Miss Silver went over to the bed, sat down upon it, and laid her hand gently over one of those straining ones. At once the pose broke up. Both Jennifer’s hands clutched at her, held to her. The blankness went from the eyes. They gazed in terror, then focussed on Miss Silver, not in full recognition but with a piteous effect of groping.
Miss Silver said, at her kindest and most matter-of-fact,
“It is quite all right, my dear. You have been dreaming.”
The child’s grip was frightening. Miss Silver did not bruise easily, but she kept the mark of those fingers for days. Jennifer said in a horrid whisper,
“It was the Hand!”
“It was a dream, my dear.”
There was a long, deep sigh.
“You didn’t see it.”
“It was a dream. There was nothing to see.”
This time the sigh became a shudder that shook the bed.
“You didn’t see it. I did.”
Miss Silver said firmly,
“Jennifer, my dear, there is nothing to see. You have had a bad dream and it has frightened you, but now you are awake again. There is nothing to frighten you any more. If you will let go of me I will get you a glass of water.”
She would not have thought it possible that Jennifer’s grasp could have tightened, but it seemed to do so. The thin body shook, the eyes stared. Words came tumbling out.
“You don’t know-you didn’t see it! Mr. Masters told me- I thought it was just a story-I did-I did! I didn’t think it was true!”
“What did he tell you, my dear?”
Jennifer went on staring and shaking.
“About the Everlys-why there aren’t any more of them. There weren’t any boys. There was old Miss Maria, only she wasn’t old then, and there was Clarice, and Isabella-three of them-and there was a man and he was their cousin, but they couldn’t all marry him. Mr. Masters said it was a pity, because then it wouldn’t have happened like it did.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“A very foolish and improper remark, my dear.”
“It wouldn’t have happened,” said Jennifer-“not if he could have married them all. Solomon had a thousand wives, and he was in the Bible. Mr. Masters said one was trouble enough for most, and three to one wasn’t fair odds, but it would have been better if the cousin could have married the three of them, because then Isabella wouldn’t-” She choked on a caught breath.
“What did Isabella do?” said Miss Silver gravely.
“She killed her.” Jennifer’s whisper crawled with horror. “He was going to marry Clarice, and she killed her-with the axe-out of the wood-shed. She cut her hand right off-the one with the ring he had given her. They said she was mad-and shut her up. And Maria went on living here all by herself until she died, and there weren’t any more Everlys.”
“A terrible story, my dear. It was very wrong of Mr. Masters to speak of it.”
Jennifer shuddered.
“He had to-it wasn’t his fault. I told him about the doors being kept locked into the big house. And I told him I was going in to explore, and he said I mustn’t do it, because-” she tripped and stumbled over the words-“because of the hand- because of Clarice’s hand.”
“My dear-”
“He said people saw it. He said there was a boy-a long time ago-he saw it, and-he never spoke again.”
“Then, my dear, how did anyone know what he had seen?”
Jennifer gave an impatient jerk.
“I don’t know-Mr. Masters said… And there was a girl- she got drowned. She used to work here-her name was Mary Cheeseman. She used to say she didn’t believe in any such tales, and she found a way to get in. At least I think she did-she wouldn’t tell. And she got drowned going home. Pushed down in the bog, Mr. Masters said-‘like as if it was a hand had pushed her.’ ”
“Mr. Masters is a foolish and superstitious old man. I do not think that any of his stories lose in the telling. I have heard about poor Mary. It was a rainy night, and she missed the bridge and wandered into the bog.”
Jennifer sat up straight, her face quite close to Miss Silver’s, her eyes unnaturally bright.
“Did she?” she said. “Did she?” She let go of Miss Silver as suddenly as she had clutched her. “Perhaps she did. You don’t know, and I don’t know, and Mr. Masters doesn’t know.” Her voice dropped to a mere breath. “I know what I saw.”
“What did you see, Jennifer?”
The long lashes drooped. From under them something looked, and was gone. Hope-uncertainty-fear? Miss Silver wasn’t sure. Jennifer said,
“You wouldn’t believe if I told you. People don’t-not if they don’t want to.” Then, without any change in her voice, “I can unlock the door into your room. I hid the key because of Miss Ball. This used to be the dressing-room, you know. If the door is open, I don’t expect I shall have another bad dream- shall I? My mother used to let me have a night-light, but he said not to.”
“It is more restful to sleep in the dark.”
Jennifer was getting out of bed. She turned a scornful glance on Miss Silver.
“Is it?” she said.
CHAPTER XVIII
Ledlington has a good many points in common with other county towns. Some of it is old and picturesque, and some of it is not. In the years between the two world wars its approaches have been cluttered up with small houses of every type and shape. When these have been passed there are the tall, ugly houses of the late Victorian period with their basements, their attics, their dismal outlook upon the shrubberies which screen them from the road. Still farther on a beautiful Georgian house or two, or older still, the mellow red brick and hooded porch of Queen Anne’s time-comfortable houses in their day, converted now for the most part to offices and flats. Here the road narrows to the High Street, winding amongst houses which were built in Elizabethan days. New fronts have been added to some, incongruous plate-glass windows front the street. A turning on one side, very competently blocked by the quite hideous monument erected under William IV to a former mayor, leads to the station. Nothing more inconvenient could possibly have been devised, but the answer of course is that nobody devised it. Like nearly everything else in England it just happened that way. Every few years some iconoclast on the council proposes that tne monument should be removed, but nothing is ever done about it. A little farther on, upon the opposite side of the High Street, an even narrower turning conducts to the Market Square, which has a colonnaded walk on two sides, the George Inn on a third, and some really beautiful old houses on the fourth.
Upon this picturesque scene the much more than life-size statue of Sir Albert Dawnish looks down. It has been named by some as the most frightful statue in the British Isles, but the competition is, of course, very strong. Ledlington owes a good deal to Sir Albert, the originator of the Dawnish Quick Cash Stores. His original shop, the cradle of the enormous Dawnish fortune, was for many years a well-known eyesore at the corner of the Square. It was pulled down in 1935 and re-erected where the High Street widens out, but the statue of Sir Albert most unfortunately remains. Of the some twenty bombs which fell in and around the town, not one inflicted so much as a scratch upon his marble trousers.
The bus from Deep End, coming in by the new by-pass, drew up in front of the station at seven minutes to three-an advance on the scheduled time which enabled the driver and conductor to adjourn for refreshment to an adjacent snack-bar. Miss Silver alighted.
At precisely the same moment a man came out of the station. He was of a noticeable and somewhat pitiful appearance, since his head and all one side of his face was heavily bandaged and he leaned upon a stick with a gloved right hand. In spite of his disability and the fact that he was burdened with a small suitcase he got along surprisingly fast and took his way past the Mayor’s monument into the High Street, where he turned to the left, emerging from the bottleneck upon the good wide road of Regency times. One of the large houses fronting upon the street is now the County Bank.