She began to consider why Olivia should have left Underhill, and immediately the point which she had been at pains to dismiss again obtruded itself. It was not only the question of why she had left Underhill, but of why she had taken Joseph with her. She was going to a furnished house which was her own property. It had just been vacated, and was presumably in perfect order. What she would require was someone to cook for her, someone to wait upon her. Exactly how the service at Underhill had been divided she was not perfectly clear, but Anna, even in her present distracted state, was an extremely good cook. The meal of which they had that evening partaken was sufficient proof of this, and in the matter of personal attendance it would have seemed more likely, and certainly more suitable, that she should be preferred to Joseph. Yet it was Joseph who had been taken, and Anna who had been left.

It was some time before she rose and began her preparations for bed. They culminated, as always, in the substitution of the strong net which it was her practice to wear at night for the almost invisible one which controlled the neatly curled fringe by day. This accomplished, the blue dressing-gown trimmed with hand-made crochet was hung over the back of a convenient chair, the black felt slippers with their blue tufts placed side-by-side below, the bedside lamp switched on, the overhead light extinguished. It was her habit to read a passage of Scripture before she slept. She did so now. In the psalm of her selection there occurred a verse which she could not help considering extremely apposite – chiming in with her thoughts and indicating the firmness of her trust in what she called Providence. It ran:

‘When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.’

She read on, she closed the book, and laid it down. She switched off the bedside light and passed into the calm and healthful slumber to which she was accustomed.

In three other rooms the occupants slept or waked. Derek Burdon was one of those who slept. There was a weight upon his heart, upon his spirits. He had found himself unable to throw it off. The long, accustomed ease of his life at Underhill had been shattered. It had just gone on from one day to another without thought and without care. There was no need to exert himself, to plan, to struggle, to wonder what was going to happen next. Instead, there was money in his pocket and the ground agreeably firm beneath his feet. To retain all this he had only to be himself – to smile and make himself agreeable, to play the piano, to drive the car, to be the adopted nephew of two kind old dears. And now catastrophe – the sudden slash of violence cutting across the picture – Miss Cara horribly dead, Miss Olivia horribly changed. He had not seen that side of her before, and it shook him. Old ladies might be crotchety and particular – it was part of the game to soothe them down and keep them happy. But the naked fury with which Olivia Benevent had turned upon him was something quite beyond him to understand. It was as if she had stripped herself to the very bones. It was a thing quite out of nature. In its way it shocked him even more than the fact that Miss Cara was dead. There was a weight upon him, and it went down into his sleep and stayed there.

Anna had knelt and prayed. The tears ran down – words broke from her. Sometimes she leaned her forehead on the hands which clasped one another, straining. Sometimes she got up from her knees and paced the room, her lips moving, her breast heaving with sobs. She wore a very full cotton nightgown made from an ancestral pattern. There must have been seven or eight yards of stuff in it. It fell about her in classic folds, darkening the olive tint of her skin, whilst over all there floated the nimbus of her wild white hair. There came a time when she went to her bed and fell upon it, weeping into the pillow.

In the end she slept, and stood at the edge of a dream looking in upon it. Waking or sleeping, what she saw was the thing which she most feared to see. If she had been awake she could have shut her eyes and turned her head. She could have bidden her feet to carry her away from it. Her very terror would have speeded them. She would have run as you run when death is at your heels. But she was asleep. Her feet would not run, and her eyes would not close. And no good if they did, because the picture was there in her mind. You cannot close your eyes to your own thoughts, nor, however swiftly you run, can you out-distance them. She stood and looked upon her dream with open eyes and with a shrinking heart.

Candida had laid down her burden. The interminable hours of the day were done. Nobody and nothing could make her live them over again. They were gone, and they would not come back. She had talked the weight of them from her heart. It was just as if she had been straining every nerve to climb a hill and now she had come to the place where the path led down again. All she had to do was to set her feet upon it and let it take her where it would. She was almost too tired to think.

She must undress. Why? There was a glass of hot milk by the bedside. Anna – how kind – She had hardly eaten anything all day. She took the glass of milk in her hand and sat down by the fire. Drinking it was the last thing she was to remember.

Chapter Thirty-one

The morning came, and with it Anna in a flowered wrapper, her lips still swollen from yesterday’s weeping. She had slept uneasily and waked to a new and burdened day. She moved with weighted limbs, the tray she carried was heavy in her hand. She set it down, answered gravely when Miss Silver spoke to her, and went on her way. It took her to the room next door, where Candida should be sleeping, but when she knocked there was no answer. She had in one hand the cup of tea which she had taken from Miss Silver’s tray. With the other she knocked again, after which she turned the handle and went in.

With her first step across the threshold the cup tilted and fell. She stood there, holding the saucer in a rigid grip and staring, not at the broken cup and the pool of tea which spread from it, but at the empty ordered room. The bed was made, and it had not been slept in. As it was now, so it had been when her shaking hands had left it at some time during the dreadful hours of yesterday morning. She remembered that the counterpane had fallen a little crooked at the head, and that she had looked back at it from the doorway and thought, ‘What does it matter? Miss Cara is dead.’ She looked at it now, and saw it was as it had been then. Her eyes moved slowly from the bed to the window, to the bookcase, the hearth, the dressing-table. There was something there – a piece of paper with a line of writing on it. She crossed the room swiftly and set the saucer down. The hand that had held it lifted the paper. The writing was smudged and blotted – a mere scrawl. It ran:

‘Goodbye. I can’t go on.’

Anna continued to look at it until the words began to run into one another. Then she went back by the way that she had come.

This time she did not knock at Miss Silver’s door. She wrenched at the handle and pushed it like a blind woman feeling her way. Miss Silver saw her come. She set down her cup upon the tray and took the paper which was thrust at her.

Anna had begun to shake and to weep again.

‘She is gone! First the one, and then the other! Miss Cara first, and then Miss Candida! But why – oh, Dio mio, why!’

Miss Silver looked gravely at the paper with its shaky scrawl.

‘Is this Miss Sayle’s writing?’

Anna threw up her hands.

‘How do I know?’

‘But you must have seen it. Pray sit down and compose yourself. You must have seen Miss Sayle’s writing.’

‘How should I?’ sobbed Anna. ‘Miss Olivia writes to her – she writes back – it is one letter among all the letters that come! I do not look at them, I do not notice them, I do not know which is from Miss Candida! I only know that she was here, and that she is gone, and that God knows what has become of her, or what is to become of us all!’