Her own troubles diminished, however, in the presence of the heavier ones under which Chrissalyn now staggered.
Colonel Layton was going down hill distressingly fast, and nothing could be done to save him. His health was broken, his wits muddled and wandering most of the time, and the end of his resources at hand. He had let go his anchorage and was drifting to his destruction, careless of wind or tide.
Meantime the brave Butterfly smiled before the world and chatted cheerily when her friends called, though with her heart in her mouth, and her ear ever alert for her husband’s wavering footsteps. When she heard the unwelcome sound, she made excuse and went outside to intercept his entrance. Usually at such times he was pathetically obedient, and sat where she placed him, in some vacant room or dark corner of the hall, till her visitors left and she came for him. To be sure he complained and whined and swore in a rambling way without rage, yet when Chrissalyn came he went with her like a worn out child. However, he was not always so tractable. There were times when he blustered and threatened, and his eyes had a light dancing in them that made one’s blood run cold.
One night Mrs. Doring could not sleep, a sense of impending danger oppressed her. Getting up and putting on a wrapper, she went to a window and looked into the street. All was still, and yet somewhere she fancied she heard mutterings. On going into the hall she saw the Laytons’ door open, the lights at full flare, and, to her surprise, the colonel, fully dressed, sitting in the doorway whetting a razor, with a slow, sibilant stroke, which seemed to give him extraordinary pleasure, for he smiled in a gratified way and his eyes twinkled like stars. There was no fury in his face, but something far more dreadful—the look of a lunatic who meditates a deed he considers delightful. Sitting by the window, opposite the door, was Chrissalyn, clad only in her sleeping gown, with a face white and rigid, and a pistol held firmly in her hand.
At sight of the scene Cartice grew cold with fright; but she went close to Colonel Layton and was about to speak, when, without pausing in his razor whetting, he said, gently, “Go away, now, Mrs. Doring, and come back a little later if you want to.”
In spite of the apparently innocent words, she felt that behind them lurked some terrible intention. If she called help the arrival of others might precipitate whatever horror lurked in his mad mind.
Chrissalyn heard everything but said nothing, and her silence was eloquently ominous.
“Why should I come again if I go away?” she asked, thinking to lead his mind from the work in hand.
Shrugging his shoulders significantly, he said, “Merely to see sights,” and then laughed the low satisfied laugh of one who knows and enjoys things his listener dreams not of.
“What sights?”