As I ran across the street I divined almost in full what had taken place.
I had noticed the possibility of some of the facts when I had left the Baron asleep on the parlor lounge, but they could have done no harm, even when Senda did not come, had it not been for two other facts which I had failed to foresee; one, that we had unwittingly overtasked our willing old nurse, and in her chair in Mrs. Fontenette's room she was going to fall asleep; and the other that the entomologist would waken.
XXI
And now see what a cunning trap the most innocent intentions may sometimes set. There was a mirror in the sick-room purposely so placed that, with the parlor door ajar, the watcher, but not the patient, could see into the parlor, and could be seen from the parlor when sitting anywhere between the mirror and the window beyond it. This window was the one that looked into the side garden. Purposely, too, the lounge had been placed so as to give and receive these advantages. A candle stood on the window's inner ledge and was screened from the unseen bed, but shone outward through the window and inward upon the mirror. The front door of the parlor opened readily to anyone within or without who knew enough to use its two latches at once, but neither within nor without to—the Baron, say—who did not know.
Do you see it? As he lay awake on the lounge his eye was, of course, drawn constantly to the mirror by the reflected light of the candle, and to its images of the nodding watcher and of the window just beyond. So lying and gazing, he had suddenly beheld that which brought him from the lounge in an instant, net in hand, and tortured to find the front door—by which he would have slipped out and around to the window—fastened! What he saw was the moth—the moth so many years unseen. Now it sipped at the saucer of sweet stuff, now hovered over it, now was lost in the dark, and now fluttered up or slid down the pane, lured by the beam of the candle.
If he was not to lose it, there was but one thing to do. With his eyes fixed, moth-mad, on the window, he glided in, passed the two sleepers, and stealthily lifted the sash with one hand, the other poising the net. The moth dropped under, the net swept after it, and the sash slipped and fell. Mrs. Fontenette rose wildly, and when she saw first the old woman, half starting from her seat with frightened stare, and then the entomologist speechless, motionless, and looming like an apparition, she gave that cry her husband heard, and fell back upon the pillow in a convulsion.
I found the Baron sitting on the side of his bed like a child trying to be awake without waking. No, not trying to do or be anything; but aimless, dazed, silent, lost.
He obeyed, automatically, my every request. I set about getting him to bed at once, putting his clothes beyond his reach, and even locking his balcony door, without a sign of objection from him. Then I left him for a moment, and calling Senda from the nursery to the parlor told her the state of the different patients, including her husband, but without the hows and whys except that I had found him in our garden with his precious net. "And now, as it will soon be day, Mrs. Smith and I—with the servants and others—can take care of the four."
"If I"—meekly interrupted the sweet woman—"vill go for se doctors? I vill go." Soon she was off.
Then I went back to her husband, and finding his mood so changed that he was eager to explain everything, I let him talk; which I soon saw was a blunder; for he got pitifully excited, and wanted to go over the same ground again and again. One matter I was resolved to fix in his mind without delay. "Mark you," I charged him, "your wife must never know a word of this!"