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roving the room and came back to us when the till
drawer smacked open and caught her in the midriff.
But immediately her attention was demanded by a
woman’s voice exclaiming that if she didn’t have a cup
of tea and a cream cake this minute she would drop
dead on the floor.
“Come along, Giselle.” Aunt Honoria prodded me
with her stick and headed for the door.
“But aren’t we ... ?” My longing look at the Victoria
sponge sitting next to the till finished the sentence for
me.
“I’m not hungry.” Her lips came together in a click
of false teeth. “And I can’t imagine how you could eat a
35
bite after the lunch you ate.”
“I suppose I did make a bit of a pig of myself.” My
sarcasm was wasted on Aunt Honoria, who marched
me through the drizzling rain, down the drive where
the trees lined up like leaky umbrellas, to where the
Daimler sat like an obedient dog who had been
ordered to stay or face a lifetime without the
occasional table scrap. I was about to open the
passenger-side front door and climb sullenly aboard
when my relative asked me how I could suppose she
would waste running the engine for such a short
distance.
“But we are miles from home,” I said.
“And only a stone’s throw from the church.”
“Oh!” I stopped being cross and skipped to keep up
with her. “Then we are going to light a candle for Anne
Thornton! I’m glad because anyone with a bit of
imagination could see Ned is in love with her portrait.”
“Not just the picture, child!” The rap-tap of Aunt
Honoria’s voice kept pace with her stick as we turned
left into the black ribbon of lane toward the church.
“And her story, of course! Telling it over and over
again to people like us he couldn’t help falling under
its tragic spell.”
“Really, Giselle! It should be obvious to anyone
with sense that Ned is in love with the girl herself.”
“You mean”—I stumbled on a loose stone and had
to grab her arm to save myself from going smack down
on the ground—“you mean her ghost? But Ned told me
the house isn’t haunted.”
“That is not what he said.”
“Yes, he did!”
“He said he had never seen a ghost at Thornton
Hall, but you and I saw one, Giselle.”
“We did?” I stopped walking and addressed the
back of Aunt Honoria’s fur coat as she marched
onward. “Do you mean one of the shadows on the wall
in the tower room shouldn’t have been there?”
“I mean,” the voice came floating back to me, “that
Ned is the ghost. Surely you know that Edward is
commonly abbreviated in that way.”
“Mr. Rochester was an Edward.” I scurried to catch
up with the back that had disappeared into the mist.
“And Jane Eyre never shortened his name to anything
except Sir. I hate to say it, Aunt Honoria,” I said
kindly, “but I think you are letting your imagination
36
run away with you. The name business is just a
coincidence. Ned couldn’t possibly be the ghost of
Edward Haverfield. He was much too real.”
“As opposed”—disparaging sniff—“to other ghosts
of your acquaintance?”
“And he’s far too old,” I persisted.
“Do you want to argue, Giselle, or would you like
me to tell you why I am sure whereof I speak? Very
well, I will assume you are nodding your head in
agreement, not because it is loose on your shoulders.”
We had entered the churchyard and stood under a
weeping willow that lived up to its name by dripping all
over us. But I hardly noticed that I was growing
damper by the minute. “If you remember, Giselle, I
remarked to Ned that the eyes of the girl in the portrait
followed his every movement.”
“I thought you meant she was watching all of us.”
“Then you need to bone up on your grammar, my
girl! Did I not use the pronoun you when addressing
him? Never mind. I pondered upon the fact that those
eyes possessed a glow only to be seen on the face of a
woman in love. You’re too young, Giselle—”
“I’m not! I saw it too!”
“And I thought the only passion you understood
was for treacle pudding! Indeed, yes!” Aunt Honoria
shook her fur coat the way my cat Tabitha used to do
after coming in from the rain. “I read your face at
lunch with the same skill with which I read Anne
Thornton’s. And even you noticed Ned’s feeling for
her.”
“He’s a nice, dear man,” I said, “and I don’t want to
believe he was ever a murderer, and a sniveling one at
that!”
“He paid the price for his act of betrayal, Giselle, in
the moldering cell that I imagine quickly changed him
from a handsome youth to a white-haired old man.
And from that time forward he has existed in
purgatory.”
“But you told me there’s no such place,” I objected.
“I said no such thing.” Aunt Honoria gave the
weeping willow a whack with her stick in hopes
perhaps of discouraging it from dripping all over us. “I
said that you and I as members of the Church of
England do not believe in purgatory. Therefore we
don’t end up in a place between heaven and hell, but [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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