Perhaps memory reads into this experience more than in those green salad days I actually found there. But of this at least I am certain—that the morning sped on unheeded in his company, and I was even unconscious of how cold I was until he suddenly glanced anxiously into my face and told me so. So now we wandered off together towards the great house—which hitherto I had left unapproached. We climbed the green-stained scaling steps from terrace to terrace, tufted with wallflower and snapdragon amongst the weeds, cushioned with bright moss, fretted with lichen. Standing there, side by side with him, looking up—our two figures alone, on the wide flowerless weed-grown terrace—hale, sour weeds some of them, shoulder-high—I scrutinized the dark, shut windows.
What was the secret that had kept it so long vacant, I inquired. Mrs. Bowater had never given me any coherent answer to this question. My words dropped into the silence, like a pebble into a vast, black pool of water.
“There was a tale about,” he replied indifferently, and yet, as I fancied, not so indifferently as he intended, “that many years ago a woman”—he pronounced the word almost as if it had reference to a different species from ourselves—“that a woman had hanged herself in one of its upper rooms.”
“Hanged herself!” It was the kind of fable Mrs. Ballard used to share with Adam Waggett’s mother over their tea and shrimps. Frowning in horror and curiosity, I scanned his face. Was this the water I could dip for in his well? Alas, how familiar I was to become with the bucket.
He made a movement with his hands; at which I saw the poor creature up there in the darkness, suspended lifeless, poor, poor human, with head awry.
“Why?” I asked him, pondering childishly over this picture.
“It was mere gossip,” he replied, “and true or not, such as ‘they’ make up to explain their own silly superstitions. Just thinking long enough and hard enough would soon invite an evil spirit into any old empty house. Human beings are no better than sheep, though they don’t always see the dogs and shepherds that drive them.”
“And does it,” I faltered, glancing covertly up the walls, and conscious of a novel vein of interest in this strangely inexhaustible world, “does the evil spirit ever look out of the windows?”
He turned his face to me, smiling; and inquired if I had ever heard the phrase, “the eyelids of the dawn.” “There’s night, too,” he said.
“But whose spirit? Whose?” I persisted. “When I am here alone in the garden, why, it is just peace. How could that be, if an evil spirit haunted here?”
“Yes,” he said, “but a selfish, solitary peace. Dead birds don’t sing. Don’t come when you can’t get back; or the clouds are down.”
“You are trying to frighten me,” I said, in a louder voice. “And I have been too much alone for that. Of course things must look after themselves. Don’t we? And you said an evil spirit. What is the good of dreaming when you are wide awake?”
“Then,” said he, almost coldly, “do you deny that Man is an evil spirit? He distorts and destroys.”
But with that the words of my mother came back to me out of a faraway morning: “He made us of His Power and Love.” Yet I could not answer him, could only wait, as if expectant that by mere silence I should be able to share the thoughts he was thinking. And, all the while, my eyes were brooding in some dark chamber of my mind on Fanny, and not, as they well might have, on the dark bark of Mr. Crimble tossing in jeopardy beneath its fleeting ray of hope.
Truly this stranger was making life very interesting, even if he was only prodding over its dead moles. And truly I was an incorrigibly romantic young lady; for when, with a glance at my grandfather’s watch, I discovered that it was long past noon, and told him I must be gone; without a single moment’s hesitation, I promised to come again to meet him on the very first fine morning that showed. So strong within me was the desire to do so, that a profound dismay chilled my mind when, on turning about at the end of the terrace—for he had shown no inclination to accompany me—I found that he was already out of sight. I formally waved my hand towards where he had vanished in case he should be watching; sighed, and went on.
It was colder under the high, sunless trees. I gathered my cloak closer around me, and at that discovered not only that Miss Austen had been left behind, but that Fanny’s letter still lay in undisturbed concealment beneath its stone. It was too late to return for them now, and a vague misgiving that had sprung up in me amid the tree-trunks was quieted by the assurance that for these—rather than for any other reason—I must return to Wanderslore as soon as I could. So, in remarkably gay spirits, I hastened light-heeled on my way in the direction of civilized society, of nefarious Man, and of my never-to-be-blessed-too-much Mrs. Bowater.
XXIII
My landlady was already awaiting me at the place appointed, and we walked off
