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Page 31
With no means of knowing whether they were legible or not, these
characters made a surprising impression upon me, one, indeed, that
was almost photographic.
I also noted that these shapes or characters, of which there were
just seven, were written on the face of an empty envelope. This
decided any doubts I may have had as to its identity with the paper
she had brought down from the attic. That had been a square sheet,
which even if folded would fail to enter this long and narrow
envelope. The interest which I had felt when I thought the two
identical was a false interest. Yet I could not but believe that
this scrap had a value of its own equal to the one with which,
under this misapprehension, I had invested it.
Carrying it back to Mrs. Packard, I handed it over with the remark
that I had found it lying in the hall. She cast a quick look at
it, gave me another look and tossed the paper into the grate. As
it caught fire and flared up, the characters started vividly into
view.
This second glimpse of them, added to the one already given me,
fixed the whole indelibly in my mind. This is the way they looked.
[]; V; []; .>; V; [-]; <;
While I watched these cabalistic marks pass from red to black and
finally vanish in a wild leap up the chimney, Mrs. Packard
remarked:
"I wish I could destroy the memory of all my mistakes as completely
as I can that old envelope."
I did not answer; I was watching the weary droop of her hand over
the arm of her chair.
"You are tired, Mrs. Packard," was my sympathetic observation.
"Will you not take a nap? I will gladly sit by you and read you to
sleep."
"No, no," she cried, at once alert and active; "no sleep. Look at
that pile of correspondence, half of it on charitable matters. Now
that I feel better, now that I have relieved my mind, I must look
over my letters and try to take up the old threads again."
"Can I help you?" I asked.
"Possibly. If you will go to my room up-stairs, I will join you
after I have sorted and read my mail."
I was glad to obey this order. I had a curiosity about her room.
It had been the scene of much I did not understand the night
before. Should I find any traces there of that search which had
finally ended over my head in the attic?
I was met at the door by Ellen. She wore a look of dismay which I
felt fully accounted for when I looked inside. Disorder reigned
from one end of the room to the other, transcending any picture I
may have formed in my own mind concerning its probable condition.
Mrs. Packard must have forgotten all this disarray, or at least had
supposed it to have yielded to the efforts of the maid, when she
proposed my awaiting her there. There were bureau-drawers with
their contents half on the floor, boxes with their covers off,
cupboard-doors ajar and even the closet shelves showing every mark
of a frenzied search among them. Her rich gown, soiled to the
width of half a foot around the bottom, lay with cut laces and its
trimmings in rags under a chair which had been knocked over and
left where it fell. Even her jewels had not been put away, but lay
scattered on the dresser. Ellen looked ashamed and, when I retired
to the one bare place I saw in the bay of the window, muttered as
she plunged to lift one of the great boxes:
"It's as bad as the attic room up-stairs. All the trunks have been
emptied on to the floor and one held her best summer dresses. What
shall I do? I have a whole morning's work before me."
"Let me help you," I proposed, rising with sudden alacrity. My
eyes had just fallen on a small desk at my right, also on the floor
beneath and around it. Here, there and everywhere above and below
lay scraps of torn-up paper; and on many, if not on all of them,
could be seen the broken squares and inverted angles which had
marked so curiously the surface of the envelope she had handed to
Mr. Steele, and which I had afterward seen her burn.
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