IN WHICH THE MIRROR IS HELD UP TO HUMAN NATURE

When, the next day, Nancy went to pay her promised visit to Mrs. Eversley, the rectory was steeped in the deep household peace of mid-afternoon.  Both Allan and Bernal had gone out soon after luncheon, while Aunt Bell had withdrawn into the silence, there to meditate the first letters of the alphabet of the inexpressible, to hover about the pleasant line that divides the normal from the subliminal.

Though bruised and torn, Nancy was still grimly upright in the eye of duty, still a worthy follower of orthodox ways.  Buried in her own eventful thoughts in that mind-world where love is born and dies, where beliefs rise and perish but no sound ever disturbs the stillness, she made her way along the shaded side of the street toward the Wyeth residence.  Not until she had passed several doors beyond the house did she recall her errand, remember that her walk led to a goal, that she herself had matters in hand other than thinking, thinking, thinking.

Retracing her steps, she rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Eversley.  Before the servant could reply, Mrs. Wyeth rustled prettily down the hall from the library at the back.  She wore a gown of primrose yellow.  An unwonted animation lighted the cold perfection of her face, like fire seen through ice.

“So glad to see you!” she said with graceful effusion ­“And the Doctor?  And that queer, fascinating, puzzling brother of yours, how are they?  So glad!  Yes, poor sister keeps to her room and you really mustn’t linger with me an instant.  I’m not even going to ask you to sit down.  Go right up.  Her door’s at the end of the hall, you know.  You’ll comfort the poor thing beautifully, you dear!”

She paused for breath, a vivid smile taking the place of words.  Mrs. Linford, rendered oddly, almost obstinately reserved by this excessive cordiality, was conscious of something unnatural in that smile ­a too great intensity, like the greenness of artificial palms.

“Thank you so much for coming, you angel,” she went on playfully, “for doubtless I shall not be visible when you go.  You see Donald’s off in the back of the house re-arranging whole shelves of wretched, dusty books and he fancies that he must have my suggestions.”

“The door at the end of the hall!” she trilled in sweet but unmistakable dismissal, one arm pointing gracefully aloft from its enveloping foam of draperies, that same too-intense smile upon the Greek face that even Nancy, in moments of humane expansion, had admitted to be all but faultless.  And the latter, wondering not a little at the stiff disposition to have her quickly away, which she had somehow divined through all the gushing cordiality of Mrs. Wyeth’s manner, went on upstairs.  As she rapped at Mrs. Eversley’s door, the bell of the street door sounded in her ears.

Somewhat less than an hour after, she came softly out again, opening and closing the door noiselessly.  So effectually had she soothed the invalid, that the latter had fallen into a much-needed sleep, and Nancy, eager to escape to that mind-world where the happenings are so momentous and the silence is so tense, had crept like a mouse from the room.

At the top of the stairs she paused to gather up her skirts.  Then her ears seemed to catch the sound of voices on the floor below and she remained motionless for a second, listening.  She had no desire to encounter for the second time the torrent of Mrs. Wyeth’s manner, no wish to meet unnecessarily one so disagreeably gifted in the art of arousing in her an aversion of which she was half ashamed.

No further sound greeted her straining ears, and, deciding that the way was clear, she descended the thickly carpeted stairs.  Near the bottom, opposite the open doors of the front drawing-room, she paused to look into the big mirror on the opposite wall.  As she turned her head for a final touch to the back of her veil, her eyes became alive to something in that corner of the room now revealed to her by the mirror ­something that held her frozen with embarrassment.

Though the room lay in the dusk of drawn curtains, the gown of Mrs. Wyeth showed unmistakably ­Mrs. Wyeth abandoned to the close, still embrace of an unrecognized man.

Distressed at the awkwardness of her position, Nancy hesitated, not knowing whether to retreat or go forward.  She had decided to go on, observing nothing ­and of course she had observed nothing save an agreeable incident in the oft impugned domesticity of Mr. and Mrs. Wyeth ­when a further revelation arrested her.

Even as she put her foot to the next step, the face of Mrs. Wyeth was lifted and Mrs. Wyeth’s big eyes fastened upon hers through the impartial mirror.  But their expression was not that of the placid matron observed in a passage of conjugal tenderness.  Rather, it was one of acute dismay ­almost fear.  Poor Mrs. Weyth, who had just said, “Doubtless I shall not be visible when you go!”

Even as she caught this look, Nancy started down the remaining steps, her cheeks hot from her own wretched awkwardness.  She wanted to hurry ­to run; she might still escape without having reason to suspect that the obscured person was other than he should be in the opinion of an exacting world.  Then, as her hand was at the door, while the silken rustling of that hurried disentanglement was in her ears, the voice of Wyeth sounded remotely from the rear of the house.  It seemed to come from far back in the library, removed from them by the length of the double drawing-rooms ­a comfortable, smooth, high-pitched voice ­lazy, drawling ­

“Oh, Linford!”

Linford! The name seemed to sink into the stillness of the great house, leaving no ripple behind.  Before an answer to the call could come, she had opened the great door and pulled it sharply to behind her.

Outside, she lingered a moment as if in serenely absent contemplation of the street, with the air of one who sought to recall her next engagement.  Then, gathering up her skirts, she went leisurely down the steps and passed unhurriedly from the view of those dismayed eyes that she felt upon her from the Wyeth window.

On the avenue she turned north and was presently alone in a shaded aisle of the park ­that park whose very trees and shrubs seem to have taken on a hard, knowing look from having been so long made the recipients of cynical confidences.  They seemed to understand perfectly what had happened, to echo Wyeth’s high-pitched, friendly drawl, with an added touch of mockery that was all their own ­“Oh ­Linford!”