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The Stillwater Tragedy

T >> Thomas Bailey Aldrich >> The Stillwater Tragedy




After this, Margaret seldom let a week slip without tapping once
or twice at the studio, at first with some pretext or other, and then
with no pretense whatever. When Margaret had disburdened herself of
excuses for dropping in to watch Richard mold his leaves and flowers,
she came oftener, and Richard insensibly drifted into the habit of
expecting her on certain days, and was disappointed when she failed
to appear. His industry had saved him, until now, from discovering
how solitary his life really was; for his life was as solitary--as
solitary as that of Margaret, who lived in the great house with only
her father, the two servants, and an episodical aunt. The mother was
long ago dead; Margaret could not recollect when that gray headstone,
with blotches of rusty-green moss breaking out over the lettering,
was not in the churchyard; and there never had been any brothers or
sisters.

To Margaret Richard's installation in the empty room, where as a
child she had always been afraid to go, was the single important
break she could remember in the monotony of her existence; and now a
vague yearning for companionship, the blind sense of the plant
reaching towards the sunshine, drew her there. The tacitly prescribed
half hour often lengthened to an hour. Sometimes Margaret brought a
book with her, or a piece of embroidery, and the two spoke scarcely
ten words, Richard giving her a smile now and then, and she returning
a sympathetic nod as the cast came out successfully.

Margaret at fifteen--she was fifteen now--was not a beauty. There
is the loveliness of the bud and the loveliness of the full-blown
flower; but Margaret as a blossom was not pretty. She was awkward and
angular, with prominent shoulder-blades, and no soft curves anywhere
in her slimness; only her black hair, growing low on the forehead,
and her eyes were fine. Her profile, indeed, with the narrow forehead
and the sensitive upper lip, might fairly have suggested the mask of
Clytie which Richard had bought of an itinerant image-dealer, and
fixed on a bracket over the mantel-shelf. But her eyes were her
specialty, if one may say that. They were fringed with such heavy
lashes that the girl seemed always to be in half-mourning. Her smile
was singularly sweet and bright, perhaps because it broke through so
much somber coloring.

If there was a latent spark of sentiment between Richard and
Margaret in those earlier days, neither was conscious of it; they had
seemingly begun where happy lovers generally end,--by being dear
comrades. He liked to have Margaret sitting there, with her needle
flashing in the sunlight, or her eyelashes making a rich gloom above
the book as she read aloud. It was so agreeable to look up from his
work, and not be alone. He had been alone so much. And Margaret found
nothing in the world pleasanter than to sit there and watch Richard
making his winter garden, as she called it. By and by it became her
custom to pass every Saturday afternoon in that employment.

Margaret was not content to be merely a visitor; she took a
housewifely care of the workshop, resolutely straightening out its
chronic disorder at unexpected moments, and fighting the white dust
that settled upon everything. The green-paper shade, which did not
roll up very well, at the west window was of her devising. An empty
camphor vial on Richard's desk had always a clove pink, or a pansy,
or a rose, stuck into it, according to the season. She hid herself
away and peeped out in a hundred feminine things in the room.
Sometimes she was a bit of crochet-work left on a chair, and
sometimes she was only a hair-pin, which Richard gravely picked up
and put on the mantel-piece.

Mr. Slocum threw no obstacles in the path of this idyllic
friendship; possibly he did not observe it. In his eyes Margaret was
still a child,--a point of view that necessarily excluded any
consideration of Richard. Perhaps, however, if Mr. Slocum could have
assisted invisibly at a pretty little scene which took place in the
studio, one day, some twelve or eighteen months after Margaret's
first visit to it, he might have found food for reflection.

It was a Saturday afternoon. Margaret had come into the workshop
with her sewing, as usual. The papers on the round table had been
neatly cleared away, and Richard was standing by the window,
indolently drumming on the glass with a palette-knife.

"Not at work this afternoon?"

"I was waiting for you."

"That is no excuse at all," said Margaret, sweeping across the
room with a curious air of self-consciousness, and arranging her
drapery with infinite pains as she seated herself.

Richard looked puzzled for a moment, and then exclaimed,
"Margaret, you have got on a long dress!"

"Yes," said Margaret, with dignity. "Do you like it,--the train?"

"That's a train?"

"Yes," said Margaret, standing up and glancing over her left
shoulder at the soft folds of maroon-colored stuff, which, with a
mysterious feminine movement of the foot, she caused to untwist
itself and flow out gracefully behind her. There was really something
very pretty in the hesitating lines of the tall, slender figure, as
she leaned back that way. Certain unsuspected points emphasized
themselves so cunningly.

"I never saw anything finer," declared Richard. "It was worth
waiting for."

"But you shouldn't have waited," said Margaret, with a gratified
flush, settling herself into the chair again. "It was understood that
you were never to let me interfere with your work."

"You see you have, by being twenty minutes late. I've finished
that acorn border for Stevens's capitals, and there's nothing more to
do for the yard. I am going to make something for myself, and I want
you to lend me a hand."

"How can I help you, Richard?" Margaret asked, promptly stopping
the needle in the hem.

"I need a paper-weight to keep my sketches from being blown about,
and I wish you literally to lend me a hand,--a hand to take a cast
of."

"Really?"

"I think that little white claw would make a very neat
paper-weight," said Richard.

Margaret gravely rolled up her sleeve to the elbow, and
contemplated the hand and wrist critically.

"It is like a claw, isn't it. I think you can find something
better than that."

"No; that is what I want, and nothing else. That, or no
paper-weight for me."

"Very well, just as you choose. It will be a fright."

"The other hand, please."

"I gave you the left because I've a ring on this one."

"You can take off the ring, I suppose."

"Of course I can take it off."

"Well, then, do."

"Richard," said Margaret severely, "I hope you are not a fidget."

"A what?"

"A fuss, then,--a person who always wants everything some other
way, and makes just twice as much trouble as anybody else."

"No, Margaret, I am not that. I prefer your right hand because the
left is next to the heart, and the evaporation of the water in the
plaster turns it as cold as snow. Your arm will be chilled to the
shoulder. We don't want to do anything to hurt the good little heart,
you know."

"Certainly not," said Margaret. "There!" and she rested her right
arm on the table, while Richard placed the hand in the desired
position on a fresh napkin which he had folded for the purpose.

"Let your hand lie flexible, please. Hold it naturally. Why do you
stiffen the fingers so?"

"I don't; they stiffen themselves, Richard. They know they are
going to have their photograph taken, and can't look natural. Who
ever does?"

After a minute the fingers relaxed, and settled of their own
accord into an easy pose. Richard laid his hand softly on her wrist.

"Don't move now."

"I'll be as quiet as a mouse," said Margaret giving a sudden queer
little glance at his face.

Richard emptied a paper of white powder into a great yellow bowl
half filled with water and fell to stirring it vigorously, like a
pastry-cook beating eggs. When the plaster was of the proper
consistency he began building it up around the hand, pouring on a
spoonful at a time, here and there, carefully. In a minute or two the
inert white fingers were completely buried. Margaret made a comical
grimace.

"Is it cold?"

"Ice," said Margaret, shutting her eyes involuntarily.

"If it is too disagreeable we can give it up," suggested Richard.

"No, don't touch it!" she cried, waving him back with her free
arm. "I don't mind; but it's as cold as so much snow. How curious!
What does it?"

"I suppose a scientific fellow could explain the matter to you
easily enough. When the water evaporates a kind of congealing process
sets in,--a sort of atmospheric change, don't you know? The sudden
precipitation of the--the"--

"You're as good as Tyndall on Heat," said Margaret demurely.

"Oh, Tyndall is well enough in his way," returned Richard, "but of
course he doesn't go into things so deeply as I do."

"The idea of telling me that 'a congealing process set in,' when I
am nearly frozen to death!" cried Margaret, bowing her head over the
imprisoned arm.

"Your unseemly levity, Margaret, makes it necessary for me to
defer my remarks on natural phenomena until some more fitting
occasion."

"Oh, Richard, don't let an atmospherical change come over
_you!"_

"When you knocked at my door, months ago," said Richard, "I didn't
dream you were such a satirical little piece, or may be you wouldn't
have got in. You stood there as meek as Moses, with your frock
reaching only to the tops of your boots. You were a deception,
Margaret."

"I was dreadfully afraid of you, Richard."

"You are not afraid of me nowadays."

"Not a bit."

"You are showing your true colors. That long dress, too! I believe
the train has turned your head."

"But just now you said you admired it."

"So I did, and do. It makes you look quite like a woman, though."

"I want to be a woman. I would like to be as old--as old as Mrs.
Methuselah. Was there a Mrs. Methuselah?"

"I really forget," replied Richard, considering. "But there must
have been. The old gentleman had time enough to have several. I
believe, however, that history is rather silent about his domestic
affairs."

"Well, then," said Margaret, after thinking it over, "I would like
to be as old as the youngest Mrs. Methuselah."

"That was probably the last one," remarked Richard, with great
profundity. "She was probably some giddy young thing of seventy or
eighty. Those old widowers never take a wife of their own age. I
shouldn't want you to be seventy, Margaret,--or even eighty."

"On the whole, perhaps, I shouldn't fancy it myself. Do you
approve of persons marrying twice?"

"N--o, not at the same time."

"Of course I didn't mean that," said Margaret, with asperity. "How
provoking you can be!"

"But they used to,--in the olden time, don't you know?"

"No, I don't."

Richard burst out laughing. "Imagine him," he cried,--"imagine
Methuselah in his eight or nine hundredth year, dressed in his
customary bridal suit, with a sprig of century-plant stuck in his
button-hole!"

"Richard," said Margaret solemnly, "you shouldn't speak jestingly
of a scriptural character."

At this Richard broke out again. "But gracious me!" he exclaimed,
suddenly checking himself. "I am forgetting you all this while!"

Richard hurriedly reversed the mass of plaster on the table, and
released Margaret's half-petrified fingers. They were shriveled and
colorless with the cold.

"There isn't any feeling in it whatever," said Margaret, holding
up her hand helplessly, like a wounded wing.

Richard took the fingers between his palms, and chafed them
smartly for a moment or two to restore the suspended circulation.

"There, that will do," said Margaret, withdrawing her hand.

"Are you all right now?"

"Yes, thanks;" and then she added, smiling, "I suppose a
scientific fellow could explain why my fingers seem to be full of hot
pins and needles shooting in every direction."

"Tyndall's your man--Tyndall on Heat," answered Richard, with a
laugh, turning to examine the result of his work. "The mold is
perfect, Margaret. You were a good girl to keep so still."

Richard then proceeded to make the cast, which was soon placed on
the window ledgde to harden in the sun. When the plaster was set, he
cautiously chipped off the shell with a chisel, Margaret leaning over
his shoulder to watch the operation,--and there was the little white
claw, which ever after took such dainty care of his papers, and
ultimately became so precious to him as a part of Margaret's very
self that he would not have exchanged it for the Venus of Milo.

But as yet Richard was far enough from all that.






X





Three years glided by with Richard Shackford as swiftly as those
periods of time which are imagined to elapse between the acts of a
play. They were eventless, untroubled years, and have no history.
Nevertheless, certain changes had taken place. Little by little Mr.
Slocum had relinquished the supervision of the workshops to Richard,
until now the affairs of the yard rested chiefly on his shoulders. It
was like a dream to him when he looked directly back to his humble
beginning, though as he reflected upon it, and retraced his progress
step by step, he saw there was nothing illogical or astonishing in
his good fortune. He had won it by downright hard work and the
faithful exercise of a sufficing talent.

In his relations with Margaret, Richard's attitude had undergone
no appreciable change. Her chance visits to the studio through the
week and those pleasant, half-idle Saturday afternoons had become to
both Richard and Margaret a matter of course, like the sunlight, or
the air they breathed.

To Richard, Margaret Slocum at nineteen was simply a charming,
frank girl,--a type of gracious young womanhood. He was conscious of
her influence; he was very fond of Margaret; but she had not yet
taken on for him that magic individuality which makes a woman the one
woman in the world to her lover. Though Richard had scant experience
in such matters, he was not wrong in accepting Margaret as the type
of a class of New England girls, which, fortunately for New England,
is not a small class. These young women for the most part lead quiet
and restricted lives so far as the actualities are concerned, but
very deep and full lives in the world of books and imagination, to
which they make early escapes. They have the high instincts that come
of good blood, the physique that naturally fits fine manners; and
when chance takes one of these maidens from her island country home
or from some sleepy town on the sea-board, and sets her amid the
complications of city existence, she is an unabashed and unassuming
lady. If in Paris, she differs from the Parisiennes only in the
greater delicacy of her lithe beauty, her innocence which is not
ignorance, and her French pronunciation; if in London, she differs
from English girls only in the matter of rosy cheeks and the rising
inflection. Should none of these fortunate transplantings befall her,
she always merits them by adorning with grace and industry and
intelligence the narrower sphere to which destiny has assigned her.

Destiny had assigned Margaret Slocum to a very narrow sphere; it
had shut her up in an obscure New England manufacturing village, with
no society, strictly speaking, and no outlets whatever to large
experiences. To her father's affection, Richard's friendship, and her
household duties she was forced to look for her happiness. If life
held wider possibilities for her, she had not dreamed of them. She
looked up to Richard with respect,--perhaps with a dash of sentiment
in the respect; there was something at once gentle and virile in his
character which she admired and leaned upon; in his presence the
small housekeeping troubles always slipped from her; but her heart,
to use a pretty French phrase, had not consciously spoken,--possibly
it had murmured a little, incoherently, to itself, but it had not
spoken out aloud, as perhaps it would have done long ago if an
impediment had been placed in the way of their intimacy. With all her
subtler intuitions, Margaret was as far as Richard from suspecting
the strength and direction of the current with which they were
drifting. Freedom, habit, and the nature of their environment
conspired to prolong this mutual lack of perception. The hour had
sounded, however, when these two were to see each other in a
different light.

One Monday morning in March, at the close of the three years in
question, as Richard mouinted the outside staircase leading to his
studio in the extension, the servant-maid beckoned to him from the
kitchen window.

Margaret had failed to come to the studio the previous Saturday
afternoon. Richard had worked at cross-purposes and returned to his
boarding-house vaguely dissatisfied, as always happened to him on
those rare occasions when she missed the appointment; but he had
thought little of the circumstance. Nor had he been disturbed on
Sunday at seeing the Slocum pew vacant during both services. The
heavy snow-storm which had begun the night before accounted for at
least Margaret's absence.

"Mr. Slocum told me to tell you that he shouldn't be in the yard
to-day," said the girl. "Miss Margaret is very ill."

"Ill!" Richard repeated, and the smile with which he had leaned
over the rail towards the window went out instantly on his lip.

"Dr. Weld was up with her until five o'clock this morning," said
the girl, fingering the corner of her apron. "She's that low."

"What is the matter?"

"It's a fever."

"What kind of fever?"

"I don't mind me what the doctor called it. He thinks it come from
something wrong with the drains."

"He didn't say typhoid?"

"Yes, that's the name of it."

Richard ascended the stairs with a slow step, and a moment
afterwards stood stupidly in the middle of the workshop. "Margaret is
going to die," he said to himself, giving voice to the dark
foreboding that had instantly seized upon him, and in a swift vision
he saw the end of all that simple, fortunate existence which he had
lived without once reflecting it could ever end. He mechanically
picked up a tool from the table, and laid it down again. Then he
seated himself on the low bench between the windows. It was
Margaret's favorite place; it was not four days since she sat there
reading to him. Already it appeared long ago,--years and years ago.
He could hardly remember when he did not have this heavy weight on
his heart. His life of yesterday abruptly presented itself to him as
a reminiscence; he saw now how happy that life had been, and how
lightly he had accepted it. It took to itself all that precious
quality of things irrevocably lost.

The clamor of the bell in the South Church striking noon, and the
shrilling of the steam-whistle softened by the thick-falling snow,
roused Richard from his abstraction. He was surprised that it was
noon. He rose from the bench and went home through the storm,
scarcely heeding the sleet that snapped in his face like whip-lashes.
Margaret was going to die!

For four or five seeks the world was nearly a blank to Richard
Shackford. The insidious fever that came and went, bringing alternate
despair and hope to the watchers in the hushed room, was in his veins
also. He passed the days between his lonely lodgings in Lime Street
and the studio, doing nothing, restless and apathetic by turns, but
with always a poignant sense of anxiety. He ceased to take any
distinct measurement of time further than to note that an interval of
months seemed to separate Monday from Monday. Meanwhile, if new
patterns had been required by the men, the work in the carving
departments would have come to a dead lock.

At length the shadow lifted, and there fell a day of soft May
weather when Margaret, muffled in shawls and as white as death, was
seated once more in her accustomed corner by the west window. She had
insisted on being brought there the first practicable moment; nowhere
else in the house was such sunshine, and Mr. Slocum himself had
brought her in his arms. She leaned back against the pillows, smiling
faintly. Her fingers lay locked on her lap, and the sunlight showed
through the narrow transparent palace. It was as if her hands were
full of blush-roses.

Richard breathed again, but not with so free a heart as before.
What if she had died? He felt an immense pity for himself when he
thought of that, and he thought of it continually as the days wore
on.

Either a great alteration had wrought itself in Margaret, or
Richard beheld her through a clearer medium during the weeks of
convalescence that followed. Was this the slight, sharp-faced girl he
used to know? The eyes and the hair were the same; but the smile was
deeper, and the pliant figure had lost its extreme slimness without a
sacrifice to its delicacy. The spring air was filling her veins with
abundant health, and mantling her cheeks with a richer duskiness than
they had ever worn. Margaret was positively handsome. Her beauty had
come all in a single morning, like the crocuses. This beauty began to
awe Richard; it had the effect of seeming to remove her further and
further from him. He grew moody and restless when they were together,
and was wretched alone. His constraint did not escape Margaret. She
watched him, and wondered at his inexplicable depression when every
one in the household was rejoicing in her recovery. By and by this
depression wounded her, but she was too spirited to show the hurt.
She always brought a book with her now, in her visits to the studio;
it was less awkward to read than to sit silent and unspoken to over a
piece of needle-work.

"How very odd you are!" said Margaret, one afternoon, closing the
volume which she had held mutely for several minutes, waiting for
Richard to grasp the fact that she was reading aloud.

"I odd!" protested Richard, breaking with a jerk from one of his
long reveries. "In what way?"

"As if I could explain--when you put the quotation suddenly, like
that."

"I didn't intend to be abrupt. I was curious to know. And then the
charge itself was a trifle unexpected, if you will look at it. But
never mind," he added with a smile; "think it over, and tell me
to-morrow."

"No, I will tell you now, since you are willing to wait."

"I wasn't really willing to wait, but I knew if I didn't pretend
to be I should never get it out of you."

"Very well, then; your duplicity is successful. Richard, I was
puzzled whre to begin with your oddities."

"Begin at the beginning."

"No, I will take the nearest. When a young lady is affable enough
to read aloud to you, the least you can do is to listen to her. That
is a deference you owe to the author, when it happens to be
Hawthorne, to say nothing of the young lady."

"But I _have_ been listening, Margaret. Every word!"

"Where did I leave off?"

"It was where--where the"--and Richard knitted his brows in the
vain effort to remember--"where the young daguerreotypist,
what's-his-name, took up his residence in the House of the Seven
Gables."

"No, sir! You stand convicted. It was ten pages further on. The
last words were,"--and Margaret read from the book,--

"'Good-night, cousin,' said Phoebe, strangely affected by
Hepsibah's manner. 'If you being to love me, I am glad.'"

"There, sir! what do you say to that?"

Richard did not say anything, but he gave a guilty start, and shot
a rapid glance at Margaret coolly enjoying her triumph.

"In the next place," she continued soberly, after a pause, "I
think it very odd in you not to reply to me,--oh, not now, for of
course you are without a word of justification; but at other times.
Frequently, when I speak to you, you look at me so," making a vacant
little face, "and then suddenly disappear,--I don't mean bodily, but
mentally."

"I am no great talker at best," said Richard with a helpless air.
"I seldom speak unless I have something to say."

"But other people do. I, for instance."

"Oh, you, Margaret; that is different. When you talk I don't much
mind what you are talking about."

"I like a neat, delicate compliment like that!"

"What a perverse girl you are to-day!" cried Richard. "You won't
understand me. I mean that your words and your voice are so pleasant
they make anything interesting, whether it's important or not."

"If no one were to speak until he had something important to
communicate," observed Margaret, "conversation in this world would
come to a general stop." Then she added, with a little ironical
smile, "Even you, Richard, wouldn't be talking all the time."

Formerly Margaret's light sarcasms, even when the struck him
point-blank, used to amuse Richard, but now he winced at being merely
grazed.

Margaret went on: "But it's not a bit necessary to be circular or
instructive--with me. I am interested in trivial matters,--in the
weather, in my spring hat, in what you are going to do next, and the
like. One must occupy one's self with something. But you, Richard,
nowadays you seem interested in nothing, and have nothing whatever to
say."

Poor Richard! He had a great deal to say, but he did not know how,
nor if it were wise to breathe it. Just three little words, murmured
or whispered, and the whole conditions would be changed. With those
fateful words uttered, what would be Margaret's probable attitude,
and what Mr. Sclocum's? Though the line which formerly drew itself
between employer and employee had grown faint with time, it still
existed in Richard's mind, and now came to the surface with great
distinctness, like a word written in sympathetic ink. If he spoke,
and Margaret was startled or offended, then there was an end to their
free, unembarrassed intercourse,--perhaps an end to all intercourse.
By keeping his secret in his breast he at least secured the present.
But that was to risk everything. Any day somebody might come and
carry Margaret off under his very eyes. As he reflected on this, the
shadow of John Dana, the son of the rich iron-manufacturer, etched
itself sharply upon Richard's imagination. Within the week young Dana
had declared in the presence of Richard that "Margaret Slocum was an
awfully nice little thing," and the Othello in Richard's blood had
been set seething. Then his thought glanced from John Dana to Mr.
Pinkham and the Rev. Arthur Langly, both of whom were assiduous
visitors at the house. The former had lately taken to accompanying
Margaret on the piano with his dismal little flute, and the latter
was perpetually making a moth of himself about her class at
Sunday-school.

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