The girl, with a renewed flush, cast a deprecatory look at the ma.s.s of faces before her, and, meeting on all sides but one look of intense and growing interest, drew up her neat figure with a relieved air and began a story which I will proceed to transcribe for you in the fewest possible words.
Tuesday morning"s breakfast had been a silent one. There had been a ball the night before at some great place on Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue; but no one spoke of it. Miss Tuttle made some remark about a friend she had met there, but as no one listened to her, she soon stopped and in a little while left the table. Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey sat on, but neither said anything. Finally Mr. Jeffrey rose and, speaking in a voice hardly recognizable, remarked that he had something to say to her, and led the way to their room. Mrs. Jeffrey looked frightened as she followed him; so frightened that it was evident that something very serious had occurred or was about to occur between them. As nothing of this kind had ever happened before, Loretta could not help waiting about till Mr. Jeffrey reappeared; and when he did so and she saw no signs of relief in his face or manner, she watched, with the silly interest of a girl who had nothing else to occupy her mind, to see if he would leave the house in such a mood, and without making peace with his young bride. To her surprise, he did not go out at the usual time, but went to Miss Tuttle"s room, where for a full half-hour he remained closeted with his sister-in-law, talking in excited and unnatural tones. Then he went back for a few minutes to where he had left his wife, in her own boudoir. But he could not have had much to say to her this time, for he presently came out again and ran hastily downstairs and out, almost without stopping to catch up his hat.
As it was Mary"s business, and not the witness", to make Mrs.
Jeffrey"s bed in the morning, Loretta could think of no excuse for approaching her mistress" room at this moment; but later, when letters came, followed by various messages and some visitors, she went more than a dozen times to Mrs. Jeffrey"s door. She was not admitted, nor were her appeals answered, except by a sharp "Go away!"
Nor was Miss Tuttle received any better, though she tried more than once to see her sister, especially as night came on and the hour approached for Mr. Jeffrey"s return. Mrs. Jeffrey was simply determined to remain alone; and when dinner time arrived, and no Mr. Jeffrey, she could be induced to open her door only wide enough to take in the cup of tea which Miss Tuttle insisted upon sending her.
The witness here confessed that she had been very much excited by these unusual proceedings and by the effect which they seemed to have on the lady just mentioned; so she was ready to notice that Mrs. Jeffrey"s hand shook like that of an old and palsied woman when she reached out for the tray.
Gladly would Loretta have caught one glimpse of her face, but it was hidden by the door; nor did Mrs. Jeffrey answer a single one of her questions. She simply closed her door and kept it so till toward midnight, when Miss Tuttle, coming into the hall, ordered the house to be closed for the night. Then the long-shut door softly swung open, but before any one could reach it, it was again pulled to and locked.
The next day brought no relief. Miss Tuttle, who had changed greatly during this unhappy day and night, succeeded no better than before in getting access to her sister, nor could Loretta gain the least word from her mistress till toward the latter part of the afternoon, when that lady, ringing her bell, gave her first order.
"A substantial dinner," she cried; and when Loretta, greatly relieved, brought up the required meal she was astonished to find the door open and herself bidden to enter. The sight which met her eyes staggered her. From one end of the room to the other were signs of great nervous unrest and of terrible suffering. The chairs were pushed into corners as if the wretched bride had tramped the floor in an agony of excitement. Curtains were torn and the piano-cover was hanging half on and half off the open upright, as if she had clutched at it to keep herself from falling. On the floor beneath lay several pieces of broken china,--vases of whose value Mrs. Jeffrey had often spoken, but which, jerked off with the cover, had been left where they fell; while immediately in front of the fireplace lay one of the rugs tossed into a heap, as if she had rolled in it on the floor or used it to smother her cries of pain or anger.
So much for the state in which the witness found the boudoir. The adjoining bed-room was not in much better case, though it was evident that the bed itself had not been lain in since it was made up the day before at breakfast time. By this token Mrs. Jeffrey had not slept the night before, or if she had laid her head anywhere it had been on the rug already spoken of.
These signs of extreme mental suffering, so much more extreme than any Loretta had ever before witnessed, frightened her so that the tray shook in her hand as she set it down on the table among the countless objects Mrs. Jeffrey always had about her. The noise seemed to startle her mistress, who had walked to the window after opening the door, for she wheeled impetuously about and Loretta saw her face. It was as if a blight had pa.s.sed over it. Once gay and animated beyond the power of any one to describe, it had become in twenty-four hours a ghost"s face, with the glare of some awful resolve on it. Or so it would appear from the way Loretta described it. But such girls do not always see correctly, and perhaps all that can be safely stated is that Mrs. Jeffrey was unnaturally pale and had lost her b.u.t.terfly-like way of incessant movement.
Loretta, who was evidently accustomed to seeing her mistress arrayed in brilliant colors and much begemmed, laid great stress on the fact that, though it was on the verge of evening and she was evidently going out, she was dressed in black cloth and without even a diamond or a flower to relieve its severe simplicity. Her hair, too, which was always her pride, was piled in a careless ma.s.s upon her head as if she had tried to arrange it herself and had forgotten what she was doing while her fingers were but half through their work. There was a cloak lying on a chair near which she was standing, and she held a hat in her band; but Loretta saw no gloves. As the maid"s glance and that of her mistress crossed, Mrs. Jeffrey spoke, and the effort she made in doing so naturally frightened the girl still more. "I am going out," were her words. "I may not be home till late--What are you looking at?"
Loretta declared that the words took her by surprise and that she did not know what to say, but managed to cover up her embarra.s.sment by intimating that if her mistress would let her touch up her hair a bit she would make her look more natural.
At this suggestion, Mrs. Jeffrey cast a glance in the gla.s.s and impetuously declared, "It doesn"t matter." But she seemed to think better of it the next minute; for, throwing herself in a chair, she bade the girl to bring a comb, and sat quiet enough, though evidently in a great tremor of haste and impatience, while Loretta combed her hair and put it up in the old way.
But the old way was not as becoming as usual, and Loretta was wondering if she ought to call in Miss Tuttle, when Mrs. Jeffrey jumped to her feet and went over to the table and began to eat with the feverish haste of one who forces himself to take food in spite of hurry and distaste.
This was the moment for Loretta to leave the room; but she did not know how to do so. She felt herself fixed to the spot and stood watching Mrs. Jeffrey till that lady, suddenly becoming conscious of the girl"s presence, turned, and in the midst of the moans which broke unconsciously from her lips, said with a pitiable effort at her old manner:
"Go away, Loretta; I am ill; have been ill for two days. I don"t like people to look at me like that!" Then, as the girl shrank back, added in a breaking voice: "When Mr. Jeffrey comes home--" and said no more for several minutes, during which she clutched her throat with both hands and struggled with herself till she got her voice back and found herself able to repeat: "When Mr. Jeffrey comes,--if he does come,--tell him that I was right about the way that novel ended. Remember that you are to say to him the moment you see him that I was right about the novel, and that he is to look and see if it did not end as I said it would. And Loretta--" here she rose and approached the speaker with a sweet, appealing look which brought tears to the impressionable girl"s eyes, "don"t go gossiping about me downstairs. I sha"n"t be sick long. I am going to be better soon, very soon. By the time you see me here again I shall be quite like my old self. Forget how--how"--and Loretta said she seemed to have difficulty in finding the right word here--"how childish I have been."
Of course Loretta promised, but she is not sure that she would have had the courage to keep all this to herself if she had not heard Mrs. Jeffrey stop in Miss Tuttle"s room on her way out. That relieved her, and enabled her to go downstairs to her own supper with more appet.i.te than she had thought ever to have again. Alas!
it was the last good meal she was able to eat for days. In three hours afterward a man came from the station house with the news of Mrs. Jeffrey"s suicide in the horrible old house in which she had been married only two weeks before.
As this had been a continuous narrative and concisely told, the coroner had not interrupted her. When at this point a little gasp escaped Miss Tuttle and a groan broke from Francis Jeffrey"s. .h.i.therto sealed lips, the feelings of the whole a.s.semblage seemed to find utterance. A young wife"s misery culminating in death on the very spot where she had been so lately married! What could be more thrilling, or appeal more closely to the general heart of humanity? But the cause of that misery! This was what every one present was eager to have explained. This is what we now expected the coroner to bring out. But instead of continuing on the line he had opened up, he proceeded to ask:
"Where were you when this officer brought the news you mention?"
"In the hall, sir. I opened the door for him."
"And to whom did he first mention his errand?"
"To Miss Tuttle. She had come in just before him and was standing at the foot of the stairs."
"What! Was Miss Tuttle out that evening?"
"Yes; she went out very soon after Mrs. Jeffrey left. When she came in she said that she had been around the block, but she must have gone around it more than once, for she was absent two hours."
"Did you let her in?"
"Yes, sir."
"And she said she had been around the block?"
"Yes, sir"
"Did she say anything else?"
"She asked if Mr. Jeffrey had come in"
"Anything else?"
"Then if Mrs. Jeffrey had returned."
"To both of which questions you answered--"
"A plain "No.""
"Now tell us about the officer."
"He rang the bell almost immediately after she did. Thinking she would want to slip upstairs before I admitted any one, I waited a minute for her to go, but she did not do so, and when the officer stepped in she--"
"Well!"
"She shrieked."
"What! before he spoke?"
"Yes, sir."
"Just at sight of him?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did he wear his badge in plain view?"
"Yes, on his breast."
"So that you knew him to be a police officer?"
"Yes."
"And Miss Tuttle shrieked at seeing a police officer?"
"Yes, and sprang forward."
"Did she say anything?"