Nevertheless, it did seem to her that her manner had conveyed something to Miss Geary. The old lady seemed so much more alert, so much nearer to earth than usual. She did not look down at Clare from the cloudy heights of her plateaux; she watched her very closely with brown eyes somehow less dim, quick to observe and eager to penetrate. She nodded jerkily, as if understanding, but when she spoke it was not about Jennifer at all. It seemed that it was a different matter that had quickened her feelings.
“I've had a letter from one of my cousins,” she said. “One of my cousins in Cornwall. It came by this afternoon's post. She mentions something rather odd. It seems that Rachel Sterne is in Cornwall. She's staying at a hotel in Truro. My cousin's seen her. She met her by chance and she writes that she thinks there's something wrong. Rachel appears to be extremely upset. I can't quite make out what it is, but it seems that she isn't coming back to Brackenbine. As if there has been some trouble, some quarrel.... You know Brackenbine is the son's, not hers...?”
“A quarrel?” Clare repeated faintly. There had come back into her mind a momentary scene in the studio a long time ago. A few grave words, sad, though spoken with a smile— 'If the itch to create were not a sin of pride.... But we can cease. Go our ways and sin no more.' Miss Geary's speculation had hit the truth: Rachel Sterne had recognised that her son's art was evil. She had fled from it, and in the guarded wording of her note, Clare now saw, she had tried to warn her against Niall.
“Yes,” Miss Geary was saying. “I should be so sorry if it were so. But it was a very odd life for them to live there. I don't see how they could have gone on indefinitely....”
It seemed a very long time after supper until the Under−matron had finished attending to Clare and Jennifer, fussing over them, making them comfortable for the night, as she called it, and when at last she went, it was only to impose a further period of suspense on Clare. She paused at the door, looked rather severely at the book Clare was holding, and said:
“You can keep your light on till Matron looks in, but mind you put it out then!”
So Clare fretted another hour or more until the Matron herself appeared. At times in that long anguish she could have laughed wildly at her meek obedience to the familiar, petty rules and regulations of Paston Hall while she awaited execution of a capital sentence—his or her own. But she answered the Matron, when finally she had made her visit, with a calm 'Good−night', and when, an hour later, she slipped out of bed, she had a firm control of herself. Her plan was clear and she had appraised what she might achieve. She would not let herself dwell on her one hope of salvation so that it grew out of proportion to the definite and known dangers she and Jennifer were in. One thing was proved: at the worst she would win the oblivion of real death for both of them. Niall, with all his art, all the unimaginable powers of darkness that he could draw on, could not keep his slaves from escaping into that last freedom. Margaret Raines had proved that. But Margaret had rebelled in her heart alone. Clare had seen more of Niall's art and understood the process of his doll−making better: she saw that the hand, too, might rebel and perhaps win a victory that would give life.
She put on her dressing−gown, put her bare feet into slippers, which were more indoor shoes than slippers, with buckles that held them firmly on, then forced herself to stand for a full minute, listening intently by the open window. The school was quiet, and there was no light falling from any window on the side where she looked out. She groped back across the Sanatorium to Jennifer's cot, listened to her regular breathing for a moment; then, after one brief caress of the younger girl's hair, returned to the window and quietly raised the sash.
The night was overcast, but not absolutely dark; enough faint moonlight filtered through the clouds to show Clare her way round the building. Lights were showing behind the curtains of some rooms on the upper floors and she went cautiously, taking advantage of the cover the shrubs afforded until she could strike across the grounds to the little beech copse by the wall. She found herself trembling, not from cold or fear, but from the simple exertion of walking after her fever and the lying in bed. To climb over the wall, she knew, would task her strength now, but it was the only way: the main gates of Paston Hall would be locked, and though there was a way out to the road through the gardener's cottage garden, fear of the dog prevented her attempting that. She set herself deliberately to control the shaking of her limbs and to save her strength by moving much more slowly and steadily than her anxiety urged. Even with that deliberation she had to make two attempts before she could gain the top of the wall behind the great beech−tree. She sat there several minutes, resting before lowering herself down on the Brackenbine side.
She was more familiar with Brackenbine grounds now than she had been on the two former occasions when she had been over the wall, and she had only to keep going straight through the woods, uphill, to reach the drive that wound round the slope from the gates to the house; then the house would lie some way to her left along the drive. With a good deal of bruising and scratching of her ankles and feet she made her way through the wood, and once on the drive, she stood and listened before going on, for she knew Niall's habit of ranging about the estate by night—indeed, her plan was partly built on that—and the noise she had made in pushing through the wood had filled her with fear that he might intercept her. Nothing stirred, however, except the branches in the slight breeze, and she carried on, stepping very cautiously, towards the house.
It was in darkness. She saw that thankfully: it meant that Niall was in truth out, as she had hoped, for he would not have been in bed at this hour if he had been at home. Groping forward to feel the wall for a guide, she moved to the right, round the side of the house, by a slippery little path overgrown with high laurels. It was pitch−dark and smelt of damp and decaying leaves and earth in perpetual shade where nothing could grow but the evergreens. The path sloped so steeply that she had to feel for boughs of the laurels and haul herself up by them. It was an agonising, slow business, and she felt she could have walked two miles by the road with less fatigue and in less time, but at last she came out under the oaks again, with the gutter of the house no higher than her knees. She sat and rested there again, listening all the time for some sound above her own alarmingly loud breathing. But all the slight sounds that her ear could catch seemed to her only the natural noises of the night woods.
For the next part of her enterprise she took off her shoes: she had seen before how leather soles slipped on the tiles. Pressing with the palms of her hands and her bare feet she managed better, and very painfully and slowly, crept up the slope of the roof until she could get a grip on the skylight frame. As she had expected, the skylight was open a foot or two at the bottom, and, remembering how she had done it before with Niall, she was able to wriggle herself sideways through and drop down into the studio.
She waited until her breathing became easier, though no pausing could quieten the heavy thumping of her heart, and then moved across the dark room, feeling her way between tables and boxes and all the miscellaneous litter towards the fireplace where a few embers were still alive. Her first care was then to secure the door. The key was in the lock on the inside, where she had always seen it. She turned it, and for additional security dragged one of the armchairs up and wedged its back under the long iron key. There were piles of books and papers in the corner by the fireplace; she groped and tore a piece which she twisted into a spill, and then, kneeling, blew on the embers until she had a flame. It showed her where the lamp was, and with a second spill she lit it and carried it into the middle of the room, setting it down on the end of Niall's bench.