ALL THAT night and day Charlotte was full of remorse and guilt. She thought she had forgotten or rather had not bothered to remember how wretched Clare must be away from her own time without even an Emily to be confided in. Also she had let herself be lulled by Emily’s apparent casualness into thinking she did not mind too much about the real Clare being gone, and so had not spent nearly as much time as she should have done in thinking of ways of escape, of ways for them to change back again to their proper times. She thought hard now to make up for it. She thought all night and day but found no ideas she had not already had, and none of them any good.
That Sunday was one of the unhappiest days she had ever spent, much worse even than the first days at Flintlock Lodge. Everyone seemed so unhappy. It was a gray, sooty, drizzling day, and the evergreens in the garden were black with rain. In the morning Charlotte and Emily were called by Mr. Chisel-Brown for a ceremonial lecture on how disgracefully, how deceitfully they had behaved, hiding in the alcove. But the lecture contained no proper fire, nor was Emily even faintly rebellious at receiving it. Having cried most of the night, she now scarcely spoke at all. At lunchtime no one else spoke either, except Miss Agnes now and then, who swam up from her own gloom to a trembling, jarring brightness that cheered no one, least of all Miss Agnes. It made Charlotte feel guilty about her, too, because the séance had been spoiled by herself and Emily.
After tea Emily said, “I’m going upstairs to bed now.”
“Shall I come up with you?”
“I think I’d like to be by myself, if you don’t mind,” replied Emily in a remote, polite, unfamiliar voice. Charlotte would not have minded going to bed then herself, for she felt heavy and sleepy after so little sleep the night before. However, she felt obliged now to stay downstairs in the dining room playing patience without interest. A short time later Miss Agnes came, and they played ludo together, which as a game of chance, not skill, was suited to their heavy minds that day. Miss Agnes looked like someone drowned.
“That voice,” she said at last, in a tone that veered uncertainly between a whisper and a cry, “that voice—was it a friend of yours, Clare?”
“Well, sort of,” Charlotte said.
“Who’d passed over, of course.”
“Well—yes—sort of,” said Charlotte again, for it was true, if not quite in the sense that Miss Agnes meant. “I’m sorry we spoiled it for you,” she said in a rush. “I’m awfully sorry. You might have heard more from your brother if it hadn’t been for us.”
“I’m not sure, dear,” said Miss Agnes, in a voice that was little and tight and precise, “I’m not sure I wanted to hear very much more. To tell you the truth, dear, I had not expected to hear anything. I’m not such a believer in spiritualism myself, but Mother insisted we have a séance here. She was so very upset about dear Arthur’s death.”
Miss Agnes shook the dice and threw a six and so set another counter on its way. No more was said for the moment. But later she added, in a similar voice, “To tell you the truth, dear, I was pleased not to hear more. I was, well, a little afraid of what he might have to tell.”
Charlotte could not think why Miss Agnes should have been afraid, but did not like to ask, so she said nothing. And in a while Miss Agnes began again, her voice very fast, while she stared at the ludo board and not at Charlotte at all.
“Arthur always wanted to be a soldier you know. He always wanted it; he dreamed of battles. Oh, I’ve told you both so many times, and you saw the books he had; you saw the stories that he tried to write, didn’t you, Clare dear? And you know he climbed the monkey puzzle tree; I told you that. He was always doing things like that, dear Arthur; he was so brave and foolhardy. But then he did not know how to finish what he began. That day he climbed the tree, he climbed right to the top, and then he could not get down. He could not move; he clung to the trunk and cried. Even on the ground I could see him crying. He cried and cried and cried. And he was so angry with me for seeing it, he would not speak to me for days.”
“How did he get down in the end?” asked Charlotte across a long silence. She was thinking that Arthur was like she was after all, for she had done that herself, got to the top of trees and then been afraid to move. But she had not thought Arthur was like her.
“A ladder, the gardener. It was all quite safe. But I’m not trying to tell you about the tree, Clare dear. Though why you should want to hear. . . . Come to think of it, I don’t know why I’m telling you; it’s a past story. You don’t really want to hear it, do you, dear?”
Charlotte did not know what Miss Agnes wanted her to say—yes, no, or neither. She did not even know what Miss Agnes wanted to talk about. In the end, she said nothing, and Miss Agnes went on talking regardless, hesitating at first, but quickly growing faster.
“Well, it was like that, like the tree. He joined the army, I told you, dear, and I’d never seen him look so happy as the day he joined up, marching in his office clothes, with his hat and umbrella, but marching like a soldier with all the other men; not smiling, very stern, but so happy I could see. And so it was all the time he trained. He was happier, he said, than he had been all his life, serving his king and country. But when he went to France, it changed. I could scarcely recognize him when he came back on leave for the first time. I couldn’t persuade him to tell me why, to tell me anything except about the mud.
“Next time it was still worse. One night I heard him cry out in his sleep, and when I went in to his room, he was awake but trembling, trembling, and he said, ‘Aggie, Aggie,’ and that it was so terrible I could not imagine, and he was afraid he might run away if he went back, and they shot people who ran away. The guns were so noisy, he said, and asleep or awake he kept on hearing them when there were no guns. He broke down. He said he could not, would not go back. I said he must, of course, and he knew that, too, and, of course, he did go. After that night he did not even suggest not going; he did not mention it.
“Then, when he went, I waited and waited. But no letter, no news came, nothing till the telegram to say he had been killed.”
“But the letter,” said Charlotte. “You had that letter to say he had been brave, from the colonel, you said.”
“I believe, dear, they sent such letters anyway. To spare relatives’ feelings, so it is said.”
“Well, I don’t believe he wasn’t brave. I don’t believe it.”
“Dear,” said Miss Agnes stiffly, growing pinker in the cheeks, her hands tight and trembling, “dear, of course he was brave. Arthur always was, even if afraid. Now is it not your turn to play? It is really getting to your bedtime, and I’ve been talking much too long—and such nonsense, too.” At which she shook the shaker wildly, so wildly that the die skidded out, across the table, to the floor, where both of them crawled to look for it, flustered, apologetic, but glad of the diversion, in a way.
•
In the bedroom, Emily had taken all the marbles from the solitaire board, put them in a glass tooth tumbler, and filled it up with water. She had set the tumbler on the table between their beds and now sat on her own bed, gazing at it. After all this time she had not even undressed herself; indeed she had on her outdoor coat as they used to in their bedroom because it was so cold without heating of any kind.
Charlotte went over and gazed with Emily. The marbles looked huge in the tumbler, huge and shiny and defined. But they looked part of the water, too, as if by some alchemy it had formed itself into solid bubbles, veined with color, not reflecting color like soap bubbles.
“Why did you do that?” she asked Emily. “Put the marbles in water, I mean?”
“I just felt like it.” Emily added defiantly, “I think they’re pretty. Stones look prettier under water. I didn’t see why marbles shouldn’t look prettier, too.”
“I think they’re beautiful,” said Charlotte. “And how huge they look!”
But when she put her fingers into the water and pulled a marble out, it was small by comparison with those still in the glass, and unimportant, too. It was like the difference between what you long for and what you find—the difference, for instance, between Arthur’s image of war and his experience of it. It was like other times, her own and Miss Agnes’s proper childhood times that seemed so near to her memory and yet so far away. It was like everything that made you ache because in one sense it was so close and in another unobtainable. Charlotte picked up the glass, held it to the light, and gazed into it obliviously. For that moment everything else around her, everything else that had happened, seemed to splinter in her head and fall away.
“Hey,” cried Emily crossly. “Hey, what are you doing? That’s mine.”
“They’re not your marbles,” Charlotte pointed out, still gazing. “They’re Miss Agnes’s marbles.”
“It was my idea to put them in water. Give them to me.” Emily leaped up, suddenly frenzied. Charlotte had already lowered the glass in order to set it back on the table when Emily snatched at it. The water slopped dangerously; the glass hung between hands for a fraction of time before falling with a crash to the floor. Marbles rolled everywhere with little hollow sounds. Emily and Charlotte trod on water and wet glass and looked at each other, dismayed.
They cleared the glass first and mopped the water up as neatly as they could. Then they hunted for the marbles. The floor was so uneven that they had rolled everywhere, were caught in the cracks of floorboards, wedged between pieces of furniture, hidden under beds and in the corners. Wood grain patterned their hands as they crawled about; little drafts of air from under the door drilled their ears and faces.
Charlotte was lying flat, reaching under a bed, her hair catching on the springs, when Emily said nearby in a small cold voice, “Of course, you’re not really a bit like Clare.”
“What? What?” asked Charlotte, peering out.
“I said you weren’t really a bit like Claire.”
“I never thought I was,” said Charlotte, not quite truthfully. “It was you that said so.”
“You’re not a bit like her. Clare wouldn’t have let me listen to the séance last night. She’s much too honorable; she’s much too stern. I wish you hadn’t let me either.”
“So do I,” cried Charlotte. “Oh, so do I. You’re not the only one.”