Mrs. Parks had suggested the same thing. She was afraid, and was fumigating with sulphur candles and chloride of lime to kill the microbes which might stray her way until the house smelled like a vault. But Rena had no fear, and was soon on her way to the McPherson place with Tom, who was very anxious about Rex and curious to know how he would receive him. I was at my wits’ end when he came, and I allowed him to go in at once, hoping he might have a quieting effect upon my patient, who was making frantic efforts to catch the eye, or rather the eyes, for the room was full of them now, and his motions were like one brushing mosquitoes from the head and face.
“Hallo, Tom!” he said. “Glad to see you, but excuse me if I keep at it, driving them away. There was only one at first. I saw it in the well, you know—I was fool enough to look in—and it has been with me ever since. There’s a thousand here now. I have counted five hundred on the bed at once, winking and blinking and mocking me, and they are everywhere; shoo, shoo,” and he began to brush his hair and arms and face.
It was pitiful to see him, and Tom’s chin quivered as he looked at him fighting the imaginary eyes floating before him.
“Rex,” he said, sitting down upon the bed, “listen. There are no eyes here, and the one you saw in the mirror was a reflection of Irene herself standing by you in flesh and blood.”
“I know, I know,” Rex replied. “Somebody told me. Who was it? Sam, I believe. He saw her. She came up close and looked at me. It was a trick, a joke, a lie! I have been made the subject of a lot of late, and it hurt me some, and you, Tom, were in it, too! Et tu, Brute! we used to read at school, but I never thought I should one day be Cæsar!”
A glimmer of reason was asserting itself for a moment, and Tom’s eyes filled with tears as he said: “Yes, Rex, I was in it, and I am so sorry. We are all sorry. Rena most of all.”
At the mention of Rena, Rex’s manner changed at once.
“Yes, Rena,” he said, with a ring of pleasure in his voice, “Rena, with the little soft hands which take the eyes away. She can catch them! Where is she? I want her. She’s the girl, you know, the other was somebody else, very grand and tall and beautiful, and lives in Claremont instead of New York, and is not the one Sandy meant. That was Rena—your Rena, I want her.”
He was talking at random again, and Rena, who heard her name, went into the room.
“I am here,” she said, going up to him, while he took his hands from Tom and gave them to her.