Anna, Where Are You?

CHAPTER XVI

Mr. Craddock was present at supper, where he dominated the conversation. During the soup he discoursed upon Alchemy and the Philosopher’s Stone, but by the time they were all eating boiled fish he had diverged into a long and very involved dissertation upon Planetary Influences, to which nobody except Miss Silver appeared to pay any attention. Mrs. Craddock occupied herself with serving, and every now and then said “Oh, yes,” or “Oh, no,” as the occasion appeared to demand. The children ate their fish. Once at least Jennifer’s eyes went to her step-father’s face in a long, bright stare. There was anger in it and something else, but when he turned to meet it the dark lashes came down. She reached out, helping herself to salt, and some of it spilled between them. Not a comfortable meal! But then Deepe House was not a comfortable house.

Mr. Craddock’s sentences got longer and longer and their meaning less apparent, until with the arrival of a cold and naked looking blancmange Benjy broke into a roar.

“Don’t want it! Don’t like it! Won’t eat it!”

Mrs. Craddock said, “Ssh!” in a guilty voice, and then, “Mrs. Masters must have forgotten. I did tell her-nobody liked it.”

“She likes making it,” said Maurice with angry gloom.

Jennifer said accusingly, “If you didn’t have cornflour in the house, she couldn’t make it.”

Mrs. Craddock helped the horrid whiteness with a trembling hand. Mr. Craddock had as yet said nothing, but he looked as if he might at any moment let fly with a thunderbolt. Instead, he merely pushed back his chair and left the table.

Nobody ate the cornflour shape except Miss Silver, but after Mr. Craddock’s departure the children partook of hearty slices of bread and jam whilst competing cheerfully as to who could say the most insulting things about the rejected blancmange.

Later on when they were in bed, Mrs. Craddock recurred to the incident. The darning-needle shook in her hand as she said,

“I am such a very bad manager, and I cannot cook at all well. Everything seems to go wrong when I try.”

“But you have Mrs. Masters to do the cooking,” said Miss Silver.

“She despises me,” said Emily Craddock in a helpless voice. “She knows that I cannot do the things myself, so she takes no notice of anything I say. I have told her over and over again that Mr. Craddock will not sit at table with a blancmange and the children hate it. But it is so easy to do, and when she is in a hurry she will make it.”

Miss Silver said,

“If you did not have any cornflour-”

“Then she uses sago, and that is worse.”

“Perhaps if you did not have any sago-”

“She would find something else,” said Mrs. Craddock in a despairing voice. A tear dropped upon a much darned undergarment. “Sometimes I feel as if I couldn’t go on. If it were not for you-” She sniffed faintly.

Miss Silver said with gravity,

“You require rest and relief from responsibility. Jennifer and Maurice would be far better at school-even Benjy.”

Emily Craddock gave a startled cry.

“Oh, no, no! I couldn’t! Mr. Craddock wouldn’t approve- and I shouldn’t feel they were safe. He says it is foolish of me, but I can’t help feeling frightened about them when they are away. You see, I very nearly lost them all last summer.”

“My dear Mrs. Craddock!”

The tears were running down Emily Craddock’s face.

“Such a pleasant seaside holiday, but I nearly lost them all- and Mr. Craddock too. They were all out in the boat, and it overturned. I was having my afternoon rest-and they were nearly drowned-all of them. It took them a long time to bring Benjy round. None of the children could swim.”

“And Mr. Craddock?”

“Only a little-just enough to keep himself afloat. He couldn’t help them. If it hadn’t been for some men in another boat… It gave me such a terrible shock. I don’t seem to get over it.” She fumbled for a handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes.

Casting about for a change of subject, Miss Silver recalled the meeting with Mr. John Robinson. It would, she considered, divert Mrs. Craddock from an agitating topic and at the same time gratify her own strong desire for information about the tenant of the other wing. She introduced the name in a bright conversational manner, adding,

“He came up and spoke to us out in the courtyard this afternoon when we came back from our walk.”

Mrs. Craddock had stopped crying. She had a fluttered look. She said,

“Oh-” And then, “Was he at all-strange?”

Miss Silver was putting the final touches to the pale blue coatee. She said,

“He quoted a line of poetry.”

“He does-at least I believe-I have heard that he does. You know, I’ve never spoken to him myself. He is-” she hesitated for a word-“rather strange. Quite solitary, I believe. He has been here for some months, but I have only seen him just once or twice in the distance. It does seem strange, but I am sure he is quite harmless. He speaks to the children sometimes. I used to worry about it, but last autumn- Oh, Miss Silver, they had such a narrow escape-and it was all due to him-so whatever people say about him, I shall always be grateful.”

Miss Silver fastened off her thread and ran it in along a seam. It was not until she had completed this task that she said,

“They had an escape?”

Emily Craddock’s thin hands were clasping one another convulsively.

“Oh, yes! It was when that Miss Ball was with us-and of course she didn’t understand that sort of thing at all. They went out to look for mushrooms, and they found some very fine ones up on the edge of the pinewood over the hill. And when they were coming home they met Mr. Robinson, and he said where had they found so many, and when they told him he looked at them and said they weren’t mushrooms at all but some horrid poisonous thing. He said real mushrooms don’t grow near pine trees, but something that looks very like them does, and he made them throw them all out. Of course it wasn’t Miss Ball’s fault, for how could she know-but it upset me dreadfully, and of course I couldn’t help feeling so very grateful to Mr. Robinson, because if he hadn’t happened to meet them-”

“It was indeed providential,” said Miss Silver.