Part 25 (1/2)

”What right had you,” exclaimed Duff Salter, rather angrily, ”to maintain a whole family on the servitude of your young body, wearing its roundness down to bone, exciting your nervous system, and inviting premature age upon a nature created for a longer girlhood, and for the solace of love?”

She did not feel the anger in his tones; it seemed like protection, for which she had hungered.

”Why, sir, all women must support their poor kin.”

”Men don't do it!” exclaimed Duff Salter, pus.h.i.+ng aside his gray ap.r.o.n of beard to see her more distinctly. ”Did that brother who rushed in vicious precocity to maintain another and a wicked woman ever think of relieving you from hard labor?”

”He never could be anything less to me than brother!” exclaimed Podge; ”but, Mr. Salter, if that was only all I had to trouble me! Oh, sir, work is occupation, but work hara.s.sed with care for others becomes unreal. I cannot sleep, thinking for Agnes. I cannot teach, my head throbs so. That river, so cold and impure, going along by the wharves, seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now.

At my desk I seem to see those low sh.o.r.es and woods and marshes, on the other side, and the chatter of children, going all day, laps and eddies up like dirty waves between me and that indistinct boundary. I am floating on the river current, drowning as I feel, reaching out for nothing, for nothing is there. All day long it is so. I was the best teacher in my rank, with certainty of promotion. I feel that I am losing confidence. It is the river, the river, and has been so since it gave up those dead bodies to bring us only ghosts and desolation.”

”It was a faithful witness,” spoke Duff Salter, still harsh, as if under an inner influence. ”Yes, a boy--a little boy such as you teach at school--had the strength to break the solid s.h.i.+eld of ice under which the river held up the dead and bring the murder out. Do you ever think of that as you hear a spectral river surge and buoy upward, whose waves are made by children's murmurs--innocent children haunting the guilty?”

”Do you mean me, Mr. Salter? Nothing haunts me but care.”

”I have been haunted by a ghost,” continued Duff Salter. ”Yes, the ghost of my playmate has come to my threshold and peeped on me sitting there inattentive to his right to vengeance. We shall all be haunted till we give our evidence for the dead. No rest will come till that is done.”

”I must go,” cried Podge Byerly. ”You terrify me.”

”Tell me,” asked Duff Salter in a low tone, ”has Andrew Zane been seen by Agnes Wilt since he escaped?”

”Don't ask me.”

”Tell me, and I will give you a sum of money which shall get you rest for years. Open your mind to me, and I will send you to Europe. Your brother shall be my brother; your invalid mother will receive abundant care. I will even ask you to love me!”

An instant's blushes overspread Podge's worn, pale face, and an expression of restful joy. Then recurring indignation made her pale again to the very roots of her golden hair.

”Betray my friend!” she exclaimed. ”Never, till she will give me leave.”

”I have lost my confidence in you both,” said Duff Salter coldly, releasing Podge's arm. ”You have been so indifferent in the face of this crime and public opinion as to receive your lovers in the very parlor where my dead friend lay. Agnes has admitted it by silence. I have seen your lover releasing you from his arms. Miss Byerly, I thought you artless, even in your arts, and only the dupe, perhaps, of a stronger woman. I hoped that you were pure. You have made me a man of suspicion and indifference again.” His face grew graver, yet unbelieving and hard.

Podge fled from his side with alarm; he saw her handkerchief staunching her tears, and people watching her as she nearly ran along the sidewalk.

”Jericho! Jerichoo! Jer--”

Duff Salter did not finish the sneeze, but with a long face called for a boat and rower to take him across to Treaty Island.

Podge arrived at school just as the bell was ringing, and, still in nervousness and tears, took her place in her division while the Bible was read. She saw the princ.i.p.al's eye upon her as she took off her bonnet and moistened her face, and the boys looked up a minute or two inquiringly, but soon relapsed to their individual selfishness. When the gla.s.s sashes dividing the rooms were closed and the recitations began, the lapping sound of the river started anew. A film grew on her eyes, and in it appeared the distant Jersey and island sh.o.r.e, with the uncertain boundary of point, cove, and marsh, like a misty cold line, cheerless and void of life or color, as it was every day, yet standing there as if it merely came of right and was the river's true border, and was not to be hated as such. Podge strained to look through the illusion, and walked down the aisle once, where it seemed to be, and touched the plaster of the wall. She had hardly receded when it reappeared, and all between it and her mind was merely empty river, wallowing and lapping and sucking and subsiding, as if around submerged piers, or wave was relieving wave from the weight of floating things like rafts, or logs, or buoys, or bodies. Into this wide waste of muddy ripples every sound in the school-room swam, and also sights and colors, till between her eye-lash and that filmy distant margin nothing existed but a freshet, alive yet with nothing, eddying around with purposeless power, and still moving onward with an under force. The open book in her hand appeared like a great white wharf, or pier, covered with lime and coal in spots and places, and pushed forward into this hissing, rippling, exclaiming deluge, which washed its base and spread beyond.

Podge could barely read a question in the book, and the sound of her voice was like gravel or sand pushed off the wharf into the river and swallowed there. She thought she heard an answer in a muddy tone and gave the question out again, and there seemed to be laughter, as if the waters, or what was drowned in them, chuckled and purled, going along.

She raised her eyes above the laughers, and there the boundary line of Jersey stood defined, and all in front of it was the drifting Delaware.

It seemed to her that boys were darting to and fro and swapping seats, and one boy had thrown a handful of beans. She walked down the aisle as if into water, wading through pools and waves of boys, who plashed and gurgled around her. She walked back again, and a surf of boys was thrown at her feet. The waters rose and licked and spilled and flowed onward again. Podge felt a sense of strangling, as if going down, in a hollow gulf of resounding wave, and shouted:

”Help! Save me! Save me!”

She heard a voice like the princ.i.p.al teacher's, say in a lapping, watery way, ”Miss Byerly, what is the meaning of this? Your division is in disorder. n.o.body has recited. Unless you are ill I must suspend you and call another teacher here.”

”Help! I'm floating off upon the river. Save me! I drown! I drown!”

The scholars were all up and excited. The princ.i.p.al motioned another lady teacher to come, and laid Podge's head in the other's lap.