Miss Adamson pulled herself together with a jerk and came into the room.
“Oh, Jenny my dear-” she said.
Jenny turned very slowly. There was only one thought in her mind. She said,
“It isn’t true. It-it can’t be true-not Garsty-”
Mrs. Forbes drove on to the house and beyond it. She put the car away, drew a long breath of the something accomplished something done sort, gathered up her parcels, locked the garage, and made her way to the front door. It was open, and Carter stood there peering out.
“Oh, ma’am,” she said, “-oh, ma’am, I’d have managed to keep it from them, because that was what I thought you’d want. But oh dear, what a dreadful thing!”‘
Mrs. Forbes was not paying very much attention. Carter was an emotional creature-it didn’t do to take too much notice of her. She came into the lighted hall and began to undo her coat. The lamp in the ceiling shone down upon her and showed a very handsome woman. Not young-she owned to being over fifty, but she was very well preserved. Her two boys had been born with only a year between them when she was twenty-eight, the two little girls not for fourteen years, during which time Major Forbes had been in the Army-though what use he could possibly be, she never pretended to understand. When he did return he was even more absent-minded than he had been before he went. He was Colonel Forbes now, that was all there was to it. He slipped easily enough into the life of the village, was on terms of politeness with his wife, of vague affection for his children and for Jenny. He had died unobtrusively two years before, and his eldest son Mac reigned in his stead.
Carter continued to obtrude her excitement.
“Oh, ma’am,” she said, “you could have knocked me down with a feather-you could indeed! I don’t know when I’ve had such a turn! Right at our door as you may say!”
“What are you talking about, Carter? Not the children?”
Carter was at once shocked and impressed by the calmness of her voice.
“Oh, no ma’am! Oh my goodness, no! I couldn’t have met you like this if there had been anything wrong with them.”
“Well, what is it?” Mrs. Forbes was a carefully controlled woman, but the control was wearing thin. “For goodness sake, Carter-what’s the matter with you? If you’ve got anything to say, say it! Oh, I got that stuff for Meg and Joyce-it will make up very nicely, I think. I’ll go down and see Miss Garstone about it in the morning, or she can come up here. Yes, that’ll be best.”
“Oh, ma’am, you don’t know-Miss Garstone won’t never make no more dresses! Not a shred of hope-that’s what the doctor told Mrs. Maggs when she asked him. She’ll go out tonight or in the early hours, he said. Miss Adamson-”
Mrs. Forbes turned. She had reached the foot of the stairs, but she turned and came back.
“What are you talking about?”
Carter had her handkerchief out. She sniffed and choked a sob.
“It’s Miss Garstone,” she said. “Went into the village this morning same as she has time out of mind and nobody thinking anything about it, and when Jim Stokes come home at noon he found her-”
“Found her?”
“Yes, he did, poor boy, and it was a shock to him. He didn’t try and move her, but he biked back to the village-he’s a sensible boy-and they fetched Dr. Williams and Miss Adamson and they brought her home. And Miss Adamson she stayed with Jenny.”
Mrs. Forbes stood where she had turned. It was a shock. She stood there assembling all her force to meet it. Then she said,
“The children don’t know?”
Carter hesitated to avert, if possible, the cloud of anger which she could see sweeping up.
“Oh, ma’am, it wasn’t me-it wasn’t indeed! Mrs. Hunt she looked in to give me the last news, knowing I’d be interested. And Meg she come peeping round the door in the middle, and what Meg knows Joyce will know, there’s no getting from it. And it isn’t as if you could keep it from them-”
“Oh, be quiet, Carter!” Mrs. Forbes struck in with a sense of resolute strength. “I gather that the children know. I must go down there at once. It’s a nuisance-I’ve just put the car away, but it’s not worth getting it out again. I may be bringing Jenny back with me-I’ll see. Get the bed made in the little room next the children’s. Oh, and be on the look out for the telephone, because I’ll ring up when I know what’s happening.” As she spoke she came down the hall and picked up a flashlight from the table. As she finished speaking she was already at the front door. A moment later it fell to behind her with a resounding clang that echoed through the house.
Two little girls sprang from the top of the stairs and raced down them. They each put an arm round Carter and tugged her out of the hall and into the study.
“She’s gone down there!”
“She said she was going!”
“We heard her, so you needn’t mind saying!”
“Is she bringing Jenny back?”
“She said she was going to!”
“Jenny will have to come if she says so!”
“Oh, yes, she’ll have to come!”
They hung on Carter and hopped while they spoke. When she tried to make herself heard they pulled her round and round about.
“I’ve got to get her bed ready. Meg-Joyce-leave go of me! I’ve got to get on. Oh, my goodness-what’s that?”
They froze where they stood, two little girls in white nightgowns with plaited hair, and Carter elderly and fat, all three of them possessed with the same fear. There was a dead silence. Everything in the house seemed to hold its breath.
Meg moved first. She whirled about and stamped with her bare foot on the carpet.
“You made it up! You pretended to hear something.”
“Did you? Did you, Carter?”
“No, I didn’t. You children will be the death of me. I’m sure I thought I heard your mother. And if it wasn’t her, we may be thankful, for she’d never understand the plague you children can be. You’re not like it with her, and I don’t know why you should be like it with me. Off to bed and no more nonsense!”
Mrs. Forbes stood in the dark and waited for her sight to clear. In a moment she had decided not to put on the lamp, and had begun to cross the open space before the house. It was not really dark. There was a moon behind those clouds which hurried in a wind she could not feel. She saw the racing clouds, and they meant no more to her than a rising wind that might or might not bring rain.
She entered the darkness of the drive. Her finger went out to the switch of the lamp and stopped short of it. No, she could manage. She kept her thoughts on finding her way. Time enough to think what she would find on the other side of the road when she got there.
She came out through the open gateway and crossed the road. There was a light in Miss Garstone’s bedroom. Then it was true. She did not know that she had doubted it until that moment. If it was true, how did it affect her-and hers-the boys? She saw them suddenly, vividly, Mac- and Alan. But her mind was on Mac, her thought was full of him. He must be safe-safe. She opened the door of the house and went in.
Mrs. Forbes walked up the crooked stairs with her firm step. The door of Miss Garstone’s bedroom stood open. She saw what there was to be seen-Jenny and Miss Adamson and Miss Garstone, and two of them were alive. And the third was a dead woman. Curiously enough, she didn’t know whether that was a bad thing or a good one. It meant a change, but there are always changes. How the change would work out, she didn’t know. Something rose up in her fiercely. She would see to it that the working out should be as she had planned. She spoke Jenny’s name and came forward into the room.
“Jenny-”
Jenny turned. She wasn’t crying. Mrs. Forbes would have thought it more natural if she had been. She said, “She’s gone,” and she said it quite steadily. Miss Adamson would have shared Mrs. Forbes’ thought if she had not seen what she had seen and what she would never forget -Jenny’s look when she came in and found her alone with her dead.