"Yes," said the little woman, "a young lady, and Mrs. Solomon Black is on her way here now."
"With _her_?" gasped the others.
"Yes, she"s coming, and she looks to me as if she might have money."
"Who is she?" asked Mrs. Whittle.
"How do I know? Mrs. Mixter"s Tommy told my Sam, and he told me, and I saw Mrs. Black and the boarder coming out of her yard, when I went out of mine, and I hurried so"s to get here first. Hush! Here they come now."
While the women were conferring many people had entered the room, although none had purchased the wares. Now there was stark silence and a concentrated fire of attention as Mrs. Black entered with a strange young woman. Mrs. Black looked doubtfully important. She, as a matter of fact, was far from sure of her wisdom in the course she was taking. She was even a little pale, and her lips moved nervously as she introduced the girl to one and another. "Miss Orr," she said; sometimes "Miss Lydia Orr."
As for the girl, she looked timid, yet determined. She was pretty, perhaps a beauty, had she made the most of her personal advantages instead of apparently ignoring them. Her beautiful fair hair, which had red-gold lights, should have shaded her forehead, which was too high. Instead it was drawn smoothly back, and fastened in a mat of compact flat braids at the back of her head. She was dressed very simply, in black, and her costume was not of the latest mode.
"I don"t see anything about her to have made Mrs. Fulsom think she was rich," Mrs. Whittle whispered to Mrs. Daggett, who made an unexpectedly shrewd retort: "I can see. She don"t look as if she cared what anybody thought of her clothes; as if she had so much she"s never minded."
Mrs. Whittle failed to understand. She grunted non-a.s.sent. "I don"t see," said she. "Her sleeves are way out of date."
For awhile there was a loud buzz of conversation all over the room.
Then it ceased, for things were happening, amazing things. The strange young lady was buying and she was paying cash down. Some of the women examined the bank notes suspiciously and handed them to their husbands to verify. The girl saw, and flushed, but she continued. She went from table to table, and she bought everything, from quilts and hideous drawn-in rugs to frosted cakes. She bought in the midst of that ominous hush of suspicion. Once she even heard a woman hiss to another, "She"s crazy. She got out of an insane asylum."
However n.o.body of all the stunned throng refused to sell. Her first failure came in the case of a young man. He was Jim Dodge, f.a.n.n.y"s brother. Jim Dodge was a sort of Ishmael in the village estimation, and yet he was liked. He was a handsome young fellow with a wild freedom of carriage. He had worked in the chair factory to support his mother and sister, before it closed. He haunted the woods, and made a little by selling skins. He had brought as his contribution to the fair a beautiful fox skin, and when the young woman essayed to buy that he strode forward. "That is not for sale," said he. "I beg you to accept that as a gift, Miss Orr."
The young fellow blushed a little before the girl"s blue eyes, although he held himself proudly. "I won"t have this sold to a young lady who is buying as much as you are," he continued.
The girl hesitated. Then she took the skin. "Thank you, it is beautiful," she said.
Jim"s mother sidled close to him. "You did just right, Jim," she whispered. "I don"t know who she is, but I feel ashamed of my life.
She can"t really want all that truck. She"s buying to help. I feel as if we were a parcel of beggars."
"Well, she won"t buy that fox skin to help!" Jim whispered back fiercely.
The whole did not take very long. Finally the girl talked in a low voice to Mrs. Black who then became her spokeswoman. Mrs. Black now looked confident, even triumphant. "Miss Orr says of course she can"t possibly use all the cake and pies and jelly," she said, "and she wants you to take away all you care for. And she wants to know if Mrs. Whittle will let the other things stay here till she"s got a place to put them in. I tell her there"s no room in my house."
"I s"pose so," said Mrs. Whittle in a thick voice. She and many others looked fairly pale and shocked.
Mrs. Solomon Black, the girl and the minister went out.
The hush continued for a few seconds. Then Mrs. Whittle spoke.
"There"s something wrong about that girl," said she. Other women echoed her. The room seemed full of feminine snarls.
Jim Dodge turned on them, and his voice rang out. "You are a lot of cats," said he. "Come on home, mother and f.a.n.n.y, I am mortal shamed for the whole of it. That girl"s buying to help, when she can"t want the things, and all you women turning on her for it!"
After the Dodges had gone there was another hush. Then it was broken by a man"s voice, an old man"s voice with a cackle of derision and shrewd amus.e.m.e.nt in it. "By gosh!" said this voice, resounding through the whole room, "that strange young woman has bought the whole church fair!"
"There"s something wrong," said Mrs. Whittle again.
"Ain"t you got the money?" queried the man"s voice.
"Yes, but--"
"Then for G.o.d"s sake hang onto it!"
Chapter III
After Jim Dodge had taken his mother and sister home, he stole off by himself for a solitary walk. The night was wonderful, and the young man, who was in a whirl of undefined emotion, unconsciously felt the need of a lesson of eternal peace. The advent of the strange girl, and her unprecedented conduct had caused in him a sort of masculine vertigo over the whole situation. Why in the name of common sense was that girl in Brookville, and why should she have done such a thing?
He admired her; he was angry with her; he was puzzled by her.
He did not like the minister. He did not wonder that Elliot should wish for emolument enough to pay his way, but he had a little contempt for him, for his a.s.sumption of such superior wisdom that he could teach his fellow men spiritual knowledge and claim from them financial reward. Aside from keeping those he loved in comfort, Jim had no wish for money. He had all the beauty of nature for the taking. He listened, as he strolled along, to the mysterious high notes of insects and night-birds; he saw the lovely shadows of the trees, and he honestly wondered within himself why Brookville people considered themselves so wronged by an occurrence of years ago, for which the perpetrator had paid so dearly. At the same time he experienced a sense of angry humiliation at the poverty of the place which had caused such an occurrence as that church fair.
When he reached Mrs. Solomon Black"s house, he stared up at its glossy whiteness, reflecting the moonlight like something infinitely more precious than paint, and he seemed to perceive again a delicate, elusive fragrance which he had noticed about the girl"s raiment when she thanked him for his fox skin.
"She smelled like a new kind of flower," Jim told himself as he swung down the road. The expression was not elegant, but it was sincere. He thought of the girl as he might have thought of an entirely new species of blossom, with a strictly individual fragrance which he had encountered in an expedition afield.
After he had left the Black house, there was only a half mile before he reached the old Andrew Bolton place. The house had been very pretentious in an ugly architectural period. There were truncated towers, a mansard roof, hideous dormers, and a reckless outbreak of perfectly useless bay windows. The house, which was large, stood aloof from the road, with a small plantation of evergreen trees before it. It had not been painted for years, and loomed up like the vaguest shadow of a dwelling even in the brilliant moonlight.
Suddenly Jim caught sight of a tiny swinging gleam of light. It bobbed along at the height of a man"s knee. It was a lantern, which seemed rather an odd article to be used on such a night. Then Jim came face to face with the man who carried the lantern, and saw who he was--Deacon Amos Whittle. To Jim"s mind, the man resembled a fox, skulking along the road, although Deacon Amos Whittle was not predatory. He was a small, thin, wiry man with a queer swirl of white whisker, and hopping gait.
He seemed somewhat blinded by his lantern, for he ran full tilt into Jim, who stood the shock with such firmness that the older man staggered back, and danced uncertainly to recover his balance. Deacon Amos Whittle stuttered uncertain remarks, as was his wont when startled. "It is only Jim Dodge," said Jim. "Guess your lantern sort of blinded you, Deacon."
Then the lantern almost blinded Jim, for Whittle swung it higher until it came on a level with Jim"s eyes. Over it peered Whittle"s little keen ones, spectacled under a gray s.h.a.g of eyebrows. "Oh it is you!" said the man with a somewhat contemptuous accent. He held Jim in slight esteem.
Jim laughed lightly. Unless he cared for people, their opinion of him always seemed a perfectly negligible matter, and he did not care at all for Amos Whittle.
Suddenly, to his amazement, Amos took hold of his coat. "Look a"
here, Jim," said he.
"Well?"
"Do you know anything about that strange woman that"s boardin" to Mis" Solomon Black"s?"
"How in creation should I know anything about her?"
"Hev you seen her?"
"I saw her at the fair tonight."
"The fair at my house?"
"Don"t know of any other fair."
"Well, what do you think of her?"
"Don"t think of her."
Jim tried to pa.s.s, but the old man danced before him with his swinging lantern.