The Clock (13 page)

“I've got the proof that Mr. Hoggart's been stealing wool.”

She gave me a long look. Then she shook her head. “Annie, you're only going to get yourself in a lot of trouble.”

“Ma'am, I'll do anything to get even with him.”

She stopped spinning, got up from the wheel, and put her arm around me. “I know,” she said. “I know how bad you feel. But we have to let the dead bury the dead. You cannot mourn Robert forever, Annie. You must get on with your life.”

“Ma'am, I know you're bound to be right about that, but I just can't get it out of my head. It keeps going around and around inside there, and I can't forget.”

She sighed. “Well, you can talk to Mr. Brown. He'll tell you the same. Hetty, go get your pa.”

Hetty went out the back to the shop where Mr. Brown was working, and in about a minute the two of them came back. “What's all this, Annie?” Mr. Brown said.

“Sir, me and one of the boys from the mill went into that cabin. We saw the wool.”

“Hold it, Annie. What cabin?”

“The one I told you about before. The one out in the woods where Mr. Hoggart's been hiding the wool he steals.”

He thought about it for a minute. “I remember now. You said you'd seen the cabin.”

“I saw the cabin, and I knew Mr. Hoggart was in it, because I heard noises inside.”

“ ‘Noises' could have been anything, Annie. A raccoon will get in anywhere. So will a skunk.”

“It was him, sir. I heard the door open, and I ran, and a few minutes later I saw him come out of the woods into the field.”

He nodded. “And you went back there again? That was mighty foolish, Annie. It was a great risk.”

“I know. But I had to do it. This time we got inside, and—”

“We?
Who's we?”

“One of the New York boys went with me to help. Mr. Hoggart beat him awful once—kicked him and broke his ribs. We went in. The whole cabin is full of wool.” I was skinning mighty near to a lie, for I hadn't gone in myself, and I hadn't seen that wool with my own eyes. But I knew if I said I hadn't seen the wool `myself, Mr. Brown wouldn't take it any more serious than he did the first time.

“The place was full of wool?”

“Bags of it.” I wished now I'd got Tom to count them. “At least twenty bags,” I said.

Mr. Brown pulled at his chin, and thought for a minute. Then he said, “Annie, don't you think you just ought to forget about all of this? What Mr. Hoggart's doing out there in-that cabin is between him and Colonel Humphreys.”

“I know, sir. I know I ought to mind my own business and stay out of it. But I can't.”

He sighed just the way Mrs. Brown had done, and I knew what was coming. “Annie, sometimes it's better to let the dead bury the dead.”

Pa had said it first, then Mrs. Brown, and he was the third. “I wished I could, sir, but I can't. It won't stop going around in my head.”

He looked at me. “I suppose you think I ought to go to Colonel Humphreys about it.”

“He'd be grateful to know, wouldn't he?”

Mr. Brown thought. “I don't know as he would. Mr. Hoggart's got things running smooth at the mill. Colonel Humphreys might be just as happy not to be told about it. You can't tell about these things. I know that twenty bags of wool sounds like a lot, but maybe Colonel Humphreys wouldn't see it that way.”

“Sir, if he's got twenty bags out there now, how many more has he sold off before?”

“That's true,” he said. “It might come out to a considerable amount. But even so, Colonel Humphreys might see it as a cheap price to pay for a good overseer.”

It was all making me feel worried and low in my mind. I'd taken all those risks, and gone to all that trouble, and it didn't mean anything. “Isn't there anything I can do, sir?”

“Annie, my advice is the same as it was; put the whole thing out of your mind. In time you may be able to persuade your pa to let you leave the mill. He's not a bad man. It's just that he's got money worries at the moment.”

“Pa's always going to have money worries. It's his way.”

“Oh, let's not look on the dark side of it, Annie. Sometimes people change. Maybe this business of the merino ram has taught him a lesson.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. He sounded just like Hetty. There wasn't any point in arguing with him anymore. He'd clean made up his mind, and that was the end of it. I could understand it all well enough. What it came down to was that nobody wanted to make a fuss. Not Pa, not Mr. Brown, and
probably
not anybody else. Accusing Mr. Hoggart of stealing was going to cause a lot of people trouble, and everybody would just as soon let things lie. But not me. Try as I might to forget about it, I couldn't, for it made my insides squirm and squiggle. How could I forget about something that made me feel like that?

What if Mr. Brown was wrong about Colonel Humphreys? What if Colonel Humphreys would be glad to know that Mr. Hoggart was stealing wool? Why, he might even know that wool was missing, and was wondering who was stealing it. You couldn't tell. How did Mr. Brown know? He was just guessing, same as me.

Suppose I wrote Colonel Humphreys a letter. Suppose I carried it over to his house, and told the servants it was from Mr. Hoggart. The servants wouldn't dare open it; they'd take it to Colonel Humphreys right away. And then we'd see what happened.

It was mighty risky, for if Mr. Hoggart found out I knew about the wool, and had told Colonel Humphreys about it, Mr. Hoggart was sure to do something serious to me. But I wouldn't sign the letter. How would anybody know where it had come from?

So the next night I took a sheet of paper from Pa's supply, and when it was time to feed the chickens, I carried the piece of paper under my cloak out to the barn. The chickens were clucking all around me. I threw them their corn, so they'd leave me alone for a while. Then I sat on a pile of hay, using a barrel top as a table, and wrote.

Dear Colonel Humphreys,

Mr. Hoggart has been stealing wool from the mill. He takes it out of the carding room and hides it in a little cabin out in the middle of the woodlot behind the mill. There is a lot of wool in there now. I saw it.

Your friend.

Of course, that was a lie about seeing the wool, for I hadn't seen it. But Tom Thrush had seen it. Or at least he'd said he'd seen it. He wouldn't have lied about that, would he? Why would he have said there was wool in there if there wasn't?

I folded the letter up, put it under my cloak, broke the ice on the chickens' water, and went back into the house.

The next morning I told Ma I'd be late getting home from work, because Hetty Brown wanted me to see her new bonnet. But after work, instead of going to Hetty's, I set off in the other direction, heading through the village toward Colonel Humphreys' big house on the hill.

I was feeling mighty nervous. It was bold for an ordinary mill hand like me, who wasn't anything but a plain farmer's daughter, to go to somebody as big and important as Colonel Humphreys; and it was worse to tell on somebody like Mr. Hoggart. But I was going to do it, no
matter
how nervous it made me feel.

I went through the village, past the green with the church in the middle and the houses around.

From there you could see Colonel Humphreys' house set on top of the hill, a big square shape with lights burning in the windows, for, of course, Colonel Humphreys was rich and didn't care how many candles he burnt. On I went, until I came to the long drive that ran up the hill through a line of elm trees. I took a deep breath, and started up the driveway. It was good and dark now, and cold, and the stars blinking overhead looked cold too.

At the top of the hill the driveway circled around behind the house, so that deliveries and such could be brought around back to the kitchen, the barns, or the storerooms. I walked around back, wondering if anybody was looking out a window at me. Then I got to the kitchen door. Through the kitchen window I could see the big fireplace. A big piece of beef was on a spit in front of it. The cook was at the table, rolling out some dough for biscuits. I knocked. In a minute a servant came to the door, his sleeves rolled up, eating the leg of a chicken. He stared down at me, like I was dirt. “Yes, miss?

“I have a letter for Colonel Humphreys.”

The man put out his hand. “Give it to me.”

I took it out from under my cloak. “It's important,” I said. “It's from Mr. Hoggart—”

“Just give it to me. I'm eating my supper.”

I handed it over. All I could do was hope that he didn't lose it, or put it down someplace where it would get chicken gravy or something on it. He shut the door, and I turned and went back around the house, and then down the long driveway. And I'd got down to near the bottom when I heard running footsteps and somebody shout, “Hey, you.”

A flash of fear went through me, and I started to run.

“Hey, blame you, hold still,” the voice shouted. “Colonel Humphreys wants to see you.”

I stopped running, and turned around. The serving man was trotting down the drive. “Blame you, girl, you've made me work up a dreadful sweat. What did you start running for?”

“You scared me,” I said.

“Well, I'll scare you good if you do it again. Come back to the house. The colonel's waiting. I'm like to catch my death out here without a coat on.”

We went on back to the house, and this time I went in through the front door. There was a hall there, with stairs in front leading to the second floor. I'd never been in such a fancy place in my life—paintings of old-fashioned people on the walls, a tall clock, a glass chandelier with ever so many candles in it winking and shining, a beautiful carpet on the floor. “You wait here,” the servant said, and went off. I stood waiting, feeling nervous as could be, for I'd never talked to anybody as important as Colonel Humphreys. I waited for five minutes by the clock, and then the colonel came.
He
was a tall man with silver hair and a fancy blue jacket on.

He stood for a moment looking at me. “What's your name, miss?” he said.

I didn't want to tell him, for I wanted it to be a secret who wrote the letter, but, of course, I had to. “Annie Steele, sir.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I know your people. Your father has a farm east of the village, doesn't he? Near where the Bronson boy lived?”

I wished he hadn't mentioned Robert. “Yes, sir. We were friends.”

“I see. It must have been hard for you when he died in that accident.”

“It wasn't any acci—yes, sir, it was hard for us all.”

He reached in his pocket and took out my letter. “Who wrote this? Did you?”

I didn't want to admit it. I wished I could say that somebody else did, and gave it to me to deliver, but, of course, I couldn't, because he'd only ask me who gave it to me. “I did, sir.”

He looked down at me some more. It was making me feel mighty small. “Why did you think it was any of your business to meddle in such a thing?”

I blushed. “I—I don't know, sir. I thought you would want to know.”

He tapped the letter on his hand, thinking. “And you saw Mr. Hoggart yourself taking wool out of the mill?”

I was feeling mighty hot and sweaty, for he was getting me in a corner. “I didn't see him taking it out, but I saw him packing it into bags.”

“How did that come about?”

“It was an accident, sir. I stayed at the mill after work to ask him not to dock my—to ask him something, and when I went up to the carding room to see him, he was packing wool into some bags.”

He gave me a look. “What gave you the right to conclude he was stealing the wool? Certainly he could have had a perfectly good reason for what he was doing?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. We already knew he was stealing.”

“Who's we?”

I was getting into it far more than I wanted to. “Robert Bronson and me, sir. Robert was tally boy, and he'd known for a long time that Mr. Hoggart was taking wool, because the figures didn't come out right.”

“What made him conclude it was Mr. Hoggart?”

“We figured it had to be him. Nobody else had the same chance to do it that he had.”

He stood there tapping the letter on his hand, his silver hair glinting a little from the candles in the chandelier over his head. Then he said, “And this cabin—where is it?”

“Out in the middle of the woodlot behind the mill. You can't see it unless you go into the woods. It looks like an ordinary tool shed.”

“And
you say there's a lot of wool in there?”

“Yes, sir. Bags of it.”

He looked at me steady. “You saw it—you saw that wool with your own eyes?”

I was sweating pretty hard now. But I'd said in the letter that I'd seen it. “Yes, sir.”

“How did you get into the cabin? Surely it was locked.”

“Yes, sir. There's a big lock on the door. We dug under the wall, and skidded in that way.”

“Who's we? Your friend Robert?”

I was making a mess of it, all right. “One of the New York boys. I don't know his right name. They call him Jack.”

“Jack? About half the boys are called Jack.” He thought some more. “You've gone to an awful lot of trouble over this, Annie. What on earth for?”

I could feel the tears come up. “Because of what he did to Robert. That wasn't any accident, sir. He put Robert up on that wheel knowing what would happen. He killed Robert on purpose, because Robert knew he was stealing wool.”

He frowned, and shook his head. “That's a hard accusation, Annie.”

“I know it, sir. But it's true.”

“So you were out for revenge. That isn't very Christian.”

“It wasn't very Christian to send Robert up on the waterwheel with that bad foot, either.”