Then I fell to upon the door-knocker and gave a loud rat-tat-too, and
followed this up with an amiable “Hel-lo!”
For a time no one answered me, and I stood listening and expectant,
with my fingers about my weapon. Some one moved about upstairs
presently, and was still again. The tension of waiting seemed to brace
my nerves.
I had my hand on the knocker for the second time, when Puss appeared in
the doorway.
For a moment we remained staring at one another without speaking. Her
hair was disheveled, her face dirty, tear-stained, and irregularly red.
Her expression at the sight of me was pure astonishment. I thought she
was about to say something, and then she had darted away out of the
house again.
“I say, Puss!” I said. “Puss!”
I followed her out of the door. “Puss! What’s the matter? Where’s
Nettie?”
She vanished round the corner of the house.
I hesitated, perplexed whether I should pursue her. What did it all
mean? Then I heard some one upstairs.
“Willie!” cried the voice of Mrs. Stuart. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Where’s every one? Where’s Nettie? I want to have a
talk with her.”
She did not answer, but I heard her dress rustle as she moved. I Judged
she was upon the landing overhead.
I paused at the foot of the stairs, expecting her to appear and come
down.
Suddenly came a strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbled and
hurrying, confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note of throaty
distress that at last submerged the words altogether and ended in a
wail. Except that it came from a woman’s throat it was exactly the
babbling sound of a weeping child with a grievance. “I can’t,” she
said, “I can’t,” and that was all I could distinguish. It was to my
young ears the strangest sound conceivable from a kindly motherly
little woman, whom I had always thought of chiefly as an unparalleled
maker of cakes. It frightened me. I went upstairs at once in a state of
infinite alarm, and there she was upon the landing, leaning forward
over the top of the chest of drawers beside her open bedroom door, and
weeping. I never saw such weeping. One thick strand of black hair had
escaped, and hung with a spiral twist down her back; never before had I
noticed that she had gray hairs.
As I came up upon the landing her voice rose again. “Oh that I should
have to tell you, Willie! Oh that I should have to tell you!” She
dropped her head again, and a fresh gust of tears swept all further
words away.
I said nothing, I was too astonished; but I drew nearer to her, and
waited. . . .
I never saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her dripping
handkerchief abides with me to this day.
“That I should have lived to see this day!” she wailed. “I had rather a
thousand times she was struck dead at my feet.”