Latter End

CHAPTER 23

Julia woke up suddenly, and wondered what had waked her. She thought it must have been Ellie crying out in her sleep as she sometimes did, not loudly but with a catch of the breath like a sob. She spoke her name gently,

“Ellie-”

There was no answer. She listened, and could hear from her soft, regular breathing that Ellie was asleep. She might have cried out and yet have been asleep. She thought, “It’s so strange-we don’t know where anyone is when he is asleep. I don’t even know about Ellie. I don’t always know where I’ve been myself.” She had the feeling of having come up out of a dream which had left her only at the moment of waking. All that remained of it was a longing to go back again, to escape from the things which waited for them all in the day to come.

She wondered what time it was. She thought between two and three in the morning. The room was dark, but the two windows hung on the darkness like pictures on a black wall. The pictures showed an even tinge of gloom, like very old paintings in which all detail is lost and only the main mass of light and shade remains. But here there was nothing which could be called light. There were gradations in the shadow, that was all. Because she had slept in this room for as long as she could remember, she knew that in the blackest part of the shadow there were the shapes of trees, and that it became less dense as the branches thinned away towards the sky. It must be very dark outside, because she could not see any line where foliage ended and cloud began.

She had risen on her elbow, the bedclothes pushed down to her waist, her hair pushed back. Now she lay down again, smoothing the sheet, pulling the pillow round a little. It was all right, Ellie was asleep. If anything had waked her, it must have been one of those night sounds which are common enough in the country-the cry of a bird, the bark of a fox, a badger calling. She had heard them all, lying here in this bed, on many nights running back through many years.

She put her head on the pillow, and the sound which had waked her came again. It wasn’t badger, bird, or fox. It was the sound of a hand brushing over the outer panel of the door. She sat up, listening, and heard it still. It isn’t a sound like anything else, it isn’t a sound that you can mistake. A hand was groping at the door-sliding over it, softly, whisperingly.

Julia pushed the clothes right back and got out of bed. Her bare feet took her to the door. She stood, holding her breath to listen. But there wasn’t anything to hear. The sound had stopped. All at once it came to her that it might be a trick. Someone had played a trick upon Lois, and Lois had died… But that was Manny. Manny wouldn’t come here in the middle of the night to play a trick on Julia.

With a sudden movement she turned the handle and opened the door, stepping back as she pulled it towards her. The landing outside was light-a low-powered bulb burned there all night. Coming from sleep and from the darkness of her room, it dazzled her. There was a white figure standing about a yard from the threshold, staring at her. The impression came and went before she could take her breath, and she saw that it wasn’t someone, but Minnie-Minnie Mercer in her nightgown, with her hair hanging down over it as far as her waist and her eyes fixed in sleep. She wasn’t staring at Julia, because she wasn’t seeing her. She wasn’t seeing anything in Julia’s waking world. What she saw and what she looked for was known only to the dream sense which had brought her here.

It went through Julia’s mind that it was dangerous to wake people who were walking in their sleep. You had to try and get them back to bed-one of those things that are nice and easy to say and abominably difficult to do. Of course she would have to try. You couldn’t have Minnie wandering all over the house, scaring people to death and perhaps starting that awful Gladys’ tongue on a new scandal. Anyhow she wasn’t going to have Ellie waked up. She came out of the room and shut the door behind her.

As if it had been a signal, Minnie turned and went towards the stairs, moving so fast that by the time Julia came up with her she had already taken the first step down and, having taken it, continued to descend without pause or stay. If she didn’t see where she was going, how was it she could move with so much certainty? She went down into the darkness of the lower hall, and Julia with her. It was like going down into dark water. When they were quite swallowed up in it Julia said in a low, insistent voice,

“Minnie-come back to bed.”

Something must have got through into her dream, for she stopped, there, at the foot of the stairs. Julia said it again.

“Come back to bed, Minnie.”

There was no response. She just stood there, barefoot, in her nightgown, with her hair hanging loose. Julia came up close and put an arm round her.

“Min-do come back to bed.”

Whether it was the urgency in Julia’s voice that reached her, or whether it was that the impulse which had brought her so far was fading out, she turned and set a hesitating foot upon the bottom step. With Julia’s arm about her, she drew the other foot up and waited there as if she didn’t know what to do next. The arm urged her gently. She took another step, and so on step by step to the top of the stair. Sometimes there was a long pause when she stood so still she hardly seemed to breathe and Julia was afraid of using any force. Sometimes she mounted steadily.

When they were about halfway up she began to talk in a rapid whispered monotone. There were words, but they had no form. It was like listening to someone talking in another room. She wondered where Minnie was in her dream, and what she was saying.

At the top of the stair there was one of those long pauses.

The murmuring voice sank into inaudibility and ceased. Julia said “Min-darling-” and to her relief Minnie walked suddenly across the landing and in through the open doorway of her room. It was dark after the light outside, but she went straight up to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. Julia stood back to see what she would do.

All at once Minnie said in a lamentable voice, “What have I done?”

Julia felt as if everything inside her had turned over. It wasn’t only the words. They were bad enough, but they seemed to come on the very breath of despair. She said them again, her tone failing under them as if they were too heavy to be borne. Then, as she drew two or three long sobbing breaths and groped for her pillow and lay down, Julia pulled the clothes over her with shaking hands. Her knees shook too. She stood there listening, and heard the sobbing breaths grow still. In less than a minute she could tell that Minnie was asleep. Whatever her dream had been, she had passed out of it into ordinary, everyday sleep.

In so far as Julia was capable of feeling relief it came to her. She turned from the bed and went towards the door. It was wide to the lighted landing. There was someone standing just outside. Julia came out into the light and saw that it was Miss Silver, in a dressing-gown of crimson wool trimmed round the neck and sleeves with handmade crochet. There were black felt slippers on her feet, her hair was arranged very neatly under a net, she looked dreadfully intelligent and alert. Julia had never felt so near the end of her courage. She did not know that her own wide, dark gaze stirred all the kindness of a benevolent heart. She did somehow receive some assurance from Miss Silver’s voice and manner as she said,

“If she is asleep now, I think it will be safe to leave her. I have never known of a case where a somnambulist has left his bed a second time. A trying experience for you, I am afraid, but there is no cause for alarm. Has she been accustomed to walk in her sleep?”

Julia put a hand against the jamb of the door. They both spoke very low. She said,

“I don’t think so-not since I can remember. I think she did a long time ago, when she was a girl. It has all been a great strain.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Quite so. And now, my dear, I think you should go back to bed. You are so very thinly clad, and the nights are cold. I do not think you need be afraid that Miss Mercer will disturb us again.”

Julia went into her room and shut the door. It seemed a long time since she had left it. As she lay down and pulled the bedclothes over her she found that she was shivering from head to foot. She was cold, but it was not only the cold that made her shake. She was very much afraid.