“Stop it!” At first, he had been in a fair way to being sorry for her, but her reference to Kate’s past caught him on the raw. He had wondered about it too often himself. “We won’t talk any more about Mrs. Croston,” he went on more mildly. “As to your going to Boston: time enough to think of that in a week or so.”
“But, Jonathan!” Too late. He had already left her.
Back in Sarah’s room, he stood, for a long time, silently by the bed, where, now, she lay asleep and asked himself, over again, all the old, despairing questions. At last he turned away, sighing, to shut himself up in his own room at the far end of the hall from Arabella’s.
Upstairs, Kate was asleep already. Much later, she woke with a start to the sound of a child’s frantic screaming. Sarah! She was out of bed in a flash, feeling in the dark for her dressing gown, then paused, hesitating. What good, after all, could she do, a complete stranger? She could hear movement downstairs, a door opening ... The screams were louder, desperate, an agony to hear. She felt her way to the door of her room and opened it a crack. Now she could hear Jonathan’s voice, a soothing murmur against the harsh persistent treble of the screams. That settled it. She closed the door as quietly as she had opened it and found her way back to bed.
The screams went on and on. In the morning it was hard to believe that she must have fallen asleep through them. Broad daylight warned her that she had slept late, and she was out of bed in a bound and hurrying into her clothes. On the floor below, a glance into Sarah’s room showed it empty and quiet, the bed already made up. She passed the closed doors of the other bedrooms and hurried on down the main stairway to the hall that ran from front to back of the house. There was no sound or sign of life. A door at the far end was open onto morning sunshine, and she moved instinctively to it and looked out on a broad stretch of rather shaggy lawn that fell away toward the river. Not a sign of life anywhere. Feeling oddly lost in this silent landscape, she walked across the rough grass to the wall that edged the river. A gravel path ran along her side of it, and she turned to follow it upstream toward a small building that had caught her eye among the trees that bordered the lawn. It was, illogically, a relief to get away from the sightless windows of the house. She had a curious feeling of flight as she approached the gray building and saw, with a little shock of surprise, that it was a miniature mutation of a Greek temple. The kind of folly one might have expected to find in an English garden, it seemed oddly out of place here. Hard to imagine Jonathan Penrose spending his money on such a frivolity. But Arabella perhaps?
Arabella? Mrs. Penrose. At last, reluctantly, she made herself remember last night’s hostile reception. It had hurt horribly at the time, but now she could see that there might be plenty of reasons for it. Facing them, she sat down a little forlornly on the marble bench in front of the temple, castigating herself as she did so, for a coward. She ought to be in the house, finding Sarah, finding servants, asking for breakfast, asserting herself. In a minute, she would go...
The minute drew out. It was pleasant here in the sun, with unknown trees in young leaf around her. It was good, after the fatigue of the journey, just to sit for a while and think about as little as possible. It was too peaceful to last. Suddenly, her head went up at the sound of running footsteps. A moment later, a child burst into view on a path that wound away through the trees in the direction of the house. She was running like a mad thing, head down, hair flying, small fists clenched. A small child. Five years old? Six? Sarah, of course. And now Kate heard a voice— Arabella’s deep, unmistakable voice calling impatiently from the direction of the house: “Sarah! Sarah! Where are you, child?”
Sarah had almost reached the temple. Surely she was not heading for the river? But on the cold thought, she stopped, panting, outside the temple, looked up, and saw Kate. Instinctively, Kate neither moved nor spoke, but merely sat there, calmly smiling, one hand held out in—what, greeting, propitiation? Their eyes met and held, the child’s gray and steady for a moment before they shifted to look, oddly, to somewhere behind Kate’s left shoulder. And then, nearer, Arabella’s voice, angry now: “Sarah! Sarah!”
The child was watching Kate sideways, to see what she would do. She did nothing, but merely sat there passive, hoping she looked as friendly, as compassionate as she felt. At any rate, Sarah seemed to have come to a decision. She edged around, keeping as far from Kate as she could, and then, with a last glance—pleading, perhaps?—dived into the little temple and hid with the ease of long practice in a corner behind the altar.
And only just in time. Arabella now appeared at the corner of the path, her mouth open to call again: “Sarah—oh!” She saw Kate. “You!” And then, formally. “Good morning, Mrs. Croston. I hope you slept well.” It was more reproach than question. “I’m looking for Sarah. Wretched child: never there when you want her. I hope you realize what you have taken on, Mrs. Croston.”
“I think I am beginning to.” Odd to feel so violent a relief that she had not been asked point blank whether she had seen the child. It seemed as if she could feel terror behind her in the little temple. And yet—this was Sarah’s mother. Fantastic not to tell her at once where the child was. But she was not going to.
“It’s just a question of time,” Arabella went on. “It will become impossible. It’s bad enough already. You must have heard what went on last night. How can I invite guests to the house when that kind of scene happens two nights out of three? There’s an admirable asylum in Boston ... But I don’t mean to discourage you, Mrs. Croston. Do your best—I am sure you will—and when you are beaten, tell my husband. Perhaps he will believe you.” She turned away, elegant in her dark blue morning dress, and called again. “Sarah! Sarah! Come here this instant!” Kate sat very still on her bench, watching the tall figure move away toward the river. Aware of a little stir of movement behind her in the temple, she automatically held out a warning backward hand. Shocking to be doing this.
Arabella was coming back. “It’s just too bad.” She shrugged trim shoulders. “I had meant her to have the treat of driving out with me. It would have given you a morning’s peace, at least; but there it is. You might as well see at once how things are. I wish you joy of your charge. Mrs. Croston.”
“Thank you.” But already Arabella had turned to sweep away, skirts fastidiously held up from the damp grass.
And Kate, who had risen to speak to her, sat down again on the cold marble, trying to control a spasm of rage. How could a mother speak thus of her own child? Appalling, too, to think that Sarah had heard it all. But then, how much did she understand? Here, at least, was a chance to find out. “She’s gone now.” She said it casually, without turning around, and was answered by a stir of movement behind her. Turning, she saw Sarah emerge from her hideaway behind the altar. Her face and gingham dress were filthy and her thin arms bore red marks to show how desperately she had squeezed herself into the cramped space. She stood there for a moment; silent, gazing, as she had done before, at a point somewhere behind Kate’s head. Instinctively, Kate too said nothing, but smiled and held out a reassuring hand. Sarah moved sideways, as if to edge around her and escape. It was, somehow, a crucial moment. What was the right thing to say, to do?
Very gently, very smoothly, as if this was a small wild animal that must not be startled, Kate rose to her feet and moved one step backward so as to give the child free passage, if she wanted it. At the same time, she still held out that encouraging hand. “Come with me, Sarah?” she asked.
The girl stood, poised for flight, huge eyes asking a question. What a graceful little creature she was, Kate thought, for all her strangeness. But the next move was hers.
“To the river, perhaps?” she said. “I love running water. Do you?” And she made the slightest possible movement away from the house. “We’ll wait, shall we, till the carriage has gone?”
A sudden sparkle in the wide gray eyes told her that Sarah had understood. She moved forward, seized Kate’s hand, and pulled her hard toward a path that
led away behind the temple.
FIVE
That was the beginning of a fantastic day. Sarah never spoke, and though Kate had established that she could, in fact, understand what was said to her, she often seemed simply not to hear it. She lived, as her father had said, in a world of her own. Of course, Kate told herself, all children must do so to a certain extent. Perhaps this was merely an extreme case. Following instinct, she submitted, that morning, to the child’s whim. Surely, back at the house, they must have connected her own disappearance with Sarah’s? She hoped that they were not worrying, but felt deeply certain that the contact she had achieved with Sarah was too important to be risked. Today, at least, she would follow where she was led.
They went first to a small waterfall among the trees a little above the house. A rough pile of rocks by the wall just above it provided a convenient perch from which to watch the plunging water, and Sarah climbed it, surefooted, evidently taking it for granted that her companion would follow. The stones hurt Kate’s feet through her soft slippers, but she hitched up her skirts and climbed just the same, to settle on cold and slimy stone with a silent prayer for her worn gray worsted. Sarah, watching the swift rush and fall of the water, seemed to have forgotten everything else. Presently, she began very quietly, almost in a whisper, to sing. Kate remembered something Jonathan had said to her. Casually, she too began to sing, her own favorite song, Greensleeves:
“Alas, my love, you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously—”
Instinctively, she made as little as possible of the words. For the moment, she was sure, the tune was the thing. The child had stopped her own singing and was looking at her cautiously, sideways, out of those big, strange gray eyes. Kate sang the first verse over again, but humming it this time, without words. Then she stopped. Water rushed and gurgled beside them. Sarah’s voice picked up the first phrase of the song and hummed it in perfect tune. It seemed to Kate a tiny miracle, and she turned, smiling, to the child. For a moment, their eyes met directly, for a moment it seemed that Sarah was going to smile back. Then, once again, her eyes slid away.
Impatiently, she scrambled down from the rock, and Kate, following more slowly, wondered if she had spoiled everything. But Sarah was waiting for her, was holding out a small brown hand. Kate took it and followed along a woodland path that led still further up the narrowing river, noting, as they went, how gracefully the child moved. Already, she was beginning to agree with Jonathan Penrose whose optimism about the child’s condition had previously seemed to her merely the hopeful self-delusion of a devoted parent. But now—could there really be anything seriously wrong with this bright-eyed, graceful little creature?
Of course, her continued silence was disconcerting, and so was the odd sliding way her eyes refused to meet one’s own ... If only she knew more about children ... Following Sarah into a secluded hollow of the woods, Kate promised herself that she would learn. Here, the ground was carpeted with violets, not only the blue ones she was used to in England, but big yellow ones as well. She bent, with an exclamation of pleasure, to smell them, only to exclaim again in disappointment. They were scentless.
Sarah had been watching her. Now she turned to lead the way to a coolly shadowed nook among boulders where grew a glossy-leaved, pink-flowered plant Kate had never seen before. This time, it was Sarah who bent, in almost comic imitation of Kate’s gesture, to sniff ecstatically. Following suit, Kate was rewarded by a delicious fragrance, at once sweet and spicy. “It’s heavenly,” she said. “Thank you, Sarah.” And then, hopefully, “What’s it called?”
No answer. Losing interest in the flowers, Sarah had picked up a handful of sticks and was laying them out in a line across the little glade. She seemed happy and occupied, and Kate settled herself on one of the stones to watch and wonder about her. But sunshine, creeping across the gray boulders, reminded her that they must have been out a long time. She jumped to her feet and held out her hand. “Time to go home, Sarah, I’m starving.” And then, on an inspiration she was slightly ashamed of, as the child hung back, eyes lowered, mouth drooping: “The carriage must have gone long since. Won’t you show me the way back to the house?”
No question but Sarah understood everything that was said to her. She looked through her bundle of sticks, chose one, dropped the others, and turned to lead the way down yet another well-trodden path. To Kate’s relief, it left the river and cut through the woods to bring them quickly back to the shrubbery near the house. The back door still stood hospitably open, and Sarah suddenly darted ahead and in, to be greeted with angry affection by a woman’s voice: “There you are at last, Sarey. Where in the world have you been? Oh—” She looked up from the child and saw Kate in the doorway. “Mrs. Croston? You found her? I hoped you must have.”
“Yes—Mrs. Peters, is it?” She liked the looks of this tall, calm-faced woman. “I’m so sorry if we’ve frightened you. Sarah took me for a walk along the river. I hoped you’d realize...”
“Took you for a walk, did she? A stranger?” Mrs. Peters digested this for a moment. “Well, I do declare; wonders will never cease. Anyways, I reckon you was dead to rights to go, in that case, and if you won’t mind my saying so. She don’t often take a shiner to strangers, not our Sarey.”
“She’s very quick to understand—aren’t you, Sarah?” Every instinct in Kate rebelled at this discussion of the child in her presence as if she had been negligible, a thing.
“But she won’t speak, will you, love? That’s what makes her ma so mad. Pure orneriness, Mrs. Penrose calls it, and I don’t know what else. But she’s gone out to lunch now, Sarey-lamb, clear into Boston, and there’s no one here but me and Prue—and she’s out back doing the washing—so come get your breakfast, there’s a good girl, and you too, Mrs. Croston. I’m mortal sorry I wasn’t about when you came down, but we were all at sixes and sevens looking for the child. Job thought he’d seen her going out the front way, see, so we reckoned she might be down to the mill looking for her pa, which Mr. Penrose won’t have on any account. Because of the machinery, you know. She’s such an active little bit of mischief, our Sarey.”
Just for an instant, as Mrs. Peters spoke, Sarah’s eyes met Kate’s in a look of such pure child’s mischief, that Kate knew she had gone out by the front door on purpose to mislead her pursuers. Nothing, surely, stupid about that?
And yet, over breakfast, she found herself compelled to reconsider. With the appearance of food, a devil seemed to enter into the child. Kate tried to laugh at herself for the notion, but failed. Sarah began by upsetting her milk, apparently by accident. Then, while Mrs. Peters was mopping this up and Kate was pouring her own coffee, she took a jug of maple syrup and poured it, slowly and deliberately, in a trail along the side of the table.
“Oh, lawks, Sarey, look what you’ve done now!” Mrs. Peters’ tone made it all too clear that this was no surprise to her. “And I thought you was going to be good today, for Mrs. Croston. Now you just move over here and try and eat your ham like a good girl while old Peters cleans up this mess. No, ma’am,” this to Kate, “don’t you stir yourself. You must be plum famished. I’m used to it.”
“I see.” Kate was beginning to see a good deal. Sarah, who had moved obediently enough to the other side of the table, was occupied in arranging the little pieces of ham Mrs. Peters had cut for her in a neat line across her plate. So far, she had eaten nothing.
“Do you like ham, Sarah?” No answer, but a quick, sideways flash of the eyes showed Kate she had been understood.
“She don’ like nothing, Mrs. Croston, but bread and milk, and her pa says she’ll never grow big and strong on that.”
“Perhaps not,” said Kate, “but could she have it for a treat, because it’s my first day? I’ll talk to Mr. Penrose about it later.”
“Of course, if you say so, miss—ma’am, I should say. I’ll fetch it directly. That will be a treat, won’t it, Sarey?”
Again the child took no notice. She was busy now, linin
g up salt cellars and other bits of crockery across the table, and Kate, who was indeed famished, was glad to leave her to it and hurry on with her own meal. She had almost finished when Mrs. Peters returned with a steaming bowl of bread and milk. “Ummm—that looks good,” she moved over to sit beside Sarah. “Shall we pretend you’re my baby and I’ll feed you? Would that be fun, Sarah?” And then, when the child merely looked past her with wide, uncomprehending eyes, “My mother used to have a game she played with me. Let me see how it went.” She dipped the spoon in the steaming bowl. “Here’s a bite for Lord Nelson”—the child swallowed it—“and one for the Queen—A bite for Lord Chatham, Wherever he’s been—” She laughed. “I shall have to make up a new one for you, Sarah. Let’s think—” as she talked she was spooning bread and milk into the passive mouth. “No good thinking we can find a rhyme for President, is there?” She did not expect an answer, and went straight on, as if talking to herself. “Here’s a bite for your father, and one for his mill. A bite for your mother—” Sarah’s teeth clenched on the spoon and she spat bread and milk all over the table. “Oh, Sarah!” But instinct warned her not to lose her temper, and she managed, quite cheerfully: “What a mess! Let’s mop it up, shall we?” congratulating herself, meanwhile, that Mrs. Peters had vanished with a disapproving glance as she began on the first rhyme.
While she was busy cleaning up the table, Sarah contrived to spill most of the rest of the bowlful down her front, but Kate refused to be drawn. “Had enough, have you? Right; then let’s go up and change that sopping dress.” She pulled back Sarah’s chair, making a mental note to ask Jonathan Penrose if there was not some more practical place and way of feeding the child than at this polished dining table. In the meantime, Mrs. Peters would doubtless draw the gloomiest conclusions from the state in which they left the room, but that could not be helped. Sarah was her job—and no sinecure. She took her hand and felt it writhe in hers, the child desperately braced against her, ready for flight.
Here Comes a Candle Page 6