Mrs. Molesworth - The Grim House

“Yes,” said Isabel, “I thought it best to give you a hint. I was sure you wouldn’t mind; for the best of servants gossip, and I should not have liked your maid to tell our servants that you and I had been talking about the Greys, though she is pretty sure to hear something about them while she is here. But, dear Regina, you really mustn’t take up the idea that papa is alarming! He is so pleased to have you here, and has said to me more than once that he hoped you would make me less of ‘an old woman,’ which he says I am in danger of becoming. I get anxious about the housekeeping and things like that, and sometimes papa says I am not enough out of doors.”

My spirits rose at this. I asked nothing better than to be out of doors from morning till night in this beautifully wild district.

“Your father won’t have to complain of your leading too quiet a life if he leaves you to me,” I said laughingly. “And the very first time we go out, Isabel, you will promise, won’t you, to show me the Grim House! And oh!” I went on, “you haven’t yet told me what has happened there just lately.”

“It sounds so little to tell,” said Isabel; “but if you could realise the utter isolation of these poor people, you would understand the sensation it has made. It is simply that they have had visitors for the first time in the memory of man!”

“What sort of visitors?” I asked eagerly.

“Two men – gentlemen – an old and a young one! They stayed at Grimsthorpe one night. They drove up in a fly from the station, and it fetched them again the next morning. You see I have kept my eyes and ears open as regards the mystery, for your benefit.”

“Did you see these men?” I asked.

“I am not quite sure, but I think I did see one of them,” was the reply. “I had been in the village, and coming home I met a stranger who asked me the way to the church. Our church is rather curious; nobody quite knows how it came to be there, it is so big a church for so tiny a place.”

“What was he like?” I inquired, thinking to myself that I should have been much more excited over the incident than Isabel appeared to be.

“It was almost dusk,” she answered. “But his voice was a very pleasant and cultivated one. He was young, and I think good-looking. I was half inclined to ask him if he was a stranger in the neighbourhood or something of that sort, for I saw he had come down a path which only leads to the Grim House, though it wasn’t till the next day that we heard of the wonderful event. It was Strott, of course, who told me of it!”

“I wonder who he was!” I said thoughtfully. “It certainly makes the whole still more interesting if they are beginning to have any communication with the outside world.”

“There is one thing,” said Isabel, “that I forgot to tell you. They really must be good people, for on one occasion they did break through their rule of never leaving their own grounds. It was when little Tony at the vicarage fell off a haystack and they feared for his life; he was insensible for many hours, and his mother was in despair. That same afternoon the fly drove up to the vicarage, and, to Mrs Franklin’s astonishment, the Misses Grey were announced! She could scarcely believe her ears, and she has often told me that the very excitement of their coming did her good.”

“How very queer it is that you forgot to tell me of it before!” I could not help interrupting.

“I just did forget,” said Isabel calmly. “You see we are so used to the Grim House strangeness that it doesn’t strike us in the same way as it strikes you.”

“And what were they like?” I asked, “and what had they come for?”

“To express their sympathy, and find out if they could be of any use,” said Isabel. “Mrs Franklin was greatly touched. Of course their faces were quite familiar, but she had never heard their voices before. She said they were very, very gentle and apologetic, and pathetically timid. There were tears in their eyes, and they murmured something about being so fond of children, and that their own younger brother had had an accident as a boy, which had injured him lastingly. There was nothing they could do to help, though Mrs Franklin said she wished she could have invented something. She thanked them, of course, heartily, and the next day they sent down for news of Tony, by that time out of danger, and Mrs Franklin began to hope it would lead to some intercourse with these poor sad ladies. But no; the Grim House closed up again, and from that day to this they have never been seen except at church.”

“Then it appears that the only way to decoy them out of their den would be for some of you to get very ill, or have an accident or trouble of some kind,” I said rather thoughtlessly.

Isabel gave a little shiver.

“Don’t talk of such things!” she exclaimed. “I am afraid I am naturally rather cowardly. I don’t know if you have found that out yet, Regina? You mustn’t despise me for it. Margaret consoles me by saying that she thinks it was the effect on my nerves of mamma’s sudden death. I was such a little girl at the time, and it was so terribly sad – seeing her apparently quite well one evening, and being told the next morning that I should never see her again.”

“Did you not see her?” I asked in a lowered voice. Sorrow of this kind had never come near our happy family circle, and the mere allusion to it filled me with awe.

Isabel shook her head.

“No,” she replied. “They thought it better not, but I am not sure that it was so. Margaret says she looked lovely. I could not understand it; she seemed to have disappeared, and yet I was frightened to ask any one about it. For nights and nights I lay awake wondering where she had gone, or rather how she had gone; for of course they assured me that she was in a happy world. But it was so dreadful to me that she had gone without saying good-bye. I think I scarcely believed what I was told.”

“Poor little Zella!” I said tenderly. “I think indeed it was enough to shake your nerves.”

There was no more time for talking, as at that moment the dressing-bell sounded. But the conversation had left its mark on me. All through the evening, which was a very bright and pleasant one, and during which my shyness in Mr Wynyard’s presence began to fade a little – all through that first evening the thought of the poor “Grey ladies,” as I had begun to call them to myself, never left me. The picture of them in their pathetic timidity touched me curiously. And how good they must be to have made such an effort as that of going to the vicarage because there was trouble there!

And when I went to bed my meditations took an even more definite shape.

“I wonder how those four poor things are spending this evening,” I thought. “So near us and yet so far off. I wonder if they have a piano or anything of that sort to pass the time. It would be a good work, surely it would be, to get to know them, and break down the dreadful barrier they have placed round themselves. It seems so probable that they are exaggerating their troubles, whatever these may be.”

The next few days passed very pleasantly. The weather was fine though rather cold, but the fresh bracing feeling of the air seemed to suit the place, and I enjoyed its invigorating effect to the full. It was before the days of bicycles, but Isabel had a little pony-cart and a sturdy, sure-footed pony, in which we managed to get over the ground in a wonderful way. Hilly roads and rough ground were no obstacles to our progress; sometimes even, we ourselves lifted the cart over some specially awkward place, the pony seeming quite to enter into the fun of the thing.