The Confession Read online

my head.

  "It's a fly," she said doggedly, and aimed another blow at it. "If Idon't kill it, we'll have a million. There, it's on the mantel now. Inever--"

  I felt that if she raised the paper club once more I should scream. So Igot up quickly and caught her wrist. She was so astonished that she letthe paper drop, and there we stood, staring at each other. I can stillsee the way her mouth hung open.

  "Don't!" I said. And my voice sounded thick even to my own ears."Maggie--I can't stand it!"

  "My God, Miss Agnes!"

  Her tone brought me up sharply. I released her arm.

  "I--I'm just nervous, Maggie," I said, and sat down. I was tremblingviolently.

  I was sane. I knew it then as I know it now. But I was not rational.Perhaps to most of us come now and then times when they realize thatsome act, or some thought, is not balanced, as though, for a moment oran hour, the control was gone from the brain. Or--and I think this wasthe feeling I had--that some other control was in charge. Not the AgnesBlakiston I knew, but another Agnes Blakiston, perhaps, was exerting atemporary dominance, a hectic, craven, and hateful control.

  That is the only outburst I recall. Possibly Maggie may have othersstored away. She has a tenacious memory. Certainly it was my nearestapproach to violence. But it had the effect of making me set a watch onmyself.

  Possibly it was coincidence. Probably, however, Maggie had communicatedwith Willie. But two days later young Martin Sprague, Freda Sprague'sson, stopped his car in the drive and came in. He is a nerve specialist,and very good, although I can remember when he came down in his nightdrawers to one of his mother's dinner-parties.

  "Thought I would just run in and see you," he said. "Mother told me youwere here. By George, Miss Agnes, you look younger than ever."

  "Who told you to come, Martie?" I asked.

  "Told me? I don't have to be told to visit an old friend."

  Well, he asked himself to lunch, and looked over the house, and decidedto ask Miss Emily if she would sell an old Japanese cabinet inlaid withmother of pearl that I would not have had as a gift. And, in the end,I told him my trouble, of the fear that seemed to center around thetelephone, and the sleep-walking.

  He listened carefully.

  "Ever get any bad news over the telephone?" he asked.

  One way and another, I said I had had plenty of it. He went over methoroughly, and was inclined to find my experience with the flour ratheramusing than otherwise. "It's rather good, that," he said. "Setting atrap to catch yourself. You'd better have Maggie sleep in your room fora while. Well, it's all pretty plain, Miss Agnes. We bury some things asdeep as possible, especially if we don't want to remember that they everhappened. But the mind's a queer thing. It holds on pretty hard, andburying is not destroying. Then we get tired or nervous--maybejust holding the thing down and pretending it is not there makes usnervous--and up it pops, like the ghost of a buried body, and raiseshell. You don't mind that, do you?" he added anxiously. "It's exactlywhat those things do raise."

  "But," I demanded irritably, "who rings the telephone at night? Idaresay you don't contend that I go out at night and call the house, andthen come back and answer the call, do you?"

  He looked at me with a maddening smile.

  "Are you sure it really rings?" he asked.

  And so bad was my nervous condition by that time, so undermined was myself-confidence, that I was not certain! And this in face of the factthat it invariably roused Maggie as well as myself.

  On the eleventh of August Miss Emily came to tea. The date does notmatter, but by following the chronology of my journal I find I can keepmy narrative in proper sequence.

  I had felt better that day. So far as I could determine, I hadnot walked in my sleep again, and there was about Maggie an air ofcheerfulness and relief which showed that my condition was more nearlynormal than it had been for some time. The fear of the telephone andof the back hall was leaving me, too. Perhaps Martin Sprague'smatter-of-fact explanation had helped me. But my own theory had alwaysbeen the one I recorded at the beginning of this narrative--that Icaught and--well, registered is a good word--that I registered anoverwhelming fear from some unknown source.

  I spied Miss Emily as she got out of the hack that day, a cool littlefigure clad in a thin black silk dress, with the sheerest possible whitecollars and cuffs. Her small bonnet with its crepe veil was faced withwhite, and her carefully crimped gray hair showed a wavy border beneathit. Mr. Staley, the station hackman, helped her out of the surrey, andhanded her the knitting-bag without which she was seldom seen. It wastwo weeks since she had been there, and she came slowly up the walk,looking from side to side at the perennial borders, then in full Augustbloom.

  She smiled when she saw me in the doorway, and said, with the littleanxious pucker between her eyes that was so childish, "Don't you thinkpeonies are better cut down at this time of year?" She took a foldedhandkerchief from her bag and dabbed at her face, where there was nosign of dust to mar its old freshness. "It gives the lilies a betterchance, my dear."

  I led her into the house, and she produced a gay bit of knitting, a babyafghan, by the signs. She smiled at me over it.

  "I am always one baby behind," she explained and fell to work rapidly.She had lovely hands, and I suspected them of being her one vanity.

  Maggie was serving tea with her usual grudging reluctance, and I noticedthen that when she was in the room Miss Emily said little or nothing.I thought it probable that she did not approve of conversing beforeservants, and would have let it go at that, had I not, as I held outMiss Emily's cup, caught her looking at Maggie. I had a swift impressionof antagonism again, of alertness and something more. When Maggie wentout, Miss Emily turned to me.

  "She is very capable, I fancy."

  "Very. Entirely too capable."

  "She looks sharp," said Miss Emily. It was a long time since I had heardthe word so used, but it was very apt. Maggie was indeed sharp. But MissEmily launched into a general dissertation on servants, and Maggie'ssharpness was forgotten.

  It was, I think, when she was about to go that I asked her about thetelephone.

  "Telephone?" she inquired. "Why, no. It has always done very well. Ofcourse, after a heavy snow in the winter, sometimes--"

  She had a fashion of leaving her sentences unfinished. They trailed off,without any abrupt break.

  "It rings at night."

  "Rings?"

  "I am called frequently and when I get to the phone, there is no onethere."

  Some of my irritation doubtless got into my voice, for Miss Emilysuddenly drew away and stared at me.

  "But--that is very strange. I--"

  She had gone pale. I saw that now. And quite suddenly she dropped herknitting-bag. When I restored it to her, she was very calm and poised,but her color had not come back.

  "It has always been very satisfactory," she said. "I don't know that itever--"

  She considered, and began again. "Why not just ignore it? If some one isplaying a malicious trick on you, the only thing is to ignore it."

  Her hands were shaking, although her voice was quiet. I saw that whenshe tried to tie the ribbons of the bag. And--I wondered at this, in sogentle a soul--there was a hint of anger in her tones. There was an edgeto her voice.

  That she could be angry was a surprise. And I found that she could alsobe obstinate. For we came to an impasse over the telephone in the nextfew minutes, and over something so absurd that I was non-plussed. It wasover her unqualified refusal to allow me to install a branch wire to mybedroom.

  "But," I expostulated, "when one thinks of the convenience, and--"

  "I am sorry." Her voice had a note of finality. "I daresay I amold-fashioned, but--I do not like changes. I shall have to ask you notto interfere with the telephone."

  I could hardly credit my senses. Her tone was one of reproof, plusdecision. It convicted me of an indiscretion. If I had asked to takethe roof off and replace it with silk umbrellas, it might have beenjustified. But to a request to move
the telephone!

  "Of course, if you feel that way about it," I said, "I shall not touchit."

  I dropped the subject, a trifle ruffled, I confess, and went upstairs tofetch a box in which Miss Emily was to carry away some flowers from thegarden.

  It was when I was coming down the staircase that I saw Maggie. She hadcarried the hall candlesticks, newly polished, to their places onthe table, and was standing, a hand on each one, staring into the oldWashington mirror in front of her. From where she was she must have hada full view of Miss Emily in the library. And Maggie was bristling. Itwas the only word for it.

  She was still there when Miss Emily had gone, blowing on the mirror andpolishing it. And I took her to task for her