Chapter V: The Tragedy

“Next mornin’, about eight o’clock, Mari come to the tarvern to know where Mr. Dalton was, that he didn’t come home.

“‘He did go home,’ says Dot’s ancestor.

“‘He didn’t come home,’ says Mari, ‘and Miss Dalton is dreadfully worried for fear he’s sick. Never slep’ a wink, and kep’ a candle burnin’ all night.’

“I don’t know what put it into his head to think somethin’ was wrong, but he did,—Dot’s ancestor, I mean, and why the plague can’t I think of his name! I know it as well as I do my own. Here, Jeff, you rascal, come here,” he called, as the boy came leaping across the end of the piazza like a young deer. “Go and ask Miss Taylor the name of her ancestor who kep’ the tavern when Mr. Dalton was killed.”

Jeff disappeared with a bound and summersault, while his master continued: “Queer boy that, but smart as a steel trap. He’s descended from Mari, who lived with Miss Dalton. A good boy, but queer motioned,—never stands still. Jumps round like a grasshopper,—turns summersets, one after another, till it makes you dizzy to see him. Reads all the trash he can git hold of about pirates and Injuns runnin’ through the bushes. Told the parson, when he asked him what he was goin’ to be when he grew up, that he s’posed he or’to be a minister, but he’d rather be a robber. Dot thrashed him for that and shut him up in the back chamber without his supper. But, my land, he was out in no time. Clum’ out of the winder,—slid down the lightnin’ rod and went rollin’ off like a hoop on the grass. Here he comes. What did she say, Jeff?”

“She said his name was Joel Butterfield, and she didn’t see what you was borin’ Mr. Mason with that story for,” was Jeff’s reply, as he went hippy-te-hopping away.

“Be I borin’ you?” Uncle Zacheus asked, and Craig replied: “Not in the least. I’m greatly interested, and shall be more so when you get to the pith of the matter. Pray, go on. Mari had come to ask why Mr. Dalton didn’t come home, and Mr. Butterfield, your wife’s ancestor, suspected something wrong. That’s where you left off.”

“Jess so; Joel Butterfield; funny I couldn’t remember his name. I did think of _cheese_. Wall, he was wonderful for smellin’ a rat, jess like Dot; she’s allus smellin’ things when there’s nothin’ to smell. Says he,—that’s Joel, I mean,—says he to Mari, says he, ‘Was anybody to your house last night?’ First she said there wasn’t; then she said there was, but she didn’t see ’em. ’Twas Monday, washin’ day, and Miss Dalton’s washin’s was big; allus wore white gowns in the summer. Had two in the wash that day, and four white skirts, and Mari was tired and went to bed early and dropped asleep at once. Bimeby she waked up and heard a man’s voice speakin’ to Miss Dalton, low like. Thinkin’ it was Mr. Dalton, she went to sleep agin, and didn’t wake till mornin’, but had bad dreams, as of a scuffle of some kind. When she asked Miss Dalton who was talkin’ if ’twasn’t Mr. Dalton, Miss Dalton said ’twas a stranger who wanted to see Mr. Dalton. She didn’t know his name, but sent him to the tarvern, where she s’posed her husband was, sayin’ he was to tell him to come right home, for she was afraid in the storm. This looked queer, and Joel and the bartender started post haste for the Dalton House.

“It was a beautiful mornin’, but it had rained so hard the night afore that the road in the lane was soft as putty, and they see plain the mark of wheels and horses’ feet which went up to the house, turned round, went out of the lane and off toward East Ridgefield. Joel noticed it and p’inted it out to the bartender, whose name I don’t know, and it don’t matter,—he was no kin to Dot. They went into the house,—Joel and the bartender,—and found Miss Dalton fresh as a pink in a white gown, with a blue ribbon round her waist and a rose stuck in it, and she a workin’ a sampler. Know what that is?”

Craig confessed his ignorance, and Uncle Zach explained: “They used to work ’em years ago in school, and at home on canvas with colored yarn or silk. Sometimes the Lord’s Prayer; sometimes a verse of scripter, but oftenest the names of the family, and when they was born. Dot’s got one, but she hid it away after she got to be forty. Wall, Miss Dalton set in a rockin’ chair, workin’ Mr. Dalton’s name, and when he was born, and lookin’ as innocent as the baby playin’ on the floor. I forgot to tell you there was a little boy two years old, with eyes like his mother. That’s Mark’s grandfather. When Miss Dalton see Mari, who came in fust, she asked as chipper like, ‘Did you find him? Was he there?’

“‘No,’ says Mari. ‘It’s mighty curis, too, for he started for home about eleven o’clock.’

“‘Yes,’ says Joel and the bartender, comin’ in behind her. ‘He started home at eleven o’clock. I’m afraid there’s been foul play somewhere.’

“‘Foul play,’ Miss Dalton gasped, and her face began to grow white, and there was a scared look in her eyes, which rolled round as if lookin’ for some place to hide.

“‘Yes, marm,’ says Joel. ‘Foul play of the wust kind. Whose buggy track is that up to the door and back, and off to the east? Who was here last night? They didn’t come to the tarvern.’

“Then she turned whiter, and wanted a glass of water, and told of the strange actin’ man who had asked for Mr. Dalton, and began to wonder if anything could have happened to her John. The bartender had gone into the yard, and was lookin’ round near the well,—one of them old-fashioned kind, with a curb and sweep and bucket. It is there now,—the well, I mean. Of course, there’s been a new curb and bucket.

“‘Great Scott’ says ’ee, faint like and sick at the pit of his stomach.

“All round the well in the mud and grass was the tracks of men’s feet, as if there had been a hard scuffle.

“‘Come here, for Lord’s sake,’ he called to Joel, and Joel come and seen the tracks all aimin’ for the well, and on the curb the muddy print of a hand as if some one had clung there fitin’ for life, and right under the curb what do you think was hangin’ on a nail?”

Zacheus was very dramatic and eloquent by this time, and pointed his forefinger at Craig, who was himself a good deal shaken, and answered under his breath, “Mr. Dalton’s hat!”

“Oh, my land,” Zacheus ejaculated, in some disgust. “A stovepipe hat on a broken nail! No, _sir_! The hat was found on the head of the vally’s brother, and on the nail was a piece of Mr. Dalton’s linen coat that everybody knew, and in the well stickin’ up out of the water and kinder lodged on the stones was one of his boots with his foot in it! Joel was that faint when he seen it that the bartender had to hold on to him to keep him from pitchin’ head fust inter the well.

“‘Here’s murder,’ says ’ee. ‘Mari, come here.’

“She come, with her knees knockin’ together and a lump in her throat as big as a goose aig.

“‘Mari,’ says ’ee, ‘where did you git water for breakfast?’

“‘From the spring, over there,’ pointin’ to the orchard. ‘Miss Dalton said she’d rather have the water from there, ’cause that in the well was low,’ says Mari, her tongue so thick she could hardly talk.

“‘Have you often got water from there,’ says Joel.

“‘No,’ says Mari, and ‘Yes, very often,’ says Miss Dalton.

“She had come out to where the tracks was in the mud, and was white now as her gown and leanin’ on to Mari.

“‘Miss Dalton,’ says Joel, ‘your husband is in the well.’

“Then she screeched so loud that some of the neighbors heard her and come runnin’ to see what was the matter, while she made as if she’d throw herself over the curb, but Joel catched her by her clothes and pulled her back.

“‘Oh, John, John. Is he dead? Get him out, somebody,’ she cried.

“‘That’s what we are goin’ to do. Who’ll go down after him?’ Joel said, and, as no one offered, he pulled off his shoes and stockin’s, and, tyin’ a rope round his waist, went down himself, clingin’ to the slippery stones, and got him up dead as a door-nail, with the marks of two big hands round his throat, as if he had been seized and choked till the life was out of him, and then been chucked into the well as the nearest place to hide him.”

At this point Uncle Zacheus became so excited and agitated that he was obliged to wait a few minutes before describing more of the terrible scenes which shook the little village of Ridgefield to its depths that summer morning, when the dead man lay upon the grass in his dripping garments, a bruise on his forehead where he must have struck a stone in his fall, and a look of horror in his wide-open eyes as he lay with his face upturned to the sky.

“Oh, John, who could have done this?” Mrs. Dalton moaned, as she knelt beside him, her arms across his chest and her long curls falling over his swollen features.

Unnoticed by any one, the little boy, Robbie, had crept down the doorsteps and came toddling across the yard to the group by the well.

“Papa, mam-ma,” he said, laying one hand on his mother’s head and the other on his father’s wet hair. “Papa, wake up. I’s ’f’aid,” he said, shaking the drops of water from his fingers and beginning to cry.

“’Twas awful,” Uncle Zach said, resuming the story and dwelling at length upon the picture of the little boy stooping over his dead father and trying to wake him up. “Yes, ’twas awful, and, though I’ll bet I’ve told the story over a hundred times, if I have once, I can never get over that part without somethin’ stickin’ in my throat and thinkin’ what if it had been Johnny and me, with Dot makin’ b’lieve. Oh—h,” and he groaned aloud;—then continued: “‘Oh, please somebody find the murderers,’ Miss Dalton said; and Joel answered: ‘You bet we will. We know ’em,’ and he winked at the bartender.

“They’d got the coroner there and half the town come with him, for the news flew like lightnin’, and the yard was full, and the fence was full,—the folks fightin’ to git sight of the tracks in the mud, and the well and the mark of a hand on the curb and the piece of his coat on a nail, and when they couldn’t do that they went and looked at the wheel tracks where the buggy turned in the lane, and then went back and fit agin to see the well. The women was mostly in the house where Miss Dalton sat wringin’ her hands soft as wool and covered with rings, her white gown bedraggled with mud and her hair flyin’ over her face, makin’ her look like a crazy critter. I tell you she stimulated grief so well that she could almost have deceived the very elect, and folks at fust didn’t know what to think. That Mr. Dalton had been killed was sure, and the verdict was wilful murder by somebody, and in less than ten minutes a posse of men with Joel and the constable started full run for Worcester. At a livery stable there they heard that a hoss driv’ nearly to death had come in towards mornin’. Who brought him the stable man didn’t know. It wa’n’t the one who hired him the afternoon before, but he paid the bill,—a big one, too,—the hoss was so used up, and he wore a stovepipe hat. That was Mr. Dalton’s, and the man was the vally’s brother. I b’lieve I could have planned better than they did, for they left their tracks so plain behind ’em that before sundown they was all three under arrest and an officer on the way to Ridgefield to keep an eye on Miss Dalton and Mari. They found Mr. Dalton’s gold watch in the vally’s pocket and his wallet and twenty-five dollars in the pocket of the vally’s brother. St. John was at a hotel with a cigar in his mouth, readin’ a paper as cool as you please and mighty indignant at being suspected of murder. He pretended to be awfully shocked at the news. Dalton was his best friend, he said, and he’d no more harm him than he would himself. He knew nothing about the movements of the vally or his brother. He was at the hotel all night and could prove it. This was true, but the vally’s brother gin him away by sayin’ to him low, but so as to be heard, ‘We sink or swim together; that was the bargain, and I’ve papers to prove it.’ They found ’em on him, too, and the three was clapped into jail, and Joel and his men and the officer got back some time in the night to Ridgefield, which next mornin’ was all up in arms wus than the day before.

“My grandmother lived here, and she said half the women was runnin’ the street bareheaded, and some with their sleeves up and their kitchen aprons on, tellin’ the news of the arrest to them who hadn’t heard it, and then makin’ a bee line for the Dalton house, where Miss Dalton still set in her muddy white gown, with her hair streamin’ down her back, and she as cold and white as a block of marble. She’d set up all night; they couldn’t make her go to bed, and when the men got back and she heard St. John was took, she turned blue, but never spoke nor stirred. In the room with her was the officer watchin’ her and Mari, who was in hysterics most of the time. They’d laid Mr. Dalton out beautiful in his best clothes, and Miss Dalton had been in to see him. They tried to shet his eyes, but couldn’t, and they was wide open, starin’ at you, and when Miss Dalton see ’em she cried: ‘Oh, John, John, don’t look at me like that,’ and fell down in a swound, and they didn’t know for a spell but she was dead.

“They made him the biggest funeral Ridgefield ever seen, and folks come for miles and miles around. Why, Joel took in for drinks and keepin’ horses more’n he’d took for months. ’Twas better than general trainin’, or a cattle show for him. Miss Dalton sat like a stone with folks starin’ at her as if they’d never seen her before, and that strange man always close to her. When she got back from the grave she was that wilted they had to carry her into the house and put her on the bed, where she lay, never movin’, nor speakin’, only moanin’, like some dumb critter in pain.

“They took her next day, and the screetch she gin when they told her she was arrested was so awful that folks in the road heard it; then she froze up ag’in, except when she looked at her little boy. They say ’twas touchin’, and made ’em all cry when she bid him good-bye, with him a sayin’, ‘Take, mam-ma; take me,’ and clingin’ to her dress she had on,—the silk one Mr. Dalton had bought her and the gold beads round her neck.”

Here Uncle Zacheus’ feelings so overcame him a second time that he could scarcely finish the story, and tell of Mrs. Dalton’s farewell to her baby and home and Maria, against whom there did not seem sufficient evidence to warrant her arrest. She would be needed as a witness later, and was left with the child whom Mrs. Dalton entrusted to her, saying, as she took his little hands from her dress and put them in Maria’s, “It is preposterous to believe they can find me guilty. But if the worst happens, and I never come back, take good care of Robbie, and tell him all the good you know of his mother.”

Then like some tragic queen she turned to the officer, and, with a proud toss of her head, said to him, “Sir, I am ready.”

She was all in black, with no color about her except the beads and her luxuriant golden hair, which showed under her widow’s bonnet like a gleam of yellow sunshine as she was driven away from the home she was never to see again. The trial which came on quickly did not last long. There were not many witnesses, and few were needed, the case was so plain. Maria was on the stand until she lost her wits entirely, and what she said one minute she contradicted the next. Only one point of any importance was brought out by her evidence. Mrs. Dalton’s name was Christina, which her husband shortened into ’Tina, and Maria testified that on the night of the murder, after she heard a man’s voice speaking to Mrs. Dalton, she thought she heard, or dreamed that she did, some one call “’Tina, ’Tina,” in what she described “a gugglin’” voice, like one in distress or choking.

Up to this point Mrs. Dalton had sat with her face unveiled, her youthful beauty enhanced by her widow’s weeds and her bright hair, telling upon the sympathy of the spectators. But when Maria repeated the name “’Tina,” as it must have been called that awful night by her dying husband, she covered her face with her hands and moaned, “Oh, Maria, in mercy stop before I go mad.”

Then Maria broke down and was taken from the room for a time, nor could any amount of questioning afterwards wring from her a confession that she ever observed anything wrong between Mrs. Dalton and St. John. He liked her,—she liked him,—and they played and sang together a good deal when Mr. Dalton was home, and more, perhaps, when he wasn’t. There was, however, sufficient evidence to convict Mrs. Dalton without Maria’s. The papers referred to by the man called by Uncle Zacheus the “vally’s brother,” and whose real name was Davis,—a recent convict from state’s prison,—contained a promise from St. John to pay Davis and his comrade, Brown, another convict, one thousand dollars to get Mr. Dalton out of the way. Davis, who, in spite of his unprepossessing appearance, was the least hardened of the two men, confessed that several plans had been suggested and talked over and abandoned, until he was getting tired and would have given up but for the thousand dollars, five hundred of which Mrs. Dalton had agreed to pay. The visit to Ridgefield that night was an accident. The horse had been hired to go to an intermediate town. On reaching it Brown had suggested going to Ridgefield to see how the land lay, as he expressed it. On hearing from Mrs. Dalton that her husband was at the hotel, and that she was expecting him home when the storm was over, they decided that this was their opportunity, as no one knew they were in town, and, waiting in the darkness and rain, they accomplished their work. Taken as he was by surprise, Mr. Dalton uttered no cry as they grasped his throat, except the words “’Tina, ’Tina,” while the ’Tina called for gave no sign if she heard it.

She said she didn’t, but few believed her. The evidence against her as an accessory to the murder was sufficient to convict her, and with the three men she was sentenced to be hung. Efforts were made to commute her punishment to imprisonment for life, but public opinion was strong against her, and with her coadjutors in the crime she suffered the penalty of the law.

After the execution, which was public and which hundreds attended, a half brother of Mr. Dalton came to look after the property in the interest of his nephew. In accordance with Mrs. Dalton’s request repeated to Maria, who visited her once in her cell, the latter took charge of the little boy during his childhood, and for some time lived alone with him in the house, bravely fighting her nervous dread of the room where the body had lain, and her terror on wild, rainy nights when she fancied she heard her master’s voice calling “’Tina, ’Tina” through the storm,—the sound of a scuffle near the well, and the wheels on the grass as the murderers drove away. At last, overmastered by her fear, she left the house and the town, taking the child with her and going to Canada where her friends were living.

Gradually the tragedy ceased to be talked about, except when revived by stories that the house was haunted. It was rented at first, then sold by Robbie, who, after attaining his majority, came once to Ridgefield and was described as a fine looking young man, much like his father. There had been a stone placed at his father’s grave, but none at his mother’s, nor did he order one. He was there to sell his property, and he sold it and went away, while family after family occupied the house. If they did not believe in the supernatural they heard nothing. If they did believe in it they heard a great deal; a struggle by the well at midnight when the rain was falling heavily and the sky was inky black; a sound of wheels upon the grass; a choking call for ’Tina; stealthy footsteps across the floor, as if in response to that call ’Tina had gone to the window and looked out; and a child’s cry for papa and mamma, which came at any time, day or night. The mamma lay in her unmarked sunken grave and the papa under the shadow of the south wall in Ridgefield cemetery. Robert became a husband, a father and a grandfather, and he, too, died. Years passed and every actor in that tragic scene was dead, but its memory was kept alive by the house fast going to decay. For a long time it was unoccupied, and “For Sale” nailed upon the door, while the storms and the boys played havoc with it, inside and out. Then Mark Hilton, the clerk at the Prospect House, and great-grandson of Mr. Dalton, bought it for a song. He called it his ancestral hall, and said when he married he should bring his bride there and quiet ’Tina’s ghost, which still haunted it, clad in a soiled white dress, with her long curls down her back. He straightened up her grave and put a plain headstone to it with just her name, Christina Dalton, upon it. Some people censured him for this, and twice he found the stone lying upon the ground face down, where it had been thrown by some malicious or mischievous person. Without a word of comment he put it in its place, and whatever pain or humiliation he felt for his ancestor he made no sign, and held his head as high as if, through the vista of nearly a hundred years, no dark crime was looming which could in any possible way touch his good name. He had come to Ridgefield as a teacher from Amherst College, where he had been for two years, and had taken his place among the best people of the town. Once or twice, after correcting an unruly boy, he found a chalk picture of a gallows on the blackboard in the morning, and, instead of rubbing it out, he drew a fair likeness of the boy artist dangling by the rope and left it there all day. There were no more insulting pictures upon the board, and his pupils treated him with great respect. But school teaching was not to his taste, and he finally gave it up and hired to Mr. Taylor, who was never tired of eulogizing him, and who finished his story of the Dalton house by saying: “There’s no more hereditary in Mark than there is in me. No, sir! His folks lived in New Bedford. Father was a sea captain and drowned; mother died a natural death, and left him a little money; not much, and he’s willin’ to do anything for an honest livin’. If there’s anything in envirymen’ he’s got it strong. Mari brought up his grandfather Robert and had him go to college. He was here once. The Daltons was high bloods and never took much notice of him on account of his mother. But, bless your soul, he wasn’t to blame for her any more than Mark is. Mari, who married in Canada, was a good woman, and great-great-grandmother to Jeff, who acts at times as if possessed with the devil; has some habits I don’t like, but he’ll git over ’em, for he’s a good boy on the whole,—well meanin’ and friendly. His name is Jefferson Wilkes. His folks is all dead and he was jest a wafer on the streets in Boston, turnin’ somersets for a penny a turn and sleepin’ in a big hogshead on the wharf at night when Mark found him. He’d kep’ track of Mari’s pedigree, tracin’ ’em down to the boy and was huntin’ for him. He asked Dot to take him, and said if he didn’t earn his board he’d pay the rest. He’ll get plenty of envirymen’ here, for Dot makes him toe the mark, especially Sundays, learnin’ the catechism and verses in the Bible, and boxes his ears when he don’t behave. Mark laughs and gives him a stick of candy for every box. Pays for it, though. He’s honesty itself. I’d trust him with all I own.

“Yes, Dotty. I’ll be there,” he added, as there came ’round the corner a call to which he always paid attention. “I’ll be back in a few minutes and tell you the rest,” he said, as he hurried away in the direction of the call.