The Mayor's Wife (Ladies' Home Journal serial)/Part 2
DRAWN BY F. VAUX WILSON
Chapter IV
I BENT to lift the prostrate form of the unhappy woman who had been placed in my care. As I did so I heard something like a snarl over my shoulder, and, turning, saw the elderly Nixon stretching eager arms toward his mistress, whose fall he had doubtless heard.
“Let me! let me!” he cried.
“We will lift her together,” I rejoined, and though his eyes sparkled irefully he accepted my help and together we carried her into her own room and laid her on a lounge.
Perceiving that she had simply fainted I was not at all alarmed, and went about my efforts to restore her with a calmness that greatly irritated the old man.
“Shall I call Ellen? Shall I call Betty?” he kept crying. “She doesn't breathe; she is white, white. Oh, what will the Mayor say! I will call Betty.”
But I managed to keep him under control and finally succeeded in restoring Mrs. Packard. When the flutter of her eyelids showed that she would soon be conscious I pointed out these signs of life to my uneasy companion and hinted very broadly that the fewer Mrs. Packard found about her on coming to herself the better she would be pleased. His aspect grew quite ferocious at this, and for a moment I almost feared him, but as I continued to urge the necessity of avoiding any fresh cause of agitation in one so weak he gradually and reluctantly withdrew to the hall.
Another moment and Mrs. Packard had started to rise; but on seeing me, and me only, standing before her she fell wearily back, crying in a subdued way, which nevertheless was very intense:
“Don't, don't let him come in—see me—or know. I must be by myself; I must be! Don't you see that I am frightened?”
The word came out with such force I was startled. Leaning over her, with the natural sympathy her condition called for, I asked quietly but firmly:
“Who do you mean by him? There is only one person in the hall, and that is your queer old butler.”
“Hasn't Mr. Packard returned?”
“No, madam.”
“But I thought I saw him looking at me.”
Her eyes were wild, her body shaking with irrepressible agitation.
“You were mistaken. Mayor Packard has yet to come home.”
At this double assurance she sank back, satisfied but still trembling and very white.
“It is Mr. Packard I meant,” she whispered presently. “Stay with me, and when he comes in tell him what will keep him from looking in or speaking to me. Promise!” She was growing wild again. “Promise!”
“I do promise.” At which I felt her hand grasp mine with grateful pressure. “Don't you wish some assistance from me? Your dress—I tried to loosen it, but failed to find the end of the cord. Shall I try again?”
“No, no; that is, I will do it myself.”
I did not see how she could, for her waist was laced up the back, but I saw that she was too eager to have me go to remember this, so I simply asked if she wished me to remain within call.
“No. I am better now. I shall be better yet when quite alone.” Then suddenly: “Who knows of this—this folly of mine?”
“Only Nixon and myself.”
“Then tell Nixon to forget what he has seen. You, I know, will remember only long enough to do for me what I have just asked.”
“Mrs. Packard, you may trust me;” and the earnest, confiding look which for a moment disturbed the melancholy of her large eyes touched me closely as I shut the door between us.
“Now what is the meaning of this mystery?” I asked myself after I had given Nixon his mistress's message and seen him go downstairs, shaking his head and casting every now and then a suspicious glance behind him. “It is not as trivial as it appears. That laugh was tragedy to her, not comedy.”
Now from whose lips had that laugh sprung? The butler denied having even heard it. Was this to be believed? Did not this very denial prove that it was he and no other who had thus shocked the proprieties of this orderly household? It certainly seemed so; yet
I wished that I knew more about the handsome secretary. I wished that fate would give me another opportunity for seeing that gentleman and putting the same direct question to him I had to Nixon.
Scarcely had this thought crossed my mind than a ring at the telephone disturbed the quiet below, and I heard the secretary's voice in reply. A minute after he appeared at the foot of the stairs. His aspect was one of embarrassment, and he peered aloft in a hesitating way as if he hardly knew how to proceed.
Taking advantage of this hesitation I ran softly down to meet him.
“Any message for Mrs. Packard?” I asked.
He looked relieved.
“Yes, from his Honor. The Mayor is unavoidably detained and may not be home till morning.”
“I will tell her.” Then, as he reached for his overcoat, I risked all on one venture and said:
“Excuse me, but was it you we heard laughing downstairs a few minutes ago? Mrs. Packard feared it might be some follower of the girls.”
Pausing in the act of putting on his coat he met my look with an air of some surprise.
“I am not given to laughing,” he remarked, “certainly not when alone.”
“But you heard this laugh?'”
He shook his head. His manner was perfectly courteous, almost cordial.
“If I did it made no impression on my mind. My thoughts are quite bound up in my work.” And with a smile and bow in every way suited to his fine appearance, he took his hat from the rack and left the house.
I drew back more mystified than ever. Which of these two men had told me a lie? One? both? or neither? It was impossible to determine, so I simply had to await the next development.
It came unexpectedly and was of an entirely different nature from any I had anticipated.
DRAWN BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS
“The Mayor Held Out the Journal, and Said, 'Find Out Who Did That'”
I had not retired, not knowing at what moment the Mayor might return or what I might be called upon to do when he did. My room had one window looking out upon a neighboring house, and, happening in an idle moment to approach it, I observed that I was not the only one awake in the house. The light from a room on the second floor poured in a stream on this same neighbor's house, and it took but a moment's consideration for me to decide that the shadow I saw crossing and recrossing this brilliant square was cast by Mrs. Packard moving hastily about her room.
My first impulse was to draw back (that was the lady's impulse), my next, to put out my own light and seat myself at the place of observation thus afforded me. The excuse I gave myself for this was plausible enough. Mrs. Packard had been intrusted to my care and if all were not right with her it was my business to know it.
Accordingly I sat and watched each movement of m mysterious charge as it was outlined on the telltale wall before me, and saw enough in one half-hour to convince me that something very vigorous and purposeful was going on in the room so determinedly closed upon every one, even her own husband.
But what?
The moving silhouette of her figure, which was all that I could see, was not perfect enough in detail for me to determine. She was busy at some hurried occupation which took her from one end of the room to the other, but after watching her shadow for an hour I was no surer than at first as to what that occupation might be. Suddenly the thought came: “She is rummaging bureau drawers and emptying boxes—in other words, packing a bag or trunk.”
Should I be witness to a flight? I thought it very likely, especially when I heard the faint sound of a door opening below, followed by the swish of silken skirts.
This called for action, and I was about to open my own door and rush out when I was deterred by the surprising discovery that the steps I heard were coming up rather than going down, and that in another moment she would be in the hall outside, possibly on her way to the nursery, possibly with the intention of coming to my own room.
Greatly taken aback, I stood with my ear to the door, listening intently. Yes, she has reached the top of the stairs and is stopping—no, she passes the nursery door, she is coming my way. What shall I say to her, how account for my comfortable wrapper and the fact that I have not yet been abed? Had I but locked my door! Could I but lock it now, unseen and unheard, before the nearing step should pause. But the very attempt were folly; no, I must stand my ground and—Ah! the step has paused, but not at my door. There is a third one on this hall, communicating, as I knew, with a covered staircase leading to the attic, and it was at this she stopped, and it was up this staircase she went as warily and softly as its creaking boards would allow; and while I marveled as to what had taken her aloft so late I heard her steps over my head and knew that she had entered the room directly above mine.
Striking a match I consulted my watch. It was just ten minutes to three. Hardly knowing what my duty was under the circumstances I blew out the match and stood listening, while the woman who was such a mystery to all her friends moved about overhead in much the same quick and purposeful way as had put life into her shadow while she was in her own room.
“Packing! Nothing less and nothing more,” was my now definite decision. “That is a trunk she is dragging forward. What a hurry she is in and how little she cares whether or no anybody hears her.”
So little did she care that during the next few minutes of acute attention I distinguished the flinging down of article after article on to the floor, as well as many other movements equally betraying haste or irritation.
Suddenly I heard her give a bound, then the sound of a heavy lid falling, and then, after a minute or two of complete silence, the soft pat, pat of her slippered feet descending the stair.
Halt-past three!
Waiting till she was well down the second flight I pushed my door ajar, and, flying down the hall, peered over the banisters in time to see her entering her own room. She held a lighted candle in her hand, and by its small flame I caught a full glimpse of her figure. To my astonishment and even to my dismay she was still in the gown she had refused to have me unlace, a rich yellow satin in which she must have shone resplendent a few hours before. She had not even removed the jewels from her neck. Whatever had occupied her, whatever had taken her hither and thither through the house, moving furniture out of her way, lifting heavy boxes, opening dust-covered trunks, had been of such moment to her as to make her entirely oblivious to the rich and delicate apparel she thus wantonly sacrificed. But it was not this alone which attracted my attention. In her hand she held a paper, and the sight of that paper and the way she clutched it rather disturbed my late conclusions. Had her errand been one of search rather than of arrangement; and was this crumpled letter the sole result of a half-hour's ransacking in an attic room at the dead of night? I was fain to think so, for in the course of another half-hour her light went out.
Mayor Packard did not come in till daybreak. He found me waiting for him in the lower hall.
“Well?” he eagerly inquired.
“Mrs. Packard is asleep, I hope. A shrill laugh, or something equally disturbing, ringing through the house shortly after her return, gave her a nervous shock, and she begged that she might be left undisturbed till morning.”
He turned from his task of hanging up his overcoat, and gave me a short stare.
“A laugh,” he repeated. “Who could have laughed like that? We are not a very jolly crowd here.”
“I don't know, sir. It was either Mr. Steele or Nixon, the butler. There was no one else in this part of the house.”
The Mayor's shoulders rose. “Mrs. Packard is very sensitive just now,” he remarked. Then as he turned away toward the library door, “I will throw myself down on a lounge. I have but an hour or two of rest before me, as I have my preparations to make for leaving town on the early morning train. Come to my office at nine o'clock, Miss Saunders.”
Chapter V
I WAS up betimes. Ready at eight, I hastened down to find Mrs. Packard awaiting me on the threshold of her room. She was carefully dressed and looked pale enough to have been up for hours. A letter was in her hand, and the smile which hailed my approach was cold and constrained.
“Good-morning,” said she. “Let us go down. Let us go down together. I slept wretchedly and do not feel very strong. When did Mr. Packard come in?”
“Late. He went directly to the library. When I told him of your very natural nervous attack he said that he had but a short time in which to rest and would take what sleep he could get on the lounge.”
She sighed—a sigh which tore its way up from no inconsiderable depths—then with a proud and resolute gesture preceded me downstairs.
Her husband was already in the breakfast-room. I could hear his voice as we turned at the foot of the stairs. Mrs. Packard, hearing it, too, drew herself up still more firmly, and was passing bravely forward when Nixon's head protruded from the doorway and I heard him say:
“There is company for breakfast, ma'am. His Honor could not spare Mr. Steele and asked me to set a place for him.”
His mistress bowed; her hesitation had been but momentary; then we both passed on and in another moment were receiving the greetings and apologies of the gentlemen.
“I am happy to make the acquaintance of one who has proved so useful to my husband,” remarked Mrs. Packard with cool but careful courtesy as we all sat down at the table; and, without waiting for an answer, proceeded to pour the coffee.
Had I known her better I might have found something extremely unnatural in her manner and the very evident restraint she put upon herself through the whole meal; but not having any acquaintance with her ordinary bearing under conditions purely social I was thrown out of my calculations by the cold ease with which she presided at her end of the table, and the set smile with which she greeted all remarks whether volunteered by her husband or his respectful but affable secretary. I noticed, however, that she ate nothing.
Nixon, whom I dared not watch, did not serve with his usual precision. This I perceived from the surprised look cast at him by Mayor Packard on at least two occasions. Though to the ordinary eye a commonplace meal, it had elements of tragedy in it which made the least movement on the part of those engaged in it of real moment to me. When, therefore, Mrs. Packard rose and, drawing a letter from under the tray before which she sat, let her glances pass from one gentleman to the other with a look of decided inquiry, I drew in my breath and paused to pick up my handkerchief when I should have passed from the room.
“Will—may I ask one of you,” she stammered with her first show of embarrassment, “to—to post this letter for me?”
Both gentlemen were standing and both gentlemen reached for it; but it was into the secretary's hand she put it, though her husband's was much the nearer to her. As Mr. Steele received it he gave it the casual glance natural under the circumstances, a glance which instantly, however, took on an air of surprise that ended in a smile.
“Have you not made some mistake?” he asked. “This does not look like a letter.” And he handed her back the paper she had given him.
With an involuntary ingathering of her breath she seemed to wake out of some dream, and looking down at the envelope she held she crushed it in her hand with a little laugh in which I heard the note of real gayety for the first time.
“Pardon me,” she exclaimed, and meeting his amused gaze with one equally expressive, she carelessly added, “I certainly brought a letter down with me.'”
Bowing pleasantly, but with that indefinable air of respect which bespeaks the stranger, he waited while she hastened back to the tray and drew from under it a second paper.
“Excuse my carelessness,” she said. “I must have caught up a scrawl of Laura's in taking this from my desk.”
She brought forward her letter and ended the whole remarkable episode by handing it now to her husband, who, with a glance at the other, put it in his pocket.
I say remarkable, for in the folded slip which had passed back and forth between her and the secretary I saw, or thought I saw, a likeness to the paper she had brought the night before out of the attic.
Mayor Packard made no mention of this affair when I went into his study at nine o'clock. To him it was an episode to be forgotten the moment it was ended.
Her increased spirits and more natural conduct were the theme of the few sentences he addressed me, and while he urged precaution and a continued watch upon his wife he expressed the fondest hope that he should find her fully restored on his return at the end of two weeks.
I encouraged his hopes, and possibly shared them, but changed my mind, as he probably did his, when a few minutes later we met her in the hall hurrying toward us with a newspaper in her hand and a ghastly look on her face.
“See! see! what they have dared to print!” she cried, with a look full of anguish into his bewildered face.
He took the sheet, read and flushed, then suddenly grew white.
“Outrageous!” he exclaimed. Then tenderly, “My poor darling! that they should dare to drag your name into this abominable campaign!”
“And for no reason,” she faltered. “There is nothing wrong with me. You believe that; you are sure of that,” she cried.
I saw the article later; it ran like this:
“Rumor has it that not even our genial Mayor's closet is free from the proverbial skeleton. Mrs. Packard's health is not what it was, and some say that the causes are not purely physical.”
He tried to dissimulate. Putting his arm about her he kissed her fondly and protested with mingled energy and feeling:
“I believe you to be all you should be: a true woman and a true wife.”
Her face lighted and she clung for a moment in passionate delight to his breast; then she caught his look, which was tender but not altogether open, and the shadows fell again as she murmured:
“You are not satisfied. Oh, what do you see—what do others see, that I should be the subject of doubt? Tell me! I can never right myself till I know.”
“I see a troubled face when I should see a happy one,” he answered lightly; then, as she still clung in very evident question to his arm, he observed gravely, “Two weeks ago you were the life of this house, and of every other house into which your duties carried you. Why shouldn't you be the same to-day? Answer me that, dear, and all my doubts will vanish, I assure you.”
“Henry”—drooping her head and lacing her fingers in and out with nervous hesitation—“you will think me very foolish—I know that it will sound foolish, childish even, and utterly ridiculous; but I can explain myself no other way. I have had a frightful experience—here—in my own house—on the spot where I have been so happy, so unthinkingly happy. Henry—do not laugh; it is real, very real, to me—a spectre has taken up its abode in this house.”
Chapter VI
HE DID not laugh; there was too much meaning in her manner.
“A spectre?” her husband repeated.
“Yes.” The tone was one of utter conviction. “I had never believed in such things—never thought about them, but—it was a week ago—in the library—I have not seen a happy moment since”
“My darling.”
“Yes, yes, | know; but imagine! I was sitting reading. I had just come from the nursery, and the memory of Laura's good-night kiss was more in my mind than the story I was finishing, when—oh, I cannot think of it without a shudder!—the page before me seemed to recede and the words fade away in a blue mist; I was conscious of a choking grip at my throat, and looking up beheld the outlines of a form between me and the lamp, which a moment before had been burning brightly. Outlines, Henry: I was conscious of no substance, and the eyes which met mine from that shadowy, blood-curdling something were those of the grave and meant a grave for you or for me. Oh, I know what I say! There was no mistaking their look. As it burned into and through me everything which had given reality to my life faded and seemed as far away and as unsubstantial as a dream. Nor has its power over me gone yet. I go about among you, I eat, I sleep—or try to; I greet men, talk with women, but it is all unreal, all phantasmagoric, even yourself and your love, and oh, God, my baby! What is real and distinctive, an absolute part of me and my life, is that shape from the dead, with its threatening eyes which pierce—pierce”
She was losing her self-control. Her husband, with a touch on her arm, brought her back to the present.
“You speak of a form,” he said, “a shadowy outline. The form of what? A man or a woman?”
“A man! a man!” With the exclamation she seemed to shrink into herself. “Not the form, face and eyes of a man as they usually appear. Hell was in his gaze, and the message he gave (if it was a message) was one of disaster if not death, Do you wonder that my happiness vanished before it? that I cannot be myself since that dreadful day?”
The Mayor was a practical man; he kept close to the subject.
“You saw this form between you and the lighted lamp. How long did it stay there and what became of it?”
“I cannot tell you. One moment it was there and the next it was gone and I found myself staring into vacancy. I seem to be staring there still, waiting for the blow destined to shatter this household.”
“Nonsense! Give me a kiss and fix your thoughts on something more substantial. What we have to fear, and all we have to fear, is that I may lose my election. And that won't kill me, whatever effect it may have on the party.”
“Henry”—her voice had changed to one more natural, so had her manner; the confidence expressed in this outburst, the vitality, the masculine attitude he took were producing their effect—“you don't believe in what I saw or in my fears. Perhaps you are right. I am ready to believe so; I will try and look upon it all asa freak of my imagination if you will promise to forget these dreadful days, and if people, other people, will leave me alone and not print such things about me.”
“I am ready to do my part,” was his glad reply, “and as for the other people you mention, we will soon bring them to book;” and, raising his voice, he called out his secretary's name.
“What are you going to do?” she gasped.
“Give an order,” he explained; then, as the secretary appeared at our end of the hall, the Mayor held out the journal which he had taken from his wife, and, indicating the offensive paragraph, said:
“Find out who did that.”
Mr. Steele, with a surprised look, ran his eyes over the paragraph, knitting his brows as he did so.
“It is calumny,” fell from Mrs. Packard's lips as she watched him.
“Most certainly,” he assented, with an energy which brought a flush of pleasure to the humiliated woman's cheek. “It will detain me two days or more to follow up this matter,” he remarked, with a look of inquiry directed at Mayor Packard.
“Never mind. Two days or a week, it is all one. I had rather lose votes than pass over such an insult. Pin me down the man who has dared attack me through my wife and you will do me the greatest favor one man can show another.”
Mr. Steele bowed.
“I cannot forego the final consultation we had planned to hold on the train. May I ride down with you to the station?”
“Certainly,'” said the Mayor.
Mr. Steele withdrew, after casting a glance of entirely respectful sympathy at the woman who up to this hour had faced the world without a shadow between her and it; and marking the lingering nature of the look with which the Mayor now turned on his wife I followed the secretary's example and left them to enjoy their few last words alone.
Verily the pendulum of events swung wide and fast in this house.
This conclusion was brought back to me with fresh insistence a few minutes later when, on hearing the front door shut, I stepped to the banisters and looked over to see if Mrs. Packard were coming up. She was not, for I saw her go into the library; but plainly on the marble pavement below, just where we had all been standing, in fact, I perceived the piece of paper she had brought with her from the dining-room and had doubtless dropped in the course of the foregoing conversation.
Running down in great haste I picked it up. This scrap of I knew not what, but which had been the occasion of the enigmatic scene I had witnessed at the breakfast-table, necessarily interested me very much, and I could not help giving it a look, and so saw that it was inscribed with Hebraic-looking characters as unlike as possible to the scrawl of a little child.
With no means of knowing whether they were legible or not these characters made a surprising impression upon me, one indeed that was almost photographic.
I also noted that these shapes or characters, of which there were just seven, were written on the face of an empty envelope. This decided any doubts I may have had as to its identity with the paper she had brought down from the attic. That had been a square sheet, which even if folded would fail to enter this long and narrow envelope. The interest which I had felt when I thought the two identical was a false interest. Yet I could not but believe that this scrap had an interest of its own equal to the one with which, under this misapprehension, I had invested it.
Carrying it in to Mrs. Packard I handed it over with the remark that I had found it lying in the hall. She gave it a quick look and me a quick look and tossed it into the grate. As it caught fire and flared up the characters started vividly into view.
This second glimpse of them, added to the one already given me, fixed the whole indelibly in my mind.
Below you will see as close a reproduction of them as can be made by one hand imitating another:
While I watched these cabalistic marks pass from red to black and finally vanish in a wild leap up the chimney, Mrs. Packard remarked:
“I wish I could destroy the memory of all my mistakes as completely as I can that old envelope.”
I did not answer; I was watching the weary droop of her hand over the arm of her chair.
“You are tired, Mrs. Packard,” was my sympathetic observation. “Will you not take a nap? 1 will gladly sit by you and read you to sleep.”
“No, no,” she cried, at once alert and active; “no sleep. Look at that pile of correspondence, half of it on charitable matters. Now that I feel better, now that I have relieved my mind, I must look over my letters and try to take up the old threads again.”
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Possibly. If you will go to my room upstairs I will join you after I have sorted and read my mail.”
I was glad to obey this order. I had a curiosity about her room. It had been the scene of much I did not understand the night before. Should I find any traces there of, that search which had finally ended over my head in the attic?
I was met at the door by the girl I had before seen and liked. She wore a look of dismay which I felt fully accounted for when I looked inside. Disorder reigned from one end of the room to the other, transcending any picture I may have formed in my own mind concerning its probable condition. I am sure that Mrs. Packard must have forgotten all this disarray, or at least had supposed it to have yielded to the efforts of the maid, when she proposed my awaiting her there. Drawers with their contents half on the floor! boxes with their covers off! cupboard doors ajar, and even the closet shelves showing every mark of a frenzied search among them. Her rich gown, soiled to the width of half afoot around the bottom, lay with cut laces and its trimmings in rags, under a chair which had been knocked over and left where it fell. Even her jewels had not been put away, but lay scattered on the dresser. Ellen looked ashamed and, when I retired to the one bare place I saw in the bay of the window, muttered as she plunged to lift one of the great boxes:
“It's as bad as the attic room upstairs. All the trunks have been emptied on to the floor, and one held her best summer dresses. What shall I do? I have a whole morning's work before me.”
“Let me help you,” I proposed, rising with sudden alacrity. My eyes had just fallen on a lady's small desk at my right, also on the floor beneath and around it. Here, there and everywhere, above and below, lay scraps of torn-up paper, and on many, if not on all of them, could be seen the broken squares and inverted angles which had marked so curiously the surface of the envelope Mrs. Packard had handed to Mr. Steele and which I had afterward seen her burn.
“A baby can make a deal of mess,” I remarked, hurriedly collecting these scraps and making a motion of throwing them into the waste-paper basket, but hiding them in my blouse instead.
“The baby! Oh,the baby never did that. Why, look at this!”
“What?” I demanded, hurrying to the closet, where Ellen stood bending over something invisible to me.
“Oh, nothing,” she answered, coming quickly out. But in another moment, her tongue getting the better of her discretion, she blurted out: “Do you suppose Mrs. Packard had any idea of going with the Mayor? Her bag is in there almost packed. 1 was wondering where all her toilet articles were. That accounts” Stopping, she cast a glance around the room which ended in a shake of the head and a shrug. “She needn't have pulled out all her things,” she sharply complained. “Certain, she is a mysterious lady; as queer as she is kind.”
This was a sentiment I could indorse, but I refrained, for just then she tossed on to the table a book which she had just pulled out from under one of the pillows of the bed, and its title had caught my eye. It was: “Eccentricities of Ghosts and Coincidences Suggesting Spiritual Interference.”
Struck forcibly by a coincidence which suggested to me something quite different from spiritual interference, I dropped everything to take up this book. As I did so it opened readily in my hand to a passage which had evidently been very much conned, and I read:
“A book was in my hand, and a strong light was shining on it and on me from a lamp set on a nearby table. The story was interesting and I was following the adventures it was relating, with eager interest, when suddenly the character of the light changed, a mist seemed to pass before my eyes, and on my looking up I saw standing between me and the lamp the figure of a man which vanished as I looked, leaving in my breast an unutterable dread and in my memory the glare of two unearthly eyes whose menace could mean but one thing—death.
“The next day I received news of a fatal accident to my husband.”
I closed the book with very strange thoughts. If Mayor Packard or myself had believed ourselves to have touched the bottom of the mystery absorbing this unhappy household, then Mayor Packard and myself had made a grave mistake.
CONTINUED IN THE AUGUST JOURNAL