CHAPTER XLVIII.THE IMAGE IN THE GLASS.
Elsie had partially recovered. Her eyes were open, and she was resting on her elbow, looking with child-like wonder around the room; while the dear old people stood hand-in-hand, regarding her through a mist of grateful tears.
“How did I come here?” said Elsie, in her sweet, natural voice, that made those two fond hearts leap in unison; “I must have studied late, and fallen asleep after. Did he miss me?”
The old people looked at each other in alarm.
“Of whom does she speak?” inquired Catharine.
“Of him,” answered the old man, glancing toward the portrait. “What can we answer?”
“He did not reach home last night,” said Catharine, gently.
“And who is this?” inquired Elsie, bending her brows, “who knows of my husband’s movements better than I do myself? Send that woman from the house, father. The last one, you remember the last one!”
“Elsie, do you not know me?” inquired Catharine, astonished.
“How should I?” was the terse answer. “What am I to you?”
“I am your friend!”
Elsie laughed softly. “I never had but one friend, and she——”
“Well, never mind her, darling,” interposed the old lady, anxiously.
Elsie cast a scrutinizing glance at the old lady, and a look of profound astonishment came to her face.
“Why, mother, how strange you look! How old you are! Dear me, your hair has grown so white; and that queer cap. This will never do, mother.”
“My child—my dear child!”
Elsie laughed, and shook her head.
“Don’t plead. Don’t attempt to persuade me, mother. You must always dress like a gentlewoman. That hair and cap are frightful. Remember how much he thinks of these things.”
The old people remained silent. This was a phase of madness that they had never witnessed before. Catharine, too, was puzzled. Elsie seemed struggling with some old remembrance, or rather to have cast herself back into a far-off scene of action, forgetting everything else; and the young woman could only look on, waiting for opportunity to act.
Elsie spoke again.
“But while I am scolding you, mamma, I had forgotten to look at myself, in this robe so disordered, and my hair all down. What will he think of me?”
As she spoke, Elsie moved toward a small mirror, set into the door of a cabinet, with which she seemed familiar.
“Why, how is this?” she cried, with astonishment, as the reflection of her figure came back from the glass; and holding out her long hair at arm’s length, she allowed the graytresses to drop slowly from her figure, repeating the question sharply, “what is this? whose hair is this?”
No one answered her, and she stood gazing upon herself in wild amazement, turning her dark eyes upon her parents with a stern, questioning air, as if they had transfigured her.
“I cannot make it out,” she said at last, dropping her arms sadly downward; “I cannot make it out.”
“It is remembrance. It is a return of sanity!” whispered Catharine. “Her recollection of what she has been, her forgetfulness of me—it is a hopeful sign.”
The old people began to tremble. Their withered hands clung together, shaking like autumn-leaves; low murmurs broke from their lips, but no words were uttered. They listened in breathless suspense for the next sentence that might fall from those troubled lips.
“I wonder—I wish some one would tell me what it means,” she continued, looking wistfully in the glass. “How am I to get these lines from my forehead, these, these—”
She checked herself suddenly, gasping for breath. Her eyes were fixed wildly on the mirror as if she had seen a basilisk there; her white lips began to tremble; and uttering a low cry, she dashed her clenched hand against the glass, shivering it to a thousand fragments.
“I have done it—I have done it!” she cried, with an insane glare of the eyes, as she held out her clenched hand, all crimson with drops of blood, for them to look upon. “She crossed my path once, twice, again! She looks like a witch now; but it’s her—I know her! I have crushed her, do you see?”
As she cried out in this exultant fashion, Elsie’s glance fell upon the bay-window, and instantly the breath was hushed on her lips.
“There, there,” she cried, “I killed her, but she is there yet!”
They followed her eyes, and there, close by the old-fashionedbay-window, peering into the room, stood a strange woman, gaunt and witch-like, both in face and figure. Her sharp, wizen face was buried in a huge bonnet, which might have been in fashion twenty years before; and her soiled, even ragged, dress, was partially concealed by a shawl covered with a glowing pattern of red, green, orange, and blue, which was, possibly, in vogue at the time the bonnet was made. Still, both these articles seemed unworn till now. The blond and flowers on the bonnet were yellow and faded with time, not by use. Her shawl had evidently just been shaken out of its original folds. But for these articles of finery, her appearance would have been that of a beggar. It was now merely fantastic; for her gaiter-boots were not mates—one was buttoned, and the other laced with a bit of strong twine. She wore no stockings; and the fingers of one hand protruded through a soiled cotton glove, while the other was concealed under her shawl, evidently lacking a mate.
This fantastic figure stood close by the window, peering through with her keen, black eyes, that had the sharp glitter of a rattlesnake in them. But for this keen intelligence, she might have been taken for a common vagrant, on whom some kind old woman had bestowed charity from her hoard of old-fashioned garments. Instantly a cry broke from Catharine also, while the good old couple looked at each other in dismay.
No one spoke, but all remained paralyzed, white as death and gazing at each other. Catharine, usually so self-possessed, shook like an aspen, and Elsie crept to her side, seizing upon her garments for protection, a sure sign that her insanity, for a moment put off, had returned again, more fiercely than ever.
The strange creature at the window seemed rather amused by the consternation she had produced. Her face wrinkled into a laugh, and the glitter of her eyes seemed to strike fire upon the glass. After indulging herself a moment or two, she turned away, walking deliberately toward the front door.