‘That’s what is so ugly about it--that nothing ever happens,’ she said.
‘There is this endless anticipation--always on the dry edge of a result
that never materialises. It is torture. Mabel is at her wits’ end, you
see. And when she begged me--what I felt about my sketches--I mean----’
She stammered badly as before.
I stopped her. I had judged too hastily. That queer symbolism in her
paintings, pagan and yet not innocent, was, I understood, the result
of mixture. I did not pretend to understand, but at least I could be
patient. I consequently held my peace. We did talk on a little longer,
but it was more general talk that avoided successfully our hostess,
the paintings, wild theories, and _him_--until at length the emotion
Frances had hitherto so successfully kept under burst vehemently forth
again. It had hidden between her calm sentences, as it had hidden
between the lines of her letter. It swept her now from head to foot,
packed tight in the thing she then said.
‘Then, Bill, if it is not an ordinary haunted house,’ she asked, ‘_what
is it_?’
The words were commonplace enough. The emotion was in the tone of her
voice that trembled; in the gesture she made, leaning forward and
clasping both hands upon her knees, and in the slight blanching of her
cheeks as her brave eyes asked the question and searched my own with
anxiety that bordered upon panic. In that moment she put herself under
my protection. I winced.
‘And why,’ she added, lowering her voice to a still and furtive
whisper, ‘does nothing ever happen? If only,’--this with great
emphasis--‘something _would_ happen--break this awful tension--bring
relief. It’s the waiting I cannot stand.’ And she shivered all over as
she said it, a touch of wildness in her eyes.
I would have given much to have made a true and satisfactory answer.
My mind searched frantically for a moment, but in vain. There lay no
sufficient answer in me. I felt what she felt, though with differences.
No conclusive explanation lay within reach. Nothing happened. Eager
as I was to shoot the entire business into the rubbish heap where
ignorance and superstition discharge their poisonous weeds, I could
not honestly accomplish this. To treat Frances as a child, and merely
‘explain away’ would be to strain her confidence in my protection, so
affectionately claimed. It would further be dishonest to myself--weak,
besides--to deny that I had also felt the strain and tension even as
she did. While my mind continued searching, I returned her stare in
silence; and Frances then, with more honesty and insight than my own,
gave suddenly the answer herself--an answer whose truth and adequacy,
so far as they went, I could not readily gainsay:
‘I think, Bill, because it is too big to happen here--to happen
anywhere, indeed, all at once--and too awful!’
To have tossed the sentence aside as nonsense, argued it away, proved
that it was really meaningless, would have been easy--at any other time
or in any other place; and, had the past week brought me none of the
vivid impressions it had brought me, this is doubtless what I should
have done. My narrowness again was proved. We understand in others only
what we have in ourselves. But her explanation, in a measure, I knew
was true. It hinted at the strife and struggle that my notion of a
Shadow had seemed to cover thinly.
‘Perhaps,’ I murmured lamely, waiting in vain for her to say more. ‘But
you said just now that you felt the thing was “in layers,” as it were.
Do you mean each one--each influence--fighting for the upper hand?’
I used her phraseology to conceal my own poverty. Terminology, after
all, was nothing, provided we could reach the idea itself.
Her eyes said yes. She had her clear conception, arrived at
independently, as was her way. And, unlike her sex, she kept it clear,
unsmothered by too many words.
‘One set of influences gets at me, another gets at you. It’s according
to our temperaments, I think.’ She glanced significantly at the vile
portfolio. ‘Sometimes they are mixed--and therefore false. There has
always been in me, more than in you, the pagan thing, perhaps, though
never, thank God, like _that_.’
The frank confession of course invited my own, as it was meant to do.
Yet it was difficult to find the words.
‘What I have felt in this place, Frances, I honestly can hardly tell
you, because--er--my impressions have not arranged themselves in any
definite form I can describe. The strife, the agony of vainly-sought
escape, and the unrest--a sort of prison atmosphere--this I have felt
at different times and with varying degrees of strength. But I find,
as yet, no final label to attach. I couldn’t say pagan, Christian, or
anything like that, I mean, as you do. As with the blind and deaf, you
may have an intensification of certain senses denied to me, or even
another sense altogether in embryo----’
‘Perhaps,’ she stopped me, anxious to keep to the point, ‘you feel it
as Mabel does. She feels the whole thing _complete_.’
‘That also is possible,’ I said very slowly. I was thinking behind my
words. Her odd remark that it was ‘big and awful’ came back upon me as
true. A vast sensation of distress and discomfort swept me suddenly.
Pity was in it, and a fierce contempt, a savage, bitter anger as well.
Fury against some sham authority was part of it.
‘Frances,’ I said, caught unawares, and dropping all pretence, ‘what in
the world can it be?’ I looked hard at her. For some minutes neither of
us spoke.
‘Have _you_ felt no desire to interpret it?’ she asked presently.
‘Mabel did suggest my writing something about the house,’ was my reply,
‘but I’ve felt nothing imperative. That sort of writing is not my line,
you know. My only feeling,’ I added, noticing that she waited for more,
‘is the impulse to explain, discover, get it out of me somehow, and so
get rid of it. Not by writing, though--as yet.’ And again I repeated my
former question: ‘What in the world do you think it is?’ My voice had
become involuntarily hushed. There was awe in it.
Her answer, given with slow emphasis, brought back all my reserve: the
phraseology provoked me rather:--
‘Whatever it is, Bill, it is not of God.’
I got up to go downstairs. I believe I shrugged my shoulders, ‘Would
you like to leave, Frances? Shall we go back to town?’ I suggested
this at the door, and hearing no immediate reply, I turned back to
look. Frances was sitting with her head bowed over and buried in her
hands. The attitude horribly suggested tears. No woman, I realised, can
keep back the pressure of strong emotion as long as Frances had done,
without ending in a fluid collapse. I waited a moment uneasily, longing
to comfort, yet afraid to act--and in this way discovered the existence
of the appalling emotion in myself, hitherto but half guessed. At all
costs a scene must be prevented: it would involve such exaggeration and
over-statement. Brutally, such is the weakness of the ordinary man, I
turned the handle to go out, but my sister then raised her head. The
sunlight caught her face, framed untidily in its auburn hair, and I saw
her wonderful expression with a start. Pity, tenderness and sympathy
shone in it like a flame. It was undeniable. There shone through all
her features the imperishable love and yearning to sacrifice self for
others which I have seen in only one type of human being. It was the
great mother look.
‘We must stay by Mabel and help her get it straight,’ she whispered,
making the decision for us both.
I murmured agreement. Abashed and half ashamed, I stole softly from
the room and went out into the grounds. And the first thing clearly
realised when alone was this: that the long scene between us was
without definite result. The exchange of confidence was really nothing
but hints and vague suggestion. We had decided to stay, but it was
a negative decision not to leave rather than a positive action. All
our words and questions, our guesses, inferences, explanations, our
most subtle allusions and insinuations, even the odious paintings
themselves, were without definite result. Nothing had happened.