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Page 39
She looked around the room. On the stand beside the bed was
something which she had not noticed before: a little old-fashioned
work-box with a picture of a little boy in a pinafore on the top.
Beside this work-box lay, as if just laid down by the user, a spool
of black silk, a pair of scissors, and a large steel thimble with a
hole in the top, after an old style. Louisa stared at these, then
at the sleeves of her dress. She moved toward the door. For a
moment she thought that this was something legitimate about which
she might demand information; then she became doubtful. Suppose
that work-box had been there all the time; suppose she had
forgotten; suppose she herself had done this absurd thing, or
suppose that she had not, what was to hinder the others from
thinking so; what was to hinder a doubt being cast upon her own
memory and reasoning powers?
Louisa Stark had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown in spite
of her iron constitution and her great will power. No woman can
teach school for forty years with absolute impunity. She was more
credulous as to her own possible failings than she had ever been in
her whole life. She was cold with horror and terror, and yet not
so much horror and terror of the supernatural as of her own self.
The weakness of belief in the supernatural was nearly impossible
for this strong nature. She could more easily believe in her own
failing powers.
"I don't know but I'm going to be like Aunt Marcia," she said to
herself, and her fat face took on a long rigidity of fear.
She started toward the mirror to unfasten her dress, then she
remembered the strange circumstance of the brooch and stopped
short. Then she straightened herself defiantly and marched up to
the bureau and looked in the glass. She saw reflected therein,
fastening the lace at her throat, the old-fashioned thing of a
large oval, a knot of fair and black hair under glass, set in a rim
of twisted gold. She unfastened it with trembling fingers and
looked at it. It was her own brooch, the cluster of pearl grapes
on black onyx. Louisa Stark placed the trinket in its little box
on the nest of pink cotton and put it away in the bureau drawer.
Only death could disturb her habit of order.
Her fingers were so cold they felt fairly numb as she unfastened
her dress; she staggered when she slipped it over her head. She
went to the closet to hang it up and recoiled. A strong smell of
lovage came in her nostrils; a purple gown near the door swung
softly against her face as if impelled by some wind from within.
All the pegs were filled with garments not her own, mostly of
somber black, but there were some strange-patterned silk things and
satins.
Suddenly Louisa Stark recovered her nerve. This, she told herself,
was something distinctly tangible. Somebody had been taking
liberties with her wardrobe. Somebody had been hanging some one
else's clothes in her closet. She hastily slipped on her dress
again and marched straight down to the parlour. The people were
seated there; the widow and the minister were playing backgammon.
The librarian was watching them. Miss Amanda Gill was mending
beside the large lamp on the centre table. They all looked up with
amazement as Louisa Stark entered. There was something strange in
her expression. She noticed none of them except Amanda.
"Where is your sister?" she asked peremptorily of her.
"She's in the kitchen mixing up bread," Amanda quavered; "is there
anything--" But the school-teacher was gone.
She found Sophia Gill standing by the kitchen table kneading dough
with dignity. The young girl Flora was bringing some flour from
the pantry. She stopped and stared at Miss Stark, and her pretty,
delicate young face took on an expression of alarm.
Miss Stark opened at once upon the subject in her mind.
"Miss Gill," said she, with her utmost school-teacher manner, "I
wish to inquire why you have had my own clothes removed from the
closet in my room and others substituted?"
Sophia Gill stood with her hands fast in the dough, regarding her.
Her own face paled slowly and reluctantly, her mouth stiffened.
"What? I don't quite understand what you mean, Miss Stark," said
she.
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