Anna, Where Are You? (10 page)

Afterwards, when Miss Silver tried to formulate a description of him, she found that it would have fitted so many other people as to be of very little value. He was neither tall nor short. He seemed to be of a slim build, but his clothes were so loose and baggy that even this might be in doubt, since a loose raincoat may hide a sagging waist-line. Beneath the raincoat aged flannel trousers and deplorable boots. Above, a long woollen muffler of uncertain shade. And above that a short beard, shaggy eyebrows, and an unkempt head of brown hair just flecked with grey. He stood, he looked—at Miss Silver in her black cloth coat, her elderly fur tippet, and her second-best hat; at Thomasina, glowing from her run; at the children, laughing and whispering with her. He looked, and spoke with a marked country accent.

“Youth at the prow—and Prudence—at the helm,” he said, and on this misquotation walked rapidly away, leaving Miss Silver quite a little surprised and not at all sure that she cared about being alluded to as Prudence by a total stranger. Better that, it is true, than the “Pleasure” of the original, but why the quotation at all?

As soon as he was gone the children bubbled over with information about him.

“That was Mr. Robinson.”

“Mr. John Robinson.”

“He watches birds—he knows an awful lot about them. He goes out all night and watches them.”

“And in the day too.”

Maurice said, “He’s batty! ” And Jennifer, “ He’s always like that if you meet him—he just says something and goes away. Sometimes it’s poetry, and sometimes it isn’t. In the village they say he’s mad because he goes about talking to himself up in the woods and on the common, but old Mr. Masters says, ‘Why shouldn’t he if he wants to? There’s a lot of people that are not so interesting to talk to as what you are yourself.’ ”

Thomasina went back to the stables, and was ten minutes late for tea with the Miss Tremletts.

Mr. Craddock was present at supper, where he dominated the conversation. During the soup he discoursed upon Alchemy and the Philosopher’s Stone, but by the time they were all eating boiled fish he had diverged into a long and very involved dissertation upon Planetary Influences, to which nobody except Miss Silver appeared to pay any attention. Mrs. Craddock occupied herself with serving, and every now and then said “Oh, yes,” or “Oh, no,” as the occasion appeared to demand. The children ate their fish. Once at least Jennifer’s eyes went to her step-father’s face in a long, bright stare. There was anger in it and something else, but when he turned to meet it the dark lashes came down. She reached out, helping herself to salt, and some of it spilled between them. Not a comfortable meal! But then Deepe House was not a comfortable house.

Mr. Craddock’s sentences got longer and longer and their meaning less apparent, until with the arrival of a cold and naked looking blancmange Benjy broke into a roar.

“Don’t want it! Don’t like it! Won’t eat it!”

Mrs. Craddock said, “Ssh!” in a guilty voice, and then, “Mrs. Masters must have forgotten. I did tell her—nobody liked it.”

“She likes making it,” said Maurice with angry gloom.

Jennifer said accusingly, “If you didn’t have cornflour in the house, she couldn’t make it.”

Mrs. Craddock helped the horrid whiteness with a trembling hand. Mr. Craddock had as yet said nothing, but he looked as if he might at any moment let fly with a thunderbolt. Instead, he merely pushed back his chair and left the table.

Nobody ate the cornflour shape except Miss Silver, but after Mr. Craddock’s departure the children partook of hearty slices of bread and jam whilst competing cheerfully as to who could say the most insulting things about the rejected blancmange.

Later on when they were in bed, Mrs. Craddock recurred to the incident. The darning-needle shook in her hand as she said,

“I am such a very bad manager, and I cannot cook at all well. Everything seems to go wrong when I try.”

“But you have Mrs. Masters to do the cooking,” said Miss Silver.

“She despises me,” said Emily Craddock in a helpless voice. “She knows that I cannot do the things myself, so she takes no notice of anything I say. I have told her over and over again that Mr. Craddock will not sit at table with a blancmange and the children hate it. But it is so easy to do, and when she is in a hurry she will make it.”

Miss Silver said,

“If you did not have any cornflour—”

“Then she uses sago, and that is worse.”

“Perhaps if you did not have any sago—”

“She would find something else,” said Mrs. Craddock in a despairing voice. A tear dropped upon a much darned undergarment. “Sometimes I feel as if I couldn’t go on. If it were not for you—” She sniffed faintly.

Miss Silver said with gravity,

“You require rest and relief from responsibility. Jennifer and Maurice would be far better at school—even Benjy.”

Emily Craddock gave a startled cry.

“Oh, no, no! I couldn’t! Mr. Craddock wouldn’t approve— and I shouldn’t feel they were safe. He says it is foolish of me, but I can’t help feeling frightened about them when they are away. You see, I very nearly lost them all last summer.”

“My dear Mrs. Craddock!”

The tears were running down Emily Craddock’s face.

“Such a pleasant seaside holiday, but I nearly lost them all— and Mr. Craddock too. They were all out in the boat, and it overturned. I was having my afternoon rest—and they were nearly drowned—all of them. It took them a long time to bring Benjy round. None of the children could swim.”

“And Mr. Craddock?”

“Only a little—just enough to keep himself afloat. He couldn’t help them. If it hadn’t been for some men in another boat… It gave me such a terrible shock. I don’t seem to get over it.” She fumbled for a handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes.

Casting about for a change of subject, Miss Silver recalled the meeting with Mr. John Robinson. It would, she considered, divert Mrs. Craddock from an agitating topic and at the same time gratify her own strong desire for information about the tenant of the other wing. She introduced the name in a bright conversational manner, adding,

“He came up and spoke to us out in the courtyard this afternoon when we came back from our walk.”

Mrs. Craddock had stopped crying. She had a fluttered look. She said,

“Oh—” And then, “Was he at all—strange?”

Miss Silver was putting the final touches to the pale blue coatee. She said,

“He quoted a line of poetry.”

“He does—at least I believe—I have heard that he does. You know, I’ve never spoken to him myself. He is—” she hesitated for a word—“rather strange. Quite solitary, I believe. He has been here for some months, but I have only seen him just once or twice in the distance. It does seem strange, but I am sure he is quite harmless. He speaks to the children sometimes. I used to worry about it, but last autumn— Oh, Miss Silver, they had such a narrow escape—and it was all due to him—so whatever people say about him, I shall always be grateful.”

Miss Silver fastened off her thread and ran it in along a seam. It was not until she had completed this task that she said,

“They had an escape?”

Emily Craddock’s thin hands were clasping one another convulsively.

“Oh, yes! It was when that Miss Ball was with us—and of course she didn’t understand that sort of thing at all. They went out to look for mushrooms, and they found some very fine ones up on the edge of the pinewood over the hill. And when they were coming home they met Mr. Robinson, and he said where had they found so many, and when they told him he looked at them and said they weren’t mushrooms at all but some horrid poisonous thing. He said real mushrooms don’t grow near pine trees, but something that looks very like them does, and he made them throw them all out. Of course it wasn’t Miss Ball’s fault, for how could she know—but it upset me dreadfully, and of course I couldn’t help feeling so very grateful to Mr. Robinson, because if he hadn’t happened to meet them—”

“It was indeed providential,” said Miss Silver.

Miss Silver woke up in the dark. One moment there had been a vague but pleasant dream, the next she was broad awake and considering what it was that had wakened her. It was just as if she had stepped from one room into another and closed the door behind her. But in the moment of that passing there had been a sound, and she thought that the sound had been a scream. There was a reading-lamp beside her bed. She turned it on and saw that the hands of her watch stood between one and two. The sound might have come from outside—an owl’s cry perhaps, but she did not think so. She thought it came from the room next door—from Jennifer’s room. There was a communicating door, but it had been locked ever since she came, with no sign of a key on either side. She got up, put on her slippers and a warm blue dressing-gown, and went out into the passage.

Of the five bedrooms in use four were on this side of the stairs —Jennifer next to herself, Mrs. Craddock and the little boys across the way. Beyond the well of the stairs, in the direction of the main building, Mr. Craddock’s room looked out upon the courtyard.

The passage was unlit from end to end. Miss Silver stood in the dark and listened. A sound came to her from the room next to hers—something between a groan and a sob. She went quietly to the door and opened it. The room was quite dark, except where the square of the window showed faintly against a denser gloom. Between it and the opened door a light air moved. A curtain stirred, blew out, and fell again. Jennifer’s gasping voice said,

“No—no—no! Take it away!”

Miss Silver came into the room, turned on the light, and shut the door behind her. Jennifer sat bolt upright, her hands pressing down upon the bed on either side of her, her pose rigid, her eyes wide, her dark hair wild. She did not look at Miss Silver, because she did not see her. What she saw was a picture in a dream, and the dream was horrible.

Miss Silver went over to the bed, sat down upon it, and laid her hand gently over one of those straining ones. At once the pose broke up. Both Jennifer’s hands clutched at her, held to her. The blankness went from the eyes. They gazed in terror, then focussed on Miss Silver, not in full recognition but with a piteous effect of groping.

Miss Silver said, at her kindest and most matter-of-fact,

“It is quite all right, my dear. You have been dreaming.”

The child’s grip was frightening. Miss Silver did not bruise easily, but she kept the mark of those fingers for days. Jennifer said in a horrid whisper,

“It was the Hand!”

“It was a dream, my dear.”

There was a long, deep sigh.

“You didn’t see it.”

“It was a dream. There was nothing to see.”

This time the sigh became a shudder that shook the bed.

“You didn’t see it. I did.”

Miss Silver said firmly,

“Jennifer, my dear, there is nothing to see. You have had a bad dream and it has frightened you, but now you are awake again. There is nothing to frighten you any more. If you will let go of me I will get you a glass of water.”

She would not have thought it possible that Jennifer’s grasp could have tightened, but it seemed to do so. The thin body shook, the eyes stared. Words came tumbling out.

“You don’t know—you didn’t see it! Mr. Masters told me— I thought it was just a story—I did—I did! I didn’t think it was true!”

“What did he tell you, my dear?”

Jennifer went on staring and shaking.

“About the Everlys—why there aren’t any more of them. There weren’t any boys. There was old Miss Maria, only she wasn’t old then, and there was Clarice, and Isabella—three of them—and there was a man and he was their cousin, but they couldn’t all marry him. Mr. Masters said it was a pity, because then it wouldn’t have happened like it did.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“A very foolish and improper remark, my dear.”

“It wouldn’t have happened,” said Jennifer—“not if he could have married them all. Solomon had a thousand wives, and he was in the Bible. Mr. Masters said one was trouble enough for most, and three to one wasn’t fair odds, but it would have been better if the cousin could have married the three of them, because then Isabella wouldn’t—” She choked on a caught breath.

“What did Isabella do?” said Miss Silver gravely.

“She killed her.” Jennifer’s whisper crawled with horror. “He was going to marry Clarice, and she killed her—with the axe—out of the wood-shed. She cut her hand right off—the one with the ring he had given her. They said she was mad—and shut her up. And Maria went on living here all by herself until she died, and there weren’t any more Everlys.”

“A terrible story, my dear. It was very wrong of Mr. Masters to speak of it.”

Jennifer shuddered.

“He had to—it wasn’t his fault. I told him about the doors being kept locked into the big house. And I told him I was going in to explore, and he said I mustn’t do it, because—” she tripped and stumbled over the words—“because of the hand— because of Clarice’s hand.”

“My dear—”

“He said people saw it. He said there was a boy—a long time ago—he saw it, and—he never spoke again.”

“Then, my dear, how did anyone know what he had seen?”

Jennifer gave an impatient jerk.

“I don’t know—Mr. Masters said… And there was a girl— she got drowned. She used to work here—her name was Mary Cheeseman. She used to say she didn’t believe in any such tales, and she found a way to get in. At least I think she did—she wouldn’t tell. And she got drowned going home. Pushed down in the bog, Mr. Masters said—‘like as if it was a hand had pushed her.’ ”

“Mr. Masters is a foolish and superstitious old man. I do not think that any of his stories lose in the telling. I have heard about poor Mary. It was a rainy night, and she missed the bridge and wandered into the bog.”

Jennifer sat up straight, her face quite close to Miss Silver’s, her eyes unnaturally bright.

“Did she?” she said. “Did she?” She let go of Miss Silver as suddenly as she had clutched her. “Perhaps she did. You don’t know, and I don’t know, and Mr. Masters doesn’t know.” Her voice dropped to a mere breath. “I know what I saw.”

“What did you see, Jennifer?”

The long lashes drooped. From under them something looked, and was gone. Hope—uncertainty—fear? Miss Silver wasn’t sure. Jennifer said,

“You wouldn’t believe if I told you. People don’t—not if they don’t want to.” Then, without any change in her voice, “I can unlock the door into your room. I hid the key because of Miss Ball. This used to be the dressing-room, you know. If the door is open, I don’t expect I shall have another bad dream— shall I? My mother used to let me have a night-light, but he said not to.”

“It is more restful to sleep in the dark.”

Jennifer was getting out of bed. She turned a scornful glance on Miss Silver.

“Is it?” she said.