“And all he knew was that he had seen a grey horse win the Derby. So he went to a medium who was being a good deal talked about just then, and the first thing she wanted to know was whether there was a grey horse running, and of course it was most unfortunate, there were two. So she looked at his hand, and she said he was on the threshold of a great opportunity and everything would depend on what he did next. And that was quite true, because he had to decide whether he would go out to South Africa and join the Cape Mounted Police or take a post in a Birmingham bank-and of course if he was going to win a lot of money on the Derby he wouldn’t do either. So she looked in the crystal, and she saw a grey horse all right, but it wasn’t winning the race that she could see. It was just galloping along with a lot of other horses, and it was gone in a flash, and she couldn’t see the jockey’s colours, or what he was like, or anything, only she had a strong impression of the letter H. And as soon as she said that, Mrs. Hughes’ nephew got quite excited and said he had that too. But it didn’t really help them, because one of the grey horses in the race was Humboldt, and the other Herring’s Eyes, so she tried again, and she couldn’t see anything but a cloud of dust. And in the end one of the grey horses was disqualified, and the other came in last but one. So the poor young man went out to South Africa, and I never heard what happened to him, because Mrs. Hughes left Wyshmere for the Channel Islands.”
They went on telling stories like this for a couple of hours. Thomasina didn’t mind as long as they kept away from the subject of Anna Ball. She had only to look attentive and make a kind of murmuring sound every now and then. None of the stories seemed to prove anything very much except the readiness with which people will believe whatever they wish to believe.
At ten o’clock they all drank tea and went to bed. That is to say, the Miss Tremletts went to bed. Thomasina did not. She turned her light low and sat down to wait, and to count the strokes when the wall-clock in the living-room chimed the quarters. She had made up her mind to wait until half past eleven, and it seemed a long, long time. It grew cold, and colder. The house gathered its silence about it like a cloak. Every time the clock struck, the sound was more startling. Thomasina found herself waiting for it and dreading it. It was like expecting the sudden flare of a magnesium light.
The time dragged unbelievably as quarter followed quarter on the old wall-clock in the living-room below-half past ten-a quarter to eleven-eleven o’clock-a quarter past- She put on her coat and made sure that the battery in her torch was all right.
As the two strokes of the half hour came upon the air, she opened her door and went softly down the stair.
CHAPTER XXXI
Peter Brandon was quite as angry with Thomasina as she was with him. There were moments during the afternoon and evening when he found himself disliking her to such an extent that he would have turned his back on Deep End and shaken its soggy clay off his feet for good and all if he hadn’t been unalterably convinced that she would get herself into some really horrible mess if he wasn’t there to restrain her. He had been fond of Thomasina for a great many years in the casual, unemotional way of family relationship. He had teased her, criticized her, and quarrelled with her, all without heat, but it was only in the last six months that he had committed the folly of falling in love with her. He hadn’t had the slightest intention of doing it. Somewhere between thirty and thirty-five he intended to marry and have children-not less than two and not more than four, and preferably two boys and a girl. He proposed to be a good husband and father, and to have the kind of pleasant calm affection for his wife which made no demands upon the emotions and conduced to a tranquil atmosphere in the home. The wife had remained a quite nebulous figure-she bore no resemblance whatever to Thomasina. And then he had to go and fall in love with a creature whom he had known in her pram.
When the fact came home to him he told himself that it was a temporary aberration. He had been summoned to Barbara Brandon’s deathbed, and his emotions were not under the usual control. He saw Thomasina being incredibly brave, and when everything was over he saw her heartbroken and desolate. She wept on his shoulder. They were both quite taken out of themselves. But when he went back to London he couldn’t get her out of his head. He told himself that it would pass, but it didn’t pass, it got worse. He began to write her long letters and to look out for the answers. And then all this damnable business about Anna Ball blew up, and when Thomasina came south he could do nothing but quarrel with her.
It ought to have put him out of love with her, but it didn’t. It is quite extraordinary how angrily you can dislike a person with whom you are in love. Peter had moments of cold fury in which he told himself that he never wanted to see her again. As these persisted side by side with a complete inability to stay away from her, his mental state was naturally an extremely uncomfortable one, and as far as possible removed from the placidity of his hypothetical courtship.
When he had walked himself tired he returned to his room at the Masters’ cottage, where he read doggedly by the light of an oil lamp until summoned by old Mr. Masters to the evening meal. Mrs. Masters being absent on an errand of mercy-a neighbour having scalded her hand-they sat down to a tête-à-tête.
“And she may be long, or she mayn’t, there’s no saying with scalds, but I shouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t all a much about little, seeing it’s Louie Gregory that’s been known from a child to be one to cry out afore she’s hurt. Six children she’s had, and was agoing to die with every one of them, and there they all are a-flourishing like weeds, and Louie trying to make out what a time she’s had a-bringing of them up.”
They had scrambled eggs, and Mr. Masters claimed with justice that he made them better than his daughter-in-law did. He was in high feather, and by the time the meal was over and he had lighted his pipe he had got going upon his repertory of old stories, and by way of that to the history of the Everlys.
“And I wouldn’t tell it, not to anyone but you, Mr. Brandon, because it isn’t a thing that ought to be spoken of. There’s those that would come here and ask their questions, but they’d never get no answers out of me. All happened a long time ago and best forgotten, that’s what I say, and that’s what I told him when he come asking, that there Craddock up at the House. And he says, ‘What’s the story, Mr. Masters?’ And, ‘What story?’ I says. And he says, ‘Is it anything about a hand?’ And I says, ‘Lord-who told you that! Have you been a-seeing things?’ I says. Well, he says he might have been. But I didn’t tell him nothing, because it wasn’t none of his business. Stands to reason, if there’s hauntings going on, those that’s doing it wouldn’t want no upstarting strangers a-coming in. Very high-up people they was, the Everlys-kep’ themselves to themselves, very proud and haughty, as you might say. And the three Miss Everlys that was the last of them, they weren’t no different from the rest. I knew them all when I was a lad-Miss Maria, Miss Isabella, and Miss Clarice…”
He dawdled on through his tale of three lonely women in a decaying house and the cousin who came to stay and was going to marry Miss Clarice.
“Only Miss Isabella, she wouldn’t have it. Seems she wouldn’t bear to have her younger sister put over her, and she went out of her head with spite, and it come to murder between them. So when Miss Clarice was dead and Miss Isabella was shut up for mad there was only Miss Maria left, and she lived on there alone in the shut-up house until she died. And they say it’s Miss Clarice that haunts the house with her cut-off hand.”