shock and mustn’t be disturbed. Oh, sir! Whatever did happen to make her take on so, such a sensible, steady girl as she is? She’s in ever such a state! I never did see anyone so upset before, and I can’t get from her what it is she’s so scared on – at least nothing that you would call coherent. And, please sir, she says she’s terribly sorry to have let you down, but she couldn’t have stayed on – not for any consideration.”
Feeling no sympathy, I snapped out: “I never heard of such behaviour. A nurse abandoning a case in the middle of the night? She must be hopelessly hysterical. What possible excuse can she have? Her patient is the most charming young lady.”
“Yes, she says the young lady she was engaged for was ever so sweet, but Doctor – I don’t understand – she talks so wild – and when I question her, begs me not to ask, but wasn’t there
Exasperated, I banged the receiver down.
It was necessary to go to the Manor House to give the address to which the nurse’s luggage was to be sent. I would have gone in, but two cars were just unloading their freight of visitors. Loud voices echoed in the courtyard, and aggressively young people, brandishing tennis rackets, bounded up the steps towards their hostess, who stood in the doorway, her face resolutely gay.
With a forlorn sense of being cut off from her, and with apprehension heavy on my heart, I stole away. As I looked back at the house, gilded by the setting sun, I almost hated it for its unconcerned beauty.
Two days later I received a note in her strangely variable, but always recognizable, writing. It had no beginning:
She went abroad, and I was glad to know her gone. If life became unutterably dreary, at least my nightmare fears were in abeyance. Naturally I wrote begging for an explanation of her note, but none came. I had many letters from her; but, except for the one line, “I am so glad I came away,” they told me nothing. They were merely brilliant descriptions of her travels – little more than inspired
As the leaves fluttered down, till winter lay like iron over the land, the magical days of that long summer began to assume the golden haze of something dreamed. Often I would go and gaze at her empty home. I began to wonder whether I was ever to see her again. There was even a rumour that the Manor House was to be let on a long lease.
One morning, when an unusually reluctant spring had at last turned the fields to glory, I was surprised to see on an envelope bearing a London postmark the writing that always made my heart leap. I read:
Coming home Monday? This was Monday. I should see her in little more than twenty-four hours. The day crept by with unbelievable slowness. To hasten tomorrow I went to bed unusually early.
In the middle of the night I woke up suddenly and with the certainty that I had been aroused by some sound. Yes, there it was again, outside the house. Small pebbles were being thrown up against my window. Expecting an emergency call, I struggled out of sleepiness and looked out of my low window. The moon was full; a tall figure stood below; a white, upturned face gleamed in the silvery-green light. It was Margaret! Her loveliness glimmered in the strange, cold light, but she looked wild, and there was desperate urgency in her voice.
“Quick, quick!” she cried. “I must have your help. I’m so frightened. Quick! Let me in! Let me in! This time I’ll tell you everything!”
Snatching my overcoat, I hurried downstairs as quietly as I could for fear of waking my servant, and opened the door.
It was no dream. The white figure stood outside, arms outstretched towards me. A glorious hope leaped in my heart; but, as I advanced, something indescribable looked out of her eyes. With desperate haste her hands moved, and in a second her face was entirely concealed by the chiffon scarf in which they had swathed it.
“Too late! Too late!” she wailed in a changing voice. “Go back, go back, and for God’s sake, don’t dare to follow me!” The white figure sped away.
Aghast, I started in pursuit, but after a few strides, the swathed, faceless figure turned. At the torrent of words that were shrieked at me in an unknown voice, I stood transfixed, frozen with horror.
Wild, nauseated fear took possession of me. God forgive me, I renounced her. To save my soul I could not have followed another step. I stole back and, drenched in cold sweat, lay shaking on my bed. Sleep never approached me, but I felt too shattered and ill to get up at my usual hour. At ten the telephone rang. Wondering what ghastly intimation was to come, I lifted the receiver.
Margaret’s lovely voice slid into my astonished ears. “It’s
When I reached the Manor House, I asked where Miss Clewer’s new room was.
“Just the same as before, sir,” replied the parlour maid. “Miss Clewer did give orders for one to be prepared on the other side of the house, but as soon as she came she said she’d go back to her own room.”
Rebecca lay in wait in the familiar passage.
“Thank God you’ve come, Doctor,” she whispered. “She seems to be wandering in her mind this morning.”
I stole into the room. Margaret, strangely beautiful, but wan and fragile, lay back on a great pillow. She stretched out both hands in welcome. At once I knew that her memory held no trace of last night. She greeted me as though we met for the first time since her departure all those long months ago.
“Rebecca thinks I’m ill,” she said. “But I must be a creature incapable of my own distress, because I assure you I feel quite well. And, oh! So, so glad to see my physician!”
Did I say that, after the incident of the dog, I was only once again to see Margaret in her incomparable radiance? Strange that it should have been now, when I was prepared to find her in delirium. But thus it was. Once more she seemed her original, untroubled, sparkling self.
She questioned me about all the Mosstone news and gave irresistibly funny descriptions of people she had met on her travels. All was as I first remembered her, dancing voice, lovely laughter, buoyant, bubbling talk, lightning response, showers of quotations. What had Rebecca meant by describing her as delirious?
But suddenly a change came into her eyes. She clutched at my hands and held them tight. Then she began to, what Rebecca described as, wander. Her voice was solemn.
“As the tree falls, so shall it lie! That is true, isn’t it, John?”
John? I had almost forgotten my unused Christian name.
“It is true in every sort of way,” she went on, “isn’t it, darling? And as that tree lies, so shall it be all through the days of eternity – that’s true too, isn’t it, John – absolutely true?”
“Yes – yes, of course,” I soothed her.
“Oh, John,” she went on. “I’ve just found such a lovely, lovely poem. I didn’t know it before. I can’t think how I could have missed it. It’s by Barnefield. Just listen to the mournful magic of these two lines:
