The Wind in the Rose-bush
Ford Village has no railroad station, being on the other side of
the river from Porter's Falls, and accessible only by the ford
which gives it its name, and a ferry line.
The ferry-boat was waiting when Rebecca Flint got off the train
with her bag and lunch basket. When she and her small trunk were
safely embarked she sat stiff and straight and calm in the ferry-
boat as it shot swiftly and smoothly across stream. There was a
horse attached to a light country wagon on board, and he pawed the
deck uneasily. His owner stood near, with a wary eye upon him,
although he was chewing, with as dully reflective an expression as
a cow. Beside Rebecca sat a woman of about her own age, who kept
looking at her with furtive curiosity; her husband, short and stout
and saturnine, stood near her. Rebecca paid, no attention to
either of them. She was tall and spare and pale, the type of a
spinster, yet with rudimentary lines and expressions of matronhood.
She all unconsciously held her shawl, rolled up in a canvas bag, on
her left hip, as if it had been a child. She wore a settled frown
of dissent at life, but it was the frown of a mother who regarded
life as a froward child, rather than as an overwhelming fate.
The other woman continued staring at her; she was mildly stupid,
except for an over-developed curiosity which made her at times
sharp beyond belief. Her eyes glittered, red spots came on her
flaccid cheeks; she kept opening her mouth to speak, making little
abortive motions. Finally she could endure it no longer; she
nudged Rebecca boldly.
"A pleasant day," said she.
Rebecca looked at her and nodded coldly.
"Yes, very," she assented.
"Have you come far?"
"I have come from Michigan."
"Oh!" said the woman, with awe. "It's a long way," she remarked
presently.
"Yes, it is," replied Rebecca, conclusively.
Still the other woman was not daunted; there was something which
she determined to know, possibly roused thereto by a vague sense of
incongruity in the other's appearance. "It's a long ways to come
and leave a family," she remarked with painful slyness.
"I ain't got any family to leave," returned Rebecca shortly.
"Then you ain't--"
"No, I ain't."
"Oh!" said the woman.
Rebecca looked straight ahead at the race of the river.
It was a long ferry. Finally Rebecca herself waxed unexpectedly
loquacious. She turned to the other woman and inquired if she knew
John Dent's widow who lived in Ford Village. "Her husband died
about three years ago," said she, by way of detail.
The woman started violently. She turned pale, then she flushed;
she cast a strange glance at her husband, who was regarding both
women with a sort of stolid keenness.
"Yes, I guess I do," faltered the woman finally.
"Well, his first wife was my sister," said Rebecca with the air of
one imparting important intelligence.
"Was she?" responded the other woman feebly. She glanced at her
husband with an expression of doubt and terror, and he shook his
head forbiddingly.
"I'm going to see her, and take my niece Agnes home with me," said
Rebecca.
Then the woman gave such a violent start that she noticed it.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"Nothin', I guess," replied the woman, with eyes on her husband,
who was slowly shaking his head, like a Chinese toy.
"Is my niece sick?" asked Rebecca with quick suspicion.
"No, she ain't sick," replied the woman with alacrity, then she
caught her breath with a gasp.
"When did you see her?"
"Let me see; I ain't seen her for some little time," replied the
woman. Then she caught her breath again.
"She ought to have grown up real pretty, if she takes after my
sister. She was a real pretty woman," Rebecca said wistfully.
"Yes, I guess she did grow up pretty," replied the woman in a
trembling voice.
"What kind of a woman is the second wife?"
The woman glanced at her husband's warning face. She continued to
gaze at him while she replied in a choking voice to Rebecca:
"I--guess she's a nice woman," she replied. "I--don't know, I--
guess so. I--don't see much of her."
"I felt kind of hurt that John married again so quick," said
Rebecca; "but I suppose he wanted his house kept, and Agnes wanted
care. I wasn't so situated that I could take her when her mother
died. I had my own mother to care for, and I was school-teaching.
Now mother has gone, and my uncle died six months ago and left me
quite a little property, and I've given up my school, and I've come
for Agnes. I guess she'll be glad to go with me, though I suppose
her stepmother is a good woman, and has always done for her."
The man's warning shake at his wife was fairly portentous.
"I guess so," said she.
"John always wrote that she was a beautiful woman," said Rebecca.
Then the ferry-boat grated on the shore.
John Dent's widow had sent a horse and wagon to meet her sister-in-
law. When the woman and her husband went down the road, on which
Rebecca in the wagon with her trunk soon passed them, she said
reproachfully:
"Seems as if I'd ought to have told her, Thomas."
"Let her find it out herself," replied the man. "Don't you go to
burnin' your fingers in other folks' puddin', Maria."
"Do you s'pose she'll see anything?" asked the woman with a
spasmodic shudder and a terrified roll of her eyes.
"See!" returned her husband with stolid scorn. "Better be sure
there's anything to see."
"Oh, Thomas, they say--"
"Lord, ain't you found out that what they say is mostly lies?"
"But if it should be true, and she's a nervous woman, she might be
scared enough to lose her wits," said his wife, staring uneasily
after Rebecca's erect figure in the wagon disappearing over the
crest of the hilly road.
"Wits that so easy upset ain't worth much," declared the man. "You
keep out of it, Maria."
Rebecca in the meantime rode on in the wagon, beside a flaxen-
headed boy, who looked, to her understanding, not very bright. She
asked him a question, and he paid no attention. She repeated it,
and he responded with a bewildered and incoherent grunt. Then she
let him alone, after making sure that he knew how to drive
straight.
They had traveled about half a mile, passed the village square, and
gone a short distance beyond, when the boy drew up with a sudden
Whoa! before a very prosperous-looking house. It had been one of
the aboriginal cottages of the vicinity, small and white, with a
roof extending on one side over a piazza, and a tiny "L" jutting
out in the rear, on the right hand. Now the cottage was
transformed by dormer windows, a bay window on the piazzaless side,
a carved railing down the front steps, and a modern hard-wood door.
"Is this John Dent's house?" asked Rebecca.
The boy was as sparing of speech as a philosopher. His only
response was in flinging the reins over the horse's back,
stretching out one foot to the shaft, and leaping out of the wagon,
then going around to the rear for the trunk. Rebecca got out and
went toward the house. Its white paint had a new gloss; its blinds
were an immaculate apple green; the lawn was trimmed as smooth as
velvet, and it was dotted with scrupulous groups of hydrangeas and
cannas.
"I always understood that John Dent was well-to-do," Rebecca
reflected comfortably. "I guess Agnes will have considerable.
I've got enough, but it will come in handy for her schooling. She
can have advantages."
The boy dragged the trunk up the fine gravel-walk, but before he
reached the steps leading up to the piazza, for the house stood on
a terrace, the front door opened and a fair, frizzled head of a
very large and handsome woman appeared. She held up her black silk
skirt, disclosing voluminous ruffles of starched embroidery, and
waited for Rebecca. She smiled placidly, her pink, double-chinned
face widened and dimpled, but her blue eyes were wary and
calculating. She extended her hand as Rebecca climbed the steps.
"This is Miss Flint, I suppose," said she.
"Yes, ma'am," replied Rebecca, noticing with bewilderment a curious
expression compounded of fear and defiance on the other's face.
"Your letter only arrived this morning," said Mrs. Dent, in a
steady voice. Her great face was a uniform pink, and her china-
blue eyes were at once aggressive and veiled with secrecy.
"Yes, I hardly thought you'd get my letter," replied Rebecca. "I
felt as if I could not wait to hear from you before I came. I
supposed you would be so situated that you could have me a little
while without putting you out too much, from what John used to
write me about his circumstances, and when I had that money so
unexpected I felt as if I must come for Agnes. I suppose you will
be willing to give her up. You know she's my own blood, and of
course she's no relation to you, though you must have got attached
to her. I know from her picture what a sweet girl she must be, and
John always said she looked like her own mother, and Grace was a
beautiful woman, if she was my sister."
Rebecca stopped and stared at the other woman in amazement and
alarm. The great handsome blonde creature stood speechless, livid,
gasping, with her hand to her heart, her lips parted in a horrible
caricature of a smile.
"Are you sick!" cried Rebecca, drawing near. "Don't you want me to
get you some water!"
Then Mrs. Dent recovered herself with a great effort. "It is
nothing," she said. "I am subject to--spells. I am over it now.
Won't you come in, Miss Flint?"
As she spoke, the beautiful deep-rose colour suffused her face, her
blue eyes met her visitor's with the opaqueness of turquoise--with
a revelation of blue, but a concealment of all behind.
Rebecca followed her hostess in, and the boy, who had waited
quiescently, climbed the steps with the trunk. But before they
entered the door a strange thing happened. On the upper terrace
close to the piazza-post, grew a great rose-bush, and on it, late
in the season though it was, one small red, perfect rose.
Rebecca looked at it, and the other woman extended her hand with a
quick gesture. "Don't you pick that rose!" she brusquely cried.
Rebecca drew herself up with stiff dignity.
"I ain't in the habit of picking other folks' roses without leave,"
said she.
As Rebecca spoke she started violently, and lost sight of her
resentment, for something singular happened. Suddenly the rose-
bush was agitated violently as if by a gust of wind, yet it was a
remarkably still day. Not a leaf of the hydrangea standing on the
terrace close to the rose trembled.
"What on earth--" began Rebecca, then she stopped with a gasp at
the sight of the other woman's face. Although a face, it gave
somehow the impression of a desperately clutched hand of secrecy.
"Come in!" said she in a harsh voice, which seemed to come forth
from her chest with no intervention of the organs of speech. "Come
into the house. I'm getting cold out here."
"What makes that rose-bush blow so when their isn't any wind?"
asked Rebecca, trembling with vague horror, yet resolute.
"I don't see as it is blowing," returned the woman calmly. And as
she spoke, indeed, the bush was quiet.
"It was blowing," declared Rebecca.
"It isn't now," said Mrs. Dent. "I can't try to account for
everything that blows out-of-doors. I have too much to do."
She spoke scornfully and confidently, with defiant, unflinching
eyes, first on the bush, then on Rebecca, and led the way into the
house.
"It looked queer," persisted Rebecca, but she followed, and also
the boy with the trunk.
Rebecca entered an interior, prosperous, even elegant, according to
her simple ideas. There were Brussels carpets, lace curtains, and
plenty of brilliant upholstery and polished wood.
"You're real nicely situated," remarked Rebecca, after she had
become a little accustomed to her new surroundings and the two
women were seated at the tea-table.
Mrs. Dent stared with a hard complacency from behind her silver-
plated service. "Yes, I be," said she.
"You got all the things new?" said Rebecca hesitatingly, with a
jealous memory of her dead sister's bridal furnishings.
"Yes," said Mrs. Dent; "I was never one to want dead folks' things,
and I had money enough of my own, so I wasn't beholden to John. I
had the old duds put up at auction. They didn't bring much."
"I suppose you saved some for Agnes. She'll want some of her poor
mother's things when she is grown up," said Rebecca with some
indignation.
The defiant stare of Mrs. Dent's blue eyes waxed more intense.
"There's a few things up garret," said she.
"She'll be likely to value them," remarked Rebecca. As she spoke
she glanced at the window. "Isn't it most time for her to be
coming home?" she asked.
"Most time," answered Mrs. Dent carelessly; "but when she gets over
to Addie Slocum's she never knows when to come home."
"Is Addie Slocum her intimate friend?"
"Intimate as any."
"Maybe we can have her come out to see Agnes when she's living with
me," said Rebecca wistfully. "I suppose she'll be likely to be
homesick at first."
"Most likely," answered Mrs. Dent.
"Does she call you mother?" Rebecca asked.
"No, she calls me Aunt Emeline," replied the other woman shortly.
"When did you say you were going home?"
"In about a week, I thought, if she can be ready to go so soon,"
answered Rebecca with a surprised look.
She reflected that she would not remain a day longer than she could
help after such an inhospitable look and question.
"Oh, as far as that goes," said Mrs. Dent, "it wouldn't make any
difference about her being ready. You could go home whenever you
felt that you must, and she could come afterward."
"Alone?"
"Why not? She's a big girl now, and you don't have to change
cars."
"My niece will go home when I do, and not travel alone; and if I
can't wait here for her, in the house that used to be her mother's
and my sister's home, I'll go and board somewhere," returned
Rebecca with warmth.
"Oh, you can stay here as long as you want to. You're welcome,"
said Mrs. Dent.
Then Rebecca started. "There she is!" she declared in a trembling,
exultant voice. Nobody knew how she longed to see the girl.
"She isn't as late as I thought she'd be," said Mrs. Dent, and
again that curious, subtle change passed over her face, and again
it settled into that stony impassiveness.
Rebecca stared at the door, waiting for it to open. "Where is
she?" she asked presently.
"I guess she's stopped to take off her hat in the entry," suggested
Mrs. Dent.
Rebecca waited. "Why don't she come? It can't take her all this
time to take off her hat."
For answer Mrs. Dent rose with a stiff jerk and threw open the
door.
"Agnes!" she called. "Agnes!" Then she turned and eyed Rebecca.
"She ain't there."
"I saw her pass the window," said Rebecca in bewilderment.
"You must have been mistaken."
"I know I did," persisted Rebecca.
"You couldn't have."
"I did. I saw first a shadow go over the ceiling, then I saw her
in the glass there"--she pointed to a mirror over the sideboard
opposite--"and then the shadow passed the window."
"How did she look in the glass?"
"Little and light-haired, with the light hair kind of tossing over
her forehead."
"You couldn't have seen her."
"Was that like Agnes?"
"Like enough; but of course you didn't see her. You've been
thinking so much about her that you thought you did."
"You thought YOU did."
"I thought I saw a shadow pass the window, but I must have been
mistaken. She didn't come in, or we would have seen her before
now. I knew it was too early for her to get home from Addie
Slocum's, anyhow."
When Rebecca went to bed Agnes had not returned. Rebecca had
resolved that she would not retire until the girl came, but she was
very tired, and she reasoned with herself that she was foolish.
Besides, Mrs. Dent suggested that Agnes might go to the church
social with Addie Slocum. When Rebecca suggested that she be sent
for and told that her aunt had come, Mrs. Dent laughed meaningly.
"I guess you'll find out that a young girl ain't so ready to leave
a sociable, where there's boys, to see her aunt," said she.
"She's too young," said Rebecca incredulously and indignantly.
"She's sixteen," replied Mrs. Dent; "and she's always been great
for the boys."
"She's going to school four years after I get her before she thinks
of boys," declared Rebecca.
"We'll see," laughed the other woman.
After Rebecca went to bed, she lay awake a long time listening for
the sound of girlish laughter and a boy's voice under her window;
then she fell asleep.
The next morning she was down early. Mrs. Dent, who kept no
servants, was busily preparing breakfast.
"Don't Agnes help you about breakfast?" asked Rebecca.
"No, I let her lay," replied Mrs. Dent shortly.
"What time did she get home last night?"
"She didn't get home."
"What?"
"She didn't get home. She stayed with Addie. She often does."
"Without sending you word?"
"Oh, she knew I wouldn't worry."
"When will she be home?"
"Oh, I guess she'll be along pretty soon."
Rebecca was uneasy, but she tried to conceal it, for she knew of no
good reason for uneasiness. What was there to occasion alarm in
the fact of one young girl staying overnight with another? She
could not eat much breakfast. Afterward she went out on the little
piazza, although her hostess strove furtively to stop her.
"Why don't you go out back of the house? It's real pretty--a view
over the river," she said.
"I guess I'll go out here," replied Rebecca. She had a purpose: to
watch for the absent girl.
Presently Rebecca came hustling into the house through the sitting-
room, into the kitchen where Mrs. Dent was cooking.
"That rose-bush!" she gasped.
Mrs. Dent turned and faced her.
"What of it?"
"It's a-blowing."
"What of it?"
"There isn't a mite of wind this morning."
Mrs. Dent turned with an inimitable toss of her fair head. "If you
think I can spend my time puzzling over such nonsense as--" she
began, but Rebecca interrupted her with a cry and a rush to the
door.
"There she is now!" she cried. She flung the door wide open, and
curiously enough a breeze came in and her own gray hair tossed, and
a paper blew off the table to the floor with a loud rustle, but
there was nobody in sight.
"There's nobody here," Rebecca said.
She looked blankly at the other woman, who brought her rolling-pin
down on a slab of pie-crust with a thud.
"I didn't hear anybody," she said calmly.
"I SAW SOMEBODY PASS THAT WINDOW!"
"You were mistaken again."
"I KNOW I saw somebody."
"You couldn't have. Please shut that door."
Rebecca shut the door. She sat down beside the window and looked
out on the autumnal yard, with its little curve of footpath to the
kitchen door.
"What smells so strong of roses in this room?" she said presently.
She sniffed hard.
"I don't smell anything but these nutmegs."
"It is not nutmeg."
"I don't smell anything else."
"Where do you suppose Agnes is?"
"Oh, perhaps she has gone over the ferry to Porter's Falls with
Addie. She often does. Addie's got an aunt over there, and
Addie's got a cousin, a real pretty boy."
"You suppose she's gone over there?"
"Mebbe. I shouldn't wonder."
"When should she be home?"
"Oh, not before afternoon."
Rebecca waited with all the patience she could muster. She kept
reassuring herself, telling herself that it was all natural, that
the other woman could not help it, but she made up her mind that if
Agnes did not return that afternoon she should be sent for.
When it was four o'clock she started up with resolution. She had
been furtively watching the onyx clock on the sitting-room mantel;
she had timed herself. She had said that if Agnes was not home by
that time she should demand that she be sent for. She rose and
stood before Mrs. Dent, who looked up coolly from her embroidery.
"I've waited just as long as I'm going to," she said. "I've come
'way from Michigan to see my own sister's daughter and take her
home with me. I've been here ever since yesterday--twenty-four
hours--and I haven't seen her. Now I'm going to. I want her sent
for."
Mrs. Dent folded her embroidery and rose.
"Well, I don't blame you," she said. "It is high time she came
home. I'll go right over and get her myself."
Rebecca heaved a sigh of relief. She hardly knew what she had
suspected or feared, but she knew that her position had been one of
antagonism if not accusation, and she was sensible of relief.
"I wish you would," she said gratefully, and went back to her
chair, while Mrs. Dent got her shawl and her little white head-tie.
"I wouldn't trouble you, but I do feel as if I couldn't wait any
longer to see her," she remarked apologetically.
"Oh, it ain't any trouble at all," said Mrs. Dent as she went out.
"I don't blame you; you have waited long enough."
Rebecca sat at the window watching breathlessly until Mrs. Dent
came stepping through the yard alone. She ran to the door and saw,
hardly noticing it this time, that the rose-bush was again
violently agitated, yet with no wind evident elsewhere.
"Where is she?" she cried.
Mrs. Dent laughed with stiff lips as she came up the steps over the
terrace. "Girls will be girls," said she. "She's gone with Addie
to Lincoln. Addie's got an uncle who's conductor on the train, and
lives there, and he got 'em passes, and they're goin' to stay to
Addie's Aunt Margaret's a few days. Mrs. Slocum said Agnes didn't
have time to come over and ask me before the train went, but she
took it on herself to say it would be all right, and--"
"Why hadn't she been over to tell you?" Rebecca was angry, though
not suspicious. She even saw no reason for her anger.
"Oh, she was putting up grapes. She was coming over just as soon
as she got the black off her hands. She heard I had company, and
her hands were a sight. She was holding them over sulphur
matches."
"You say she's going to stay a few days?" repeated Rebecca dazedly.
"Yes; till Thursday, Mrs. Slocum said."
"How far is Lincoln from here?"
"About fifty miles. It'll be a real treat to her. Mrs. Slocum's
sister is a real nice woman."
"It is goin' to make it pretty late about my goin' home."
"If you don't feel as if you could wait, I'll get her ready and
send her on just as soon as I can," Mrs. Dent said sweetly.
"I'm going to wait," said Rebecca grimly.
The two women sat down again, and Mrs. Dent took up her embroidery.
"Is there any sewing I can do for her?" Rebecca asked finally in a
desperate way. "If I can get her sewing along some--"
Mrs. Dent arose with alacrity and fetched a mass of white from the
closet. "Here," she said, "if you want to sew the lace on this
nightgown. I was going to put her to it, but she'll be glad enough
to get rid of it. She ought to have this and one more before she
goes. I don't like to send her away without some good
underclothing."
Rebecca snatched at the little white garment and sewed feverishly.
That night she wakened from a deep sleep a little after midnight
and lay a minute trying to collect her faculties and explain to
herself what she was listening to. At last she discovered that it
was the then popular strains of "The Maiden's Prayer" floating up
through the floor from the piano in the sitting-room below. She
jumped up, threw a shawl over her nightgown, and hurried downstairs
trembling. There was nobody in the sitting-room; the piano was
silent. She ran to Mrs. Dent's bedroom and called hysterically:
"Emeline! Emeline!"
"What is it?" asked Mrs. Dent's voice from the bed. The voice was
stern, but had a note of consciousness in it.
"Who--who was that playing 'The Maiden's Prayer' in the sitting-
room, on the piano?"
"I didn't hear anybody."
"There was some one."
"I didn't hear anything."
"I tell you there was some one. But--THERE AIN'T ANYBODY THERE."
"I didn't hear anything."
"I did--somebody playing 'The Maiden's Prayer' on the piano. Has
Agnes got home? I WANT TO KNOW."
"Of course Agnes hasn't got home," answered Mrs. Dent with rising
inflection. "Be you gone crazy over that girl? The last boat from
Porter's Falls was in before we went to bed. Of course she ain't
come."
"I heard--"
"You were dreaming."
"I wasn't; I was broad awake."
Rebecca went back to her chamber and kept her lamp burning all
night.
The next morning her eyes upon Mrs. Dent were wary and blazing with
suppressed excitement. She kept opening her mouth as if to speak,
then frowning, and setting her lips hard. After breakfast she went
upstairs, and came down presently with her coat and bonnet.
"Now, Emeline," she said, "I want to know where the Slocums live."
Mrs. Dent gave a strange, long, half-lidded glance at her. She was
finishing her coffee.
"Why?" she asked.
"I'm going over there and find out if they have heard anything from
her daughter and Agnes since they went away. I don't like what I
heard last night."
"You must have been dreaming."
"It don't make any odds whether I was or not. Does she play 'The
Maiden's Prayer' on the piano? I want to know."
"What if she does? She plays it a little, I believe. I don't
know. She don't half play it, anyhow; she ain't got an ear."
"That wasn't half played last night. I don't like such things
happening. I ain't superstitious, but I don't like it. I'm going.
Where do the Slocum's live?"
"You go down the road over the bridge past the old grist mill, then
you turn to the left; it's the only house for half a mile. You can
t miss it. It has a barn with a ship in full sail on the cupola."
"Well, I'm going. I don't feel easy."
About two hours later Rebecca returned. There were red spots on
her cheeks. She looked wild. "I've been there," she said, and
there isn't a soul at home. Something HAS happened."
"What has happened?"
"I don't know. Something. I had a warning last night. There
wasn't a soul there. They've been sent for to Lincoln."
"Did you see anybody to ask?" asked Mrs. Dent with thinly concealed
anxiety.
"I asked the woman that lives on the turn of the road. She's stone
deaf. I suppose you know. She listened while I screamed at her to
know where the Slocums were, and then she said, 'Mrs. Smith don't
live here.' I didn't see anybody on the road, and that's the only
house. What do you suppose it means?"
"I don't suppose it means much of anything," replied Mrs. Dent
coolly. "Mr. Slocum is conductor on the railroad, and he'd be away
anyway, and Mrs. Slocum often goes early when he does, to spend the
day with her sister in Porter's Falls. She'd be more likely to go
away than Addie."
"And you don't think anything has happened?" Rebecca asked with
diminishing distrust before the reasonableness of it.
"Land, no!"
Rebecca went upstairs to lay aside her coat and bonnet. But she
came hurrying back with them still on.
"Who's been in my room?" she gasped. Her face was pale as ashes.
Mrs. Dent also paled as she regarded her.
"What do you mean?" she asked slowly.
"I found when I went upstairs that--little nightgown of--Agnes's
on--the bed, laid out. It was--LAID OUT. The sleeves were folded
across the bosom, and there was that little red rose between them.
Emeline, what is it? Emeline, what's the matter? Oh!"
Mrs. Dent was struggling for breath in great, choking gasps. She
clung to the back of a chair. Rebecca, trembling herself so she
could scarcely keep on her feet, got her some water.
As soon as she recovered herself Mrs. Dent regarded her with eyes
full of the strangest mixture of fear and horror and hostility.
"What do you mean talking so?" she said in a hard voice.
"It IS THERE."
"Nonsense. You threw it down and it fell that way."
"It was folded in my bureau drawer."
"It couldn't have been."
"Who picked that red rose?"
"Look on the bush," Mrs. Dent replied shortly.
Rebecca looked at her; her mouth gaped. She hurried out of the
room. When she came back her eyes seemed to protrude. (She had in
the meantime hastened upstairs, and come down with tottering steps,
clinging to the banisters.)
"Now I want to know what all this means?" she demanded.
"What what means?"
"The rose is on the bush, and it's gone from the bed in my room!
Is this house haunted, or what?"
"I don't know anything about a house being haunted. I don't
believe in such things. Be you crazy?" Mrs. Dent spoke with
gathering force. The colour flashed back to her cheeks.
"No," said Rebecca shortly. "I ain't crazy yet, but I shall be if
this keeps on much longer. I'm going to find out where that girl
is before night."
Mrs. Dent eyed her.
"What be you going to do?"
"I'm going to Lincoln."
A faint triumphant smile overspread Mrs. Dent's large face.
"You can't," said she; "there ain't any train."
"No train?"
"No; there ain't any afternoon train from the Falls to Lincoln."
"Then I'm going over to the Slocums' again to-night."
However, Rebecca did not go; such a rain came up as deterred even
her resolution, and she had only her best dresses with her. Then
in the evening came the letter from the Michigan village which she
had left nearly a week ago. It was from her cousin, a single
woman, who had come to keep her house while she was away. It was a
pleasant unexciting letter enough, all the first of it, and related
mostly how she missed Rebecca; how she hoped she was having
pleasant weather and kept her health; and how her friend, Mrs.
Greenaway, had come to stay with her since she had felt lonesome
the first night in the house; how she hoped Rebecca would have no
objections to this, although nothing had been said about it, since
she had not realized that she might be nervous alone. The cousin
was painfully conscientious, hence the letter. Rebecca smiled in
spite of her disturbed mind as she read it, then her eye caught the
postscript. That was in a different hand, purporting to be written
by the friend, Mrs. Hannah Greenaway, informing her that the cousin
had fallen down the cellar stairs and broken her hip, and was in a
dangerous condition, and begging Rebecca to return at once, as she
herself was rheumatic and unable to nurse her properly, and no one
else could be obtained.
Rebecca looked at Mrs. Dent, who had come to her room with the
letter quite late; it was half-past nine, and she had gone upstairs
for the night.
"Where did this come from?" she asked.
"Mr. Amblecrom brought it," she replied.
"Who's he?"
"The postmaster. He often brings the letters that come on the late
mail. He knows I ain't anybody to send. He brought yours about
your coming. He said he and his wife came over on the ferry-boat
with you."
"I remember him," Rebecca replied shortly. "There's bad news in
this letter."
Mrs. Dent's face took on an expression of serious inquiry.
"Yes, my Cousin Harriet has fallen down the cellar stairs--they
were always dangerous--and she's broken her hip, and I've got to
take the first train home to-morrow."
"You don't say so. I'm dreadfully sorry."
"No, you ain't sorry!" said Rebecca, with a look as if she leaped.
"You're glad. I don't know why, but you're glad. You've wanted to
get rid of me for some reason ever since I came. I don't know why.
You're a strange woman. Now you've got your way, and I hope you're
satisfied."
"How you talk."
Mrs. Dent spoke in a faintly injured voice, but there was a light
in her eyes.
"I talk the way it is. Well, I'm going to-morrow morning, and I
want you, just as soon as Agnes Dent comes home, to send her out to
me. Don't you wait for anything. You pack what clothes she's got,
and don't wait even to mend them, and you buy her ticket. I'll
leave the money, and you send her along. She don't have to change
cars. You start her off, when she gets home, on the next train!"
"Very well," replied the other woman. She had an expression of
covert amusement.
"Mind you do it."
"Very well, Rebecca."
Rebecca started on her journey the next morning. When she arrived,
two days later, she found her cousin in perfect health. She found,
moreover, that the friend had not written the postscript in the
cousin's letter. Rebecca would have returned to Ford Village the
next morning, but the fatigue and nervous strain had been too much
for her. She was not able to move from her bed. She had a species
of low fever induced by anxiety and fatigue. But she could write,
and she did, to the Slocums, and she received no answer. She also
wrote to Mrs. Dent; she even sent numerous telegrams, with no
response. Finally she wrote to the postmaster, and an answer
arrived by the first possible mail. The letter was short, curt,
and to the purpose. Mr. Amblecrom, the postmaster, was a man of
few words, and especially wary as to his expressions in a letter.
"Dear madam," he wrote, "your favour rec'ed. No Slocums in Ford's
Village. All dead. Addie ten years ago, her mother two years
later, her father five. House vacant. Mrs. John Dent said to have
neglected stepdaughter. Girl was sick. Medicine not given. Talk
of taking action. Not enough evidence. House said to be haunted.
Strange sights and sounds. Your niece, Agnes Dent, died a year
ago, about this time.
"Yours truly,
"THOMAS AMBLECROM."
-THE END-
Mary E Wilkins Freeman's short story: The Wind in the Rose-bush
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