“Where is my wife?”
“Sleeping, sir, after a day of exhausting emotion.”
“She didn’t wire me?”
“No, sir.”
“Perhaps she wasn’t able?”
“She was not, Mayor Packard.”
“I must see her. I came as soon as I could. Left Warner to fill my place
on the platform, and it is the night of nights, too. Why, what’s the
matter?”
He had caught me staring over his shoulder at the form drawn up in the
doorway.
“Nothing; I thought you had come alone.”
“No, Mr. Steele is with me. He joined me at noon, just after I had
telegraphed home. He has come back to finish the work I assigned him.
He has at last discovered--or thinks he has--the real author of those
libels. You have something special to say to me?” he whispered, as I
followed him upstairs.
“Yes, and I think, if I were you, that I should say nothing to Mrs.
Packard about Mr. Steele’s having returned.” And I rapidly detailed the
occurrence of the afternoon, ending with Mrs. Packard’s explanation to
her servants.
The mayor showed impatience. “Oh, I can not bother with such nonsense as
that,” he declared; “the situation is too serious.”
I thought so, too, when in another moment his wife’s door opened and she
stepped out upon the landing to meet him. Her eyes fell on Mr. Steele,
standing at the foot of the stairs, before they encountered her husband;
and though she uttered no cry and hardly paused in her approach toward
the mayor, I saw the heart within her die as suddenly and surely as the
flame goes out in a gust of wind.
“You!” There was hysteria in the cry. Pray God that the wild note in it
was not that of incipient insanity! “How good of you to give up making
your great speech to-night, just to see how I have borne this last
outrage! You do see, don’t you?” Here she drew her form to its full
height. “My husband believes in me, and it gives me courage to face the
whole world. Ah! is that Mr. Steele I see below there? Pardon me, Mr.
Steele, if I show surprise. We heard a false report of your illness this
afternoon. Henry, hadn’t Mr. Steele better come up-stairs? I presume you
are here to talk over this last dreadful paragraph with me.”
“It is not necessary for Mr. Steele to join us if you do not wish him
to,” I heard the mayor whisper in his wife’s ear.
“Oh, I do not mind,” she returned with an indifference whose reality I
probably gauged more accurately than he did.
“That is good.” And he called Mr. Steele up. “You see she is reasonable
enough,” he muttered in my ear as he motioned me to follow them into the
up-stairs sitting-room to which she had led the way. “The more heads the
better in a discussion of this kind,” was the excuse he gave his wife
and Mr. Steele as he ushered me in.
As neither answered, I considered my presence accepted and sat down
in as remote a corner as offered. Verily the fates were active in my
behalf.
Mayor Packard was about to close the door, when Mrs. Packard suddenly
leaped by him with the cry:
“There’s the baby! She must have heard your voice.” And rushing into
the hall she came back with the child whom she immediately placed in its
father’s arms. Then she slowly seated herself. Not until she had done so
did she turn to Mr. Steele.
“Sit,” said she, with a look and gesture her husband would have marveled
at had he not been momentarily occupied with the prattling child.
The secretary bowed and complied. Surely men of such great personal
attractions are few. Instantly the light, shaded though it seemingly
was in all directions, settled on his face, making him, to my astonished
gaze, the leading personality in the group. Was this on account of
the distinction inherent in extreme beauty or because of a new and
dominating expression which had insensibly crept into his features?
The mayor, and the mayor only, seemed oblivious to the fact. Glancing up
from the child, he opened the conference by saying: “Tell Mrs. Packard,
Steele, what you have just told me.”
With a quiet shifting of his figure which brought him into a better line
with the woman he was asked to address, the secretary opened his lips to
reply when she, starting, reached out one hand and drew toward herself
the little innocent figure of her child, which she at once placed
between herself and him. Seeing this, I recalled the scraps of cipher
left in my room above and wished I had succeeded in determining their
meaning, if only to understand the present enigmatical situation.
Meanwhile Mr. Steele was saying in the mellow tone of a man accustomed
to tune his voice to suit all occasions: “Mrs. Packard will excuse me
if I seem abrupt. In obedience to commands laid upon me by his Honor,
I spent both Tuesday and Wednesday in inquiries as to the origin of
the offensive paragraph which appeared in Monday’s issue of the Leader.
Names were given me, but too many of them. It took me two days to sift
these down to one, and when I had succeeded in doing this, it was only
to find that the man I sought was ninety miles away. Madam, I journeyed
those ninety miles to learn that meanwhile he had returned to this city.
While I was covering those miles for the second time, to-day’s paragraph
appeared. I hastened to accuse its author of libel, but the result was
hardly what I expected. Perhaps you know what he said.”
“No,” she harshly returned, “I do not.” And with the instinctive gesture
of one awaiting attack she raised her now sleepy and nodding child in
front of her laboring breast, with a look in her eyes which I see yet.
“He said--pardon me, your Honor, pardon me, Madam--that I was at liberty
to point out what was false in it.”
With a leap she was on her feet, towering above us all in her
indignation and overpowering revolt against the man who was the
conscious instrument of this insult. The child, loosened so suddenly
from her arms, tottered and would have fallen, had not Mr. Steele leaned
forward and drawn the little one across to himself. Mr. Packard, who, we
must remember, had been more or less prepared for what his secretary had
to say, cast a glance at his wife, teeming with varied emotions.
“And what did you reply to that?” were the words she hurled at the
unabashed secretary.
“Nothing,” was his grave reply. “I did not know myself what was false in
it.”
With sudden faltering, Mrs. Packard reseated herself, while the mayor,
outraged by what was evidently a very unexpected answer, leaned forward
in great anger, crying:
“That was not the account you gave me of this wretched interview.
Explain yourself, Mr. Steele. Don’t you see that your silence at such
a moment, to say nothing of the attitude you at present assume, is an
insult to Mrs. Packard?”
The smile he met in reply was deprecatory enough; so were the words his
outburst had called forth.
“I did not mean, and do not mean to insult Mrs. Packard. I am merely
showing you how hampered a man is, whatever his feelings, when it
comes to a question of facts known only to a lady with whom he has not
exchanged fifty words since he came into her house. If Mrs. Packard will
be good enough to inform me just how much and how little is true in the
paragraph we are considering, I shall see this rascally reporter again
and give him a better answer.”
Mayor Packard looked unappeased. This was not the way to soothe a woman
whom he believed to be greatly maligned. With an exclamation indicative
of his feelings, he was about to address some hasty words to the
composed, almost smiling, man who confronted him, when Mrs. Packard
herself spoke with unexpected self-control, if not disdain.
“You are a very honest man, Mr. Steele. I commend the nicety of your
scruples and am quite ready to trust myself to them. I own to no blot,
in my past or present life, calling for public arraignment. If my
statement of the fact is not enough, I here swear on the head of my
child--”
“No, no,” he quickly interpolated, “don’t frighten the baby. Swearing
is not necessary; I am bound to believe your word, Mrs. Packard.” And
lifting a sheet of paper from a pile lying on the table before him, he
took a pencil from his pocket and began making lines to amuse the child
dancing on his knee.
Mrs. Packard’s eyes opened in wonder mingled with some emotion deeper
than distaste, but she said nothing, only watched in a fascinated way
his moving fingers. The mayor, mollified possibly by his secretary’s
last words, sank back again in his chair with the remark:
“You have heard Mrs. Packard’s distinct denial. You are consequently
armed for battle. See that you fight well. It is all a part of the
scheme to break me up. One more paragraph of that kind and I shall be a
wreck, even if my campaign is not.”
“There will not be any more.”
“Ah! you can assure me of that?”
“Positively.”
“What are you playing there?” It was Mrs. Packard who spoke. She was
pointing at the scribble he was making on the paper.
“Tit-tat-to,” he smiled, “to amuse the baby.”
Did she hate to see him so occupied, or was her own restlessness of a
nature demanding a like outlet? Tearing her eyes away from him and the
child, she looked about her in a wild way, till she came upon a box of
matches standing on the large center-table around which they were all
grouped. Taking some in her hand, she commenced to lay them out on the
table before her, possibly in an attempt to attract the baby’s attention
to herself. Puerile business, but it struck me forcibly, possibly from
the effect it appeared to have upon the mayor. Looking from one to the
other in an astonishment which was not without its hint of some new and
overmastering feeling on his own part, he remarked:
“Isn’t it time for the baby to go to bed? Surely, our talk is too
serious to be interrupted by games to please a child.”
Without a word Mr. Steele rose and put the protesting child in the
mother’s arms. She, rising, carried it to the door, and, coming slowly
back, reseated herself before the table and began to push the matches
about again with fingers that trembled beyond her control. The mayor
proceeded as if no time had elapsed since his last words.
“You had some words then with this Brainard--I think you called him
Brainard--exacted some promise from him?”
“Yes, your Honor,” was the only reply.
Did not Mrs. Packard speak, too? We all seemed to think so, for we
turned toward her; but she gave no evidence of having said anything,
though an increased nervousness was visible in her fingers as she pushed
the matches about.
“I thought I was warranted in doing so much,” continued Mr. Steele. “I
could not buy the man with money, so I used threats.”
“Right! anything to squelch him,” exclaimed the mayor, but not with the
vigor I expected from him. Some doubt, some dread--caught perhaps from
his wife’s attitude or expression--seemed to interpose between his
indignation and the object of it. “You are our good friend, Steele, in
spite of the shock you gave us a moment ago.”
As no answer was made to this beyond a smile too subtle and too fine to
be understood by his openhearted chief, the mayor proceeded to declare:
“Then that matter is at an end. I pray that it may have done us no real
harm. I do not think it has. People resent attacks on women, especially,
on one whose reputation has never known a shadow, as girl, wife, or
mother.”
“Yes,” came in slow assent from the lips which had just smiled, and he
glanced at Mrs. Packard whose own lips seemed suddenly to become dry,
for I saw her try to moisten them as her right hand groped about for
something on the tabletop and finally settled on a small paper-weight
which she set down amongst her matches. Was it then or afterward that
I began to have my first real doubt whether some shadow had not fallen
across her apparently unsullied life?
“Yes, you are right,” repeated Mr. Steele more energetically. “People
do resent such insinuations against a woman, though I remember one case
where the opposite effect was produced. It was when Collins ran for
supervisor in Cleveland. He was a good fellow himself, and he had a wife
who was all that was beautiful and charming, but who had once risked
her reputation in an act which did call for public arraignment.
Unfortunately, there was a man who knew of this act and he published it
right and left and--”
“Olympia!” Mayor Packard was on his feet, pointing in sudden fury and
suspicion at the table where the matches lay about in odd and, as I now
saw, seemingly set figures. “You are doing something besides playing
with those matches. I know Mr. Steele’s famous cipher; he showed it to
me a week ago; and so, evidently, do you, in spite of the fact that you
have had barely fifty words with him since he came to the house. Let me
read--ah!--give over that piece of paper you have there, Steele, if you
would not have me think you as great a dastard as we know that Brainard
to be!”
And while his wife drooped before his eyes and a cynical smile crept
about the secretary’s fine mouth, he caught up the sheet on which Steele
had been playing tit-tat-to with the child, and glanced from the table
to it and back again to the table on which the matches lay in the
following device, the paper-weight answering for the dot:
7; L;.)7; [-]; ^V. “M,” suddenly left the mayor’s writhing lips; then
slowly, letter by letter, “E-R-C-Y. Mercy!” he vociferated. “Why does
my wife appeal for mercy to you--a stranger--and in your own cipher!
Miserable woman! What secret’s here? Either you are--”
“Hush! some one’s at the door!” admonished the secretary.
Mr. Packard turned quickly, and, smoothing his face rapidly, as such men
must, started for the door. Mrs. Packard, flinging her whole soul into
a look, met the secretary’s eyes for a moment and then let her head
sink forward on her hands above those telltale matches, from whose
arrangement she had reaped despair in place of hope.
Mr. Steele smiled again, his fine, false smile, but after her head had
fallen; not before. Indeed, he had vouchsafed no reply to her eloquent
look. It was as if it had met marble till her eyes were bidden; then--
But Nixon was in the open doorway and Nixon was speaking:
“A telegram, your Honor.”
The old man spoke briskly, even a little crisply--perhaps he always did
when he addressed the mayor. But his eyes roamed eagerly and changed
to a burning, red color when they fell upon the dejected figure of his
mistress. I fancied that, had he dared, he would have leaped into
the room and taken his own part--and who could rightly gage what that
was?--in the scene which may have been far more comprehensive to him
than to me. But he did not dare, and my eyes passed from him to the
mayor.
“From Haines,” that gentleman announced, forgetting the suggestive
discovery he had just made in the great and absorbing interest of his
campaign. “‘Speech good--great applause becoming thunderous at flash of
your picture. All right so far if--’” he read out, ceasing abruptly at
the “if” which, as I afterward understood, really ended the message.
“No answer,” he explained to Nixon as he hurriedly, dismissed him. “That
‘if’ concerns you,” he now declared, coming back to his wife and to his
troubles at the same instant. “Explain the mystery which seems likely
to undo me. Why do you sit there bowed under my accusations? Why should
Henry Packard’s wife cry for mercy, to any man? Because those damnable
accusations are true? Because you have a secret in your past and this
man knows it?”
Slowly she rose, slowly she met his eyes, and even he started back at
her pallor and the drawn misery in her face. But she did not speak.
Instead of that she simply reached out and laid her hand on Mr. Steele’s
arm, drooping almost to the ground as she did so. “Mercy!” she suddenly
wailed, but this time to the man who had so relentlessly accused her.
The effect was appalling. The mayor reeled, then sprang forward with his
hand outstretched for his secretary’s throat. But his words were for his
wife. “What does this mean? Why do you take your stand by the side of
another man than myself? What have I done or what have you done that I
should live to face such an abomination as this?”
It was Steele who answered, with a lift of his head as full of assertion
as it was of triumph.
“You? nothing; she? everything. You do not know this woman, Mayor
Packard; for instance, you do not know her name.”
“Not know her name? My wife’s?”
“Not in the least. This lady’s name is Brainard. So is mine. Though she
has lived with you several years in ignorance of my continued existence,
no doubt, she is my wife and not yours. We were married in Boone,
Minnesota, six years ago.”