stored
away divers small treasures, and never looked at the box without a
swift dart of pain as from a hidden sting and the consciousness as
of the presence of some noxious insect caged therein.
Mrs. Zelotes was more successful in arresting the progress of the
other editors, and (standing at the window, her Bible on the little
table at her side) flatly contradicted all that had been told them
by her daughter-in-law and her sister. "The Louds always give way,
no matter what comes up. You can always tell what kind of a family
anybody comes from by the way they take things when anything comes
across them. You can't depend on anything she says this morning. My
son did not marry just as I wished; everybody knows that; the Louds
weren't equal to our family, and everybody knows it, and I have
never made any secret as to how I felt, but we have always got along
well enough. The Brewsters are not quarrelsome; they never have
been. There were no words whatever last night to make my
granddaughter run away. Eva and Fanny are all wrong about it. Ellen
has been stolen; I know it as well as if I had seen it. A
strange-looking woman came to the door yesterday afternoon; she was
the tallest woman I ever saw, and she took the widest steps; she
measured her dress skirt every step she took, and she spoke gruff. I
said then I knew she was a man dressed up. Ellen was playing out in
the yard, and she saw the child as she went out, and I see her stoop
and look at her real sharp, and my blood run kind of cold then, and
I called Ellen away as quick as I could; and the woman, she turned
round and gave me a look that I won't ever forget as long as I live.
My belief is that that woman was laying in wait when Ellen was going
across the yard home from here last night, and she has got her safe
somewhere till a reward is offered. Or maybe she wants to keep her,
Ellen is such a beautiful child. You needn't put in your papers that
my grandchild run away because of quarrelling in our family, because
she didn't. Eva and Fanny don't know what they are talking about,
they are so wrought up; and, coming from the family they do, they
don't know how to control themselves and show any sense. I feel it
as much as they do, but I have been sitting here all the morning; I
know I can't do anything to help, and I am working a good deal
harder, waiting, than they are, rushing from pillar to post and
taking on, and I'm doing more good. I shall be the only one fit to
do anything when they find the poor child. I've got blankets warming
by the fire, and my tea-kettle on, and I'm going to be the one to
depend on when she's brought home." Mrs. Zelotes gave a glance of
defiant faith from the window down the road as she spoke. Then she
settled back in her chair and resumed her Bible, and dismissed the
tall and forbidding woman whom she had summoned to save the honor of
her family resolutely from her conscience. The editors of _The Spy_
and _The Observer_ had a row of ingratiating photographs of little
Ellen from three weeks to seven years of age; and their opinions as
to the cause of her disappearance, while fully agreeing in all
points of sensationalism with those of young Bemis, of _The Star_,
differed in detail.
Young Bemis read about the mysterious kidnapper, and wondered, and
the demand for _The Star_ was chiefly among the immediate neighbors
of the Brewsters. Both _The Observer_ and _The Spy_ doubled their
circulation in one day, and every face on the night cars was hidden
behind poor little Ellen's baby countenances and the fairy-story of
the witch-woman who had lured her away. Mothers kept their children
carefully in-doors that evening, and pulled down curtains, fearful
lest She look in the windows and be tempted. Mrs. Zelotes also
waylaid both of the Boston reporters, but with results upon which
she had not counted. One presented her story and Fanny's and Eva's
with impartial justice; the other kept wholly to the latter version,
with the addition of a shrewd theory of his own, deduced from the
circumstances which had a parallel in actual history, and boldly
stated that the child had probably committed suicide on account of
family troubles. Poor Fanny and Eva both saw that, when night was
falling and Ellen had not been found. Eva rushed out and secured the
paper from the newsboy, and the two sisters gasped over the
startling column together.
"It's a lie! oh, Fanny, it's a lie!" cried Eva. "She never would;
oh, she never would! That little thing, just because she heard you
and me scoldin', and you said that to her, that if it wasn't for her
you'd go away. She never would."
"Go away?" sobbed Fanny--"go away? I wouldn't go away from hell if
she was there. I would burn; I would hear the clankin' of chains,
and groans, and screeches, and devils whisperin' in my ears what I
had done wrong, for all eternity, before I'd go where they were
playin' harps in heaven, if she was there. I'd like it better, I
would. And I'd stay here if I had twenty sisters I didn't get along
with, and be happier than I would be anywhere else on earth, if she
was here. But she couldn't have done it. She didn't know how. It's
awful to put such things into papers."
Eva jumped up with a fierce gesture, ran to the stove, and crammed
the paper in. "There!" said she; "I wish I could serve all the
papers in the country the same way. I do, and I'd like to put all
the editors in after 'em. I'd like to put 'em in the stove with
their own papers for kindlin's." Suddenly Eva turned with a swish
of skirts, and was out of the room and pounding up-stairs, shaking
the little house with every step. When she returned she bore over
her arm her best dress--a cherished blue silk, ornate with ribbons
and cheap lace. "Where's that pattern?" she asked her sister.
"She wouldn't ever do such a thing," moaned Fanny.
"Where's that pattern?"
"What pattern?" Fanny said, faintly.
"That little dress pattern. Her little dress pattern, the one you
cut over my dress for her by."
"In the bureau drawer in my room. Oh, she wouldn't."
Eva went into the bedroom, returned with the pattern, got the
scissors from Fanny's work-basket, and threw her best silk dress in
a rustling heap upon the table.
Fanny stopped moaning and looked at her with wretched wonder. "What
be you goin' to do?"
"Do?" cried Eva, fiercely--"do? I'm goin' to cut this dress over for
her."
"You ain't."
"Yes, I be. If I drove her away from home, scoldin' because you cut
over that other old thing of mine for her, I'm goin' to make up for
it now. I'm goin' to give her my best blue silk, that I paid a
dollar and a half a yard for, and 'ain't worn three times. Yes, I
be. She's goin' to have a dress cut out of it, an' she's comin' back
to wear it, too. You'll see she is comin' home to wear it."
Eva cut wildly into the silk with mad slashes of her gleaming
shears, while two neighboring women, who had just come into the
room, stared aghast, and even Fanny was partly diverted from her
sorrow.
"She's crazy," whispered one of the women, backing away as she
spoke.
"Oh, Eva, don't; don't do so," pleaded Fanny, tremulously.
"I be," said Eva, and she cut recklessly up the front breadth.
"You ain't cutting it right," said the other neighbor, who was
skilful in such matters, and never fully moved from her own
household grooves by any excitement. "If you are a-goin' to cut it
at all, you had better cut it right."
"I don't care how I cut it," returned Eva, thrusting the woman away.
"Oh, I don't care how I cut it; I want to waste it. I will waste
it."
The other neighbor backed entirely out of the room, then turned and
fled across the yard, her calico wrapper blowing wildly and lashing
about her slender legs, to her own house, the doors of which she
locked. Presently the other woman followed her, stepping with the
ponderous leisure which results from vastness of body and philosophy
of mind. The autumn wind, swirling in impetuous gusts, had little
effect upon her broadside of woollen shawl. She had not come out on
that raw evening with nothing upon her head. She shook the kitchen
door of her friend, and smiled with calm reassurance when it was
cautiously set ajar to disclose a wide-eyed and open-mouthed face of
terror. "Who is it?"
"It's me. What have you got your door locked for?"
"I think that Eva Loud is raving crazy. I'm afraid of her."
"Lord! you 'ain't no reason to be 'fraid of her. She ain't crazy.
She's only lettin' the birds that fly over your an' my heads settle
down to roost. You and me, both of us, if we was situated jest as
she is, might think of doin' jest what she's a-doin', but we won't
neither of us do it. We'd let our best dresses hang in the closet,
safe and sound, while we cut them up in our souls; but Eva, she's
different."
"Well, I don't care. I believe she's crazy, and I'm going to keep my
doors locked. How do you know she hasn't killed Ellen and put her in
the well?"
"Stuff! Now you're lettin' your birds roost, Hattie Monroe."
"I read something that wasn't any worse than that in the paper the
other day. I should think they would look in the well. Have Mrs.
Jones and Miss Cross gone home?"
"No; they are over there. There's poor Andrew coming now; I wonder
if he has heard anything?"
Both women eyed hesitatingly poor Andrew Brewster's dejected figure
creeping up the road in the dark.
"You holler and ask him," said the woman in the door.
"I hate to, for I know by his looks he 'ain't heard anything of her.
I know he's jest comin' home to rest a minute, so he can start
again. I know he 'ain't eat a thing since last night. Well, Maria
has got some coffee all made, and a nice little piece of steak ready
to cook."
"You holler and ask him."
"What is the use? Just see the way he walks; I know without askin'."
However, as Andrew neared his house he involuntarily quickened his
pace, and his head and shoulders became suddenly alert. It had
occurred to him that possibly Fanny and Eva might have had some news
of Ellen during his absence. Possibly she might have come home even.
Then he was hailed by the stout woman standing at the door of the
next house. "Heard anything yet, Andrew?"
Andrew shook his head, and looked with despairing eyes at the
windows where he used to see Ellen's little face. She had not come,
then, for these women would have known it. He entered the house, and
Fanny greeted him with a tremulous cry. "Have you heard anything;
oh, have you heard anything, Andrew?"
Eva sprang forward and clutched him by the arm.
"Have you?"
[Illustration: Eva sprang forward and clutched him by the arm]
Andrew shook his head, and moved her hand from his arm, and pushed
past her roughly.
Fanny stood in his way, and threw her arms around him with a wild,
sobbing cry, but he pushed her away also with sternness, and went to
the kitchen sink to wash his hands. The four women--his wife, her
sister, and the two neighbors--stood staring at him; his face was
terrible as he dipped the water from the pail on the sink corner,
and the terribleness of it was accentuated by the homely and
every-day nature of his action.
They all stared, then Fanny burst out with a loud and desperate
wail. "He won't speak to me, he pushes me away, when it is our child
that's lost--his as well as mine. He hasn't any feelings for me that
bore her. He only thinks of himself. Oh, oh, my own husband pushes
me away."
Andrew went on washing his hands and his ghastly face, and made no
reply. He had actually at that moment not the slightest sympathy
with his wife. All his other outlets of affection were choked by his
concern for his lost child; and as for pity, he kept reflecting,
with a cold cruelty, that it served her right--it served both her
and her sister right. Had not they driven the child away between
them?
He would not eat the supper which the neighbors had prepared for
him; finally he went across the yard to his mother's. It seemed to
him at that time that his mother could enter into his state of mind
better than any one else.
When he went out, Fanny called after him, frantically, "Oh, Andrew,
you ain't going to leave me?"
When he made no response, she gazed for a second at his retreating
back, then her temper came to her aid. She caught her sister's arm,
and pulled her away out of the kitchen. "Come with me," she said,
hoarsely. "I've got nobody but you. My own husband leaves me when he
is in such awful trouble, and goes to that old woman, that has
always hated me, for comfort."
The sisters went into Fanny's bedroom, and sat down on the edge of
the bed, with their arms round each other. "Oh, Fanny!" sobbed Eva;
"poor, poor Fanny! if Andrew turns against you, I will stand by you
as long as I live. I will work my fingers to the bone to support you
and Ellen. I will never get married. I will stay and work for you
and her. And I will never get mad with you again as long as I live,
Fanny. Oh, it was all my fault, every bit my fault, but, but--"
Eva's voice broke; suddenly she clasped her sister tighter, and then
she went down on her knees beside the bed, and hid her tangled head
in her lap. "Oh, Fanny," she sobbed out miserably, "there ain't much
excuse for me, but there's a little. When Jim Tenny stopped goin'
with me last summer, my heart 'most broke. I don't care if you do
know it. That's what made me so much worse than I used to be. Oh, my
heart 'most broke, Fanny! He's treated me awful, but I can't get
over it; and now little Ellen's gone, and I drove her away!"
Fanny bent over her sister, and pressed her head close to her bosom.
"Don't you feel so bad, Eva," said she. "You wasn't any more to
blame than I was, and we'll stand by each other as long as we live."
"I'll work my fingers to the bone for you and Ellen, and I'll never
get married," said Eva again.