Determined to know the cause of Mrs. Packard’s anguish, if not of
Nixon’s unprovoked anger against myself, I caught him back as he was
passing me and peremptorily demanded:
“What message did you carry to Mrs. Packard to throw her into such a
state as this? Answer! I am in this house to protect her against all
such disturbances. What did you tell her?”
“Nothing.”
Sullenness itself in the tone.
“Nothing? and you were sent on an errand? Didn’t you fulfil it?”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t tell her what you learned?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t give me the chance.”
“Oh!”
“I know it sounds queer, Miss, but it’s true. She didn’t give me a
chance to talk.”
He muttered the final sentence. Indeed, all that we had said until now
had been in a subdued tone, but now my voice unconsciously rose.
“You found Mr. Steele?”
“No, Miss, he was not at home.”
“But they told you where to look for him?”
“No. His landlady thinks he is dead. He has queer spells, and some one
had sent her word about a man, handsome like him, who was found dead at
Hudson Three Corners last night. Mr. Steele told her he was going over
to Hudson Three Corners. She has sent to see if the dead man is he.”
“The dead man!”
Who spoke? Not Mrs. Packard! Surely that voice was another’s. Yet we
both looked up to see:
The sight which met our eyes was astonishing, appalling. She had let her
baby slip to the floor and had advanced to the stairs, where she stood,
clutching at the rail, looking down upon us, with a joy in her face
matching the unholy elation we could still hear ringing in that word
“dead.”
Such a look might have leaped to life in the eyes of the Medusa when she
turned her beauty upon her foredoomed victims.
“Dead!” came again in ringing repetition from Mrs. Packard’s lips, every
fiber in her tense form quivering and the gleam of hope shining brighter
and brighter in her countenance. “No, not dead!” Then while Nixon
trembled and succumbed inwardly to this spectacle of a gentle-hearted
woman transformed by some secret and overwhelming emotion into an image
of vindictive delight, her hands left the stair-rail and flew straight
up over her head in the transcendent gesture which only the greatest
crises in life call forth, and she exclaimed with awe-inspiring
emphasis: “God could not have been so merciful!”
It is not often, perhaps it is only once in a lifetime, that it is given
us to look straight into the innermost recesses of the human soul. Never
before had such an opportunity come to me, and possibly never would
it come again, yet my first conscious impulse was one of fright at the
appalling self-revelation she had made, not only in my hearing, but in
that of nearly her whole household. I could see, over her shoulders,
Letty’s eyes staring wide in ingenuous dismay, while from the hall below
rose the sound of hurrying feet as the girls came running in from the
kitchen. Something must be done, and immediately, to recall her to
herself, and, if possible, to reinstate her in the eyes of her servants.
Bounding upward to where she still stood forgetful and self-absorbed, I
laid my hands softly but firmly on hers, which had fallen back upon the
rail, and quietly said:
“You have some very strong reason, I see, for looking upon Mr. Steele as
your husband’s enemy rather than friend.”
The appeal was timely. With a start she woke to the realization of her
position and of the suggestive words she had just uttered, and with a
glance behind her at Letty and another at Nixon and the maids, who by
this time had pushed their way to the foot of the stairs, she gathered
herself up with a determination born of the necessity of the moment and
emphatically replied:
“No; I do not know Mr. Steele well enough for that. My emotion at the
unexpected tidings of his possible death springs from another cause.”
Here the help, the explanation for which she had been searching, came.
“Girls,” she went on, addressing them with an emphasis which drew all
eyes, “I am ashamed to tell you what has so deeply disturbed me these
last few days. I should blame any one of you for being affected as I
was. The great love I bear my husband and child is my excuse--a poor
one, I know, but one you will understand. A week ago something happened
to me in the library which frightened me very much. I saw--or thought
I saw--what some would call an apparition, but what you would call a
ghost. Don’t shriek!” (The two girls behind me had begun to scream and
make as if to run away.) “It was all imagination, of course--there can
not really be any such thing. Ghosts in these days? Pshaw! But I was
very, nervous that night and could not help feeling that the mere fact
of my thinking of anything so dreadful meant misfortune to some one in
this house. Wait!” Her voice was imperious; and the shivering, terrified
girls, superstitious to the backbone, stopped in spite of themselves.
“You must hear it all, and you, too, Miss Saunders, who have only heard
half. I was badly frightened then, especially as the ghost, spirit-man,
or whatever it was, wore a look, in the one short moment I stood face
to face with it, full of threat and warning. Next day Mr. Packard
introduced his new secretary. Girls, he had the face of the Something I
had seen, without the threatening look, which had so alarmed me.”
“Bad ‘cess to him!” rang in vigorous denunciation from the cook. “Why
didn’t ye send him ‘mejitly about his business? It’s trouble he’ll bring
to us all and no mistake!”
“That was what I feared,” assented her now thoroughly composed mistress.
“So when Nixon said just now that Mr. Steele was dead, had fallen in a
fit at Hudson Three Corners or something like that--I felt such wicked
relief at finding that my experience had not meant danger to ourselves,
but to him--wicked, because it was so selfish--that I forgot myself
and cried out in the way you all heard. Blame me if you will, but don’t
frighten yourselves by talking about it. If Mr. Steele is indeed dead,
we have enough to trouble us without that.”
And with a last glance at me, which ended in a wavering half-deprecatory
smile, she stepped back and passed into her own room.
The mood in which I proceeded to my own quarters was as thoughtful as
any I had ever experienced.