chaffing remarks about people not looking quite so happy as they did
a day or two ago; and next he claimed that the new aspect was
deepening to positive sadness; next, that it was taking on a sick
look; and finally he said that everybody was become so moody,
thoughtful, and absent-minded that he could rob the meanest man in
town of a cent out of the bottom of his breeches pocket and not
disturb his reverie.
At this stage–or at about this stage–a saying like this was
dropped at bedtime–with a sigh, usually–by the head of each of the
nineteen principal households:
“Ah, what COULD have been the remark that Goodson made?”
And straightway–with a shudder–came this, from the man’s wife:
“Oh, DON’T! What horrible thing are you mulling in your mind? Put
it away from you, for God’s sake!”
But that question was wrung from those men again the next night–and
got the same retort. But weaker.
And the third night the men uttered the question yet again–with
anguish, and absently. This time–and the following night–the
wives fidgeted feebly, and tried to say something. But didn’t.
And the night after that they found their tongues and responded–
longingly:
“Oh, if we COULD only guess!”
Halliday’s comments grew daily more and more sparklingly
disagreeable and disparaging. He went diligently about, laughing at
the town, individually and in mass. But his laugh was the only one
left in the village: it fell upon a hollow and mournful vacancy and
emptiness. Not even a smile was findable anywhere. Halliday
carried a cigar-box around on a tripod, playing that it was a
camera, and halted all passers and aimed the thing and said “Ready!
–now look pleasant, please,” but not even this capital joke could
surprise the dreary faces into any softening.
So three weeks passed–one week was left. It was Saturday evening
after supper. Instead of the aforetime Saturday-evening flutter and
bustle and shopping and larking, the streets were empty and
desolate. Richards and his old wife sat apart in their little
parlour–miserable and thinking. This was become their evening
habit now: the life-long habit which had preceded it, of reading,
knitting, and contented chat, or receiving or paying neighbourly
calls, was dead and gone and forgotten, ages ago–two or three weeks
ago; nobody talked now, nobody read, nobody visited–the whole
village sat at home, sighing, worrying, silent. Trying to guess out
that remark.
The postman left a letter. Richards glanced listlessly at the
superscription and the post-mark–unfamiliar, both–and tossed the
letter on the table and resumed his might-have-beens and his
hopeless dull miseries where he had left them off. Two or three
hours later his wife got wearily up and was going away to bed
without a good-night–custom now–but she stopped near the letter
and eyed it awhile with a dead interest, then broke it open, and
began to skim it over. Richards, sitting there with his chair
tilted back against the wall and his chin between his knees, heard
something fall. It was his wife. He sprang to her side, but she
cried out:
“Leave me alone, I am too happy. Read the letter–read it!”
He did. He devoured it, his brain reeling. The letter was from a
distant State, and it said:
“I am a stranger to you, but no matter: I have something to tell.
I have just arrived home from Mexico, and learned about that
episode. Of course you do not know who made that remark, but I
know, and I am the only person living who does know. It was
GOODSON. I knew him well, many years ago. I passed through your
village that very night, and was his guest till the midnight train
came along. I overheard him make that remark to the stranger in the
dark–it was in Hale Alley. He and I talked of it the rest of the
way home, and while smoking in his house. He mentioned many of your
villagers in the course of his talk–most of them in a very
uncomplimentary way, but two or three favourably: among these
latter yourself. I say ‘favourably’–nothing stronger. I remember
his saying he did not actually LIKE any person in the town–not one;