Books: The Mayor\'s Wife
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Anna Katherine Green >> The Mayor\'s Wife
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She must have looked majestic. Her voice thrilling with
anticipated triumph rang through the room, awaking echoes which
surely must have touched the heart of this man if, as I had
sometimes thought, he cherished an unwelcome admiration for her.
But when he answered, there was no hint in his finely modulated
tones of any chord having been touched in his breast, save the
legitimate one of respectful appreciation of a woman who fulfilled
the expectation of one alive to what is admirable in her sex.
"Your idea is a happy one," said he. "I can give you three names
now. Those of Judge Whittaker, Mr. Dumont, the lawyer, and the two
Mowries, father and son."
"Thank you. I am indebted to you, Mr. Steele, for the patience
with which you have met and answered my doubts."
He made some reply, added something about not seeing her again till
he returned with the mayor, then I heard the door open and quietly
shut. The interview was over, without my having felt called upon to
show myself. An interval of silence, and then I heard her voice.
She had thrown herself down at the piano and was singing gaily,
ecstatically.
Approaching her in undisguised wonder at this new mood, I stood at
her back and listened. I do not suppose she had what is called a
great voice, but the feeling back of it at this moment of reaction
gave it a great quality. The piece--some operatic aria--was sung
in a way to thrill the soul. Opening with a burst, it ended with
low notes of an intense sweetness like sobs, not of grief, but
happiness. In their midst and while the tones sank deepest, a
child's voice rose in the hall and we heard, uttered at the very
door:
"Mama busy; mama sing."
With a cry she sprang from the piano and, bounding to the door,
flung it open and caught her child in her arms.
"Darling! darling! my darling!" she exclaimed in a burst of
mother-rapture, crushing the child to her breast and kissing it
repeatedly.
Then she began to dance, holding the baby in her arms and humming
a waltz. As I stood on one side in my own mood of excited
sympathy, I caught fleeting glimpses of their two faces, as she
went whirling about. Hers was beautiful in her new relief--if it
was a relief--the child's dimpled with delight at the rapid
movement--a lovely picture. Letty, who stood waiting in the
doorway, showed a countenance full of surprise. Mrs. Packard was
the first to feel tired. Stopping her dance, she peered round at
the baby's face and laughed.
"Was that good?" she asked. "Are you glad to have mama merry
again? I am going to be merry all the time now. With such a dear,
dear dearie of a baby, how can I help it?" And whirling about in
my direction, she held up the child for inspection, crying: "Isn't
she a darling! Do you wonder at my happiness?"
Indeed I did not; the sweet baby-face full of glee was
irresistible; so was the pat-pat of the two dimpled hands on her
mother's shoulders. With a longing all women can understand, I
held out my own arms.
"I wonder if she will come to me?" said I.
But though I got a smile, the little hands closed still more
tightly round the mother's neck.
"Mama dear!" she cried, "mama dear!" and the tender emphasis on the
endearing word completed the charm. Tears sprang to Mrs. Packard's
eyes, and it was with difficulty that she passed the clinging child
over to the nurse waiting to take her out.
"That was the happiest moment of my life!" fell unconsciously from
Mrs. Packard's lips as the two disappeared; but presently, meeting
my eyes, she blushed and made haste to remark:
"I certainly did Mr. Steele an arrant injustice. He was very
respectful; I wonder how I ever got the idea he could be anything
else."
Anxious myself about this very fact, I attempted to reply, but she
gave me no opportunity.
"And now for those dinner invitations!" she gaily suggested.
"While I feel like it I must busy myself in making out my list. It
will give me something new to think about."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE TWO WEIRD SISTERS
Ellen seemed to understand my anxiety about Mrs. Packard and to
sympathize with it. That afternoon as I passed her in the hall she
whispered softly:
"I have just been unpacking that bag and putting everything back
into place. She told me she had packed it in readiness to go with
Mr. Packard if he desired it at the last minute."
I doubted this final statement, but the fact that the bag had been
unpacked gave me great relief. I began to look forward with much
pleasure to a night of unbroken rest.
Alas! rest was not for me yet. Relieved as to Mrs. Packard, I
found my mind immediately reverting to the topic which had before
engrossed it, though always before in her connection. The mystery
of the so-called ghosts had been explained, but not the loss of the
bonds, which had driven my poor neighbors mad. This was still a
fruitful subject of thought, though I knew that such well-balanced
and practical minds as Mayor Packard's or Mr. Steele's would have
but little sympathy with the theory ever recurring to me. Could
this money be still in the house?--the possibility of such a fact
worked and worked upon my imagination till I grew as restless as I
had been over the mystery of the ghosts and presently quite as
ready for action.
Possibly the hurried glimpse I had got of Miss Thankful's
countenance a little while before, in the momentary visit she paid
to the attic window at which I had been accustomed to see either
her or her sister constantly sit, inspired me with my present
interest in this old and wearing trouble of theirs and the
condition into which it had thrown their minds. I thought of their
nights of broken rest while they were ransacking the rooms below
and testing over and over the same boards, the same panels for the
secret hiding-place of their lost treasure, of their foolish
attempts to scare away all other intruders, and the racking of
nerve and muscle which must have attended efforts so out of keeping
with their age and infirmities.
It would be natural to regard the whole matter as an hallucination
on their part, to disbelieve in the existence of the bonds, and to
regard Miss Thankful's whole story to Mrs. Packard as the play of
a diseased imagination.
But I could not, would not, carry my own doubts to this extent.
The bonds had been in existence; Miss Thankful had seen them; and
the one question calling for answer now was, whether they had been
long ago found and carried off, or whether they were still within
the reach of the fortunate hand capable of discovering their
hiding-place.
The nurse who, according to Miss Thankful, had wakened such dread
in the dying man's breast as to drive him to the attempt which had
ended in this complete loss of the whole treasure, appeared to me
the chief factor in the first theory. If any one had ever found
these bonds, it was she; how, it was not for me to say, in my
present ignorant state of the events following the reclosing of the
house after this old man's death and burial. But the supposition
of an utter failure on the part of this woman and of every other
subsequent resident of the house to discover this mysterious
hiding-place, wakened in me no real instinct of search. I felt
absolutely and at once that any such effort in my present blind
state of mind would be totally unavailing. The secret trap and the
passage it led to, with all the opportunities they offered for the
concealment of a few folded documents, did not, strange as it may
appear at first blush, suggest the spot where these papers might be
lying hid. The manipulation of the concealed mechanism and the
difficulties attending a descent there, even on the part of a well
man, struck me as precluding all idea of any such solution to this
mystery. Strong as dying men sometimes are in the last flickering
up of life in the speedily dissolving frame, the lowering of this
trap, and, above all, the drawing of it back into place, which I
instinctively felt would be the hardest act of the two, would be
beyond the utmost fire or force conceivable in a dying man. No,
even if he, as a member of the family, knew of this subterranean
retreat, he could not have made use of it. I did not even accept
the possibility sufficiently to approach the place again with this
new inquiry in mind. Yet what a delight lay in the thought of a
possible finding of this old treasure, and the new life which
would follow its restoration to the hands which had once touched
it only to lose it on the instant.
The charm of this idea was still upon me when I woke the next
morning. At breakfast I thought of the bonds, and in the hour
which followed, the work I was doing for Mrs. Packard in the
library was rendered difficult by the constant recurrence of the
one question into my mind: "What would a man in such a position
do with the money he was anxious to protect from the woman he saw
coming and secure to his sister who had just stepped next door?"
When a moment came at last in which I could really indulge in these
intruding thoughts, I leaned back in my chair and tried to
reconstruct the room according to Mrs. Packard's description of
it at that time. I even pulled my chair over to that portion of
the room where his bed had stood, and, choosing the spot where
his head would naturally lie, threw back my own on the reclining
chair I had chosen, and allowed my gaze to wander over the walls
before me in a vague hope of reproducing, in my mind, the ideas
which must have passed through his before he rose and thrust
those papers into their place of concealment. Alas! those walls
were barren of all suggestion, and my eyes went wandering through
the window before me in a vague appeal, when a sudden remembrance
of his last moments struck me sharply and I bounded up with a new
thought, a new idea, which sent me in haste to my room and brought
me down again in hat and jacket. Mrs. Packard had once said that
the ladies next door were pleased to have callers, and advised me
to visit them. I would test her judgment in the matter. Early
though it was, I would present myself at the neighboring door and
see what my reception would be. The discovery I had made in my
unfortunate accident in the old entry way should be my excuse.
Apologies were in order from us to them; I would make these
apologies.
I was prepared to confront poverty in this bare and
comfortless-looking abode of decayed gentility. But I did not
expect quite so many evidences of it as met my eyes as the door
swung slowly open some time after my persistent knock, and I
beheld Miss Charity's meager figure outlined against walls and
a flight of uncarpeted stairs such as I had never seen before
out of a tenement house. I may have dropped my eyes, but I
recovered myself immediately. Marking the slow awakening of
pleasure in the wan old face as she recognized me, I uttered
some apology for my early call and then waited to see if she
would welcome me in.
She not only did so, but did it with such a sudden breaking up of
her rigidity into the pliancy of a naturally hospitable nature,
that my heart was touched, and I followed her into the great bare
apartment, which must have once answered the purposes of a drawing-
room, with very different feelings from those with which I had been
accustomed to look upon her face in the old attic window.
"I should like to see your sister, too," I said, as she hastily,
but with a certain sort of ceremony, too, pushed forward one of the
ancient chairs which stood at long intervals about the room. "I
have not been your neighbor very long, but I should like to pay my
respects to both of you."
I had purposely spoken with the formal precision she had been
accustomed to in her earlier days, and I could see how perceptibly
her self-respect returned at this echo of the past, giving her a
sudden dignity which made me forget for the moment her neglected
appearance.
"I will summon my sister," she returned, disappearing quietly from
the room.
I waited fifteen minutes, then Miss Thankful entered, dressed in
her very best, followed by my first acquaintance in her same gown,
but with a little cap on her head. The cap, despite its faded
ribbons carefully pressed out but with too cold an iron, gave her
an old-time fashionable air which for the moment created the
impression that she might have been a beauty and a belle in her
early days, which I afterward discovered to be true.
It was Miss Thankful, however, who had the personal presence, and
it was she who now expressed their sense of the honor, pushing
forward another chair than that from which I had risen, with the
remark:
"Take this, I pray. Many an honored guest has occupied this seat.
Let us see you in it."
I could detect no difference between the one she offered and the
one in which I had just sat, but I at once stepped forward and took
the chair she proffered. She bowed and Miss Charity bowed, and
then they seated themselves side by side on the hair-cloth sofa,
which was the only other article of furniture in the room.
"We are--we are preparing to move," stammered Miss Charity, a faint
flush tingeing her faded cheeks, as she caught the involuntary
glance I had cast about me.
Miss Thankful bridled and gave her sister a look of open rebuke.
She had, as one could instantly see from her strong features and
purposeful ways, been a woman of decided parts and of strict,
upright character. Weakened as she was, the shadow of an untruth
disturbed her. Her pride ran in a different groove from that of
her once over-complimented, over-fostered sister. She was going to
add a protest in words to that expressed by her gesture, but I
hastily prevented this by coming at once to the point of my errand.
"My excuse for this early call," I said, this time addressing Miss
Thankful, "lies in an adventure which occurred to me yesterday in
the adjoining house." It was painful to see how they both started,
and how they instinctively caught each at the other's hand as they
sat side by side on the sofa, as if only thus they could bear the
shock of what might be coming next. I had to nerve myself to
proceed. "You know, or rather I gather from your kind greetings
that you know that I am at present staying with Mrs. Packard. She
is very kind and we spend many pleasant hours together; but of
course some of the time I have to be alone, and then I try to amuse
myself by looking about at the various interesting things which are
scattered through the house."
A gasp from Miss Charity, a look still more expressive from Miss
Thankful. I hastened to cut their suspense short.
"You know the little cabinet they have placed in the old entrance
pointing this way? Well, I was looking at that when the whim
seized me--I hardly know how--to press one of the knobs in the
molding which runs about the doorway, when instantly everything
gave way under me and I fell into a deep hole which had been
scooped out of the alley-way--nobody knows for what."
A cry and they were on their feet, still holding hands and
endeavoring to show nothing but concern for my disaster.
"Oh, I wasn't hurt," I smiled. "I was frightened, of course, but
not so much as to lose my curiosity. When I got to my feet again,
I looked about in this surprising hole--"
"It was our uncle's way of reaching his winecellar," Miss Thankful
explained with great dignity as she and her sister sank back into
their seats. "He had some remarkable old wine, and, as he was
covetous of it, he conceived this way of securing it from
everybody's knowledge but his own. It was a strange way, but he
was a little touched," she added, laying a slow impressive finger
on her forehead, "just a little touched here."
The short, significant glance she cast at Charity as she said this,
and the little smile she gave were to give me to understand that
this weakness had descended in the family. I felt my heart
contract; my self-imposed task was a harder one than I had
anticipated, but I could not shirk it now. "Did this wine-cellar
you mention run all the way to this house?" I lightly inquired. "I
stumbled on a passage leading here, which I thought you ought to
know is now open to any one in Mayor Packard's house. Of course,
it will be closed soon," I hastened to add as Miss Charity
hurriedly rose at her sister's quick look and anxiously left the
room. "Mrs. Packard will see to that."
"Yes, yes, I have no doubt; she's a very good woman, a very fair
woman, don't you think so, Miss--"
"My name is Saunders."
"A very good name. I knew a fine family of that name when I was
younger. There was one of them--his name was Robert--" Here she
rambled on for several minutes as if this topic and no other filled
her whole mind; then, as if suddenly brought back to what started
it, she uttered in sudden anxiety, "You think well of Mrs. Packard?
You have confidence in her?"
I allowed myself to speak with all the enthusiasm she so greedily
desired.
"Indeed I have," I cried. "I think she can be absolutely depended
on to do the right thing every time. You are fortunate in having
such good neighbors at the time of this mishap."
At this minute Miss Charity reentered. Her panting condition, as
well as the unsettled position of the cap on her head, told very
plainly where she had been. Reseating herself, she looked at Miss
Thankful and Miss Thankful looked at her, but no word passed. They
evidently understood each other.
"I'm obliged to Mrs. Packard," now fell from Miss Thankful's lips,
"and to you, too, young lady, for acquainting us with this
accident. The passage we extended ourselves after taking up our
abode in this house. We--we did not see why we should not profit
by our ancestor's old and undiscovered wine-cellar to secure
certain things which were valuable to us."
Her hesitation in uttering this final sentence--a sentence all the
more marked because naturally, she was a very straightforward
person--awoke my doubt and caused me to ask myself what she meant
by this word "secure." Did she mean, as circumstances went to show
and as I had hitherto believed, that they had opened up this
passage for the purpose of a private search in their old home for
the lost valuables they believed to be concealed there? Or had
they, under some temporary suggestion of their disorganized brains,
themselves hidden away among the rafters of this unexplored spot
the treasure they believed lost and now constantly bewailed?
The doubt thus temporarily raised in my mind made me very uneasy
for a moment, but I soon dismissed it and dropping this subject for
the nonce, began to speak of the houses as they now looked and of
the changes which had evidently been made in them since they had
left the one and entered the other.
"I understand," I ventured at last, "that in those days this house
also had a door opening on the alley-way. Where did it lead--do
you mind my asking?--into a room or into a hallway? I am so
interested in old houses."
They did not resent this overt act of curiosity; I had expected
Miss Thankful to, but she didn't. Some recollection connected with
the name of Saunders had softened her heart toward me and made her
regard with indulgence an interest which she might otherwise have
looked upon as intrusive.
"We long ago boarded up that door," she answered. "It was of very
little use to us from our old library."
"It looked into one of the rooms then?" I persisted, but with a
wary gentleness which I felt could not offend.
"No; there is no room there, only a passageway. But it has closets
in it, and we did not like to be seen going to them any time of
day. The door had glass panes in it, you know, just like a window.
It made the relations so intimate with people only a few feet
away."
"Naturally," I cried, "I don't wonder you wanted to shut them off
if you could." Then with a sudden access of interest which I
vainly tried to hide, I thought of the closets and said with a
smile, "The closets were for china, I suppose; old families have so
much china."
Miss Charity nodded, complacency in every feature; but Miss
Thankful thought it more decorous to seem to be indifferent in
this matter.
"Yes, china; old pieces, not very valuable. We gave what we had of
worth to our sister when she married. We keep other things there,
too, but they are not important. We seldom go to those closets
now, so we don't mind the darkness."
"I--I dote on old china," I exclaimed, carefully restraining myself
from appearing unduly curious. "Won't you let me look at it? I
know that it is more valuable than you think. It will make me
happy for the whole day, if you will let me see these old pieces.
They may not look beautiful to you, you are so accustomed to them;
but to me every one must have a history, or a history my
imagination will supply."
Miss Charity looked gently but perceptibly frightened. She shook
her head, saying in her weak, fond tones:
"They are too dusty; we are not such housekeepers as we used to be;
I am ashamed--"
But Miss Thankful's peremptory tones cut her short.
"Miss Saunders will excuse a little dust. We are so occupied," she
explained, with her eye fixed upon me in almost a challenging way,
"that we can afford little time for unnecessary housework. If she
wants to see these old relics of a former day, let her. You,
Charity, lead the way."
I was trembling with gratitude and the hopes I had suppressed, but
I managed to follow the apologetic figure of the humiliated old
lady with a very good grace. As we quitted the room we were in,
through a door at the end leading into the dark passageway, I
thought of the day when, according to Mrs. Packard's story, Miss
Thankful had come running across the alley and through this very
place to astound her sister and nephew in the drawing-room with the
news of the large legacy destined so soon to be theirs. That was
two years ago, and to-day--I proceeded no further with what was in
my mind, for my interest was centered in the closet whose door Miss
Charity had just flung open.
"You see," murmured that lady, "that we haven't anything of
extraordinary interest to show you. Do you want me to hand some of
them down? I don't believe that it will pay you."
I cast a look at the shelves and felt a real disappointment. Not
that the china was of too ordinary a nature to attract, but that
the pieces I saw, and indeed the full contents of the shelves,
failed to include what I was vaguely in search of and had almost
brought my mind into condition to expect.
"Haven't you another closet here?" I faltered. "These pieces are
pretty, but I am sure you have some that are larger and with the
pattern more dispersed--a platter or a vegetable dish."
"No, no," murmured Miss Charity, drawing back as she let the door
slip from her hand. "Really, Thankful,"--this to her sister who
was pulling open another door,--"the look of those shelves is
positively disreputable--all the old things we have had in the house
for years. Don't--"
"Oh, do let me see that old tureen up on the top shelf," I put in.
"I like that."
Miss Thankful's long arm went up, and, despite Miss Charity's
complaint that it was too badly cracked to handle, it was soon down
and placed in my hands. I muttered my thanks, gave utterance to
sundry outbursts of enthusiasm, then with a sudden stopping of my
heart-beats, I lifted the cover and--
"Let me set it down," I gasped, hurriedly replacing the cover. I
was really afraid I should drop it. Miss Thankful took it from me
and rested it on the edge of the lower shelf.
"Why, how you tremble, child!" she cried. "Do you like old
Colonial blue ware as well as that? If you do, you shall have this
piece. Charity, bring a duster, or, better, a damp cloth. You
shall have it, yes, you shall have it."
"Wait!" I could hardly speak. "Don't get a cloth yet. Come with
me back into the parlor, and bring the tureen. I want to see it in
full light."
They looked amazed, but they followed me as I made a dash for the
drawing-room, Miss Thankful with the tureen in her hands. I was
quite Mistress of myself before I faced them again, and, sitting
down, took the tureen on my lap, greatly to Miss Charity's concern
as to the injury it might do my frock.
"There is something I must tell you about myself before I can
accept your gift," I said.
"What can you have to tell us about yourself that could make us
hesitate to bestow upon you such an insignificant piece of old
cracked china?" Miss Thankful asked as I sat looking up at them
with moist eyes and wildly beating heart.
"Only this," I answered. "I know what perhaps you had rather have
had me ignorant of. Mrs. Packard told me about the bonds you lost,
and how you thought them still in the house where your brother
died, though no one has ever been able to find them there. Oh, sit
down," I entreated, as they both turned very pale and looked at
each other in affright. "I don't wonder that you have felt their
loss keenly; I don't wonder that you have done your utmost to
recover them, but what I do wonder at is that you were so sure they
were concealed in the room where he lay that you never thought of
looking elsewhere. Do you remember, Miss Quinlan, where his eyes
were fixed at the moment of death?"
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