As she rushed past me and up the stairs, the patter of her feet fell on
my ears like the soft padding of Toi Wah’s footsteps that had filled
my youthful years with fear. My blood chilled at this old, until now,
forgotten sound.
What craven fear was this? I tried to pull myself together, to reason
rationally. Fear of a cat long dead, whose mouldering bones were upstairs
on the attic floor! What was there to fear? Was I going mad?
The slamming of the bedroom door, the turning of the key in the lock,
instantly changed my thought and roused in me an overwhelming fury. Was
I to be locked out of my own bedroom—_our_ bedroom?
I rushed up the stairs. I knocked on the door, I rattled the knob. I
pounded with my fists on the panels. I shouted, “Open! _Open the door!_”
In the midst of my furious onslaught, the door suddenly opened and a
sleepy-eyed little figure stood aside to allow me to enter.
“Why, Robert!” she exclaimed, as I stood there, bewildered and ashamed,
a furious conflict of doubt, fear and uncertainty raging in my mind.
“What’s the matter? Where have you been? I was sound asleep, and you
frightened me, shouting and pounding at the door.”
Was I deceived? Partly. But in her eyes! Ah! In her eyes was that sly,
inscrutable catlike look that I had never seen there until that day. And
now that look never leaves them, it is there always!
“What were you doing below stairs—alone—in my grandmother’s room?” I
stammered.
She arched her brows incredulously.
“I?—below stairs? Why, Robert, what is wrong with you? I just this moment
awoke from a sound sleep to let you in. How could I be below stairs?”
“But the bedroom door was locked!” I exclaimed.
“You must have gone below yourself,” she explained, “and shut the door
after you. It has a spring lock. You surely must have had some hideous
dream. Dear, come to bed now.” And she went back to bed.
Again I dissembled as I had that day when I found her standing before Toi
Wah’s portrait. I knew, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she was lying.
I knew I had been fully awake and in my right senses when I had gone
down stairs and found her there. Evidently she desired to deceive me,
and until I could fathom her motive I would pretend to believe her. So,
muttering something to the effect that she must be right, I got into bed
also.
But not to sleep. There came trooping into my harried mind all the old
youthful terrors of the dark, and I lived over all those terror-haunted
days when I dwelt in fear of Toi Wah or of a shadowy something, I knew
not what.
Lying there in the dark, I resolved that morning would find me leaving
that seemingly ghost-ridden place forever. My peace of mind, my
happiness, to be free from fear—these things were worth all the fine old
country places in the world. And with this resolution, I slept.
I slept far into the day, awaking at noon to find my wife had gone out
with some of our neighbors for a game of tennis and afternoon tea. So,
clearly, I could not arrange to leave until the next day. I must await
my wife’s return, and in the meantime formulate some sort of reasonable
excuse to explain to her my precipitate return to town, after planning a
year’s sojourn in the country.
And then, too, it was daylight now, sober matter-of-fact daylight, and,
as was always the case with me, the terrors of the night then seemed
unreal, half forgotten nightmares. So I dismissed the subject from my
mind for the time being, and set out for a long walk across the fields.
It was near dinner time when I returned. As I opened the door of the
dining-room, my wife turned from where she stood by the fire-place to
greet me, and I was again struck by her resemblance to Toi Wah. The
arrangement of her hair heightened this effect. And when she smiled!—I
cannot describe it! Such a sly, secret, feline smile!
“Robert,” she said, as she came to me and put up her lips to be kissed.
“Do you know what day this is?”