THE MYSTERY AT BEECHWOOD.
A day or two after Guy’s return to New York there came to Beechwood a
tall, muscular-looking woman, whom Alice called Mrs. Jenks, and for whom
Magdalen could see no possible use. She did not consort with the family,
nor with the servants, and Magdalen often met her in the upper hall, and
saw her disappearing through the green baize door. It was about this
time, too, that Mr. Grey left home for Cincinnati, and the household
settled down into a state of quiet and loneliness, which, contrasting as
it did with the merry holidays when Guy Seymour was there, seemed to
both girls very hard to bear.
Alice was unusually restless, and when at last Guy wrote telling of a
famous singer who had just appeared in New York, and asking them all to
come down for a few days and hear for themselves, she caught eagerly at
it, and overruling every objection, won her aunt’s consent to going.
Magdalen was to accompany them, and she was anticipating the trip and
what it might bring about, for Hester Floyd had written that _Roger_ was
in New York. But when the morning fixed upon for their journey came she
was suffering with a prevailing influenza which made the trip impossible
for her. She, however, insisted upon Alice’s going without her, and so
for a few days she was left alone in the house so far as congenial
companionship was concerned. Mrs. Jenks she never saw, though she knew
she was there; for as she grew better and able to be about the parlors
and library she heard the servants speak of the amount of _wine_ she
ordered with her dinner, while one of them added in a whisper, “Suppose
she should get drunk and there should be a row, wouldn’t we be in a
pretty mess. Nobody could control her.”
Magdalen was not timid, but after this she kept her door locked at
night, while during the day she frequently caught herself listening
intently as if expecting something to happen. But nothing did happen
until one night when she went as usual to the parlor, where she sat down
to the piano and tried a new piece of music which Guy had sent to Alice.
Finding it rather difficult, she cast it aside and dashed off something
more familiar to her. On the music stand were piles and piles of songs,
some her own, some Alice’s, and she looked them over, and selecting one
which had always been her favorite, she began to sing, feeling much as
an imprisoned bird must feel when it finds itself free again, for since
her first night at Beechwood she had never been asked to sing with the
piano. Now, however, she was alone, and she sang on and on, her voice,
which had been out of practice so long, gathering strength and sweetness
until the whole house was full of the clear, liquid tones, and the
servants, still dawdling over their supper, commented upon the music and
held their breath to listen. One of them had brought a lamp into the
room before going to her tea, and this with the fire in the grate was
all the light there was; but it answered every purpose for Magdalen, who
enjoyed the dim twilight and the flickering shadows on the wall, and
kept on with her singing, while through the upper hall there came
stealing softly the figure of a woman with her white night dress
trailing on the carpet, and her bare feet giving back no echo to her
stealthy footsteps. She had come through the green baize door, and she
paused there a moment and turned her ear in the direction whence she had
come. But all was quiet. There was no one watching her, and with a
cunning gleam in her restless, black eyes, she shut the door softly,
then opened it again, and went back down the long hall until she reached
a door which was partly ajar. This she also shut, and turning the key
took it in her hand and started again for the music which had set her
poor brain to throbbing, and quickened the blood in her veins until
every nerve was quivering with excitement.
“I am coming, oh, I’m coming. Don’t you hear me as I come?” sang
Magdalen, while down the stairs and through the hall came the unseen
visitor until she reached the parlor door, where she stood for a moment
in the attitude of listening, while her eyes were fixed upon Magdalen
with a curious, inquiring look.
Then they rolled restlessly about the room, and took in every thing from
the picture on the wall to the fire in the grate, and then went back
again to the young girl, still singing her song of summer. The music
evidently had a soothing effect upon the poor, crazed creature, and her
eyes were soft and pleasant and moist with tears as she drew near to
Magdalen, who at last felt the hot breath upon her neck, and knew there
was some one behind her. There was a violent start, then a sudden crash
among the keys, as Magdalen felt not only the breath, but the touch of
the long, white fingers, which clasped her shoulder so firmly. She could
see the fingers as they held to her dress, but only the outline of a
human form was visible, and so she did not scream until she turned her
head and saw the white-robed woman, with the long hair falling down her
back, the peculiar look of insanity in every feature. Then a shriek,
loud and unearthly, rang through the house, followed by another and
still another, as she felt the woman’s arm twining itself around her
neck, and heard the woman’s voice saying to her, “What are you, angel or
devil, that you can move me so?”
Roused by the terrific shrieks, the servants came rushing to the parlor,
where they found Magdalen fainted entirely away, with the maniac bending
over her and peering into her face. When Magdalen came to herself, she
was in her own room, and the girl, Honora, who waited on her in the
absence of Pauline, was sitting by and caring for her. She did not seem
inclined to talk, and to Magdalen’s inquiries, “Oh, what was it, and
shall I see it again?” she merely replied, “You’ll not be troubled any
more. It was the fault of Mrs. Jenks. She drank half a bottle of wine
since noon and is drunk as a beast.”
That was all the explanation Magdalen could get, and as she recovered
rapidly from the effects of her fainting fit, she signified her wish to
be left alone; but she did not venture to the parlor again that night,
and she saw that both the doors leading from her room and Alice’s into
the hall were locked, and bolted, too. Then she tried to reason herself
into a tolerable degree of calmness and quiet, as she thought over the
events of the evening and wondered who the maniac was.
“Alice’s mother, most likely,” she said, and a great throb of pity swept
over her for the young girl whose life had been so darkened and who had
possibly never known a mother’s love any more than she herself had done.
And then her thoughts went out after her own mother, with a longing
desire such as she had seldom felt. Where was she that wintry night? Was
she far from or was she near to the daughter who had never seen her face
to remember it? Was she living still, or was the snow piled upon her
grave, and would not Magdalen rather have her thus than like the
babbling maniac who had startled her so in the parlor? She believed she
would. In one sense Alice was more to be pitied than herself, and she
sat thinking of the young girl and the shadow on her life until the fire
burned out upon the hearth, and she crept shivering to bed. But not to
sleep. She could not do that for the peculiar cry, half human, half
unearthly, which from time to time kept coming to her ears, and in which
she recognized tones like the voice heard an instant in the parlor
before consciousness forsook her. There was evidently a great commotion
throughout the house, the servants running to and fro; but no one came
near her until the early dawn was stealing into the room, and giving
definite shapes and forms to the objects about her. Then there was a tap
at her door, and Honora’s voice said:
“Miss Lennox, will you come with me and see what you can do to quiet
her? She’s kept screeching for you all night, and Mrs. Jenks, who is in
her senses now, says maybe you can influence her. Strangers sometimes
do. I’ll wait outside till you are ready. You needn’t be afraid,—she
never hurt any body.”
Magdalen trembled in every joint, and her teeth fairly chattered as she
hastened to dress herself.
“It’s because I’m cold; there certainly is nothing to fear,” she
thought, as she bound her hair under a net and knotted her dressing-gown
around her waist.
She had never been through the baize door, and as Honora held it for her
to pass she felt for a moment as if trespassing upon forbidden ground.
But the door swung to behind her. She was shut into a narrow hall, with
two doors on the right hand side, and one of them ajar. The mystery she
was going to confront was beyond that door, she knew, for a moaning cry
of “Let me go to her, I tell you,” met her ear, and made her draw a
little closer to Honora, who said to her, reassuringly, “There is
nothing to fear; she is perfectly harmless.”
“Yes; but tell me, please, who it is,” Magdalen said, clutching the arm
of the girl, who replied:
“Oh, I supposed you knew. It is _Mrs. Grey_.”
Magdalen’s conjectures were correct, and she went fearlessly up to the
door, which Honora opened wide and then shut behind her, leaving her
standing just across the threshold in the room which held the Mystery at
Beechwood.