Mrs. De Peyster could hardly keep back a groan.

"So, now," Jack again propounded, "what the d.i.c.kens are the five of us going to do?"

Mr. Pyecroft rubbed his wide mouth for a meditative moment. Then he smiled upon Matilda.

"It seems to me, sister dear, that we'll have to put it up to you."

"Up to me?" cried Matilda.

"Yes, Matilda. You belong here; you can come and go as a matter of course. You have a sister visiting you; also a brother, but as I have requested, the less said about his being here the better. But you can go out and openly order provisions for yourself and our sister. And you can give a good large order for nourishing canned goods, casually mentioning that you are laying in a supply so that you will not have to bother again soon with staples. That, with what Judge Harvey and William can smuggle in, should keep us provided for."

Mr. Pyecroft's suggestion was approved by the majority. As an addendum to his proposal Matilda was ordered to answer the bell whenever rung; if she did not, with the knowledge abroad that she was in the house, a dangerous suspicion might be aroused. But she should be careful when she went to the door, very careful.

Matilda was driven forth to make the purchases; Mr. Pyecroft, under Jack's guidance, went below to forage for the anaesthetic of immediate crumbs; and Mary, tender-heartedly, remained behind to relieve the tedium of and give comfort to the invalid. She straightened up the room a bit; urged the patient to eat, to no avail; then went out of the room for a minute, and reappeared with a book.

"I'm going to read to you, Angelica," she announced, in a loud yet nursey voice. "I suppose your taste in books is about the same as your sister's. Here's a story I found in Matilda's room. It's called 'Wormwood.' I'm sure you'll like it."

So placed that she could get all of the dim light that slanted through the tiny shuttered window, Mary began, her voice raised to meet the need of Mrs. De Peyster's aural handicap. Now Marie Corelli may have been the favorite novelist of a certain amiable queen, who somehow managed to continue to the age of eighty-two despite her preference.

But Mrs. De Peyster liked no fiction; and the n.o.ble plat.i.tudes, the resounding moralizings, the prodigious melodrama, the vast caverns of words of the queen's favorite made Mrs. De Peyster writhe upon her second maid's undentable bed. If only she actually did possess the divine gift of defective hearing with which Mr. Pyecroft had afflicted her! But in the same loud voice, trying to conceal her own boredom, Mary read on, on, on--patiently on.

At length Matilda returned. Mary closed the book with a sigh of relief, which on the instant she repressed.

"I'll read to you for a while two or three times a day," she promised.

"I know what a comfort it is to a sick person to hear a story she likes."

Mrs. De Peyster did not even thank her.

CHAPTER XV

DOMESTIC SCENES

The provisions arrived; Mr. Pyecroft proved himself agreeably competent and willing in the matter of their preparation; and such as had appet.i.tes gorged themselves. Also Mr. Pyecroft proved himself agreeably competent and willing to do his full share, and more, in the matter of cleaning up.

Later in the forenoon, Mary again called on Mrs. De Peyster. "I hope you don't mind a little praise directed at your family, Angelica,"

she said, in the loud voice she had adopted for that unfortunate.

"At first Jack and I thought your brother Archibald was--well--too pompous. You know, clergymen are often that way. But the more we see of him, the better we like him. He's so pleasant, so helpful. I hope the little trouble he spoke of being in with the police isn't serious, for Jack and I think he's simply splendid!"

Archibald's sister seemed indifferent to this praise of her brother.

At least she said nothing. So Mary took up "Wormwood" and half-shouted another installment.

The spirits of Jack and Mary, which during the previous evening and the earlier part of this morning had been subdued by concern over the illness of the distant Mrs. De Peyster, had, an hour before Mary's second visit, become suddenly hilarious. While Mary read, Mrs. De Peyster wondered over this change. When the book was closed upon the installment, she hesitatingly asked concerning this mystery.

"It's news about Mrs. De Peyster," answered Mary. "But of course it could hardly interest you much, for you've never met her--at least I supposed not, Angelica."

"I've--seen her," corrected Angelica. "What--what news?"

"Why," cried Mary in her soft, happy contralto, "Judge Harvey just telephoned that the latest papers contain cables saying that Mrs. De Peyster has just left Paris on that long motor trip of hers to the Balkans. That means that Jack's mother must be quite well again. We all feel so relieved--so very, very relieved!"

Mrs. De Peyster also felt relief--and some badly needed courage flowed into her. Olivetta's part of the plan, at least, was working out as per schedule.

Finally Mary went, Matilda brought in her lunch, and the afternoon began to wear itself away, Mrs. De Peyster keeping most of the time to the hard, narrow bed of the second maid. Twice, however, she got up while Matilda guarded her door, stood at her high, cell-like window, and peered through the slats of the closed shutter, past the purple-and-lavender plumes of the wistaria that climbed on up to the roof, and out upon the soft, green, sunny s.p.a.ces of Washington Square.

The Square, which she had been proud to live upon but rarely walked in,--only children and nursemaids and the commoner people actually walked in it,--the Square looked so expansive, so free, so inviting.

And this tiny cell--these days of early May were unseasonably, hot--seemed to grow more narrow and more stifling every moment. How had any one ever, ever voluntarily endured it!

Mrs. De Peyster learned that Jack was studying at home, and studying hard. With the return of Matilda to the house, Jack repeated his instruction concerning the piano: Matilda was to tell any inquisitive folk that Mrs. De Peyster had bought a player-piano shortly before she sailed, and that she, Matilda, was operating it to while away the tedious hours. This device made it possible for Mary to begin her neglected practice.

With the certainty of being bored, yet with an irrepressible curiosity, Mrs. De Peyster, piano-lover, awaited during the morning and early forenoon Mary's first a.s.sault upon the instrument. She would be crude, no doubt of it; no technique, no poetic suavity of touch, no sense of interpretation.

When from the rear drawing-room the grand piano sent upwards to Mrs.

De Peyster its first strains, they were rapid, careless scales and runs. Quite as she'd expected. Then the player began Chopin's Ballade in G Minor. Mrs. De Peyster listened contemptuously; then with rebellious interest; then with complete absorption. That person below could certainly play the piano--brilliantly, feelingly, with the touch and insight of an artist. Mrs. De Peyster's soul rose and fell with the soul of the song, and when the piano, after its uprushing, almost human closing cry, fell sharply into silence, she was for the moment that piano's va.s.sal.

Then she remembered who was the player. Instinctively her emotions chilled; and she lay stiffly in bed, hostile, on guard, defying the charm of the further music.

Suddenly the piano broke off in the very middle of Liszt's Rhapsodic Number Twelve. The way the music snapped off startled her. There was something inexplicably ominous about it. Intuitively she felt that something was happening below. She wondered what it could be.

An hour pa.s.sed; she continued wondering; then Matilda entered the attic room, behind her Mr. Pyecroft and Mary.

"Sister"--such familiarity was difficult to Matilda, even though she knew this familiarity was necessary to maintain the roles circ.u.mstances and Mr. Pyecroft had forced upon them--"sister," she quavered, "I thought you might be interested to know that the bell rang awhile ago, and I went down, and there was a man--with a note to me from--from Mrs. De Peyster."

"What!" exclaimed Mrs. De Peyster, in an almost natural tone.

"It--it's disturbed us all so much that I thought you might like to look at it. Here it is."

Shakingly, Matilda held out a sheet of paper. Shakingly, but without turning to face her visitors, Mrs. De Peyster took it. There was enough light to see that the letter was written on heavy paper embossed at the top with a flag and "S.S. Plutonia," and was dated the evening she had supposedly gone on board. The note read:--

DEAR MATILDA:--

Just at this late moment I recall something which, in the hurry of getting off, I forgot to tell you about.

This is that I left instructions with Mr. Howard, an expert cabinet-maker, who has previously done things for me under the supervision of the Tiffany Studios, to go over all my furniture while I am abroad and touch up and repair such pieces as may be out of order. I am sending this letter to Mr. Howard for him or his representative to present for identification to you when he is ready to undertake the work. See that he has every facility.

Mrs. De Peyster lay dizzily still. Such an order she had never given.

But the writing was amazingly similar to her own.

"Well, Matilda?" she managed to inquire, in a voice she tried to make like the sickly Angelica's.

"When the man showed me the note, I tried to put him off; but he simply wouldn't go and he followed me in. His orders, he said. I showed the letter to Mary and Mr. Pyecroft. The man saw them. They said call up Judge Harvey and ask him what to do. I did and Judge Harvey came down and he examined the letter and said it was undoubtedly written by Mrs. De Peyster. And he called up the Tiffany Studios, and they said they'd had such a telephone order from Mrs. De Peyster."

"Jack and I never dreamed that his mother might have left orders to have people in here to renovate the house!" cried Mary in dismay.

"Then--then Judge Harvey asked the man to put off the work," Matilda went on. "The man was very polite, but he said his orders from Mrs.

De Peyster had been strict, and if he wasn't allowed to go on with the work, he said, in order to protect himself, he'd have to cable Mrs.

De Peyster that the people occupying her house wouldn't let him. Judge Harvey didn't want Mrs. De Peyster to find out about Mr. and Mrs.

Jack, so he told the man to go ahead."