The Mayor's Wife (Ladies' Home Journal serial)/Part 3
Chapter VII
I WAS still in Mrs. Packard's room, brooding over the enigma offered by the similarity between the account I had just read and the explanation she had given her husband of the mysterious event which had thrown such a cloud over her life, when, moved by some unaccountable influence, I glanced up and saw Nixon standing in the open doorway gazing at me with an uneasy curiosity I was sorry enough to have inspired.
“Mrs. Packard wants you,” he declared with short ceremony. “She's in the library,” and turning on his heel he took his deliberate way down the stairs.
I followed hard after him, and being brisk in my movements was at his back before he was half-way to the bottom. He seemed to resent this, for he turned a baleful look back at me and purposely delayed his steps without giving me the right of way.
“Is Mrs. Packard in a hurry?” I asked. “If so you had better let me pass.”
He gave no appearance of having heard me; his attention had been caught by something going on at the rear of the hall we were now approaching. Following his anxious glance I saw the door of the Mayor's study open and Mrs. Packard come out. As we reached the lower step she passed us on her way to the library. As I turned to join her there I caught a glimpse of the old man's face. It was more puckered, scowling and malignant of aspect than usual. I wondered that Mrs. Packard had not noticed it. Surely it was not the countenance of a mere disgruntled servant. Something not to be seen on the surface was disturbing this old man; and, moving in the shadows as I was, I questioned whether it would not conduce to some explanation between Mrs. Packard and myself if I addressed her on the subject of this old serving-man's peculiar ways and unnatural curiosity.
But the opportunity for doing this did not come that morning. On entering the library I was met by Mrs. Packard with the remark:
“Have you any interest in politics? Do you know anything about them?”
“I have an interest in Mayor Packard's election,” I smilingly assured her; “and I know that in this I represent a great number of my own class in this town if not in the State.”
“You want to see him Governor? You desired this before you came to the house? You believe him to be a good man—the right man for the place?”
“I certainly do, Mrs. Packard.”
“And you represent a large class who feel the same?”
“I think so, Mrs. Packard.”
“I am so glad.” Her tone was almost hysterical. “My heart is set on this election,” she ardently explained. “It means so much this year. My husband is very ambitious. So am I—for him. I would give” there she paused, caught back, as it would seem, by some warning thought. I took advantage of her preoccupation to scrutinize her working features more closely than I had dared to do while she was directly addressing me. I found them set in the stern mould of profound feeling, womanly feeling no doubt, but one actuated by causes tar greater than the subject, serious as it was, apparently called for. She would give
What lay beyond that give? I never knew, for she never finished her sentence.
She suddenly smoothed her brow, and, catching up a piece of embroidery from the table, she sat down with it in her hand.
“A wife is naturally heart and soul with her husband,” she observed, with an assumption of composure which restored some sort of naturalness to the conversation. “You are a thinking person, I see, and, what is more, a conscientious one. There are many, many such in town—many among the men as well as among the women. Do you think—I am in earnest about this—that Mr. Packard's chances could be affected by—by anything that might be said about me? You saw, or heard us say at least, that my name had been mentioned in the morning paper in a way not altogether agreeable to us. It was false, of course, but” She started. The door-bell had rung, and we could hear Nixon in the hall hastening to answer it.
“Miss Saunders,” she hurriedly interposed with a great effort to speak naturally, “I have told Nixon that I wish to speak to Mr. Steele if he comes in this morning. I want to talk to him about what Mr. Packard told him to do. I hesitate to say so, especially to one I have known but a day, but I do not quite like Mr. Steele—not as well as Mr. Packard does, at least. He may show me the utmost respect during this interview, and answer my questions as a gentleman in his position should—and again he may not. Will you be good enough—rather will you show me the great kindness of sitting on that low divan by the fireplace—see! you may have my work to busy yourself with—and if—he may not, you know—if he should show the slightest disposition to transgress in any way, to rise and show yourself?”
Glancing in the direction named, and seeing that I should be concealed so long as I remained seated, I understood the pleading tone in her voice and felt a little grateful for it. Yet she had but demanded what fitted well with my duty. To see and hear how this man would comport himself when believing himself alone with her was what I now found to be the most desirable thing possible; and, assured by the sounds in the hall that it was indeed Mr. Steele who had entered, I stifled my pride, and, taking the embroidery from her hand, sat down in the place she had directed. Convinced as I now was that foliage of some kind lay back of an interview which she feared to hold without the support of another's secret presence, I settled myself to listen intently.
The calm, even tones of the gentleman himself, modulated to an expression of utmost deference, were the first to break the silence:
“You wish to see me, Mrs. Packard?”
“Yes.” The tremble in this ordinary monosyllable was slight but quite perceptible. “Mr. Packard has given you a task concerning the necessity of which I should be glad to learn your opinion. Do you think it wise to—to probe into such matters? Not that I mean to deter you. You are under Mr. Packard's orders, but—but a word from so experienced a man would be welcome if only to reconcile me to an effort which must lead to the indiscriminate use of my name in quarters where it hurts a woman to imagine it used at all.”
“Who Pinned That Paper on My Child? You Know; You Saw it Done. Was it a Man or'”
This with her eyes on his face. Of this I felt sure. Her tone was much too level for her not to be looking directly at him. His tone, when he answered, was as cool and deferentially polite as was to be expected from a man chosen by Mayor Packard for his private secretary.
“Mrs. Packard, your fears are very natural. A woman shrinks from such inquiries, even when sustained by the consciousness that nothing can rob her name of its deserved honor. But if we let one innuendo pass how can we prevent a second? The man who did this thing should be punished. In this I agree with Mayor Packard.”
She stirred impulsively. I could hear the rustle of her dress as she moved.
“You are honest with me?” she urged. “You do agree with Mr. Packard in this?”
His answer was firm, straightforward, and, so far as I could judge, free from any objectionable feature.
“I certainly do, Mrs. Packard.”
“You are desirous that Mr. Packard should win in this election?”
“I am his secretary, and was largely instrumental in securing his nomination for Governor,” was the reply.
There was a pause; how filled, I would have given half my expected salary to know. Then I heard her ask him the very question she had asked me:
“Do you think that in the event of your not succeeding in forcing an apology from the man who inserted that objectionable paragraph against myself—that—that such hints of something being wrong with myself may affect Mr. Packard's chances—lose him votes, I mean? Will the husband suffer because of some imagined lack in his wife?”
“One cannot say.” The man seemed to weigh his words carefully. “No real admirer of the Mayor would go over to the enemy from any such cause as that. Only the doubtful, the half-hearted—those who are ready to grasp at any excuse for voting with the other party—would allow a consideration of the Mayor's social relations to interfere with their confidence in him as a public officer.”
“But these”—how I wish I could have seen her face!—“these half-hearted votes, these easily stifled convictions, are what make majorities,” she stammered.
Mr. Steele may have bowed; he probably did, for she went on confidently and with a certain authority not observable in the tone of her previous remarks: “You are right. The paragraph reflecting on me must be traced to its source. After what you have just said I have no fear of an unfortunate result. The lie must be met and grappled with. I was not well last week and showed it, but I am perfectly well to-day, and am resolved to show that, too. No skeleton hangs in the Packard closet. I am a happy wife and a happy mother. Let them come here and see. This morning I shall issue invitations for a dinner to be given the first night you can assure me Mr. Packard will be at home. Do you know of any such night?”
“On Friday of next week I know he has no speech to make.”
“Very well. When you see him tell him to leave that evening free. And, Mr. Steele, if you will be so good, give me the names of some of those half-hearted ones—critical people who have to see in order to believe. I shall have them at my table. I shall let them see that the shadow which enveloped me was ephemeral, that a woman can rise above all weakness in the support of a husband she loves and honors as I do Mr. Packard.”
She must have looked majestic. Her voice, thrilling with anticipated triumph, rang through the room, awakening echoes which surely must have touched the heart of this man if, as she had almost intimated to me, he cherished an unwelcome admiration for herself.
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,” returned Mr. Steele. “I can give you three names now: those of Judge Whittaker, Mr. Dumont, the lawyer, and the two Littells, 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; said 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 long-unused piano and was singing gayly, 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 revulsion 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:
“Mamma busy; mamma 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 her 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 relief), the child's dimpled with delight at the rapid movement—a lovely picture. The maid waiting in the doorway showed a countenance full of surprise. I took occasion to note her. She was of a useful but perfectly commonplace type; a conscientious nurse—that was all. Mrs. Packard was the first to feel tired. Stopping her busy gyrations she peered around at the baby's face and laughed.
“Was that good?” she asked. “Are you glad to have mamma 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 her 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 the tighter around the mother's neck.
“Mamma, dear!” she cried; “mamma, dear!” and the tender emphasis on the endearing word completed the charm. Tears sprang to Mrs. Packard's eyes, and it was with difficulty 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 gayly suggested, and turned toward her desk.
Chapter VIII
THAT afternoon as I passed Ellen in the hall she whispered softly:
“I have just been unpacking Mrs. Packard's bag and putting everything back into place. She told me she had packed it in readiness to go with Mayor Packard if he asked her to at the last minute.”
I doubted this final statement, but the fact that this bag had been unpacked gave me great relief. I began to look forward with much pleasure to a night of unbroken rest.
I was more fortunate even than I anticipated. I had three; then trouble settled down upon us once more.
It began on a Friday afternoon. Mrs. Packard and I had been out making some arrangements for the projected dinner-party, and both she and I had stopped for a minute in the library before going upstairs.
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 only sent out ten invitations. What is the meaning of it?”
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 some thing 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 Betty, the nursemaid. 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 wee 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 in horror. She seized the paper and staggered with it to one of the windows. While she looked at it I cast a glance at Betty. 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 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 nor 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 under her clutch.
It seemed the proper moment to proffer help, but before either Betty or myself 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, also that her coat had been torn open and even the front of her dress wrenched apart, as if she had felt herself suffocating or as if But this latter possibility did not suggest itself to me until later, and I shall refrain from mentioning it now.
Crossing the floor with a stumbling step, the paper which had roused all this indignation still in her hand, she paused before the now seriously alarmed Betty, 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, the baby in my arms, and this woman, passing by, saw us, and smiling at the baby's ways, 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 to the baby's coat then, for it was the only time anybody was near enough to do it.”
Mrs. Packard, with one 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 this 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 on the part of all of us. “Give the baby her supper—I know that you will never let any one else come so near her again.”
Betty did not catch the secret anguish hidden in her tone, but I did, and after the nursemaid was gone I waited anxiously for what Mrs. Packard would say next.
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 departure from the room. There seemed no alternative but to obey, yet I felt loth to leave her and was hesitating near the doorway when a new interruption occurred. A telegram was brought in, and as she advanced to take it she threw on the table the slip of paper which she had been poring over behind the curtains.
As I had stepped back at Nixon's entrance I was near this table, and the single glance I threw at this paper as it fell showed me that it was covered with those same Hebraic-looking 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 if that was what Betty 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 seemed to think better of it and 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 those 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 topsyturvy 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 eye. 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 slight gesture which allowed me to secure what I felt to be the most valuable acquisition which could come my way in the present exigency.
Then she turned to her telegram. It was from her husband, and I was not prepared for the ejaculation 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.
“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
“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:
“Apropos of the late disgraceful discoveries, by which a woman of apparent means and unsullied honor has been precipitated from her proud preëminence 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 ægis 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 attempt to carry out the Mayor's orders. See! your husband asks where he is. He can mean no other by the words 'Where is' 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 himself 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 will 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 IX
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 minute 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 only see his back, but there was something which I did not like in the curve of that back and the crawling way his hand moved up 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 wish I could have followed 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 little Laura, whom the nursemaid was bringing down from the upper hall.
Appalled by the anguish expressed in the mother's cry I was bounding up the 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 was now kneeling with her in her arms in the open space at the top of the stairs, crying and sobbing over her in a paroxysm of grief which, wild and unconstrained as it was, gave less hint of madness than of extreme and 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 all mean?
CONTINUED IN THE SEPTEMBER JOURNAL