I spent the next several days sketching the girls. Each morning, Flint led me to a different room, Miss Joseph fetched the children to it, and I started making pictures.
I might have stopped at any time and said, “Girls, which one of you wrote ‘Help us’? I want to help you. Of what help can I be?”
But I held back. Whichever one of them it was, she was afraid to speak in front of the others; and none of them ever saw me alone, as Jane had that day in the schoolroom.
I feared too that something lurking nearby might hear me and be warned.
I saw it most often in the pictures of Florence and Jane. Then it was almost another person, smirking or leering above them. When I drew Mary, the thing seemed to be in profile, if it came at all. With Julia it was smaller but thicker than with the others. Sometimes I even found it clinging to Popau.
Did the girls know it was there? They must feel something. Wasn’t this the thing from which at least one of them wanted to be rescued ?
They gave no sign of it. When they were with me, they ignored me almost completely. When they came into whatever room Flint had taken me, Florence always dropped me a deep, sarcastic curtsy. Jane bowed and stuck out her tongue. Mary said, “Good morning, Uncle Sargent,” and Julia simply looked at me, then whispered something to Popau.
Then they wandered around whatever room we were in, shouting, bickering, and playing. I might have been as inhuman as Popau as far as they were concerned.
Each day Iza Boit examined my sketches. Each day she approved my work but shook her head over the rooms.
“We must try, try again,” she said.
Toward the end of the week, I was beginning to think that Jane’s suggestion of the coal bin might be the right one after all. We had tried the schoolroom again, the salon again, the small salon, and the dining room. Today we were in the music room.
“Today, Uncle Sargent, we will delight you with our new tone poem, ‘Siegfried the German goes Mad,’” Jane announced.
She and Florence sat down at the piano.
“I sometimes enjoy music when I work,” I said.
“Well, you won’t enjoy this,” said Jane.
They started smashing the keys, playing two different songs.
“We changed our minds. It’s not a tone poem, it’s an opera,” Jane shouted.
She began to sing,
“Siegfried the German
Tried to paint, tried to paint, tried to paint.
A lady came and made him faint,
My fair lady.”
Mary joined in. Julia accompanied her sisters, singing, “Ya-Ya,Ya- Ya,Ya-Ya, Ya-Ya,” and banging on a drum made from a footstool.
I studied the room.
I didn’t like the light there. In summer it would have been in full glare, but in winter it was dim. Not shadowy, but gray. I wanted more light, to create some true shadows.
I sent for Flint.
“Flint, would it be possible to have that large mirror in the hall brought into this room and set there, where it will reflect what light we have?” I asked. I had to speak almost directly into his ear to be heard.
“Of course, sir,” Flint said.
In a quarter of an hour, he and a footman were back with the mirror, a huge and heavy thing in a dark frame.
When it came into the room, the concert stopped.
“P-paul says no,” Julia said, and ran to her doll.
“Flint, you must put that back at once,” Florence commanded. “Back at once, you dunce!”
Ignoring her perfectly, Flint and his helper went out of the room.
“Flint, come back here!” Jane shrieked.
In the reflection I saw Florence and Jane standing up behind the piano. Mary had crossed to Julia and taken her hand. Each of their faces was riveted on the mirror in fear.
It was now or never, I decided. Let whatever was listening hear
what I said next. My father’s old advice came back to me: “Go straight through the torpedo line, like Farragut at Mobile Bay.”
I turned to them.
“Girls, which one of you asked me for help? I want to help. Tell me what I need to do.”
Now the three oldest ones looked at one another.
“It wasn’t me,” said Mary.
“Yes, it was, you little sneak,” Jane hissed.
She slapped her sister.
Screaming, Mary ran out of the room, dragging Julia.
Popau fell from Julia’s grip and lay on the floor by the footstool.
“Please, Uncle Sargent, put it back,” Florence implored me.
“Florence, what’s wrong?” I said. “It’s just a mirror. It’s here to light up one side of the room a little better, that’s all. What are you afraid of?”
She didn’t answer.
“Look,” Jane whispered.
I turned back to the mirror.
In one corner of it, a pale light began to gleam. It was not a reflection. It was coming from within the mirror, or behind it. Pale, indefinite, wavering, it grew from a nebulous patch the size of my fist to something larger than my head. It flashed brilliantly, and faded.
“It didn’t happen,” Jane said.
“What?” I demanded. “What didn’t happen?”
I crossed the room to the piano and clumsily wedged myself in behind it.
“None of it happened,” Jane said.
“Jane, tell me,” I said. “I need to know what you know. I see what you see in the shadows, but I don’t know what it is. Help me.”
“No one can help you,” Florence said. “It’s too late.”
“Too late for what?” I said.
Then clearly, from above and behind me, I smelled burning ambergris.
Just one whiff, sharp and real as if I were in a lady’s bedroom. Intimate, arousing, and impossible. Impossible as what I had just seen in the mirror.
“She’s calling, she’s calling,” Florence said with wild joy.
She pushed me away with a strength I would never have guessed she had and grabbed Jane. Out of the room they ran, and down the hall.
I hesitated, then went after them, calling, “Jane, Florence, come back. Don’t run from this thing. Come back and face it.”
When I reached the doorway, the hall was empty. There was no sound of their feet.
They must be somewhere close by, but it would be unforgivably rude of me to go from room to room, searching for them. I couldn’t go ranging through the Boits’ home. The girls might as well have dropped off the face of the earth.
I turned back to the mirror. It was normal now. All I saw were my own face, stupid with surprise, and the room behind me.
The perfume lingered, teasing me. It was as if the thing that had made the light in the mirror knew that. As if it was scorning me. I felt embarassed, threatened.
“"What is it?” I asked the empty room. “What are you?”
It was only when the odor was gone that I saw what wasn’t in the mirror any longer.
Popau was missing.
I had seen Julia drop that damned doll. I’d heard its china head hit the carpet. It had been lying by the footstool.
Hadn’t it?
I looked under every piece of furniture in the room. I searched behind the curtains. It wasn’t the doll I wanted, it was the rationality that told me it was there. I wanted that badly.
I almost called out its name, but the words caught in my throat.
She’s calling, she's calling.
What had that meant? Whatever Florence’s words signified, whether some clue to this madness I was in or madness itself, one thing was clear. I was no longer watching some children’s game. This was something real.
“Or perhaps not real but definitely serious,” I muttered, rubbing my chin. Then, “Good grief, Sargent, what the devil do you mean by that?”
Then Flint was there.
“I beg your pardon, sir. Have you any further need of the mirror?” he asked.
“No, I guess not,” I said. “Take it back, Flint.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Flint do you smell anything?” I blurted out.
“Sir?” Flint said.
“Never mind. Sorry,” I said.
Then I had a thought. There was one person here who might be able to help me now.
“Flint, would Miss Joseph be in the schoolroom?”
“I believe so, sir,” Flint said.
“Thank you. I may just put my head in there before I go,” I said.
“Very good, sir,” Flint said. “I’ll get help to replace the mirror.”
I went down the hall to the schoolroom.
Miss Joseph wasn’t there, but Mary and Julia were, hiding under Mary’s desk.
“Mary, darling, are you all right?” I asked.
I knelt down beside the girls and put my hand on Mary’s trembling shoulders.
“Go away, Uncle Sargent, I want my mother,” she sobbed.
“I’ll send for her as soon as someone comes,” I said. “I’m afraid I don’t know where she is.”
“Uncle Sargent, you made it come,” Julia said.
“Why did you do that?” Mary said.
“Do what, Mary?” I asked. “What did I make come?”
“We want Mother!” Mary shouted.
She jerked out from under the desk and ran away, with Julia behind her.
It wasn’t long before they were back, with Miss Joseph shepherding them.
“Miss Joseph, I’m afraid something very . . . very odd has happened,” I said.
I saw the fear in her eyes that had been there before, the day the girls danced.
“What have you seen?” she said.
Clearly there was more in my own face than I had realized.
“I don’t know,” I replied. Then I asked, “Did Florence and Jane come this way?”
It was a stupid question, and I knew it.
“Wherever they are sir, they are far from you and me,” Miss Joseph said.
Then she turned to Mary and Julia, who were still howling for their mother.
“There, my dears, there, there,” she kept saying. “It’s all right now.Your mother made it all right. She wants you to be happy, darlings. She wants you to go to the nursery. Come on now, won’t that be nice? Mary, be a brave little soldier. We’ll play house.”
Ignoring me, she dragged and pushed the sobbing girls away.
Clearly it was time for me to go. I wondered if I would ever be asked back to coninue my work.
Down the hall, down the stairs I went.
I wondered where Iza Boit was. Out visiting? It was that time of day. Or was she lying in a dark room with a cold cloth on her face and a dose of opium in her veins? Or was she simply sitting somewhere in the beautiful modern apartment oblivious to everything going on beyond her door?
Flint was waiting in the foyer. He had been expecting me.
The mirror was already back in its place.
“Flint, did you see where the Misses Boit went?” I asked.
"No, sir,” he said.
“They ran out of the room, you know,” I said. “They seemed
quite badly frightened by something. I’m worried that they may have gone out unaccompanied. Are you sure that none of them ran out the door?”
“I believe not, sir, “ Flint said.
“Do you have any idea where they did go?”
“No, sir,” said Flint. “The comings and goings of the children are the concern of Miss Joseph.”
“And yet you did know to search for Miss Florence and Miss Jane in the coal bin that first day I came.”
“It was not the first time they had hidden there, sir,” Flint said. “May I help you with your coat?”
A moment later I was out on the street.