Rudyard Kipling

“ Baxter's conscience and Agnes Moultrie, gone mad in the well-lit bedroom that waited me. These reflections secured me a night during which I rediscovered how, from purely mental causes, a man can be physically sick; but the sickness was bliss compared to my dreams when the birds waked. On my departure, M'Leod gave me a beautiful narwhal's horn, much as a nurse gives a child sweets for being brave at a dentist's. ”

“ My one fear was that the blasting gust of depression would return—the surest way, of course, to bring it. I lay awake till dawn, breathing quickly and sweating lightly, beneath what De Quincey inadequately describes as "the oppression of inexpiable guilt." Now as soon as the lovely day was broken, I fell into the most terrible of all dreams—that joyous one in which all past evil has not only been wiped out of our lives, but has never been committed; and in the very bliss of our assured innocence, before our loves shriek and change countenance, we wake to the day we have earned. ”

“ You felt the depression very soon. It is simply frightful in that bedroom sometimes. What do you think it is—bewitchment? In Greece, where I was a little girl, it might have been; but not in England, do you think? Or do you?"
"Cheer up, Thea. It will all come right," he insisted.
"No, papa." She shook her dark head. "Nothing is right while it comes."
"It is nothing that we ourselves have ever done in our lives that I will swear to you," said Mrs. M'Leod suddenly. "And we have changed our servants several times. So we know it is not them." ”

“ Despair upon despair, misery upon misery, fear after fear, each causing their distinct and separate woe, packed in upon me for an unrecorded length of time, until at last they blurred together, and I heard a click in my brain like the click in the ear when one descends in a diving bell, and I knew that the pressures were equalised within and without, and that, for the moment, the worst was at an end. ”

“ I went straight from that house to Burry Mills Hydro, keen for the first time in my life on playing golf, which is guaranteed to occupy the mind. Baxter had taken me a room communicating with his own, and after lunch introduced me to a tall, horse-headed elderly lady of decided manners, whom a white-haired maid pushed along in a bath-chair through the park-like grounds of the Hydro. She was Miss Mary Moultrie, and she coughed and cleared her throat just like Baxter. ”

“ She's as hard as a rock—Mary. Always was. She won't die."
We led her out on to the platform like a blind woman, and so got her into the fly. The half-hour crawl to Holmescroft was the most racking experience of the day. M'Leod had obeyed my instructions. There was no one visible in the house or the gardens; and the front door stood open.
Miss Mary rose from beside her sister, stepped forth first, and entered the hall.
"Come, Bessie," she cried.
"I daren't. Oh, I daren't."
"Come!" Her voice had altered. I felt Baxter start. "There's nothing to be afraid of." ”

“ Then my brain telegraphed that it was the forerunner of a swift-striding gloom which there was yet time to escape if I would force my thoughts away from it, as a man leaping for life forces his body forward and away from the fall of a wall. ”

“ Holmescroft was a large, two-storied, low, creeper-covered residence. A verandah at the south side gave on to a garden and two tennis courts, separated by a tasteful iron fence from a most park-like meadow of five or six acres, where two Jersey cows grazed. Tea was ready in the shade of a promising copper beech, and I could see groups on the lawn of young men and maidens appropriately clothed, playing lawn tennis in the sunshine.
"A pretty scene, ain't it?" said Mr. M'Leod. "My good lady's sitting under the tree, and that's my little girl in pink on the far court. ”

“ What you did, Mary, misled four people into thinking you—you meant to do away with yourself."
"Isn't one suicide in the family enough? Oh God, help and pity us! You couldn't have believed that!" she cried.
"The evidence was complete. Now, don't you think," Baxter's finger wagged under her nose—"can't you think that poor Aggie did the same thing at Holmescroft when she fell out of the window?"
"She had the same throat," said Miss Elizabeth. "Exactly the same symptoms. Don't you remember, Mary?"
"Which was her bedroom?" I asked of Baxter in an undertone. ”

“ It was a coolish morning, but we preferred to breakfast in the south verandah. The forenoon we spent in the garden, pretending to play games that come out of boxes, such as croquet and clock golf. But most of the time we drew together and talked. The young man who knew all about South American railways took Miss M'Leod for a walk in the afternoon, and at five M'Leod thoughtfully whirled us all up to dine in town. ”

“ Come down to Holmescroft for an hour—for half an hour and satisfy yourself."
"Of what? You don't understand. I see the house every day-every night. I am always there in spirit—waking or sleeping. I couldn't face it in reality."
"But you must," I said. "If you go there in the spirit the greater need for you to go there in the flesh. Go to your sister's room once more, and see the window—I nearly fell out of it myself. It's—it's awfully low and dangerous. That would convince you," I pleaded.
"Yet Aggie had slept in that room for years," she interrupted. ”

“ We had been practically drunk since nightfall, and grew incoherent on water and milk.
"I like that Baxter," said M'Leod. "He's a sharp man. The death wasn't in the house, but he ran it pretty close, ain't it?"
"And the joke of it is that he supposes I want to buy the place from you," I said. "Are you selling?"
"Not for twice what I paid for it—now," said M'Leod. "I'll keep you in furs all your life, but not our Holmescroft."
"No—never our Holmescroft," said Miss M'Leod. "We'll ask him here on Tuesday, mamma." They squeezed each other's hands. ”

“ M'Leod interrupted. "It is not our trouble. They have told each other now."
"Do you think, then," said Miss M'Leod, "that those two, the living ones, were actually told something—upstairs—in your in the room?"
"I can't say. At any rate they were made happy, and they ate a big tea afterwards. As your father says, it is not our trouble any longer—thank God!"
"Amen!" said M'Leod. "Now, Thea, let us have some music after all these months. 'With mirth, thou pretty bird,' ain't it? You ought to hear that."
And in the half-lighted hall, Thea sang an old English song that I had never heard before. ”

“ But no death has ever taken place in the house, so far as we were concerned. You can make yourself quite easy on that point. Mr. M'Leod's extra thousand for what you called the 'clean bill of health' was something toward my cousins' estate when we sold. It was my duty as their lawyer to get it for them—at any cost to my own feelings."
I know better than to argue when the English talk about their duty. So I agreed with my solicitor.
"Their sister's death must have been a great blow to your cousins," I went on. The bath-chair was behind me.
"Unspeakable," Baxter whispered. ”

“ He had told me at tea that these were the days of financial specialisation.
"I think it went off beautifully, my dear," said Mr. M'Leod to his wife; and to me: "You feel all right now, ain't it? Of course you do."
Mrs. M'Leod surged across the gravel. Her husband skipped nimbly before her into the south verandah, turned a switch, and all Holmescroft was flooded with light.
"You can do that from your room also," he said as they went in. "There is something in money, ain't it?" ”

“ M'Leod was quite willing to enter into the game of the pretended purchase, but did not see how it would help if I knew Baxter.
"He's the only living soul I can get at who was connected with Holmescroft," I said.
"Ah! Living soul is good," said M'Leod. "At any rate our little girl will be pleased that you are still interested in us. Won't you come down some day this week?" ”

“ Baxter waited hand and foot on his cousins till five o'clock, trying, as I saw, to atone for his treatment of the dead sister. Miss Mary ordered him about like a dog.
"I warned you it would be dull," he said when we met in the smoking-room.
"It's tremendously interesting," I said. "But how about a look round the links?"
"Unluckily damp always affects my eldest cousin. I've got to buy her a new bronchitis-kettle. Arthurs broke her old one yesterday." ”

“ That is one thing true," she nodded. "And I might have been killed as—perhaps Aggie was killed."
"In that case your own sister and cousin and maid would have said you had committed suicide, Miss Moultrie. Come down to Holmescroft, and go over the place just once."
"You are lying," she said quite quietly. "You don't want me to come down to see a window. It is something else. I warn you we are Evangelicals. We don't believe in prayers for the dead. ”