I left soon after. There was little I could do.
But I comforted her as best I could, and said good
night. My heart was heavy as I went down the
stairs. For, twist things as I might, it was clear
that in some way the Howell boy was mixed up in the
Brice case. Poor little troubled Lida! Poor
distracted boy!
I had a curious experience down-stairs. I had
reached the foot of the staircase and was turning
to go back and along the hall to the side entrance,
when I came face to face with Isaac, the old colored
man who had driven the family carriage when I was
a child, and whom I had seen, at intervals since I
came back, pottering around Alma’s house.
The old man was bent and feeble; he came slowly down
the hall, with a bunch of keys in his hand. I
had seen him do the same thing many times.
He stopped when he saw me, and I shrank back from
the light, but he had seen me. “Miss Bess!”
he said. “Foh Gawd’s sake, Miss Bess!”
“You are making a mistake, my friend,”
I said, quivering. “I am not ’Miss
Bess’!”
He came close to me and stared into my face.
And from that he looked at my cloth gloves, at my
coat, and he shook his white head. “I sure
thought you was Miss Bess,” he said, and made
no further effort to detain me. He led the way
back to the door where the machine waited, his head
shaking with the palsy of age, muttering as he went.
He opened the door with his best manner, and stood
aside.
“Good night, ma’am,” he quavered.
I had tears in my eyes. I tried to keep them
back. “Good night,” I said.
“Good night, Ikkie.”
It had slipped out, my baby name for old Isaac!
“Miss Bess!” he cried. “Oh,
praise Gawd, it’s Miss Bess again!”
He caught my arm and pulled me back into the hall,
and there he held me, crying over me, muttering praises
for my return, begging me to come back, recalling
little tender things out of the past that almost killed
me to hear again.
But I had made my bed and must lie in it. I forced
him to swear silence about my visit; I made him promise
not to reveal my identity to Lida; and I told him—Heaven
forgive me!—that I was well and prosperous
and happy.
Dear old Isaac! I would not let him come to see
me, but the next day there came a basket, with six
bottles of wine, and an old daguerreotype of my mother,
that had been his treasure. Nor was that basket
the last.
The coroner held an inquest over the headless body
the next day, Tuesday. Mr. Graves telephoned
me in the morning, and I went to the morgue with him.
I do not like the morgue, although some of my neighbors
pay it weekly visits. It is by way of excursion,
like nickelodeons or watching the circus put up its
tents. I have heard them threaten the children
that if they misbehaved they would not be taken to
the morgue that week!
