CHAPTER IX

AS was only natural in a town of the size of Stafford, the sudden departure of Fred Walton, under circumstances no one seemed able to explain, caused wide and growing comment. A railroad man who had returned from Atlanta informed an eager cluster of idlers in the big office of the main hotel of the place that Fred had been seen lurking about the freight-yards in the city at early daylight, evidently trying to avoid being seen. The report went out, too—and no less authority accompanied it than the word of Fred’s stepmother, who, admitting the fact that she hated the young man, could not be charged with originating a direct lie—that Fred had gone without “a thread to wear,” except what he had on when leaving. The town did not need to be told that in that detail alone lay ample evidence of the gravity of the case, even if it were not said—on good authority, too—that old Simon Walton, immediately on discovering the flight, had called in Bill Johnston to consult with him. Had he taken away money? That was the question designedly put by Walton’s business rivals, and that was the question which one and all declared the old man and Toby Lassiter had promptly denied. No, it was something else; that was quite plain.

Mrs. Barry heard the news at the fence the next afternoon from the voluble tongue of a poor washerwoman, a Mrs. Chumley, who, since the downfall of her only daughter, and the handsome girl’s adoption of a life of prostitution in Augusta, had lived on alone in a cottage adjoining Mrs. Barry’s, and who, as she cleansed the linen of her neighbors for a living, besmirched their characters as her only available solace. She was fond of hinting darkly that if disgrace had come to her family by discovery, it hovered—ready to drop at any minute—over the heads of people not a bit better, and who were far too stuck-up for their own safety.

“You certainly ought to be glad the scamp’s gone,” she remarked to Mrs. Barry, as she leaned her bare, crinkled arms on the fence when she unctuously told the news. “I never liked to see him hanging round Dora. A body would see him one day over there at that big fine house with Miss Margaret, whose high-priced ruffles I’ve got in the tub right now, and the next bending his head to enter your lowly door. Things as wide apart as them two naturally are won’t hitch, neighbor, that’s all—they won’t hitch.”

“Yes, I’m glad he’s gone,” Mrs. Barry admitted, with the indiscretion most persons had under the plausible eye and guiding tone of the gossip. “Dora says he had a kind heart, and that she’s sorry for him in all his ups and downs; but, as you say, no good could come of their being together so much, at least, and it is better to have it end.”

“The postman left a letter for you-all this morning, didn’t he?” was a question Mrs. Chumley had evidently been holding in reserve.

“No, there wasn’t anything. Dora went out to the fence to see if he had any mail, but he didn’t.”

“Huh, that’s strange!” Mrs. Chumley’s purposely averted glance came back to the wrinkled face of her neighbor, and remained fixed there in a direct and probing stare. “That’s queer, for I certainly saw him hand her a letter over the fence as plain as I see that tub of suds. I saw her reading it, too.”

“You must be mistaken.” Mrs. Barry’s face had changed. There were splotches of pallor in her gaunt cheeks.

“No, I couldn’t be. I don’t make mistakes in things of that sort—not of that sort.”

Mrs. Barry was silent. She was forced to admit that if any pair of earthly eyes could detect a hidden thing those eyes were now eagerly blinking under the sinister brows before her. As she stared into the reddish, freckled face, certain long-subdued fears rose within her. She felt faint, and had a sensation as if all visible objects were whirling around her. Then she became anchored by something in the gossip’s glance which, had she has been less afraid, she would have taken as direct insult. It was as if the washerwoman were saying: “Well, you know I can sympathize with you. I have been through it all.”

“She came back in the house after the postman had gone on,” Mrs. Barry faltered, “and told me there wasn’t any letter.”

The poor woman felt that her defence, if defence it might be called, was falling on wilfully closed ears, and again she was conscious of that rocking, floating sensation. The round, red visage of the washerwoman seemed to recede from her; there was a sound as of roaring water in her ears. But through it all the insistent voice of her tormentor beat into her consciousness.

“If she didn’t show it to you, she hid it; I’m dead sure of that. She hid it. I have been watching your girl, Mrs. Barry, for several weeks, and I’m free to say that something has gone wrong with her. A body can see it in the drooping way she has in moving about. The day you sent her over for the salt I thought, on my soul, she’d drop in her tracks before she left the kitchen. Maybe the letter was to tell her where the scamp was going, or—or—well, there could be lots a fellow like that might say at such a time. But I’ll be bound, he was putting her off. They all do. It is man-nature.”

“I am sure she didn’t get any letter,” Mrs. Barry said, and she now tore herself away, conscious of her overwhelming disadvantage in the adroit woman’s hands.

“Well, you’ll find out I’m right,” was the shot which struck her in the back as she turned the corner of the cottage. “If you don’t believe me, you can ask the postman; there he is—coming down the street right now.”

But Mrs. Barry did not pause. She went into the house and closed her door. She stood in the middle of the room like a creature deprived of animation. Through the parted curtains of an open window she heard the washerwoman call out to the man in uniform:

“I just had a bet up with Mrs. Barry, Sim Carter! She must think I’m blind. I told her you left a letter at her house this morning, and she says she never saw hair nor hide of it.”

“It is there all right,” the man laughed. “I gave it to Miss Dora.”

“That’s what I told her. I say, Sim Carter, have they heard anything more yet about—” But the postman was gone.

Through the window, by stooping and peering forth, Mrs. Barry could see him crossing the street to the next house. With a heart as heavy as lead she went into the parlor; Dora was not there. She passed on to the kitchen; no one was there, either. There was something incongruous in the contented aspect of the fat, gray cat lying and purring in the sunlight on the door-sill. Bliss like that under the coat of a mere dumb brute when she had this to bear—this lurking, insinuating, maddening thing, which had been creeping slowly upon her night and day until it had assumed the shape and size of a monster of mental and spiritual torture.

She went on to Dora’s room, where she found the girl seated on her bed. The great, long-lashed, somnolent eyes, over the exquisite beauty of which men and women had marvelled, were red as from weeping. She gave her mother, as the old woman stood in the doorway, a weary, despondent glance, and then, half startled, looked down. Mrs. Barry saw the charred remains of a sheet of writing-paper in the open fireplace, and a fresh pang darted through her.

“Did you need me, mother?” Dora inquired, softly, in the musical voice so many had admired, and which to-day sounded sweeter, more appealing, than ever before.

“Mrs. Chumley says you got a letter from the postman this morning,” Mrs. Barry said, tremblingly.

The girl seemed to hesitate just an instant; then she nodded, mutely.

“Who was it from, daughter?”

“Mother, I don’t want to say—even to you. I have reasons why—”

“It was from Fred Walton! You need not deny it.”

Dora made no protest; she simply dropped her eyes to her lap, and sat motionless.

“You knew he had left, didn’t you?”

“Yes, mother. I knew he was gone.”

“And while the whole town is wondering why he went, you know, I suppose?”

“I don’t feel that I have the right to talk about it, mother.”

“Well, I sha’n’t urge you!” And the older woman shambled away, now bearing doubts which were heavier and more maddening than ever.

“Something’s wrong—very, very wrong—or she wouldn’t droop like that,” she said. “Oh, God have mercy, I’m actually afraid to question my own child! I am afraid to even do that!”

The sun went down, the night came on; workingmen, women, and children passed along on their homeward way from the cotton and woolen mills, carrying their dinner-pails. The very cheerfulness of their faces, lightness of step, and merry jesting with one another sent shafts of misery to the heart of the brooding woman. When she had put the supper on the table she went to the daughter’s room and told her it was ready.

“Some of your art pupils came to the gate just now, didn’t they?” she inquired.

“Yes,” the girl answered. “Sally and Mary Hill wanted to know if I’d go sketching with them to the swamp to-morrow afternoon.”

“And are you going?”

“I told them I’d let them know in the morning.” Dora was at her place at the side of the table, and she felt her mother’s despondent gaze turned on her.

“You told them you’d let them know! Why, don’t you know already? I thought you liked to go out that way. Some of your best studies were made at the swamp.”

“I was feeling so badly,” the girl sighed, “that I didn’t have the heart to promise. I can never work to any advantage if I am not in the mood for it.”

“Oh! that is it!” They both sat down. “You ought to fight against languor at this time of the year. I never let an ache or pain keep me from work. Sometimes merely being busy seems to help one. Your father used to stick at his easel as long as the light would hold out. He used to say the time would come when the whole world would admire your painting, and you really are improving.”

Dora sighed, but said nothing.

Mrs. Barry passed her a cup of coffee. “Here, drink this down while it is hot,” she advised. “I made it strong. It will do you good.”

“Thank you, mother, you are very kind to me.” Dora drank some of the coffee, and daintily munched a piece of buttered toast. In the afternoon light, which fell through a western window, Mrs. Barry saw a deeply troubled look on the wan face—a certain nervous twitching of the tapering fingers.

Presently Dora pushed back her chair and rose.

“I don’t care for anything else,” she said, avoiding her mother’s eyes.

“But you haven’t eaten anything at all,” Mrs. Barry protested, anxiously.

“I can’t eat—I simply can’t,” Dora said, with strange and desperate frankness. “I’m too miserable. Oh, mother, mother, pity me! pity me!”

Mrs. Barry sat motionless, her head, with its scant hair, now supported by her two sinewy hands. She saw her daughter turn away, and, with dragging feet, go on to her bedroom.

“God, have mercy!” she moaned. “She’s as good as admitted it. What else could she have meant? Oh, God, what else—what else? She must know what I am afraid of. Oh, my baby!—my poor, poor baby!”

She rose from her untasted meal and followed her child, not noticing, in the gathering dusk, that Mrs. Chumley had entered the outer door, and was treading softly and with bated breath in her wake. She found the girl standing at a window, dumb and pale, looking out into the yard.

“You must tell me everything, daughter,” Mrs. Barry said. “I can’t sleep to-night unless you do. I am afraid I am going mad. Tell me, tell me!”

“Oh, mother, mother, how can I?”

“You are ruined!” Mrs. Barry groaned. “Tell me I am right—you are ruined!”

With a cry, Dora turned and threw herself on the bed, and with her face hidden in a pillow she burst into dry sobs.

“Make her tell you the whole thing,” Mrs. Chumley spoke up, as she stood in the doorway. “Have it out of her, and be done with it; that’s the course I took.”

Mrs. Barry turned upon her, but no anger or resentment over the intrusion stirred the dregs of her despair. A faint shock came to her with the thought that now all Stafford would know the truth, but it was followed by the realization that, after all, concealment would not lessen in any degree the horror of the disaster.

“Come away!” she heard herself imploring the gossip. “Let her alone! I won’t have folks bothering her. She’s got enough to bear as it is, without having people prying. Come away, come away!”

Mrs. Chumley suffered herself to be led to the outer door.

“All right. I came over to return the cup of sugar you lent me; I left it in the kitchen. I am much obliged, and I’m as sorry for you as one woman could be for another. Good-night.”

Mrs. Barry went to the supper-table, and, as it was growing dark, she lighted a lamp. She proceeded to wash and dry and put away the dishes. No one would have suspected that such a deadening blow had been dealt her to have looked in on her at this moment, as she moved dumbly about the room, her head and face hidden by the gingham sunbonnet she had put on. It was a badge of humility—a thing she vaguely fancied hid her maternal shame from eyes which she already felt prying.

Her task finished, she stood for a moment hesitatingly; then she blew out the lamp and crept softly to the door of her daughter’s room. Bending her head, she listened at the keyhole. No sound came to her ears, and she softly lifted the latch and went in. Dora still lay on the bed, her arms clutching the pillow, her face out of view in the darkened room.

“Darling, I haven’t come to scold you, don’t think that,” the old woman said, most tenderly, as she sat down on the edge of the bed and took her daughter’s tear-damp hand. “This calamity has fallen on both of us, just as the death of your dear father did so far away from home, and just as many other hard things have come to us. I shall stand by you through it all. It is not the first time a poor young girl has been misled. Nothing is left for us but to do our duty to the best of our ability in the sight of Heaven. I shall not press you to tell me a thing, either. My knowing particulars wouldn’t better matters at all. It is done, and that is enough. Now, go to sleep, baby girl, and don’t give way to despair. Good-night.”

Dora sat up, extended her arms, and for a moment the two remained locked in a tight, sobbing embrace. Neither spoke after that. Tenderly releasing her daughter’s twining arms, Mrs. Barry went out and softly closed the door. In her own room, in utter darkness, she undressed. Before retiring, and with the sunbonnet still on her head, she knelt beside a chair in the room and started to pray, but somehow the needed words failed to come. Prayer is born in hope in some sort of faith, at least, but this lone widow, brave as her front appeared, had neither.

“Oh, Edwin!” she suddenly cried out, “she was your idol, your little pet; you used to say, as she sat on your knee in the firelight at night, that she was born to be lucky and happy. You said her beauty, genius, and gentleness would draw the world to her feet. You hoped all that for her, Edwin, and yet there she is bowed down in the greatest shame and sorrow that can fall to a young girl’s lot. On the day you left never to return, you told me of the great Virginia family from which she was descended, and said that some day we’d be grandparents of children that would make us proud. Poor, dear Edwin!—that was only one of your pretty dreams—our grandchild, if God lets it come, won’t even have a name of its own, and may bear this curse through a long life to its grave. Oh, Edwin!—my gentle, loving husband—you are here by my side to-night, aren’t you? You are here putting your dear spirit arms about me, trying to comfort me, and you will help her, too, dear husband, as you are helping me. Hold up the sweet, stricken child. Fill her dark life with your own unrealized dreams. Give her something—anything to help her bear her burden! That’s my prayer to you, Edwin—to you, and to God!”

She went to her bed and threw herself down. Tears welled up in her, but she forced them back, and, dry-eyed and still, she lay with her wrinkled face near to the wall.