No. 13 Washington Square Part 41

At two o'clock of the fifth night Matilda stole into Mrs. De Peyster with a face that would have been an apt cover for the Book of Lamentations. She opened her pages. That day she had had a telegram that her sister Angelica--the really and truly Angelica, who really and truly lived near Syracuse--that Angelica was seriously ill. She was sorry, but she felt that she must go.

"Of course, you must go, Matilda!" exclaimed Mrs. De Peyster. Then the significance to her of Matilda's absence flashed upon her. "But what will I do without any company at all?" she cried. "And without any food?"

"I've seen to the food, ma'am." And Matilda explained that during the evening, in preparation for her going, she had been smuggling into the house from Sixth Avenue delicatessen stores boxes of crackers, cold meats, all varieties of canned goods--"enough to last you for a month, ma'am, and by that time I'll be back."

Her explanation made, Matilda proceeded, with extremest caution, to carry the provisions up and stack them in one corner of Mrs. De Peyster's large, white-tiled bathroom. When the freightage was over, the bathroom, with its supply of crackers and zweibach, its bottles of olives and pickles, its cold tongue, cold roast beef, cold chicken, its cans of salmon, sardines, deviled ham, California peaches, and condensed milk--the bathroom was itself a delicatessen shop that many an ambitious young German would have regarded as a proud start in life.

"But what about food for the others while you're gone?" inquired Mrs.

De Peyster--with a sudden hope that the others would be starved into leaving.

"I've attended to them, ma'am. I've bought a lot of things that will keep. And then I told the tradespeople that my niece was going to be here in my place, and they are to deliver milk and other fresh things for her every day in care of William."

Matilda broke down at the last moment.

"If it wasn't for you, ma'am, I wouldn't care if it was me that was sick, instead of my sister, and if I never got well. For with William--"

She could say no more, and departed adrip with tears.

Matilda's nightly visits were a loss; but Mrs. De Peyster had come to take her situation more and more philosophically. The life was unspeakably tedious, to be sure, and rather dangerous, too; but she had accepted the predicament--it had to be endured and could not be helped; and such a state of mind made her circ.u.mstances much easier to support. All in all, there was no reason, though, of course, it was most uncomfortable--there was no good reason, she kept a.s.suring herself, why she might not safely withstand the siege and come out of the affair with none but her two confidants being the wiser.

In this philosophic mood three more days pa.s.sed--pa.s.sed slowly and tediously, to be sure, but yet they did get by. There were relaxations, of course,--things to occupy her mind. She read a little each day; she listened to Mary's concert in the drawing-room below her--for Mary dared to continue playing despite Matilda's absence, since it was known that Matilda's niece was in the house, though Mary never showed her face; she listened for s.n.a.t.c.hes of the conversation of Jack and Mary and Mr. Pyecroft when they pa.s.sed her door; at times she stood upon a chair at one of her windows and cautiously peered through the little panes in her shutters, like the lens of a camera, down into the sunny green of Washington Square.

Also, of evenings, she found herself straining to hear the voice of Judge Harvey. When she surprised herself at this, she would flush slightly, and again raise her book close to her shaded candle.

Then, of course, her meals were a diversion. She became quite expert with the can-opener and the corkscrew. The empty cans, since there was no way to get them out of her suite, she stacked on the side of the bathroom opposite her provisions; and daily the stack grew higher.

The nearest approach to an incident during this solitary period came to pa.s.s on the third night after Matilda's departure. On that evening Mrs. De Peyster became aware of a new voice in the house--a voice with a French accent. It seemed familiar, yet for a time she was puzzled as to the ident.i.ty of the voice's owner. Then suddenly she knew: the man below was M. Dubois, whom Olivetta, at her desire, had with unwilling but obedient frostiness sent about his business. She had known that Jack had taken up with M. Dubois at the time the artist was doing her portrait; but she had not known that Jack was so intimate as the artist's being admitted to Jack's secret seemed to indicate.

Within herself, some formless, incomprehensible thing seemed about to happen. During these days of solitude--and this, too, even before Matilda had gone--a queer new something had begun to stir within her, almost as though threatening an eruption. It seemed a force, or spirit, rising darkly from hitherto unknown s.p.a.ces of her being. It frightened her, with its amorphous, menacing strangeness. She tried to keep it down. She tried to keep her mental eyes away from it. And so, during all these days, she had no idea what the fearsome thing might be....

And then something did happen. On the fifth day after Matilda's departure, and the eighteenth after the sailing of the Plutonia, Mrs.

De Peyster observed a sudden change in the atmosphere of the house.

Within an hour, from being filled with honeymoon hilarity, the house became filled with gloom. There was no more laughter--no more running up and down the stairs and through the hallways--the piano's song was silent. Mrs. De Peyster sought to gain some clue to this mysterious change by listening for the talk of Mary and Jack and Mr. Pyecroft as they pa.s.sed her door. But whereas the trio had heretofore spoken freely and often in liveliest tones, they now were either wordless or their voices were solemnly hushed.

What did it mean? Days pa.s.sed--the solemn gloom continued unabated--and this question grew an ever more puzzling mystery to Mrs.

De Peyster. What could it possibly, _possibly_, mean?

But there was no way in which she could find out. Her only source of information was Matilda, and Matilda was gone for a month; and even if Matilda, by any chance, should know what was the matter, she would not dare write; and even if she wrote, the letter, of course, would never be delivered, but would doubtless be forwarded to the pretended Mrs.

De Peyster in Europe. Mrs. De Peyster could only wonder--and read--and gaze furtively out of the little peep-holes of her prison--and eat--and stack the empty cans yet higher in her bathroom--and wait, impatiently wait, while the mystery grew daily and hourly in magnitude.

Among the details that added to the mystery's bulk was the sound of another new but familiar voice--the voice of the competent Miss Gardner, her discharged secretary. And Miss Gardner's voice was not heard for an hour and then heard no more--but was heard day after day, and her tone was the tone of a person who is acquainted with the management of an establishment and who is giving necessary orders.

And another detail was that William no longer kept to the stable, but seemed now constantly busy within the house. And another detail was that she became aware that Jack and Mary no longer tried to keep their presence in the house a secret, but went openly forth into the streets together. And Judge Harvey every day came openly to see them.

But the most bewildering, and yet most clarifying, detail of all was one she observed on the twelfth day since Matilda's going, the twenty-fifth of her own official absence.

On that afternoon she was standing on a chair entertaining herself by gazing through one of her shutters, when she saw Jack crossing Washington Square. He was walking very soberly, and about the left sleeve of a quiet gray summer suit was a band of c.r.a.pe.

Mrs. De Peyster stepped down from her chair. The mystery was lifting.

Somebody was dead! But who? Who?

Early the next morning, while the inmates of the house were occupied in the serving or the eating of breakfast, Mrs. De Peyster was startled by a soft knocking at her door. But instantly she was rea.s.sured by the tremulous accents without.

"It's me, ma'am,--Matilda. Let me in--quick!"

The next instant the door opened and Matilda half staggered, half fell, into the room. But such a Matilda! Shivering all over, eyes wildly staring.

"What is it?" cried Mrs. De Peyster, seizing her housekeeper's arm.

"Oh, ma--ma--ma'am," chattered Matilda. "It's--it's awful!"

"But what is it?" demanded Mrs. De Peyster, beginning to tremble with an unknown terror.

"Oh, it's--it's awful! I couldn't get you word before--for I didn't dare write, and my sister wasn't well enough for me to leave her till last night."

Mrs. De Peyster shook the shaking Matilda.

"Will you please tell me what's happened!"

"Yes, ma--ma'am. Here's a copy of the first paper that had anything about it. The paper's over a week old. I brought it along to--to break the thing to you gently."

Mrs. De Peyster seized the newspaper. In the center of its first page was a reproduction of M. Dubois's painting of herself, and across the paper's top ran the giant headline:--

MRS. DE PEYSTER FOUND DEAD IN THE SEINE

_Face Disfigured by Water, but Friends in Paris Identify Social Leader by Clothes upon the Body_

Mrs. De Peyster sank without a word into a chair, and her face duplicated the ashen hue of Matilda's.

Matilda likewise collapsed into a chair. "Oh, isn't it awful, ma'am,"

she moaned.

"So--so it's I--that's--that's dead!" mumbled Mrs. De Peyster.

"Yes, ma'am. But that isn't all. I--I thought I'd break it to you gently. That was over a week ago. Since then--"

"You mean," breathed the marble lips of Mrs. De Peyster, "that there's something more?"

"Yes, ma'am. Oh, the papers have been full of it. It's been a tremendous sensation!"

"Oh!" gasped Mrs. De Peyster.

"And Mr. Jack, since you died without a will, is your heir. And, since he is now the head of the De Peyster family, the first thing he did on hearing the news was to arrange by cable to have your body sent here."

Mrs. De Peyster, as though galvanized, half rose from her chair.

"You mean--my body--is coming here?"