The Shape of Fear [16]
they gave Grandma Hanscom the room with the fire- place. Grandma was well pleased. The roaring fire warmed her heart as well as her chill old body, and she wept with weak joy when she looked at the larches, because they reminded her of the house she had lived in when she was first married. All the forenoon of the first day she was busy putting things away in bureau drawers and closets, but by afternoon she was ready to sit down in her high-backed rocker and enjoy the comforts of her room. She nodded a bit before the fire, as she usually did after luncheon, and then she awoke with an awful start and sat staring before her with such a look in her gentle, filmy old eyes as had never been there before. She did not move, except to rock slightly, and the Thought grew and grew till her face was disguised as by some hideous mask of tragedy. By and by the children came pounding at the door. "Oh, grandma, let us in, please. We want to see your new room, and mamma gave us some ginger cookies on a plate, and we want to give some to you." The door gave way under their assaults, and the three little ones stood peeping in, wait- ing for permission to enter. But it did not seem to be their grandma -- their own dear grandma -- who arose and tottered toward them in fierce haste, crying: "Away, away! Out of my sight! Out of my sight before I do the thing I want to do! Such a terrible thing! Send some one to me quick, children, children! Send some one quick!" They fled with feet shod with fear, and their mother came, and Grandma Hanscom sank down and clung about her skirts and sobbed: "Tie me, Miranda. Make me fast to the bed or the wall. Get some one to watch me. For I want to do an awful thing!" They put the trembling old creature in bed, and she raved there all the night long and cried out to be held, and to be kept from doing the fearful thing, whatever it was -- for she never said what it was. The next morning some one suggested tak- ing her in the sitting-room where she would be with the family. So they laid her on the sofa, hemmed around with cushions, and before long she was her quiet self again, though exhausted, naturally, with the tumult of the previous night. Now and then, as the children played about her, a shadow crept over her face -- a shadow as of cold remem- brance -- and then the perplexed tears followed. When she seemed as well as ever they put her back in her room. But though the fire glowed and the lamp burned, as soon as ever she was alone they heard her shrill cries ring- ing to them that the Evil Thought had come again. So Hal, who was home from col- lege, carried her up to his room, which she seemed to like very well. Then he went down to have a smoke before grandma's fire. The next morning he was absent from break- fast. They thought he might have gone for an early walk, and waited for him a few min- utes. Then his sister went to the room that looked upon the larches, and found him dressed and pacing the floor with a face set and stern. He had not been in bed at all, as she saw at once. His eyes were bloodshot, his face stricken as if with old age or sin or -- but she could not make it out. When he saw her he sank in a chair and covered his face with his hands, and between the trembling fingers she could see drops of perspiration on his forehead. "Hal!" she cried, "Hal, what is it?" But for answer he threw his arms about the little table and clung to it, and looked at her with tortured eyes, in which she fancied she saw a gleam of hate. She ran, screaming, from the room, and her father came and went up to him and laid his hands on the boy's shoulders. And then a fearful thing hap- pened. All the family saw it. There could be no mistake. Hal's hands found their way with frantic eagerness toward his father's throat as if they would choke him, and the look in his eyes was so like a madman's that his father raised his fist and felled him as he used to fell men years before in the college fights, and then dragged him into the sitting- room and wept over him. By evening, however, Hal was all right, and the family