The Shadow (15 page)

They were good features, with clear evidence of the bone but not really thin. In the lamplight certain fine lines were hardly discernible. There were lines on the forehead but they gave character rather than age. It was an open face, but firm, with something attractive about the blue eyes, which yet were by themselves in no way unusual in colour or size. Her hair must at one time have been a red-gold. Now it was pale as autumn stubble in an evening light, with just that remaining glint in it. There was also that hint of glow in her fair skin. The bone of her jaw, thought Ranald, is there all right.

“For us at the moment,” said Aunt Phemie, “it may be enough if we understand about her fighting. She wants to clean up her own mind, to understand. But in spite of the cynics, a person can at the same time be doing this not only for herself but also for someone else. She might even have the notion, say, that she is doing it for
you,
in the sense that she fancies she has discovered the enormous fact that there may be more things in heaven and earth than are contained in your philosophy. Or do you think that's impossible for any human mind?”

There was a breath of laughter as Ranald stirred in his chair. “I get your point, but is not that, too, an obvious illusion? To think you are doing it for someone else is to flatter yourself the more. Isn't it?”

“So when
you
think you are going to put the world right for
everyone
else you are flattering yourself rather enormously?”

“Except for this: that I am prepared to reason the matter logically with everyone else.” This kind of argument would clearly make no impression on him; he obviously liked it as a familiar intellectual exercise. The very way he stretched himself, wanting to cock his feet up on the edge of the kitchen range, indicated whole nights of talk.

“You may flatter yourself that you have a monopoly of logic. That may be your particular illusion. And more horrors are committed, I'm beginning to think, in the name of logic than in any other name.”

“Even God's—remembering history?”

“Even God's,” said Aunt Phemie, “and for what it's worth I took history in my degree.”

“But not perhaps the materialistic interpretation of history?”

“Perhaps not,” said Aunt Phemie, annoyed with herself for feeling she was actively disliking him again, his smiling cocksureness.

“We merely think that history has been taught wrongly, has been misunderstood,” he said lightly, having found the right place for his heels. “Emotion has nothing to do with it.”

“Emotion is the greater part of life, and to ignore it is to—is to make a mess of life.” She was losing grip, couldn't get the right words now.

“I was talking scientifically, a scientific interpretation. Do you think emotion should influence the scientist in his work?”

“We didn't class history as one of the science subjects—but then of course our professors probably didn't know any better,” said Aunt Phemie, sinking deeper.

He seemed to become aware for the first time that she was disturbed and studied the movement of his slipper—Dan's slipper—with a faint smile. “It's rather important to me,” he said.

She made her effort at recovery: “If I said that about logic and—and God, I meant that the horrors were committed by the churchmen logically expounding their—their doctrine. It was their
logic
that drove them to the—to the Inquisition and all the rest.”

“But their logic was based on false premises.”

“Still, it was their logic.”

“And therefore logic is to be condemned?”

“You are jumping to conclusions.”

“Am I?”

His polite restraint felt to her like a superior insult. “Yes,” she said flatly. “I do not condemn logic as a process. If you cannot see my distinction, I can't help you.”

He remained silent.

“However,” said Aunt Phemie, “I started to tell you about Nan.”

He waited.

She took her time and, not looking at him, began, “She was getting on quite well, was sometimes very full of life indeed—even emotion,” she added coolly. “Then this horrible murder took place in that cottage. It preyed on her mind—no doubt she felt she had left that kind of thing behind. But the war had pursued her—in this case it was the first Great War. The murder was attributed to a man who had what they call here shell-shock from that war. It cast a gloom over the place, particularly as they could not find the man. He had disappeared. They hunted for him everywhere. The police were scouring the countryside. One day Nan set out for one of her walks. As you go up the back out there, you finally come on a moor. There is a burn, and down on the right a steep place with birches. It's quite a long way from here. In this place Nan met a man who seems to be an artist or poet. She was feeling a bit nervous, no doubt because the murderer was still at large. She only spoke a few words to this man and then turned for home. On the way, there is a pine plantation. The village policeman was lurking there and Nan ran into him. He asked her if she had seen anyone and she said No. That worried her.”

“Why did she say No?”

Aunt Phemie remained still for a moment then looked at him. “You have no idea?”

He blew a thoughtful stream of smoke “Well—I suppose she didn't want to get involved.”

“The policeman called here,” Aunt Phemie continued, “but as it turned out it was only to return a handkerchief she had dropped. And that incident blew over—at least she was getting over it.”

“Why don't you tell me why she said No?” he asked.

“That was the question Nan asked me,” replied Aunt Phemie. “I said I understood perfectly.”

“Please go on.”

She took a moment or two then went on, “She had to fight this murder shadow. I saw that and let her go ahead in her own way. She had to clear it off the land. That may sound very irrational, but at least it was real for her. I hope that's clear?”

“You needn't rub it in. I am concerned about Nan,” he explained.

“She met this man, this artist fellow, once or twice again. I don't know him. But he interested her in his attitude to things. I don't think she cared much for the man himself, but the way he thought of things—of wild things and the way they behaved—fascinated her. I rather think he lay in wait for her.”

“How do you mean,” he asked as she paused, “that he fascinated her—if she doesn't care for him?”

She met his look for a moment. His face was pale and firm in a logical ruthless way. He was going to let nothing pass now.

“It's difficult to explain—rationally,” answered Aunt Phemie without any emphasis.

“But even the irrational can be explained rationally. Do you think you can do it?”

Aunt Phemie took her time. “You told me about that fellow—Fanwicke, was it?—who fascinated her, yet she didn't like him. Or did I understand you properly?”

He thought so concentratedly that he obviously forgot her. “You said something about wild things and the way they behaved. What did you mean?”

“It's the nature of a hawk to kill a small bird. Something like that was his kind of logic.”

His eyebrows gathered as he looked at her. “What are you getting at?”

“I am simply trying to explain as best I can. I never met him.”

“Where does he live?”

“Somewhere in the town, I have gathered since.”

“Didn't Nan know?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Not even his name?”

“She knew his first name was Adam. That's all.”

“What happened then?”

“There was a final meeting. It may have been arranged, but I am not certain. She left the house immediately after lunch, instead of having her usual rest.” Aunt Phemie stopped. “I want to tell you,” she went on at last in a quiet earnest voice as though thinking now only of Nan, “what happened as far as I can make it out. It's difficult because she was in a very broken condition. Calm for a moment, with staring eyes, then when she spoke a word she lost control and buried her face and grabbed and tore at the bedclothes. She was upstairs when I came in. I had been over at the steading and didn't see her come in. I realised something terrible had happened. When I went near her, she started away. She shivered violently. I am trying to tell you this calmly. I can give you no idea of what she was like. More than once I thought she was completely—unhinged. It was terrifying, and I was quite helpless.”

He did not speak, did not move.

“I won't try to describe the sort of night we had. Nothing would keep her quiet long. She was incoherent; would cry out in her sleep and start awake; and the paralysing thing was that what she saw in her sleep—if it was sleep—was more real than what she saw when she awoke; she still fought it—physically—stared at it in horror, cried words like ‘leprosy'; you saw her being gripped, collapsing, fainting. In between times, when she was pushing away from her horror, or had a lucid moment or two, when she was taking one as an ally, someone who might help her, she said things which helped me to see a little what had actually happened. That's what I'm going to tell you.”

“You did this all alone?” Curiosity and acknowledgement were in his eyes.

“Yes,” she answered simply. “I could not send for the doctor. Mrs. Fraser had gone for the day; she was at this time giving me a hand in the forenoons only. And anyway,” continued Aunt Phemie, “I got the feeling no-one could help me. I even knew, in a way I cannot explain, how dangerous it might be to give her too much sleeping drug. I may have been wrong. But I had a deep feeling of—of understanding. Once, for example, I knew that if only I could get my body between her and what she saw, and cry to her, so that she would know the voice, so that it would be like a cry from someone coming to relieve her—but it's no good trying to explain. All I can say is that in the desperate moment, it helped.”

Aunt Phemie blew the dead stub of cigarette from her holder. Her manner was still calm, but it now concealed a quivering tension.

“You are going to tell me,” he said, “that this fellow Adam attacked her—as Fanwicke did.” He gathered his heels back against his chair. His words sounded harsh, satiric, but there was something in them that would not let him wait any longer.

“Yes,” she answered, not now put off by him. “Only if that had been all—it might have been simple. It wasn't all.”

He gave her a piercing glance.

“I told you about the man—Gordie, they called him—who was supposed to have committed the murder of the old man in the cottage. For money, they said. They had never found him.” She stopped, as if she could not go on.

His eyes were fixed on her. She wasn't looking at him.

“She met this man Adam on that last day. He took her round the mountain, to a place where there are hags, little black lochs. He took her to some certain spot. It's a wild place. He tried to—he must have tried to make love to her. Remember, in her mind he was in some way part of the shadow, the murder, and he had taken her to this spot. She fought away from him—to the edge of a hag-hole—and there at their feet was the body of Gordie—drowned, bloated, horrible.”

Aunt Phemie swallowed and drew a deep breath. Ranald got up. “My God!” he said.

They both stood, listening to what had been told and to the silence in the house.

“The one thing I am terribly frightened of,” said Aunt Phemie as though all the time this was a secret burden she had been bearing, “is that she will find you in the house.”

“I understand,” he responded.

“What do you think yourself?”

“Are you uncertain in your own mind?”

“If only she could get a night's sleep. I think I could take a risk on that now—and give her an extra dose. If only she hadn't thought she heard you. If you were to walk in now … I don't know.”

“A sleep would strengthen her.”

“Yes. From what you told me—from what she has just gone through—she—she mightn't want you to touch her. With a reaction of that sort—her exhaustion, from the excitement of seeing you, might be too much. I cannot help feeling that.”

“I understand.”

She wanted to glance at him, for there had been a suggestion, a faint recognition, of his own futility in his cool tone, and none the less so because it had been just perceptibly bitter.

“You now see my difficulty?” she asked almost gently.

“Yes.”

What I have been thinking, since she heard you, was this. To-morrow, if all goes well, after the doctor's visit, I will get your telegram, saying you're coming. I'll tell her. I'll say I
wrote
you—and at once you must have wired, saying you were coming. I'll be glad about it. I'll tell her, tell her she must be getting the second sight, imagining she heard you before you came. I'll make a game of it. That would mean you would appear the day after to-morrow. If that's not too long for you?”

“No,” he answered. “It's simply a question of the right action.”

She nodded. All in a moment, there was no more to be said. She glanced at his face. It was pale, cold, almost intolerant, but drained.

Then she heard something. Her fingers closed on the cigarette holder; her whole forearm quivered and shook and she lowered it to her side. Going to the door, she opened it and listened. “It's Mrs. Fraser,” she said on a relieved breath. “She's coming.”

Mrs. Fraser always returned to her own home before midday to prepare her husband's meal. Ranald had gone out after breakfast to look around and wait for the doctor's visit.

Aunt Phemie was busy in the kitchen cleaning vegetables for lunch when she thought she heard a cry from Nan's room. She listened, holding her breath, and decided she must have been mistaken. Odd enough sounds often came from the steading, and the back door was wide open. But after a few moments she could not go on with her work and experienced what had now become a weakening sensation, warm and melting, for she was suffering from lack of sleep and prolonged anxiety. Last night had been at times an almost intolerable burden; horrible, she thought suddenly, blinding her inner sight.