THE IMAGE IN THE GLASS.
Elsie had partially recovered. Her eyes were open, and she was resting
on her elbow, looking with child-like wonder around the room; while the
dear old people stood hand-in-hand, regarding her through a mist of
grateful tears.
“How did I come here?” said Elsie, in her sweet, natural voice, that
made those two fond hearts leap in unison; “I must have studied late,
and fallen asleep after. Did he miss me?”
The old people looked at each other in alarm.
“Of whom does she speak?” inquired Catharine.
“Of him,” answered the old man, glancing toward the portrait. “What can
we answer?”
“He did not reach home last night,” said Catharine, gently.
“And who is this?” inquired Elsie, bending her brows, “who knows of my
husband’s movements better than I do myself? Send that woman from the
house, father. The last one, you remember the last one!”
“Elsie, do you not know me?” inquired Catharine, astonished.
“How should I?” was the terse answer. “What am I to you?”
“I am your friend!”
Elsie laughed softly. “I never had but one friend, and she——”
“Well, never mind her, darling,” interposed the old lady, anxiously.
Elsie cast a scrutinizing glance at the old lady, and a look of profound
astonishment came to her face.
“Why, mother, how strange you look! How old you are! Dear me, your hair
has grown so white; and that queer cap. This will never do, mother.”
“My child—my dear child!”
Elsie laughed, and shook her head.
“Don’t plead. Don’t attempt to persuade me, mother. You must always
dress like a gentlewoman. That hair and cap are frightful. Remember how
much he thinks of these things.”
The old people remained silent. This was a phase of madness that they
had never witnessed before. Catharine, too, was puzzled. Elsie seemed
struggling with some old remembrance, or rather to have cast herself
back into a far-off scene of action, forgetting everything else; and the
young woman could only look on, waiting for opportunity to act.
Elsie spoke again.
“But while I am scolding you, mamma, I had forgotten to look at myself,
in this robe so disordered, and my hair all down. What will he think of
me?”
As she spoke, Elsie moved toward a small mirror, set into the door of a
cabinet, with which she seemed familiar.
“Why, how is this?” she cried, with astonishment, as the reflection of
her figure came back from the glass; and holding out her long hair at
arm’s length, she allowed the gray tresses to drop slowly from her
figure, repeating the question sharply, “what is this? whose hair is
this?”
No one answered her, and she stood gazing upon herself in wild
amazement, turning her dark eyes upon her parents with a stern,
questioning air, as if they had transfigured her.
“I cannot make it out,” she said at last, dropping her arms sadly
downward; “I cannot make it out.”
“It is remembrance. It is a return of sanity!” whispered Catharine. “Her
recollection of what she has been, her forgetfulness of me—it is a
hopeful sign.”
The old people began to tremble. Their withered hands clung together,
shaking like autumn-leaves; low murmurs broke from their lips, but no
words were uttered. They listened in breathless suspense for the next
sentence that might fall from those troubled lips.
“I wonder—I wish some one would tell me what it means,” she continued,
looking wistfully in the glass. “How am I to get these lines from my
forehead, these, these—”
She checked herself suddenly, gasping for breath. Her eyes were fixed
wildly on the mirror as if she had seen a basilisk there; her white lips
began to tremble; and uttering a low cry, she dashed her clenched hand
against the glass, shivering it to a thousand fragments.
“I have done it—I have done it!” she cried, with an insane glare of the
eyes, as she held out her clenched hand, all crimson with drops of
blood, for them to look upon. “She crossed my path once, twice, again!
She looks like a witch now; but it’s her—I know her! I have crushed her,
do you see?”
As she cried out in this exultant fashion, Elsie’s glance fell upon the
bay-window, and instantly the breath was hushed on her lips.
“There, there,” she cried, “I killed her, but she is there yet!”
They followed her eyes, and there, close by the old-fashioned
bay-window, peering into the room, stood a strange woman, gaunt and
witch-like, both in face and figure. Her sharp, wizen face was buried in
a huge bonnet, which might have been in fashion twenty years before; and
her soiled, even ragged, dress, was partially concealed by a shawl
covered with a glowing pattern of red, green, orange, and blue, which
was, possibly, in vogue at the time the bonnet was made. Still, both
these articles seemed unworn till now. The blond and flowers on the
bonnet were yellow and faded with time, not by use. Her shawl had
evidently just been shaken out of its original folds. But for these
articles of finery, her appearance would have been that of a beggar. It
was now merely fantastic; for her gaiter-boots were not mates—one was
buttoned, and the other laced with a bit of strong twine. She wore no
stockings; and the fingers of one hand protruded through a soiled cotton
glove, while the other was concealed under her shawl, evidently lacking
a mate.
This fantastic figure stood close by the window, peering through with
her keen, black eyes, that had the sharp glitter of a rattlesnake in
them. But for this keen intelligence, she might have been taken for a
common vagrant, on whom some kind old woman had bestowed charity from
her hoard of old-fashioned garments. Instantly a cry broke from
Catharine also, while the good old couple looked at each other in
dismay.
No one spoke, but all remained paralyzed, white as death and gazing at
each other. Catharine, usually so self-possessed, shook like an aspen,
and Elsie crept to her side, seizing upon her garments for protection, a
sure sign that her insanity, for a moment put off, had returned again,
more fiercely than ever.
The strange creature at the window seemed rather amused by the
consternation she had produced. Her face wrinkled into a laugh, and the
glitter of her eyes seemed to strike fire upon the glass. After
indulging herself a moment or two, she turned away, walking deliberately
toward the front door.