A
short story by
Susan Glaspell, written in
1917. She wrote it based on her one-act
play,
Trifles.
When Martha Hale opened the storm-door and got a cut of the north wind,
she ran back for her big woolen scarf. As she hurriedly wound that round
her head her eye made a scandalized sweep of her kitchen. It was no
ordinary thing that called her away--it was probably further from
ordinary than anything that had ever happened in Dickson County. But what
her eye took in was that her kitchen was in no shape for leaving: her
bread all ready for mixing, half the flour sifted and half unsifted.
She hated to see things half done; but she had been at that when the team
from town stopped to get Mr. Hale, and then the sheriff came running in
to say his wife wished Mrs. Hale would come too--adding, with a grin,
that he guessed she was getting scary and wanted another woman along. So
she had dropped everything right where it was.
"Martha!" now came her husband's impatient voice. "Don't keep folks
waiting out here in the cold."
She again opened the storm-door, and this time joined the three men and
the one woman waiting for her in the big two-seated buggy.
After she had the robes tucked around her she took another look at the
woman who sat beside her on the back seat. She had met Mrs. Peters the
year before at the county fair, and the thing she remembered about her
was that she didn't seem like a sheriff's wife. She was small and thin
and didn't have a strong voice. Mrs. Gorman, sheriff's wife before Gorman
went out and Peters came in, had a voice that somehow seemed to be
backing up the law with every word. But if Mrs. Peters didn't look like a
sheriff's wife, Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. He was to a
dot the kind of man who could get himself elected sheriff--a heavy man
with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the law-abiding, as if
to make it plain that he knew the difference between criminals and
non-criminals. And right there it came into Mrs. Hale's mind, with a
stab, that this man who was so pleasant and lively with all of them was
going to the Wrights' now as a sheriff.
"The country's not very pleasant this time of year," Mrs. Peters at last
ventured, as if she felt they ought to be talking as well as the men.
Mrs. Hale scarcely finished her reply, for they had gone up a little hill
and could see the Wright place now, and seeing it did not make her feel
like talking. It looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It had
always been a lonesome-looking place. It was down in a hollow, and the
poplar trees around it were lonesome-looking trees. The men were looking
at it and talking about what had happened. The county attorney was
bending to one side of the buggy, and kept looking steadily at the place
as they drew up to it.
"I'm glad you came with me," Mrs. Peters said nervously, as the two women
were about to follow the men in through the kitchen door.
Even after she had her foot on the door-step, her hand on the knob,
Martha Hale had a moment of feeling she could not cross that threshold.
And the reason it seemed she couldn't cross it now was simply because she
hadn't crossed it before. Time and time again it had been in her mind, "I
ought to go over and see Minnie Foster"--she still thought of her as
Minnie Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs. Wright. And then
there was always something to do and Minnie Foster would go from her
mind. But now she could come.
The men went over to the stove. The women stood close together by the
door. Young Henderson, the county attorney, turned around and said, "Come
up to the fire, ladies."
Mrs. Peters took a step forward, then stopped. "I'm not--cold," she said.
And so the two women stood by the door, at first not even so much as
looking around the kitchen.
The men talked for a minute about what a good thing it was the sheriff
had sent his deputy out that morning to make a fire for them, and then
Sheriff Peters stepped back from the stove, unbuttoned his outer coat,
and leaned his hands on the kitchen table in a way that seemed to mark
the beginning of official business. "Now, Mr. Hale," he said in a sort of
semi-official voice, "before we move things about, you tell Mr. Henderson
just what it was you saw when you came here yesterday morning."
The county attorney was looking around the kitchen.
"By the way," he said, "has anything been moved?" He turned to the
sheriff. "Are things just as you left them yesterday?"
Peters looked from cupboard to sink; from that to a small worn rocker a
little to one side of the kitchen table.
"It's just the same."
"Somebody should have been left here yesterday," said the county
attorney.
"Oh--yesterday," returned the sheriff, with a little gesture as of
yesterday having been more than he could bear to think of. "When I had to
send Frank to Morris Center for that man who went crazy--let me tell you.
I had my hands full yesterday. I knew you could get back from Omaha by
today, George, and as long as I went over everything here myself--"
"Well, Mr. Hale," said the county attorney, in a way of letting what was
past and gone go, "tell just what happened when you came here yesterday
morning."
Mrs. Hale, still leaning against the door, had that sinking feeling of
the mother whose child is about to speak a piece. Lewis often wandered
along and got things mixed up in a story. She hoped he would tell this
straight and plain, and not say unnecessary things that would just make
things harder for Minnie Foster. He didn't begin at once, and she noticed
that he looked queer--as if standing in that kitchen and having to tell
what he had seen there yesterday morning made him almost sick.
"Yes, Mr. Hale?" the county attorney reminded.
"Harry and I had started to town with a load of potatoes," Mrs. Hale's
husband began.
Harry was Mrs. Hale's oldest boy. He wasn't with them now, for the very
good reason that those potatoes never got to town yesterday and he was
taking them this morning, so he hadn't been home when the sheriff stopped
to say he wanted Mr. Hale to come over to the Wright place and tell the
county attorney his story there, where he could point it all out. With
all Mrs. Hale's other emotions came the fear now that maybe Harry wasn't
dressed warm enough--they hadn't any of them realized how that north wind
did bite.
"We come along this road," Hale was going on, with a motion of his hand
to the road over which they had just come, "and as we got in sight of the
house I says to Harry, 'I'm goin' to see if I can't get John Wright to
take a telephone.' You see," he explained to Henderson, "unless I can get
somebody to go in with me they won't come out this branch road except for
a price I can't pay. I'd spoke to Wright about it once before; but
he put me off, saying folks talked too much anyway, and all he asked was
peace and quiet--guess you know about how much he talked himself. But I
thought maybe if I went to the house and talked about it before his wife,
and said all the women-folks liked the telephones, and that in this
lonesome stretch of road it would be a good thing--well, I said to Harry
that that was what I was going to say--though I said at the same time
that I didn't know as what his wife wanted made much difference to
John--"
Now there he was!--saying things he didn't need to say. Mrs. Hale tried
to catch her husband's eye, but fortunately the county attorney
interrupted with:
"Let's talk about that a little later, Mr. Hale. I do want to talk about
that but, I'm anxious now to get along to just what happened when you got
here."
When he began this time, it was very deliberately and carefully:
"I didn't see or hear anything. I knocked at the door. And still it was
all quiet inside. I knew they must be up--it was past eight o'clock. So I
knocked again, louder, and I thought I heard somebody say, 'Come in.' I
wasn't sure--I'm not sure yet. But I opened the door--this door," jerking
a hand toward the door by which the two women stood. "and there, in that
rocker"--pointing to it--"sat Mrs. Wright."
Everyone in the kitchen looked at the rocker. It came into Mrs. Hale's
mind that that rocker didn't look in the least like Minnie Foster--the
Minnie Foster of twenty years before. It was a dingy red, with wooden
rungs up the back, and the middle rung was gone, and the chair sagged to
one side.
"How did she--look?" the county attorney was inquiring.
"Well," said Hale, "she looked--queer."
"How do you mean--queer?"
As he asked it he took out a note-book and pencil. Mrs. Hale did not like
the
sight of that pencil. She kept her eye fixed on her husband, as if to
keep him from saying unnecessary things that would go into that note-book
and make trouble.
Hale did speak guardedly, as if the pencil had affected him too.
"Well, as if she didn't know what she was going to do next. And kind
of--done up."
"How did she seem to feel about your coming?"
"Why, I don't think she minded--one way or other. She didn't pay much
attention. I said, 'Ho' do, Mrs. Wright? It's cold, ain't it?' And she
said. 'Is it?'--and went on pleatin' at her apron.
"Well, I was surprised. She didn't ask me to come up to the stove, or to
sit down, but just set there, not even lookin' at me. And so I said: 'I
want to see John.'
"And then she--laughed. I guess you would call it a laugh.
"I thought of Harry and the team outside, so I said, a little sharp, 'Can
I see John?' 'No,' says she--kind of dull like. 'Ain't he home?' says I.
Then she looked at me. 'Yes,' says she, 'he's home.' 'Then why can't I
see him?' I asked her, out of patience with her now. 'Cause he's dead'
says she, just as quiet and dull--and fell to pleatin' her apron. 'Dead?'
says, I, like you do when you can't take in what you've heard.
"She just nodded her head, not getting a bit excited, but rockin' back
and forth.
"'Why--where is he?' says I, not knowing what to say.
"She just pointed upstairs--like this"--pointing to the room above.
"I got up, with the idea of going up there myself. By this time I--didn't
know what to do. I walked from there to here; then I says: 'Why, what did
he die of?'
"'He died of a rope around his neck,' says she; and just went on pleatin'
at her apron."
Hale stopped speaking, and stood staring at the rocker, as if he were
still seeing the woman who had sat there the morning before. Nobody
spoke; it was as if every one were seeing the woman who had sat there the
morning before.
"And what did you do then?" the county attorney at last broke the
silence.
"I went out and called Harry. I thought I might--need help. I got Harry
in, and we went upstairs." His voice fell almost to a whisper. "There he
was--lying over the--"
"I think I'd rather have you go into that upstairs," the county attorney
interrupted, "where you can point it all out. Just go on now with the
rest of the story."
"Well, my first thought was to get that rope off. It looked--"
He stopped, his face twitching.
"But Harry, he went up to him, and he said. 'No, he's dead all right, and
we'd better not touch anything.' So we went downstairs.
"She was still sitting that same way. 'Has anybody been notified?' I
asked. 'No, says she, unconcerned.
"'Who did this, Mrs. Wright?' said Harry. He said it businesslike, and
she stopped pleatin' at her apron. 'I don't know,' she says. 'You don't
know?' says Harry. 'Weren't you sleepin' in the bed with him?'
'Yes,' says she, 'but I was on the inside. 'Somebody slipped a rope round
his neck and strangled him, and you didn't wake up?' says Harry. 'I
didn't wake up,' she said after him.
"We may have looked as if we didn't see how that could be, for after a
minute she said, 'I sleep sound.'
"Harry was going to ask her more questions, but I said maybe that weren't
our business; maybe we ought to let her tell her story first to the
coroner or the sheriff. So Harry went fast as he could over to High
Road--the Rivers' place, where there's a telephone."
"And what did she do when she knew you had gone for the coroner?" The
attorney got his pencil in his hand all ready for writing.
"She moved from that chair to this one over here"--Hale pointed to a
small chair in the corner--"and just sat there with her hands held
together and lookin down. I got a feeling that I ought to make some
conversation, so I said I had come in to see if John wanted to put in a
telephone; and at that she started to laugh, and then she stopped and
looked at me--scared."
At the sound of a moving pencil the man who was telling the story looked
up.
"I dunno--maybe it wasn't scared," he hastened: "I wouldn't like to say
it was. Soon Harry got back, and then Dr. Lloyd came, and you, Mr.
Peters, and so I guess that's all I know that you don't."
He said that last with relief, and moved a little, as if relaxing.
Everyone moved a little. The county attorney walked toward the stair
door.
"I guess we'll go upstairs first--then out to the barn and around
there."
He paused and looked around the kitchen.
"You're convinced there was nothing important here?" he asked the
sheriff. "Nothing that would--point to any motive?"
The sheriff too looked all around, as if to re-convince himself.
"Nothing here but kitchen things," he said, with a little laugh for the
insignificance of kitchen things.
The county attorney was looking at the cupboard--a peculiar, ungainly
structure, half closet and half cupboard, the upper part of it being
built in the wall, and the lower part just the old-fashioned kitchen
cupboard. As if its queerness attracted him, he got a chair and opened
the upper part and looked in. After a moment he drew his hand away
sticky.
"Here's a nice mess," he said resentfully.
The two women had drawn nearer, and now the sheriff's wife spoke.
"Oh--her fruit," she said, looking to Mrs. Hale for sympathetic
understanding.
She turned back to the county attorney and explained: "She worried about
that when it turned so cold last night. She said the fire would go out
and her jars might burst."
Mrs. Peters' husband broke into a laugh.
"Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder, and worrying about her
preserves!"
The young attorney set his lips.
"I guess before we're through with her she may have something more
serious than preserves to worry about."
"Oh, well," said Mrs. Hale's husband, with good-natured superiority,
"women are used to worrying over trifles."
The two women moved a little closer together. Neither of them spoke. The
county attorney seemed suddenly to remember his manners--and think of his
future.
"And yet," said he, with the gallantry of a young politician. "for all
their worries, what would we do without the ladies?"
The women did not speak, did not unbend. He went to the sink and began
washing his hands. He turned to wipe them on the roller towel--whirled it
for a cleaner place.
"Dirty towelsl Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?"
He kicked his foot against some dirty pans under the sink.
"There's a great deal of work to be done on a farm," said Mrs. Hale
stiffly.
"To be sure. And yet"--with a little bow to her--'I know there are some
Dickson County farm-houses that do not have such roller towels." He gave
it a pull to expose its full length again.
"Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men's hands aren't always as clean
as they might be.
"Ah, loyal to your sex, I see," he laughed. He stopped and gave her a
keen look, "But you and Mrs. Wright were neighbors. I suppose you were
friends, too."
Martha Hale shook her head.
"I've seen little enough of her of late years. I've not been in this
house--it's more than a year."
"And why was that? You didn't like her?"
"I liked her well enough," she replied with spirit. "Farmers' wives have
their hands full, Mr. Henderson. And then--" She looked around the
kitchen.
"Yes?" he encouraged.
"It never seemed a very cheerful place," said she, more to herself than
to him.
"No," he agreed; "I don't think anyone would call it cheerful. I
shouldn't say she had the home-making instinct."
"Well, I don't know as Wright had, either," she muttered.
"You mean they didn't get on very well?" he was quick to ask.
"No; I don't mean anything," she answered, with decision. As she turned a
lit-
tle away from him, she added: "But I don't think a place would be any the
cheerfuller for John Wright's bein' in it."
"I'd like to talk to you about that a little later, Mrs. Hale," he said.
"I'm anxious to get the lay of things upstairs now."
He moved toward the stair door, followed by the two men.
"I suppose anything Mrs. Peters does'll be all right?" the sheriff
inquired. "She was to take in some clothes for her, you know--and a few
little things. We left in such a hurry yesterday."
The county attorney looked at the two women they were leaving alone there
among the kitchen things.
"Yes--Mrs. Peters," he said, his glance resting on the woman who was not
Mrs. Peters, the big farmer woman who stood behind the sheriff's wife.
"Of course Mrs. Peters is one of us," he said, in a manner of entrusting
responsibility. "And keep your eye out, Mrs. Peters, for anything that
might be of use. No telling; you women might come upon a clue to the
motive--and that's the thing we need."
Mr. Hale rubbed his face after the fashion of a showman getting ready for
a pleasantry.
"But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?" he said; and,
having delivered himself of this, he followed the others through the
stair door.
The women stood motionless and silent, listening to the footsteps, first
upon the stairs, then in the room above them.
Then, as if releasing herself from something strange. Mrs. Hale began to
arrange the dirty pans under the sink, which the county attorney's
disdainful push of the foot had deranged.
"I'd hate to have men comin' into my kitchen," she said
testily--"snoopin' round and criticizin'."
"Of course it's no more than their duty," said the sheriff's wife, in her
manner of timid acquiescence.
"Duty's all right," replied Mrs. Hale bluffly; "but I guess that deputy
sheriff that come out to make the fire might have got a little of this
on." She gave the roller towel a pull. 'Wish I'd thought of that sooner!
Seems mean to talk about her for not having things slicked up, when she
had to come away in such a hurry."
She looked around the kitchen. Certainly it was not "slicked up." Her eye
was held by a bucket of sugar on a low shelf. The cover was off the
wooden bucket, and beside it was a paper bag--half full.
Mrs. HaIe moved toward it.
"She was putting this in there," she said to herself--slowly.
She thought of the flour in her kitchen at home--half sifted, half not
sifted. She had been interrupted, and had left things half done. What had
interrupted Minnie Foster? Why had that work been left half done? She
made a move as if to finish it,--unfinished things always bothered
her,--and then she glanced around and saw that Mrs. Peters was watching
her--and she didn't want Mrs. Peters to get that feeling she had got of
work begun and then--for some reason--not finished.
"It's a shame about her fruit," she said, and walked toward the cupboard
that the county attorney had opened, and got on the chair, murmuring: "I
wonder if it's all gone."
It was a sorry enough looking sight, but "Here's one that's all right,"
she said at last. She held it toward the light. "This is cherries, too."
She looked again. "I declare I believe that's the only one."
With a sigh, she got down from the chair, went to the sink, and wiped off
the bottle.
"She'Il feel awful bad, after all her hard work in the hot weather. I
remember the afternoon I put up my cherries last summer.
She set the bottle on the table, and, with another sigh, started to sit
down in the rocker. But she did not sit down. Something kept her from
sitting down in that chair. She straightened--stepped back, and, half
turned away, stood looking at it, seeing the woman who had sat there
"pleatin' at her apron."
The thin voice of the sheriff's wife broke in upon her: "I must be
getting those things from the front-room closet." She opened the door
into the other room, started in, stepped back. "You coming with me, Mrs.
Hale?" she asked nervously. "You--you could help me get them."
They were soon back--the stark coldness of that shut-up room was not a
thing to linger in.
"My!" said Mrs. Peters, dropping the things on the table and hurrying to
the stove.
Mrs. Hale stood examining the clothes the woman who was being detained in
town had said she wanted.
"Wright was close!" she exclaimed, holding up a shabby black skirt that
bore the marks of much making over. "I think maybe that's why she kept so
much to herself. I s'pose she felt she couldn't do her part; and then,
you don't enjoy things when you feel shabby. She used to wear pretty
clothes and be lively--when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls,
singing in the choir. But that--oh, that was twenty years ago."
With a carefulness in which there was something tender, she folded the
shabby clothes and piled them at one corner of the table. She looked up
at Mrs. Peters, and there was something in the other woman's look that
irritated her.
"She don't care," she said to herself. "Much difference it makes to her
whether Minnie Foster had pretty clothes when she was a girl."
Then she looked again, and she wasn't so sure; in fact, she hadn't at any
time been perfectly sure about Mrs. Peters. She had that shrinking
manner, and yet her eyes looked as if they could see a long way into
things.
"This all you was to take in?" asked Mrs. Hale.
"No," said the sheriffs wife; "she said she wanted an apron. Funny thing
to want, " she ventured in her nervous little way, "for there's not much
to get you dirty in jail, goodness knows. But I suppose just to make her
feel more natural. If you're used to wearing an apron--. She said they
were in the bottom drawer of this cupboard. Yes--here they are. And then
her little shawl that always hung on the stair door."
She took the small gray shawl from behind the door leading upstairs, and
stood a minute looking at it.
Suddenly Mrs. Hale took a quick step toward the other woman, "Mrs.
Peters!"
"Yes, Mrs. Hale?"
"Do you think she--did it?'
A frightened look blurred the other thing in Mrs. Peters' eyes.
"Oh, I don't know," she said, in a voice that seemed to shink away from
the subject.
"Well, I don't think she did," affirmed Mrs. Hale stoutly. "Asking for an
apron, and her little shawl. Worryin' about her fruit."
"Mr. Peters says--." Footsteps were heard in the room above; she stopped,
looked up, then went on in a lowered voice: "Mr. Peters says--it looks
bad for her. Mr. Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech, and he's going
to make fun of her saying she didn't--wake up."
For a moment Mrs. Hale had no answer. Then, "Well, I guess John Wright
didn't wake up--when they was slippin' that rope under his neck," she
muttered.
"No, it's strange," breathed Mrs. Peters. "They think it was such
a--funny way to kill a man."
She began to laugh; at sound of the laugh, abruptly stopped.
"That's just what Mr. Hale said," said Mrs. Hale, in a resolutely natural
voice. "There was a gun in the house. He says that's what he can't
understand."
"Mr. Henderson said, coming out, that what was needed for the case was a
motive. Something to show anger--or sudden feeling."
'Well, I don't see any signs of anger around here," said Mrs. Hale, "I
don't--" She stopped. It was as if her mind tripped on something. Her eye
was caught by a dish-towel in the middle of the kitchen table. Slowly she
moved toward the table. One half of it was wiped clean, the other half
messy. Her eyes made a slow, almost unwilling turn to the bucket of sugar
and the half empty bag beside it. Things begun--and not finished.
After a moment she stepped back, and said, in that manner of releasing
herself:
"Wonder how they're finding things upstairs? I hope she had it a little
more red up up there. You know,"--she paused, and feeling gathered,--"it
seems kind of sneaking: locking her up in town and coming out here
to get her own house to turn against her!"
"But, Mrs. Hale," said the sheriff's wife, "the law is the law."
"I s'pose 'tis," answered Mrs. Hale shortly.
She turned to the stove, saying something about that fire not being much
to brag of. She worked with it a minute, and when she straightened up she
said aggressively:
"The law is the law--and a bad stove is a bad stove. How'd you like to
cook on this?"--pointing with the poker to the broken lining. She opened
the oven door and started to express her opinion of the oven; but she was
swept into her own thoughts, thinking of what it would mean, year after
year, to have that stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster
trying to bake in that oven--and the thought of her never going over to
see Minnie Foster--.
She was startled by hearing Mrs. Peters say: "A person gets
discouraged--and loses heart."
The sheriff's wife had looked from the stove to the sink--to the pail of
water which had been carried in from outside. The two women stood there
silent, above them the footsteps of the men who were looking for evidence
against the woman who had worked in that kitchen. That look of seeing
into things, of seeing through a thing to something else, was in the eyes
of the sheriff's wife now. When Mrs. Hale next spoke to her, it was
gently:
"Better loosen up your things, Mrs. Peters. We'll not feel them when we
go out."
Mrs. Peters went to the back of the room to hang up the fur tippet she
was wearing. A moment later she exclaimed, "Why, she was piecing a
quilt," and held up a large sewing basket piled high with quilt
pieces.
Mrs. Hale spread some of the blocks on the table.
"It's log-cabin pattern," she said, putting several of them together,
"Pretty, isn't it?"
They were so engaged with the quilt that they did not hear the footsteps
on the stairs. Just as the stair door opened Mrs. Hale was saying:
"Do you suppose she was going to quilt it or just knot it?"
The sheriff threw up his hands.
"They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or just knot it!"
There was a laugh for the ways of women, a warming of hands over the
stove, and then the county attorney said briskly:
"Well, let's go right out to the barn and get that cleared up."
"I don't see as there's anything so strange," Mrs. Hale said resentfully,
after the outside door had closed on the three men--"our taking up our
time with little things while we're waiting for them to get the evidence.
I don't see as it's anything to laugh about."
"Of course they've got awful important things on their minds," said the
sheriff's wife apologetically.
They returned to an inspection of the block for the quilt. Mrs. Hale was
looking at the fine, even sewing, and preoccupied with thoughts of the
woman who had done that sewing, when she heard the sheriff's wife say, in
a queer tone:
"Why, look at this one."
She turned to take the block held out to her.
"The sewing," said Mrs. Peters, in a troubled way, "All the rest of them
have been so nice and even--but--this one. Why, it looks as if she didn't
know what she was about!"
Their eyes met--something flashed to life, passed between them; then, as
if with an effort, they seemed to pull away from each other. A moment
Mrs. Hale sat there, her hands folded over that sewing which was so
unlike all the rest of the sewing. Then she had pulled a knot and drawn
the threads.
"Oh, what are you doing, Mrs. Hale?" asked the sheriff's wife,
startled.
"Just pulling out a stitch or two that's not sewed very good," said Mrs.
Hale mildly.
"I don't think we ought to touch things," Mrs. Peters said, a little
helplessly.
"I'll just finish up this end," answered Mrs. Hale, still in that mild,
matter-of-fact fashion.
She threaded a needle and started to replace bad sewing with good. For a
little while she sewed in silence. Then, in that thin, timid voice, she
heard:
"Mrs. Hale!"
"Yes, Mrs. Peters?"
'What do you suppose she was so--nervous about?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Hale, as if dismissing a thing not
important enough to spend much time on. "I don't know as she
was--nervous. I sew awful queer sometimes when I'm just tired."
A Jury of Her Peers: 2