by Annie Haynes
Cynthia, whose thoughts were far away, hardly realized what was happening until it was balancing itself on the sill; then, with a quick exclamation of dismay, she sprang forward to catch it. But Polly had not gained its liberty in order to lose it again so quickly. With a fierce dab at the outstretched hands it flew away, right out of her reach, across the strip of grass before the window, and settled in one of the lowest branches of a pine-tree opposite.
Cynthia threw the window farther up and sprang out; long before she could reach her, however, Polly had recognized discretion as the better part of valour, and had flown to a higher branch right over her head. There the bird sat, preening her feathers, with guttural chuckles of satisfaction, regarding Cynthia cautiously out of the corner of her unwavering eye. The girl was in despair; in vain she tried to coax, but Polly was impervious to cajoleries. At length she saw it was impossible to think of getting the bird back alone, and she made up her mind to ask Sybil to help. She hurried down to the gate; there was no sign of Sybil, and instead she encountered Mrs Knowles’s portly presence.
“La, miss, you do look flustered! Is there anything the matter?” that worthy inquired.
“The parrot has got out of its cage and I can’t catch it!” Cynthia explained breathlessly. “Where is Miss Sybil?”
Mrs Knowles’s rubicund countenance twinkled up in a broad smile.
“Eh, I never see such a one as Miss Sybil!” she said. “She was that excited when the circus was going by there was no holding her in. They are taking the horses and the elephants to drink at the pond over there, and nothing would do for Miss Sybil but she must go and watch them. What was it you were saying about the parrot, miss? My lady will be rare and put about if anything happens to it.”
“I know she will!” Cynthia said ruefully. She was watching the animals as they trooped off across the moor to the pond, and thinking, with some natural exasperation, that surely Sybil at her age might have known better than run off after the animals like a child. Her irritation would not mend matters, however, and she turned round disgustedly and went back to the house.
“Come and try if you can help me, Mrs Knowles!” she called over her shoulder.
Mrs Knowles followed her, panting.
“Which I shall be glad if I can, miss,” she said breathlessly, “knowing the store my lady set on it. Not that I can say that I am much of a hand at climbing trees, my head being apt to turn giddy on a height.”
They came in sight of the parrot, busily engaged in cleaning its feathers on the branch where Cynthia had last seen it. It cocked its head as they looked up and regarded them rakishly. Cynthia could not forbear a laugh.
“Mrs Knowles,” she said, “what are we to do?”
“Pines are not the easiest of trees to get up, I should say, judging by the looks of this one,” Mrs Knowles said reflectively. “If we had a ladder now you could go up it, miss, and I might make shift to hold it at the bottom. I believe I saw one in the stable a day or two ago as Mr Gillman had been using over there for something. Maybe you and me together could carry it here, miss.”
“We might try; it seems the only plan,” Cynthia said doubtfully.
They went round to the back of the house, found the ladder where Mrs Knowles had indicated, and carried it back, notwithstanding some difficulty, the parrot meanwhile remaining an apparently interested spectator of the proceedings.
As soon, however, as they had reared the ladder against the tree, and Cynthia, having put on a pair of thick gloves and armed herself with a woollen shawl, was preparing to make the ascent, with a sound like a sarcastic chuckle it flew off and this time alighted on the outhouse in which various garden tools were kept.
Cynthia stepped down again.
“What is to be done now?” she asked despairingly.
“Well, if you ask me, miss,” replied Mrs Knowles, “I should say it is a deal safer to go up and catch the bird just where it is and rest your ladder on solid bricks and mortar than on a nasty treacherous tree.”
“I don’t know.” Cynthia looked up dubiously. “I wonder if we left the cage on the lawn and went away whether Polly would not go in herself?” she debated.
“Not she, miss! No, you just go up as quick as you can, miss. We shan’t make any noise, and we shall have Polly back in the cage without my lady being any the wiser.”
Cynthia thought it would be the best plan. She moved the ladder and Mrs Knowles held it at the bottom, while Cynthia, carefully and not without some feelings of trepidation, climbed up. At the top, as the charwoman had suggested, it was possible, by catching a branch of an adjoining tree, to swing herself on to the roof. The parrot eyed her with a curious sidelong leer, she fancied, but possibly it was tired of its spell of liberty, for it submitted without much struggle to be caught. Cynthia managed to throw the shawl firmly round it, and was about to turn back when, looking up, she saw that she was opposite to Lady Hannah’s window. She paused a moment in amazement. The blind was not drawn down closely as usual, and from where she stood she had a distinct view of the interior of the room. The bed stood opposite the window, and the bed, as she saw plainly, to her intense bewilderment, was empty. There were signs of recent occupancy, as the bedclothes lay in a tumbled heap; not only, however, was Lady Hannah not in the bed, but as far as Cynthia could see, she was not in the room at all.
The whole of the bedroom, with the exception of the alcove, was perfectly visible, and there was no sign of any living creature at all. Something in the look of the matter-of-fact orderliness of the room, of the empty bed and easy-chairs, of the array of medicine bottles standing on the table, struck Cynthia with a terrible sense of ill. Where could her Cousin Hannah be, she asked herself, with chattering teeth as she stared round.
“Cynthia”—it was Sybil’s voice, but so changed and hoarse that at first Cynthia did not recognize it—“what are you doing up there? Come down at once!”
“It is my lady’s parrot as has got away, miss, and me and Miss Cynthia has been trying to catch it,” Mrs Knowles took upon herself to answer. “There is its cage which we have been trying to coax it into. It is my belief that to hear that bird was lost might have done my lady some mischief, and Miss Cynthia got up there as light as you please.”
“I am sure Cousin Hannah would be very cross if she knew you were scrambling about on the roof, Cynthia—parrot or no parrot!”
There was a strange note of fear underlying the anger in Sybil’s voice.
Mrs Knowles laughed.
“La, my lady won’t know nothing about it, will she, miss?”
Cynthia, looking strangely white and shaken, was descending the ladder, holding the shawl firmly fastened round the parrot in one hand, while she steadied herself against the rungs with the other.
“No,” she said slowly, “no, she will not know.”
Sybil looked at her sharply.
“She must have heard you; I believe she could see you from her bed.”
Cynthia made no reply, but turned her back on the other girl and busied herself putting the parrot into its cage and fastening the door securely with Mrs Knowles’s help.
When Polly was once more in safe custody Mrs Knowles lifted the cage.
“Now I think the sooner it is put back in the dining-room the better, young ladies. No, I can carry it myself, thank you, miss!” as Cynthia would have helped her. “I can see the climb has upset you. I know just how it is. If I got up there my head would be all of a swim, but for carrying and such like there is nobody better than me, though I says it as shouldn’t.”
She went off round the corner of the house to the back door and Cynthia and Sybil were left alone.
Sybil was the first to break the silence.
“I do not know what Cousin Henry would say!” she remarked resentfully, two hot red spots burning on her cheeks. “The doctor told us that the least shock might have the most serious consequences in Cousin Hannah’s weak state; we have been taking the greatest pains to keep her as quiet as possible,
and here you go and do just the very thing most calculated to alarm her. What would she think when she heard all that noise and then saw you on the roof! Why, you might have fallen down and killed yourself!”
“Cousin Hannah did not see me,” Cynthia answered steadily, shivering a little as she spoke, “because—oh, Sybil, I couldn’t understand it!—she is not in bed at all!”
“Not in bed at all!” Sybil echoed, her tone insensibly catching some of the solemnity of the other’s. It was her turn to become pale now, and the angry colour in her cheeks faded slowly into a ghastly pallor. “What do you mean? Where is she?”
“That I do not know,” Cynthia replied, watching Sybil’s face. “I could see all over the room except just that part by the alcove, and assuredly she was not there. She—sometimes I have suspected it before, Sybil, once I heard steps in the room above—she is not so helpless as we think, and she can move about when she likes!”
There was a curious hard glitter in Sybil’s eyes as she glanced quickly at Cynthia’s puzzled face. For the first time, as the girl met her eyes, she was conscious of an overwhelming shrinking repugnance, and she drew back involuntarily.
“I think you are making some strange mistake,” Sybil said. “I will go up and see what she is doing. Wait here, Cynthia!” And she hurried off.
Cynthia did not attempt to follow her; she was so bewildered and dazed by the fact of her cousin’s absence as to be for the moment almost incapable of moving. Sybil was not long away; and as she came towards her Cynthia saw that she was still looking strangely disturbed.
“The door was locked as usual,” she said, “but the key was not there. Cousin Henry must have taken it and then gone out and forgotten. I knocked, but there was no answer. What are we to do?”
“I do not know,” Cynthia said absently. She could not forget the strange thrill that had shaken her, as she looked into that apparently unoccupied room. She felt another odd thrill of repugnance as Sybil put her arm through hers and drew her on to the grass.
Sybil turned and looked at her; she had regained her careless smile; her expression was as innocent and childlike as ever.
“You are cold, Cynthia, and I think it is so hot to-day. I hope you have not taken a chill?”
With an effort Cynthia managed to free her arm.
“Oh, it is nothing! I am quite warm, really.”
Chapter Fifteen
SYBIL did not appear to notice Cynthia’s rebuff; she sprang across the lawn and stood gazing through the trees.
“The last of the vans is not out of sight yet. I shall try to get Cousin Henry to take me over to see the performance,” she said as she shaded her eyes with her hand.
Cynthia made no reply; the sense of mystery that had been with her since her coming down to Greylands was heavy upon her now. In vain she told herself that she was nervous and hysterical and fancied things, that she was inclined to magnify trifles. Her conviction that there was something radically wrong, that all was not open and above-board at Greylands, grew and strengthened, and with it there was borne in upon her mind a terror, a shrinking as from something indescribably evil that was altogether inexplicable.
The aversion to Gillman of which she had been conscious from the first seemed now to have extended to Sybil, and with an irrepressible shudder she moved quickly to the house.
Sybil soon caught her up.
“Do you know what I am going to do, Cynthia, if Cousin Hannah really is shamming? I am going to find her out!”
“How are you going to do that?” Cynthia’s steps did not slacken and Sybil caught her arm.
“Do not be so tiresome! You will have to help me. You will have to come with me. I mean to get on the fowl-house roof, and if she is really not in her room I will tell you my plan. I do not believe I dare climb up myself, and you will have to help me.”
Cynthia was by no means enamoured of the scheme.
“I thought you said the sight of anyone clambering on that roof was enough to kill Cousin Hannah?” she said uncompromisingly.
Sybil pinched her arm.
“How tiresomely literal you are! If Cousin Hannah is not there at all, as you say, it will not hurt her because she will not know anything about it. If she is, we will be as quiet as mice in getting up, and I am only just going to take the tiniest little peep. You will help me, won’t you, Cynthia? Don’t be cross, dear! I know I was horrid when you first told me; I couldn’t believe it, it seemed so improbable. Now, if I must confess, I am most fearfully curious. It would be so funny if Cousin Hannah had been taking us in all this time!”
She raised herself on tiptoe and touched Cynthia’s cheek with her hand as she spoke.
As Cynthia met her pleading smile she felt a touch of the old glamour; the spell that Sybil had exercised over her was broken, but it was not yet wholly forgotten. She even smiled a little as Sybil drew her towards the ladder.
“Well, as I feel sure that she is not there—”
“You will help me?” Sybil gave a graceful little pirouette of joy. “You are a dear, Cynthia! Now be very careful—no noise!” as she put one foot on the first rung.
Cynthia steadied the ladder carefully. Sybil went up lightly and swung herself on the roof with catlike agility. With an elaborate show of caution she peered forward at the window; then, turning she went through a joyful little pantomime.
“Come up, Cynthia!” she exclaimed. “Yes! Yes! You must! Be quick!”
After a moment’s hesitation, with a curious feeling that she was taking part in some play, Cynthia climbed up.
“Oh, Cynthia, you are silly!” Sybil exclaimed as they stood clinging together. “To think that I was foolish enough to believe you! Cousin Hannah is there safe enough! I think I see how you came to make the mistake, though. The bedclothes are all hunched up in the middle, and she is lying half concealed by the curtain with her back towards us; her big frilled nightcap looks just like another pillow.”
Cynthia gazed at her blankly.
“I tell you she was not there a few minutes ago!” she said positively.
Sybil pouted.
“How obstinate you are, Cynthia! Look for yourself instead of arguing,” she said, giving her a playful little push.
Cynthia obeyed mechanically. As she leaned forward on the penthouse roof the other girl clutched her hand in a tight feverish grip.
“There she is, I tell you; you see, you are mistaken!”
Leaning forward, Cynthia looked in. Her first impression was that the room was exactly as she had seen it a few minutes ago, save that now, on the farther side of the great untidy heap of bedclothes, there lay a figure, though little of it could be seen— merely a vague outline, the back of the nightcap, one hand resting on the bedclothes. Cynthia’s eyes wandered round the room. Suddenly they were caught by a chair standing by the bedside; something about it made her look again—and she knew instantly that it had been moved since she saw it before.
Sybil jerked her arm impatiently.
“Well, you see she was there all the time! You see you were mistaken!”
“Yes, I see her now,” Cynthia said slowly after a little pause.
She turned her head unexpectedly, and surprised a strange exultant expression in the other girl’s face. With a sudden certainty that in some way she was being tricked she bent forward again.
“Certainly she is there!” Sybil’s tone was a little forced, a trifle impatient. “You are so fanciful, Cynthia! Why, you almost infected me,” with a light laugh, “though I knew better in my heart, and I was certain poor Cousin Hannah could neither move hand nor foot.”
Cynthia was still looking intently at that quiet form on the bed. The idea occurred to her that it might be a lay figure put in to represent Cousin Hannah, but that theory had to be dismissed, for, looking intently, it was possible to see a slight motion as of breathing. As the last phrase left Sybil’s lips however the other girl started violently and drew forward recklessly.
Sybil pulled her back.
&nbs
p; “How careless you are, Cynthia! You nearly upset us both!”
Cynthia shivered from head to foot; she caught her breath sharply; then, with a strange, frightened movement, she stepped back and hurried to the ladder. Catching sight of her face as she passed, Sybil saw that all the bright, healthy colour had faded, that even her lips looked a dull grey. She followed quickly.
“What is the matter, Cynthia, are you ill?”
Cynthia did not answer as she caught the branch and let herself down. When both girls stood on level ground once more Sybil glanced at her anxiously.
“What is it, Cynthia? Do you feel faint?” putting one arm round her caressingly.
Cynthia drew herself away swiftly.
“Don’t please, Sybil! I feel hot—suffocating!” thrusting the heavy mass of hair back from her brow. “Surely there must be thunder about! It is terribly close.”
Sybil regarded her pityingly.
“Poor old girl! The climb must have been too much for you! It was thoughtless of me to insist upon your doing it a second time, but I was so keen on your seeing that you had made a mistake.”
“Yes, yes!” Cynthia said hurriedly. “It—it was the climbing, I—I’m not used to it. I do not think I shall come in yet, Sybil,” as the girl turned towards the house. “I will walk round the garden a while. I feel as if I must have fresh air.”
“You are sure you are able?” Sybil questioned anxiously. “I must go in because I have set my mind on making some scones for Cousin Henry’s tea, and he may be in any moment. Don’t you think you had better come in with me and rest?”
“No, no, I couldn’t!” Cynthia responded incoherently, again putting aside Sybil’s arm. “Please let me do as I like, Sybil!”
“Oh, certainly if you put it that way!” Sybil’s tone was half offended. “But do not expect me to look after you if you are faint, for I shall be busy in the kitchen for the next half-hour.”
“I shall not faint,” Cynthia said decidedly as she moved off across the grass.