Everton and Miss Gribbin both liked the house at first. It suited the two temperaments which were alike in their lack of festivity. Asked if she too liked it, Monica said simply ‘Yes,’ in a tone which implied stolid and complete indifference.
All three in their several ways led much the same lives as they had led at Hampstead. But a slow change began to work in Monica, a change so slight and subtle that weeks passed before Everton or Miss Gribbin noticed it. It was late on an afternoon in early spring when Everton first became aware of something unusual in Monica’s demeanour.
He had been searching in the library for one of his own books – The Fall of the Commonwealth of England – and having failed to find it went in search of Miss Gribbin and met Monica instead at the foot of the long oak staircase. Of her he casually inquired about the book and she jerked up her head brightly, to answer him with an unwonted smile:
‘Yes, I’ve been reading it. I expect I left it in the schoolroom. I’ll go and see.’
It was a long speech for her to have uttered, but Everton scarcely noticed that at the time. His attention was directed elsewhere.
‘Where did you leave it?’ he demanded.
‘In the schoolroom,’ she repeated.
‘I know of no schoolroom,’ said Everton coldly. He hated to hear anything mis-called, even were it only a room. ‘Miss Gribbin generally takes you for your lessons in either the library or the dining-room. If it is one of those rooms, kindly call it by its proper name.’
Monica shook her head.
‘No, I mean the schoolroom – the big empty room next to the library. That’s what it’s called.’
Everton knew the room. It faced north, and seemed darker and more dismal than any other room in the house. He had wondered idly why Monica chose to spend so much of her time in a room bare of furniture, with nothing better to sit on than uncovered boards or a cushionless window-seat; and put it down to her genius for being unlike anybody else.
‘Who calls it that?’ he demanded.
‘It’s its name,’ said Monica smiling.
She ran upstairs, and presently returned with the book, which she handed to him with another smile. He was already wondering at her. It was surprising and pleasant to see her run, instead of the heavy and clumsy walk which generally moved her when she went to obey a behest. And she had smiled two or three times in the short space of a minute. Then he realized that for some little while she had been a brighter, happier creature than she had ever been at Hampstead.
‘How did you come to call that room the schoolroom?’ he asked, as he took the book from her hand.
‘It is the schoolroom,’ she insisted, seeking to cover her evasion by laying stress on the verb.
That was all he could get out of her. As he questioned further the smiles ceased and the pale, plain little face became devoid of any expression. He knew then that it was useless to press her, but his curiosity was aroused. He inquired of Miss Gribbin and the servant, and learned that nobody was in the habit of calling the long, empty apartment the schoolroom.
Clearly Monica had given it its name. But why? She was so altogether remote from school and schoolrooms. Some germ of imagination was active in her small mind. Everton’s interest was stimulated. He was like a doctor who remarks in a patient some abnormal symptom.
‘Monica seems a lot brighter and more alert than she used to be,’ he remarked to Miss Gribbin.
‘Yes,’ agreed the secretary. ‘I have noticed that. She is learning to play.’
‘To play what? The piano?’
‘No, no. To play childish games. Haven’t you heard her dancing about and singing?’
Everton shook his head and looked interested.
‘I have not,’ he said. ‘Possibly my presence acts as a check upon her – er – exuberance.’
‘I hear her in that empty room which she insists upon calling the schoolroom. She stops when she hears my step. Of course, I have not interfered with her in any way, but I could wish that she would not talk to herself. I don’t like people who do that. It is somehow – uncomfortable.’
‘I didn’t know she did,’ said Everton slowly.
‘Oh, yes, quite long conversations. I haven’t actually heard what she talks about, but sometimes you would think she was in the midst of a circle of friends.’
‘In that same room?’
‘Generally,’ said Miss Gribbin, with a nod.
Everton regarded his secretary with a slow, thoughtful smile.
‘Development,’ he said, ‘is always extremely interesting. I am glad the place seems to suit Monica. I think it suits all of us.’
There was a doubtful note in his voice as he uttered the last words, and Miss Gribbin agreed with him with the same lack of conviction in her tone. As a fact, Everton had been doubtful of late if his health had been benefited by the move from Hampstead. For the first week or two his nerves had been the better for the change of air; but now he was conscious of the beginning of a relapse. His imagination was beginning to play him tricks, filling his mind with vague, distorted fancies. Sometimes when he sat up late, writing – he was given to working at night on strong coffee – he became a victim of the most distressing nervous symptoms, hard to analyse and impossible to combat, which invariably drove him to bed with a sense of defeat.
That same night he suffered one of the variations of this common experience.
It was close upon midnight when he felt stealing
