I like to think of those last days we spent together. They were dreamy, and happily-sad—different from other days altogether. Keefe was finishing her portrait, but we would no longer let her sit to him. He caught her expressions from day to day and made studies of them, and touched up the portrait by himself. It was wonderful to me to see her sparkling, wrinkled, aristocratic face, at once so worldly and so spiritual, growing out of the canvas. Then, when she told him that he was to make a second copy of it, that I might have one for my very own, you can fancy my pride and satisfaction.
Well, we had fallen into the way of locking the two doors that lead from her bedroom, so that if she should be taken with one of her old wandering spells and should try to slip by Martha, who had a cot in the room with her, she would be unable to get out. I slept in the little dressing room next to her that I might be of assistance to Martha should she need me, and several times she did, for grandmother insisted on going out to the old place at the end of the garden. Once she had her jewel case with her, and insisted that Jack must have the jewels, because he was going hungry and was sleeping by the wayside, while she and all the rest of the family lived in luxury. It took me a long time to quiet her.
But she was so well guarded that we thought no harm could possibly come to her. But the hour came when we all failed her. I cannot bear to think of it. No one in the house can.
It happened this way. I had gone motoring with Uncle David and Keefe. Aunt Lorena remained at home to be near grandmother, and Martha was in immediate charge. But Martha is old, too, and though she is most loyal, she does not always use the best judgment. At any rate, while Aunt Lorena was down with the cook talking over Sunday’s dinner, Grandmother sent Martha to call her. She said she wished to consult with her at once upon some important matter.
So Martha, nothing doubting, went in search of Aunt Lorena, and when she came back grandmother was missing. She had been in the little upstairs sitting room, but she was not to be found there nor in her bedroom. Unfortunately, Martha wasted a few minutes in looking for her on the second story, and then she came trembling down to the first floor, her old knees quaking under her, and looked there without success. Old James had been tidying up the walk in front of the house—for there had been a rain and a cold wind, and twigs and branches were lying all about the ground—and he said she had not come out. So more time was spent in searching for her all about the great rambling house. The servants began looking in the rooms we never use, and then they ran up to the attic, thinking she might be up there looking over her chests and boxes as she likes to do sometimes. But she was not there either.
Then Uncle David, Keefe and I came home.
I had noticed as we swept around the drive which goes by the east wing of the house, that a certain little side door opening into the garden, stood ajar, which was curious for this time of the year. It is a door used only in the summer time, and then usually by someone who wishes to escape quietly into the garden without being seen by those in the front of the house.
“It’s a cold day for a door to be standing open like that,” I said to Uncle David.
“Curious,” he said. “Mr. O’Connor, as you go in, be kind enough to close it. It leads from the little coat room beneath the stairs.”
Keefe and I went in together, and then we heard the tumult in the house.