The dark fantastic (23 page)

Judith drew her hand across her eyes. It was possible that a crash in the kitchen had come simultaneously with the hurling of the brick. . . .

"But I saw the brick. I felt a whisssssh! of air as it passed my head. Someone threw a brick through that window, then ran around the corner of the house, reached through the door, and recovered it while my back was turned."

Richard stepped to the open door and searched the premises with a keen glance. Suddenly his hand came up with a gesture as involuntary as breathing.

Judith said, "It's too late to warn her, Richard. I've seen her."

Thorne was approaching the house, her apron filled with berries.

She was still wet from her swim in the creek. Her dark hair dripped liquid gold where the sun touched it; the childish pinafore clung damply to her small body. The two in the doorway watched her approach; the man's eyes fixed upon the dripping curls and berry-stained face, the woman's upon the budding curves revealed by the clinging apron.

Judith said, "Did you throw that brick, Thorne?"

Thorne said, "what brick?"

"Judith thought she saw someone throw a brick," said Richard.

"Where would I get a brick?" said Thorne.

"Exactly," said Richard. "Where would she get a brick? There's none on this farm." He was beginning to speak impatiently. "Furthermore, there's no brick in the room. Are you right sure, Judith, you didn't imagine the whole thing?"

Judith chilled, though the August morning was already hot. She felt as if there were someone close beside her—not Richard, closer than that—close enough to touch her. She moved farther back into the room, and when something brushed her thigh she almost swooned. She had backed into the bed.

"I'm moving upstairs again," she announced. "I never liked sleeping on the ground floor. I tried it to please you, Richard, but I much prefer the bird's-eye-maple room."

He made no comment. He told Thorne to go wash her face and hands for breakfast, and when they went into the dining room he explained to the others that some hoodlum had thrown a brick through the bedroom window. "He must have got frightened when he heard Judith scream and retrieved his missile, because the brick's disappeared."

That was the first brick. It was not the last. Judith heard and saw them intermittently for several weeks. Always half bricks; always through the same window, the one Abigail had nailed down. In what ever part of the house Judith might be at the time, she could distinctly hear the heavy thud as the brick hit the floor. She would rush immediately to the south room and find the missile lying where she had seen the first. But when she had hastened to bring some other member of the family to verify what she had seen, the brick would be gone.

Because of the heat the window was still open. Judith no longer heard a crash of glass when the brick fell. Miss Ann suggested closing the window.

"Then we'll know whether the brick comes through there or not. A shattered windowpane is substantial evidence."

"You think I'm lying?" said Judith.

"No, no, my dear." No one doubted Judith's testimony regarding the bricks. She was too intelligent to be suspected of hallucination, as Abigail had been, and her reaction to the disturbance was too sincere to permit a doubt of her veracity. "But it's just possible the sound you hear is something outside the house," said Miss Ann, "because no one else ever hears anything."

The brick thrower seemed to confine his activities to periods when only Judith was in the vicinity of the south room.

"But I saw the brick. Time and again I've seen a brick on the floor."

"And you always run to fetch someone, which gives the culprit time to make off with it. Next time pick the brick up before you leave the room."

But Judith could not bring herself to touch the bricks. Neither would she allow Miss Ann to close the window. She had a horrible fear of hearing the crash of glass again and finding the brick as usual, and of finding the windowpane unbroken. Better to cling to the alternative made possible by the open window and the convenient door.

The Tomlinsons searched the countryside for the tramp or urchin who might be responsible for the mischief, but no such person was found. News of the disturbance spread throughout the neighborhood, and self-elected guards posted themselves at outlying points of vantage to watch for the culprit. But the brick thrower was never seen.

Judith insisted that Thorne was guilty. For a time she was able to persuade others to this opinion, particularly young Will. The bricks always seemed to come when Thorne was out of the house. In vain did Richard caution her to stay withindoors until the nuisance could be tracked to its source. When Thorne remained in the house nothing happened.

As the suspicions of the others deepened against her, Richard grew more frantic. He had words with his entire family. He had violent arguments with his wife. Their disputes were the more bitter because Judith's insistence upon Thorne's guilt was based on a fear which Richard, in his desperation, continually fostered. He had said once, lightly, that he thought it possible the spirit of his dead wife might be plaguing them. He stated now, unequivocably, that only Abigail could devise so cunning a persecution as this incrimination of an innocent girl. His words shocked his family, but he did not care. He would fight both the living and the dead in Thorne's defense.

As for Thorne, she had nothing to say beyond her repeated assertion that she had no knowledge of this thing. But she grew thin and pale with nervous anxiety. She stayed indoors when Richard so ordered, effacing herself from Judith's eye by industriously helping Miss Ann, But when the strain of her position grew more than she could bear she would escape to the woods and the solitude which now provided her only respite. Invariably, when she returned to the house, she would find that Judith had heard and seen another brick.

One evening Thorne was returning after a full day's absence. She had fled early in the morning from Judith's tongue, and so hopeless had seemed her plight that she had seriously considered running away and never coming back. But toward sundown she remembered that Richard would be coming from the fields before long, so she turned her steps toward home.

Dusk had fallen by the time she came within sight of the house. The log kitchen glowed with lighted windows, and red sparks flew from its chimney. Appetizing odors reminded her that she had had nothing to eat since breakfast. As she started up the slope from the springhouse she saw a familiar figure cross the barn lot and her heart swelled like a homing pigeon's. "Richard's home," she thought happily, and started running.

Judith, watching from the kitchen window, also saw Richard coming from the barn. She likewise caught sight of Thorne running to meet him. She slipped outside, determined to forestall the meeting. As she stood watching Thorne's flying figure she saw the girl pitch suddenly, violently, forward and then lie very still.

Judith ran swiftly down the slope to be at the spot before Richard. She would spare him the necessity of drying Thorne's tears.

But Thorne was not weeping. She was lying still as death, with a great bleeding cut on her head. On the ground close by, Judith saw a half brick.

Her first thought was that Richard must not see that brick. He would take it as concrete proof of Thorne's innocence. Because Thorne could not possibly have struck herself with the brick at which Judith was now staring.

She could hear her husband's pounding footsteps. He was running from the barn. She must dispose of the brick before he reached them. . . .

She could not bring herself to pick it up.

Richard knelt in the path, lifting Thorne in his arms, cursing softly in his rage and anxiety. "My poor Cricket! What happened?" he asked Judith.

Judith said, "Put her down. She'll come out of her faint quicker."

He laid Thorne gently on the grass. Then he wet his hand-kerchief in the overflow from the spring and bathed her face. Judith wondered how much longer it would be before he saw the brick.

"There must be a rock in this path that tripped her," he said.

"Do you see anything?" asked Judith.

"No." His eyes scanned the darkening hillside. "whatever it was must be close by." He searched the grass. The brick lay near the spot where he had put Thorne. His eyes moved over it as though it were not there.

Suddenly panic gripped Judith. It became more important for Richard to see the brick than for herself to preserve the fiction of Thorne's guilt.

She cried, 'There, stupid! There on the ground beside her is the thing that felled her."

His gaze followed her pointing finger. He said, "I don't see anything."

"Look where I'm pointing," cried Judith—and then stopped.

The brick was gone.

"That's nothing but a clump of grass," said Richard. "Here's what probably did the mischief." With the toe of his boot he scraped the hard-packed earth from an embedded rock in the path.

Thorne was beginning to regain consciousness. Richard lifted her in his arms and carried her up to the house. Judith followed, like a woman in a dream.

They found Miss Ann in the kitchen with Millie.

"Get ointment and bandages, Mother. Thorne's had an accident."

Ann Tomlinson gasped at sight of the girl's bloody head. Millie groaned, "Oh Lawdy!" and set down a tray of dishes with a clatter.

"what happened to her?" asked Miss Ann.

"She was running up the hill and took a nasty fall."

"What tripped you, child?"

Thorne murmured, "I don't know." She was feeling faint again. "I don't know what happened."

Richard said, "Luckily I saw the whole thing. So did Judith." He then described the incident. Young Will and Jesse Moffat came in while he was talking and listened with interest.

"There was a rock embedded in the path which must have tripped her," finished Richard. "At least it was the only thing we could find. And we both looked, didn't we, Judith?"

Judith said coldly, "Thorne didn't trip over anything."

"What do you mean?" said Richard sharply.

Judith said to Thorne, "What did you do wth that brick?"

"What brick?" said Thorne blankly.

Richard said, "What are you talking about, Judith?"

"When I reached Thorne there was a brick on the ground beside her." Judith's face was pale, but there was no hysteria in her voice. "I pointed it out to you, Richard. But you pretended not to see it until Thorne had time to conceal it beneath her skirt."

"Judith! Do you accuse Thorne of giving herself a blow that knocked her unconscious?"

"No. I accuse her of taking a stage fall, first dropping a brick beside the path to make it look as though she had been struck down bv our brick thrower."

But the idea of Thorne's having a heavy brickbat concealed on her person was too preposterous to be credited. Besides, the girl's injuries were serious enough to preclude malingering. There was outspoken, indignant rejection of Judith's theory.

Jesse Moffat, however, was inclined to agree that Thorne might have been struck by a brick. "If Judith says she seen one, I reckon she seen it. Somebody might have made off with it before Richard got there, but it couldn't have been Thorne, with her knocked unconscious."

Richard said, "If Judith did see a brick, then this clears Thorne of throwing them." Will's eyes rested on the girl as though he were ashamed of the stand he had previously taken.

Judith made one last effort. "It's been your contention, Richard, that these bricks have been thrown for the purpose of incriminating Thorne. In that case, why would her enemy exonerate her by striking her down?"

He had an answer, even for that. "The malice that failed to drive her from home might have decided to kill her and have done with it."

Without another word Judith left the kitchen and went up to her room. She felt as though she had reached the limit of her endurance. All during these terrible weeks she had clung to her conviction of Thorne's guilt as a drowning man clings to a spar. Now it had been wrested from her by a wave which threatened to engulf her. For if Thorne was not guilty of this mischief—whence came those bricks and whither did they go?

She had seen them again and again; yet when she brought others to view them they were never there. Who, besides herself, would go to any lengths to prove they had been thrown by human hands?

Her desperation furnished the answer. Lighting a candle, she sat down at her desk, took a fresh quill pen, and rapidly covered a sheet of note paper With her clear, impersonal handwriting. When she had finished she locked the letter in her desk, pending an opportunity to mail it.

There was a cessation of her torment after that. For weeks the letter lay in her desk, not forgotten, but postponed, like a desperate remedy to be used only in extremity. Then when the harvest was in and Richard made his usual trip to the city, Judith was ill and unable to accompany him. Instead of deferring the excursion, he went off by himself, returning late the same day, pockets bulging with gifts for everyone, and bearing a large dressmaker's box which Judith was sure contained the new faille silk she had been wanting. But when the box was opened it was found that the object of his trip had been to buy Thorne the long-promised new dress.

It was then that Judith decided to post the letter she had written to Otis Huse.

CHAPTER 19

The square in Woodridge was a sea of mud. Wagons and buggies, mired to the hub, crept sluggishly. Horses and mules, flat-eared and streaming, stood resignedly at hitching posts. The hot spell had broken with an equinoctial storm. It had rained for a week.

Two men sat in the bar of the hotel, morosely regarding the weather.

"If this keeps up much longer there'll be another flood."

The speaker was a drummer from Indianapolis. He carried a line of household supplies: toilet goods, patent medicines, thread, needles, pins, et cetera. Crossroads stores were his clientele, the weather his concern.

"Little Raccoon is over its banks. Sure plays whaly with my business."

The other man merely looked bored.

"I'm in the commercial line," explained the drummer. "What's yours?"