The three of us were going up the great staircase to bed as this
was said, and, not knowing quite her meaning, I dropped the subject. It
edged delicate ground, I felt. Frances added no word of her own. It now
occurred to me abruptly that "stay" was the word made use of, when
"live" would have been more natural. How insignificant to recall! Yet
why did they suggest themselves just at this moment ...? And, on going to Frances's room to make sure she was not nervous or
lonely, I realized abruptly, that Mrs. Franklyn, of course, had talked
with her in a confidential sense that I, as a mere visiting brother,
could not share. Frances had told me nothing. I might easily have wormed
it out of her, had I not felt that for us to discuss further our hostess
and her house merely because we were under the roof together, was not
quite nice or loyal. "I'll call you, Bill, if I'm scared," she had laughed as we parted, my
room being just across the big corridor from her own. I had fallen
asleep, thinking what in the world was meant by "getting it straight
again." And now in my antechamber to the library, on the second morning, sitting
among piles of foolscap and sheets of spotless blotting-paper, all
useless to me, these slight hints came back and helped to frame the big,
vague Shadow I have mentioned. Up to the neck in this Shadow, almost
drowned, yet just treading water, stood the figure of my hostess in her
walking costume. Frances and I seemed swimming to her aid. The Shadow
was large enough to include both house and grounds, but farther than
that I could not see.... Dismissing it, I fell to reading my purloined
book again. Before I turned another page, however, another startling
detail leaped out at me: the figure of Mrs. Franklyn in the Shadow was
not living. It floated helplessly, like a doll or puppet that has no
life in it. It was both pathetic and dreadful. Any one who sits in reverie thus, of course, may see similar ridiculous
pictures when the will no longer guides construction. The incongruities
of dreams are thus explained. I merely record the picture as it came. That it remained by me for several days, just as vivid dreams do, is
neither here nor there. I did not allow myself to dwell upon it. The
curious thing, perhaps, is that from this moment I date my inclination,
though not yet my desire, to leave. I purposely say "to leave." I cannot quite remember when the word changed to that aggressive,
frantic thing which is escape. Chapter V


We were left delightfully to ourselves in this pretentious country
mansion with the soul of a villa. Frances took up her painting again,
and, the weather being propitious, spent hours out of doors, sketching
flowers, trees and nooks of woodland, garden, even the house itself
where bits of it peered suggestively across the orchards. Mrs. Franklyn
seemed always busy about something or other, and never interfered with
us except to propose motoring, tea in another part of the lawn, and so
forth. She flitted everywhere, preoccupied, yet apparently doing
nothing. The house engulfed her rather. No visitor called. For one
thing, she was not supposed to be back from abroad yet; and for another,
I think, the neighborhood--her husband's neighborhood--was puzzled by
her sudden cessation from good works. Brigades and temperance societies
did not ask to hold their meetings in the big hall, and the vicar
arranged the school-treats in another's field without explanation. The
full-length portrait in the dining room, and the presence of the
housekeeper with the "burnt" back hair, indeed, were the only reminders
of the man who once had lived here. Mrs. Marsh retained her place in
silence, well-paid sinecure as it doubtless was, yet with no hint of
that suppressed disapproval one might have expected from her. Indeed
there was nothing positive to disapprove, since nothing "worldly"
entered grounds or building. In her master's lifetime she had been
another "brand snatched from the burning," and it had then been her
custom to give vociferous "testimony" at the revival meetings where he
adorned the platform and led in streams of prayer. I saw her sometimes
on the stairs, hovering, wandering, half-watching and half-listening,
and the idea came to me once that this woman somehow formed a link with
the departed influence of her bigoted employer. She, alone among us,
belonged to the house, and looked at home there. When I saw her talking
--oh, with such correct and respectful mien--to Mrs. Franklyn, I had the
feeling that for all her unaggressive attitude, she yet exerted some
influence that sought to make her mistress stay in the building forever
--live there. She would prevent her escape, prevent "getting it straight
again," thwart somehow her will to freedom, if she could. The idea in me
was of the most fleeting kind. But another time, when I came down late
at night to get a book from the library antechamber, and found her
sitting in the hall--alone--the impression left upon me was the reverse
of fleeting. I can never forget the vivid, disagreeable effect it
produced upon me. What was she doing there at half-past eleven at night,
all alone in the darkness? She was sitting upright, stiff, in a big
chair below the clock. It gave me a turn. It was so incongruous and odd. She rose quietly as I turned the corner of the stairs, and asked me
respectfully, her eyes cast down as usual, whether I had finished with
the library, so that she might lock up. There was no more to it than
that; but the picture stayed with me--unpleasantly. These various impressions came to me at odd moments, of course, and not
in a single sequence as I now relate them. I was hard at work before
three days were past, not writing, as explained, but reading, making
notes, and gathering material from the library for future use. It was in
chance moments that these curious flashes came, catching me unawares
with a touch of surprise that sometimes made me start. For they proved
that my under-mind was still conscious of the Shadow, and that far away
out of sight lay the cause of it that left me with a vague unrest,
unsettled, seeking to "nest" in a place that did not want me. Only when
this deeper part knows harmony, perhaps, can good brainwork result, and
my inability to write was thus explained. Certainly, I was always seeking for something here I could not find--an
explanation that continually evaded me. Nothing but these trivial hints
offered themselves. Lumped together, however, they had the effect of
defining the Shadow a little. I became more and more aware of its very
real existence. And, if I have made little mention of Frances and my
hostess in this connection, it is because they contributed at first
little or nothing towards the discovery of what this story tries to
tell. Our life was wholly external, normal, quiet, and uneventful;
conversation banal--Mrs. Franklyn's conversation in particular. They
said nothing that suggested revelation.