Nellie said in a scornful voice,
‘She fusses, and I won’t say I haven’t cheeked her, but that’s all in the family. Up in the air one minute and all right again the next – that’s Aunt Anna. Always been like that, she has. I wouldn’t take any notice of Aunt Anna.’
‘Is it Joseph then – your uncle?’
Nellie blazed.
‘He’s no uncle of mine, thank God! What Aunt Anna wanted to marry him for, I can’t think! Twenty years younger than her, and all he thinks about is money! Disgusting I call it! And how Aunt Anna could!’
Candida had a fleeting thought that thumbed its nose and suggested with a giggle that Anna’s savings must be considerable and her family would naturally prefer them to come their way. It was the kind of guttersnipe thought which you repress and dismiss. But Nellie appeared to have caught a glimpse of it, for she said on a defiant note,
‘And you needn’t think we’d have minded if it had been what you could call suitable, and not someone that was young enough to be her son and just to please the Miss Benevents. We all know she’s fond of them – do anything for Miss Cara she would. But you’re not called on to marry a chap that’s after your money just because it suits the people you work for!’
Candida laughed.
‘I suppose not, but I expect it’s been done before now. Well, you don’t like Joseph. Is that why you are going?’
‘It’s reason enough!’
‘But is it the reason?’
Nellie looked her straight in the face and said, ‘No!’
‘Then – ’
Nellie flushed.
‘Why can’t you leave it alone? I don’t like it here, and I’m clearing out! And if you’ve got any sense you’ll clear out too! Let me go!’
Candida shook her head.
All at once Nellie Brown’s resistance broke. She had a temper and it got away with her. She had always hated the place, and now it scared her. It was going to do her quite a lot of good to get some of these feelings off her chest. Her eyes sparkled as she said,
‘All right then, here it is – and don’t blame me if you don’t like it!’ She laughed angrily. ‘How would you like to wake up in the night and hear someone in your room?’
‘Nellie!’
‘Oh, it wasn’t Joseph or Mr. Derek – I’d have known what to do about that! It was something that went crying in the dark, and by the time I’d got a light on it was gone. So I started locking my door, but last night it came again. There was a cold hand that touched my face – it wasn’t half horrible. I wasn’t properly awake for a minute, and by the time I was, there was the crying thing half across the room. My curtains were back, but all I could see was something white, and it walked right into the wall and wasn’t there any more. Well, I put on the light, and the door was locked all right the way I’d left it. It was past two o’clock, and I kept my light on till the morning, and every minute of the time I was making up my mind I wouldn’t stay another day. Only when I was up and dressed and the sun was shining it seemed stupid to go away without my money. There’ll be a month owing me tomorrow, and I thought I’d get it first.’ She stopped abruptly and said with a complete change of voice and manner, ‘Well, I must go.’
Candida said,
‘Don’t you – mind?’
Nellie laughed with an effect of bravado. ‘Mind? What about?’ Then, as Candida only looked at her, she went into a rush of words, ‘If you’re thinking about my sleeping in that room again, I’m not doing it, and that’s flat! I told Aunt Anna I wouldn’t, and I won’t! I’m going in with her, and she’ll be wondering what’s keeping me!’
‘But – Joseph – ’
Nellie tossed her head.
‘She’s got her own room and always has had! And there’s a bolt on the door, what’s more! I’ll be all right in with Aunt Anna!’
Chapter Fifteen
Candida went to bed, but it was some time before she put out her light. When she thought of putting it out there was an echo of what Nellie had said about the cold hand that had touched her face and the thing that went crying in the dark. It was frightfully stupid of course, but she had a horrid feeling that if she told her hand to go out and turn off the bedside light there would be some pretty dogged opposition. She went barefoot to the bookshelves which filled the whole of the recess between the fireplace and the window. If she were to read for a little, the pictures in her mind would change and she would be able to sleep.
She took down a book of verse and turned the pages. A couple of lines started to her eye:
‘Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.’
That brought up a picture of cold moonlight and a frosted world. She remembered:
‘The owl for all his feathers was a-cold.’
Not just what she wanted at the moment. She turned the leaves, and saw four lines at the bottom of a page:
‘I saw their starved lips in the gloom,
With horrid warning gaped wide;
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill-side.’
She clapped the book to and put it back upon the shelf. If all that Tennyson and Keats had got to offer were things about cold owls and horrid warnings, to say nothing of starved lips in the gloom, then they were definitely off.
She found a book of short stories and chanced upon one about a coral island. With a hot water-bottle at her feet and the glow of a reading-lamp at her left shoulder, it was possible to be transported to the tropics and to warm the imagination at a description of blue water, rainbow fish, and exotic blooms. After two or three stories all set amongst surroundings where the temperature never fell below eighty degrees she actually found the bottle too much and pushed it away. A little later on she was so nearly asleep that the book slipped from her hand. The sound that it made as it slid to the floor roused her just enough to make her reach out and turn off the light. She passed at once into one of those indeterminate dreams of which no real impression remains.
A long time afterwards she came back to the place where the dreams that come are remembered. She was in the midst of one, and there was no comfort in it. A wide moor and a blowing wind and the hour before the dawn. There were voices in the wind, but what they said went by. Only if she didn’t know what they were saying, how did she know that it was something that she must not, must not hear? In her dream she began to run so as to get away from the wind, but she tripped and fell, and the wind went over her and was gone.
It hadn’t been dark in the dream – just grey, and the clouds racing. But now when she opened her eyes it was very dark indeed. She was awake and in bed in her own room, and the room was full of darkness. She lay on her back, with the head of the bed against the wall, the door to the right, the windows to the left, and in the opposite wall the bulging chimney-breast and the recess which held the books. She knew where all these things were, but as far as seeing them they might just as well not have been there, except that the shape of the windows showed against the denser blackness of the wall. Outside and away from the hill the darkness would not be absolute. There would be at the very least the remembrance and the promise of light. But it couldn’t get into the house. It couldn’t get into the room, because the darkness filled it to the very brim.
Candida lay there in the dark and was afraid. Moments went by, each one more dragging than the last, and as they dragged, the fear weighed on her and held her down. She had only to put out her hand to the switch of the reading-lamp and turn it on and a golden light would fill the place. Darkness had no power against light. She had only to put out her hand. But she couldn’t move it from where it was clenched upon the other, hard up against the slow beating of her heart.
And then all of a sudden there was a sound and there was light.