“My dear, I know you do,” he said, then asked if he might smoke, and lit a cigarette. “I think that’s an interesting story,” he continued, after a few puffs, “and I’ll admit it’s clever of Mrs. Wasp, but pretty hard on the amiable caterpillar. Think of being out for a stroll and having a day nursery grafted on you! And then consider finding yourself a boarding-house and--on top of that--being asked to supply meals at all hours! I don’t blame the old boy for kicking off. It would be simply too much!”
I wondered how he could protect himself, and Mr. Kempwood said he shouldn’t have shaved. He said shaving made men lots of trouble, anyway, and if this fellow had been wise and grown a Van Dyke on his back, all troubles with the adopted family would have been avoided.
Then I said I must go, and stood up. “Do you think,” I asked, “that Madam Jumel ever had a servant who grew blind? Or did anyone who was ever blind love her very much?”
“I heard,” said Mr. Kempwood, “that one of those French refugees went blind and that she let him stay around the place, but don’t know how much truth there is in it. Someone who had known the coachman’s son said that this old chap used to sit out near the back door and sing peasant songs of his part of France and that he worshipped old Madam Jumel. . . . I think perhaps he missed Royalty and that she seemed that to him. . . . Anyway, it is said that he swore he would do anything for her that she asked, and that--blind or not--he would accomplish what he set out to do.”
I was interested, and it was as I supposed.
“Why did you ask?” he questioned.
“Some day perhaps I’ll tell you,” I responded, “but not now----” And then I left. As I started for my walk that day I had passed the blind man, and for a space, in one empty street, he had followed me. And as I returned I found him sitting huddled up in a little dry spot near the basement entrance of our building. I meant to keep the bracelet. It was mine. But--keeping it was beginning to be a terror-striking matter. . . . I thought of it, fearfully, I will confess, as I went up to our apartment, but once there all thoughts of Madam Jumel’s servant, Madam Jumel, and my bracelet fled. For Evelyn stood in the centre of the hall orating to Aunt Penelope. She held an empty box in one hand and the note Amy and I had written and signed with Jane’s name in the other. And I then felt the bluest spot in all that blue Monday.
Chapter XIV--Evelyn Blames Me
“She did it,” said Evelyn shrilly, as I stepped through the door. “I saw her carrying them. She even had the assurance to smile at me and wave! And as to this”--she waved the note--“that is only what I would expect from a prying, thieving chit who has had no upbringing, and who is suddenly thrown among people of cultivation. I----” She stopped, looked at the empty box, and choked.
Aunt Penelope, who was looking awfully baffled, stooped to pick up one of the stockings that had fallen from the box. “What is this?” she asked in a sort of vacant tone, and the question, and all that tangled in its answer, evidently enraged Evelyn, for she almost exploded with rage.