Ariel Custer (17 page)

They laid the poor little bit of disfigured clay back in the tomb until the resurrection, after they had recorded all the bits of evidence that were to be found from examination, and the relatives and friends and judiciary went to their homes and shook their heads. Things looked bad for the Grannisses. It was said that the Dillons were going to protest the will. It was said they were going further back to see what they could do toward restoring the Granniss house to the Dillon family. It was whispered that evidence was being gathered and would soon be in hand and that a murder trial might be the result.

It was then that Judson Granniss went to the lawyer and declared that he wished to renounce all right to the property that had been left to him and that Ariel Custer refused to accept the bungalow that had been left to her. And people said: “Oh yes! They’re getting cold feet! They ought to have thought of that before!” But Harriet Granniss held on her way and declared to her anxious son that she meant to have her rights, and no Dillon was going to cheat her out of them!

It only took a week for the gossiping part of the town to fix it all up just how the murder had been committed. It was called murder plain out now, and old residents who had moved away and come back for a visit spoke of it in lowered tones and said: “Well, what do you think of our
murder
case? Isn’t that
awful
? When is the trial coming off?”

Ariel Custer wilted right down under the fire and had to be sent to the hospital. She hadn’t been eating enough lately and had stayed up nights far into the mornings trying to eke out her scanty salary and save a little to get married with, so she had no reserve force, though her spirit was exceedingly strong and she still could smile wistfully at Jud and say gently, “It’s somehow coming out all right, Jud. I know
He
will not fail us. We must be willing to say, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.’” Poor Jud could only press her hand and turn his head away to hide the trouble in his eyes. For Jud was deeply troubled about Ariel—her strong, sweet spirit was enmeshed in such a frail, young body that had already endured much sorrow and anxiety.

Judson Granniss went about these days with bowed head and worked in the mill as long as he was allowed, utterly apart from his mates. It was already as if he had borne the brand of Cain on his forehead, and he was not surprised when he was laid off. Men did not want to work side by side with a murder suspect!

T
he Boggs girl was still a fixture with Harriet Granniss and drove the car around a great deal at high speed, chewing gum nonchalantly and appearing to enjoy the notoriety. There was an insolence about her straight, black, bobbed hair and the way she wore the slouchy tam on one side of her big head and precluded criticism. She showed plainly that she was being what she was because she
wanted
to be that way and
liked
to have people shocked by it. She made exceedingly free with men about the town, joked a lot about the coming trial, and pretended to enjoy the prospect.

But Harriet Granniss went her grim and arrogant way unmoved. This was her house, and here she stayed if heaven and earth should fall. What Emily Dillon chose to do about dying did not concern her. She was here and respectable, and she had been here and respectable all the time, and she could prove it, and she wasn’t going to pay the slightest attention to any trumped-up gossip about her having connived at Emily’s death with her son and that washed-out, spineless creature called Ariel that he had associated himself with. So she went to prayer meeting regularly as ever and walked heavily home alone through the darkness, for she didn’t seem to succeed in making the Boggs girl go often. But virtue was her line, and virtue should be hers to the end of time.

Then at last the slow mesh of the law in the hands of the dignified and indignant Dillons enfolded the victims, and Harriet Granniss, Judson Granniss, Ariel Custer, and the Boggs girl were summoned to answer a charge of murder in the first degree. It is not likely the Boggs girl would have been included if she had not held herself in the public notice so persistently, but her skill with the car, her daredevil eye, and her impudent air were too much for the Dillons to swallow, and once their venom was started, there really were a lot of things that pointed toward her collusion in the matter. So the trap was set, warrants issued, and the day of the trial dawned.

Out of all the townful of Christians and heathen, not one had been found to really stand out against public opinion and befriend the four. Of course there had not been wanting a few acquaintances who had expressed regret. One had gone so far as to bring Harriet Granniss a large bunch of flaming dahlias on the morning of the trial. These she had handed promptly back to the donor with the grim remark that it wasn’t her funeral yet, she was thankful to say.

It was Emily Dillon’s lawyer who had quietly distinguished himself by offering to take the case of the accused four. Harriet Granniss had promptly and rudely declined the offer for herself and the Boggs girl, with a covert sneer that more than hinted that his own innocence might bear looking into. How much, for instance, had he received for fixing up that ridiculous will for Ariel and Jud?

Harriet Granniss had a nasty quirk of revenge in her makeup that made it possible for her to charge her own son with connivance at a murder. Not that she really thought that anything would ever be proved against him, of course, but she wanted to punish him for going against her in the matter of the girl, and she felt sure Ariel would be proved guilty.

But Judson Granniss gratefully accepted the services of the well-known and successful lawyer for Ariel and himself. Harriet, on her part, hunted out a smart but disagreeable young man from the city to defend her case, and he, seeing her spirit, did his cunningest to throw suspicion from his own clients upon her son and the frail young girl, with a decided specializing on the girl.

So at last the stage was set, and the day of the trial dawned.

I
t was crowded and warm in the courtroom when they entered, for the day before had been frosty, and fires had been started vigorously; but Ariel shivered as she sat down and gazed around in horror on the crowd assembled to gloat over her humiliation. She had the atmosphere of something exquisitely delicate and tender being rudely, ruthlessly crushed in barbarous hands. There were rows and rows of Glenside people, Congregationalists, Methodists, all the other denominations, and two solid rows of Dillons, male and female, importance and recrimination in the countenances. She recognized Mrs. Smalley and two or three mothers of her Sunday school class of boys she had recently been teaching as a substitute; also the man whose daughter she had helped in arithmetic evenings, but none of them had a friendly light of pity for her; and away back by the door she saw the brutal, handsome face of her employer watching her with a kind of gloating triumph as if now he had her where he wanted her. He had dared to send her word the night before that if she would accede to his wishes, he would see that she went scot-free. His eyes sought hers now in her fist wild look around the sea of curious and unfriendly faces, and his look sickened her so that she swayed in her chair and turned white. The Dillon lawyer saw it and stooped pityingly, whispering, “Just take courage, Miss Custer. We have a good case. Don’t let them see you break down. It will be bad for you and bad for Mr. Granniss also. Remember, you’ve him to think of as well as yourself.”

With a brave look Ariel answered him and set her delicate lips firmly. They should not see her fright and weakness. She would be brave and somehow help to get Jud free. She herself felt that her life was almost flickering out, but for his sake it must go out bravely and without a blemish. So she sat and faced the day and the regiment of eyes and set herself to be strong and pray without ceasing for the strength she knew she had not in herself.

Early that morning she had found a wonderful verse, and she had sent the reference to Jud by Dick, who was her faithful envoy: 1 Peter 4:12–13. She knew he had his little pocket testament, her birthday gift to him, always in his pocket. She saw him take it out covertly and look it up. His eyes met hers. The words were going over now in her mind: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.”

Jud’s eyes met hers. There was a look of understanding in them, of faith, as if he had taken hold of the message from above. Ariel felt a thrill of exultation even there in the courtroom. God had not forgotten, and Jud was standing his test. And suddenly another Bible verse came to her mind: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul—”

Strange how those wonderful words spoke themselves into her heart as if her Lord indeed stood by and spoke them in her ear, keeping His promise to be with her through the fire and through the floods. A new strength came to her, and she sat up, brave and unafraid. Whatever came, God was theirs, and He would do what seemed good to Him. Why should they be afraid? They were His, and He had said they were of more value than many sparrows. He stood by a sparrow’s dying bed. If they must die, He would be there, too. So why fear?

People wondered at Ariel Custer’s sweet composure. It argued ill for her with the Dillon cousins. They called it brazenness. They said among themselves, “How could anyone be so brazen?” as she sat there in conscious realization of her Lord close by her side. But then, how could they understand? Not many of them knew the Lord even with a speaking acquaintance.

If Emily Dillon, sweet soul, as she had sat in her little tatted nightgown in the cool of the summer night planning her sweet plans for the happiness of these two young things, could have foreseen this day and the sorrow on their suddenly aged young faces, what sorrow would have been hers! Emily Dillon had passed beyond the vision of little Glenside and its doings, having wrought her sweet worst for the two she loved best, and they were here alone. Ariel thought of it as she looked around with a desperate feeling that somehow her old friend would be there among the rest and would rise and put her in the right. She thought of the last time she had seen her sitting in the fragrant darkness of the honeysuckle vine, so wholesome and little in her white skirt and shirtwaist, with a bit of a ribbon-bound palm-leaf fan in her hand, gently rocking back and forth and stirring the sweetness from the vine into the soft night around them. She thought of the kind action that had left the fatal gift of the coveted bungalow and smiled wanly to herself as she stared into the space of blurred faces, seeing them not at all. Emily Dillon had meant to do such a beautiful thing, and all these humans here judging before her had turned it into such a horrible thing. She shuddered as she thought of all her lost dreams and beautiful hopes, as she looked toward Jud with his dark head bowed and the lines so heavily marked in his dear face. They had not been able to thank their dear friend for the beauty she had meant to put into their lives, but sometime, up in heaven, perhaps very soon if this awful trial went against them, she would be able to slip to her old friend’s side and whisper to her how dear she had been. It was not her fault that all this horror had come. If only she and Jud could go together! Perhaps they would! Who knew? It was awful to go in such a way, with a false reputation; but up there—up there surely everything would be set right. There was a day coming when even Dillons would see the truth, and everybody would know. “For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.” She and Jud would not have to bear this false accusation throughout eternity. It would all be made right someday. Ariel closed her eyes and leaned her head down on her hand. The room seemed to whirl before her, and she looked more like her name than ever. Someone brought her a glass of water, and she drank it and sat up again courageously, determined to be brave to the end.

The day wore on, and the trial proved more and more exciting as witness after witness was called and added choice bits one after another to the growing mass of evidence that seemed to be slowly shutting these four away from their kind into an outer darkness of horror.

It was late in the afternoon of the second day, and the little sneak of a Granniss lawyer had managed to make a pretty strong impression that his two clients were innocent and Jud and Ariel had been the sole plotters of the murder. He had cross-questioned Ariel, making her admit the expedition that she and Jud had made to Mercer to the vicinity of the creek. How he had found out about it, only the devils of the underworld could tell perhaps, but he brought it out at such an opportune time, and in such a way as to make it appear that this important fact had been purposely hidden. Before he was through, there was no further question in the minds of most of his listeners but that Ariel and Jud had brought undue pressure to bear upon the deceased in influencing her to leave them both money and house and had then plotted carefully to get her out of the way. He even hunted out like a needle in the proverbial haystack the man and boy who got off the same car with Emily Dillon on that memorable morning. He had brought to the witness stand the two men who had driven down the pike and seen Ariel in her green organdy. He had primed and bribed old Ephraim Sears and Silas Hawkins until they told a wonderful tale about the two who had rented his canoe and lingered long about the old swimming hole and the stepping-stones; and he somehow managed to connect it inevitably with the coming of the poor lady in her bare feet to that identical spot. The courtroom was very still when Ephraim Sears got done, and Silas Hawkins briefly corroborated all that he had said. Not even when the town meeting had been swayed so much against their will in favor of keeping the school tax down had Ephraim Sears made such an impression, and he felt immensely pleased with himself. He held on to his stub of a beard and pulled it out straight in front, as was his habit when greatly excited, and he shifted the quid in his cheek to the other side and looked around complacently on the crowded audience. This was the moment he had waited for, and he looked over at Si and nodded contentedly.

It hardly seemed necessary to the onlookers after this that Emily Dillon’s lawyer should go through the form of defending the two who sat there with guilt plainly marked on their haggard countenances. But, of course, justice was justice, and the law said that all criminals had a right to defense. If there was anything left that could be said, let it be said quickly. They settled back with foregone conclusion written plainly in their eyes and prepared to listen to a vain harangue.

The lawyer had risen and was addressing the judge. His clear, cultured voice was like a breath of another atmosphere after the snarl of Harriet’s defender, and caught their jaded attention. Perhaps he had something up his sleeve, after all—some new morsel that would interest and satisfy their morbid curiosity, even if it proved nothing.

Then, even as the lawyer turned his face toward them and opened his mouth to call his first witness, there came a breath of something strange and tense into the atmosphere; no noise, just a quiet opening of the door at the back of the room; no stir, yet every eye turned to look, and every head was stretched up over his neighbor’s to see who had come in at that door, for that it was something startling and unexpected the hush and the awe in the entire room made plain to even the farthest occupant.