Part 31 (2/2)

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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 uprus.h.i.+ng, 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.”

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