 | X.
FAUSTINA'S SUSPENSE. Neighbor's wives |  |
10. X.
FAUSTINA'S SUSPENSE.
It is an anxious hour to Faustina. With all her reiterated
assurances to herself that she has done only what
necessity compelled her to do, and what she had a perfect
right to do after Mrs. Apjohn's example, she feels a
deep concern to know whether her visit to the house
will be discovered, and, in that case, what will be the
issue. For a long time she perceives no signs of life
about the Apjohn premises. The grocer's boy comes
with a bundle, knocks, and, after waiting a few minutes,
deposits it on the door-step. Then Cooper John appears,
and Faustina holds her breath. But he passes
by, just looking at the bundle on the door-step, and enters
his shop, where presently he can be heard hammering
the old tune on the hoop, — “Cooper Dan, Cooper
Dan, Cooper Dan, Dan, Dan!” — sounds which never
fell so heavily on Faustina's heart before.
But soon she has more dreadful things to contemplate.
Prudence Apjohn has returned, with her arms full of
packages from the store. These she lays beside the
larger bundle which has already arrived, and inserts a
and opens it. Then she loads up her apron with the
packages, and enters. Then she shuts the door behind
her, and all is ominously still, and Faustina waits for
the anticipated explosion. Prudence has had plenty of
time to go to the chest and discover the burglary; still
there is no movement of alarm. But now it is coming!
Faustina feels her cheek blanch as the kitchen-door of
the Apjohn cottage flies open, and the portly figure of
Prudence appears. But apprehension is useless. No
scream is heard; the ponderous arms are not flung upward
with despair at the loss of half her treasure;
Mrs. Apjohn has a tin teakettle in her hand, which she
fills at the well, and goes back with it to the house
again.
Faustina's fear is relieved. And now she considers
within herself the expediency of going over and telling
Mrs. Apjohn what she has done. But her evil genius
whispers, “You will never be discovered; keep still!”
Faustina kept still accordingly. She entered the
kitchen, and finding some work to do, set herself about
it with remarkable industry. Faustina was cheerful.
Faustina was demure. She spoke pleasantly to Melissa,
and did not scold. She actually tolerated little
Ebby, and did not say, as usual, “Oh, go away; you
spoil my nice collar; take him, Melissa.” And what
was most extraordinary, she appeared quite amiable toward
the old lady.
“Do you feel pretty well to-day, dear mother?” with
a smile of filial solicitude.
“Oh, quite well,” smiles back the old lady, “with the
exception of the pain in my bootjack,” — meaning her
rheumatic shoulder.
Abel comes home to supper, and is, at first, pleased
with the change in his fair young wife. The cloud has
passed from her brow. She greets him with a serene
aspect. But she is almost too affectionate, too eager to
please. He half-suspects that she means to coax money
out of him by putting on these fascinations. There is a
nervousness in her manner, an ill-concealed excitement
in her looks, and often an incoherence and singular abruptness
in her words, which do not seem quite natural.
Lively as she would fain appear, her replies are frequently
mechanical and absent-minded. So that Abel
hardly knows whether he ought to feel gratified, or
view her behavior with suspicion.
But she lisps no syllable of a wish for money. He
therefore concludes that what he said to her at noon has
produced a salutary effect. She evidently regrets her
late extravagance and unreasonableness; means to be a
better wife to him than she has been; and is now trying
hard to appear contented with her lot. Regarding in
this light the part she is playing, he can well forgive her
for overdoing it. And once more he hopes — as he has
so often vainly hoped before — that happier days are at
hand. Alas, Abel!
Faustina cannot help starting and losing her color,
when she hears any noise without. Visions of the
affrighted cooper, of Prudence, furious at the loss of her
knocking at the door with his wishfully-wagging tail, as
he waits to be let in, makes her heart sink. And now
footsteps actually approaching take her very breath
away.
It is Mr. Hodge, come to have his settlement with
Abel. She is glad it is not somebody else. Yet his
presence disturbs her; for now the money is to be
counted, and change hands, and she dreads she knows
not what. Her hand shakes so that she puts the candle
out when she goes to snuff it. She lights it with a match,
and then blows the candle out instead of the match,
which burns her fingers. Fortunately, Mr. Hodge and
Abel are talking and do not observe her.
The settlement takes place in the sitting-room. There
she leaves the candle with Abel and the visitor, and pretends
to return to the kitchen, but finds some excuse to
linger at the door and listen.
“Well,” exclaimed Abel, looking over his money, “I
didn't know I had a bill on the Manville Bank! I had a
fifty-dollar bill — but — it's curious! I should think I'd
have noticed it.”
“One bill is as good as another, if the banks are good
and the bills genuine,” carelessly observes the merchant.
“Yes; but I don't see how I could have that bill in
my possession, and not know it,” says the puzzled Abel,
while Faustina's heart throbs suffocatingly.
“If you handled as much money as I do,” replies
Hodge, “you couldn't always think of keeping the run
Faustina is faint.
Hodge soon after took his departure, which now
proved as serious a cause of disturbance to Faustina as
his coming had been; for he carried away with him the
irrevocable bank-note, to which his attention had been
drawn in such a manner that he could not fail to remember
and trace it back to Abel, in case any trouble
came of it in future. She had fondly imagined that, as
soon as the money was out of her husband's hands, her
mind would be at rest. But there is no rest for the
guilty conscience. Half the night she lay tormenting
herself with fears of detection; while Abel, for the first
time in weeks, slept tranquilly at her side. Then she
also slept, and dreamed that Mrs. Apjohn's apron was a
huge bank-bill, and that it contained, in place of tomatoes,
several red and bleeding hearts, one of which was
hers and one Abel's. She thought that she and Tasso
were waiting for Mrs. Apjohn to fall asleep, in order
that they might unlock the lid of the apron, and steal
her heart out of it, which they had just succeeded in
doing, and were running away with it, when she —
Faustina, not Mrs. Apjohn — awoke.
There was a loud knocking below; Abel was bestirring
himself; and presently Melissa screamed at their
chamber-door, —
“Mr. Dane! Mr. Dane! here's Mr. Apjohn wants
to see you!”
“Well, well; I'm coming,” answered Abel. “What
day?”
It was just daylight. Abel, half-dressed, hastened to
the door, where the cooper met him, with a face as white
as chalk and eyes starting from his head.
“Good-morning, Mr. Apjohn,” said Abel. “What's
the news this morning?”
“I'm a ruined man!” said the cooper, with grief,
despair, and bitter reproach in his tones; “and it's you
that has ruined me.”
| X.
FAUSTINA'S SUSPENSE. Neighbor's wives | |