” I’ve used such a lot of my blue silks.”
” What did you think about … my fright?”
“All that work would have been in vain.”
” Who told you about it?”
” But it would have done for some other baby. There are always babies.” Her eyes widened and she went on: “Perhaps Luke’s. I wonder if Luke will have good babies?”
” Please don’t talk about my child as though it will never be born,” I said sharply.
She recoiled as though I had struck her.
” It made you angry,” she said. ” People are angry when they are frightened.”
“I’m not frightened.”
” Are you angry?”
” When you talk like that about my baby.”
“Then you’re frightened, because angry people are really frightened people.”
I changed the subject.
“The coverlet is lovely. My baby will like it.”
She smiled, well pleased.
” I went to see your sister a few days ago. She told me about a Christmas-time when Matthew dressed up.”
She put her hand to her mouth and began to laugh. ” They quarrelled so,” she said. ” She made his nose bleed. It went all over his jacket.
Our governess was cross. They had nothing but bread and water for a whole day. He’d dressed up, you see . to frighten her. ” She looked at me. her brows puckered; I could see that she was struck by the similarity of the incidents. ” What are you going to do, Hagar?
What are you going to do about . the monk? “
I did not remind her that I was Catherine. Instead I said:
” I want to see if I can find the clothes.”
” I know where the hat is,” she said. ” I was there when he found it.”
” Do you know where the monk’s robe is?”
She turned to me, startled. ” Monk’s robe? I never saw it. There is no monk’s robe. Matthew found the hat and he said he was going to frighten her when she was asleep. It was a hat with such a lovely feather. It’s still in the chest.”
” Where is the chest?”
“You know, Hagar. In that little room near the school room.”
” Let us go and look at it.”
” Are you going to dress up and frighten Matthew?”
” I’m not going to dress up. I merely want to see the clothes.”
” All right, she said. ” Come on. “
So she led the way. We went through the schoolroom and past the nurseries till we came to a door at the end of a corridor. She threw this open. There was a smell of age as though the place had not been ventilated for years. I saw several large chests, some pictures stacked against the walls, and odd pieces of furniture.
” Mother changed the Revels when she came here,” mused Sarah. ” She said we were overcrowded with furniture. She put some here … and some in other places…. It’s been here ever since.”
” Let us look at the clothes.”
I saw that there was a film of dust on everything, and I looked intently about me, for if anyone had been at these chests recently would they not have left some mark in the dust?
I saw an imprint on the top of a chest which was Sarah’s, and she was now ruefully looking at her hands.
” The dust,” she said. ” No one’s been in here for a very long time.
Perhaps not since we were children. “
It was not easy to lift the lid, as the thing was not only heavy but stiff; but we managed between us.
I looked down at the garments which were there. Gowns, shoes, cloaks, and there was the hat itself on which Sarah seized with a cry of triumph.
She put it on her head and she looked as though she had stepped right out of the picture gallery.
” Hagar must have had a fright,” I said.
“Hagar wouldn’t be frightened long.” She was looking at me intently.
“Some people are not frightened for long. For a while they are and then … they stop being frightened. You are like that, Hagar.”
I was suddenly conscious of the stuffiness of the attic, of the strangeness of the woman who stood before me, whose childlike blue eyes could be so vague and yet so penetrating.
She had bent over the chest and brought out a silk pelisse which she wrapped around her. The hat was still on her head.
” Now,” she said, ” I feel I am not myself. I am someone else … someone who lived in this house long long ago. When you wear other people’s clothes perhaps you become like them. This is a man’s hat though and a woman’s pelisse.” She began to laugh. ” I wonder, if I put on the monk’s robe, whether I should feel like a monk.”
” Aunt Sarah,” I said, ” where is the monk’s robe?”
She paused as though thinking deeply and for a moment I thought I was on the road to discovery. Then she said: ” It is on the monk who came to your bedroom, Catherine. That’s where the monk’s robe is.”
I began taking clothes from the chest, and as I could not find the robe I gave my attention to the smaller trunks and ransacked them.
When I could not find what I sought I felt deflated. I turned to Sarah, who was watching me earnestly.
“There are other chests in the house,” she said.
“Where?”
She shook her head. ” I hardly ever leave my part of the house.”
I felt the faintness coming over me again; the room was so airless, so confined; it smelt of dust and age.
What did Sarah know? I asked myself. Sometimes she seemed so simple, at others so knowledgeable.
Did she know who had come to my room in the guise of a monk? I wondered if it had been Sarah herself.
As this feeling became stronger I wanted to get away, back to my own room. I wondered what would happen to me if I fainted in this room among all these musty relics of the past, as I had in Hagar’s house.
” I must go now,” I said. ” It has been interesting.”
She held out her hand to me as though I were an acquaintance who had made a formal call.
” Do come again,” she said.
Gabriel and Friday were constantly in my thoughts. I was still hoping that one day Friday would come back to me. I simply could not bear to think that he was dead. But there was one matter which surprised me; although I remembered so vividly the occasion of my meeting with Gabriel, I had to concentrate to remember exactly what he looked like.
I reproached myself for this because in some ways it seemed disloyal; and yet, deep in my secret thoughts, I knew that although we had been husband and wife, Gabriel and I had been almost strangers in some respects. Each day some revealing action had betrayed to me the fact that I had a great deal to learn about him. I told myself that this was due to an innate reticence in his nature. But was this so? I had been fond of Gabriel; I had missed him deeply; but what did I miss?
Was it a friend rather than a lover?
Now I carried Gabriel’s child and I believed that when I held my baby in my arms I should be happy. Already I loved my child and the force of my emotion was teaching me that the feeling I had had for Gabriel was shallow compared with this new love. I longed for the spring as I never had before because, with the coming of spring, my baby would be born. But there were many dark days between me and that happy time.
The weather had set in damp and, even when the rain ceased, the mist was with us. It crept into the house like a grey ghost, and shut out the view from the windows. I liked to walk whenever possible, and I did not mind the rain for it was not cold yet and was that gentle damp which came from the south and which put a soft bloom on the skin. I felt very well, only impatient of the dragging of time.
I was delighted when I noticed for the first time the lines of green in the brown fields on the Kelly Grange land. The young wheat was pushing through the earth: the promise of a new year and a reminder that spring was on its way. My baby was due to be born in March and this was November. Four more months to wait.