She repeated it, as if the words had been imprinted in her memory.
“Most folks have forgotten Mr. Peregrine, you know. Perhaps that’s for the best.”
But they’d remember all the whispers soon enough, when he was brought back to Owlhurst to lie next to his father. I had a feeling it would be a brief graveside service, with few mourners, though the curious would be there to gawk.
She went on with other stories about her years as housekeeper, and after a while, since the rector hadn’t returned, I put on my still-damp shoes and my cloak and set out for the Graham house. The rain had let up, just as Mrs. Oldsey had prophesized, and I was grateful.
I let myself in the front door. There were no sounds to greet me-no conversation somewhere in the downstairs rooms, and no voices on the first floor as I quietly went up the staircase. I wanted to find Susan and ask her what was happening. But she too seemed to have vanished. I expect she had gone to visit her mother and give her the outcome of the inquest. She had one afternoon off a week.
I sat by the fire in my room and waited. There was nothing else I could do.
But it wasn’t Mrs. Graham who came to speak to me-it was Robert. He knocked at my door, and when I opened it, he said gruffly, “Mrs. Graham’s apologies, Miss Crawford, but there’s been terrible news. Mrs. Graham would take it as a favor if you could be in Tonbridge in time for the six o’clock train tonight. I’ll be taking you myself, as soon as you’re ready.”
I had expected this-and I hadn’t.
All I could manage to say was, “I can be ready in an hour. I’d like to say my farewells-”
“Mrs. Graham begs you to forgive her if she isn’t able to wish you a safe journey. I’ll ask Susan to pack a box of sandwiches for you, and a Thermos of tea, to see you as far as London. I’m to send a telegram to your father to meet you there.”
I could hardly tell him that I would rather leave in the morning than arrive in London so late. Instead I thanked him and added, “I’ll write Mrs. Graham as soon as I reach Somerset. Please tell her she’s been more than kind.”
I didn’t know what else to add.
He nodded, and was gone.
I packed my belongings for a second time, and looked around for Elayne’s letter to me, to read again on the train. I’d forgot the name of the man she was so sure she’d marry. But it wasn’t in my case, and it wasn’t in the little desk between the windows. I’d last seen it in the sickroom, and I went there to find it. It wasn’t on the table by the bed nor on the mantelpiece, and I knew that if Susan had found it, she’d have brought it to me. As a last resort, I got down on my knees and lifted the coverlet to look under the bed. And there it was, the three pages scattered there. I chuckled. Susan hadn’t used the carpet sweeper-my fingers came up with dust clinging to them. I looked again for the envelope, but it wasn’t with the pages. That she might well have found, without the enclosed letter, and tossed it in the grate. I took the letter back to my room, and after closing my case, I left it outside my door with my valise for Robert to take down.
I was ready when he came for me, and in the dogcart I saw the box with my sandwiches. He handed me warmed rugs as I stepped into the cart, and I settled myself as comfortably as I could. He draped a length of canvas over my baggage and my lap, handed me a large black umbrella, and then mounted the box. No one had come to see me off.
I watched the house disappear and then the church dwindle to a distant smudge as we turned away, and The Bells with it. And then Owlhurst was gone. I felt like crying. Nothing had happened the way I’d hoped or even expected. And somehow I’d lost Arthur as well. I had liked Dr. Philips and the rector and was sorry not to say farewell to them, but surely they would understand.
Soon the asylum loomed ahead, in daylight a grim place with no redeeming softness-as grim, I thought, as a prison. At least Peregrine was free of it, and his suffering over.
Like Ted Booker, he would be buried in a wintry churchyard and forgotten before the spring.
I was thoroughly miserable when we finally reached the station in Tonbridge, and the train was already there, white plumes of smoke curling about the booking office roof as the engine worked up a head of steam. Robert left me in the cart while he went quickly inside, speaking to the stationmaster. I could see them through the grimy, lamp-lit window. The winter darkness had come down, and it fit my own dark mood.
And then Robert was back again, my tickets in his hand, hurrying me toward the train. I had forgotten my sandwiches, and with a muttered word, he went back for them, then caught me up. All the while, the stationmaster was fingering his watch, impatience in every line as he stood by my compartment.
I expected Robert to leave me then, but he helped me up into the train, settled me by the window, then stowed my case and valise where I could reach them if I needed them. That done, he stood for a moment, looking down at me, as if he didn’t know what to say. Finally he took my hand and held it for a moment, like a gentleman telling a lady good-bye. Without a word, he touched the brim of his hat and was gone, and the train started with a lurch almost before his boots had touched the platform again.
I sat back in my seat and prepared myself for the long journey ahead.
We were just coming into Sevenoaks when a thought brought me out of my drowsiness.
I remembered Timothy and Jonathan arguing in their mother’s presence about who should inherit when Peregrine was dead.
Well, they would soon know.
I found that I didn’t care.
In Sevenoaks, I got off the train to send a telegram to my father, telling him I would like to stay in London a few days with Elayne. He had no way of knowing she was in France, and I needed a respite before I faced his sharp eyes or my mother’s intuition. So much for longing for their comfort. That had been a moment of weakness, and I was rather ashamed of it now that I’d put some distance between myself and Owlhurst.
The train was slow, a troop train taking precedence up the line, and I listened to two elderly women comparing notes on the funeral they’d attended in Tunbridge Wells. I knew Tunbridge-it had once been a garrison town, and I’d visited friends of my parents there on one of my father’s leaves. But dissecting a funeral was not a comfortable subject for me, and I tried to shut out their voices with a book I borrowed from the gentleman across from me. He had just finished it and was stuffing it back in his case when I asked to see it.
It was a treatise on the history of the Turkish Empire, and I found it quite absorbing. Our P &O boat had stopped in Istanbul on our return from India, and I had spent an afternoon in a carriage, touring the city.
I fell asleep all the same.
And then we were pulling into London, the outskirts a series of back gardens and small industries, depressing in winter garb. But mostly I could see only my own reflection in the glass as I looked out from our brightly lit carriage, and there were circles under my eyes nearly as dark as those I saw in the glass on my way home from Greece in November.