Books: The Mayor\'s Wife
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Anna Katherine Green >> The Mayor\'s Wife
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"On the window directly facing his bed."
"Gazing at what?"
"Sky--no, the walls of our house."
"Be more definite; at the old side door through which he could see
the closet shelves where this old tureen stood. During the time
you had been gone, he had realized his sinking condition, and,
afraid of the nurse he saw advancing down the street, summoned all
his strength and rushed with his treasure across the alley-way and
put it in the first hiding-place his poor old eyes fell on. He may
have been going to give it to you; but you had company, you
remember, in here, and he may have heard voices. Anyhow, we know
that he put it in the tureen because--" here I lifted the
lid--"because--" I was almost as excited and trembling and beside
myself as they were--"because it is here now."
They looked, then gazed in each other's face and bowed their heads.
Silence alone could express the emotion of that moment. Then with
a burst of inarticulate cries, Miss Charity rose and solemnly began
dancing up and down the great room. Her sister looked on with
grave disapproval till the actual nature of the find made its way
into her bewildered mind, then she reached over and plunged her
hand into the tureen and drew out the five bonds which she clutched
first to her breast and then began proudly to unfold.
"Fifty thousand dollars!" she exclaimed. "We are rich women from
to-day," and as she said it I saw the shrewdness creep beck into
her eyes and the long powerful features take on the expressive
character which they had so pitifully lacked up to the moment. I
realized that I had been the witness of a miracle. The reason,
shattered, or, let us say, disturbed by one shock, had been
restored by another. The real Miss Thankful stood before me.
Meanwhile the weaker sister, dancing still, was uttering jubilant
murmurs to which her feet kept time with almost startling
precision. But as the other let the words I have recorded here
leave her lips, she came to a sudden standstill and approaching her
lips to Miss Thankful's ear said joyfully:
"We must tell--oh," she hastily interpolated as she caught her
sister's eyes and followed the direction of her pointing finger,
"we have not thanked our little friend, our good little friend who
has done us such an inestimable service." I felt her quivering
arms fall round my neck, as Miss Thankful removed the tureen and in
words both reasonable and kind expressed the unbounded gratitude
which she herself felt.
"How came you to think? How came you to care enough to think?"
fell from her lips as she kissed me on the forehead. "You are a
jewel, little Miss Saunders, and some day--"
But I need not relate all that she said or all the extravagant
things Miss Charity did, or even my own delight, so much greater
even than any I had anticipated, when I first saw this possible
ending of my suddenly inspired idea. However, Miss Thankful's
words as we parted at the door struck me as strange, showing that
it would be a little while yet before the full balance of her mind
was restored.
"Tell everybody," she cried; "tell Mrs. Packard and all who live in
the house; but keep it secret from the woman who keeps that little
shop. We are afraid of her; she haunts this neighborhood to get at
these very bonds. She was the nurse who cared for my brother, and
it was to escape her greed that he hid this money. If she knew
that we had found these our lives wouldn't be safe. Wait till we
have them in the bank."
"Assuredly. I shall tell no one."
"But you must tell those at home," she smiled; and the beaming
light in her kindled eye followed me the few steps I had to take,
and even into the door.
So Bess had been the old man's nurse'!
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MORNING NEWS
That evening I was made a heroine of by Mrs. Packard and all the
other members of the household. Even Nixon thawed and showed me
his genial side. I had to repeat my story above stairs--and below,
and relate just what the old ladies had done and said, and how they
bore their joy, and whatever I thought they would do with their
money now they had it. When I at last reached my room, my first
act was to pull aside my shade and take a peep at the old attic
window. Miss Charity's face was there, but so smiling and gay I
hardly knew it. She kissed her hand to me as I nodded my head, and
then turned away with her light as if to show me she had only been
waiting to give me this joyous good night.
This was a much better picture to sleep on than the former one had
been.
Next day I settled back into my old groove. Mrs. Packard busied
herself with her embroidery and I read to her or played on the
piano. Happier days seemed approaching, nay, had come. We enjoyed
two days of it, then trouble settled down on us once more.
It began on Friday afternoon. Mrs. Packard and I had been out
making some arrangements for the projected dinner-party and I had
stopped for a minute in the library before going up-stairs.
A pile of mail lay on the table. Running this over with a rapid
hand, she singled out several letters which she began to open.
Their contents seemed far from satisfactory. Exclamation after
exclamation left her lips, her agitation increasing with each one
she read, and her haste, too, till finally it seemed sufficient for
her just to glance at the unfolded sheet before letting it drop.
When the last one had left her hand, she turned and, encountering
my anxious look, bitterly remarked:
"We need not have made those arrangements this morning. Seven
regrets in this mail and two in the early one. Nine regrets in
all! and I sent out only ten invitations. What is the meaning of
it? I begin to feel myself ostracized."
I did not understand it any more than she did.
"Invite others," I suggested, and was sorry for my presumption the
next minute.
Her poor lip trembled.
"I do not dare," she whispered. "Oh, what will Mr. Packard say!
Some one or something is working against us. We have enemies--
enemies, and Mr. Packard will never get his election."
Her trouble was natural and so was her expression of it. Feeling
for her, and all the more that the cause of this concerted action
against her was as much a mystery to me as it was to herself, I
made some attempt to comfort her, which was futile enough, God
knows. She heard my voice, no doubt, but she gave no evidence of
noting what I said. When I had finished--that is, when she no
longer heard me speaking--she let her head droop and presently I
heard her murmur:
"It seems to me that if for any reason he fails to get his election
I shall wish to die."
She was in this state of dejection, with the echo of this sad
sentence in both our ears, when a light tap at the door was
followed by the entrance of Letty, the nurse-maid. She wore an
unusual look of embarrassment and held something crushed in her
hand. Mrs. Packard advanced hurriedly to meet her.
"What is it?" she interrogated sharply, like one expectant of evil
tidings.
"Nothing! that is, not much," stammered the frightened girl,
attempting to thrust her hand behind her back.
But Mrs. Packard was too quick for her.
"You have something there! What is it? Let me see."
The girl's hand moved forward reluctantly. "A paper which I found
pinned to the baby's coat when I took her out of the carriage," she
faltered. "I--I don't know what it means."
Mrs. Packard's eyes opened wide with horror. She seized the paper
and staggered with it to one of the windows. While she looked at
it, I cast a glance at Letty. She was crying, from what looked
like pure fear; but it was the fear of ignorance rather than
duplicity; she appeared as much mystified as ourselves.
Meanwhile I felt, rather than saw, the old shadow settling fast
upon the head of her who an hour before had been so bright. She
had chosen a place where her form could not fail of being more or
less concealed by the curtain, and though I heard the paper rattle
I could not see it or the hand which held it. But the time she
spent over it seemed interminable before I heard her utter a sharp
cry and saw the curtains shake as she clutched them.
It seemed the proper moment to proffer help, but before either
Letty or I could start forward, her command rang out in smothered
but peremptory tones:
"Keep back! I want no one here!" and we stopped, each looking at
the other in very natural consternation. And when, after another
seemingly interminable interval, she finally stepped forth, I noted
a haggard change in her face, and that her coat had been torn open
and even the front of her dress wrenched apart as if she felt
herself suffocating, or as if--but this alternative only suggested
itself to me later and I shall refrain from mentioning it now.
Crossing the floor with a stumbling step, with the paper which had
roused all this indignation still in her hand, she paused before
the now seriously alarmed Letty, and demanded in great excitement:
"Who pinned that paper on my child? You know; you saw it done.
Was it a man or--"
"Oh no, ma'am, no, ma'am," protested the girl. "No man came near
her. It was a woman--a nice-looking woman."
"A woman!"
Mrs. Packard's tone was incredulous. But the girl insisted.
"Yes, ma'am; there was no man there at all. I was on one of the
park benches resting, with the baby in my arms, and this woman
passed by and saw us. She smiled at the baby's ways, and then
stopped and took to talking about her,--how pretty she was and how
little afraid of strangers. I saw no harm in the woman, ma'am, and
let her sit down on the same bench with me for a few minutes. She
must have pinned the paper on the baby's coat then, for it was the
only time anybody was near enough to do it."
Mrs. Packard, with an irrepressible gesture of anger or dismay,
turned and walked back to the window. The movement was a natural
one. Certainly she was excusable for wishing to hide from the girl
the full extent of the agitation into which this misadventure had
thrown her.
"You may go." The words came after a moment of silent suspense.
"Give the baby her supper--I know that you will never let any one
else come so near her again."
Letty probably did not catch the secret anguish hidden in her tone,
but I did, and after the nurse-maid was gone, I waited anxiously
for what Mrs. Packard would say.
It came from the window and conveyed nothing. Would I do so and
so? I forget what her requests were, only that they necessitated
my leaving the room. There seemed no alternative but to obey, yet
I felt loath to leave her and was hesitating near the doorway when
a new interruption occurred. Nixon brought in a telegram, and, as
Mrs. Packard advanced to take it, she threw on the table the slip
of paper which she had been poring over behind the curtains.
As I stepped back at Nixon's entrance I was near the table and the
single glance I gave this paper as it fell showed me that it was
covered with the same Hebrew-like characters of which I already
possessed more than one example. The surprise was acute, but the
opportunity which came with it was one I could not let slip.
Meeting her eye as the door closed on Nixon, I pointed at the
scrawl she had thrown down, and wonderingly asked her if that was
what Letty had found pinned to the baby's coat.
With a surprised start, she paused in her act of opening the
telegram and made a motion as if to repossess herself of this, but
seeming to think better of it she confined herself to giving me a
sharp look.
"Yes," was her curt assent.
I summoned up all my courage, possibly all my powers of acting."
"Why, what is there in unreadable characters like these to alarm
you?"
She forgot her telegram, she forgot everything but that here was a
question she must answer in a way to disarm all suspicion.
"The fact," she accentuated gravely, "that they are unreadable.
What menace may they not contain? I am afraid of them, as I am of
all obscure and mystifying things."
In a flash, at the utterance of these words, I saw, my way to the
fulfillment of the wish which had actuated me from the instant my
eyes had fallen on this paper.
"Do you think it a cipher?" I asked.
"A cipher?"
"I have always been good at puzzles. I wish you would let me see
what I can make out of these rows of broken squares and topsy-turvy
angles. Perhaps I can prove to you that they contain nothing to
alarm you."
The gleam of something almost ferocious sprang into this gentle
woman's eyes. Her lips moved and I expected an angry denial, but
fear kept her back. She did not dare to appear to understand this
paper any better than I did. Besides, she was doubtless conscious
that its secret was not one to yield to any mere puzzle-reader.
She could safely trust it to my curiosity. All this I detected in
her changing expression, before she made the slightest gesture
which allowed me to secure what I felt to be the most valuable
acquisition in the present exigency.
Then she turned to her telegram. It was from her husband, and I
was not prepared for the cry of dismay which left her lips as she
read it, nor for the increased excitement into which she was thrown
by its few and seemingly simple words.
With apparent forgetfulness of what had just occurred--a
forgetfulness which insensibly carried her back to the moment when
she had given me some order which involved my departure from the
room--she impetuously called out over her shoulder which she had
turned on opening her telegram:
"Miss Saunders! Miss Saunders! are you there? Bring me the
morning papers; bring me the morning papers!"
Instantly I remembered that we had not read the papers. Contrary
to our usual habit we had gone about a pressing piece of work
without a glance at any of the three dailies laid to hand in their
usual place on the library table. "They are here on the table," I
replied, wondering as much at the hectic flush which now enlivened
her features as at the extreme paleness that had marked them the
moment before.
"Search them! There is something new in them about me. There must
be. Read Mr. Packard's message."
I took it from her hand; only eight words in all.
Here they are--the marks of separation being mine:
I am coming--libel I know--where is S.
Henry.
"Search the columns," she repeated, as I laid the telegram down.
"Search! Search!"
I hastily obeyed. But it took me some time to find the paragraph
I sought. The certainty that others in the house had read these
papers, if we had not, disturbed me. I recalled certain glances
which I had seen pass between the servants behind Mrs. Packard's
back,--glances which I had barely noted at the time, but which
returned to my mind now with forceful meaning; and if these busy
girls had read, all the town had read--what? Suddenly I found it.
She saw my eyes stop in their hurried scanning and my fingers
clutch the sheet more firmly, and, drawing up behind me, she
attempted to follow with her eyes the words I reluctantly read out.
Here they are, just as they left my trembling lips that day--words
that only the most rabid of opponents could have instigated:
Apropos of the late disgraceful discoveries, by which a woman
of apparent means and unsullied honor has been precipitated from
her proud preeminence as a leader of fashion, how many women,
known and admired to-day, could stand the test of such an inquiry
as she was subjected to? We know one at least, high in position
and aiming at a higher, who, if the merciful veil were withdrawn
which protects the secrets of the heart, would show such a dark
spot in her life, that even the aegis of the greatest power in
the state would be powerless to shield her from the indignation
of those who now speak loudest in her praise.
"A lie!" burst in vehement protest from Mrs. Packard, as I
finished. "A lie like the rest! But oh, the shame of it! a shame
that will kill me." Then suddenly and with a kind of cold horror:
"It is this which has destroyed my social prestige in town. I
understand those nine declinations now. Henry! my poor Henry!"
There was little comfort to offer, but I tried to divert her mind
to the practical aspect of the case by saying:
"What can Mr. Steele be doing? He does not seem to be very
successful in his attempts to carry out the mayor's orders. See! your
husband asks where he is. He can mean no other by the words 'Where is
S--?' He knew that your mind would supply the name."
"Yes."
Her eyes had become fixed; her whole face betrayed a settled
despair. Quickly, violently, she rang the bell.
Nixon appeared.
She advanced hurriedly to meet him.
"Nixon, you have Mr. Steele's address?"
"Yes, Mrs. Packard."
"Then go to it at once. Find Mr. Steele if you can, but if that is
not possible, learn where he has gone and come right back and tell
me. Mr. Packard telegraphs to know where he is. He has not joined
the mayor in C---."
"Yes, Mrs. Packard; the house is not far. I shall be back in
fifteen minutes."
The words were respectful, but the sly glint in his blinking eyes
as he hastened out fixed my thoughts again on this man and the
uncommon attitude he maintained toward the mistress whose behests
he nevertheless flew to obey.
CHAPTER XIX
THE CRY FROM THE STAIRS
I was alone in the library when Nixon returned. He must have seen
Mrs. Packard go up before he left, for he passed by without
stopping, and the next moment I heard his foot on the stairs.
Some impulse made me step into the hall and cast a glance at his
ascending figure. I could see only his back, but there was
something which I did not like in the curve of that back and the
slide of his hand as it moved along the stair-rail.
His was not an open nature at the best. I almost forgot the
importance of his errand in watching the man himself. Had he not
been a servant--but he was, and an old and foolishly fussy one. I
would not imagine follies, only I wished I could follow him into
Mrs. Packard's presence.
His stay, however, was too short for much to have been gained
thereby. Almost immediately he reappeared, shaking his head and
looking very much disturbed, and I was watching his pottering
descent when he was startled, and I was startled, by two cries
which rang out simultaneously from above, one of pain and distress
from the room he had just left, and one expressive of the utmost
glee from the lips of the baby whom the nursemaid was bringing down
from the upper hall.
Appalled by the anguish expressed in the mother's cry, I was
bounding up-stairs when my course was stopped by one of the most
poignant sights it has ever been my lot to witness. Mrs. Packard
had heard her child's laugh, and flying from her room had met the
little one on the threshold of her door and now, crying and
sobbing, was kneeling with the child in her arms in the open space
at the top of the stairs. Her paroxysm of grief, wild and
unconstrained as it was, gave less hint of madness than of
intolerable suffering.
Wondering at an abandonment which bespoke a grief too great for all
further concealment, I glanced again at Nixon. He had paused in
the middle of the staircase and was looking back in a dubious way
denoting hesitation. But as the full force of the tragic scene
above made itself felt in his slow mind, he showed a disposition to
escape and tremblingly continued his descent. He was nearly upon
me when he caught my eye. A glare awoke in his, and seeing his
right arm rise threateningly, I thought he would certainly strike
me. But he slid by without doing so.
What did it mean? Oh, what did it all mean?
CHAPTER XX
EXPLANATION
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!"
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