Part 58 (2/2)

”I wonder they remain,” responded Winifred smilingly.

”They don't remain. They come back.”

”In what way?” asked Winifred.

”In what is known as spirit form,” said Miss Stock.

Winifred considered. She was perfectly accustomed to claims of that kind, to the many sorts it takes to make a world.

”Like the Willis in Giselle?” she enquired helpfully.

”I believe so,” said Miss Stock. 'I've never been inside a theater. I was brought up not to go, and I've never seen any good reason for breaking the rule.”

”It's become so expensive too,” said Winifred, if only because it was what she would have said in other, doubtless more conventional circ.u.mstances.

”This glove,” interrupted Millicent, actually dropping it on the floor because she had no wish to hold it any longer. ”We saw it lying by itself on the churchyard path.”

”I daresay you did,” said Miss Stock. ”It's not the only thing that's been seen lying in and around the churchyard.”

Winifred politely picked up the glove, rose, and placed it on Miss Stock's sofa. ”We thought we should hand it in locally.”

”That's good of you,” said Miss Stock. ”Though no one will claim it. There's a room half full of things like it. Trinkets, knicknacks, great gold hearts the size of oysters, souvenirs of all kinds, even a pair of riding boots. Things seem to appear and disappear just as they please. No one ever enquires again for them. That's not why the females come back. Of course it was a kind action on your part. Sometimes people benefit, I suppose. They say that if one finds something, or sees something, one will come back anyway.” Miss Stock paused for half a second. Then she asked casually, ”Which of you was it?”

At once Millicent replied, ”It was I who saw the glove first, and several other things too.”

”Then you'd better take the greatest possible care,” said Miss Stock, still quite lightly. ”Avoid all entanglements of the heart, or you may end like Lettice.”

Winifred, who was still on her feet, said, ”Millicent, we really must go, or we shall never get to Baddeley End.”

Miss Stock said at once, ”Baddeley End is closed all day on Thursdays. So wherever else you go, there's no point in going there. ”

”You're right about Thursdays, Miss Stock,” said Winifred, ”because I looked it up most carefully in the book before we left. But this is Wednesday.”

”It's not,” said Millicent. ”It's Thursday.”

”Whatever else it may be,” confirmed Miss Stock, ”it indubitably is Thursday.”

There was an embarra.s.sing blank in time, while an angel flitted through the room, or perhaps a demon.

”I now realize that it is Thursday,” said Winifred. She turned pale. ”Millicent, I am sorry. I must be going mad.”

”Of course there are many, many other places you can visit,” said Miss Stock. ”Endless places. Almost every little hamlet has something of its own to offer.” ”Yes,” said Winifred. ”We must have a look round.”

”What, then, do they come back for,” asked Millicent, interrupting again, ”if it's not for their property?”

”I didn't say it wasn't for their property. It depends what property. Not for their gloves or their rings or their little false thises and thats, but for their property, none the less. For what they regard as their property, anyway. One's broken heart, if it can be mended at all, can be mended only in one way.”

”And yet at times,” said Millicent,”the whole thing seems so trivial, so unreal. So absurd, even. Never really there at all. Utterly not worth the melodrama.”

”Indubitably,” said Miss Stock. ”And the same is true of religious faith, or poetry, of a walk round a lake, of existence itself.”

”I suppose so,” said Millicent. ”But personal feeling is quite particularly-” She could not find the word.

”Millicent,” said Winifred. ”Let's go.” She seemed past conventions with their hostess. She looked white and upset. ”We've got rid of the glove. Let's go.”

”Tell me,” said Millicent. ”What is the one way to mend a broken heart? If we are to take the matter so seriously, we need to be told.”

”Millicent,” said Winifred, ”I'll wait for you in the car. At the end of the drive, you remember.”

”I'm flattered that you call it a drive,” said Miss Stock.

Winifred opened the front door and walked out. The door flopped slowly back behind her.

”Tell me,” said Millicent. ”What is the one way to mend a broken heart?” She spoke as if in capital letters.

”You know what it is,” said Miss Stock. ”It is to kill the man who has broken it. Or at least to see to it that he dies.”

”Yes, I imagined it was that,” said Millicent. Her eyes were on the Palestinian lamblets.

”It is the sole possible test of whether the feeling is real,” explained Miss Stock, as if she were a senior demonstrator.

”Or was real?”

”There can be no was. if the feeling's real.”

Millicent withdrew her gaze from the gamboling livestock. ”And have you yourself taken the necessary steps? If you don't mind my asking, of course?”

”No. The matter has never arisen in my case. I live here and I look on.”

”It doesn't seem a very jolly place to live.”

”It's a very instructive place to live. Very cautionary. I profit greatly.”

Millicent again paused for a moment, staring across the spa.r.s.ely endowed room at Miss Stock in her alarming clothes.

”What, Miss Stock, would be your final words of guidance?”

”The matter is probably out of your hands by now, let alone of mine.”

Millicent could not bring herself to leave it at that.

”Do girls-women-come here from outside the village? If there really is a village? My friend and I haven't' seen one and the church appears to be disused. It seems to have been disused for a very long time.”

”Of course there's a village.” said Miss Stock, quite fiercely.

”And the church is not entirely disused, I a.s.sure you. And there are cows and a place where they are kept; and a river and a bridge. All the normal things, in fact, though, in each case, with a local emphasis, as is only right and proper. And, yes, females frequently come from outside the village. They find themselves here, often before they know it. Or so I take it to be.” Millicent rose.

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