Now all this time, while the tragi-comedy of life was being played in
these three suburban villas, while on a commonplace stage love and humor
and fears and lights and shadows were so swiftly succeeding each other,
and while these three families, drifted together by fate, were shaping
each other's destinies and working out in their own fashion the strange,
intricate ends of human life, there were human eyes which watched over
every stage of the performance, and which were keenly critical of
every actor on it.
Across the road beyond the green palings and the
close-cropped lawn, behind the curtains of their creeper-framed windows,
sat the two old ladies, Miss Bertha and Miss Monica Williams, looking
out as from a private box at all that was being enacted before them.
The growing friendship of the three families, the engagement of Harold
Denver with Clara Walker, the engagement of Charles Westmacott with her
sister, the dangerous fascination which the widow exercised over
the Doctor, the preposterous behavior of the Walker girls and the
unhappiness which they had caused their father, not one of these
incidents escaped the notice of the two maiden ladies. Bertha the
younger had a smile or a sigh for the lovers, Monica the elder a frown
or a shrug for the elders. Every night they talked over what they had
seen, and their own dull, uneventful life took a warmth and a coloring
from their neighbors as a blank wall reflects a beacon fire.
And now it was destined that they should experience the one keen
sensation of their later years, the one memorable incident from which
all future incidents should be dated.
It was on the very night which succeeded the events which have just been
narrated, when suddenly into Monica William's head, as she tossed upon
her sleepless bed, there shot a thought which made her sit up with a
thrill and a gasp.
"Bertha," said she, plucking at the shoulder of her sister, "I have left
the front window open."
"No, Monica, surely not." Bertha sat up also, and thrilled in sympathy.
"I am sure of it. You remember I had forgotten to water the pots, and
then I opened the window, and Jane called me about the jam, and I have
never been in the room since."
"Good gracious, Monica, it is a mercy that we have not been murdered in
our beds. There was a house broken into at Forest Hill last week. Shall
we go down and shut it?"
"I dare not go down alone, dear, but if you will come with me. Put on
your slippers and dressing-gown. We do not need a candle. Now, Bertha,
we will go down together."