"What is that?" he demanded in a strange voice.
"It must be due to something in the room," Mrs. Brigham said faintly.
Henry Glynn stood and stared a moment longer. His face showed a gamut of
emotions. Horror, conviction, then furious incredulity. Suddenly he
began hastening hither and thither about the room. He moved the
furniture with fierce jerks, turning ever to see the effect upon the
shadow on the wall. Not a line of its terrible outlines wavered.
"It must be something in the room!" he declared in a voice which seemed
to snap like a lash.
His face changed, the inmost secrecy of his nature seemed evident upon
his face, until one almost lost sight of his lineaments. Rebecca stood
close to her sofa, regarding him with woeful, fascinated eyes. Mrs.
Brigham clutched Caroline's hand. They both stood in a corner out of his
way. For a few moments he raged about the room like a caged wild animal.
He moved every piece of furniture; when the moving of a piece did not
affect the shadow he flung it to the floor.
Then suddenly he desisted. He laughed.
"What an absurdity," he said easily. "Such a to-do about a shadow."
"That's so," assented Mrs. Brigham, in a scared voice which she tried to
make natural. As she spoke she lifted a chair near her.
"I think you have broken the chair that Edward was fond of," said
Caroline.
Terror and wrath were struggling for expression on her face. Her mouth
was set, her eyes shrinking. Henry lifted the chair with a show of
anxiety.
"Just as good as ever," he said pleasantly. He laughed again, looking at
his sisters. "Did I scare you?" he said. "I should think you might be
used to me by this time. You know my way of wanting to leap to the
bottom of a mystery, and that shadow does look--queer, like--and I
thought if there was any way of accounting for it I would like to
without any delay."
"You don't seem to have succeeded," remarked Caroline dryly, with a
slight glance at the wall.
Henry's eyes followed hers and he quivered perceptibly.
"Oh, there is no accounting for shadows," he said, and he laughed again.
"A man is a fool to try to account for shadows."
Then the supper bell rang, and they all left the room, but Henry kept
his back to the wall--as did, indeed, the others.
Henry led the way with an alert motion like a boy; Rebecca brought up
the rear. She could scarcely walk, her knees trembled so.
"I can't sit in that room again this evening," she whispered to Caroline
after supper.
"Very well; we will sit in the south room," replied Caroline. "I think
we will sit in the south parlor," she said aloud; "it isn't as damp as
the study, and I have a cold."
So they all sat in the south room with their sewing. Henry read the
newspaper, his chair drawn close to the lamp on the table. About nine
o'clock he rose abruptly and crossed the hall to the study. The three
sisters looked at one another. Mrs. Brigham rose, folded her rustling
skirts compactly round her, and began tiptoeing toward the door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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