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Out of the kitchen came the cheerful sound of batter for the corn bread being beaten in the bowl, and with it Sarah Newbolt's voice in song: Near the cross, O Lamb of God The beating of the batter dimmed the next line. Then it rose to the close Let me walk from day to day, With its shadow o'er me. The clamp of the oven door was heard, and silence followed.
Less than half an hour before, the public would have attended Joe Newbolt's hanging with all the pleasurable and satisfactory thrills which men draw from such melancholy events. Now it was clamoring to lift him to its shoulders and bear him in triumph through the town. Judge Maxwell smiled, and adjourned court, which order nobody but his clerk heard, and let them have their noisy way.
Newbolt's chair no longer drew squeaks and groans from the floor of the porch as she rocked, swaying gently as her quick shears shaped the board. New flooring had been laid there, and painted a handsome gray; the falling trellis between gate and door had been plumbed and renewed. New life was everywhere about the old place, yet its old charm was undisturbed, its old homeliness was unchanged.
The coroner mingled with them, giving them the weight of his experience. "That Newbolt's deeper than he looks on the outside, gentlemen," he said, shaking his serious whiskers. "There's a lot more behind this case than we can see. Old Isom Chase was murdered, and that murder was planned away ahead.
Colonel Price turned his thoughts from mint to men as he came across the dewy lawn, his gleanings in his hand, his bare head gleaming in the morning sun. He had heard, the evening before, of the arrest of Peter Newbolt's boy for the murder of Isom Chase, and the news of it had come to him with a disturbing shock, almost as poignant as if one of his own blood had been accused.
Newbolt's ponderous step on the stairs, was broken by Bingo's dashing, with ear-piercing barks, into the room: Eleanor took him on her knee, and Maurice, giving the little black nose a kindly squeeze, looked around in pantomimic horror of the obese upholstery, and Rogers groups on the tops of bookcases full of expensively bound and unread classics.
Newbolt's; probably she walked, for there were no cabs in that part of town and no car line passed Mrs. Newbolt's door. The time after she left Mrs. O'Brien's was a blank. Even when she had swallowed the hot whisky, and began to feel warmer, she was still mentally benumbed, and couldn't remember what she had done.
Johnny Bennett, walking toward Mrs. Newbolt's, was also thinking, in his calm way, of just what he had said there by Maurice's fireside. "Of course he doesn't see why she hasn't fallen in love with anybody else. Any decent fellow would be stupid about that sort of thing. But it's been that way ever since she was a child. And I've loved her ever since then, too.
"Why, Maurice," she said; "just to show you how hysterical Eleanor is, she told me " Mrs. Houghton dropped her voice, and looked toward the dining-room door; but Mrs. Newbolt's ponderous step made itself heard overhead. "She said Oh, Maurice, this is too foolish to repeat; but it just shows how Eleanor loves you.
Newbolt, Peter Newbolt's widow, upon my soul!" exclaimed the colonel, shocked by his own slow recognition. "I beg your pardon, madam. I didn't know you at first, it has been so long since I saw you. But I was thinking of you only the minute past." "Oh, I'm in such trouble, Colonel Price!" said she. Colonel Price took her by the arm with tender friendliness.
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