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?'
