My Little Sister Part 16

"Look out of the window," my mother said.

I could see nothing. The night was dark and still.

"She can't be long now," my mother said. "But go and tell them they may bolt the front door. We are sure to hear her coming up the walk."

She called me back. "Tell them not to forget to put the chain on the door."

Oh, the times we had been told that!

Downstairs I found the house shut up and barred as for a siege. The maids had done their work and vanished. I was the only creature stirring. Upstairs the same. My mother seemed not to hear me come back into the room. She was lying with the candle-light on her face, and on her face the old listening fear. What made her look like that?

If there had been anything, if there had been even that old mournful sound of the wind, I could have minded less. But the night was very quiet. The house was hushed as death. And still she listened.

Now and then she would lift her eyelids suddenly, and the intense white of the eyeb.a.l.l.s shone, while she strained to catch some sound beyond my narrower range.

I sat there by the fire a long, long time. And she never spoke--until I, unable to bear the stillness any longer, fell back for that last time on the familiar Magic--my father, and the old, beautiful days. She stirred.

She folded and unfolded her hands, and then took up the theme. But in a different key.

"The more I came to understand other women's lives," she said, "the more I saw that my happiness was like the safety of a person walking a narrow plank across a chasm." Then after a moment, she added, "A question of nice equilibrium."

"I don't know how you ever bore the fall," I said.

"The fall?"

"Yes--when father was killed--and all the happiness fell down."

Then she said something wholly incomprehensible at the time, but which I understand better now. "Perhaps," she said, "I would have borne what you call 'the fall' less well if I hadn't known ... there are worse than tigers in the world's jungle."

I felt I was on the track of some truer understanding, and a secret excitement took hold of me. "How was it you came to know that?" I asked.

"It is a thing," she said, "that even happy women learn." Then, hurriedly, she went on: "And it ended--my happiness--before any stain or tarnish dimmed it. All bright and s.h.i.+ning one moment, the next all vanished."

I watched the face I knew so well. Covertly, I watched it. Saw the delicate lineaments a little pinched with anxiety. The eyes veiled one moment, the next lifting wide as at a sudden call.

"What was that?" she said.

I heard nothing.

Oftenest that quick lift of heavy eyelids, and the flash of bright fixity, would come without any following of speech. And the eloquence of that silence, tense, glittering, wrought more upon my nerves than any words. All my body strung to attention, I listened with my soul.

No sound.

No sound at all. Then, inwardly, I rebelled against the tyranny and waste of this emotion.

Why was she like this?

"Have they put on the chain?" she asked.

"Yes."

"And bolted the door?"

"Yes."

"How do you know they have bolted it?"

"I heard them."

"Heard _them_?"

"Heard the bolt."

"One may easily think a stiff bolt has gone home, and all the while----"

"But I am sure."

My easy certainty seemed to anger her. "I thought so, too, once." She said it with a vehemence that startled me.

After a moment: "Was that here?" I asked.

"No, no, no"--she shook it off.

I went and knelt down by the bed. "Tell me about it, mother."

"No, no. It is not the kind of thing you need ever know."

"How can you be sure? _You_ weren't expecting anything to happen." I felt my way by the shrinking in her face. "Yet someone came to the unbolted door----?"

"What makes you think that!" she exclaimed, and I was hot and cold under her look.

"It--it only came into my head"; and then, with fresh courage, or renewed curiosity, "But I am right!" I said, with sudden firmness.

"Isn't it so? You were horribly frightened, _weren't_ you?" I touched her hand, expecting she would draw it away from me, but the fingers had locked on the silk frill of the quilt. They were cold; they made me think of death.

"Yes," she said, very low, "I was horribly frightened." I felt the shuddering that ran along her wrist, and the chill of that old fear of hers crept into my blood, too. She looked through me, as though I were vapour, as though the bodyless Dread her eyes were fixed on once again for that instant--as though _that_ were the most real presence in the room.

"Tell me," I whispered, "tell me what it was."

"----impossible to talk about such things." She drew away her hand. "All you need to know is ... the need of taking care. Of never running risks.

What time is it?"

"Five minutes past eleven."

"Did Lady Helmstone say she and Hermione would walk back with Bettina?"

"No, she didn't say that."

"What did she say?"