MATILDA BREAKS IT GENTLY
At two o'clock of the fifth night Matilda stole into Mrs. De Peyster
with a face that would have been an apt cover for the Book of
Lamentations. She opened her pages. That day she had had a telegram
that her sister Angelica--the really and truly Angelica, who really
and truly lived near Syracuse--that Angelica was seriously ill. She
was sorry, but she felt that she must go.
"Of course, you must go, Matilda!" exclaimed Mrs. De Peyster. Then the
significance to her of Matilda's absence flashed upon her. "But what
will I do without any company at all?" she cried. "And without any
food?"
"I've seen to the food, ma'am." And Matilda explained that during the
evening, in preparation for her going, she had been smuggling into the
house from Sixth Avenue delicatessen stores boxes of crackers, cold
meats, all varieties of canned goods--"enough to last you for a month,
ma'am, and by that time I'll be back."
Her explanation made, Matilda proceeded, with extremest caution,
to carry the provisions up and stack them in one corner of Mrs. De
Peyster's large, white-tiled bathroom. When the freightage was over,
the bathroom, with its supply of crackers and zweibach, its bottles
of olives and pickles, its cold tongue, cold roast beef, cold chicken,
its cans of salmon, sardines, deviled ham, California peaches, and
condensed milk--the bathroom was itself a delicatessen shop that many
an ambitious young German would have regarded as a proud start in
life.
"But what about food for the others while you're gone?" inquired Mrs.
De Peyster--with a sudden hope that the others would be starved into
leaving.
"I've attended to them, ma'am. I've bought a lot of things that will
keep. And then I told the tradespeople that my niece was going to be
here in my place, and they are to deliver milk and other fresh things
for her every day in care of William."
Matilda broke down at the last moment.
"If it wasn't for you, ma'am, I wouldn't care if it was me that
was sick, instead of my sister, and if I never got well. For with
William--"
She could say no more, and departed adrip with tears.
Matilda's nightly visits were a loss; but Mrs. De Peyster had come
to take her situation more and more philosophically. The life was
unspeakably tedious, to be sure, and rather dangerous, too; but she
had accepted the predicament--it had to be endured and could not be
helped; and such a state of mind made her circumstances much easier
to support. All in all, there was no reason, though, of course, it
was most uncomfortable--there was no good reason, she kept assuring
herself, why she might not safely withstand the siege and come out of
the affair with none but her two confidants being the wiser.
In this philosophic mood three more days passed--passed slowly
and tediously, to be sure, but yet they did get by. There were
relaxations, of course,--things to occupy her mind. She read a little
each day; she listened to Mary's concert in the drawing-room below
her--for Mary dared to continue playing despite Matilda's absence,
since it was known that Matilda's niece was in the house, though Mary
never showed her face; she listened for snatches of the conversation
of Jack and Mary and Mr. Pyecroft when they passed her door; at times
she stood upon a chair at one of her windows and cautiously peered
through the little panes in her shutters, like the lens of a camera,
down into the sunny green of Washington Square.
Also, of evenings, she found herself straining to hear the voice of
Judge Harvey. When she surprised herself at this, she would flush
slightly, and again raise her book close to her shaded candle.
Then, of course, her meals were a diversion. She became quite expert
with the can-opener and the corkscrew. The empty cans, since there was
no way to get them out of her suite, she stacked on the side of the
bathroom opposite her provisions; and daily the stack grew higher.
The nearest approach to an incident during this solitary period came
to pass on the third night after Matilda's departure. On that evening
Mrs. De Peyster became aware of a new voice in the house--a voice with
a French accent. It seemed familiar, yet for a time she was puzzled as
to the identity of the voice's owner. Then suddenly she knew: the man
below was M. Dubois, whom Olivetta, at her desire, had with unwilling
but obedient frostiness sent about his business. She had known that
Jack had taken up with M. Dubois at the time the artist was doing
her portrait; but she had not known that Jack was so intimate as the
artist's being admitted to Jack's secret seemed to indicate.
Within herself, some formless, incomprehensible thing seemed about
to happen. During these days of solitude--and this, too, even before
Matilda had gone--a queer new something had begun to stir within
her, almost as though threatening an eruption. It seemed a force, or
spirit, rising darkly from hitherto unknown spaces of her being. It
frightened her, with its amorphous, menacing strangeness. She tried to
keep it down. She tried to keep her mental eyes away from it. And so,
during all these days, she had no idea what the fearsome thing might
be....
And then something did happen. On the fifth day after Matilda's
departure, and the eighteenth after the sailing of the Plutonia, Mrs.
De Peyster observed a sudden change in the atmosphere of the house.
Within an hour, from being filled with honeymoon hilarity, the house
became filled with gloom. There was no more laughter--no more running
up and down the stairs and through the hallways--the piano's song was
silent. Mrs. De Peyster sought to gain some clue to this mysterious
change by listening for the talk of Mary and Jack and Mr. Pyecroft
as they passed her door. But whereas the trio had heretofore spoken
freely and often in liveliest tones, they now were either wordless or
their voices were solemnly hushed.
What did it mean? Days passed--the solemn gloom continued
unabated--and this question grew an ever more puzzling mystery to Mrs.
De Peyster. What could it possibly, _possibly_, mean?
But there was no way in which she could find out. Her only source of
information was Matilda, and Matilda was gone for a month; and even if
Matilda, by any chance, should know what was the matter, she would not
dare write; and even if she wrote, the letter, of course, would never
be delivered, but would doubtless be forwarded to the pretended Mrs.
De Peyster in Europe. Mrs. De Peyster could only wonder--and read--and
gaze furtively out of the little peep-holes of her prison--and
eat--and stack the empty cans yet higher in her bathroom--and
wait, impatiently wait, while the mystery grew daily and hourly in
magnitude.
Among the details that added to the mystery's bulk was the sound
of another new but familiar voice--the voice of the competent Miss
Gardner, her discharged secretary. And Miss Gardner's voice was not
heard for an hour and then heard no more--but was heard day after
day, and her tone was the tone of a person who is acquainted with the
management of an establishment and who is giving necessary orders.
And another detail was that William no longer kept to the stable, but
seemed now constantly busy within the house. And another detail was
that she became aware that Jack and Mary no longer tried to keep their
presence in the house a secret, but went openly forth into the streets
together. And Judge Harvey every day came openly to see them.
But the most bewildering, and yet most clarifying, detail of all
was one she observed on the twelfth day since Matilda's going, the
twenty-fifth of her own official absence.
On that afternoon she was standing on a chair entertaining herself
by gazing through one of her shutters, when she saw Jack crossing
Washington Square. He was walking very soberly, and about the left
sleeve of a quiet gray summer suit was a band of crape.
Mrs. De Peyster stepped down from her chair. The mystery was lifting.
Somebody was dead! But who? Who?
Early the next morning, while the inmates of the house were occupied
in the serving or the eating of breakfast, Mrs. De Peyster was
startled by a soft knocking at her door. But instantly she was
reassured by the tremulous accents without.
"It's me, ma'am,--Matilda. Let me in--quick!"
The next instant the door opened and Matilda half staggered, half
fell, into the room. But such a Matilda! Shivering all over, eyes
wildly staring.
"What is it?" cried Mrs. De Peyster, seizing her housekeeper's arm.
"Oh, ma--ma--ma'am," chattered Matilda. "It's--it's awful!"
"But what is it?" demanded Mrs. De Peyster, beginning to tremble with
an unknown terror.
"Oh, it's--it's awful! I couldn't get you word before--for I didn't
dare write, and my sister wasn't well enough for me to leave her till
last night."
Mrs. De Peyster shook the shaking Matilda.
"Will you please tell me what's happened!"
"Yes, ma--ma'am. Here's a copy of the first paper that had anything
about it. The paper's over a week old. I brought it along to--to break
the thing to you gently."
Mrs. De Peyster seized the newspaper. In the center of its first page
was a reproduction of M. Dubois's painting of herself, and across the
paper's top ran the giant headline:--
MRS. DE PEYSTER FOUND
DEAD IN THE SEINE
_Face Disfigured by Water, but
Friends in Paris Identify Social
Leader by Clothes upon
the Body_
Mrs. De Peyster sank without a word into a chair, and her face
duplicated the ashen hue of Matilda's.
Matilda likewise collapsed into a chair. "Oh, isn't it awful, ma'am,"
she moaned.
"So--so it's I--that's--that's dead!" mumbled Mrs. De Peyster.
"Yes, ma'am. But that isn't all. I--I thought I'd break it to you
gently. That was over a week ago. Since then--"
"You mean," breathed the marble lips of Mrs. De Peyster, "that there's
something more?"
"Yes, ma'am. Oh, the papers have been full of it. It's been a
tremendous sensation!"
"Oh!" gasped Mrs. De Peyster.
"And Mr. Jack, since you died without a will, is your heir. And, since
he is now the head of the De Peyster family, the first thing he did on
hearing the news was to arrange by cable to have your body sent here."
Mrs. De Peyster, as though galvanized, half rose from her chair.
"You mean--my body--is coming here?"
"I said I was trying to break it to you gently," moaned Matilda.
"It's--it's already here. The ship that brought it is now docking.
Your funeral--"
"My funeral!"
"It takes place in the drawing-room, this morning. Oh, isn't it awful!
But, perhaps, ma'am, if you could see what beautiful flowers your
friends have sent--"
But Mrs. De Peyster had very softly sunk back into her chair.
[Illustration: "SO--SO IT'S I--THAT'S--THAT'S DEAD!"]