‘I must either accept, or go away,’ she went on calmly, but a little
white. ‘I’ve tried everything. There was a scene the third day I was
here--when I showed her my first result. I wanted to write to you, but
hesitated----’
‘It’s unintentional, then, on your part--forgive my asking it, Frances,
dear?’ I blundered, hardly knowing what to think or say. ‘Between the
lines’ of her letter came back to me. ‘I mean, you make the sketches in
your ordinary way and--the result comes out of itself, so to speak?’
She nodded, throwing her hands out like a Frenchman. ‘We needn’t keep
the money for ourselves, Bill. We can give it away, but--I must either
accept or leave,’ and she repeated the shrugging gesture. She sat down
on the chair facing me, staring helplessly at the carpet.
‘You say there was a scene?’ I went on presently. ‘She insisted?’
‘She begged me to continue,’ my sister replied very quietly. ‘She
thinks--that is, she has an idea or theory that there’s something about
the place--something she can’t get at quite.’ Frances stammered badly.
She knew I did not encourage her wild theories.
‘Something she feels--yes,’ I helped her, more than curious.
‘Oh, you know what I mean, Bill,’ she said desperately. ‘That the place
is saturated with some influence that she is herself too positive or
too stupid to interpret. She’s trying to make herself negative and
receptive, as she calls it, but can’t, of course, succeed. Haven’t you
noticed how dull and impersonal and insipid she seems, as though she
had no personality? She thinks impressions will come to her that way.
But they don’t----’
‘Naturally.’
‘So she’s trying me--us--what she calls the sensitive and
impressionable artistic temperament. She says that until she is sure
exactly what this influence is, she can’t fight it, turn it out, “get
the house straight,” as she phrases it.’
Remembering my own singular impressions, I felt more lenient than I
might otherwise have done. I tried to keep impatience out of my voice.
‘And this influence, what--whose is it?’
We used the pronoun that followed in the same breath, for I answered my
own question at the same moment as she did:
‘_His._’ Our heads nodded involuntarily towards the floor, the
dining-room being directly underneath.
And my heart sank, my curiosity died away on the instant, I felt bored.
A commonplace haunted house was the last thing in the world to amuse
or interest me. The mere thought exasperated, with its suggestions of
imagination, overwrought nerves, hysteria, and the rest. Mingled with
my other feelings was certainly disappointment. To see a figure or feel
a ‘presence,’ and report from day to day strange incidents to each
other would be a form of weariness I could never tolerate.
‘But really, Frances,’ I said firmly, after a moment’s pause, ‘it’s too
far-fetched, this explanation. A curse, you know, belongs to the ghost
stories of early Victorian days.’ And only my positive conviction that
there _was_ something after all worth discovering, and that it most
certainly was _not_ this, prevented my suggesting that we terminate
our visit forthwith, or as soon as we decently could. ‘This is not
a haunted house, whatever it is,’ I concluded somewhat vehemently,
bringing my hand down upon her odious portfolio.
My sister’s reply revived my curiosity sharply.
‘I was waiting for you to say that. Mabel says exactly the same. _He_
is in it--but it’s something more than that alone, something far bigger
and more complicated.’ Her sentence seemed to indicate the sketches,
and though I caught the inference I did not take it up, having no
desire to discuss them with her just then, indeed, if ever.
I merely stared at her and listened. Questions, I felt sure, would be
of little use. It was better she should say her thought in her own way.
‘He is one influence, the most recent,’ she went on slowly, and
always very calmly, ‘but there are others--deeper layers, as it
were--underneath. If his were the only one, something would happen. But
nothing ever does happen. The others hinder and prevent--as though each
were struggling to predominate.’