I read until the light grew too dim to see anymore, and then I sat on, beside the little window, with the books piled round me. The light lingered for a while among the trees; the tops of them were still bright when there was nothing but darkness and shadow on the ground. Then the light faded swiftly, and only the sky was faintly gray.
Nanny came up and found me sitting there.
“Miss Char!” she said, coming over and touching me in the darkness. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, and then I remembered about the diaries. Miss Char, are you ill? You are all wet, my dear!”
“Tears, Nanny. Just tears.”
“Oh, Miss Char! There have been too many tears in this house—it’s a sorrowful house—too much pain and tears—all the time I have been here…a lifetime…no happiness…all tears. I hoped so much that you would come here—long ago—and make us all happy. That night of the birthday dance I was sure you would come. And then the war came and everything went wrong, and I thought—when he comes back from the war he will bring her home. Oh, Miss Char, what was it that happened? I’ve often wondered…often and often. We would have been happier if it had been you, my dear. You understood him…it was always you…never Miss Kitty…you could have made him happy.”
“I know, I know!”
“What was it, Miss Char?”
“It wasn’t…my fault, Nanny. I didn’t know what it was…that changed him…never until now. I know now. It was all a ghastly mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“You remember Mr. Senture, Nanny?”
“Not the old gentleman, you don’t mean him?”
“Yes. Garth thought—was told that I was going to marry him.”
“He couldn’t have thought it. Mr. Senture was old—as old as Mr. Wisdon—and married too. How could he have thought it?”
“He never saw Mr. Senture. He was told about it, told about how often I was with Mr. Senture, and about our expedition
to Canterbury.”
“I can’t believe it,” Nanny said.
“It is difficult to believe,” I agreed. I could hardly believe it myself. It was incredible to me that Garth could have thought I would ever look twice at another man.
“Who told him?” said Nanny at last.
I hesitated a moment, and then I said, “Kitty told him.” It was no use to hide anything from Nanny. She was too deeply interested in us all, and I wanted a confidante so badly.
I heard her draw in her breath. “I see it all now,” she said. “I see it all as plain as plain—him going off by himself that night when Mr. Senture came to dinner. Yes, I’ll tell you about it, Miss Char. It all started from that night—the quarrels and the bitterness. They were happy enough till that night, the two of them, and then Mr. Wisdon (old Mr. Wisdon, I mean) asked Mr. Senture to dinner and Mrs. Wisdon was angry with him for asking him. Mr. Senture had come back for a few days to draw something else in the church for his book. Well, old Mr. Wisdon wouldn’t put him off, not for all Mrs. Wisdon’s wheedling (though he usually did give in to her), and Mr. Senture came. Mrs. Wisdon was taken ill in the middle of it, and I got her to bed. Then we found Mr. Garth had gone—just disappeared, without saying a word to nobody. He stayed away nearly a week, and we were all scared to death about him. (He wasn’t the sort of gentleman who did things like that; he was always so considerate, so thoughtful and kind.) Nobody said much, we just looked at each other’s faces and looked away. It was awful. It seemed like a year. None of us knew where he was, but Mrs. Wisdon suspected something—I was sure of it. I thought at the time they’d quarreled, and I was angry with Mr. Garth for going off like that, and her in the condition she was in. And then one night he just walked in, as if he had been out for a walk in the park, and nothing was said—nothing that I heard. I meant to speak to him, but when I saw his face I couldn’t get up the courage—it wasn’t Mr. Garth’s face at all, it was so hard and bitter, so lined. He looked as if he had been ill for weeks. I never saw such a change in a person. He moved his things out of her bedroom and they were never moved back. It nearly broke my heart to see it all going wrong and not be able to do anything.”
“Oh, Nanny!”
“It all went wrong after that—worse and worse. He never went near her, never gave her a kind word. I was sorry for her, she was a young, pretty thing and she loved a good time. It was a dreadful house! Oh, Miss Char, it was a dreadful house! The maids felt it too. They wouldn’t stay, they said they couldn’t settle; they said it was haunted. It was the secret between those two that haunted the house—no ghost, just hatred.”
“Not hatred,” I whispered.
“Yes, hatred. You could feel it in the room when they were there together—a black cloud. He went away a lot. I was glad when he went away—I loved Mr. Garth like my own son, but I was glad when he went away.”
She paused for a few moments, and then she went on again in a low hurried tone, “And then she began to be friendly with other gentlemen—it was very wrong, of course—there were others before Mr. Hamilton. Oh, it was wrong, I knew that, but how could you blame her? She was young and pretty—such a pretty thing—and she loved company, and she loved to be gay.”
I clung to her hard old hand in the darkness. I couldn’t speak. I felt broken, utterly exhausted.
“Come to bed, Miss Char,” Nanny said. “It’s all over long ago. They’re both dead—God rest them—and they’re not suffering anymore. Come to bed, my dear.”
I let her put me to bed, and fuss over me with hot-water bottles and eau de Cologne. She brought me some soup for my dinner and made me take it, and she came and sat by my fire with her knitting until I went to sleep. It was very comforting to be fussed over by Nanny. She was a well of tenderness.