Someone had lighted the stove, and with the fire and the press of people, the schoolroom was pleasantly warm. Sarah sat with her mother near the front, the baby playing happily on his grandmother’s lap, his bright eyes seeming to miss nothing. Clay and Karen sat with Mrs. Beard. Karen, silent and lumpish between clay and her mother-in-law, looked as though she had not bathed or washed her hair since the wedding. Clay held their daughter on his lap. Her little fist patted his hand, barely big enough to close on his sausagelike fingers.
Mrs. Cogswell stood apart. Her gaze fixed on her husband the moment he entered with Imogene.
“Joseph…”
“You stay out of this, Judith.” And he was past, smiling, greeting people, leading Imogene to the head of the classroom.
There was a smattering of applause as Imogene reached the front of the room. Sarah waved, but the schoolteacher didn’t see her. Joseph seated her near the wall and, stepping behind the desk, rapped for silence with a ruler. Mothers gathered toddlers off the floor and onto laps, where they couldn’t get into mischief, and people shuffled expectantly.
“Before we start with the elections and whatnot,” Joseph began, “there’s something I’d like to say. Imogene Grelznik has been the teacher here for three years. Three years is the longest spell we’ve had a teacher. And in that time, Miss Grelznik’s turned the school from a drafty shack used by subscription teachers who charged two dollars a head-and drank most of that-into a warm, fit place for us to send our children. And if words and energy could have done it, she’d have built a brand-new school. For the first time, youngsters coming out of Calliope can stand up beside their cousins schooled in the East and not be ashamed. I think we’re all willing to admit Miss Grelznik’s responsible for all this.”
Mrs. Cogswell’s face was growing a deep shade of crimson. Every time her husband looked toward the back of the room, she’d tried to catch his attention and he’d avoided her eye. Finally she broke her aggressive silence. “This has gone far enough,” she declared.
There was a confused silence; the people looked from Judith to her husband and back.
“Judith,” Mr. Cogswell warned, “before you say anything, let me finish.”
“I will not. I’ve stood here and listened to this long enough. You and that schoolteacher of yours have been pulling the wool over the eyes of this town. People have a right to know.” The words snapped out like thrown stones, and no one had time to respond. In her hand was a brown envelope with the words Head man at school Calliope Penna scrawled across the face. She took out a folded sheet of paper and opened it.
“Judith, that’s enough,” Mr. Cogswell shouted, but all eyes were on his wife.
“This letter came in the mail over a week ago, and I kept my tongue in my head, but I think the time’s come it would be a wickedness to keep quiet. This letter came over a week ago, like I said, and I take no pleasure in reading it. It’s from a Mr. Darrel Aiken of Philadelphia.”
Mrs. Cogswell had everyone’s attention. She began to read: “ ’I would have wrote sooner but Imogene Grelznik made so careful to keep her whereabouts a secret it’s took me this long to find her. If she’s teaching in your school then whatever she told you about leaving here is a lie. She was run off for behaving indecent and immoral toward a young girl, my sister, who is now dead. I found her acting with my sister the way only a man ought to act toward a woman who is his lawful wedded wife.
“ ‘I wrote to warn you against her that she craves unnatural things and I don’t want no brother or father to have to see what I saw betwixt them two and live knowing it. Respectfully yours, Darrel Aiken.’ ”
Judith finished. People continued to look at her because they couldn’t look at Imogene. Mrs. Cogswell folded the page, creasing it sharply between her thumb and forefinger, and laid it down on a desk. “Somebody had to do it,” she said, “and I waited longer than was right.”
Sarah held Matthew to her, her lips against his hair, and watched Imogene. The schoolteacher sat erect, spots of color burning in her cheeks. As people found voice and a confused babble arose, Imogene crossed to the desk and picked the ruler out of Joseph’s hand. It cracked on the desktop, and there was quiet. Holding the eyes of the people she knew, she looked from one to another: mothers and fathers of the children she taught, merchants from the shops where she traded, former students-she held them and she began to speak.
“Mary Beth Aiken was one of my students and a very dear friend. I was there when she died.” Imogene’s voice was strong, defiance clipping the edges. “Darrel Aiken is a drunken ne’er-do-well. If on the strength of this man’s letter you would condemn me…” People were settling back into their seats, the power in Imogene stilling their fear.
Karen looked around the room. People were relaxing; Miss Grelznik was winning them back. Her eye lit on her husband, and the handsome face of his brother flashed through her mind. Hatred filled her, she jumped to her feet, her chair crashing over against the floorboards. Pointing at the schoolmistress, she cried, “I saw them!”
All eyes turned to her. Karen swelled with the attention. “I saw her kissing Sarah Tolstonadge,” she lied viciously. As one, the townsfolk took a quick breath. Pleased, Karen embroidered on the lie: “They was doing it when they didn’t know I was there. I was looking through the window-the bedroom window.”
Sarah’s eyes grew wide. “Karen,” she cried, “that isn’t true! You know it isn’t!”
“Imogene was kissing on her like a man. In the bedroom. And Sarah pregnant out to here,” Karen insisted and, looking pleased with herself, maintained a smug silence while Sarah’s world unraveled.
“You’re lying,” Sarah breathed, then screamed, “You’re lying!”
Chairs were scraping, people coming to their feet.
“No!” Imogene shouted. “It is not true. Not Sarah. No! Please, God, listen to me!” Her words were swallowed up; everyone was yelling at once. Sam Ebbitt pushed through the milling crowd and grabbed his wife by the upper arm, jerking her to her feet. Sarah cried out and held tight to the baby. Sam plucked her son from her arms, handing him, shrieking, to Margaret. “Look after the boy,” he commanded, and half-led, half-dragged Sarah toward the door.
Curtains drawn and the door bolted, no candles lit against the night, Imogene rocked herself before a cold grate, her eyes open but unseeing. Unsettled by her strange behavior, Dandy had given up crying for her dinner and vanished into the bedroom.
Around midnight the snow turned to sleet and the wind drove it against the windows and down the chimney in icy drafts. Roused by the cold, Imogene lay down in the bed fully clothed and pulled the covers over her. Dandy came to nestle against her warmth, kneading at the pillow with her claws and purring.
Several hours before dawn, Imogene was snatched from an uneasy doze by a low thump. Motionless, she lay listening. Her breathing rushed loud in the dead air of the room and she could hear her heart pounding against her ribs. She held her breath. There was nothing-then a soft, sliding sound. Throwing back the covers, she crossed to the bedroom window and, pulling the curtains apart a bare half-inch, put her eye to the slit. The storm had blown itself out. The night was moonless and the shadows protected their secrets. She settled the curtains closed again. A barely audible cry, seeming to have no place of origin, came to her through the close darkness. It sounded like the muffled wail of a baby. The hairs prickled on the back of her neck as she groped her way to the bedroom door. “Who’s there?” she whispered. Her voice was higher than usual, and she cleared her throat. Nothing. Slipping her shoes off, she padded silently into the kitchen and grabbed the matches from the stove. Back in the living room, she struck one and held it over her head. The room was empty but for the two glowing eyes of the cat, watching curiously from the bedroom. The match burned to her fingers and she shook it out. Again in the dark the sound was there-the soft shush of something rubbing against the house. She grabbed up the fire tongs. Creeping on noiseless feet, she made her way to the door and pressed her ear against it. A faint sound of scratching could be heard through the planks. Holding her weight against the wood to relieve the bolt, she drew it back, careful not to let the metal rasp; then, grasping the handle, she raised the fire tongs and jerked the door inward. It pulled out of her hands as a shapeless bundle of humanity fell against it, and Sarah Ebbitt crumpled to the floor. Faint starlight picked out her features above the cumbersome layers of an oversized man’s coat.