The Old Lady
By Eleanor Scott
Adela Young must have come up to Oxford at the same time as myself; but no one, in a way, knew that she had. She was one of those people whom one never notices, physically or mentally – the kind of person whose adjectives you always qualify with “-ish.” She was smallish, thinnish, palish, with dim brownish hair and pale scared eyes. She had a timid, withdrawing manner; she dressed always in rather dismal neutral tints – dull greys and dim greens and fawnish drab, and tussore silk, to match her sallow skin. She was a good deal ignored.
I should never have known Adela, or the old lady, if it hadn’t been for a silly bet. One does these things in one’s first year – risky, futile, daring things – rather caddish things sometimes – with perhaps half-a-crown on them. Someone had ragged me on my numerous acquaintances, and I’d retorted by saying that anyone could make friends with anyone else if they wanted to. Maude Evans caught me up at once.
“Rot!” she said, with her usual affectation of breezy brusquerie. “There’s some people no one would ever know.”
“I bet there’s nobody in College I couldn’t get to know if I wanted to,” I asserted, with more assurance than was at all warranted. Maude had that effect on me.
Maude thought rapidly. I could see her, as I watched her challengingly, going over all the various types of people – the superior, the literary, the sporting, the fashionable, the “swots.” I felt pretty safe. I was only a fresher, but I had possibilities of friendships with all these types.
“You’d never get to know little Whatshername- that washed- out little dishcloth – Young, that’s it. I bet you’d never get thick with her.”
I had my doubts too, really. It was like betting you’d quarrel with a sofa-cushion. But of course I took her on.
“Bet I will,” I said at once.
“How much?” Maude caught me up. She always had rather an eye to the main chance.
“Oh – what you like.” I expected the usual half-crown.
“Bet you a fiver you don’t.”
That stung me. Maude would never have risked such a sum -five pounds means a good deal to a girl undergraduate – if she hadn’t felt certain of winning.
“Right,” I said immediately.
Then we settled the terms of the bet. I was to have invited and been invited – the latter was, of course, the important point – to six walks or meals by the end of the term: to have got some sort of real confidence (“heart to heart talk,” we called it) out of little Young, and have wangled an invitation to stay at her home before the end of the next term – the summer term.
Even as I took it on I felt a good deal of a cad. I felt much worse when I began the campaign. The college invitations were all right -one could take them as meaning a lot or as meaning nothing; but to fish for confidences and try to secure an invitation to stay with her people – rotten, both of them. I felt dimly even then that, even when tiresome, both are honors – often the highest honors one person can do another. But I’d been dared. Much as I wanted to win five pounds from the comparatively wealthy Maude Evans, little as I liked the idea of parting with any of my much smaller income to her, what really mattered was that I had been challenged and had accepted the challenge. So I set about the siege of Adela Young.
It was extremely difficult. Maude couldn’t have chosen a more hopeless subject. Certainly if I could “make good” with her I could with anyone, I thought, as I studied her across the dinner table that night. She looked permanently scared – she hardly raised her voice above a whisper, and her remarks, when audible, were merely hurried agreements with whatever the last speaker had said. She was silent whenever possible; her very movements were furtive and rapid, as if she had to get through the meal against time, and secretly. For the first time I felt rather intriguée about her. Plain, awkward, nondescript as she was, I felt something unusual, almost mysterious, about her. I was even rather thrilled by the idea of finding out more about her.
I caught her up as she was silently scuttling to her room after dinner – I remembered, now that I came to think of it, that she almost never waited for coffee after dinner, nor, indeed, for any semi-social function like that.
“I say,” I said, overtaking her, “you’re taking Mods. this term, aren’t you?”
“Y-Yes,” she breathed, looking terrified.
“I wonder if I might come in and go over the Plato with you?”
She said nothing, just goggled at me.
“You are taking the Plato set books, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I thought so. I’ve seen you at the classes.”
“Yes.”
We seemed stuck. I tried again.
“I meant to go over the stuff with Hanson and Phil Leamore, but they say they aren’t going to revise at all. Shall you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“When are you going to go over the Plato?”
She looked at me mutely, her mouth opening and shutting like a newly caught fish. She seemed quite incapable of making any suggestion.
“Could you possibly do it tonight?”
“Oh, yes. ”
I began to wonder if she could say anything except “Yes” and “Oh, yes.”
“Then may I come along now?” I pressed on.
She said nothing but opened her door for me. She had the oddest manner as she did it – reluctant, almost, and yet half anxious. I wondered rather cockily if she was one of those people you meet sometimes who, when they want a thing, are half afraid of getting it.
As we entered I looked curiously round to see what ideas of decoration such a person (or thing – she hardly seemed to be a real person) would have. She had apparently none. Not a picture, not a flower, not a cushion or a novel or a vase or a photograph was there. Just the usual regulation college furniture and the set books for Pass Mods. I’ve seldom seen anything so chilling, so absolutely impersonal. I began to regret the bet. Maude Evans was probably right – there were people you could never get to know, because there was nothing to know; and Adela Young was one of them. She had a nondescript face and figure, and inside – nothing. Nothing at all. However I’d undertaken it and I’d go on. I sat down – on a stiff college chair – you couldn’t somehow sit naturally on the floor in that dead-alive room – and opened the “Apology” of Plato.
It was exactly like working with a well-informed gramophone – a hushed, husky voice with nothing alive behind it. But she’d quite obviously worked a lot. She was most useful. While we were working it wasn’t so bad. But when I tried to get cheery and conversational afterwards – suggested making tea and so on – she was as palely noncommittal as ever. “Yes” – “No” – “Thank you” – “No, thank you” – “Yes” – “Yes, please” – “Oh, yes” – “Yes…” That was about the extent of it. But the very difficulty of it determined me. I fixed up a second tete-a-tete, and went away feeling quite astonishingly curious. She puzzled me completely. Pallid and dull and dusty and silent as she was, she somehow suggested a mystery. I found myself thinking of her constantly. She absorbed my thoughts as did no one else in the place, however brilliant or beautiful or witty. I could not get her out of my mind.
There wasn’t much left of that term – only a few days – but I managed to see quite a lot of Adela Young. But “see” is the right verb. I saw her – occasionally heard her colorless voice whispering Greek verbs or Latin constructions – and that was all. I began to feel rather alarmed for my fiver. I didn’t see how anyone could ever extract any confidences from that cobweb of a girl. I didn’t believe she had any to make. As to an invitation from her people – hopeless. You simply couldn’t imagine her as having any people or home or anything. I wondered vaguely, when I first thought of this, if she could be a foundling, a child from some orphanage or something, and, if so, whether that wouldn’t cancel the bet. I rather jumped at the idea – I thought it would solve my difficulties so very nicely. So, rather tentatively, I broached the subject of families and homes and vacation plans to Adela.
“Shall you spend all the vac. at home?” I asked her one night when we’d “gone over” the work for the next day’s paper – Tacitus, I think it was.
“Oh, yes.”
“Shall you stay up for the viva, or go home in between?”
“Go home, I think.” She paused, and then actually volunteered a remark. “I come so late on the list,” she added.
“Yes. So do I, of course. Nuisance, beginning with a Y. But it’s too expensive to go all the way to Ireland and back again. I shall have to stay up. Sickening,” I added, “I shall be the only person in coll. except the dons.”
That was as broad as I dared make it, but I began to fear that she wouldn’t take the hint, she was so long before she spoke. She gave me the impression that she was trying to make up her mind to do something rather dreadful. At last she brought it out.
“I – that is, my guardian – she said – I mean, I – we – should be so glad – she said, if I had any friend – who would care…”
Her voice died away. It had been even more gasping and husky than usual – as if she were forcing herself to speak and her strength or courage wouldn’t last out.
It wasn’t exactly what you might call an invitation, but I eagerly took it as such.
“D’you mean that I could stay with you till the viva?” I asked with indecent haste.
“Oh, yes. She – she’d like you to… ” Again her voice faded into silence.
“But does she know anything about me?” I asked.
“She wants me – make friends – my own age…” whispered Adela. She said nothing whatever, I noticed, about her own inclinations.
I twisted round – (we were in my room, and I was sitting on the floor, while Adela Young sat in an upright chair behind me) – I twisted round and looked at her curiously. Her face was dead white and her forehead was damp. Her pale eyes stared at me, terrified, above a handkerchief that she held with a shaking hand to her mouth.
What on earth could the girl be so scared about? At the very worst, I might be horribly rude – though she must have known me well enough to know that I shouldn’t be. But I couldn’t even then see how the grossest insolence could be as terrifying as that.
“Did she – your guardian – suggest that you should ask me?” I asked, curious.
She nodded dumbly.
“It’s awfully kind of her,” I said warmly. “I’d love to.”
I expected to see her face clear at that; but it didn’t. She looked as scared as ever, mutely terrified, with a kind of half-wistful, almost pitying look as well. I stared at her, rather obviously, I’m afraid, trying to think what the idea was that she suggested to my mind. She looked embarrassed – got up restlessly – moved to the door. But she was too late. I’d got it. She looked exactly like someone who has just been through some awful experience of pain telling the next victim that it’s his turn… Relieved for herself but knowing what she was sending me to… I was tremendously interested, too much so to speak.
At the door she turned.
“Shall I say you’ll come?” she whispered.
“Oh, rather, please. May I send a note too? I mean – it’s so awfully kind of your guardian to invite me. I’d like to thank her.”
“Oh, I’ll tell her,” breathed Adela anxiously. “You needn’t bother. I’ll tell her. She’ll be very pleased,” she added; and at the words she did look a little easier.
When she was gone, I began to put things together. It came, I thought, to this – the kid must have been brought up in the firmest manner by a Tartar of a guardian of whom she was, even now, mortally scared. She had probably never been allowed to have a friend, or even a possession, of her own. Then, when she was grown up, the dragon had seen her mistake, and had sent her to Oxford with the idea of developing her. She was probably pathetically anxious to see Adela launching out, making friends, being a success, when, owing to the training she had given her, the poor kid was completely incapable of doing anything of the kind. And Adela was still so terrified of this tyrant of her childhood that she had dreaded my refusing – dreaded having to confess that she had, so far, failed to take advantage of her opportunities. That accounted, too, for her odd look at me. Dreading her guardian as she clearly did, she disliked having to hand me over to her. The Subconscious, no doubt, I thought rather grandly. Subconsciously she associated her guardian with whippings, supperless bedtimes and scoldings, and still feared, both for herself and for me, the iron discipline of her childhood. I felt very much pleased with this reconstruction, it fitted all the facts (so far as I knew them) so admirably. I was sure I was right!
I felt quite unwarrantably excited as I arranged my journey to the Bedfordshire village where, it seemed, Adela and her guardian lived. I’d already told Maude Evans where I was going, and rejoiced to see her skepticism change to disappointment and a kind of sulky admiration. If I could get the invitation, I was sure, I thought, to get the confidences in the end; and clearly Maude thought so too. She was obviously very much annoyed – though she could quite well spare the fiver. This added to my pleasurable excitement, which had been considerable in any case, for I was really interested, and very keen to find out what Adela’s background really was. I was sure my guess was right in the main, and I also felt that I might, with luck, be able to do something to set things right for the poor kid. I hate to see people as crushed as that, and I had, then, almost unlimited faith in my powers to please and cajole people, especially oldish ladies. I had, then, not the smallest doubt that I should be able to soothe and tame this particular dragon and make life much easier for her aggravatingly timid charge.
On the way down, and especially during the inevitable and interminable wait at Bletchley, I tried to extract something more from Adela about her home conditions. I particularly wanted to know whether there were any other members of the household; my campaign would rather depend on that. But Adela seemed terrified afresh by the very tactful questions I asked. “No – no one else -now… We… there were more of us – at one time…” And here her voice quite gave out, and her pale eyes filled with horror, gazing past me in blank misery.
Again I guessed – some appalling family tragedy, of which she was the sole survivor. Experience, memory, or a “complex” due to an ancient terror – that accounted for a lot. And, on top of it, this probably severe guardian… I was getting on. Soon, I felt, I should know enough to extract confidences! I was almost sorry when the train struggled in.
It was pretty full – there had been some local market somewhere – and it was quite impossible to talk. But I watched, surreptitiously, and I saw the pale, vague face opposite me grow paler and the eyes more strained and blank with every stage of our slow, jolting progress.
We were met at our station by an odd old cumbrous carriage, “handsome” to look at, but most depressing. One felt that it was quite inevitably connected with highly respectable funerals; you could almost smell black kid gloves and expensive wreaths. And our dead silence, broken only by Adela’s hoarse, uneven breathing and the splash as we rumbled through puddles, only made it worse. I’ve seldom felt so uneasy – not alarmed, nothing so definite, but just indefinably uncomfortable, with a rather quickened heartbeat as we moved, ponderously and silently, along deserted lanes, wet with the cold rains of March, and between hedges dripping with evening mist.
The house was as large, solid, respectable, and nearly as depressing as the carriage. As we got out, Adela startled me by a sudden, feverish clutch at my hand; hers was dead cold. But before I could respond, the huge front door had swung silently open, and we were inside the house.
It was quite different inside – warm, almost to oppression, well-lighted, roomy. I hardly had time to notice more than this before I saw my hostess.
One generally, though often unconsciously, makes pictures in one’s mind of what a stranger will look like. I hadn’t known that I had made such a guess about Adela Young’s guardian (whose very name I had not yet heard); I think perhaps I had a sort of Lady Dedlock, or even a Mrs. Reid, in my mind; but, as we entered the hall, comfortingly warm and bright after the misty fields and lanes, and I had my first glimpse of her, I knew at a glance that whatever I guessed had been wrong, for I could never, never have pictured such a person as I saw.
She remained sitting by the fire – a tiny, tiny little old lady, wrapped in a marvelous Eastern shawl; and the first thing that I thought was that she was tremendously, incredibly old – not “old” as one generally uses the word of people, but “old” as the pyramids and Stonehenge are old – timeless, ageless, and vital. And she was also – not beautiful – fascinating is the only word I can think of to express her face – a face from which I could hardly take my eyes, it was at once so vivid and so inscrutable. When my first impressions settled into something more nearly approaching coherence, I thought I saw why that was. Her porcelain face was flushed, her tiny mouth scarlet, constantly moving, her motions all quick, precise, alert; but over her eyes she wore dark, blank glasses that gave her a secret look, rather dreadful.
As we came in, she moved round in her chair with one of the darting movements, between the movement of a bird and a snake, that, though they were startling at first, I soon got used to, they were so characteristic.
“Is that you, Adela? Have you brought Miss Yorke?”
Her voice was shallow, sweet and tremendously eager, but at the same time – what shall I say? – bodiless. From its eagerness I might have been a celebrity. Poor old thing, I thought, what a life she must lead when the visit of an Irish undergraduate thrills her like that!
“Yes,” whispered Adela, hardly audibly. Her voice was so faint, so quavering, that I looked round at her sharply. Her face was ashen, her lips colorless, her eyes vacant as if with sheer naked panic. Her tongue passed incessantly over her white lips. She reminded me of a hypnotized rabbit.
“How very kind of her,” murmured the old lady. “Bring her here, Adela – I can’t come to you, Miss Yorke, you must forgive me – I’m an old woman – lame and blind…”
And sick, too, I thought, as I took her tiny shrunken hand, for it was burning as if with fever, and tremulous with something that I did not think was age alone. It was more like the quivering of intense excitement. What a life, I thought! What a life they must lead, those two women in that big, lonely comfortable house, when the young one was a mass of terrors and alarms and the old one feverish with excitement over a visit from a girl she could not even see!
“I can’t see you with my eyes,” the old lady said then. “I wonder if you will let me see you with my fingers? Will you let me feel your face?”
“Of course,” I said, and knelt down beside her.
If I had guessed at all what that ordeal would be like, I would never have assented. I cannot describe the utter loathing and repulsion that filled me as the tiny, soft, hot hands passed like feathers over my face. It was horrible, sickening – like allowing some dreadful unclean insect to crawl about one’s face, up to the roots of my hair, down my cheeks, round my eyes, along my chin and neck… I could hardly restrain my utter disgust, although, when at last her hands dropped, and I rose, rather unsteadily, to my feet, I could not understand my own loathing. I shook myself impatiently, angry at my own folly.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to remain beside her for very long. She kept Adela – her gesture was at once commanding and excited, as she asked her to stop for a few minutes, though her voice was as soft and sweet as ever – and I was given over into the charge of an elderly, most respectable-looking maid; but she, too, was odd. She was quiet, efficient, everything she should have been: but she had the face of a sleepwalker. There was not a flicker of expression on it. Her eyes were open, but wholly expressionless; they might have been made of glass, except that they were dull, like the eyes of a dead animal. Quiet, orderly, deft as she was, she made me shiver a little. It was like being waited on by an automaton, or a somnambulist. I got rid of her as soon as I could, saying that I preferred to dress myself; and turning at once to the dressing-table; and it was then that I got a real shock. For, looking in the mirror, my back to her, I saw that she turned at the door, and I caught a glance of a white face distorted by a look of such malignance as I had never dreamed possible. It was utterly inhuman, devilish. I whipped round – but she had gone, the door closed silently behind her. I must have imagined it, I thought, taking up my brushes; some trick of reflection – some odd effect of the mingled twilight and electric light… I dressed quickly, though, and went downstairs as soon as I could. I felt I wanted company.
I remember practically nothing of that dinner, except the vivid, fascinating face of the old lady, surmounted by the terrible dark glasses. I don’t remember even what we talked of; though I have a dim impression that the old lady did most of the talking and that her talk was extremely good. Adela, I think, said not one word. I remember nothing at all of her presence, except one glance, when, her guardian having turned aside to speak to a servant, I caught her eyes across the table and was shocked by the sheer despair of their terror. Why? What on earth was the matter with her? I felt impatient, almost angry; but the next moment I had forgotten her very existence in the charm (I use the word in its old sense) of the old lady’s presence.
After I went to bed that night I could not sleep for thinking about this odd household. I lay for hours, it seemed to me, turning it over in my mind – that enchanting old lady, with the vivid face and blank eyes, the touch of her soft, wandering fingers on my face, the wonderful talk in the shallow, sweet, meaningless voice; Adela, scared, quivering and drab; the secretive, passive maid with that one malignant glance…
It had been a chilly month, but my room felt curiously close and warm. At home in Ireland, I always sleep out of doors, and, when I can, I get my bed out on a balcony even at college. I missed the cool freedom, I thought; so I got up to see if there were, by any chance, a balcony or even a ledge where I could sit for a bit.
There was – a narrow one, but wide enough to stand on. I got out of my window and stood there, enjoying the coolness. There must be central heating in the house, I thought, to get that oppressive heat… And then I heard voices.
“…Midsummer. You must bring her, do you hear?”
“Oh, I can’t! I can’t…”
That, I knew, was Adela, though I had never before heard her voice so loud or so urgent. It was almost a wail.
“Be quiet, you fool! It’s either that, or you…”
I stepped over my sill again. I couldn’t stand and listen. But I was more wide awake than ever. The other voice, though it had been only a whisper, was, I felt sure, the old lady’s. There had been in it something chill, menacing, that made me feel cold even now.
What could it all be about? I, no doubt, was the person who was to be “brought” at Midsummer. But why? And why had Adela broken through her scared neutrality to cry, in that anguished wail, “I can’t?” And what would happen if she didn’t?
What was the choice suggested by that “It’s either that, or you…”?
I am, I admit, curious by nature, and now I was thrilled, consumed by curiosity. My repulsion was gone in the sheer love of a mystery. For I felt sure that there was a real mystery here – it was not my imagination, but something real, actual, in this house – a mystery that concerned me, as well as Adela and the old lady. I must find out what it was. Adela was so docile, so entirely without the power of resistance; surely I could get it out of her? Surely I had a right to try, when it concerned myself? I determined, anyhow, that I would. Dawn had come when I fell asleep with that resolution.
Breakfast was brought to me in bed. I gathered, from the matter-of-fact way in which this was done, that it must be the rule of the house. I wasn’t sorry; I was tired after my wakeful night, and besides I wanted to think things over, sort out my impressions, and, if it seemed necessary, get some sort of idea of what my plans should be. When I finally came down to the hall, I found the old lady in sole possession, established in her chair as she had been when we arrived. She might never have moved. I greeted her as cheerily as I could, and she called me over to her chair.
“Miss Yorke,” she said, “I’m so glad to have you alone. I want to ask you something. You must forgive my springing things on you, but I don’t want Adela to hear and I might not have another opportunity.”
I murmured vaguely.
“Tell me,” said the old lady – and her voice was urgent – “has Adela ever said anything to make you think that she might marry?”
“Why no!” I cried, astonished. Adela marry! You might as well suspect a faded lettuce of falling in love.
“Never? Not a hint?”
“Never. But we aren’t at all – intimate, you know,” I said. “She’s never spoken at all of – of her personal affairs, her family or anything like that.”
“No? No, perhaps she wouldn’t. She’s very shy,” said the old lady, “and she had – a shock.”
Her voice was quite ordinary, sweet, compassionate a little; but for an instant her lips were parted in a tiny smile, furtive, malicious and cold, and her little scarlet tongue flickered over her lips. “Listen, Miss Yorke,” she went on, very earnestly. “I’m anxious about Adela. She has no relations – no one but me. I can’t explain now, there isn’t time. But, you see, I’m very old. I want Adela to marry – to marry soon,” she added, and I could see her little wrinkled hands clutched on her stick.
“And is there anyone…?” I hesitated.
“Yes. There is. And I want it settled – at once.”
Her voice was tense with her urgency.
“I want to lay my hands on her children,” she added, in an extraordinary voice – “gloating” was the word that occurred to me. It ought to have been pathetic, her anxiety to feel, since she could not see, the children of the girl she had brought up; but it wasn’t. It was sickening – nauseating. Why, I don’t know – something in her voice or tone, or the greedy way in which her tiny aged hands tightened till the knuckles stood out like white pebbles.
“She’s never said a word to me,” I said, stupidly and coldly.
“No? Well, perhaps she will. If she does, Miss Yorke, urge her -urge her. Tell her she must, for her own sake.”
It was the same voice I had heard last night – silky, cold and menacing. The voice that had said “It’s either that, or you…”
I said nothing. There seemed to be nothing to say. And in the stubborn silence I felt – enmity. It seemed to last for minutes. Then, “Thank you,” said the sweet, shallow voice. “Thank you very much, Miss Yorke. I am counting on you.”
She smiled again, and again her smile sickened me, it was so triumphant and so ruthless. Or so it seemed at the time. A few seconds later, when, with a muttered excuse about looking for Adela, I had escaped into the damp garden, I thought I was a fool – overtired, probably, with term – ready to read mysteries into the most ordinary things. For after all, what was more natural than that the old lady should wish to see Adela’s future safe before she died? – to touch, since she could not see, her children? What was there malignant in that? On the contrary, it was benevolent, rather pathetic. I felt very penitent over my own moodiness and (I feared) rudeness.
In fact, the more I thought of it, the more I saw how right the old lady was. Clearly, Adela’s future would be pretty hopeless when her guardian was gone. Shyness, with her, was almost a mania. She would simply retire into herself, shut herself up here in the Bedfordshire house with the odd maid – go off her head, as likely as not. Myself, I should have thought marriage was an impossible idea for her; I could not imagine any man… But apparently there was one. She might be an heiress, you never knew. Not a very good motive for anyone to want to marry her, perhaps; but even so a marriage that was at all reasonably happy would be better than solitude and craziness. Why on earth had I so loathed the idea when the old lady mentioned it? Why had I been so utterly repelled by her? I could not imagine. What a fool I had been!
I wandered about the neglected garden, vaguely, with no purpose. I was trying to sort things out in my mind, and I hardly noticed where I went. It was not a very big garden, but it seemed so because it had been allowed to run wild; the long, wet grass and overgrown borders and dripping evergreens gave a depressing effect of decay and neglect and age. There were tall hedges and clumps of laurestinus and box and elder that would have made it a fine place for hide-and-seek – only no one could imagine children laughing and romping there. It was dead, as gardens are when houses have long stood empty – dead, and yet somehow furtive. I disliked it more and more; but still I strayed there simply because I hated the house, and the blank-eyed, sweet-voiced old lady, even more. Things are never so bad out-of-doors, I thought; and I also thought that I could not imagine anyone ever feeling really terrified out-of- doors – for I now admitted, although unconsciously, that in the house I had felt, suddenly and inexplicably, real fear such as I had never in my life known before.
The very next moment, I knew that I was wrong. Quite suddenly, without the least reason, I was cold and sick with sheer panic. It clutched my heart so that I could not breathe; sweat started out on my forehead and lips and arms. I heard my breath rasping in my throat, and the heavy, irregular thudding of my heart…
I stared round me wildly. If only I could see something, no matter how appalling – it would not be so bad. It was this terror of nothing that was so dreadful.
But there was nothing. Nothing. Long rank grass, hedged in by dark, dripping evergreens; a stone seat, low and broad and flat, the charred ring left by a weed fire, black in the long, rain-grey grass. Nothing else. Not a sound but the melancholy drip of the leaves – nothing. I stood there as if bewitched – I could not move, I could not even cry out. I felt soaked in evil…
And then, as suddenly, the charm was snapped. I heard a sound – a hurried, furtive, stumbling step, a little whimpering sobbing noise – and I could move again. I turned and ran, gasping and shaking, out of the silent, evil enclosure – and ran straight into Adela.
She shrieked – such a shriek as I never wish to hear again -and immediately clapped both her hands to her mouth, crushing back the sound. Her eyes stared, terrified, over her hands.
I caught at her as if she were my salvation.
“Adela,” I gasped – I could not speak – “Adela – what is it – in there – in this house? What is it?”
She stared dumbly back. I shook her arm, dragging her hands down from her shaking lips.
“Tell me,” I urged. “Who is she? What is it?”
“Oh, Honor, don’t – I don’t know – what do you mean? Oh, don’t ask me – don’t – I don’t know…”
“You do know. What is it? What is going to happen at Midsummer?”
She still stared back, horror in her eyes, her white lips moving inaudibly.
“What do you know?” she whispered at last. I could only just hear the words.
“I know there’s devilry going on in this house,” I said, “and I know that I’m in it… Look here, Adela; we must work together. You must help me. We can stop it – we will. Only we’ll have to be quick. Tell me. Who is she? What is it?”
She still stared back, too scared to speak.
I don’t know what put the words into my head.
“It isn’t only me,” I said, “it’s you, Adela – and your children.”
She gasped at that, and her cold hands clutched at me.
“I know, I know!” she babbled in a whisper I could hardly hear. “She will, I know… Honor, what can we do? She’s listening even now. She can hear and see everything we do… We can’t ever get away from her. She – she wants another, Honor. It’s the year – it’s five years since… Listen. She got us when we were babies, my brothers and me. I don’t know why. I was only three. Two years, later…”
She broke off, gulping.
I shook her arm again.
“Go on,” I said.
She glanced at me, and then away, her eyes staring before her.
“He died – Phil, the youngest. He – they said he fell – on the shears – there, in the enclosure there. His throat – they said it was pierced. I think I knew even then – I was a baby, but I think I knew -it wasn’t as they said… I knew things, even then. Afterwards…”
Again she broke off, shaking all over.
“Five years after that,” she went on – and again she stopped. “Yes? Yes?” I urged her.
“It was Leslie next,” she whispered. “It – an operation, she said – her own doctor – it satisfied people… But I knew, Honor, I knew – and he did, I think… And then, five years ago, Stephen… the one just older than me… They said it was suicide… Honor, oh, Honor, it wasn’t, it wasn’t. She…”
She sobbed, one deep, heavy sob.
“It was there – where you came from just now – oh, you frightened me so – I thought it was… It was there, Honor, one Midsummer night. I saw smoke. I guessed. I knew it was Stephen – the five years were over. I knew it was danger – oh, horrible, you don’t know. I knew a good deal then… I was in bed, but I ran and ran… Stephen – I thought – I ran, hoping all the time… My feet were all cut next day…”
Her voice died away in a little sobbing whisper. “It was – over… I saw her – and the fire – and the stone bench… Oh, Honor!”
She clutched at me again, staring as if she still saw that horror.
“She knew I was there,” she went on at last. I could hardly hear her shaken whisper. “She never hid anything after that. I’ve seen -everything… And now – she – the next five years are up.”
I felt cold and very sick. “It’s to be me,” I whispered. Adela nodded.
“That’s why I was sent,” she said at last, “to get someone. I tried not to, Honor, I did try. I couldn’t help it. I had to do it… You see – she wants to keep me – she wants children – little children – ready…”
We stared at each other in hopeless horror.
“She knows everything I do and say and think,” Adela went on in the same hurried gabbling whisper. “She knows we’re here now, talking of it. She knows everything, Honor. We can’t ever – oh what can I do? What can I do?”
Her despair roused me.
“We have till Midsummer,” I said. “We’ll be ready by then.”
But she shook her head hopelessly.
“You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t understand. She sees your thoughts. You can’t plan against her.”
“We can,” I asserted, “and we will.”
She looked up, a glimmer of hope in her questioning eyes.
“It’ll be all right,” I said. “I’ll get you out of it.”
And linking my arm in hers I led her back to the house.
I can’t find words to say how I dreaded entering it, facing the old lady who, according to Adela, knew all we had done and said. But Adela’s presence made it easier. Anyhow I knew what I was up against, and I knew that someone weaker than I depended on me. You can’t have better incentives to courage. So when we met the old lady face to face in the porch I was able to open my attack right away. I was astonished to hear how natural my voice was as I spoke.
“I did meet Adela, you see,” I said, “and we’ve been having a lovely long talk. She’s been awfully kind – she says she’d like me to come again. I wonder if I really may?”
“I should be delighted if you would,” purred the old lady, with her polite, surface smile. I wondered with one part of my mind if she really could see into my mind and read my thoughts. “When can you manage it?”
“We go down on the twentieth of June,” I said. “Could I come straight to you then on the twentieth?”
I heard Adela give a terrified gasp, and her hand, tucked under my elbow, clutched my arm convulsively. The old lady’s blank, black glasses above her shallow smile made me shiver a little; I had the impression that, owing to their very emptiness, they read me and concealed their knowledge. But I kept a hold on myself, thanks to Adela’s trembling hand in my arm; I think there was not even a tremor in my voice as I made all the arrangements and polite speeches that one does make when one fixes up a visit.
We went back to Oxford that afternoon, and after that, I returned to Connemara for the rest of the vac. And, during those few weeks, I thought it all out. Finally I took my twin brother Conal into my secret. I knew he would know that I hadn’t panicked over nothing and that he would help me to pull through. We spent long afternoons in the glens with a wise man. My family chaffed me about my sudden interest in fairy lore. I left Conal to carry on our preparations and went back to Oxford for the Summer Term.
One’s first summer term generally seems to stand out in people’s memory. Mine is a blank. I could think of nothing but what was to come on the day after term ended on Midsummer Day. And I was not helped to forget it by Adela, who followed me round with mute, imploring, adoring eyes and half-begun, quavering sentences that she never completed. I nearly lost my patience with her more than once, and begged her not to destroy the little nerve I had left. After all it was my risk, not hers, and I’d seen – and, even worse, felt – quite enough to make it unnecessary and maddening to hear her constant appeals – “Oh, Honor, do take care – oh, don’t try it – you don’t understand…” I was determined to take every possible care, but I was equally determined to see the business through.
I don’t believe Adela and I exchanged a single word on our journey down to Bedfordshire on that twentieth of June. It was a steamy, breathless day – not a leaf stirring on the heavy trees, the streams crawling sluggishly between the fields where the very grass was motionless. I hoped for thunder vaguely; and with all my might I hoped and prayed that Conal had managed his part of the business. I had said nothing about him, or our plans, to Adela, because I now believed that, owing to her long subjection and terror, her mind was really open to her terrible guardian even when they were apart. But my mind was free, my own; I was strong and independent; so I made my plans – and kept them entirely to myself. All I had said to Adela was that she was to slip out of the house at midnight and remain away from it. I had learnt that all the servants left it each evening – I could guess why.
The house seemed asleep, in a heavy, enchanted torpor that was, as it were, embodied in the thick flowery patens and sickly, pungent scent of the elder trees about it. It was silent, motionless. In the airless heat I felt my hands and feet dead cold. It was sinister -evil. It had not been like that before, I thought stupidly; it was as if the heat drew out some evil emanation as it drew the scent from the elder blossoms. My feet seemed turned to lead, heavy, cold. I could hardly drag them along. I felt drugged, stupefied, by the scent that enveloped the house and by the heat that only seemed to touch the outside of me and left an icy core of fear within. I kept thinking, all that dreadful evening, “Five hours more – only four hours now…” as the time loitered by and midnight approached.
I don’t remember much of the evening except that I heard my own voice making conversation, and remember being vaguely surprised to hear how easy and ordinary it sounded. I remember wondering if I had developed a dual personality. My mind felt like my body – giving normal reactions on the surface, while deep down in the center it was frozen by sheer unnamable terror. I still dream sometimes of that hot, airless evening, with the smell of the elders outside the windows, and the smooth flow of mechanical talk concealing hatred and horror under a mask as smooth and thin as silk.
The sky darkened slowly, and at ten, I made my excuses. I said I was tired – the weather made me headachey – might I go to bed? I smothered a yawn convincingly. The old lady was very solicitous, and, I thought, relieved. I was urged to go to bed at once – she would send me hot milk and a mild sleeping draught. I thanked her, accepted everything, and went to my room.
I wondered, as I undressed, whether I should take that sleeping draught. Suppose Conal failed… I felt so sick at the thought that I had to sit down – I was trembling too much to stand. I felt despairing now. The house had sucked away my courage and my hope. I knew, now, that I was doomed as those others had been doomed… We would fail – we must. What could we do against – that? I would be sacrificed as Adela’s brothers had been – as her children would be. Would I not be better drugged, only half aware of the final horror?
I stood hesitating, the draught in my hand. All my pluck was gone… I can’t describe the awful abyss of sheer terror that engulfed me. I heard myself whimpering a little, like a terrified dog, and felt my face twitching. I couldn’t, couldn’t do it – that terrible little enclosure, hedged by the secret shrubs – the fire – the stone bench – I couldn’t – I couldn’t…
Then the idea of Conal came into my mind. I mustn’t let him down. I had my part to play. If I were a heavy, unconscious lump I might fail him just when he needed me. That braced me at once. I could do it now. I knew how I would have looked and felt if I had yielded to the temptation and taken the drug – I had seen myself as clearly as if I had stood beside my own drugged body. I could do it, and I would. I should not fail… I undressed and lay down in the bed. Somewhere in the silent house a clock tolled half past ten. My agony had lasted only a few minutes, and – I had to wait till midnight. I can’t attempt to describe those crawling minutes – the alternation of determination and overwhelming terror, of the picture of the secret, evil enclosure, and of my brother. At last I heard the heavy, boding stroke – a quarter to twelve. My time had come. Any minute now…
A step in the passage – light, shuffling, furtive. I relaxed every muscle; I half buried my face in the pillow, breathing slowly and heavily, and rejoicing that I had thought of smearing the edges of my lips with the pungent drug she had given me. The door opened inch by inch. I wondered if she could hear my heart thumping in the dead silence.
Not a sound. Had she gone? If only I dared look! It was awful, wondering and waiting. Had she gone? Or was she there, beside me, watching me.. ? No sound. I had to keep relaxing my muscles; they stiffened as soon as I listened. And I had to go on breathing steadily, quietly…
I nearly screamed when I felt a cold, light touch on my neck. I was just able to turn it into a restless sign and the little movement of a heavy sleeper settling again to slumber.
“Take the head,” came a bodiless whisper. “We have only just time.”
Hands were slipped under my shoulders; other hands – tiny, cold, soft hands – took my feet. I could hardly bear that cold, soft ruthless touch. I knew whose hands they were…
They carried me downstairs. I think they were too heavily burdened – or perhaps too anxious – to notice how, twice, I forgot and found my muscles tense with loathing and terror. I lay, for most of that awful journey, limp and relaxed, breathing as if asleep, with my heart in my throat with terror.
We were out of doors. There was no stir of air, but it felt different, and the scent of the elders was heavier, more cloying than ever. On and on, through the rank grass that smelt of dew as they pressed it; over a path that gave a dull echo to their shuffling feet; through a gap in a hedge that smelt stuffily of evergreens…
They laid me on the stone bench. I could feel it, cold and rough, through my thin nightgown; and then – can hardly bear to remember it – I smelt thick, heavy smoke and heard the rasp of steel on stone…
I could not endure another instant. I leapt up and shrieked -shrieked the words I had learned – heard a crash…
I don’t remember anything more. All I know is that Conal had not failed me. He, outside that evil enclosure, had done his part as I had done mine within. It was over… An hour later the house was roaring in flame to the darkened sky, while lightning flickered overhead and Adela crouched weeping beside me…
I was ill after that, and went up late next term. Almost the first person I met was Maude Evans.
“Hullo!” she said. “Better?”
I said I was all right.
“Fancy you being so upset about a fire!” she said. “But there was a death in it, wasn’t there?” she added, as an extenuation.
“Yes,” I said.
“You were there when it broke out, weren’t you?” she went on.
“Oh yes. I was staying there. You’ve lost your fiver all right,” I said, hoping that would make her sheer off. But it didn’t. She had clearly forgotten the fiver, and was rather crestfallen, but looking for a loophole at once.
“Well, but did the Young kid ever confide anything to you?” she demanded. “That was part of it, you know.”
I shivered a little.
“Oh yes, she confided in me all right,” I said.
“Really intimate?”
“Oh yes – very. Too intimate to tell you, Maude.”
Maude scowled sulkily.
“Men?” she asked then.
Again I shivered.
“Well,” I said, “marriage came into it.”
