slowly, and looked at the cupboard.
"It's a better remedy even than the blue-glass bottle," she said; "it
cures you so soon when you are tired, or troubled in your mind, that I
have brought it away with me from Wurzburg, to use it for myself."
Jack's face brightened with a new interest. "Oh," he said eagerly, "do
let me see it again!"
She put her hand in her pocket, took out the key, and hesitated at the
last moment.
"Just one look at it," Jack pleaded, "to see if it's the same."
She unlocked the cupboard.
CHAPTER V
Jack attempted to follow her, and look in. She waved him back with her
hand.
"Wait at the window," she said, "where you can see the medicine in the
light." She took the bottle of "Alexander's Wine" from the chest, and
having locked the cupboard again, replaced the key in her pocket. "Do you
remember it?" she asked, showing him the bottle.
He shuddered as he recognized the color. "Medicine?" he said to
himself--troubled anew by doubts which he was not able to realize. "I
don't remember how much I took when I tasted it. Do you?"
"I have told you already. You took twice the proper dose."
"Did my master the Doctor say that?"
"Yes."
"And did he tell you what the proper dose was?"
"Yes."
Jack was not able to resist this. "I should like to see it!" he said
eagerly. "My master was a wonderful man--my master knew everything."
Madame Fontaine looked at him. He waited to see his request granted, like
a child waiting to see a promised toy. "Shall I measure it out, and show
you?" she said. "I suppose you don't know what two drachms mean?"
"No, no! Let me see it."
She looked at him again and hesitated. With a certain reluctance of
manner, she opened her dressing-case. As she took out a
medicine-measuring-glass, her hand began to tremble. A faint perspiration
showed itself on her forehead. She put the glass on the table, and spoke
to Jack.
"What makes you so curious to see what the dose is?" she said. "Do you
think you are likely to want some of it yourself?"
His eyes looked longingly at the poison. "It cures you when you are tired
or troubled in your mind," he answered, repeating her own words. "I am
but a little fellow--and I'm more easily tired sometimes than you would
think."
She passed her handkerchief over her forehead. "The fire makes the room
rather warm," she said.
Jack took no notice of the remark; he had not done yet with the
confession of his little infirmities. He went on proving his claim to be
favored with some of the wonderful remedy.
"And as for being troubled in my mind," he said, "you haven't a notion
how bad I am sometimes. If I'm kept away from Mistress for a whole
day--when I say or do something wrong, you know--I tell you this, I'm fit
to hang myself! If you were to see me, I do think your heart would be
touched; I do indeed!"
Instead of answering him, she rose abruptly, and hurried to the door.
"Surely there's somebody outside," she exclaimed--"somebody wanting to
speak to me!"
"I don't hear it," said Jack; "and mine are the quickest ears in the
house."
"Wait a minute, and let me see."
She opened the door: closed it again behind her; and hurried along the
lonely corridor. Throwing up the window at the end, she put her head out
into the keen wintry air, with a wild sense of relief. She was almost
beside herself, without knowing why. Poor Jack's innocent attempts to
persuade her to his destruction had, in their pitiable simplicity, laid a
hold on that complex and terrible nature which shook it to its center.
The woman stood face to face with her own contemplated crime, and
trembled at the diabolical treachery of it. "What's the matter with me?"
she wondered inwardly. "I feel as if I could destroy every poison in the
chest with my own hands."
Slowly she returned along the corridor, to her room. The refreshing air
had strung up her nerves again! she began to recover herself. The
strengthened body reacted on the wavering mind. She smiled as she
recalled her own weakness, looking at the bottle of poison which she had
mechanically kept in her hand. "That feeble little creature might do some
serious mischief, between this and the wedding-day," she thought; "and
yet----and yet----"
"Well, was there anybody outside?" Jack asked.
"Nothing to matter," she said. The answer was spoken mechanically.
Something in him or something in herself, it was impossible to say which,
had suddenly set her thinking of the day when her husband had dragged him
out of the jaws of death. It seemed strange that the memory of the dead
Doctor should come between them in that way, and at that time.
Jack recalled her to the passing moment. He offered her the
medicine-measuring-glass left on the table. "It frightens me, when I
think of what I did," he said. "And yet it's such a pretty color--I want
to see it again."
In silence, she took the glass; in silence, she measured out the fatal
two drachms of the poison, and showed it to him.
"Do put it in something," he pleaded, "and let me have it to keep: I know
I shall want it."
Still in silence, she turned to the table, and searching again in her
dressing-case, found a little empty bottle. She filled it and carefully
fitted in the glass stopper. Jack held out his hand. She suddenly drew
her own hand back. "No," she said. "On second thoughts, I won't let you
have it."
"Why not?"
"Because you can't govern your tongue, and can't keep anything to
yourself. You will tell everybody in the house that I have given you my
wonderful medicine. They will all be wanting some--and I shall have none
left for myself."
"Isn't that rather selfish?" said Jack. "I suppose it's natural, though.
Never mind, I'll do anything to please you; I'll keep it in my pocket and
not say a word to anybody. Now?"
Once more, he held out his hand. Once more Madame Fontaine checked
herself in the act of yielding to him. Her dead husband had got between
them again. The wild words he had spoken to her, in the first horror of
the discovery that his poor imbecile servant had found and tasted the
fatal drug, came back to her memory--"If he dies I shall not survive him.
And I firmly believe I shall not rest in my grave." She had never been,
like her husband, a believer in ghosts: superstitions of all sorts were
to her mind unworthy of a reasonable being. And yet at that moment, she
was so completely unnerved that she looked round the old Gothic room,
with a nameless fear throbbing at her heart.
It was enough--though nothing appeared: it was enough--though
superstitions of all sorts were unworthy of a reasonable being--to shake
her fell purpose, for the time. Nothing that Jack could say had the least
effect on her. Having arrived at a determination, she was mistress of
herself again. "Not yet," she resolved; "there may be consequences that I
haven't calculated on.
I'll take the night to think of it." Jack tried a
last entreaty as she put her hand into her pocket, searching for the
cupboard key, and tried it in vain. "No," she said; "I will keep it for
you. Come to me when you are really ill, and want it."
Her pocket proved to be entangled for the moment in the skirt of her
dress. In irritably trying to disengage it, she threw out the key on the
floor. Jack picked the key up and noticed the inscription on the handle.
"Pink-Room Cupboard," he read. "Why do they call it by that name?"
In her over-wrought state of mind, she had even felt the small irritating
influence of an entangled pocket. She was in no temper to endure simple
questions patiently. "Look at the pink curtains, you fool!" she said--and
snatched the key out of his hand.
Jack instantly resented the language and the action. "I didn't come here
to be insulted," he declared in his loftiest manner.
Madame Fontaine secured the poison in the cupboard without noticing him,
and made him more angry than ever.
"Take back your new gloves," he cried, "I don't want them!" He rolled up
his gloves, and threw them at her. "I wish I could throw all the cake
I've eaten after them!" he burst out fervently.
He delivered this aspiration with an emphatic stamp of his foot. The
hysterical excitement in Madame Fontaine forced its way outwards under a
new form. She burst into a frantic fit of laughter. "You curious little
creature," she said; "I didn't mean to offend you. Don't you know that
women will lose their patience sometimes? There! Shake hands and make it
up. And take away the rest of the cake, if you like it." Jack looked at
her in speechless surprise. "Leave me to myself!" she cried, relapsing
into irritability. "Do you hear? Go! go! go!"
Jack left the room without a word of protest. The rapid changes in her,
the bewildering diversity of looks and tones that accompanied them,
completely cowed him. It was only when he was safe outside in the
corridor, that he sufficiently recovered himself to put his own
interpretation on what had happened. He looked back at the door of Madame
Fontaine's room, and shook his little gray head solemnly.
"Now I understand it," he thought to himself "Mrs. Housekeeper is mad.
Oh, dear, dear me--Bedlam is the only place for her!"
He descended the first flight of stairs, and stopped again to draw the
moral suggested by his own clever discovery. "I must speak to Mistress
about this," he concluded. "The sooner we are back in London, the safer I
shall feel."
CHAPTER VI
Mrs. Wagner was still hard at work at her desk, when Jack Straw made his
appearance again in the private office.
"Where have you been all this time?" she asked. "And what have you done
with your new gloves?"
"I threw them at Madame Fontaine," Jack answered. "Don't alarm yourself.
I didn't hit her."
Mrs. Wagner laid down her pen, smiling. "Even business must give way to
such an extraordinary event as this," she said. "What has gone wrong
between you and Madame Fontaine?"
Jack entered into a long rambling narrative of what he had heard on the
subject of the wonderful remedy, and of the capricious manner in which a
supply of it had been first offered to him, and then taken away again.
"Turn it over in your own mind," he said grandly, "and tell me what your
opinion is, so far."
"I think you had better let Madame Fontaine keep her medicine in the
cupboard," Mrs. Wagner answered; "and when you want anything of that
sort, mention it to me." The piece of cake which Jack had brought away
with him attracted her attention, as she spoke. Had he bought it himself?
or had he carried it off from the housekeeper's room? "Does that belong
to you, or to Madame Fontaine?" she asked. "Anything that belongs to
Madame Fontaine must be taken back to her."
"Do you think I would condescend to take anything that didn't belong to
me?" said Jack indignantly. He entered into another confused narrative,
which brought him, in due course of time, to the dropping of the key and
the picking of it up. "I happened to read 'Pink-Room Cupboard' on the
handle," he proceeded; "and when I asked what it meant she called me a
fool, and snatched the key out of my hand. Do you suppose I was going to
wear her gloves after that? No! I am as capable of self-sacrifice as any
of you--I acted nobly--I threw them at her. Wait a bit! You may laugh at
that, but there's something terrible to come. What do you think of a
furious person who insults me, suddenly turning into a funny person who
shakes hands with me and bursts out laughing? She did that. On the honor
of a gentleman, she did that. Follow my wise example; keep out of her
way--and let's get back to London as soon as we can. Oh, I have got a
reason for what I say. Just let me look through the keyhole before I
mention it. All right; there's nobody at the keyhole; I may say it
safely. It's a dreadful secret to reveal--Mrs. Housekeeper is mad! No,
no; there can be no possible mistake about it. If there's a creature
living who thoroughly understands madness when he sees it--by Heaven, I'm
that man!"
Watching Jack attentively while he was speaking. Mrs. Wagner beckoned to
him to come nearer, and took him by the hand.
"No more now," she said quietly; "you are beginning to get a little
excited."
"Who says that?" cried Jack.
"Your eyes say it. Come here to your place."
She rose, and led him to his customary seat in the recess of the
old-fashioned window. "Sit down," she said.
"I don't want to sit down."
"Not if I ask you?"
He instantly sat down. Mrs. Wagner produced her pocket-book, and made a
mark in it with her pencil. "One good conduct-mark already for Jack," she
said. "Now I must go on with my work; and you must occupy yourself
quietly, in some way that will amuse you. What will you do?"
Jack, steadily restraining himself under the firm kind eyes that rested
on him, was not in the right frame of mind for discovering a suitable
employment. "You tell me," he said.
Mrs. Wagner pointed to the bag of keys, hanging over his shoulder. "Have
you cleaned them yet?" she asked.
His attention was instantly diverted to the keys; he was astonished at
having forgotten them. Mrs. Wagner rang the bell, and supplied him with
sandpaper, leather, and whiting. "Now then," she said, pointing to the
clock, "for another hour at least--silence and work!"
She returned to her desk; and Jack opened his bag.
He spread out the rusty keys in a row, on the seat at his side. Looking
from one to the other before he began the cleansing operations, he
started, picked out one key, and held it up to the light. There was
something inscribed on the handle, under a layer of rust and dirt. He
snatched up his materials, and set to work with such good will that the
inscription became visible in a few minutes. He could read it
plainly--"Pink-Room Cupboard." A word followed which was not quite so
intelligible to him--the word "Duplica
te." But he had no need to trouble
himself about this. "Pink-Room Cupboard," on a second key, told him all
he wanted to know.
His eyes sparkled--he opened his lips--looked at Mrs. Wagner, busily
engaged with her pen--and restrained himself within the hard limits of
silence. "Aha! I can take Mrs. Housekeeper's medicine whenever I like,"
he thought slily.
His faith in the remedy was not at all shaken by his conviction that
Madame Fontaine was mad. It was the Doctor who had made the remedy--and
the Doctor could not commit a mistake. "She's not fit to have the keeping
of such a precious thing," he concluded. "I'll take the whole of it under
my own charge. Shall I tell Mistress, when we have done work?"
He considered this question, cleaning his keys, and looking furtively
from time to time at Mrs. Wagner. The cunning which is almost invariably
well developed in a feeble intelligence, decided him on keeping his
discovery to himself. "Anything that belongs to Madame Fontaine must be
taken back to her"--was what the Mistress had just said to him. He would
certainly be ordered to give up the duplicate key (which meant giving up
the wonderful remedy) if he took Mrs. Wagner into his confidence. "When I
have got what I want," he thought, "I can throw away the key--and there
will be an end of it."
The minutes followed each other, the quarters struck--and still the two
strangely associated companions went on silently with their strangely
dissimilar work. It was close on the time for the striking of the hour,
when a third person interrupted the proceedings--that person being no
other than Madame Fontaine again.
"A thousand pardons, Mrs. Wagner! At what time can I say two words to you
in confidence?"
"You could not have chosen your time better, Madame Fontaine. My work is
done for to-day." She paused, and looked at Jack, ostentatiously busy
with his keys. The wisest course would be to leave him in the
window-seat, harmlessly employed. "Shall we step into the dining-room?"
she suggested, leading the way out. "Wait there, Jack, till I return; I
may have another good mark to put in my pocket-book."
The two ladies held their conference, with closed doors, in the empty
dining-room.
"My only excuse for troubling you, madam," the widow began, "is that I
speak in the interest of that poor little Jack, whom we have just left in
the office. May I ask if you have lately observed any signs of excitement
in him?"
"Certainly!" Mrs. Wagner answered, with her customary frankness of reply;
"I found it necessary to compose him, when he came to me about an hour
ago--and you have just seen that he is as quiet again as a man can be. I
am afraid you have had reason to complain of his conduct yourself?"
Madame Fontaine lifted her hands in gently-expressed protest. "Oh, dear,
no--not to complain! To pity our afflicted Jack, and to feel, perhaps,
that your irresistible influence over him might be required--no more."
"You are very good," said Mrs. Wagner dryly. "At the same time, I beg you
to accept my excuses--not only for Jack, but for myself. I found him so
well behaved, and so capable of restraining himself in London, that I
thought I was running no risk in bringing him with me to Frankfort."
"Pray say no more, dear madam--you really confuse me. I am the innocent
cause of his little outbreak. I most unfortunately reminded him of the
time when he lived with us at Wurzburg--and in that way I revived one of
his old delusions, which even your admirable treatment has failed to
remove from his mind."
"May I ask what the delusion is, Madame Fontaine?"
"One of the commonest delusions among insane persons, Mrs. Wagner--the