Anna, Where Are You? (6 page)

“Do you always plan things?”

Miss Silver gave her the smile which had won the heart of many a reluctant client.

“Do you not do so?”

“Sometimes I do. Sometimes my plan isn’t the same as someone else’s plan. It mightn’t be the same as yours—it might be a very opposite plan indeed. What would you do then?”

Miss Silver appeared to give this question as much serious attention as if it had been put to her by a grown-up person. Then she said,

“One can really only make plans for oneself. When they come into conflict with the plans of other people one has to consider to what extent each can accommodate his plan to another’s. It is a problem that arises constantly. People who are successful in dealing with it will also make a success of their lives.”

She had caught the child’s attention. The dark eyes had a sudden bright spark of intelligence. Under the overhead light she saw that they were not brown as she had thought at first, but a sombre grey heavily shaded by black lashes. The spark flashed and was gone. Jennifer stood poised with her weight on one foot, as if ready to fly off at a tangent. She said,

“You planned to come here. So did the others. They didn’t stay. Perhaps you won’t stay either. Do you think you will?”

Miss Silver was removing her black cloth coat. As she hung it up in the cheap plywood wardrobe she said in her temperate way,

“That will depend a good deal upon you. I should not care to stay where I was not wanted. But I think your mother needs someone to help her.”

Jennifer stamped her foot. She said with sudden passion,

“If she doesn’t have someone she’ll die! I told him so! That’s why he got you! He wouldn’t like her to die! Because of the money! But she will if someone doesn’t help her!” She came at Miss Silver with a rush, not touching her but coming up close, her dark head on the same level, her eyes full of angry tears. “Why do you make me say things?”

“My dear—”

The child stamped again.

“I’m not! And you needn’t think you can make me do things I don’t want to! Nobody can!” There was tragic intensity in the words.

Before Miss Silver could make any reply, one of those quick rushes took Jennifer across the floor and out of the room. She was as light on her feet as a kitten, the darting flight was soundless. The door clapped to with a bang.

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!” After which she removed her hat, changed into indoor shoes, and remembered that she had not ascertained the whereabouts of the bathroom. She was tidying her hair—an entirely superfluous action, since it was always perfectly under control—when the door was flung open again. Jennifer stood beyond the threshold, her head up, her look defiant.

“The bathroom is next door. I thought I’d make you look for it—and then I thought I wouldn’t. Are you coming down?”

“I thought that I would put my things away first.”

Jennifer backed. She remained poised for a moment in the patch of light from the doorway. She said with a jerk in her voice,

“You won’t stay—they never do!”

And was gone.

Seen in the light of a grey January morning, Deepe House had a very desolate and ruined look. The main block of the house showed plainly the bomb damage which it had sustained. Of the ornamental balustrade which had run the length of the roof only a few fragments survived, and no more than three of the windows in the whole façade still kept their glass, the rest had been roughly boarded up. These three windows, all on the ground floor, imparted a curious furtive look, as if the house were peering up from under the clogging weight of its two blind storeys. The courtyard between the two wings was slippery with moss. When the wind stirred, fallen magnolia leaves and droppings of ivy whispered against the stone flags with which it was paved.

Even in the Craddocks’ wing not all the windows had glass in them.

“It is too big for us,” Mrs. Craddock explained. “We could not furnish or keep so many rooms. But it will be nice when we can get the windows mended.”

On the other side of the courtyard in the opposite wing all the windows were boarded up, the tenant using only those rooms which looked upon what had once been a garden. He was a Mr. Robinson, and Miss Silver gathered that he preferred seclusion and was addicted to bird-watching and nature-study. He could not be said to have a very extensive view, but if he desired privacy he had it. Dead grass stood knee-high amongst unpruned fruit trees. Roses gone back to briar contended with the wild raspberry and currant. Evergreens, some half dead, ran riot, with here and there a cypress grown to an immense height. There were dark patches of the churchyard yew. Miss Silver could see only the outer fringe of this wilderness, but the signs of ruin and neglect were unmistakable.

At lunch she made bright conversation about the house.

“A very interesting old place. It is sad to think how much irreparable damage was done during the war, but perhaps it is better to reflect with gratitude upon what has been spared.”

Mrs. Craddock said, “Oh, yes.” Mr. Craddock, partaking of a lentil cutlet, said nothing at all. The children said nothing.

Miss Silver, who was never at a loss for meal-time conversation, continued her remarks. An enquiry as to whether Mr. Craddock had had any difficulty with the plumbing—men generally took so much interest in this subject—elicited, not from him but again from Mrs. Craddock, an assurance that it was all that could be desired, and that though the new bathroom and hot water system had been a great expense, they were certainly a comfort.

It was not until he had absorbed four lentil cutlets and an inordinate amount of greenstuff that Mr. Craddock emerged from his philosophic abstraction. That he happened to do so at the moment when Miss Silver was remarking upon the ruins of what appeared to be a chapel at some little distance from the house was no doubt a coincidence. She had asked if the damage had been caused by the same bomb which wrecked the house, and was surprised to receive a decided negative.

“Oh, no. The old church had been a ruin for thirty or forty years before that. And by the way, the place is not safe. There is a danger of flying masonry.”

With striking lack of tact Benjy chose this moment to say,

“We play hide-and-seek there. It’s a very good place for hide-and-seek.”

Parental displeasure descended.

“It is not at all a safe place for you to play. If one of those big stones fell—”

“Would it cut my head off?”

There was a gasp of “Benjy!” from Mrs. Craddock, and a calm “It might ” from Mr. Craddock.

“Right off? ” enquired Benjy with interest. “ And my hands? And my feet? Like the stone man inside the church?”

“Benjy!”

Jennifer, sitting next to him, slid a hand under the table and pinched hard. His outraged roar effectually changed the conversation, since he howled at the top of his voice until he discovered that the pudding was apple dumpling.

It was over the washing-up that Jennifer, washing whilst Miss Silver dried, said defiantly,

“Benjy is a damfool.”

It was beyond Miss Silver to let this pass.

“My dear, you should not use such words.”

Jennifer looked at her calmly.

“I shall use any words I like. If you interfere with my self-expression you will do something to my psyche. You ask him if you won’t! ” She broke into an angry laugh. “He talks that way, but when we do anything he doesn’t like, a lot he cares about our psyches!” Then, still with the utmost aggressiveness of voice and manner, “Don’t you hate, and loathe, and abominate, and detest washing-up?”

Miss Silver decided that it would be better to reply only to this last sentence.

“No, I really do not dislike it at all. With two of us it will be quickly done, and a great help to your mother. Do you not think that she might be persuaded to take a little rest while you and I go out for a walk with the boys?”

Jennifer said, “I don’t know!” in an angry voice, but this time the anger was not for Miss Silver. She washed up at an incredible pace, neither chipped nor broke anything, and darted out of the room whilst Miss Silver finished the drying, to return a moment later with the triumphant announcement that Mrs. Craddock had promised to lie down.

Miss Silver, having donned the black cloth coat, the elderly fur tippet, the felt hat with a purple starfish on one side, and the black woollen gloves, her invariable wear in winter except when the occasion demanded her best hat and the kid gloves reserved to go with it, they set out, Benjy and Maurice running ahead, Jennifer hatless in her scarlet jumper, not walking with Miss Silver but making short excursions here, there, and everywhere, yet always coming back after the manner of a puppy or any young thing for whom the pace of its elders is too slow.

They were out of sight of the house and had come to the edge of a wide sloping common, when Benjy came running back.

“Are we going there now?” he said, the words tumbling one over the other. “I want to show her the man what had his head broke off, an’ I want a piece of stone for my ruin I’m making in my garden, an’ I want a snail for my other snail to run races with, an’ I want—”

Jennifer came up with him and caught his hand.

“You want a lot, don’t you?”

“I want a snail, an’ a white spider, an’ a little green spider, an’ put them in a cage and see if they eat each other. An’ I want a big fir cone—”

Jennifer said, “All right, Toad—come along!” She waved with her free hand to Miss Silver. “We shall be about an hour. We don’t want you, and you don’t want us. You can meet us where the ruined chapel is and make sure we don’t get hit by flying masonry like he says.”

She gave Benjy a tug, and they raced away together, gathering up Maurice as they went.

It being no part of Miss Silver’s plan for the afternoon to pursue three wild children over country quite strange to her and perfectly well known to them, she merely remarked “Dear me!” and having watched them out of sight, retraced her steps until the ruins came in sight, and made her way towards them.

The church must have been a very tiny one. The chancel arch still stood, with parts of two others. Fallen stone lay confusedly amongst a prickly growth of bramble, whilst all around were the half-obliterated mounds and sunken headstones of a disused graveyard, the whole enclosed by a low wall. As this was in the same condition of disrepair as the church itself, it could no longer serve to keep anyone out.

Miss Silver walked through a gap and made her way cautiously amongst faded grass and fallen stones. The place was desolate in the extreme. With Deepe House behind her, there was not a human habitation in sight. All who had used this place for worship, for the christening of their children, for the marriage of their young people, for the burial of their dead, were gone. David’s words came into her mind—“For the wind passeth over it and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.”

In what had been the nave she came upon Benjy’s man without a head, a tomb with the recumbent figure of a knight in armour. The head was gone, and so were the feet. The hands, much weathered, were crossed upon a sword, and the legs crossed at the knees, showing that he had been upon two crusades—the only information which the tomb could now afford, since the inscription which had once set forth his name and virtues could no longer be deciphered. A little nearer to what had been the entrance a stone slab lay slightly raised above the ground. She made out that it would have been just within and to the right of the west door, and that there was an inscription now so much defaced that it could no longer be read.

After observing it for some minutes Miss Silver prepared to go. She was not very strongly addicted to ruins. Benjy’s remarks about the snails and spiders lingered unfavourably in her mind. If a sense of duty compelled her to wait here for the children, she felt it would be more agreeable to do so on the other side of the wall. Turning from the stone slab, she saw that the ruins had another visitor, and a striking one. A very tall and very large woman in a voluminous dark cape was standing just beyond the gap through which she herself had entered. The cape billowed out on every side, giving in spite of her bulk the impression that it might at any moment spread into wings and carry its wearer away. She had blunt, ugly features, a pair of rolling eyes, and an immense bush of the dark red hair which is usually a product of the dye bottle. Miss Silver found herself quite unable to believe that it was natural, though, being old-fashioned in her taste and preferring the more conventional shades, she was at a loss to imagine why anyone should wish to dye her hair such a distressing colour.

A large hand let go of the cloak to wave at her and then clutched it again. A deep voice hailed her.

“That place isn’t safe. The masonry flies.”

This inversion of Mr. Craddock’s phrase had a very peculiar sound, a peculiarity which was intensified when the stranger continued,

“Other things too perhaps. You had better not linger.”

Declaimed in that contralto manner, the words were arresting. Miss Silver, having reached the gap in the wall, was arrested. The cloak flapped loose again. Her hand was grasped.

“You are Emily Craddock’s new governess. I am Miranda! We must know each other! You are psychic?”

Miss Silver coughed a little primly.

“I do not think so.”

The cloak threatened to engulf them both. Her hand was released.

“Many people do not know their own powers. We must talk. This place interests you?”

“It is very desolate.”

“Ah—you are a sensitive.” The words were pronounced in a pontifical manner. “The burial place of an extinct family. There are emanations from such places. They affect the sensitive. The Everlys once owned all this land. They were rich, they were powerful. They are ruined, they are gone. Sic transit gloria mundi.”

She rolled out the words with the air of making an original statement. A sharp gust of wind blew the cloak right up over her head, disclosing the fact that she wore beneath it a curious short purple garment resembling a cassock which has been cut off at the knees. Comfortable for walking, no doubt, but most unsuitable for so large a figure. When the cloak was under control again the owner went on as if there had been no interruption.

“That stone—the one over which you were bending—it covers the entrance to their family vault. You could not read the inscription. It has been obliterated for years. Only a letter here and there remains. On my first visit I pored over it. Without success. Later, in trance, I read it clearly.” She intoned the words: “ ‘Here I—Ever Lye,’ Spelt with a Y, you know! A play upon the name Everly. Strange mixture of the Pun and the Funeral Pall!”

“Strange indeed—”

Miss Silver’s murmured words may not have referred entirely to an Elizabethan partiality for punning. Miranda’s eyes, brown and rather prominent, stopped rolling and contemplated her in a fixed manner.

“You will stay with the Craddocks, I hope. Peveril is Marvellous—an inspiration to all Seekers. You will find it a Privilege to belong to his household. I may say a Great Privilege. Dear Emily, of course, is earthbound. One wonders why—” She shook her head with the air of a warning Sybil. “But he cannot fail to raise her.”

Miss Silver hastened to say,

“Mrs. Craddock is all that is kind.”

“Oh, kind—” Miranda let go of the cloak with a free gesture which was obviously intended to dismiss Mrs. Craddock’s kindness as irrelevant. By the time she had recaptured it the question of dear Emily’s exact spiritual status or the lack of it had gone down the wind. She reverted to her original theme.

“You will stay. They will need you. She is frail. And the children—sadly uncontrolled. Peveril believes in the self-expression of the Ego, but I do not follow him all the way. Not with children. For the adult, yes! Undoubtedly! Entirely! But for the untrained child intelligence, no! There must be Leading, Guiding—even at times Discipline! You agree with me?”

“I do indeed.”

Miranda waved hand and cloak together.

“We must talk of it. Peveril must be made to see reason. His work must not be disturbed. And Emily requires relief. The young girls whom she has had were useless—no experience, no authority. Miss Dally left after a week because Maurice put a spider down her back and Benjy poured the ink over her hair, and all she did was to burst into tears and pack her bag. Fluffy fair hair and pale blue eyes—most unsuitable! Miss Ball equally so, but a different type. A morose girl. She stayed for a fortnight, and I told Emily at the time that she was a good riddance. I saw her go by to the station, and the words sprang unbidden to my lips. I spoke them aloud. Not to Emily Craddock, because she was not there, but to Augustus Remington. He lives next door to me. You must meet him, A gentle soul—he does exquisite needlework. Have you met Elaine and Gwyneth Tremlett yet?*”

“Not yet. I only came yesterday.”

“You will do so. Rather earthbound, but pleasant neighbours. They adore Peveril, but it would have been better if they had stayed at Wyshmere. Elaine had a folk-dancing class there— she misses it. Gwyneth, of course, can go on with her weaving. But it would be better if they had not come—I have told them so frankly. I always say just what I think. If it is not received in the same spirit, that is not my fault. What made you come here?”