And it
startled me, I think because in some way it seemed like my Shadow
materialized--as though the dark horror that was rising everywhere from
house and garden, then settling back so thickly yet so imperceptibly
upon us all, were incarnated in that whirring creature that passed
between the daylight and the coming night. I stood a moment, wondering if it would appear again, before I followed
the others indoors, and as I was in the act of closing the windows after
me, I caught a glimpse of a figure on the lawn. It was some distance
away, on the other side of the shrubberies, in fact where the bird had
vanished. But in spite of the twilight that half magnified, half
obscured it, the identity was unmistakable. I knew the housekeeper's
stiff walk too well to be deceived. "Mrs. Marsh taking the air," I said
to myself. I felt the necessity of saying it, and I wondered why she was
doing so at this particular hour. If I had other thoughts they were so
vague, and so quickly and utterly suppressed, that I cannot recall them
sufficiently to relate them here. And, once indoors, it was to be expected that there would come
explanation, discussion, conversation, at any rate, regarding the
singular noise and its cause, some uttered evidence of the mood that had
been strong enough to drive us all inside. Yet there was none. Each of
us purposely, and with various skill, ignored it. We talked little, and
when we did it was of anything in the world but that. Personally, I
experienced a touch of that same bewilderment which had come over me
during my first talk with Frances on the evening of my arrival, for I
recall now the acute tension, and the hope, yet dread, that one or other
of us must sooner or later introduce the subject. It did not happen,
however; no reference was made to it even remotely. It was the presence
of Mabel, I felt positive, that prohibited. As soon might we have
discussed Death in the bedroom of a dying woman. The only scrap of conversation I remember, where all was ordinary and
commonplace, was when Mabel spoke casually to the grenadier asking why
Mrs. Marsh had omitted to do something or other--what it was I forget--
and that the maid replied respectfully that "Mrs. Marsh was very sorry,
but her 'and still pained her." I enquired, though so casually that I
scarcely know what prompted the words, whether she had injured herself
severely, and the reply, "She upset a lamp and burnt herself," was said
in a tone that made me feel my curiosity was indiscreet, "but she always
has an excuse for not doing things she ought to do." The little bit of
conversation remained with me, and I remember particularly the quick way
Frances interrupted and turned the talk upon the delinquencies of
servants in general, telling incidents of her own at our flat with a
volubility that perhaps seemed forced, and that certainly did not
encourage general talk as it may have been intended to do. We lapsed
into silence immediately she finished. But for all our care and all our calculated silence, each knew that
something had, in these last moments, come very close; it had brushed us
in passing; it had retired; and I am inclined to think now that the
large dark thing I saw, riding the dusk, probably bird of prey, was in
some sense a symbol of it in my mind--that actually there had been no
bird at all, I mean, but that my mood of apprehension and dismay had
formed the vivid picture in my thoughts. It had swept past us, it had
retreated, but it was now, at this moment, in hiding very close. And it
was watching us. Perhaps, too, it was mere coincidence that I encountered Mrs. Marsh, his
housekeeper, several times that evening in the short interval between
tea and dinner, and that on each occasion the sight of this gaunt,
half-saturnine woman fed my prejudice against her. Once, on my way to the
telephone, I ran into her just where the passage is somewhat jammed by a
square table carrying the Chinese gong, a grandfather's clock and a box
of croquet mallets. We both gave way, then both advanced, then again
gave way--simultaneously. It seemed, impossible to pass. We stepped with
decision to the same side, finally colliding in the middle, while saying
those futile little things, half apology, half excuse, that are
inevitable at such times. In the end she stood upright against the wall
for me to pass, taking her place against the very door I wished to open. It was ludicrous. "Excuse me--I was just going in--to telephone," I explained. And she
sidled off, murmuring apologies, but opening the door for me while she
did so. Our hands met a moment on the handle. There was a second's awkwardness--it was too stupid. I remembered her
injury, and by way of something to say, I enquired after it. She thanked
me; it was entirely healed now, but it might have been much worse; and
there was something about the "mercy of the Lord" that I didn't quite
catch. While telephoning, however--London call, and my attention focused
on it--realized sharply that this was the first time I had spoken with
her; also, that I had--touched her. It happened to be a Sunday, and the lines were clear. I got my
connection quickly, and the incident was forgotten while my thoughts
went up to London. On my way upstairs, then, the woman came back into my
mind, so that I recalled other things about her--how she seemed all over
the house, in unlikely places often; how I had caught her sitting in the
hall alone that night; how she was forever coming and going with her
lugubrious visage and that untidy hair at the back that had made me
laugh three years ago with the idea that it looked singed or burnt; and
how the impression on my first arrival at The Towers was that this woman
somehow kept alive, though its evidence was outwardly suppressed, the
influence of her late employer and of his somber teachings. Somewhere
with her was associated the idea of punishment, vindictiveness, revenge. I remembered again suddenly my odd notion that she sought to keep her
present mistress here, a prisoner in this bleak and comfortless house,
and that really, in spite of her obsequious silence, she was intensely
opposed to the change of thought that had reclaimed Mabel to a happier
view of life. All this in a passing second flashed in review before me, and I
discovered, or at any rate reconstructed, the real Mrs. Marsh. She was
decidedly in the Shadow. More, she stood in the forefront of it,
stealthily leading an assault, as it were, against The Towers and its
occupants, as though, consciously or unconsciously, she labored
incessantly to this hateful end. I can only judge that some state of nervousness in me permitted the
series of insignificant thoughts to assume this dramatic shape, and that
what had gone before prepared the way and led her up at the head of so
formidable a procession. I relate it exactly as it came to me. My nerves
were doubtless somewhat on edge by now. Otherwise I should hardly have
been a prey to the exaggeration at all.