The tenth woman

Front matter

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BOOKS BY

HARRIET T. COMSTOCK

Chapter I

T HE branch road of the Boston & Essex Line ended abruptly at the dun-coloured station of Middle Essex. The main line ended at Essex. So sudden was the branch’s termination that it gave one the impression of a jog.

Beyond the station, to the west, lay pleasant pastures and woody hills, rich in rocks and sturdy trees—wild flowers grew everywhere but the ground was uncultivated and was held, by far-visioned owners, for the future; in the meantime the section was known as Far Essex.

In front of the dull-toned station, and running to the east, was the Main, and only, street of the township of Middle Essex. In well-kept and dignified beauty the road took its course between plume-like elms, past green and fragrant lawns. Just as it had a hundred years ago; as it would, so it suggested, a hundred years hence.

The first estate one came to after leaving the station be¬ longed to the Compton family. The stately lawns and house were cared for by a faithful old servant; the garden bloomed early and late, but for over twenty years the owners had lived abroad and left their affairs in the hands of the law firm, Dalton and Dalton, of Boston.

That any one should choose to live abroad who legitimately belonged to Middle Essex was a matter rarely discussed but deeply resented by other Middle Essexians.

The head of the family of Compton had always been a queer, moody man taking no interest in public affairs, feared and obeyed blindly by his meek wife; a man from whom his only son, Barry, shrank and before whom his servants tremi bled. He was not missed from Middle Essex; he was merely resented; but when he died it was hoped that his widow and son would return to their native land. This had not come to pass and no one but the lawyers and, perhaps, the care¬ taker, knew their whereabouts.

Between the Compton place and the hilltop there was a stretch of lovely pasture crowned on the right by a wooded knoll in the heart of which lay a tiny lake, like a hidden jewel.

The Trevall homestead dominated, triumphantly, the crest of the hill. A dignified, colonial edifice was the Trevall’s and nearly two hundred years old. It still preserved, through all accumulation of modern devices for comfort, the sacred relics of the past. In the brick oven the Christmas turkey was always roasted; open fireplaces played their active part even while the hot-water furnace sputtered its contempt.

The road, after leaving the Trevall acres, seemed to get absent-minded. It sagged a bit and edged, in friendly fashion, to the very doorsteps of lesser homes where, behind discreetly drawn shutters and closed portals, old families hid, even from their kith and kin, the devices made necessary by diminishing incomes and proud refusals to adapt themselves to change.

But the road recovered its dignity farther on and became a respectable highway as it entered Essex.

At Essex were the Primary and Grammar schools; the three churches, Presbyterian, Unitarian, and Catholic; the First National Bank, of which John Trevall was president; the woollen mills of the Conklin and Conklin Company; some very good stores, and the houses of young married people.

Some of these young people were strangers to Essex and, indeed, to New England. They saw no reason for apology for their pretty homes with small, tidy lawns and embowered porches, but those citizens who came of the Middle Essex stock regarded Essex as a sort of purgatory: a temporary test of character and business genius. They existed merely until such time as they could afford to build in Middle Essex and begin to carry on the traditions; be sure of their neighhours and forget the trying ordeal of the purgatorial state through which they had passed.

Of course one could go by the branch road from Essex to Middle Essex—that was what the Branch was constructed for, and many availed themselves of the convenience—but those who could afford to do so motored into town and thus escaped contact with strangers who, while most desirable from a business point of view, were not eligible as social equals.

John Trevall always rode to Essex in his small but ex¬ pensive car. He naturally resented automobiles as he did all other innovations, but when they became necessities he procured the best.

Often one or the other of his daughters acted as chauffeur for Trevall; when they were not at the wheel, a young manof-all-work, who had had this detested job thrust upon him, scowlingly took command.

From the moment the door of his house closed upon Tre¬ vall, he became another personality. A citizen who saw his duty and did it serenely; a business man, keen and of iron integrity. But when at six o’clock his eyes rested, from afar, upon the door of his house—a doorway mentioned in most books dealing with New England architecture: when the shining knocker on that door caught his eye—a knocker that had been lifted by the hands of Emerson, Longfellow, and several Harvard presidents, Trevall became himself once more. Himself.

Inside, the stately rooms of the quiet house presented an almost painful order and cleanliness. The shining quality of mahogany and brass suggested backache and set mouths, but Trevall never got that suggestion. As things had been, they were, and always would be. They represented a static state; a state he reverenced.

Trevall always went at once, upon reaching home, to his bedchamber. There he dropped his business garments and reappeared later in clothing more befitting his surround¬ ings. He then descended to the living room and his family. He was always greeted as though he had been away on a long trip.

Faith Trevall, John’s wife, sat, according to the tempera¬ ture, by the open fire or the open west window. She always sat in a low rocker from whose back swung a rather giddy silk workbag. When Trevall entered the room Faith rose and went toward him.

“Tired, dear?” she asked, raising her sweet face.

“No, my dear,” Trevall would answer, and bend to kiss her—on the forehead.

Sometimes Prudence, the older daughter, would be in the room; occasionally Rose-Ann the younger; but they never interrupted this rite of arrival.

A newcomer to Middle Essex often contemplated Faith Trevall with puzzled amusement—she did not seem exactly to fit into the general scheme, but the old families had long ago accepted the little woman as something Trevall had acquired and moulded into shape.

When she was Faith Adams, and seventeen, she had been pretty, rather giddy, and exquisitely pliable. She was a daughter of the haphazard state of New York and in her veins ran a mingling of blood that might have caused trouble had she not been, at seventeen and a half, appropriated by Trevall, incorporated into his traditions, and run into form. She had apparently congealed and, thereafter, honoured her station.

There had been seven children born to Trevall and his wife. Five of them died early in life, and the neat little row of graves in the Presbyterian Churchyard still had power to contract the throat of the mother.

The sixth child, Prudence, survived, and was all that might be expected. She gave no trouble from the hour of her birth; she did what was legitimate and proper, and seemed to be the recompense for all that had been denied. For ten years this model child was the only child and lived her serene days in the old house without interruption, and then—Rose- Ann was born! After Rose-Ann anything else in the form of offspring would have been superfluous. From the moment of her birth she dominated the household.

She was so pretty that she startled the family, who regarded beauty and happiness as obstacles to virtue. She completely obliterated Prudence by this quality of loveliness. When life smiled upon Rose-Ann she smiled and coquetted with life, but she reacted to discipline with roars of rage—no other word described her tones. She hungered for adventure and counted not the cost, but monotony drove her to actions bordering upon impishness.

She had all childish diseases in terrifying rapidity and intensity. She walked early and talked earlier. Her first word was “why” and that was the keynote of her career.

Rose-Ann, in after life, always said that her first impressions were received from a prostrate position. Lying on her stomach, her small chin resting in her hands, she regarded events at an angle that probably accounted for many of her conclusions.

Out of doors this position was utilized for reading and gathering knowledge of animal and insect life. The up¬ lifted feet indicating the state of mind, as a dog’s tail in¬ dicates his.

It was wonderful what sounds were discerned when one laid her ear to the warm earth. The sap running up into the trees, the scurry of little wild feet near, oh! so near to the slim, quiet form, and the bursting of the buds in the spring.

Indoors the prostrate position was regarded as the best possible angle from which to view the mysteries of the open fire.

Prudence, when she was fifteen and Rose-Ann five, became sedately interested in the fire revelations; they stirred her sluggish imagination, but that sterling steed of Prudence’s was always well in control.

“The things are not in the fire, Rose-Ann,” Prudence primly stated. “You only think they are, while you play.”

“They are in the fire. I couldn’t put them there. It’s only when I see them there that I can play,” Rose-Ann retorted, and kicked her heels aloft as she spoke.

“Then—you tell lies y Rose-Ann.” Prudence knew neither gray nor light blue in virtue. “And little girls who tell lies-”

“Shut up!” Rose-Ann suddenly broke in, “When you talk something happens to things in the fire—they get blurry.”

This was reported to headquarters.

“She does lie, Mother, really,” Prudence explained with tears in her cool steady eyes, “and—and I haven’t told you before but she says worse things than ‘shut up’—she once said—‘damn.’ It frightened her after she said it—she cried, and when I asked her \yhere she had heard that word she said—it was in her; she only had to take it out, and that there were many she could take out if she wanted to; worse ones!”

This was alarming. Mrs. Trevall, with an insane desire to laugh, controlled the tendency by undue severity.

Rose-Ann was dignifiedly spanked and sent to the “upper chamber” over the living room to think the matter over and perchance find forgiveness.

Things were in the Trevall family as they always had been. Virtues, sins, punishments, and—reactions. Nothing changed.

Now in that upper chamber, sacred to guests of honour and freshly spanked youngsters, there was a hole in the floor. This was covered by a thin sheeting of tin and a beautiful knitted rug. A stovepipe, in long-past days, had made its way to the chimney by this route.

The day that Rose-Ann came into contact with authority as it dealt with blasphemy, she discovered the hole by pure good luck. She was howling and kicking when a well-aimed blow disclosed the medium through which curiosity could leak down and information ooze up.

Rose-Ann ceased her outrageous tantrum so suddenly that people below should have taken warning, but they did not; they just went calmly on—talking.

John Trevall had entered the room. Rose-Ann knew exactly what was occurring. He would stand in the middle of the room until Mother lifted her face and asked if he were tired. He would say “no” and kiss the forehead of Mother and then go to his chair, across the hearth from Mother’s rocker, and beckon Prudence to him. After being assured of Prudence’s virtuous conduct he would kiss her and ask for Rose-Ann.

That was exactly what occurred while Rose-Ann listened.

“John, I had to punish the child.”

There was a tone in Mother’s voic^ that Rose-Ann later understood.

Then followed a detailed account of the scandalous actions of Rose-Ann while Trevall tapped the arms of his chair with thin white fingers.

“I—I spanked her, John—and she is so little and—soft.”

Mother was crying.

“She thinks she sees and hears things,” Mrs. Trevall pleaded.

“She cannot too early learn to distinguish between what she thinks and what she knows.” That was Father, of course, and the words were punctuated by taps.

“But who does know, really, John?”

Rose-Ann waited breathlessly. That was her particular stumbling block—to think that her mother felt that way, too! That was the hour of Rose-Ann’s intellectual revolt.

“It is very simple,” John Trevall replied. “Truth is simple.”

The small rebel above, on her stomach, longed to resort to her time-honoured roar , but she conquered the impulse. She solemnly swore, then and there, never again to indulge in that relief—it attracted attention! She would never again tell any one about the pictures in the fire nor the queer sounds that birds made in their nests.

She would keep things to herself—no one should get the best of her in the future. She would never, God hearing her, make her mother cry again if she could help it.

From five to twelve Rose-Ann was a silent, wide-eyed child given to most alarming symptoms.

She took the stern religion of her family hard, as she did measles and whooping cough, and she gloried in it.

“Why, I wouldn’t be a Unitarian for anything, Mother,” she confided; “it’s too easy—I like hell fire”—the religion of the Trevalls was exactly the same as it had been from the time of Jonathan Edwards. Fierce, hot, and picturesque; it was their one dramatic indulgence.

“Oh! Rose-Ann,” Mrs. Trevall was shocked as people often are when their creeds turn about and give a direct blow. “Hell is not a thing to like—it’s a fearful warning—a thing we don’t talk about-”

“Why not?” Rose-Ann asked. “Someone’s got to go there or it—it would dry up—so I think we ought to talk about it and get—acquainted.

“Why”—here Rose-Ann’s eyes took on that look that made Mrs. Trevall’s lips soften—“I’ve got it all pictured out asTeal as can be.

“Hell is like our furnace—and by the door stands some¬ one shovelling folks in-”

“Rose-Ann—stop!” Mrs. Trevall was trembling.

“That’s only the way I picture it, Mother. I have to have something familiar. Sometimes it’s so funny, Mother —but sometimes I try and see who is on the shovel—but never is it any one I know. Isn’t hell for our people, Mother?”

“It’s for sinners,” Mrs. Trevall replied weakly; “and there are sinners in all classes, Rose-Ann dear, but—but don’t you ever picture heaven ?”

“I try to, but it seems so—so stupid. Honestly, Mother; and maybe I am a sinner and being prepared for the shovel, but I don’t think I’d mind burns, and hoppings around to cool off, half so much as to be bored stiff.”

This conversation was repeated to Mr. Trevall in the living room that evening. Indeed, the doings of Rose-Ann were the usual topic of conversation when John and Faith sat alone, and they were often alone now, for at the age of twenty-two Prudence had married the head clerk in her father’s bank and was enduring purgatorial tests in a small house in Essex. Her absence from the Trevall house had brought about changes most gratifying to Rose-Ann. Life was less complicated and dispositions were sweeter. With no one bent constantly upon doing others good, good looked after itself. Then, too, Rose-Ann as daughter of the house had privileges. She had been offered Prudence’s bedcham¬ ber, but to this she, as might have been expected, objected.

“I’d rather have the upper chamber, Mother,” she ex¬ plained; “please do Prue’s room over for guests—they wouldn’t mind.”

Strange to say,Mr.Trevall agreed to this without comment, and so it was that Rose-Ann, whose dignity and conscience now recoiled from the hole in the floor still, while lying in bed, gathered valuable information.

Wide-eyed and motionless the girl, supposed to be sleeping, learned much of the true inwardness of life as it rose, broken here and there by lowered tones in the conversation carried on by her parents or their friends below.

Rose-Ann at twelve was athirst for truth; athirst for knowledge; but early she had learned that her questions more often closed doors to her than opened them. The simplest course to pursue, consequently, was to keep silent and—listen. Often she drifted into sleep with a cargo of valuable and undigested material some of which melted into dreams—wonderful dreams—but some sank into that vague region of subconsciousness and bided its time.

The evening of the day upon which Rose-Ann had con¬ fided her religious views to her mother was destined to make a deep impression upon the girl.

Mr. Trevall was tapping on the arms of his chair; the staccato raps seemed to strike on Rose-Ann’s exposed nerves. When one is “all ears,” sounds have terrific significance, and those sharp taps had grown, with the years, into a torment to the sensitive child. The raps punctuated the vital conversa¬ tion below like audible marks; commas, semi-colons, and periods.

“She’s a very strange and puzzling child,” John Trevall spoke in reply to his wife’s confidence; “she’s a serious responsibility. It seems peculiarly hard, Faith, that you and I should have such a problem to solve.”

“ Perhaps we—we ought not try to solve it, John.” This was daring. “She’s very lovely and affectionate—though different. She is the merriest soul, too. Her amazing ideas about religion and life do not detract from her sweet¬ ness and charm.”

“She seems to me,” Trevall broke in, “to be very superfi¬ cial and trifling. Her ‘ideas/ as you term them, are simply pert. A constant curb should be kept upon her.”

“I’m not so sure about that, John. To clip and train often makes young things stronger at the roots.”

This caused the listener in the bed above to raise her bare feet in an ecstasy of delighted kicks. Rose-Ann adored her mother; was beginning already to understand her.

“‘As the twig is bent/” John Trevall quoted solemnly, and then there was a pause while the tapping continued and the clicking of Faith TrevalPs knitting needles kept time.

From such pauses dramatic things often evolve.

Suddenly, apropos of nothing, apparently, Faith Trevall remarked calmly:

“Old Mrs. Armstrong was here to-day, John. She toddled up the hill like a naughty, mischievous old baby. She must be ninety, if she is a day-”

“Ninety-two,” Trevall corrected.

“She said such a strange thing, John. She chuckled over it—she said that Rose-Ann looks like”— the voice fell to a mere whisper—“like Aunt Theodora!”

The name struck upon Rose-Ann’s waiting ears with thudding force. She had never heard it before, but it was heavy with significance.

“How can Mrs. Armstrong remember my great-aunt Theodora?” asked Trevall, and his voice was like something rigid; “she was a mere child at the time.”

“The old are visioned both ways, John dear. She may remember clearly, though she were only a little child at the time.”

“This is not a pleasant topic of conversation, Faith.”

Trevall always snipped off conversation he did not approve as one snips a dead leaf from a bush. But Faith Trevall, just then, took no heed. She went on musingly:

“Old Mrs. Armstrong described clearly the night-” Here n a lowering of her voice caused Rose-Ann to lose a sentence or two. Then: “ It was an awful thing, John, to send a young girl adrift, no matter what she had done—and at night, too.”

Little, dramatic details always interested Faith Trevall.

“You surprise me, my dear,” and John Trevall’s voice sounded surprised; “surely you remember that it was Theo¬ dora who cut herself adrift.”

“But she came back, John.”

“A woman never comes back, my dear, after doing what she did!” Trevall’s words struck into the quietness like icy pellets; “when one thinks of the blood that ran in her veins; of her training and opportunities—why, it was incompre¬ hensible!” Since Trevall had not choked the subject of conversation at its birth he meant to get the best of it now and for ever. It was as if the long-dead ghost of Aunt Theodora had risen and must be definitely laid.

“She left her home and husband.” TrevalFs voice trembled with virtue and determination. “She ran away with a common peddler.”

“Oh, not quite that, John,” Faith breathlessly interjected with one of her dramatic details; “Mrs. Armstrong said he was a kind of artist or something like that.”

Trevall paid no attention to the interruption.

“She tramped the countryside with him like an abandoned gypsy, and when she became weary of her evil doings, she did what was most wrong of all. Unwilling to bear the burden she had evolved for herself, she sought to make them she had injured share it with her. She placed them in a position, always the saddest, of either shielding what no right-minded persons should or doing their hard but sacred duty.

“In the name of decency and Christianity there was but one thing to do, and I am proud to say my forbears did it!” TrevalFs voice clanked like an iron chain. “Blood should never weigh against justice.”

Rose-Ann drew the blankets over her head. She was cold and unhappy. Muffled, however, Faith Trevall's words reached the shivering girl:

“I suppose you are right, John. I dare not question that.

But when I think of that poor child, as Mrs. Armstrong described her—I—I hate—justice!

“She stood right on the crown of the hill in front of this house, John, so Mrs. Armstrong said, and called back.” There was a pause and Trevall broke in:

“I do not wish this evil story to be repeated,” he said sternly and finally; “that you, Faith, should be interested in forgotten scandal brought to your door by a senile old creature-”

Trevall brought a “period tap” into action.

“Does Rose-Ann look like Aunt Theodora, John?” Faith was too deep in the matter to heed the efforts to distract her. This, then, was the crux of the matter.

“Does she, John?”

“How should I know? Everything relating to the un¬ happy woman was destroyed.”

“But did they, years after, bring her poor body back and bury it here, John?”

“If they did—the place is forgotten, Faith!” There was no relenting in Trevall’s tone.

Again Faith Trevall, as if talking to herself, spoke musingly:

“Poor, desperate child! They say she laughed and warned them that they were not through with her, she would return and have her hour yet.”

“Faith!” The tone of command at last silenced Faith Trevall and it caused Rose-Ann, in the chamber above, to experience that sensation of heat, followed by cold, that more and more her father's overbearing personality evoked.

Slipping quietly from her bed, she ran across the hall and to the window overlooking the crown of the hill upon which Aunt Theodora had taken her last stand.

The road was like a broad band of white lying between the shadows of the tall elms, for the moon was directly over¬ head.

Almost it seemed, in the weird, ghostly gleam, as if a small, defiant figure stood there and a sound, perhaps the lowing of a bereft cow, rose like a desolate call from the risen dead who could find no rest; no peace.

“Vll have my hour yet!”

Well, Aunt Theodora was having it now, for Rose-Ann shivering by the window, stretched out her slim arms as if in welcome while she murmured softly:

“Aunt Theodora—here I am; Rose-Ann! I’m—sorry for you.”

Chapter II

W HEN the clock struck ten on the night that Rose- Ann stood by thewindow and looked out at the crest of the hill, it did not strike just the hours; it struck a deep note that sank into the girl’s consciousness and one which was destined to reverberate through all her future years.

“ You* re — not — done — with — me — V11 — have — my — hour — yet!"

Ten! Then such quiet as surely had rarely fallen upon Middle Essex.

The girl by the window trembled, while instincts never recognized before rose and overwhelmed her.

She flamed and paled; she smiled and then broke into tears; she was being absorbed by a force over which she had no control.

Between the ages of twelve and twenty Rose-Ann passed from the lank, trying type into a sweet, fascinating creature of colour and charm.

She was as utterly unlike Prudence as though no common blood ran in their veins. Prudence was stout and capable. She wore trim house gowns of her own making. Rose-Ann de¬ signed her own gowns and the village seamstress carried out her plan. They were strange garments, unlike anything female that Middle Essex had ever seen, but they seemed to be part of Rose-Ann.

“You wear no corsets!” Prudence once remarked indig¬ nantly.

“No, thank heaven,” Rose-Ann flung back, “I haven’t anything to hold up that my bones cannot hold.” Then, un¬ kindly, “ Prudence—you eat too much. You’re growing fat.” Prudence’s cool eyes blazed but she made no reply.

H i5

Life was comfortable for Prudence and Albert Townsend. Investments had turned out well and the new house to be built in the future was becoming a near-by possibility. Purgatory was all but over!

There were no children to disturb and complicate the Townsend affairs. Prudence’s life had flowed undisturbedly on and that made for breadth of beam and soft flesh.

Rose-Ann had gone brilliantly through the schools of Essex. She had read everything within a radius of fifteen miles and had bought books in Boston, besides. She had a carefully chosen shelf of books in the chamber above the living room and then instead of going the expected way and marrying, she suddenly announced, on her twentieth birth¬ day, that she wanted to go to college.

This request Trevall flatly refused.

“But you wanted Prudence to go!” pleaded Rose-Ann. “You’ve always said that you believed women should have all the education possible.”

“Would you care to go to Mt. Holyoke?” John Trevall temporized at this crisis.

“No—that is only a half-way measure,” the girl retorted.

“Very well, then, Rose-Ann, you cannot leave home for any other college.”

After this interview, John Trevall took the family into his confidence. Rose-Ann and her demands had disturbed him considerably and he was beginning to feel the necessity of sharing the responsibility with others.

“Why do you think she has suddenly come to this desire?” he asked.

Prudence, who was present at the time, was ready with an explanation.

“She doesn’t really want college , Father, she wants to get away; to go to one of those dangerous universities where both men and women go!”

Trevall stared.

“Has she said anything like this to you, Prudence?”

“Yes, Father. She is restless and says that Middle Essex bores her.”

i6

John Trevall looked positively alarmed, but Faith smiled over her knitting. At this juncture Rose-Ann came in from one of her long, wind-swept walks. She looked radiant in her youth and beauty.

“Rose-Ann,” John Trevall began the terrible tapping on the arms of his chair, “we’ve been discussing this mad idea of yours—about college.”

“I thought that was settled, Father, as far as you were concerned.” Rose-Ann went close to her father and smiled down upon him—her smile thrilled even him, and he resented that.

“Do you mind, Daddy,” she said, “if I sit on the arm of your chair?” This would limit the tapping, she felt.

“ I prefer that you draw up a chair of your own, Rose-Ann.”

“Very well, Pater. Now, then, let us hear what the family have to say.”

She took the family in with a sweep of her wide, friendly eyes; she removed her turban and let loose a lovely mass of short curly hair.

“Now, Sir—and family!”

Trevall never approached a subject directly when dealing with inferiors. He left ways open for them to incriminate themselves.

“Just for argument, Rose-Ann, if you were to choose a college, which one would it be?” he asked suddenly.

“I haven’t quite decided which, Father. I know that I would like to go a long way from home—that would seem part of the experience. I want to live among new people; among new scenes. I want to find myself, Father, to get a good understanding of myself—be independent.”

The sweet, hurried voice broke into fervent tones.

Prudence sighed—she was justified!

Mrs. Trevall sent a yearning glance toward the pretty creature pleading before a power that could never compre¬ hend her.

“I see!” John Trevall set his strong teeth together; “you are touched with the spirit of the times.”

“Yes, Father. These are my times.”

1 7

“You—want to be free!”

“Yes, Father. What have I done that I should not be free? Why is it a subject of discussion?”

“Do you forget that you are a woman?” That was the thought in Trevall’s mind, but he said tolerantly:

“My dear child, it is my duty as your father to protect you!”

“From what, Father?”

“From yourself, apparently, Rose-Ann. Had I found in you a sincere desire for learning, I might have reconsidered my decision, reached a few days ago, but anything that tends to draw a woman permanently from her legitimate field should be discouraged.”

“But, Daddy,” Rose-Ann was smiling, “who is to judge so tremendous a thing for another?”

“In this case I am, Rose-Ann.”

There was never a doubt in Trevall’s mind as to his eligi¬ bility as a judge.

Then Rose-Ann stood up; the others gazed afFrightedly at her, for the expression on her face was new.

“You dears!” she said calmly, almost pityingly. “I wasn’t going to tell you for a long time, but after all perhaps this is as good a time as any. I will be twenty-one in an¬ other year and then—I am going to college. I am thinking seriously about which one, but when the time comes I will have chosen. I will work my way through if necessary, but I am going.”