The House in the Mist | Page 5

who had attempted to make a show with a new silk
dress and a hat in the latest fashion, but who had lamentably failed,
owing to the slouchiness of her figure and some misadventure by which
her hat had been set awry on her head and her usual complacency
destroyed. Later, I noted that her down-looking eyes had a false twinkle
in them, and that, commonplace as she looked, she was one to steer
clear of in times of necessity and distress.
She, too, evidently expected to find the door open and people
assembled, but she had not anticipated being confronted by the portrait
on the wall, and cringed in an unpleasant way as she stumbled by it into
one of the ill-lighted corners.
The old man, who had doubtless caught the rustle of her dress as she
passed him, emitted one short sentence.
"Almost late," said he.
Her answer was a sputter of words.

"It's the fault of that driver," she complained. "If he had taken one drop
more at the half-way house, I might really not have got here at all. That
would not have inconvenienced you. But oh! what a grudge I would
have owed that skinflint brother of ours"--here she shook her fist at the
picture--"for making our good luck depend upon our arrival within two
short strokes of the clock!"
"There are several to come yet," blandly observed the lawyer. But
before the words were well out of his mouth, we all became aware of a
new presence--a woman, whose somber grace and quiet bearing gave
distinction to her unobtrusive entrance, and caused a feeling of
something like awe to follow the first sight of her cold features and
deep, heavily-fringed eyes. But this soon passed in the more human
sentiment awakened by the soft pleading which infused her gaze with a
touching femininity. She wore a long loose garment which fell without
a fold from chin to foot, and in her arms she seemed to carry
something.
Never before had I seen so beautiful a woman. As I was contemplating
her, with respect but yet with a masculine intentness I could not quite
suppress, two or three other persons came in. And now I began to
notice that the eyes of all these people turned mainly one way, and that
was toward the clock. Another small circumstance likewise drew my
attention. Whenever any one entered,--and there were one or two
additional arrivals during the five minutes preceding the striking of the
hour,--a frown settled for an instant on every brow, giving to each and
all a similar look, for the interpretation of which I lacked the key. Yet
not on every brow either. There was one which remained undisturbed
and showed only a grand patience.
As the hands of the big clock neared the point of eight, a furtive smile
appeared on more than one face; and when the hour rang out, a sigh of
satisfaction swept through the room, to which the little old lawyer
responded with a worldly-wise grunt, as he moved from his place and
proceeded to the door.
This he had scarcely shut when a chorus of voices rose from without.
Three or four lingerers had pushed their way as far as the gate, only to

see the door of the house shut in their faces.
"Too late!" growled old man Luke from between the locks of his long
beard.
"Too late!" shrieked the woman who had come so near being late
herself.
"Too late!" smoothly acquiesced the lawyer, locking and bolting the
door with a deft and assured hand.
But the four or five persons who thus found themselves barred out did
not accept without a struggle the decision of the more fortunate ones
assembled within. More than one hand began pounding on the door,
and we could hear cries of, "The train was behind time!" "Your clock is
fast!" "You are cheating us; you want it all for yourselves!" "We will
have the law on you!" and other bitter adjurations unintelligible to me
from my ignorance of the circumstances which called them forth.
But the wary old lawyer simply shook his head and answered nothing;
whereat a murmur of gratification rose from within, and a howl of
almost frenzied dismay from without, which latter presently received
point from a startling vision which now appeared at the casement where
the lights burned. A man's face looked in, and behind it, that of a
woman, so wild and maddened by some sort of heart-break that I found
my sympathies aroused in spite of the glare of evil passions which
made both of these countenances something less than human.
But the lawyer met the stare of these four eyes with a quiet chuckle,
which found its echo in the ill-advised mirth of those