Something like a cold draught went through Everton. An ugly suspicion, vague and almost shapeless, began to move in dim recesses of his mind. He tried to shake himself free of it, to smile and to speak lightly.
‘I shouldn’t be in the least surprised. Nobody knows the limits of telepathy and auto-suggestion. If I can feel the presence of children whom Monica has created out of her own imagination, why shouldn’t your daughter, who is probably more receptive and impressionable than I am, be able to see them?’
The Rev. Parslow shook his head.
‘Do you really mean that?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t it seem to you a little far-fetched?’
‘Everything we don’t understand must seem farfetched. If one had dared to talk of wireless thirty years ago –’
‘Mr Everton, do you know that your house was once a girls’ school?’
Once more Everton experienced that vague feeling of discomfiture.
‘I didn’t know,’ he said, still indifferently.
‘My aunt, whom I never saw, was there. Indeed she died there. There were seven who died. Diphtheria broke out there many years ago. It ruined the school, which was shortly afterwards closed. Did you know that, Mr Everton? My aunt’s name was Mary Hewitt –’
‘Good God!’ Everton cried out sharply. ‘Good God!’
‘Ah!’ said Parslow. ‘Now do you begin to see?’
Everton, suddenly a little giddy, passed a hand across his forehead.
‘That is – one of the names Monica told me,’ he faltered. ‘How could she know?’
‘How indeed? Mary Hewitt’s great friend was Elsie Power. They died within a few hours of each other.’
‘That name too … she told me … and there were seven. How could she have known? Even the people around here wouldn’t have remembered names after all these years.’
‘Gladys knew them. But that was only partly why she was afraid. Yet I think she was more awed than afraid, because she knew instinctively that the children who came to play with little Monica, although they were not of this world, were good children, blessed children.’
‘What are you telling me?’ Everton burst out.
‘Don’t be afraid, Mr Everton. You are not afraid, are you? If those whom we call dead still remain close to us, what more natural than these children should come back to play with a lonely little girl who lacked human playmates? It may seem inconceivable, but how else explain it? How could little Monica have invented those two names? How could she have learned that seven little girls once died in your house? Only the very old people about here remember it, and even they could not tell you how many died or the name of any one of the little victims. Haven’t you noticed a change in your ward since first she began to – imagine them, as you thought?’
Everton nodded heavily.
‘Yes,’ he said, almost unwittingly, ‘she learned all sorts of tricks of speech, childish gestures she never had before, and games … I couldn’t understand. Mr Parslow, what in God’s name am I to do?’
The Rev. Parslow still kept a hand on Everton’s arm.
‘If I were you I should send her off to school. It may not be very good for her.’
‘Not good for her! But the children, you say –’
‘Children? I might have said angels. They will never harm her. But Monica is developing a gift of seeing and conversing with – with beings that are invisible and inaudible to others. It is not a gift to be encouraged. She may in time see and converse with others – wretched souls who are not God’s children. She may lose the faculty if she mixes with others of her age. Out of her need, I am sure, these came to her.’
‘I must think,’ said Everton.
He walked on dazedly. In a moment or two the whole aspect of life had changed, and grown clearer, as if he had been blind from birth and was now given the first glimmerings of light. He looked forward no longer into the face of a blank and featureless wall, but through a curtain beyond which life manifested itself vaguely but at least perceptibly. His footfalls on the ground beat out the words: ‘There is no death. There is no death.’
That evening after dinner he sent for Monica and spoke to her in an unaccustomed way. He was strangely shy of her, and his hand, which he rested on one of her slim shoulders, lay there awkwardly.
‘Do you know what I’m going to do with you, young woman?’ he said. ‘I’m going to pack you off to school.’
‘O-oh!’ she stared at him, half smiling. ‘Are you really?’
‘Do you want to go?’
She considered the matter, frowning and staring at the tips of her fingers.
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to leave them.’
‘Who?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you know!’ she said, and turned her head half shyly.
‘What? Your – friends, Monica?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wouldn’t you like other playmates?’
‘I don’t know. I love them, you see. But they said – they said I ought to go to school if you ever sent me. They might be angry with me if I was to ask you to let me stay. They wanted me to play with other girls who aren’t – who aren’t like they are. Because you know, they are different from children that everybody can see. And Mary told me not to – not to encourage anybody else who was different, like them.’
Everton drew a deep breath.
‘We’ll have a talk tomorrow about finding a school for you, Monica,’ he said. ‘Run off to bed, now. Good night, my dear.’
He hesitated, then touched her forehead with his lips. She ran from him, nearly as shy as Everton himself, tossing back her long hair, but from the door she gave him the strangest little brimming glance, and there was that in her eyes which he had
