"It"s just like the wind," he said, "and I do love the wind. It makes me feel so sad and so happy. Why is it?"
The governess did not answer.
"How old am I _really_?" he went on. "How can I be so old and so ignorant? I"ve forgotten such an awful lot of knowledge."
"The fact is--well, perhaps, you won"t quite understand--but you"re really two ages at once. Sometimes you feel as old as your body, and sometimes as old as your soul. You"re still connected with your body; so you get the sensations of both mixed up."
"Then is the body younger than the soul?"
"The soul--that is yourself," she answered, "is, oh, so old, awfully old, as old as the stars, and older. But the body is no older than itself--of course, how could it be?"
"Of course," repeated the boy, who was not listening to a word she said.
"How could it be?"
"But it doesn"t matter how old you are or how young you feel, as long as you don"t hate me for having frightened you," she said after a pause.
"That"s the chief thing."
He was very, very puzzled. He could not help feeling it had been rather unkind of her to frighten him so badly that he had literally been frightened out of his skin; but he couldn"t remember anything about it, and she was taking so much trouble to save him now that he quite forgave her. He nestled up against her, and said of course he liked her, and she stroked his curly head and mumbled a lot of things to herself that he couldn"t understand a bit.
But in spite of his new-found friend the feeling of over-mastering loneliness would suddenly rush over him. She might be a protector, but she was not a _real_ companion; and he knew that somewhere or other he had left a lot of other _real_ companions whom he now missed dreadfully.
He longed more than he could say for freedom; he wanted to be able to come and go as he pleased; to play about in a garden somewhere as of old; to wander over soft green lawns among laburnums and sweet-smelling lilac trees, and to be up to all his old tricks and mischief--though he could not remember in detail what they were.
In a word, he wanted to escape; his whole being yearned to escape and be free again; yet here he was a wretched prisoner in a room like a prison-cell, with a sort of monster for a keeper, and a troop of horrible frightened children somewhere else in the house to keep him company. And outside there was only a hard, narrow, paved courtyard with a high wall round it. Oh, it was too terrible to think of, and his heart sank down within him till he felt as if he could do nothing else but cry.
"I shall save you in time," whispered the governess, as though she read his thoughts. "You must be patient, and do what I tell you, and I promise to get you out. Only be brave, and don"t ask too many questions.
We shall win in the end and escape."
Suddenly he looked up, with quite a new expression in his face. "But I say, Miss Cake, I"m frightfully hungry. I"ve had nothing to eat since--I can"t remember when, but ever so long ago."
"You needn"t call me Miss Cake, though," she laughed.
"I suppose it"s because I"m so hungry."
"Then you"ll call me Miss Lake when you"re thirsty, perhaps," she said.
"But, anyhow, I"ll see what I can get you. Only, you must eat as little as possible. I want you to get very thin. What you feel is not really hunger--it"s only a memory of hunger, and you"ll soon get used to it."
He stared at her with a very distressful little face as she crossed the room making this new announcement; and just as she disappeared through the trap-door, only her head being visible, she added with great emphasis, "The thinner you get the better; because the thinner you are the lighter you are, and the lighter you are the easier it will be to escape. Remember, the thinner the better--the lighter the better--and don"t ask a lot of questions about it."
With that the trap-door closed over her, and Jimbo was left alone with her last strange words ringing in his ears.
CHAPTER VII
THE SPELL OF THE EMPTY HOUSE
It was not long before Jimbo realised that the House, and everything connected with it, spelt for him one message, and one only--a message of fear. From the first day of his imprisonment the forces of his whole being shaped themselves without further ado into one intense, single, concentrated desire to _escape_.
Freedom, escape into the world beyond that terrible high wall, was his only object, and Miss Lake, the governess, as its symbol, was his only hope. He asked a lot of questions and listened to a lot of answers, but all he really cared about was how he was going to escape, and when. All her other explanations were tedious, and he only half-listened to them.
His faith in her was absolute, his patience unbounded; she had come to save him, and he knew that before long she would accomplish her end. He felt a blind and perfect confidence. But, meanwhile, his fear of the House, and his horror for the secret Being who meant to keep him prisoner till at length he became one of the troop of Frightened Children, increased by leaps and bounds.
Presently the trap-door creaked again, and the governess reappeared; in her hand was a small white jug and a soup plate.
"Thin gruel and skim milk," she explained, pouring out a substance like paste into the soup plate, and handing him a big wooden spoon.
But Jimbo"s hunger had somehow vanished.
"It wasn"t real hunger," she told him, "but only a sort of memory of being hungry. They"re trying to feed your broken body now in the night-nursery, and so you feel a sort of ghostly hunger here even though you"re out of the body."
"It"s easily satisfied, at any rate," he said, looking at the paste in the soup plate.
"No one actually eats or drinks here----"
"But I"m solid," he said, "am I not?"
"People always think they"re solid everywhere," she laughed. "It"s only a question of degree; solidity _here_ means a different thing to solidity _there_."
"I can get thinner though, can"t I?" he asked, thinking of her remark about escape being easier the lighter he grew.
She a.s.sured him there would be no difficulty about that, and after replying evasively to a lot more questions, she gathered up the dishes and once more disappeared through the trap-door.
Jimbo watched her going down the ladder into the black gulf below, and wondered greatly where she went to and what she did down there; but on these points the governess had refused to satisfy his curiosity, and every time she appeared or disappeared the atmosphere of mystery came and went with her.
As he stared, wondering, a sound suddenly made itself heard behind him, and on turning quickly round he saw to his great surprise that the door into the pa.s.sage was open. This was more than he could resist, and in another minute, with mingled feelings of dread and delight, he was out in the pa.s.sage.
When he was first brought to the house, two hours before, it had been too dark to see properly, but now the sun was high in the heavens, and the light still increasing. He crept cautiously to the head of the stairs and peered over into the well of the house. It was still too dark to make things out clearly; but, as he looked, he thought something moved among the shadows below, and for a moment his heart stood still with fear. A large grey face seemed to be staring up at him out of the gloom. He clutched the banisters and felt as if he hardly had strength enough in his legs to get back to the room he had just left; but almost immediately the terror pa.s.sed, for he saw that the face resolved itself into the mingling of light and shadow, and the features, after all, were of his own creation. He went on slowly and stealthily down the staircase.
It was certainly an empty house. There were no carpets; the pa.s.sages were cold and draughty; the paper curled from the damp walls, leaving ugly discoloured patches about; cobwebs hung in many places from the ceiling, the windows were more or less broken, and all were coated so thickly with dirt that the rain had traced little furrows from top to bottom. Shadows hung about everywhere, and Jimbo thought every minute he saw moving figures; but the figures always resolved themselves into nothing when he looked closely.
He began to wonder how far it was safe to go, and why the governess had arranged for the door to be opened--for he felt sure it was she who had done this, and that it was all right for him to come out. Fright, she had said, was never about in the daylight. But, at the same time, something warned him to be ready at a moment"s notice to turn and dash up the stairs again to the room where he was at least comparatively safe.
So he moved along very quietly and very cautiously. He pa.s.sed many rooms with the doors open--all empty and silent; some of them had tables and chairs, but no sign of occupation; the grates were black and empty, the walls blank, the windows unshuttered. Everywhere was only silence and shadows; there was no sign of the frightened children, or of where they lived; no trace of another staircase leading to the region where the governess went when she disappeared down the ladder through the trap-door--only hushed, listening, cold silence, and shadows that seemed for ever shifting from place to place as he moved past them. This illusion of people peering at him from corners, and behind doors just ajar, was very strong; yet whenever he turned his head to face them, lo, they were gone, and the shadows rushed in to fill their places.
The spell of the Empty House was weaving itself slowly and surely about his heart.
Yet he went on pluckily, full of a dreadful curiosity, continuing his search, and at length, after pa.s.sing through another gloomy pa.s.sage, he was in the act of crossing the threshold of an open door leading out into the courtyard, when he stopped short and clutched the door-posts with both hands.
Some one had laughed!
He turned, trying to look in every direction at once, but there was no sign of any living being. Yet the sound was close beside him; he could still hear it ringing in his ears--a mocking sort of laugh, in a harsh, guttural voice. The blood froze in his veins, and he hardly knew which way to turn, when another voice sounded, and his terror disappeared as if by magic.
It was Miss Lake"s voice calling to him over the banisters at the top of the house, and its tone was so cheerful that all his courage came back in a twinkling.
"Go out into the yard," she called, "and play in the sunshine. But don"t stay too long."
Jimbo answered "All right" in a rather feeble little voice, and went on down the pa.s.sage and out into the yard.