The Mayor's Wife Part 21

"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 embarra.s.sment 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 pa.s.sed 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sent.

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 pa.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 s.h.i.+eld 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: