THE TERRACES OF NIGHT Page 12

  ‘I know—I feel idiotically young just now!’ she admitted. ‘I can’t even remember I’m married, sometimes—it gives me quite a shock to turn round and find George in the room, do you know? It feels somehow all wrong, since we came here. So much so, that he’s sleeping in the little dressing-room these days!’

  She laughed lightly, but an odd little fear plucked at me—why, I don’t know. Deliberately I steered the conversation away from personalities by turning and looking at the house, lying back like a huge white sleeping cat among its dark encircling trees.

  ‘Funny’ I said. ‘I can’t think now why the place ever looked grey to me. The first time I saw it, from the hill by Freyne, I could have sworn it was a grey house—and much larger than it actually is.’

  Lina turned and looked at me and I blinked, startled. For a fleeting minute it seemed to me that another girl, a much younger girl, gleamed out at me from the depths of her hazel eyes as she answered—an answer so surprising that I almost fell off the wall as I heard it!

  ‘But—it is grey? Grey stones, grey walls—a great grey prison. . . .’

  I gaped at her and she paused, then laughed, oddly, confusedly . . . and it was Lina again who looked at me from the hazel eyes in Lina’s face!

  ‘Grey?’ she said surprisingly . . . and instantly I knew that, as before on that first evening, she did not know that she had spoken! ‘I don’t know what you mean, Frank? It’s white—a typical old-world white house.’

  ‘A minute ago you said it looked grey.’

  I spoke snappishly, a little frightened—Lina drew a hand across her eyes and answered confusedly.

  ‘Did I? Well. . . . I remember I did get that impression—that it was grey—when I saw it first from Freyne Hill. And yes, the whole place looked somehow bigger. . . .’

  With one accord we turned and looked round at the house, as if for reassurement—and as we stared, we gave a simultaneous gasp of astonishment, for there, walking quietly up the wide sweep of the drive before the house, clear in the golden afternoon sunshine, was the black-clad figure of a nun!

  Now there was but one entrance, as far as I knew, to Nannory House and its grounds, and that one the gate on which Lina and I had mounted guard to wait for George, at least ten minutes ago, during which time but one single human being had passed us going along the road—a solitary motor-cyclist, snorting along in a cloud of floury dust! Yet there the nun was, walking along, solid, obvious, a short little stout figure, her hands folded before her in the voluminous folds of her habit, her head bent—yet despite the stolid homeliness of the figure, in the depths of my being I shivered, cold, feeling the swift touch of an ominous deep-seated fear!

  ‘Well, I’m blessed!’ Lina ejaculated. ‘Where on earth did she get in?’

  ‘There must be some other way in,’ I said hastily. Lina shook her head doubtfully.

  ‘Only a gate out to the water-meadows at the back—and that’s usually padlocked. I can’t make it out. Still, she’s far too solid for a ghost, and it’s six o’clock, not at all ghost time!’

  Her bright laugh rang out—yet somehow I wished she would not laugh. Despite my own common sense that jeered at me, I did not like the look of that squat determined figure marching steadily in the sunlight towards the tranquil house. Lina jumped down from the wall, setting her brief blue frock into place with an expert twist.

  ‘I expect she’s come for a subscription,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know there was a convent near, and I never like nuns much somehow. They always frighten me a little. Goodness knows why! But still, I’d better go and deal with her. . . .’ She was gone, running up the drive after the solitary black figure, and on a sudden impulse I ran after her.

  The figure of the nun was now level with the front door, and obviously, one expected her to mount the steps, ring the bell, and await an answer. But she did not reach a hand to the bell at all! The door stood open, and without a pause she walked calmly through it, straight into the house. Lina flung me an indignant glance over her shoulder as she ran, and I heard her splutter something about ‘darned cheek’ . . . neck to neck we reached the front door and ran into the hall. But it was empty, from end to end! Lina dashed out into the veranda, while I made for the kitchen quarters, but in both cases we drew a blank. There was nobody in the bedrooms, nobody in the garden, except Menken, asleep in the potting-shed. We met, after a final end-to-end search of the garden, in the drive again before the front door, and Lina gave a vexed laugh as her eyes met mine.

  ‘I’m damned!’ she said frankly. ‘She was there, wasn’t she? We both saw her there, solid enough! A fat little black nun stumping up the drive—either we both drank too much gin and ginger-beer for lunch, and are seeing things, or we’ve got hallucinations, and are going dippy. What do you think?’

  I was not prepared, as a matter of fact, to say precisely what I actually thought—if, indeed, my thoughts were sufficiently coherent to express in speech at all—but I was saved from answering by the chug-chug of the car, and its snorting sweep into the drive, bearing a beaming George at the wheel, the usual assortment of parcels behind him, and a stranger, a perky red-bearded little man in spectacles, at his side. Leaping out, George introduced the stranger with a flourish of satisfaction.

  ‘Lina—Frank! This is old John Fraser, one of my old school friends, now the doctor in Freyne—just fancy! Ran into him in the High Street and brought him back to dinner. . . . Come on in, old man, and Lina will mix you the finest cocktail you ever tasted!’

  Dr Fraser—of whom I remembered dimly hearing George speak once or twice in the old days—proved a dry pleasant little man, with red-brown eyes like a squirrel’s to match his squirrel-red wispy beard, and a quick wit. We three men yarned pleasantly over cigarettes as Lina mixed the cocktails, and in the ‘reminiscing’ that inevitably took place as he and George exchanged news of their respective lives and adventures since their last meeting, the curious incident of the nun was for the moment forgotten. But only for the moment. Later on, when we sat in the mellow candlelight over dinner, enjoying yet another of the amazingly successful impromptu meals that Lina and Menken between them seemed so successful in providing, Lina suddenly introduced the subject.

  ‘Such a funny thing happened today, George,’ she said. ‘A nun came—begging, I suppose—while we were waiting for you by the gate, and had the cheek to walk slap into the house without ringing or anything! Frank and I were after her almost at once, but we couldn’t find her anywhere—I suppose she knew the house, thought I wasn’t in, and went off quickly. But she must have run like a hare to have done it. . . .’

  Fraser stroked his thin beard.

  ‘A nun?’ he said reflectively. Then laughed. ‘You can call yourself lucky you saw her in broad daylight, Mrs Meredith, or the neighbours’ll be saying you saw the ghost of Nannory House!’

  ‘A nun—oh, is the ghost a nun?’ demanded Lina, bright-eyed and excited. ‘Oh, do you know the story—go on and tell us!’

  She propped her chin on her cupped hands, elbows on the table, and stared eagerly into the little man’s face—across the table I looked at George; he was frowning faintly, but there was no avoiding it. And truth to tell, in my heart of hearts, I too wanted to hear the story—even if the telling of it brought the Shadow a little nearer.

  ‘Oh, yes—the ghost is a nun. The old Abbess of the place—didn’t you know that this house is built upon the foundations of an old nunnery—that’s why it’s called “Nannory House”?’ I smiled a smile of secret self-satisfaction as the little man continued. ‘Oh, yes, there’s a story, and rather a good one, too. I’ll tell you, if you like.’ He paused, lighted a cigarette, and plunged straightway into his tale.

  ‘They say that this was once a great and famous nunnery, headed by a grim and implacable old Abbess, who ruled over her sisterhood with a rod of steel. Now there arrived one day among the nuns a young girl—Alicia Maltravers was her name—sent to the convent for family reasons. This girl had lands and money, and
the Abbess was only too pleased to collar her and her property for the Abbey . . . but man proposes and love disposes, and it seems Alicia Maltravers was fated for love and not the veil; anyway, despite the strict rules of the convent, love came to her, swift and overwhelming. One Roger d’Enquen, a Norman-born lord, who was staying in the neighbourhood, saw her, according to old traditions, one morning out with the other Sisters, gathering rushes on the marshes, while he rode by to the hawking—and it was the world well lost for love between them, from that moment onwards! At any rate, Alicia was missing one night from her accustomed place among the Sisters, when they filed in to take their places for their meagre supper in the refectory . . . did you know, by the way, that this room where we’re sitting is actually part of the old refectory?.?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lina mechanically. ‘I knew! Go on.’

  I stirred uneasily. I did not like her tone, nor did I feel easy at the trend of the tale, yet there was no way of stopping it. The little doctor went on.

  ‘When search was made they found a torn scrap of her grey nun’s habit clinging to the coping wall beside the great locked gate, where she must have climbed over into her lover’s arms and away. The scandal was terrific, since the Maltravers family were well known at Court, and Roger d’Enquen was not only already married, but a Catholic to boot, so that no marriage was possible to gild the pill of scandal for the family’s swallowing! The lovers fled abroad, and disappeared—but the girl’s family never got over their rage and chagrin at the disgrace to their name, and at last they brought power to bear to arraign the Abbess before the courts of the day on a charge of laxity, or alternatively, of accepting a bribe from Roger d’Enquen to let the girl escape.

  ‘They could “cook” a case, if it paid them, as well in the Middle Ages as today, and despite the brave defence that the stern old lady put up for herself, she was dismissed from her high post; her nuns were scattered abroad among other sisterhoods, and her beloved convent taken over by one of the Maltravers who fancied it as a country seat. But she did not live to endure her fate for long. A few months afterwards she died, broken-hearted, chafing bitterly, furiously, a fierce old lioness driven from her lair . . . and as she died, in her rage and despair she sent a message out into the wide world, to the girl whose rash impulsive action had brought ruin upon her and her community.’

  ‘What was the message?’ said Lina in a low voice. Vaguely I noticed, as she spoke that just beyond the window stood old Menken, his deep-set eyes shining uncannily bright in his lean handsome old face as he listened . . . oddly enough, it did not strike me as strange or unusual that he should be listening to the quaint old tale with the same strained, almost painful interest as the rest of us.

  ‘The message ran something like this,’ said the doctor. ‘That Alicia Maltravers, wherever she might wander, bore with her the curse of a broken vow—and that some day sooner or later she must return and face her punishment.’

  ‘What,’ said Lina, ‘was the punishment of a nun who had broken her vows?’

  A voice spoke from the window, and with one accord we turned sharply, a cold chill of superstitious fear catching at each of our hearts—at least I knew it caught mine!

  ‘Death!’ said the voice. It was Menken speaking, and for a brief second we all held still, frightened. For it did not seem—just for a moment—as if it was Menken speaking at all, but a man much younger; a man with a voice resonant, cultured, beautiful. . . . It was Lina who broke the awkward pause, springing to her feet, with a little embarrassed laugh.

  ‘Really, what a jumpy lot of idiots you’ve made us, Dr Fraser!’ But her laughter sounded oddly strained. ‘You’ve even got my darling Menken “all het up”, as the saying is. Did you come to tell us coffee was ready, Menken? All right, we’ll come out.’

  She swept out of the French windows to the veranda, and like a shadow the old man faded away into the darkness. With one accord we dropped all discussion of the story of Nannory House, and talked almost feverishly of other things; the weather, the state of the crops—politics, art, books. . . . Yet I think all of us, in our secret hearts, were still pondering, nervously, uneasily, the doctor’s story. Vaguely frightened, yet unwilling to admit that we were frightened. . . . . I know now that I was; that the telling of the story had, as it were, brought something nearer to us, as the lighting of a flame will bring wild things from the woods to prowl and hover about it. With all my heart I wished that George, and above all Lina, had never come to Nannory House!

  I watched Lina furtively as, the coffee made and distributed, she wandered absently away upon the veranda, head bent, her hands clasped behind her, the cigarette between her lips a red spark in the gloom. Up and down and back again, she paced the old cloister, her white gown rippling, filmy as a moth’s wing, fluttering about her—up and down the cloister where those gentle prisoned women had walked so many hundred years ago, while George and little Fraser yarned, and I lay back listening and watching . . . and suddenly, as I watched, something happened! Lina paused to light, after the shocking habit of the confirmed cigarette-smoker, a fresh cigarette from the stub of her old one—and as she stood a few feet away from us, just beyond the circle of lamplight, her head bent over her hands, cupped to shelter the smouldering flame, it seemed to me that she changed, suddenly and horribly, and that a slender, grey-clad nun stood there, sobbing heartbrokenly, her face buried in her hands!

  The illusion—for so, of course it was, my bewildered mind told me—was so strong that I clutched the arm of my chair, staring, unable to speak. But still it seemed that the nun stood there and wept, and now another figure shaped itself out of the Shadows beyond her! A dark, hooded Thing, squat, grim, menacing. . . . With an involuntary cry of terror I sprang to my feet, and found the astonished eyes of my three friends upon me, and Lina, herself once more, amazed and laughing, a just-lighted cigarette between her fingers!

  ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ they all chorused in alarm. I could only mumble confusedly, and point along the veranda with, I admit, a very uncertain finger.

  ‘The nun again!’ I stuttered. ‘She’s gone—but she was standing just there. . . .’ For a moment Lina paused, and I fancied grew a little white as we eyed each other, but Fraser’s hearty laugh broke the tensity of the moment.

  ‘By Jove!’ he laughed. ‘You do pay me a compliment, if you see spooks in exact accordance with my story!’

  Mechanically I joined in the laughter against me—but despite all the jeerings I admit I had invited, my innermost soul told me that I had seen truly, that the fear I felt for Lina was real and desperate, and that I could do nothing to hinder or prevent that befalling which must befall, in due accordance with Fate! The net was closing slowly about us all, but chiefly, I knew, about Lina, and it was with a curious sinking of the heart, a feeling of premonition that I answered her blithe ‘good night’, and saw her white skirts flutter down the long room, up the stairs and away into the darkness above.

  The nights were beginning to draw in chilly, as September nights are apt to do, so on Lina’s departure to bed, we men moved the little table within doors, put a match to the piled logs in the deep brick fireplace, and resumed our talk in the mellow firelit gloom. The shadows gathered about us, as the night darkened outside, the logs glowed and faded slowly to red embers as George and Fraser talked, interested as only two long-parted friends can be in each other, and at last, weary, troubled, yet curiously wide awake, I got up, deciding to go to bed, and knocking out the dottle of my pipe against the overmantel, turned to say good night to George and Fraser. I turned, I say; the movement brought me round to face the long room, now lying deep in shadow but for the shallow gleam of our fire, and I gasped—at my gasp the two turned round, and I knew, from George’s leap to his feet, from the doctor’s quick-drawn breath of horror, that this time they too saw as I did!

  Down the stairs, a pale shadow against the gloom, Lina was coming—Lina walking slowly, mechanically, her eyes fixed and empty as those of a sleep-walke
r, her crossed hands held out before her as though tied together. She was barefoot and draped vaguely in white, her lovely hair hidden beneath a closely tied coif like headdress . . . for a single crazy moment I wondered whether, obeying some whimsical impulse, she had chosen to dress up as a ghostly nun to serve me out for my ‘panicking’, but as I stared, the brief impression fled in terror—for she was not alone!

  Just behind her came a hooded figure, dark and squat and menacing, one hand upon her shoulder, impelling her forward as a gaoler impels his victim . . . down the stairs, down the long room they came, without a sound, towards the veranda, moving with a hideous purposeful steadiness, when suddenly a figure sprang past us from the veranda where he must have lain in hiding, obeying who knows what strange dim instinct—old Menken!

  Past us, past the dim circle of fading firelight from which, like spectators, spell-bound, helpless, we watched the strange scene, he rushed, and for a dramatic second halted, staring at the advancing couple, the tranced pale figure and her grim captor—and then, as they still came steadily on, he did a thing for which I shall always honour him! For I (and I am, I trust, a man not altogether without valiance, as my war-record proves), I would not have dared so to challenge the burning eyes that gleamed, like hell-fires, in that shadowed face behind Lina’s shoulder! But he—he stepped forward, and seizing Lina by both arms, dragged her, literally it seems, from the grip of the ghostly fingers that were guiding her to the dark outdoors and God knows what mysterious death, and flung her behind him. Without a sound the girl crumpled and slid to the ground in a dead faint, but for the moment all our eyes were for Menken and the Thing he faced—that black-hooded Shadow in the garb of a nun, a gleaming rosary swinging from her waist.