The Secret of Greylands (19 page)

“I don't care.” Sybil's tone was almost sullen. “Absurd old idiot! As for him—”

“Well, at any rate, if they like to write the silliest nonsense in the world we cannot prevent them,” Cynthia argued sensibly.

“Can we not?” Sybil's mood had apparently changed; she laughed shortly as she sprang off the arm of the chair, with a suddenness that threatened to upset Cynthia, and went over to the open window. Cynthia, looking at her, saw that her breath was still coming quickly, that one of her feet in its small high- heeled shoe was tapping impatiently on the floor. Marvelling what could be the cause of her emotion, Cynthia sat silent; surely she thought the spectacle of Gillman's apparent devotion to his elderly wife was no new thing.

She was about to speak, when Sybil uttered a low exclamation and leaned forward.

“It is—it must be a circus procession coming across the moor! Oh, come, Cynthia, let us go down to the gate and look at it!” she said, running towards the door.

“A circus procession?” Cynthia repeated incredulously. “Nonsense!”

“It is! Don't I tell you it is?” Sybil affirmed impatiently. “If you look out of the window you will see the horses—such a string of them! A woman in a habit covered with tinsel is riding one; and then the vans—all covered! There are such a quantity! Do make haste, Cynthia; they will be at the gate in a minute!”

Cynthia hung back and said:

“I do not think I will come. I—I don't care for circuses; and I can see just as much as I want to from the window.”

“How tiresome you are! I am sure it would be a treat to me to see even a funeral in this dull hole!” Sybil cried angrily. Then, with a twirl of her elaborately-flounced petticoats, she banged the door loudly.

After a minute or two Cynthia rose and looked through the window languidly. Only a very cursory glance could be obtained, through the fir-trees, and soon her attention wandered to the parrot, which, enraged by Sybil's treatment, was now clawing angrily at the wires of its cage, its feathers ruffled as it uttered shrill, raucous sounds of wrath.

“Pretty Polly, poor Polly! You do not forget your mistress, do you?” the girl said softly.

But the bird was in no mood for blandishments. It bit savagely at the extended fingers, and Cynthia drew back.

The circus was still passing. Through the open window she caught the sound of the animals' tramp, of the men's voices as they shouted to their charges; there was no sign of Sybil's return.

Cynthia smiled as she recalled her excitement. There was a triumphant squawk from the parrot. At length its efforts had met with their reward; it had succeeded in pulling out the bar which fastened the door of its cage, the door flew open, and, with its head cocked on one side and a wicked look in its round black eyes, it walked out and through the window.

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.”

S
YBIL
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.