A Woman of Consequence

However, Lucy got down the steps safely and I was next to follow her. When I reached the bottom I looked up and saw that Penelope was just moving towards the stairway. She bent to lift her skirt a little, for the wind was blowing it about her ankles. She went down the first two steps and then she stopped – holding on to the ivy that grows upon the wall with one hand, she turned back as if she would speak to Harriet.

And, in the instant that she did so – when she was turned back and looking full into the gallery – there came such a look of shock over her face. Her mouth opened – she put a hand to her lips – she stepped backward – and lost her footing.

She fell down onto the broken pavement of the nave below – and lay without moving.

There seemed, Eliza, to be a moment in which the world and everything in it stood quite still. Then movement came back suddenly; but not so smoothly as it ought. Everything, including myself, was moving in an awkward, jerking fashion. I was the first to reach Penelope and it seemed as if everything was to be left for me to do. Lucy was entirely occupied in screaming (which at least served the purpose of bringing Captain Laurence and one or two of the men running to our aid). And Harriet was still at the top of the steps, weak and shocked and struggling hard to hold on to her bonnet and cap which were almost blowing away in the wind. I think she was perhaps afraid of falling herself.

I raised Penelope up as best I could and began to rub her temples. But she was heavy and did not seem to breathe.

I called her name.

The eyes flickered and opened for a moment. The lips moved. ‘I saw her,’ she said. ‘It was her …’

Chapter Three

Dido did not believe in ghosts. No, she quite definitely did not believe in them … But what had Penelope meant when she said, ‘I saw her …’?

There was such an air of mystery about the whole affair as could not help but inspire the dullest of imaginations – and Dido’s imagination was certainly not one of the dullest.

She had written so long her candle was burning low and the eerie light of the moon was throwing long shadows from the bedposts and the washstand across the bare floorboards. The wind was whining softly under the eaves and the clock upon the landing was striking the half-hour after midnight … At such a time, in such a place, it was only natural that the fancy should wander …

She could not prevent it, though she did not like to confess it in her letter – and she could not help but wonder what a certain Mr William Lomax might say if he knew about it.

‘A ghost, Miss Kent?’ She could imagine the look of wonder, the lifting of the eyebrows, the half-smile. ‘You cannot truly believe that your friend saw a ghost upon the gallery?’

‘No, no,’ she said aloud, ‘I do not say that there certainly was a ghost – only that there was something – something which shocked her and made her fall.’

She smiled at herself and shook her head. Disputing with the absent Mr Lomax was become quite a habit with her. It was, perhaps, because there was so little rational conversation to be had in the vicarage; but she did not like it; it spoke of too great a dependence upon his opinions. And besides, he was too much inclined to win their disagreements, even when he was not present and she had all the trouble of devising his share of the conversation as well as her own – which did not seem quite fair.

But she would certainly not wish him – or anyone else – to think that she believed in such things as moaning, hand-wringing grey nuns. In point of fact, she had no patience at all with ghosts. They were so very useless.

There might for example be some purpose in this dead nun appearing, as she was reputed to do whenever disaster threatened the folk of Madderstone, if only she could be prevailed upon to disclose the nature of that disaster or advise how it might be averted. But, from all that Dido could gather, she had never performed such a service.

And, while they continued to be so very unobliging, she was determined not to put herself to the trouble of believing in ghosts.

It was an opinion which she might have expressed yesterday at Madderstone – if there had been an opportunity. For, no sooner had Captain Laurence carried the insensible Penelope into the hall of the great house, than Lucy had broken out with: ‘She saw the Grey Nun on the gallery! And the fright made her fall. It is true. She said that she had seen the ghost.’

Dido had tried to intervene at this point with a suggestion that it was not certain that it was the nun she had seen. That she had not exactly named her …

But reasoned argument was quite out of the question just then, for all the while Lucy was talking, Mr Harman-Foote was booming out orders for a man to ride to the village for the surgeon, and his wife was giving very exact directions as to how Penelope must be carried up the stairs. And all the little Harman-Footes, who had, unluckily, been in the drawing room when news of the accident burst upon the household, were loitering about in the hall and adding their own noise to the uproar, despite their mama’s pleas to the nursery-maid to remove them from the distressing scene. Two imperious little girls were clinging to the lady’s gown and screaming to be noticed, while young Georgie – a stout-looking boy of eight or nine – was regarding Penelope levelly and demanding to know, ‘Is she dead?’ with very little sign of distress, but with a great deal of interest.

It was not until some hours later that Dido was at liberty to give her own account of the accident. By then the house was more at peace. Mr Paynter, the surgeon, had come and shaken his head and drawn in his breath, and finally declared that Penelope had a contusion to the head. However, he did not despair. Rest and careful nursing would probably set her to right – though they must not hope for a very rapid recovery.

The invalid was made comfortable in one of the abbey’s best bedchambers and Harriet appointed herself her only nurse, sending away all the others. ‘I know what I am about,’ she said, flapping her hands at Dido. ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth, you know.’

‘But you cannot take all the trouble upon yourself,’ Dido protested, still holding her place beside the bed, and gazing down at the pale face, sunk deep into the pillow, and the closed eyes which had not opened again since that strange moment in the cloisters. ‘You must allow me to help.’

Harriet stepped back from the bed for a moment, and drew in a long, weary breath. Turning into the light which was coming through the half-closed curtains, she pushed up her large, ugly cap – and, without it shadowing her face, she looked positively young. Harriet was certainly the prettier of the two Crockford sisters – there could not be two opinions upon that point. She had a smooth white brow from which the hair grew in a delicate peak, small regular features, and an elegant figure; but her dress and air were those of an aging woman. Harriet Crockford had given up youth many years ago – or perhaps she had never embraced it.

‘My trouble is of no consequence,’ she said, now frowning seriously, ‘and I cannot allow you to stay, for if you do, Lucy will demand it as a right that she stay too.’

‘And why should she not? It is only fair that she should join with you in nursing.’

‘Oh no, it will not do. She cannot look at Penelope without weeping. The greatest kindness you can do me is to take care of her and see her safely home. It would not do at all to have Lucy fixed here at Madderstone.’

Dido raised an eyebrow. ‘You would not have her living in the same house as Captain Laurence?’ she asked curiously.

Harriet avoided her gaze. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that young girls should not fix themselves too soon. They should make hay while the sun shines.’

When Harriet could not express the thoughts of ‘Dear Papa’ it was her habit to fall back on maxims and received wisdom. It gave all her conversation a threadbare, made-over feeling – and rendered her real opinions difficult to comprehend.

‘Lucy is three and twenty,’ Dido observed. ‘Time enough, I would have thought, to become fixed.’