The Stillwater Tragedy

"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. Slocum'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.

Richard stood with the edge of his chisel resting idly upon the plaster mold in front of him, pondering these things. Presently he heard Margaret's voice, as if somewhere in the distance, saying,–

"I have not finished yet, Richard."

"Go on," said Richard, falling to work again with a kind of galvanic action. "Go on, please."

"I have a serious grievance. Frankly, I am hurt by your preoccupation and indifference, your want of openness or cordiality,–I don't know how to name it. You are the only person who seems to be unaware that I escaped a great danger a month ago. I am obliged to remember all the agreeable hours I have spent in the studio to keep off the impression that during my illness you got used to not seeing me, and that now my presence somehow obstructs your work and annoys you."

Richard threw his chisel on the bench, and crossed over to the window where Margaret was.

"You are as wrong as you can be," he said, looking down on her half-lifted face, from which a quick wave of color was subsiding; for the abruptness of Richard's movement had startled her.

"I am glad if I am wrong."

"It is nearly an unforgivable thing to be as wide of the mark as you are. Oh, Margaret, if you had died that time!"

"You would have been very sorry?"

"Sorry? No. That doesn't express it; one outlives mere sorrow. If anything had happened to you, I should never have got over it. You don't know what those five weeks were to me. It was a kind of death to come to this room day after day, and not find you."

Margaret rested her eyes thoughtfully on the space occupied by Richard rather than on Richard himself, seeming to look through and beyond him, as if he were incorporeal.

"You missed me like that?" she said slowly.

"I missed you like that."

Margaret meditated a moment. "In the first days of my illness I wondered if you didn't miss me a little; afterwards everything was confused in my mind. When I tried to think, I seemed to be somebody else,–I seemed to be you waiting for me here in the studio. Wasn't that singular? But when I recovered, and returned to my old place, I began to suspect I had been bearing your anxiety,–that I had been distressed by the absence to which you had grown accustomed."

"I never got used to it, Margaret. It became more and more unendurable. This workshop was full of–of your absence. There wasn't a sketch or a cast or an object in the room that didn't remind me of you, and seem to mock at me for having let the most precious moments of my life slip away unheeded. That bit of geranium in the glass yonder seemed to say with its dying breath, 'You have cared for neither of us as you ought to have cared; my scent and her goodness have been all one to you,–things to take or to leave. It was for no merit of yours that she was always planning something to make life smoother and brighter for you. What had you done to deserve it? How unselfish and generous and good she has been to you for years and years! What would have become of you without her? She left me here on purpose'–it's the geranium leaf that is speaking all the while, Margaret–'to say this to you, and to tell you that she was not half appreciated; but now you have lost her.'"

As she leaned forward listening, with her lips slightly parted, Margaret gave an unconscious little approbative nod of the head. Richard's fanciful accusation of himself caused her a singular thrill of pleasure. He had never before spoken to her in just this fashion; the subterfuge which his tenderness had employed, the little detour it had made in order to get at her, was a novel species of flattery. She recognized the ring of a distinctly new note in his voice; but, strangely enough, the note lost its unfamiliarity in an instant. Margaret recognized that fact also, and as she swiftly speculate on the phenomenon her pulse went one or two strokes faster.

"Oh, you poor boy!" she said, looking up with a laugh, and a flush so interfused that they seemed one, "that geranium took a great deal upon itself. It went quite beyond its instructions, which were simply to remind you of me now and then. One day, while you were out,–the day before I was taken ill,–I placed the flowers on the desk there, perhaps with a kind of premonition that I was going away from you for a time."

"What if you had never come back?"

"I wouldn't think of that if I were you," said Margaret softly.

"But it haunts me,–that thought. Sometimes of a morning, after I unlock the workshop door, I stand hesitating, with my hand on the latch, as one might hesitate a few seconds before stepping into a tomb. There were days last month, Margaret, when this chamber did appear to me like a tomb. All that was happy in my past seemed to lie buried here; it was something visible and tangible; I used to steal in and look upon it."

"Oh, Richard!"

"If you only knew what a life I led as a boy in my cousin's house, and what a doleful existence for years afterwards, until I found you, perhaps you would understand my despair when I saw everything suddenly slipping away from me. Margaret! the day your father brought you in here, I had all I could do not to kneel down at your feet"–Richard stopped short. "I didn't mean to tell you that," he added, turning towards the work-table. Then he checked himself, and came and stood in front of her again. He had gone too far not to go further. "While you were ill I made a great discovery."

"What was that, Richard?"

"I discovered that I had been blind for two or three years."

"Blind?" repeated Margaret.

"Stone-blind. I discovered it by suddenly seeing–by seeing that I had loved you all the while, Margaret! Are you offended?"

"No," said Margaret, slowly; she was a moment finding her voice to say it. "I–ought I to be offended?"

"Not if you are not!" said Richard.

"Then I am not. I–I've made little discoveries myself," murmured Margaret, going into full mourning with her eyelashes.

But it was only for an instant. She refused to take her happiness shyly or insincerely; it was something too sacred. She was a trifle appalled by it, if the truth must be told. If Richard had scattered his love-making through the month of her convalescence, or if he had made his avowal in a different mood, perhaps Margaret might have met him with some natural coquetry. But Richard's tone and manner had been such as to suppress any instinct of the kind. His declaration, moreover, had amazed her. Margaret's own feelings had been more or less plain to her that past month, and she had diligently disciplined herself to accept Richard's friendship, since it seemed all he had to give. Indeed, it had seemed at times as if he had not even that.

When Margaret lifted her eyes to him, a second after her confession, they were full of a sweet seriousness, and she had no thought of withdrawing the hands which Richard had taken, and was holding lightly, that she might withdraw them if she willed. She felt no impulse to do so, though as Margaret looked up she saw her father standing a few paces behind Richard.

With an occult sense of another presence in the room, Richard, turned at the same instant.

Mr. Slocum had advanced two steps into the apartment, and had been brought to a dead halt by the surprising tableau in the embrasure of the window. He stood motionless, with an account-book under his arm, while a dozen expressions chased each other over his countenance.