“Yes, it is his latest Will you look at it?” and Aunt Rhoda led the way among the furniture and pulled the cloth from the painting.
Miss Bybegone looked: she was an admirer of Hector Pawley's, and possessed several of his works in lieu of school fees; but this evening, for once, she was at a loss. “It's rather dark,” she said at last.
“It's winter,” said Kate. “Winter in the valley.”
“Winter in the mind,” corrected Aunt Rhoda gently, giving her an indulgent smile. How sweet she was being: she was like a pill that you know is really nasty, but you have to enjoy the sugar. And how familiar! She was pretending to be a proper aunt for Miss Bybegone's benefit. Kate despised the performance, but also she liked it, part of her wanted it to be real.
“Are you interested in recorded music?” Aunt Rhoda continued.
Kate stared. The gramophone had not been played for years, the records were lost or given away.
“Oh, definitely yes!” cried Miss Bybegone who wasn't and she added that she had come in with music, to the voice of the chair, but Aunt Rhoda did not smile.
“We haven't any records,” Kate protested, feeling as she spoke that if Aunt Rhoda wanted it, music there would be; and indeed she was already pushing out the gramophone. She wound it up, and opened it: inside there was a large, brightly colored envelope. Kate settled back into the comfortable old sofa. This evening had got out of control, it belonged, now, to Aunt Rhoda: she was conjurer here, with the whole room to do tricks in, and had evidently arranged her props beforehand. She had put something funny to burn on the fire, too: it puffed the strangest smell, sweet and smoky, like a bonfire of flowers, and wreaths of blue mist against the light as though cigarettes had been smoked (but none had).
Aunt Rhoda put on the record, and Kate idly picked up the empty envelope that she had tossed onto the sofa. It was very bright, with a design of orange, red and purple fames; and there were no names upon it, of the people who played or the company that had issued it. She turned it over: the other side was the same. She saw that Aunt Rhoda was watching her, and put the envelope down; and then the music began.
It was strange and wild, and marvelous, making her want to leap and sing; and frightening so that she wanted to hide her head. It entered every bit of her from the very first notes so that she seemed to melt slowly, to disintegrate among the waves of sound; she could not say, after, what it had been about, or whether it was well played, or even what instruments had played it. But it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard, it reduced her to a flame, and increased her to white heat. She had an impression of many voices at last, in a great chorus, singing wild and free as people might who had the width of sky to live in, and hurtled across it before a storm. At last she did not know what was music, and what the scent from the fire: the whole of her was drugged, but for one clear particle of brain that noticed Aunt Rhoda, sitting behind the gramophone and keeping her pale unblinking eyes upon her; and Miss Bybegone solid in the armchair, a mountain of flesh, with legs like two wide roads leading up to it out of sensible lace-up shoes.
The music ended. Gradually Kate came to herself. Miss Bybegone got up and brushed down her woolen garments, and said how nice it had been, and how much she had enjoyed it, but that she must now retrace her steps through the Cimmerian gloom; and then it dawned on Kate, from the way she spoke, that in fact she had not understood the music, that she had heard nothing in it, not even the singing of the sky people.
She went with her to the front gate, and watched her energetic foot-pumping until the infernal machine was got going. She stood waving with watering eyes and lungs full of poisonous gas until the gasping and spluttering of the engine and the polite “Thanks so much!” of Miss Bybegone sounded no more along the road. At last, yawning and knuckling her eyes, she returned to the house. She glanced into the drawing room from the hall, and saw that Aunt Rhoda had turned out the lights: the room glowed, though, from the fire. She thought she would go straight up to bed, when Rhoda appeared in the open doorway stood there with her arms out, and glowing firelight on her beautiful black hair. “Come!” she said, with tenderness, as though she longed to fold Kate in her outstretched arms. And it would have been easy to go to her; but she felt tired, and had a headache, and a lingering resentment at the way the evening had been taken over.
“I'm going to bed,” she answered.
There was a pause, and then Aunt Rhoda suddenly spoke with force and bitterness.
“I've got Thomas, you know that, don't you. You'd be better off with us.”
“What do you mean, you've got Thomas?”
“You know I have. Whatever I want, with the house, he won't stand in my way, I can make him help me .”
“He's not as stupid as all that. Besides, you can't depend on a person of four years old.”
“I made this evening for you, it's your last chance. You'd be better off on our side. I'm only telling you for your good, although it's against the rules. You can't stop what will happen, one way or the other.”
“We'll see about that “ said Kate rudely, and began to go upstairs.
“You're a stupid girl, Kate Pawley,” screamed Aunt Rhoda, and Kate looked over her shoulder. She had not heard her raise her voice before. She still stood in the drawing-room doorway, silhouetted by the red glow of the fire, but her arms were not open now, not welcoming; and in the darkness that was her face, her eyes glared horribly, twin lamps.
“She wouldn't scream like that if she wasn't afraid,” Kate thought in a flash, “if she didn't know that I can do something to stop what she wants to happen. She may think she's got Thomas, but it's not true, he belongs to his own family and his own house.” She turned her back and went on up the stairs, and Aunt Rhoda shut herself in the drawing room, slamming the door.
She went first to Thomas's room. It was all gray and white with moonlight, and the little boy slept peacefully in his cot, his arms up and mouth open. She felt his hair: it was warm and damp, he was too hot. Most carefully she took off one of his blankets, so that he should not wake; and then she looked out over acres and acres of quiet earth owned by Wyatts and Morrises and Plentipots. Through the open window she heard the distant wail of Mrs. Mardy's daughter; but the animal hosts, sleeping or hunting or hiding, were silent. And then she heard a whistling, coming from the wood.
It lasted only a minute. It was not a person whistling -- it was thin and shrill, on one note. It was like some thing -- calling another thing.
And it stopped. Thomas stirred in his sleep, and Kate left him.
She had washed before Miss Bybegone came, so she did not spend much time in the bathroom. She lay down on her bed with a book. What on earth could Aunt Rhoda be doing in the drawing room all this time? It was directly under her bedroom, but she could not hear a sound. She was glad that the door to the second staircase was kept locked, on her side.
She could not concentrate on the book. She could only think of Thomas, sleeping so peacefully, unconscious of the fight over him. But was he as unconscious as all that? Perhaps he had already chosen, according to childish reason, between his sister and Aunt Rhoda. And she could not see how to help him. She understood that Aunt Rhoda meant to take over their house for her own purposes, but if Thomas wanted her to how was she to stop it? She gave up all attempts to read, and stared up at the ceiling, reasoning it out.
It all began with the writing on the statue. “First we'll wait . . .” well, the black dog had come, and hung about the place, waiting. Now that Aunt Rhoda was installed, it had disappeared. Then a certain phrase, that she might have forgotten, jumped up in her mind as most important. She remembered Aunt Rhoda in her mackintosh, carrying a cardboard suitcase; and they had gone to the house together and the window had blown out upon the path. She saw again Aunt Rhoda's figure, like a conqueror, upon the threshold. And she heard her own voice asking about the dog, and Aunt Rhoda's answer:
“It will be along, by and by.”
Was that why she wanted the hous
e, for the dog? What sort of a dog could it be, that a whole house must be got for it?
“Then we'll whistle . . .” She sat up on her bed with a jerk. There had been whistling that very evening.
No, she told herself, her heart thudding; it was only Sir Henry's gamekeeper, patrolling the wood. But she knew very well that no man whistled like that.
The dog had waited. But dogs don't whistle. Men whistle, dogs obey.
It was crazy to imagine that Aunt Rhoda wanted the house for her dog, and that it called her with a whistle.
“Then we'll dance together.” This was where the dancing would be, when everything was accomplished. In this dear house that belonged to the Pawleys, not to Aunt Rhoda jubilant with her little master.
And suddenly the last bit of the jigsaw slipped into place.
The dog was master.
The jigsaw was done, and it made a frightening picture.
Then it occurred to Kate that if she crept down her private staircase, and listened behind the locked door, she might be able to hear what was going on in the drawing room.
How she wished (not for the first time) that she was a little, light, fairylike creature! Stairs usually creaked when she trod on them. These were old and worm-eaten, thick with soft brown dust. She left the door at the stairhead slightly open to let some light through from her bedroom, but not much in case Aunt Rhoda should spot it under the lower door. With utmost caution she tiptoed down the stairs; but her breathing alone sounded to her like an elephant crashing through the jungle. Suppose Aunt Rhoda had found out about the door, had already unlocked it and taken the key away? She panted with fear; but no, her fingers gingerly groping around the handle touched the key just as she had left it, in the lock.
At first she could not hear anything at all. She was beginning to think that Aunt Rhoda must have gone upstairs, after all, and might visit her bedroom and catch her in the act of spying; in fact, she had just decided to leave the dangerous staircase when to her great relief she did hear a tiny noise in the drawing room. It was a crackling, coming as far as she could judge from the fireplace: Aunt Rhoda must have thrown more coal upon the fire. Soon after, she was sure she could smell again the sweet strange smell, as though the room was incensed. Then her straining cars caught a creaking of furniture, as though Aunt Rhoda, having mended the fire, was settling down into an armchair. But how silently she moved! The furniture, the fire made noises: she did not. It was quite impossible to tell what she was doing simply by listening: since she was already a spy, she might as well try to see what was going on.
Should she open the door a crack? It was a great risk, she dared not: but she could, she thought, ease the key out of the lock, and peep through. It was an old key and she had to give it half a turn in order to pull it out. It grated, she was certain it would be heard; but there was no sound of alarm on the other side of the door. Two minutes later she saw why.
She put her eye to the keyhole, and stared into the firelit room. Immediately she started back. For Aunt Rhoda's glossy head was within two feet of her peering eye: she was sitting reading in an armchair, with her back to Kate, so close that if she had opened the door only a crack, she must have touched the back of the chair.
She made herself take courage to look again. She knew that she could not possibly be seen; besides, Aunt Rhoda had her back to the door, and was absorbed in her book. But she was sure that she must feel she was being stared at, she did not want to trust her own invisibility. Then she thought of Thomas, and again she peeped through the keyhole.
The room was full of shadows, it could have been any size. The furniture had lost its familiarity, it could have belonged to any house. Aunt Rhoda had banked the fire right up, but it did not fame, only gave out a scarlet glow that made a vast gloomy cavern of the room. Wreaths of blue smoke still hung in the air, but the flowers on the mantelpiece, the newspapers on the table in the corner, the ornaments and ashtrays, were in such shadow that she could have believed they had been tidied away.
Aunt Rhoda sat so still all this time she might have been asleep. She did not turn the pages of her book. She was not sleeping, for, as her head was slightly bent, Kate could see one pale eye, and it was open. She was entirely concentrated on that book: learning it by heart, perhaps. Of course, she was close enough for Kate to see what she was reading over her shoulder.
The lefthand page was scrawled with diagrams. First, two triangles laid across made a six-pointed star, in the middle of which was a squiggle, rather like Greek letters joined up; and between the points were six little stars of the pattern Kate already knew, five-pointed. There was a drawing of a torch, rather like an Olympic torch, under which was written: Tripod for perfume to be held in the hand or stuck into the earth -- this direction being handwritten -- in fact those pages Kate saw did not look printed: it was difficult to tell in the firelight, but she thought they were drawn and written in ordinary blue-black ink. It was followed by a heading: Recipe for powder to burn on occasions in above tripod, but this was given so small she could not read it. Another drawing, called Chrystal to be set in gold, showed an object like a pendant, containing the same six-pointed star surmounting a circle, around which were written four names but in letters so tiny she could not make them out.
The other page was headed: Elizabeth Bennet, Chelmsford, March 1582; and the writing was clear, although it was a strain to read it with only one eye, from the distance of the keyhole. It appeared to be a brief account of her trial; it was not very illuminating, a recital of various cattle plagues and sudden deaths in the district which were apparently attributed to the luckless Mistress Bennet. But the last words on the page caught Kate's attention: for it is asserted that the said Mistress Bennet had. a familiar called Suckin being black like a dog, and obsequious to the kingdom of darkness. What happened to her, Kate did not discover, although she stayed rooted to the spot, for Aunt Rhoda did not turn the page: probably she was committing the diagrams to memory, and already knew by heart the history of Elizabeth Bennet. But at last she got up from her chair, and shut her book, Kate saw that it was a perfectly ordinary red-backed notebook, such as she herself used at Miss Bybegone's, well thumbed.
And as she took this in she watched Aunt Rhoda stretched and walk so quietly to the fire, and bending down blow it out. One moment there were banked coals, providing all the light for the room, the next all was black, as if she had blown out a candle.
How long she had spent on the stairs Kate never knew. She was stiff from head to foot, her headache was several degrees worse, and as she climbed back to her bedroom, a little voice clamored inside her head: “Elizabeth Bennet was a witch! Elizabeth Bennet was a witch!”
What, then, was Rhoda Cantrip?
Next morning, before she took Thomas to church, Kate looked nervously into the drawing room. It was rather tidier than usual, as she herself had prepared it for Miss Bybegone. There was nothing left of the fire but a handful of ashes, but in the fender there lay a single large leaf which she picked up. At first she thought it must have fallen from the vase or the mantelpiece, but those were pinks and marguerites, with leaves quite unlike this one. She put it in her pocket, and then smelled her fingers: there again was the scent of last night. It must have been blown out of the grate, and on Monday she would show it to Miss Bybegone, who possessed a dictionary of plants, and find out what it was.
After church, walking back up the hill, she did not want to get home, and it was only the image of Mrs. Beer in the kitchen that cheered her.
But Aunt Rhoda was out all day -- they were reprieved. They settled comfortably into the old way of life that Sunday. They had lunch in the kitchen with Mr. and Mrs. Beer, and Thomas behaved properly; and it was so welcome, so kind, that Kate hardly dared to listen in case she heard Aunt Rhoda's feet upon the path. She realized now how much things had changed, as a climber can only know how far he has gone by turning to look back into the valley. After lunch they all went up to Mrs. Beer's house for tea. It was free and windy up
there on the hill. Aunt Rhoda dwindled to doll size, and witches scuttled back between the covers of fairy stories.
The common was all yellow with buttercups and dandelions, running down to the dark green woods like a sandy slope to the sea. Kate stood at the end of the Beers' garden, staring out through the high wire fence. She could see Farmer Wyatt climbing the hill past the chapel, like a creeping, earthy insect. Fat Mrs. Morris was drawing the curtains to shut the golden evening out of her little boy's room; and Mrs. Mardy was running in circles on her lawn like a mad woman, trying to catch her little girl to get her into bed. Now Mr. and Mrs. Wyatt swept by in their large car, taking the road to Middle Mow; and the Reverend Hughes spun downhill on his bicycle, exchanging salutes with the old farmer. Over at Long Lead the young bulls in the field by the Wyatts' burned-out cottage stuck their tails in the air and galloped about for no reason: there was plenty going on in the valley on a summer evening. The kind sky covered it, the good earth supported it. Kate loved it. There at the bottom of the Beers' garden she determined that Rhoda Cantrip and her accompanying darkness should be driven out. It was an easy promise to make, to the green and the gold and the blue.
There was a very beautiful sunset that evening. As it touched the horizon the sun seemed to burst, and flowed out of its confining orb in layers of scarlet, crimson and rose. “Why don't you stay up here, with us?” said Mr. Beer, at Kate's elbow, and Mrs. Beer waited in agreement, and Thomas looked at his sister, to see what she would say.
“Do you want to stay?” she asked him, but he smiled his secret smile. “No, we must go back, staying away isn't the answer,” she continued; and Mr. and Mrs. Beer did not ask what she meant because they knew already. They gave them a slice of fruit cake each to sustain them on the journey; for Kate decided that they would not go back down the hill, as it was still light and warm; there was a longer way home, across the common and through the wood, and the glory of the sky invited her to take it.
They had to leave the Beers to get onto the common, and walk further uphill until they came to a six-barred gate, which they climbed. Now the green and yellow pasture had grown as high as Thomas's knees, and it was not even as it looked from a distance. They held hands and ran up and down the hollows, scrambling and laughing. The stunted thorn trees were gigantic now, added to their long shadows. The sheep had all gone, but the white pony moved about in the distance. Kate did not know who owned it: it was always turned out on the common.
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