Pilgrim’s Rest

chapter 24

When March knocked at Miss Janetta’s door and went in he found Miss Lona Day in attendance. He was aware that the stage had been set and his part mapped out for him. He was undoubtedly the crude policeman blundering into a lady’s sick-room. The curtains, half-drawn across the windows, were flowered in roses and forget-me-nots. Pink linen blinds half down converted the cold daylight into a rosy glow.

Just at first he couldn’t see anything. Miss Day conducted him deviously amidst furniture until he reached the bed, where he was provided with a seat. After a minute or two his eyes cleared and he discerned Miss Janetta amidst pink bed-linen with an embroidered coverlet drawn up to her waist. She appeared to have sufficient strength to sit up. She wore a bed-jacket trimmed with a great many yards of lace, and not a hair of her elaborate curls was out of place. A boudoir cap composed of about two inches of lace, a rosebud and a bunch of forget-me-nots nestled coquettishly amongst them, and she wore several valuable rings. He reflected that she looked a good deal more like a Dresden shepherdess than a mourning invalid.

She was speaking to him out of the pink haze.

“You must forgive me if I have kept you waiting. It has been such a terrible shock. I am not as strong as my sister. You will not mind if my nurse stays in the room.”

“I would rather see you alone, Miss Pilgrim.”

She gave a fluttered sigh.

“Do you know-I don’t really feel-I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to let her stay. Lona dear, my smelling-salts-”

Miss Day’s eyes met his with sympathy. She said,

“I think you’d better let me stay.”

He gave up. If he pressed her, she would probably swoon, and then it would all be to do again.

After producing a vinaigrette Miss Day had drifted tactfully over to the window. Miss Janetta addressed him.

“Just tell me what you want to know, and I will do my best. But I must save my strength-you will help me to do that?”

“I won’t keep you longer than I can help. I wondered whether you could tell me what was the general feeling in the family with regard to the sale of the estate-when it was first suggested.”

Miss Janetta forgot all about being prostrated. She said with surprising energy,

“It was my brother. I can’t think how he came to think of such a thing. I never was so shocked in my life. And getting Roger to break the entail! I can’t think what either of them were thinking about. We were all quite horrified.”

“When you say we, to whom do you refer?”

The curls were lightly tossed.

“All of us-the whole family. Why, my sister would simply have broken her heart. She lives for the garden, and-of course you couldn’t be expected to understand, but there have always been Pilgrims at Pilgrim’s Rest.”

He produced a sympathetic smile.

“Yes, it is very sad when these old places pass into other hands. But I gather Mr. Pilgrim intended to proceed with the sale.”

Miss Janetta heaved a sigh.

“He was very, very obstinate about it. He had a very obstinate character. If he hadn’t died when he did, we should all have been turned out.”

Miss Day had come back from the window. She said in a soothing voice,

“Are you sure you are not talking too much, dear?”

It didn’t go down at all well. There was an acid edge on the voice that snubbed her.

“I think you had better go and see if Jerome wants anything. You can come back presently.”

March felt a little sorry for Miss Day, but she was probably used to it. What a life!

She faded from the room, and he resumed.

“The sale fell through owing to your brother’s death?”

She heaved another sigh.

“Yes. It was quite providential. A terrible accident of course, but he was in failing health, and he has been spared all these terrible things-Roger, and poor Jack-and now Henry.” A lace-edged handkerchief touched her eyes for a moment.

March would have bet his last sixpence that the gesture was purely ritual. He said,

“Yes.” And then, “Roger was about to sell, wasn’t he?”

A natural flush deepened the colour in her cheeks.

“And look what came of it!” she said.

“My dear Miss Pilgrim-”

The curls were tossed with vigour.

“I suppose you don’t believe in things like that, but I do. My brother was going to sell, and he died. And Roger was going to sell, and he died. There’s a verse about it. It’s carved over the mantelpiece in the hall-

“If Pilgrim fare upon the Pilgrims’ Way,

And leave his Rest, he’ll find nor rest nor stay.

Stay Pilgrim in thy Rest, or thou shalt find

Ill luck before, Death but one pace behind.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” said March drily. “Henry Clayton wasn’t selling the estate though, was he? How do you account for him?”

The brightness went out of her eyes. They looked vague.

“My brother was trying to sell-it stirs up ill luck-you don’t know where it will strike next. You mayn’t believe in things like that, but I know they’re true. If Jerome tries to sell, something will happen to him.”

“I don’t think it will,” said March grimly.

“There must always be a Pilgrim at Pilgrim’s Rest,” said Miss Janetta.

He got nothing from her of any more value than that. She remembered the evening her nephew Henry disappeared. She had been very much fatigued by the large family party, and had gone to her room at half past nine. But not to sleep- oh dear no! She was a perfect martyr to insomnia.

“Your windows look out to the street, Miss Pilgrim. Did you hear Clayton go out?”

It transpired that she had heard nothing.

“I feel the cold too much to have my windows open. Dr. Daly doesn’t advice it.”

March found it impossible to resist the belief that the insomnia existed only in her imagination. Anyone who was awake in this room would surely have heard that big front door fall to.

He came downstairs a little later and went on with his interviews.

Miss Columba had taken her heavy heart to the garden. It was very heavy indeed. It was a relief to dibble in another row of peas under Pell’s disapproving eye. He laid his peas in a trench and raked the earth over them. It aroused all his worst passions to see her using her middle finger as a dibber and making a separate hole for every pea. The fact that her rows usually did better than his was an old and gnawing grievance-one of the things which added bitterness to the tone in which he talked to William about “females.”

“Females wasn’t never intended to garden-stands to reason they wasn’t. ’Twas Adam was set to till the ground, not that flighty piece Eve. Childer and cooking-that’s all that females are fit for. Getting in trousis and doing a man’s job is clean flying in the face of Providence, and you can’t get from it.”

The dead weight which Miss Columba carried lifted perceptibly as she put in her peas. In the house they were all sorry for her. All except Janetta, who never thought of anyone but herself. Even Robbins-no, she wasn’t sure about Robbins. Dark-secret. Like a plant that has run to root. She remembered an apple-tree when she was a girl. Never bloomed or fruited, and her father had it taken up. Six foot of tap root. Dark-secret. Going down and down. They planted it again with a paving stone under it. It did all right after that.

Pell’s voice came up out of the wordless grumbling which had accompanied his digging.

“That grand-daughter of mine’s home.”

Miss Columba poked a hole with her finger and dropped a pea into it.

“Which one?”

“Maggie. Looks a show in her uniform. Against nature, I call it.”

“Leave?”

Pell cleared his throat.

“Peck of rubbish! Calls herself a corporal-two stripes on her arm! Flying in the face of Providence, that’s what I call it.”

Miss Columba put in another pea.

“Maggie’s a good girl.”

“She wus. No saying what she is now. Paints her mouth!”

“Girls do.”

He gave a crowing laugh.

“Same as Jezebel! And what come of her-answer me that!”

Miss Columba made two more holes, dropped in two more peas, and said with finality.

“Maggie’s a good girl.”

It was all very soothing. Pell wasn’t sorry for her. If the whole family was lying dead, he would be just as cross-grained and obstructive as he always was. It kept you in the world you were accustomed to, the world of normal disagreeable things-north-east winds-May frosts-hail-drought- green fly-wire-worm-Pell. Very steadying. Murder was not a normal thing. Something out of control. Something out of madness and nightmare. Wrenched loose. Threshing round. Killing. Don’t think about it. Plant the peas. They’ll put down roots and throw up shoots. Bloom. Fruit. Fade. Go back to manure the ground. Natural. Murder not natural. Don’t think about it. Think about Pell. Think about Maggie.

She put in another pea, and said,

“I’d like to see Maggie. Tell her to come up and see me.”