We did not laugh; we did not even question her sanity; at least I did
not; there was too much meaning in her manner.
“A specter,” her husband repeated with a suggestive glance at the
brilliant sunshine in which we all stood.
“Yes.” The tone was one of utter conviction. “I had never believed in
such things--never thought about them, but--it was a week ago--in the
library--I have not seen a happy moment since--”
“My darling!”
“Yes, yes, I know; but imagine! I was sitting reading. I had just come
from the nursery, and the memory of Laura’s good-night kiss was more in
my mind than the story I was finishing when--oh, I can not think of it
without a shudder!--the page before me seemed to recede and the words
fade away in a blue mist; glancing up I beheld the outlines of a
form between me and the lamp, which a moment before had been burning
brightly. Outlines, Henry,--I was conscious of no substance, and the
eyes which met mine from that shadowy, blood-curdling Something were
those of the grave and meant a grave for you or for me. Oh, I know what
I say! There was no mistaking their look. As it burned into and through
me, everything which had given reality to my life faded and seemed as
far away and as unsubstantial as a dream. Nor has its power over me gone
yet. I go about amongst you, I eat, I sleep, or try to; I greet men,
talk with women, but it is all unreal, all phantasmagoric, even yourself
and your love and, O God, my baby! What is real and distinctive, an
absolute part of me and my life, is that shape from the dead, with its
threatening eyes which pierce--pierce--”
She was losing her self-control. Her husband, with a soothing touch on
her arm, brought her back to the present.
“You speak of a form,” he said, “a shadowy outline. The form of what? A
man or a woman?”
“A man! a man!” With the exclamation she seemed to shrink into herself
and her eyes, just now deprecating and appealing, took on a hollow
stare, as if the vision she described had risen again before her.
In spite of himself and the sympathy he undoubtedly felt for her, an
ejaculation of impatience left her husband’s lips. Obligations very far
removed from the fantasies of a disturbed mind made these unsubstantial
fears of hers seem puerile enough to this virile, outspoken man. No
doubt she heard it, and to stop the matter-of-fact protest on his lips
added quickly:
“Not the form, face and eyes of a man, as they usually appear. Hell was
in his gaze and the message he gave, if it was a message, was one of
disaster, if not death. Do you wonder that my happiness vanished before
it? That I can not be myself since that dreadful day?”
The mayor was a practical man; he kept close to the subject.
“You saw this form between you and the lighted lamp. How long did it
stay there and what became of it?”
“I can not tell you. One moment it was there and the next it was gone,
and I found myself staring into vacancy. I seem to be staring there
still, waiting for the blow destined to shatter this household.”
“Nonsense! give me a kiss and fix your thoughts on something more
substantial. What we have to fear and all we have to fear is that I may
lose my election. And that won’t kill me, whatever effect it may have on
the party.”
“Henry,”--her voice had changed to one more natural, also her manner.
The confidence expressed in this outburst, the vitality, the masculine
attitude he took were producing their effect. “You don’t believe in what
I saw or in my fears. Perhaps you are right. I am ready to acknowledge
this; I will try to look upon it all as a freak of my imagination if you
will promise to forget these dreadful days, and if people, other people,
will leave me alone and not print such things about me.”
“I am ready to do my part,” was his glad reply, “and as for the other
people you mention, we shall soon bring them to book.” Raising his
voice, he called out his secretary’s name. As it rang loud and cheery
down the hall, the joy and renewed life which had been visible in her
manner lost some of their brightness.
“What are you going to do?” she gasped, with the quickness of doubt and
strong if reasonless apprehension. “Give an order,” he explained;
then, as the secretary appeared at our end of the hall, he held out the
journal which he had taken from his wife and indicating the offensive
paragraph, said:
“Find out who did that.”
Mr. Steele with a surprised look ran his eyes over the paragraph,
knitting his brows as he did.
“It is calumny,” fell from Mrs. Packard’s lips as she watched him.
“Most certainly,” he assented, with an energy which brought a flush of
pleasure to the humiliated woman’s cheek. “It will detain me two days
or more to follow up this matter,” he remarked, with a look of inquiry
directed at Mayor Packard.
“Never mind. Two days or a week, it is all one. I would rather lose
votes than pass over such an insult. Pin me down the man who has dared
attack me through my wife, and you will do me the greatest favor one man
can show another.”
Mr. Steele bowed. “I can not forego the final consultation we had
planned to hold on the train. May I ride down with you to the station?”
“Certainly; most happy.”
Mr. Steele withdrew, after casting a glance of entirely respectful
sympathy at the woman who up to this hour had faced the world without a
shadow between her and it; and, marking the lingering nature of the look
with which the mayor now turned on his wife, I followed the secretary’s
example and left them to enjoy their few last words alone.
Verily the pendulum of events swung wide and fast in this house.
This conclusion was brought back to me with fresh insistence a few
minutes later, when, on hearing the front door shut, I stepped to the
balustrade and looked over to see if Mrs. Packard was coming up. She
was not, for I saw her go into the library; but plainly on the marble
pavement below, just where we had all been standing, in fact, I
perceived the piece of paper she had brought with her from the
dining-room and had doubtless dropped in the course of the foregoing
conversation.
Running down in great haste, I picked it up. This scrap of I knew not
what, but which had been the occasion of the enigmatic scene I had
witnessed at the breakfast-table, necessarily interested me very much
and I could not help giving it a look. I saw that it was inscribed with
Hebraic-looking characters as unlike as possible to the scrawl of a
little child.
With no means of knowing whether they were legible or not, these
characters made a surprising impression upon me, one, indeed, that was
almost photographic.
I also noted that these shapes or characters, of which there were just
seven, were written on the face of an empty envelope. This decided any
doubts I may have had as to its identity with the paper she had brought
down from the attic. That had been a square sheet, which even if folded
would fail to enter this long and narrow envelope. The interest which
I had felt when I thought the two identical was a false interest. Yet
I could not but believe that this scrap had a value of its own equal to
the one with which, under this misapprehension, I had invested it.
Carrying it back to Mrs. Packard, I handed it over with the remark that
I had found it lying in the hall. She cast a quick look at it, gave me
another look and tossed the paper into the grate. As it caught fire and
flared up, the characters started vividly into view.
This second glimpse of them, added to the one already given me, fixed
the whole indelibly in my mind. This is the way they looked.
[]; V; [];.>; V; [-]; <;
While I watched these cabalistic marks pass from red to black and
finally vanish in a wild leap up the chimney, Mrs. Packard remarked:
“I wish I could destroy the memory of all my mistakes as completely as I
can that old envelope.”
I did not answer; I was watching the weary droop of her hand over the
arm of her chair.
“You are tired, Mrs. Packard,” was my sympathetic observation. “Will you
not take a nap? I will gladly sit by you and read you to sleep.”
“No, no,” she cried, at once alert and active; “no sleep. Look at that
pile of correspondence, half of it on charitable matters. Now that
I feel better, now that I have relieved my mind, I must look over my
letters and try to take up the old threads again.”
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Possibly. If you will go to my room up-stairs, I will join you after I
have sorted and read my mail.”
I was glad to obey this order. I had a curiosity about her room. It had
been the scene of much I did not understand the night before. Should
I find any traces there of that search which had finally ended over my
head in the attic?
I was met at the door by Ellen. She wore a look of dismay which I felt
fully accounted for when I looked inside. Disorder reigned from one end
of the room to the other, transcending any picture I may have formed in
my own mind concerning its probable condition. Mrs. Packard must have
forgotten all this disarray, or at least had supposed it to have yielded
to the efforts of the maid, when she proposed my awaiting her there.
There were bureau-drawers with their contents half on the floor, boxes
with their covers off, cupboard-doors ajar and even the closet shelves
showing every mark of a frenzied search among them. Her rich gown,
soiled to the width of half a foot around the bottom, lay with cut laces
and its trimmings in rags under a chair which had been knocked over
and left where it fell. Even her jewels had not been put away, but lay
scattered on the dresser. Ellen looked ashamed and, when I retired
to the one bare place I saw in the bay of the window, muttered as she
plunged to lift one of the great boxes:
“It’s as bad as the attic room up-stairs. All the trunks have been
emptied on to the floor and one held her best summer dresses. What shall
I do? I have a whole morning’s work before me.”
“Let me help you,” I proposed, rising with sudden alacrity. My eyes had
just fallen on a small desk at my right, also on the floor beneath and
around it. Here, there and everywhere above and below lay scraps of
torn-up paper; and on many, if not on all of them, could be seen the
broken squares and inverted angles which had marked so curiously the
surface of the envelope she had handed to Mr. Steele, and which I had
afterward seen her burn.
“A baby can make a deal of mess,” I remarked, hurriedly collecting these
scraps and making a motion of throwing them into the waste-paper basket,
but hiding them in my blouse instead.
“The baby! Oh, the baby never did that. She’s too young.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. I haven’t seen much of the child though I heard her
cry once in the nursery. How old is she?”
“Twenty months and such a darling! You never saw such curls or such
eyes. Why, look at this!”
“What?” I demanded, hurrying to the closet, where Ellen stood bending
over something invisible to me. “Oh, nothing,” she answered, coming
quickly out. But in another moment, her tongue getting the better of her
discretion, she blurted out: “Do you suppose Mrs. Packard had any
idea of going with the mayor? Her bag is in there almost packed. I was
wondering where all her toilet articles were. That accounts--” Stopping,
she cast a glance around the room, ending with a shake of the head and
a shrug. “She needn’t have pulled out all her things,” she sharply
complained. “Certain, she is a mysterious lady;--as queer as she is
kind.”