In the train from Bristol to Paddington for the last time: July, eighteen-eighty.

She would never see any of them again: Ada and Geraldine; Mabel and Florrie and little Lena and Kate; Miss Wray with her pale face and angry eyes; never hear her sudden, cold, delicious praise. Never see the bare, oblong schoolroom with the brown desks, seven rows across for the lower school, one long form along the wall for Class One where she and Ada and Geraldine sat apart. Never look through the bay windows over the lea to the Channel, at sunset, Lundy Island flattened out, floating, gold on gold in the offing. Never see magenta valerian growing in hot white grey walls.

Never hear Louie Prichard straining the little music room with Chopin's Fontana Polonaise. Never breathe in its floor-dust with the Adagio of the "Pathetic Sonata."

She was glad she had seen it through to the end when the clergymen's and squires' daughters went and the daughters of Bristol drapers and publicans and lodging-house keepers came.

("What do you think! Bessie Parson's brother marked all her underclothing. In the shop!")

But they taught you quite a lot of things: Zoology, Physiology, Paley's Evidences, British Law, Political Economy. It had been a wonderful school when Mrs. Propart's nieces went to it. And they kept all that up when the smash came and the butter gave out, and you ate cheap bread that tasted of alum, and potatoes that were fibrous skeletons in a green pulp. Oh—she had seen it through. A whole year and a half of it.

Why? Because you promised Mamma you'd stick to the Clevehead School whatever it was like? Because they taught you German and let you learn Greek by yourself with the old arithmetic master? (Ada Clark said it was a mean trick to get more marks.) Because of the Beethoven and Schumann and Chopin, and Lundy Island, and the valerian? Because nothing mattered, not even going hungry?

She was glad she hadn't told about that, nor why she asked for the "room to herself" that turned out to be a servants' garret on a deserted floor. You could wake at five o'clock in the light mornings and read Plato, or snatch twenty minutes from undressing before Miss Payne came for your candle. The tall sycamore swayed in the moonlight, tapping on the window pane; its shadow moved softly in the room like a ghost.

II.

She would like to see the valerian again, though. Mamma said it didn't grow in Yorkshire.

Funny to be going back to Ilford after Roddy and Papa and Mamma had left it. Funny to be staying at Five Elms with Uncle Victor. Nice Uncle Victor, buying the house from Papa and making Dan live with them. That was to keep him from drinking. Uncle Victor was hurt because Papa and Mamma would go to Morfe when he wanted you all to live with him. But you couldn't imagine Emilius and Victor living together or Mamma and Aunt Lavvy.

Bristol to Paddington. This time next week it would be King's Cross to
Reyburn for Morfe.

She wondered what it would be like. Aunt Bella said it was a dead-and-alive place. Morfe—Morfe. It did sound rather as if people died in it. Aunt Bella was angry with Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin for making Mamma go there. But Aunt Bella had never liked Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin. That was because they had been Mamma's friends at school and not Aunt Bella's.

She wondered what they would be like, and whether they would disapprove of her. They would if they believed she had been expelled from Dover and had broken Mamma's heart. All Mamma's friends thought that.

She didn't mind going to Morfe so much. The awful thing was leaving Ilford. Ilford was part of Mark, part of her, part of her and Mark together. There were things they had done that never in all their lives they could do again. Waldteufel Waltzes played on the old Cramer piano, standing in its place by the door, waltzes that would never sound the same in any other place in any other room. And there was the sumach tree. It would die if you transplanted it.

III.

The little thin, sallow old man, coming towards her on the platform at
Paddington, turned out to be Uncle Victor. She had not seen him since
Christmas, for at Easter he had been away somewhere on business.

He came slowly, showing a smile of jerked muscles, under cold fixed eyes. He was not really glad to see her. That was because he disapproved of her. They all believed she had been expelled from the Dover school, and they didn't seem able to forget it. Going down from Liverpool Street to Ilford he sat bowed and dejected in his corner, not looking at her unless he could help it.

"How's Aunt Charlotte?" She thought he would be pleased to think that she had remembered Aunt Charlotte; but he winced as if she had hit him.

"She is—not so well." And then: "How have you been getting on?"

"Oh, all right. I've got the Literature prize again, and the French prize and the German prize; and I might have got the Good Conduct prize too."

"And why didn't you get it?"

"Because I gave it up. Somebody else had to have a prize, and Miss Wray said she knew it was the one I could best bear to part with."

Uncle Victor frowned as if he were displeased.

"You don't seem to consider that I gave it up," she said. But he had turned his eyes away. He wasn't listening any more, as he used to listen.

The train was passing the City of London Cemetery. She thought: "I must go and see Jenny's grave before I leave. I wish I hadn't teased her so to love me." She thought: "If I die I shall be put in the grass plot beside Grandpapa and Grandmamma Olivier. Papa will bring me in a coffin all the way from Morfe in the train." Little birch bushes were beginning to grow among the graves. She wondered how she could ever have been afraid of those graves and of their dead.

Uncle Victor was looking at the graves too; queerly, with a sombre, passionate interest. When the train had passed them he sighed and shut his eyes, as if he wanted to keep on seeing them—to keep on.

As Mr. Parish's wagonette drove up Ley Street he pointed to a field where a street of little houses had begun.

"Some day they'll run a street over Five Elms. But I shan't know anything about it," he said.

"No. It won't be for ages."

He smiled queerly.

They drew up at the gate. "You must be prepared for more changes," he said.

Aunt Lavvy was at the gate. She was sweet as if she loved you, and sad as if she still remembered your disgrace.

"No. Not that door," she said.

The dining-room and drawing-room had changed places, and both were filled with the large mahogany furniture that had belonged to Grandpapa.

"Why, you've turned it back to front."

Strips of Mamma's garden shone between the dull maroon red curtains.
Inside the happy light was dead.

There seemed to her something sinister about this change. Only the two spare rooms still looked to the front. They had put her in one of them instead of her old room on the top floor; Dan had the other instead of his. It was very queer.

Aunt Lavvy sat in Mamma's place at the head of the tea-table. A tall, iron-grey woman in an iron-grey gown stood at her elbow holding a little tray. She looked curiously at Mary, as if her appearance there surprised and interested her. Aunt Lavvy put a cup of tea on the tray.

"Where's Aunt Charlotte?"

"Aunt Charlotte is upstairs. She isn't very well."

The maid was saying, "Miss Charlotte asked for a large piece of plum cake, ma'am," and Aunt Lavvy added a large piece of plum cake to the plate of thin bread and butter.

Mary thought: "There can't be much the matter with her if she can eat all that."

"Can I see her?" she said.

She heard the woman whisper, "Better not." She was glad when she left the room.

"Has old Louisa gone, then?"

"No," Aunt Lavvy said. She added presently, "That is Aunt Charlotte's maid."

IV.

Aunt Charlotte looked out through the bars of the old nursery window. She nodded to Mary and called to her to come up.

Aunt Lavvy said it did her good to see people.

There was a door at the head of the stairs, in a matchboard partition that walled the well of the staircase. You rang a bell. The corridor was very dark. Another partition with a door in it shut off the servants' rooms and the back staircase. They had put the big yellow linen cupboard before the tall window, the one she used to hang out of.

Some of the old things had been left in the nursery schoolroom, so that it looked much the same. Britton, the maid, sat in Jenny's low chair by the fireguard. Aunt Charlotte sat in an armchair by the window.

Her face was thin and small; the pencil lines had deepened; the long black curls hung from a puff of grey hair rolled back above her ears. Her eyes pointed at you—pointed. They had more than ever their look of wisdom and excitement. She was twisting and untwisting a string of white tulle round a sprig of privet flower.

"Don't you believe a word of it," she said. "Your father hasn't gone.
He's here in this house. He's in when Victor's out.

"He says he's sold the house to Victor. That's a lie. He doesn't want it known that he's hidden me here to prevent my getting married."

"I'm sure he hasn't," Mary said. Across the room Britton looked at her and shook her head.

"It's all part of a plan," Aunt Charlotte said. "To put me away, my dear.
Dr. Draper's in it with Victor and Emilius.

"They may say what they like. It isn't the piano-tuner. It isn't the man who does the clocks. They know who it is. It isn't that Marriott man. I've found out something about him they don't know. He's got a false stomach. It goes by clockwork.

"As if I'd look at a clock-tuner or a piano-winder. I wouldn't, would I,
Britton?"

She meditated, smiling softly. "They make them so beautifully now, you can't tell the difference.

"He's been to see me nine times in one week. Nine times. But your Uncle
Victor got him away before he could speak. But he came again and again.
He wouldn't take 'No' for an answer. Britton, how many times did Mr.
Jourdain come?"

Britton said, "I'm sure I couldn't say, Miss Charlotte." She made a sign to Mary to go.

Aunt Lavvy was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. She took her into her bedroom, Mamma's old room, and asked her what Aunt Charlotte had said. Mary told her.

"Poor Mary—I oughtn't to have let you see her."

Aunt Lavvy's chin trembled. "I'm afraid," she said, "the removal's upset her. I said it would. But Emilius would have it. He could always make Victor do what he wanted."

"It might have been something you don't know about."

Grown-up and strong, she wanted to comfort Aunt Lavvy and protect her.

"No," Aunt Lavvy said. "It's the house. I knew it would be. She's been trying to get away. She never did that before."

(The doors and the partitions, the nursery and its bars, the big cupboard across the window, to keep her from getting away.)

"Aunt Lavvy, did Mr. Jourdain really call?"

Aunt Lavvy hesitated. "Yes. He called."

"Did he see Aunt Charlotte?"

"She was in the room when he came in, but your uncle took him out at once."

"She didn't talk to him? Did he hear her talking?"

"No, my dear, I'm sure he didn't."

"Are you sure he didn't see her?"

Aunt Lavvy smiled. "He didn't look. I don't think he saw any of us very clearly."

"How many times did he come?"

"Three or four times, I believe."

"Did he ask to see me?"

"No. He asked to see your Uncle Victor."

"I didn't know he knew Uncle Victor."

"Well," Aunt Lavvy said, "he knows him now."

"Did he leave any message for me?"

"No. None."

"You don't like him, Aunt Lavvy."

"No, Mary, I do not. And I don't know anybody who does."

"I like him," Mary said.

Aunt Lavvy looked as if she hadn't heard. "I oughtn't to have let you see
Aunt Charlotte."

V.

Mary woke up suddenly. It was her third night in the spare room at Five
Elms.

She had dreamed that she saw Aunt Charlotte standing at the foot of the basement stairs, by the cat's cupboard where the kittens were born, taking her clothes off and hiding them. She had seen that before. When she was six years old. She didn't know whether she had been dreaming about something that had really happened, or about a dream. Only, this time, she saw Aunt Charlotte open her mouth and scream. The scream woke her.

She remembered her mother and Aunt Bertha in the drawing-room, talking, their faces together. That wasn't a dream.

There was a sound of feet overhead. Uncle Victor's room. A sound of a door opening and shutting. And then a scream, muffled by the shut door. Her heart checked; turned sickeningly. She hadn't dreamed that.

Uncle Victor shouted down the stair to Dan. She could hear Dan's feet in the next room and his door opening.

The screaming began again: "I-ihh! I-ihh! I-ihh!" Up and up, tearing your brain. Then: "Aah-a-o-oh!" Tearing your heart out. "Aa-h-a-o-oh!" and "Ahh-ahh!" Short and sharp.

She threw off the bed-clothes, and went out to the foot of the stairs. The cries had stopped. There was a sound of feet staggering and shuffling. Somebody being carried.

Dan came back down the stair. His trousers were drawn up over his night-shirt, the braces hanging. He was sucking the back of his hand and spitting the blood out on to his sleeve.

"Dan—was that Aunt Charlotte?"

"Yes."

"Was it pain?"

"No." He was out of breath. She could see his night-shirt shake with the beating of his heart.

"Have you hurt your hand?"

"No."

"Can I do anything?"

"No. Go back to bed. She's all right now."

She went back. Presently she heard him leave his room and go upstairs again. The bolt of the front door squeaked; then the hinge of the gate. Somebody going out. She fell asleep.

The sound of hoofs and wheels woke her. The room was light. She got up and went to the open window. Dr. Draper's black brougham stood at the gate.

The sun blazed, tree-high, on the flat mangold field across the road. The green leaves had the cold glitter of wet, pointed metal. To the north-east a dead smear of dawn. The brougham didn't look like itself, standing still in that unearthly light. As if it were taking part in a funeral, the funeral of some dreadful death. She put on her dressing-gown and waited, looking out. She had to look. Downstairs the hall clock struck a half-hour.

The front door opened. Britton came out first. Then Aunt Charlotte, between Uncle Victor and Dr. Draper. They were holding her up by her arm-pits, half leading, half pushing her before them. Her feet made a brushing noise on the flagstones.

They lifted her into the brougham and placed themselves one on each side of her. Then Britton got in, and they drove off.

A string of white tulle lay on the garden path.

END OF BOOK THREE