Ariel Custer (15 page)

She did not go back by way of the bridge. She had too great a consciousness of the farmer and his helper, and now that she had come to her decision, she did not want to meet anyone or have the beauty of her day dispelled. Besides, there was barely time to get back to her appointment before the office would be closed. So she climbed the hill higher and went down on the other side to the pike that met the trolley farther on. She had to cross three fields, and hurried a good deal, trembling and breathless with the exertion and flushed with the heat, but she reached the trolley just in time. All the way into the city, she sat hugging herself with delight at what she had done, and at what she had decided to do. It was as if she looked at the details of the road, as she passed, with new eyes.

I
t was half past six when Emily Dillon entered the door, and Harriet Granniss was just sitting down to a solitary meal.

“Well, you decided to come home at last, did you?” she said with an acrid smile. “It is a wonder you didn’t take dinner in town somewhere and make an evening of it.”

Emily Dillon smiled without the usual meek apology in her face.

“I was detained,” she said in a businesslike tone. “I expected to make the five thirty. I am sorry to have held back supper, but I had just time to get on this train without waiting to phone for you to go on and eat. I wish you would never wait for me when I am late.”

“Well, everything’s stone cold by this time,” Harriet answered haughtily. “Perhaps you enjoy cold muffins; I don’t! But I’m not one to sit down and gorge myself alone. Of course, if you prefer cold meals to hot ones I’ll have to take them, too. You speak as if you intend to make a practice of coming home late after this.”

“Well, perhaps I shall,” smiled Emily, putting her toque on a chair and sitting down at the table. “What beautiful muffins! And you’ve made some orange marmalade. I’m really very hungry, and it all looks so good.”

Harriet Granniss gradually grew more mollified and attempted to find out what Emily had been doing all day, but though she threw out every kind of an opening short of actually asking her point-blank, which she never could bring herself to do, Emily smiled and kept her own counsel. After supper Emily did the dishes and then went out on the porch and sat for an hour conversing with Harriet about the things she knew she liked to talk of: what kind of a suit Harriet would get for winter; how she would make over last winter’s purple tricotine, and whether it was really best to wash woolens in hot water or lukewarm; also whether the next-door neighbors lived as happily as they seemed to do, and whether the postmaster ever read letters. There was some gossip about a young girl who was pretty and wild, a slur about the Methodist minister, and a tale that a woman on the next street had wine on her table every day in spite of prohibition and had been seen in her car drunk several times, to which Emily would not condescend; but she managed to mollify Harriet with descriptions of winter coats she had seen in the shop windows, until finally she said good night with less than her usual stiffness, and they parted at the top of the stairs and went to their rooms.

Emily did not go to her bed immediately, tired though she was from her unusual day. Instead, she fussed over her immaculate bureau drawers for a while, laid out some clean garments for the morning, and sat long by her little desk going over papers, some of which she destroyed. The neighbor across the way told Harriet the next day that she should think they’d have a big electric-light bill, for she saw a light in Miss Dillon’s room at two o’clock when she got up to give Johnny his medicine.

But there was nothing about Emily Dillon’s face the next morning at breakfast to show that she had sat up late the night before. On the contrary, she looked serene as a summer morning and took all Harriet’s gibes with a good-natured smile.

“Well, I s’pose you’re going a-gadding again today,” snapped Harriet, setting down the coffeepot and letting her ample proportions into her chair carefully. “This is your day to go up to your bank with your check, isn’t it? It’s come, hasn’t it?” and she nodded inquiringly toward the long envelope that lay by Emily’s plate along with the weekly
Methodist Review
and a begging letter from her pet orphan asylum.

“Yes, it’s come,” said Emily indifferently, laying the letter by itself.

“Well, I s’pose those tomatoes’ll have to wait till you come back, for I’m not going to do them alone. For mercy’s sake hurry back! I don’t see why you can’t be reasonable and bank in Glenside. I’m sure if it’s good enough for me it ought to be good enough for you.”

“Well, you know, Harriet, I like to stick to the old bank where Father always went,” soothed Emily, tasting her coffee delicately like a bird.

“Oh yes, I know you’re traditional. You can’t ever do anything but what you’ve always done.”

Emily smiled at some inner thought.

“Now you’ll just waste the whole day. I know you. You’ll forget all about the tomatoes—”

Emily looked troubled for a moment.

“I’m sorry about the tomatoes, Harriet, but suppose we don’t put them up this year. Neither of us likes them put up anyway. I don’t really know why we grow them. I suggest that you pick them and give them to your friends.”

Harriet arose from the table in wrath and gave Emily the benefit of her most withering glance.

“That’s just like your easy ways, Emily Dillon. Give away perfectly good vegetables that we have and don’t cost us anything! Give them away when we ought to put them up just as everybody else does. We have them in our garden, and it’s a sin to let them go to waste! Give them away! Hmm!”

“But why have them in our garden?” questioned Emily mildly. “You know you don’t like stewed tomatoes, Harriet. And I never eat them.”

“I consider it my duty to eat everything that is set on the table. Whatever
you
do, I always do my duty,” declared Harriet severely. “The Bible says that there is nothing common or unclean, and I can eat tomatoes or anything else that grows, even if I don’t like them. I’m not a slave to my dislikes as you are. And as for the garden, I’d be ashamed to say I hadn’t any tomatoes in mine. Why,
every
body grows tomatoes
of course
!” She marched from the room with a gathering of soiled dishes and thumped them down in the sink. Emily carried hers and washed them as usual, without a word, and then, gathering up her mail, went to her room.

In a few minutes she came down with her little black toque and veil on, and stopped in the kitchen door while she buttoned her glove.

“Well, good-bye, Harriet. I want to catch this next car,” she said amiably. “I’m sorry about the tomatoes, but that’s really the way I feel about them.” She lingered with a wistful look at the belligerent back of her housemate, but no answer came from the hard-shut lips, and she turned away, saying again, “Well, good-bye, Harriet. Don’t wait for me if it comes time to eat.”

And then she was gone down the little flower-bordered walk, out the ornate pillared gate, past the neatly trimmed hedge, down the street to her trolley.

Harriet Granniss waited until she heard the front gate click, and then she put on an old sunbonnet that she kept for aggressive purposes and went out in the garden to pick tomatoes. She picked and picked in the sweltering sun, great red, luscious, ripe, overgrown fruit, till her back ached, her knees trembled, and her eyes began to have spasms of red and green. She filled all the pans and baskets she could find, and then she emptied some of them on the kitchen table and began to pick some more. She picked even the green ones—every tomato on the patch. She stripped the vines clean, and then she pulled them up and put them in a desolate, subdued pile down at the end of the lot and left the garden with a great bare square where the flourishing vines had been, the pride of her heart and the admiration of the neighborhood. Emily Dillon should see!

She went in the house and hung up the sunbonnet, sitting down heavily in a kitchen chair with the perspiration streaming down her red face, and there she sat puffing and glaring at the tomatoes, red and green. In her green-and-white-checked gingham dress, she strongly resembled an overgrown tomato herself at that moment. When she had sufficiently recovered her equilibrium, she arose and made a cup of strong coffee; then she put on the teakettle and got out the preserving kettle. There was a look about her mouth that boded no good for those tomatoes. She swathed herself in an immense apron and rolled around the kitchen noisily and efficiently, preparing glass jars, hunting rings and tops, filling the salt-jar and the kitchen sugar bowl, getting out her mother’s recipe book, which always figured at a time like this, more particularly as it contained recipes that were not common in the Dillon annals, nor much favored by Emily. Harriet was in a continual state of endeavoring to force Emily into liking what she liked and had always been accustomed to. The effort was all the more aggravating to Harriet because Emily always accepted the result so cheerfully and patiently, striving to say something nice about it even when one could see she didn’t care for it.

Harriet wrought with knife and fire and glass jars until far beyond the usual lunch hour, momently expecting the arrival of Emily and telling herself that if Emily would go off when there was extra work to be done, she must just expect to wait for her lunch, that was all. But Emily did not come. Harriet concluded not to stop for any lunch herself and went on her heroic way, wearing a martyrlike air and glancing at the thermometer to note with satisfaction that it was running higher than any day so far that week. When the red tomatoes were all stowed away behind shining glass and standing in neat and orderly rows, labeled and ready to put away, she began to make pickles with all her might. She cut and chopped and cooked. She used up vinegar and spices and celery seed. Twice she had to call up on the telephone and have things sent up from the grocery store to aid in the scheme of pickling, which had grown through the day into vast proportions. The day wore slowly on, and the last tomato was screwed down under the last jar top, the jar wiped and set at the end of the row with its severe little label P
ICCALILLY
on its front. The task was done. Emily could say no more about the tomatoes. They were saved and ready for anything.

Harriet glared at the clock. She was weary almost to exhaustion, and there was no dinner. It was ten minutes to six, and in fifteen minutes the train would come in, the train on which the gadding Emily would likely arrive, the same train she came on the night before. Harriet shut her thin lips tight and made a resolve. If Emily wanted dinner that night, she might get it herself. No dinner would be got by her in that house that night after the Herculean task she had accomplished. She would make a pitcher of iced tea and take it upstairs with some bread and butter and orange marmalade. Then she could take a bath and be in bed when Emily came if she hurried. She strode around that kitchen with a vigor that was surprising after all she had done all day, and while the kettle was boiling she gathered her bread and butter, the leftover wing of a chicken, a bit of raisin cake, and her cup and plate on a tray. Without her usual fear of waste, she cut a good-sized chunk of ice and put it in her pitcher of tea. Who had a better right after her hard day’s work? And hastily cutting a lemon, she seized the sugar bowl and made good her way to the second floor just as the town clock was striking six.

She stowed her food in her bedroom, took a hasty sponge-off in the bathroom, and was just getting into her nightgown when the six-five steamed into Glenside. She settled herself on her pillow with her supper under the bed out of sight, and a palm-leaf fan for attendant. Emily should get the full benefit of her deed of desertion. She was glad that she always kept the aromatic ammonia handy on her bedside table. It would show Emily. For really, now she was down on the big, cool bed, she felt as if maybe she might be going to die, she was so tired, and the blood in her head seemed about to burst out, it throbbed so hard. How she ached! How furious she was at Emily, to go off all day and have a good time and leave her to do all that work! Her blood boiled higher and hotter as she lay there fanning and waiting for the sound of Emily’s footstep down in the hall. But the minutes went by, and no Emily came.

T
hree days later the Glenside fire-whistle sounded such a blast as drove the peaceful inhabitants of the little borough out of their houses and into the street, or to their various windows. All those who could, ran with all their might toward the firehouse. Those who could not run waited to hear which way the engine would take before starting to follow, but no engine went clattering out, as it usually did after an alarm like that, and yet the alarm continued to sound and screech the louder. For a half hour it sounded, and then gradually the word drifted about that someone was lost, a child probably. Excitement rose high, and everyone began to count and locate his children. At last came a lame man with a white, important look.

“Heard who was lost? Emily Dillon! Been gone for three days, and no one don’t know where she’s at! They got a posse out scourin’ the woods, an’ they’re talkin’ of bloodhounds an’ the state constabulary if they don’t find her before dark, poor soul!”

“Emily Dillon! Why! How? What?”

“Getting kind of strange, I suppose,” supplied the old man, sadly shaking his head. He liked to think Emily Dillon was getting old and strange, for once in her younger days she had turned him down rather neatly in favor of a younger boy. “I understand it isn’t the first time it’s happened,” he embellished his story once more.

“You don’t say! Why, I never should have thought it! Why, I met Emily Dillon only day before yesterday.”

“Well, she’s
gone
!” He rolled the words as a sweet morsel under his tongue. “Yes, she is gone, and they’re very much afraid of
foul play
!”

He whispered the last two words hoarsely.

“Oh, you don’t mean it!”

“Yes, that’s what I hear. Well, I must be getting on. Seems strange, don’t it, to have a real tragedy happen right here in our little town; well, you never can tell, you never can tell, what’s gonta be the outcome of a day.”

Husbands came home on the evening trains, heard the tale with wise, doubting eyes and half-amused smiles.

“Oh, she’s off visiting somewhere, you may depend, and when she gets good and ready she’ll turn up. Foul play! Nonsense! As if anything like that could happen in this quiet little town with a perfectly good police force and several plainclothes men on the alert all the time. No, you’ll see Miss Dillon back again among us before very long and don’t you forget it! I’ve heard she’s none too happy with that Granniss family in the house. There’s been some trouble there. The son’s left home. Probably he and Miss Dillon didn’t agree. You mark my words,
she’s
not lost.”

The night came down, and the boys of the town hurried into old army trousers and ancient sweaters and went out eagerly to search the woods. Men telephoned home from the drugstore that they wouldn’t be back for a while; they were going to stay up and help pump the quarry dry. They were dragging the quarry pond for her body! Women shivered in their sheltered homes and went in early from their cool porches. They couldn’t seem to bear the leafy shadows of the lawn. It made them think of dark shapes all dripping, with clinging skirts and bedraggled hair. The word “suicide” was whispered softly over shadowed gateways and behind the hedges. Wasn’t it a pity! She always seemed so sweet and quiet!

The night wore on, the quarry hole was pumped dry, and still no clue. A detective arrived on the scene in the morning, and the alienated relatives woke up and began to ask about that will, and what had become of Jud Granniss? There was talk, too, of Ariel Custer, and shakings of heads.

“Too bad! I always thought he wasn’t good enough for her. But that’s what comes to girls without mothers, having to make their way in the world. Any man can turn their heads. Jus’ so he’s a man!”

The talk drifted to the machine shop where Judson Granniss had found a temporary job, because it paid better than his old position in the city. He had been in the city the night before and gone early to his job in the morning and so had not yet heard of the excitement. He heard the gossip going around, asked a few direct questions, then dropped his tools and went to his mother.

Harriet Granniss, stolid, indignant, frightened, and belligerent but dominant as ever, met her son’s anxious glance without flinching. She was not going to make friends with him easily just because there was trouble, unless she found he was ready to give in to her will.

“So you thought you’d come around and get a finger in the pie!” she sneered. “Have you come to find fault or give advice?”

“Mother! This is serious business!”

“Well, I guess I wasn’t born yesterday!” she came back. “Did you s’pose that was news to me? But anyway, whatever happens, this house belongs to me!”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t say anything about that now, Mother; it may make things look bad for—us—you know!”

“Oh! Us! Us!” she screamed. “I suppose you mean yourself and that silly girl. I suppose you’re afraid A—
e
—riel won’t marry you if there’s any talk about us, she’s so aristocratic!”

The young man’s nostrils quivered angrily and his lips were white, but he controlled himself.

“Leave Ariel out of the question, please, Mother.”

“Leave Ariel out! You weren’t so ready to leave her out last week! You’ll find she won’t get left out if we get into it and it gets into the papers! You’ll find your fine lady will be smirched as well as the rest of us. You’ll find they will ask if you know anything about Emily Dillon. And how do I know but you do? You two were always so thick!”

“Mother, will you be sensible?” The young man was controlling himself by the hardest effort. “We need to talk this thing over calmly and advise together.”

“Oh,
advise
! No! I don’t need your advice, thank you,” she said bitterly. “I haven’t quite come to that pass, thank fortune! I still have my senses and can order my own course. If you are going to stick to that silly, yellow-haired girl, you can
get out of my house
!”

Down in the village various theories had been advanced. It was known that Emily Dillon had last been seen at the corner waiting for the trolley to take her to Bolton, a little old town halfway between Glenside and Mercer, where her father had always banked and where she had continued to put certain portions of her income, rather because she enjoyed the excuse for the ride and the occasional meeting with old acquaintances than because of any sentimental reason. Perhaps, too, partly because she didn’t care to have Glenside know all her affairs. She had talked with Abe Morse, “passed the time of day,” said how pleasant the weather had been since the last rain, and asked after Amy Morse’s baby. The town took a satisfaction in repeating over from neighbor to neighbor the common, homely phrases that savored of every day and had no hint of dreary quarry holes and masked men by midnight. It was known that she had taken the car for Bolton, for Abe Morse helped her on and said she smiled good-bye and told him not to stand too long in the hot sun, it was bad for him.

“Kind, always
kind
and thoughtful, Emily was,” he murmured.

“Is!” sharply asserted his wife, who was a good friend of Emily’s. “I’ll
never
believe she committed suicide. That’s rank nonsense! What would she want to commit suicide for, now when she’s just got her own way in life for the first time since she was born?”

“Well, they do say,” said Abe, lowering his breath, “that she ain’t so happy with Harriet Granniss. Harriet won’t have this, and will have that, till Emily don’t know she owns her own soul. She’s been druv to the back room in a house that should by good rights belong entirely to Emily. I was a good friend of Jake Dillon, but I do say that he did wrong by her when he set her shoulder to shoulder with that she-devil.”

“Now, Abe!” broke in his wife. “I’m surprised at you. Harriet Granniss may not be as pleasant to live with as some, but she’s a good woman, we all know that, and she’s a member in good and regular standing—”

“Good and reg’ler standing
rot
! What’s that got to do with it? There’s hypocrites in all churches, and before this thing’s cleared up we’ll know who a few of them are, or I’ll miss my guess! Hannah, now answer me this: Do you know who would get that house if it was proved that Emily Dillon’s dead? Do you
know
? Well, I
thought you didn’t. Harriet Granniss
would! That’s who! Now, what do you think?”

“But—”

“No buts about it, and do you know what they’re sayin’? Well, they’re sayin’ that Harriet Granniss and her precious son, and mebbe that wild girl with the short hair, know more’n they want to tell about where Emily Dillon is.”

The city papers made much of the matter in little paragraphs with black-letter headings on the front page, and Glenside came into immediate prominence. There was even an editorial about “making our suburbs safer” with the Glenside “abduction” as illustration of “what we have come to in these days.” Every morning the paragraph appeared with new embellishments, as for instance:

The news was copied in the county papers and drifted over to Mercer the day after Emily’s disappearance had been made public. Ephraim Sears and Si Hawkins nodded their heads over it and winked at the supper table.

“That was her, Si,” whispered Joe, when his wife went to the pantry for more bread. “I thought I couldn’t be mistaken, though I ain’t seen her fer years. Best keep yer mouth shet awhile an’ yer eyes open. She might be round here yet somewheres, and there’ll likely be a reward. Where there’s money there’s always a reward, you know.”