And now see what a cunning trap the most innocent intentions may sometimes
set. There was a mirror in the sick-room purposely so placed that, with
the parlor door ajar, the watcher, but not the patient, could see into the
parlor, and could be seen from the parlor when sitting anywhere between
the mirror and the window beyond it. This window was the one that looked
into the side garden. Purposely, too, the lounge had been placed so as to
give and receive these advantages. A candle stood on the window's inner
ledge and was screened from the unseen bed, but shone outward through the
window and inward upon the mirror. The front door of the parlor opened
readily to anyone within or without who knew enough to use its two latches
at once, but neither within nor without to--the Baron, say--who did not
know.
Do you see it? As he lay awake on the lounge his eye was, of course, drawn
constantly to the mirror by the reflected light of the candle, and to its
images of the nodding watcher and of the window just beyond. So lying and
gazing, he had suddenly beheld that which brought him from the lounge in
an instant, net in hand, and tortured to find the front door--by which he
would have slipped out and around to the window--fastened! What he saw was
the moth--the moth so many years unseen. Now it sipped at the saucer of
sweet stuff, now hovered over it, now was lost in the dark, and now
fluttered up or slid down the pane, lured by the beam of the candle.
If he was not to lose it, there was but one thing to do. With his eyes
fixed, moth-mad, on the window, he glided in, passed the two sleepers, and
stealthily lifted the sash with one hand, the other poising the net. The
moth dropped under, the net swept after it, and the sash slipped and fell.
Mrs. Fontenette rose wildly, and when she saw first the old woman, half
starting from her seat with frightened stare, and then the entomologist
speechless, motionless, and looming like an apparition, she gave that cry
her husband heard, and fell back upon the pillow in a convulsion.
I found the Baron sitting on the side of his bed like a child trying to be
awake without waking. No, not _trying_ to do or be anything; but aimless,
dazed, silent, lost.
He obeyed, automatically, my every request. I set about getting him to bed
at once, putting his clothes beyond his reach, and even locking his
balcony door, without a sign of objection from him. Then I left him for a
moment, and calling Senda from the nursery to the parlor told her the
state of the different patients, including her husband, but without the
hows and whys except that I had found him in our garden with his precious
net. "And now, as it will soon be day, Mrs. Smith and I--with the servants
and others--can take care of the four."
"If I"--meekly interrupted the sweet woman--"vill go for se doctors? I
vill go." Soon she was off.
Then I went back to her husband, and finding his mood so changed that he
was eager to explain everything, I let him talk; which I soon saw was a
blunder; for he got pitifully excited, and wanted to go over the same
ground again and again. One matter I was resolved to fix in his mind
without delay. "Mark you," I charged him, "your wife must never know a
word of this!"
"Eh?--No"--and the next instant the sick woman across the way was filling
all his thought: "Mine Gott! she rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!"
and up he would start. Then as I pressed him down--"Mine Gott! I vould not
go in, if I dhink she would do dot. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry!--Undt I tidt not
t'e mawdt get.
"Hmm! Even I titn't saw vhere it iss gone. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry!
"Undt dot door kit shtuck! Hmm! Undt dot vindow iss not right made. Hmm!
"I tidn't vant to do dot--you know? Hmm! I am sorry!--Ach, mine Gott! she
rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!" Thus round and round. What to do
for him I did not know!
Yet he grew quiet, and was as good as silent, when Senda, long before I
began to look for her, stood unbonneted at my side in a soft glow of
physical animation, her anxiety all hidden and with a pink spot on each
cheek. I was startled. Had _I_ slept--or had she somehow ridden?
"Are the street-cars running already?" I asked.
"No," she murmured, producing a vial and looking for a glass. "'Tis I haf
been running alreadty. Sat iss not so tiresome as to valk. Also it is
safeh. I runned all se vay. Vill you sose drops drop faw me?" Her hand
trembled.
I took the vial but did not meet her glance: for I was wondering if there
was anything in the world she could ask of me that I would not do, and at
such a time it is good for anyone as weak as I am to look at inanimate
things.
"You got word to all three doctors?"
"Yes;" she gave her chin the drollest little twist--"sey are all coming
--vhen sey get ready."