Franklyn seemed always busy about something or other, and never

interfered with us except to propose motoring, tea in another part of

the lawn, and so forth. She flitted everywhere, preoccupied, yet

apparently doing nothing. The house engulfed her rather. No visitor

called. For one thing, she was not supposed to be back from abroad

yet; and for another, I think, the neighbourhood—her husband’s

neighbourhood—was puzzled by her sudden cessation from good works.

Brigades and temperance societies did not ask to hold their meetings

in the big hall, and the vicar arranged the school-treats in another’s

field without explanation. The full-length portrait in the

dining-room, and the presence of the housekeeper with the ‘burnt’

backhair, indeed, were the only reminders of the man who once had

lived here. Mrs. Marsh retained her place in silence, well-paid

sinecure as it doubtless was, yet with no hint of that suppressed

disapproval one might have expected from her. Indeed there was nothing

positive to disapprove, since nothing ‘worldly’ entered grounds or

building. In her master’s lifetime she had been another ‘brand

snatched from the burning’, and it had then been her custom to give

vociferous ‘testimony’ at the revival meetings where he adorned the

platform and led in streams of prayer. I saw her sometimes on the

stairs, hovering, wandering, half-watching and half-listening, and the

idea came to me once that this woman somehow formed a link with the

departed influence of her bigoted employer. She, alone among us,

belonged to the house, and looked at home there. When I saw her

talking—oh, with such correct and respectful mien—to Mrs. Franklyn,

I had the feeling that for all her unaggressive attitude, she yet

exerted some influence that sought to make her mistress stay in the

building for ever—live there. She would prevent her escape, prevent

‘getting it straight again,’ thwart somehow her will to freedom, if

she could. The idea in me was of the most fleeting kind. But another

time, when I came down late at night to get a book from the library

antechamber, and found her sitting in the hall—alone—the impression

left upon me was the reverse of fleeting. I can never forget the

vivid, disagreeable effect it produced upon me. What was she doing

there at half-past eleven at night, all alone in the darkness? She was

sitting upright, stiff, in a big chair below the clock. It gave me a

turn. It was so incongruous and odd. She rose quietly as I turned the

corner of the stairs, and asked me respectfully, her eyes cast down as

usual, whether I had finished with the library, so that she might lock

up. There was no more to it than that; but the picture stayed with

me—unpleasantly.

These various impressions came to me at odd moments, of course, and

not in a single sequence as I now relate them. I was hard at work

before three days were past, not writing, as explained,.but reading,

making notes, and gathering material from the library for future use.

It was in chance moments that these curious flashes came, catching me

unawares with a touch of surprise that sometimes made me start. For

they proved that my under-mind was still conscious of the Shadow, and

that far away out of sight lay the cause of it that left me with a

vague unrest, unsettled, seeking to ‘nest’ in a place that did not

want me. Only when this deeper part knows harmony, perhaps, can good

brain work result, and my inability to write was thus explained.

Certainly, I was always seeking for something here I could not

find—an explanation that continually evaded me.