At about half-past twelve that night I suddenly awoke, thoughts of Margaret thrumming in my brain. Suppose she were to walk in her sleep again? Might she not injure herself or wake up and be terrified? How could I have risked such a thing happening again without even warning her? Of course I should have arranged for someone to sleep in her room.
I was in my clothes almost before I knew I had decided to go to the Manor House. If I found her walking, I could lead her home in her sleep.
A full moon flooded the house with a strange green beauty. Glancing up at Margaret’s window, I was surprised to see it shut on so warm a night. I decided to patrol the courtyard and watch the door in case she should emerge. I trod as softly as possible. Save for the distant bark of the inevitable dog, my vigil seemed unshared. The night was full of an indescribable menace. A low wind crept through the trees and the leaves whispered momentously. Claimed by the moon, the house looked wan and remote, palely repudiating any human allegiance it might seem to concede by daylight.
I was startled by the loud hoot of an owl, a sound I can never hear without a strange stirring as of some forgotten but intense memory. “You can’t think how lovely it looks at night with a great white owl sweeping about.” I remembered Margaret’s words, and obeyed an impulse to enter the churchyard. A white owl almost brushed my cheek as he passed on his blundering flight.
Beneath the transmuting moon the crowded tombstones looked more sharply outlined, far less merged into the green quiet of the long grass. In the day time the atmosphere breathed a sense of acquiescence, as though the oft-repeated text “Thy will be done” had been instilled into the very air, but now the peace of buried centuries seemed disturbed; the consecrated ground to quiver with insubmission. Even the yew trees seemed to bristle. Starkly black, they stood like mutinous sentinels.
As I turned my eyes to the eastern side of the churchyard, I heard myself gasp. In the uttermost corner something white glimmered on the ground. I knew at once what it was. Ten strides brought me to where Margaret, in her long nightgown, lay outstretched across a flat tombstone. Her arms, the hands tightly clenched, were flung out in front; her slim, protesting body writhed. It looked as though she were struggling to rise, but had no power; almost as though some force were drawing her down. I heard a low, piteous moaning, and kneeled to examine her pale, twisted face. The eyes were closed. Her tormented body rolled over to one side, leaving the inscription on the grey lichened stone exposed. As I knelt I involuntarily read the brief words:
I recalled my first visit to the churchyard. So it was upon the grave of Elspeth Clewer, the uncommended ancestress who had so aroused my curiosity, that Margaret lay.
“No! No!
I raised her gently. Strength was required. It was like lifting a body from a quicksand. Fearful of waking her, I slowly led her home and to her room.
Sheen, the Golden Retriever, greeted me sleepily, but with his usual exquisite courtesy, and when I had laid her on the bed, he gently licked his mistress’s white hand.
I watched by her side for some time until her sleep seemed tranquil and normal. Then, in misplaced confidence, I left her alone, except for the dog who lay stretched out his golden length across the bed.
Anxious to see her the next morning, I went round as early as possible, intending to explain my uninvited visit by a wish to alter a prescription. But Rebecca met me in the passage, her honest brow besieged with worry.
“You’re a glad sight for sore eyes, Doctor. I was just going to send for you. Miss Margaret’s just like she was yesterday – deep drowned in that sleep that don’t seem natural. I can’t abide to see her like that.”
“I think it only means she’s very over-tired,” I said, anxious to soothe.
“That’s as maybe,” she answered, unconvinced. “Though what she’s done to get so tired, I don’t know. And, Doctor, there’s something most dreadful’s gone and happened. I suppose that dratted cat must have got into my lady’s room in the night and forced its way – the cunning brute – into the birdcage, and there’s them two sweet little birds, as Miss Margaret sets such store by, lying dead in their blood with their poor little heads torn right off of their bodies. Really, I don’t know how to tell Miss Margaret when she wakes. She’ll take on so!”
“I’ll tell her,” I said, as I followed her into the bedroom, hastily adding, “but, for heaven’s sake, take away the cage. She mustn’t see that awful sight when she wakes.”
With little moans of concern the maid hurried away with her gruesome burden.
Margaret lay in deep unconsciousness. Her appearance was in every way the same as on the previous morning. I turned over her limp hand to feel her pulse. Then I heard my heart hammering in my ears. It was as though it had attended and taken in something my mind refused to accept. Soon I felt deadly sick. Self-protection, reason, fought against the evidence of my sight, but in vain. The lovely white hand that I had so often ached to kiss was thickly smeared with red, and sticking between the fingers and thumb was a cluster of bloodstained feathers.
For the first time I knew what it was to shudder with my whole being. Difficult though it was to control my thoughts, prompt action was necessary, and, fetching warm water, I hastily washed all traces from her hand.
Soon afterwards she turned and, struggling through layers of oblivion and subconsciousness, came to herself. Bewilderment showed in her eyes, then relief and welcome.
“What’s the matter?” she said, looking at my face. Struggling to hide the shrinking that I felt, I explained my presence and wrote out a prescription.
Margaret looked round the room for her inseparable companion. “Where’s Sheen?” she asked.
“He wasn’t in here when I come in this morning, Miss,” said Rebecca, “and I can’t find him nowhere. I’ve asked everyone, and no one’s seen him.”
“He must have jumped out of the window,” said Margaret. “How queer of him.”
At her request I looked out of the window. The flower bed below plainly showed a dog’s pawmarks.
“I must get up and go and hunt for him,” said Margaret. “I had a horrid dream about him.”
She looked deathly pale, quite unfit to leave her bed, but I knew it would be useless to attempt to detain her. I had come to the conclusion that I must tell her of her sleep-walking and insist that she should have a night nurse for a time. I wanted an opportunity to break this to her as unalarmingly as possible, so I reminded her of her promise to call on a farmer’s wife and try to persuade the obstinate woman to obey my injunctions and send her crippled child to a hospital. She agreed to come that afternoon.
As I left the house I remembered that I had not told her about the death of the birds: neither had she noticed the absence of their cage.
At three o’clock we started on our two-mile walk across the fields. It was a lovely afternoon, resplendent summer, though a delicious tang in the air hinted at autumn and brought an exquisite pink to Margaret’s cheeks. More than ever I was struck by her astonishing look of dewy youth. Like a just opened wild rose her face looked utterly unused, as though it had never harboured any expression save one of vague expectancy. My horrid misgivings began to seem fantastically unreal.
“Have you heard of the cat’s crime?” she asked. Her eyes looked like wet flowers and her voice quivered, though characteristically she tried to laugh as she added: “Of all Shakespeare’s adjectives, I think the queerest are his ‘harmless’ and ‘necessary’ applied to a cat. I adored those little birds.”
I murmured sympathy.
“I’m wretchedly worried about Sheen’s disappearance, too,” she said. “He’s never been away from me for even an hour before. He’ll go mad with misery without me. Do you think he can have been stolen?”
“I’m quite sure he hasn’t,” I said emphatically.
I steered the conversation until, as unconcernedly as possible, I told her I had discovered that she was given to the quite common but not to be encouraged habit of sleep-walking.
Consternation flared in her eyes and she flushed painfully. She tried to laugh it off.
“I wonder what my particular ‘damned spot’ may be. It always is some damned spot that won’t ‘out’ that makes people walk in their sleep, isn’t it? Or may it be merely due to unsubmissive food?”
“It’s far more often caused by indigestion than by conscience,” I said, with a laugh, and I took advantage of this wave of flippancy to float the hospital nurse into the conversation.
To my surprise and relief Margaret promptly acquiesced. In fact, it seemed to me that a look of unmistakable relief flickered across her face. I told her an excellent nurse was just about to leave one of my patients, and that I would engage her to come in that evening.
