That was good, that passion; undoubtedly, he had inherited some of her own troubled ambition – and there was the fact that he had been caught stealing just before they left the city, and released with a warning.
She hadn’t blamed him then, felt only his bitter fury against a world that lashed out so cruelly against boys ruthlessly deprived by fate of spending money.
That was all over, of course. For two years he had been a steady, quiet worker, pulling his full share with the other hired men. Nevertheless—
To get Phyllis, that earlier, harder training would surely rise up once more – and win for all of them.
Slyly, she watched as, out of the corner of his eyes, he took one of his long, measured glances at Phyllis, where she sat across the table slantwise from him. For more than a year now, the woman had observed him look at Phyllis like that – and besides she had asked him, and—
Surely, a young man of twenty would fight to get the girl he loved.
Fight unscrupulously. The only thing was—
How did a mother tell her son the particular grim plan that was in her mind? Did she . . . she just tell him?
After lunch, while Phyllis and Pearl were washing the dishes, the woman softly followed Bill up to his room. And, actually, it was easier than she had thought.
He lay for a while, after she had finished, staring at the ceiling; his heavy face was quiet almost placid. Finally:
“So the idea is that this evening you take Pearl in to Kempster to a movie; the old man, of course, will sleep like a log. But after Phyllis goes to bed at her usual time, I go into her room – and then she’ll have to marry me.”
It was so baldly put that the woman shrank, as if a mirror had been held up to her; and the image was an incredibly evil, ravaged thing. The cool voice went on:
“If I do this it means we’ll be able to stay on the farm, is that right?”
She nodded, because no words would come. Then, not daring to stay a moment longer, she turned and left the room.
Slowly, the black mood of that interview passed. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when she came out into the veranda; and the old man looked up from his chair, and said:
“Terrible thing,” he said, “your sister hanged. They told me at the hotel. Hanged. Terrible, terrible; you’ve been right to have nothing to do with her.”
He seemed to forget her, simply sat there staring into space.
The whole thing was utterly unreal, and, after a moment, quite unthinkably fantastic. The woman stared at him with a sudden, calm, grim understanding of the faint smile that was creeping back into his face, a serene smile.
So that was his plan, she thought coolly. The mischievous old scoundrel intended that Phyllis should not marry Bill. Therefore, knowing his own reputation for prophecy, he had cleverly told her that Phyllis and Charlie Couzens—
That was his purpose. And now he was trying to scare her into doing nothing about it. Hanging indeed. She smiled, her thick face taut with inward anger.
He was clever – but not clever enough.
In the theater she had a curious sense of chattering voices and flickering lights. Too much meaningless talk, too much light.
Her eyes hurt and, afterward, when they came out onto the pale dimness of Kempster’s main street, the difference – the greater darkness – was soothing.
She must have said, “Pearl, let’s go in and have a banana split.”
She must have said that or agreed to it because after a while they were sitting at a little table; and the ice cream was cold as it went into her mouth; and there was a taste of banana.
Her mind held only a variation of one tense thought: If she and Bill could put this over, the world was won. Nothing thereafter could ever damage them to the same dreadful degree as this could.
“Aw, gee, ma, I’m sleepy. It’s half past eleven.”
The woman came to reality with a start. She looked at her watch; and it was true. “Goodness gracious!” she exclaimed with artifical amazement. “I didn’t realize—”
The moon was shining, and the horse anxious to get home. Coming down the great hill, she could see no light anywhere in the house. The buildings loomed silent in the moonlit darkness, like great semiformless shapes against the transparent background of the land.
She left Pearl to unhitch the animal and, trembling, went into the house. There was a lamp in the kitchen turned very low. She turned it into brightness, but the light didn’t seem to help her feet on the stairs. She kept stumbling, but she reached the top, reached Bill’s door. Ever so softly, she knocked.
No answer.
She opened the door. The pale, yellow light of the lamp poured onto the empty bed – and it was only the sound of Pearl coming into the kitchen downstairs that made her close hastily the door of Bill’s room. Pearl came up, yawning, and disappeared instantly into her own room.
The fat man stopped abruptly as a distant telephone thrummed. He rolled apologetically out of his seat. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
“One question,” Kent asked hastily. “What about this prophecy of hanging? I thought Mrs Carmody was in a madhouse, very much alive.”
“She is.” The vast bulk of the hotel proprietor filled the door. “We figured out that the old man was definitely trying to put something over.”
The minutes dragged. Kent took his note-book and wrote with the elaborate ornateness of vague purpose.
An old man
Who can tell the future
Who caused a woman to murder him
But still lives
Who walks through solid objects
Who reads minds (possibly)
He sat thoughtful, then added to the list:
A senile ghost
For long minutes he stared at the combination. Finally he laughed ruefully – and simultaneously grew aware of the clicking of pool balls inside.
He stood up, peered through the door – and smiled sardonically as he saw that fat Jenkins was playing a game of snooker with a chunky man of his own age.
Kent shrugged; and, turning, went down the steps. It was obvious that he would have to get the rest of this story piecemeal, here and there over the countryside: obvious, too, that he’d better write Miss Kincaid to send him some books on ghosts and seers, the folklore as well as anything remotely scientific.
He’d need everything he could lay his hands on if he was going to solve the mystery of – the ghost!
The books kept trickling in over a period of four weeks. Miss Kincaid sent ghost stories, compilations of true ghost tales, four books on psychic phenomena, a history of magic, a treatise on astrology and kindred arts, the works of Charles Fort; and, finally, three thin volumes by one J. W. Dunne, on the subject of time.
Kent sat on the veranda in the early morning just after the arrival of the mail that had brought them, and read the three books in one sitting, with an excitement that gathered at every page.
He got up at last, shaky, and half convinced that he had the tremendous answer; and yet – there were things to clear up—
An hour later he was lying in a little wooded dell that overlooked the house and yard, waiting. It was almost time for the – ghost – to come out, if he intended to take his morning walk—
At noon Kent returned to the hotel, thinking tensely: The old man must have gone somewhere else today . . . somewhere else—
His mind nearly came out of his head from contemplating that somewhere else. The following morning, eight o’clock found him in his little copse, waiting. Again, the old man failed to appear.
The third morning, Kent’s luck was better. Dark, threatening clouds rode the sky as he watched the thin, tall figure move from behind the house and slowly approach the gate. The old man came across the field; Kent showed himself in plenty of time, striding along out of the bush as if he, too, was out for a walk.