never called it “home”; and had emphasized
unnecessarily, for a well-bred woman, our “great
kindness” in coming down to stay so long with
her. Another time, in answer to my futile compliment
about the “stately rooms,” she said quietly,
“It is an enormous house for so small a party;
but I stay here very little, and only till I get it
straight again.” The three of us were going
up the great staircase to bed as this was said, and,
not knowing quite her meaning, I dropped the subject.
It edged delicate ground, I felt. Frances added
no word of her own. It now occurred to me abruptly
that “stay” was the word made use of, when
“live” would have been more natural.
How insignificant to recall! Yet why did they
suggest themselves just at this moment ...?
And, on going to Frances’s room to make sure
she was not nervous or lonely, I realized abruptly,
that Mrs. Franklyn, of course, had talked with her
in a confidential sense that I, as a mere visiting
brother, could not share. Frances had told me
nothing. I might easily have wormed it out of
her, had I not felt that for us to discuss further
our hostess and her house merely because we were under
the roof together, was not quite nice or loyal.
“I’ll call you, Bill, if I’m scared,”
she had laughed as we parted, my room being just across
the big corridor from her own. I had fallen asleep,
thinking what in the world was meant by “getting
it straight again.”
And now in my antechamber to the library, on the second
morning, sitting among piles of foolscap and sheets
of spotless blotting-paper, all useless to me, these
slight hints came back and helped to frame the big,
vague Shadow I have mentioned. Up to the neck
in this Shadow, almost drowned, yet just treading
water, stood the figure of my hostess in her walking
costume. Frances and I seemed swimming to her
aid. The Shadow was large enough to include both
house and grounds, but farther than that I could not
see.... Dismissing it, I fell to reading my purloined
book again. Before I turned another page, however,
another startling detail leaped out at me: the
figure of Mrs. Franklyn in the Shadow was not living.
It floated helplessly, like a doll or puppet that has
no life in it. It was both pathetic and dreadful.
Any one who sits in reverie thus, of course, may see
similar ridiculous pictures when the will no longer
guides construction. The incongruities of dreams
are thus explained. I merely record the picture
as it came. That it remained by me for several
days, just as vivid dreams do, is neither here nor
there. I did not allow myself to dwell upon it.
The curious thing, perhaps, is that from this moment
I date my inclination, though not yet my desire, to
leave. I purposely say “to leave.”
I cannot quite remember when the word changed to that
aggressive, frantic thing which is escape.
