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Page 13
Drawing back, I reclosed the shutter, lowered the window and
started for my own room. As I passed the first stair-head, I
heard a baby's laugh, followed by a merry shout, which, ringing
through the house, seemed to dispel all its shadows.
I had touched reality again. Remembering Mayor Packard's
suggestion that I might through the child find a means of reaching
the mother, I paid a short visit to the nursery where I found a
baby whose sweetness must certainly have won its mother's deepest
love. Letty, the nurse, was of a useful but commonplace type, a
conscientious nurse, that was all.
But I was to have a further taste of the unusual that night and
to experience another thrill before I slept. My room was dark
when I entered it, and, recognizing a condition favorable to
the gratification of my growing curiosity in regard to the
neighboring house, I approached the window and stole a quick look
at the gable-end where, earlier in the evening I had seen peering
out at me an old woman's face. Conceive my astonishment at
finding the spot still lighted and a face looking out, but not
the same face, a countenance as old, one as intent, but of
different conformation and of a much more intellectual type. I
considered myself the victim of an illusion; I tried to persuade
myself that it was the same woman, only in another garb and under
a different state of feeling; but the features were much too
dissimilar for such an hypothesis to hold. The eagerness, the
unswerving attitude were the same, but the first woman had had a
weak round face with pinched features, while this one showed a
virile head and long heavy cheeks and chin, which once must have
been full of character, though they now showed only heaviness of
heart and the dull apathy of a fixed idea.
Two women, total strangers to me, united in an unceasing watch
upon me in my room! I own that the sense of mystery which this
discovery brought struck me at the moment as being fully as
uncanny and as unsettling to contemplate as the idea of a spirit
haunting walls in which I was destined for a while to live,
breathe and sleep. However, as soon as I had drawn the shade and
lighted the gas, I forgot the whole thing, and not till I was
quite ready for bed, and my light again turned low, did I feel
the least desire to take another peep at that mysterious window.
The face was still there, peering at me through a flood of
moonlight. The effect was ghastly, and for hours I could not
sleep, imagining that face still staring down upon me,
illuminated with the unnatural light and worn with a profitless
and unmeaning vigil.
That there was something to fear in this house was evident from
the halting step with which the servants, one and all, passed my
door on their way up to their own beds. I now knew, or thought I
knew, what was in their minds; but the comfort brought by this
understanding was scarcely sufficient to act as antidote to the
keen strain to which my faculties had been brought. Yet nothing
happened, and when a clock somewhere in the house had assured me
by its own clear stroke that the dreaded midnight hour had passed
I rose and stole again to the window. This time both moonlight
and face were gone. Contentment came with the discovery. I
crept back to bed with lightened heart and soon was asleep.
Next morning, however, the first face was again at the window, as
I at once saw on raising the blind. I breakfasted alone. Mrs.
Packard was not yet down and the mayor had already left to fulfil
an early appointment down-town. Old Nixon waited on me. As he,
like every other member of the family, with the possible
exception of the mayor, was still an unknown quantity in the
problem given me to solve, I allowed a few stray glances to
follow him as he moved decorously about the board anticipating my
wants and showing himself an adept in his appointed task. Once I
caught his eye and I half expected him to speak, but he was too
well-trained for that, and the meal proceeded in the same silence
in which it had begun. But this short interchange of looks had
given me an idea. He showed an eager interest in me quite apart
from his duty to me as waiter. He was nearer sixty, than fifty,
but it was not his age which made his hand tremble as he laid
down a plate before me or served me with coffee and bread.
Whether this interest was malevolent or kindly I found it
impossible to judge. He had a stoic's face with but one eloquent
feature--his eyes; and these he kept studiously lowered after
that one quick glance. Would it help matters for me to address
him? Possibly, but I decided not to risk it. Whatever my
immediate loss I must on no account rouse the least distrust in
this evidently watchful household. If knowledge came naturally,
well and good; I must not seem to seek it.
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