The Mayor's Wife Part 8

"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. I recalled Mayor Packard's fears and began to suspect that they were not groundless.

This called for action, and I was about to open my 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 pa.s.ses 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.

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 in the circ.u.mstances, 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 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 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.

Half-past three.

Waiting till she was well down the second flight, I pushed my door ajar and, flying down the hall, peered over the bal.u.s.trade in time to see her entering her 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 of 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. Relieved that she had not left the house, I was still anxious as to the cause of her strange conduct.

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, 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 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. I thought it must have been either Mr. Steele or Nixon, the butler, but each denied it. There was no one else in this part of the house."

"Mrs. Packard is very sensitive just now," he remarked. Then as he turned away toward the library door: "I will throw myself on a lounge. I have but an hour or two before me, as I have my preparations to make for leaving town on the early morning train. I shall have some final instructions to give you."

CHAPTER VIII. THE PARAGRAPH

I was up betimes. Would Mrs. Packard appear at breakfast? I hardly thought so. Yet who knows? Such women have great recuperative powers, and from one so mysteriously affected anything might be expected.

Ready at eight, I hastened down to the second floor to find the lady, concerning whom I had had these doubts, awaiting me on the threshold of her room. She was carefully dressed and looked pale enough to have been up for hours. An envelope 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. He said that he had but a short time in which to rest, and would take what sleep he could get on the lounge, when I told him of your very natural nervous attack."

She sighed--a sigh which came from no inconsiderable depths--then with a proud and resolute gesture preceded me down-stairs.

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 pa.s.sing bravely forward, when Nixon's gray head protruded from the doorway and I heard him say:

"There's company for breakfast, ma'am. His Honor could not spare Mr.

Steele and asked me to set a place for him."

I noted a momentary hesitation on Mrs. Packard's part, then she silently acquiesced and we both pa.s.sed on. In another instant we were receiving the greetings and apologies of the gentlemen. If Mr. Steele had expected that his employer's wife would offer him her hand, he was disappointed.

"I am happy to welcome one who has proved so useful to my husband," she remarked with cool though careful courtesy as we all sat down at the table; and, without waiting for an answer, she proceeded to pour the coffee with a proud grace which gave no hint of the extreme feeling by which I had seen her moved the night before.

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 by his respectful but affable secretary. I noticed, however, that she ate little.

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. I was about to leave the table unenlightened, however, when Mrs. Packard rose and, drawing a letter from under the tray before which she sat, let her glances pa.s.s from one gentleman to the other with a look of decided inquiry. I drew in my breath and by dropping my handkerchief sought an excuse for lingering in the room an instant longer.

"Will--may I ask one of you," she stammered with her first show of embarra.s.sment during the meal, "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. As Mr. Steele received it he gave it the casual glance natural under the circ.u.mstances,--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 gaiety 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.

"Pardon my carelessness," she said. "I must have caught up a scrawl of the baby's in taking this from my desk."

She brought forward a letter and ended the whole remarkable episode by handing it now to her husband, who, with an apologetic glance at the other, put it in his pocket.

I say remarkable; for in the folded slip which had pa.s.sed 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.

If Mayor Packard saw anything unusual in his wife's action he made no mention of it when I went into his study at nine o'clock. And it was so much of an enigma to me that I was not ready to venture a question regarding it.

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 I 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 something 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 true wife."