AFTER the news of Bunty’s father, Emily became increasingly quiet and withdrawn. She had always tended to be in trouble at school. No one made allowances for her being younger than anyone else, and all her work came back scrawled across with pencil, blue or red, and with words such as “poor” or “ill-done” written underneath; for which she was given detentions or sometimes even conduct marks. She had not seemed to mind too much before, had let Charlotte help her sometimes with the work—in fact, usually begged her to. Now she still did not say that she minded, but looked as if she did, and she would no longer let Charlotte help at all. Her homework done, she sat playing endless solitary games—of patience or spillikins or checkers. She spent hours arranging the checkers in towers or patterns or trying to balance them around the edges of their box. Once when Miss Agnes did not come, she spent half the evening pulling horsehairs out of the dining-room chairs and arranging them in rows along the table and the other half scraping dirt with her nails from around the little brass studs that held the leather down.
The next day, Charlotte found a solitaire board and the marbles to fit into its rounded holes. From then on Emily played with that incessantly. She even took it up to bed with her, sat hunched over the board, moving one marble across another till it was time to put out the light.
With Emily like this, Charlotte was quite glad sometimes to have Miss Agnes to talk to, but she, too, for some reason seemed different just now, especially awkward and uncertain. Sometimes when talking of Arthur, she would change the subject abruptly to something else. Charlotte wondered if she would mention the séance, but she did not—at least not until the Friday night.
Miss Agnes seemed more nervous and edgy than ever then, knocking things over with her elbow, picking them up quickly and putting them down again, starting to say something and not finishing. Two red patches came to her cheeks, both very firm and bright.
“Did you hear of the séance?” she whispered abruptly. “Did you hear we were having a séance? Do you know what a séance is, Clare?”
“A little bit, I think.”
“We have a medium coming, a very wonderful lady, I believe. We hope, through her, to get in touch with dear Arthur. At least, Mrs. Chisel-Brown . . . I’m not so sure myself. . . .” She was looking away from Charlotte, twiddling a white checker between her fingers, round and round. “But dear Mother was so keen to have it, you know. She thinks of dear Arthur all the time; she was so very fond of him. A friend told us of this medium lady, and she wished to have her here. All those photographs, you know, on her table, they are all of my brother Arthur, and she won’t let anyone touch them except herself.”
Emily was listening. Without turning her head, Charlotte could see her look up from the solitaire board. But she said nothing at all.
“We are having,” Miss Agnes continued, “we are having this séance tomorrow.”
In spite of what she had said to Emily before about the séance, Charlotte found herself curious to know what would happen and ready to hide in the window bay, deceitful as that seemed. She was curious about Arthur, having heard so much about him. She wanted to hear what he might say if he did say anything. She went to bed thinking of all she knew of him.
So she dreamed about Arthur, not for the first time. She dreamed she stood below the picture, the “Mark of the German Beast,” and there were soldiers all round her in red uniforms, stiff as toys but tall as men. There were dolls, too, like Miss Agnes’s doll, tall as the soldiers; and when she looked down, she was wearing the same kind of clothes as they wore, with boots and a hat and a sash behind.
She dreamed she heard a drum beating and never knew afterwards whether this was a dream or real. Thrum, thrum, thrum it went, reaching into all parts of her head. It might even have come from inside her head. And she thought she heard someone laughing and someone else crying. Then, without seeming to move, she found herself standing beside a boy who beat the drum. Its gold and green stripes were bright; its soft top vibrated; it sounded not only like a drum, but also like a roaring airplane, and it made lights as well as sounds, beams like searchlights dazzling at every stroke. She was begging the boy to stop. “Oh, please, Arthur, please, you’ll wake everyone up. Papa will hear you, oh please.”
The boy wore bandages on his head under a cricketer’s hat, and he laughed and went on beating the drum. “Why shouldn’t I?” he asked, making the drum go thrum, roll like an airplane, the sound growing against her head. And she was Miss Agnes in the short humped skirt that the doll had worn, the feather of the doll’s hat tickling on her cheek. She began crying bitterly, could not stop, and so at last woke up.
It was very silent, also darkish. Yet there was light, too. At first, so sleepy, her eyes barely open, Charlotte had merely an impression of it, of a dazzling, or more, perhaps, a kind of shine, but when she opened her eyes properly at last, she found it the reflection of light on glass. The glass must have been on the picture, “Mark of the German Beast”; the light certainly was moonlight.
Yet it was odd. There was a difference somewhere. Something in the room had changed. Charlotte lay quite still, with her eyes open, and sensed that, not knowing why or by which sense—sight, smell, hearing. After a moment she turned her head slowly toward Emily’s bed and felt the difference still more strongly, yet as intangibly. Moonlight fell on the end of the bed, bleaching all color from the dark red counterpane. Charlotte turned her head away from it at once—and as quickly wanted to look back again, to reassure herself that nothing was different after all. And yet she could not, would not look. The simple turning of her head seemed to need as much effort, as much resolve, as a dive into water or a climb up a long wall. She stared at the ceiling instead, which looked blank and ordinary enough.
She dragged at her head, dragged it round at last. But she was not reassured at all. She sat up quickly, trembling violently, for the bed was flat, the counterpane smooth. There was no Emily. And when she looked at the wall, at the picture glass, it looked quite empty, as if a mirror hung there, not a picture after all. She slid down again, buried herself in bed, huddled the blankets round her, trembling, but not only from the cold.
For a while she might have slept again. What stirred her next was sound; a creak, footfalls. It was Emily, she thought in huge relief, out of bed, hence the empty bed, now coming back. She opened her eyes, peering out of the covers to find the moonlight much diminished. She did not yet want, dare, to see more, so she shut them again before they had begun to be able to decipher the rest of her surroundings.
“Emily,” she said. “Emily, is that you?” Her voice came in a kind of croak, which demonstrated to herself how frightened she was.
There was no reply. “Emily?” she said again, screwing her eyes more tightly shut than ever. This time a voice came, barely discernible, making whisperings that she could only gradually begin to recognize, rather desperate, pleading, frightened whisperings.
“Ag . . .” she heard, then “Ag . . . Aggie. Are you awake? Aggie, Aggie, Aggie! Wake up, Aggie.”
Charlotte was digging herself into the bed, rigid all over, clutching sheets and blankets. She could not, would not look.
“I’m not Aggie,” she was crying out, not knowing if aloud or in her head. “I’m not Aggie. Go away! I’m not her. I’m Clare, I’m Clare. No, I’m not, I’m Charlotte. I’m Charlotte, I’m Charlotte.” She was screaming it at last, again and again. “I’m Charlotte.”
The next thing she knew was Emily sitting up in bed, saying, “Clare, did you have a bad dream or something?”
“I think so,” Charlotte said, dazed and shivering, not knowing whether it had been a dream or not. There came a knock on the door and Miss Agnes’s little whispering voice.
“Are you all right, dear? Are you all right?”
“I’m sorry. I just had a bad dream,” Charlotte explained. She was still shivering all over and did not stop shivering till she fell asleep again.
The next day was the séance. Charlotte wanted nothing to do with it now. She was thinking such terrible thoughts, growing more frightened even than she had been in the night, understanding or perhaps fearing more. “Suppose,” she thought, “suppose it wasn’t a dream I had? Suppose I did go back again in time and I was Miss Agnes for a little while, and it was really Arthur whispering? Suppose another time I changed with her properly like I changed with Clare? It was her room then, after all, the one we’re in, and maybe I’m sleeping in her bed. Suppose I grew up like Miss Agnes? Oh, no,” she thought, horrified. “Oh, no.”
She only half believed in it. So many things were different. She did not look like Miss Agnes, and she could not believe she would look like Miss Agnes when grown up. But she did not feel she could be sure of anything. The séance seemed the more dangerous because so unknown and unknowable. And yet eventually, almost inevitably, she let Emily persuade her to hide in the window bay. It was as if she could not help herself.