A Family Affair. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ around the curve when she saw the man standing in front of her, a short distance down the road. She stopped dead in her tracks, fighting the temptation to turn and run. There could be no doubt of it, he had seen her; he was, in fact, watching her.

      “Don’t be a ninny,” she told herself without much resolve. You’ve been wanting to see some sign of life and unless there’s some horrible mistake, this certainly is one.

      “Hello,” she called aloud, not moving from the spot where she stood. “Can you direct me to Kelsey House?”

      There was such a long pause before he answered that she half wondered if he had heard her at all, and was about to call again when he finally spoke.

      “You must be Miss Jennifer,” he called back, quite as though she had just opened the door of her home to find him there waiting to greet her, rather than having met him along an isolated country road at night.

      The fact that he knew her name startled her at first. It was an incongruous spot in which to find someone who could address her by name.

      “Miss Kelsey said I should bring you up to the house,” he went on as he drew nearer.

      Jennifer let out the breath she had been holding in a great sigh of relief. Of course, she chided herself for her stupidity. He was a servant that her aunt had sent out to watch for her. After all, they did know she was coming, they were expecting her, and she was considerably later than she had indicated in her letter. They had grown concerned, which was nice to realize, and had sent this man out to see if anything had happened to her.

      “Oh, thank Heaven,” she said aloud. “I had all but given up hope of ever finding the place.”

      “She thought you might need some help. People coming from outside can’t see the place without help,” he said.

      “It must be very isolated,” she said, thinking his remark strange. But the trees around her were very high and thick, and she could well understand that a house would be difficult to spy if it were shielded from the road.

      The man had stopped directly in front of her, studying her intently but with no sign of either pleasure or displeasure at what he saw.

      “Are you Mr. Kelsey?” Jennifer asked. He did not act very much like a servant. She had not, as it were, had much experience in such matters, but he did not act as she would expect a servant to act; not even, she thought fleetingly, as she had acted toward her mother.

      The man chuckled, a fact which Jennifer regarded as rude. There was not, so far as she could see, anything humorous in her question.

      He grew abruptly sober. “No,” he said. “Mrs. Kelsey did him in a long time ago.”

      What exactly did one say to such a comment, Jennifer wondered? He was a strange one, that was for sure. Under any other circumstances, she would probably have brought him down a peg or two. Unfortunately, this was neither the time nor the place to take exception with his manners. He was not Mr. Kelsey, but he might be a relative, or a friend of the family; or he might, after all, prove to be a servant, and a very rude one. Whatever he was, she promised herself, she would inform her aunt of his peculiar remarks and his rather rude manner. It was hardly what ought to be due a guest who had just arrived, and was in addition a stranger here.

      Since he had made no attempt to indicate the way, she asked, “Is it far to Kelsey House?” She had spent quite enough time on this silly road for one night, and was eager now to be at her destination.

      “No, we’ll take the path,” he said. “Save some time.” He turned and started toward the woods.

      She had seen no sign of a path, and her first thought was that he was somehow mistaken. But when she looked in the direction that he was going, sure enough she saw a break in the denseness of trees and shrubs. There was no question that it was a path, quite a well used one, leading sharply off from the road. It was strange that she had not noticed it before; but then, she reminded herself, she had not really been looking for a path so much as for some sign of the house itself—a mailbox, perhaps, or the sight of lights burning in the distance. Those things were still not in evidence.

      “Oh, I say,” she called after him, suddenly remembering how she happened to be walking along here, and not driving her car. “I left my luggage back in the car. It stalled back there in the stream. I wonder if you would mind getting it out for me?”

      “Your car?” he asked rather skeptically, pausing without looking back.

      “Oh, no, I meant the luggage. It’s in the car.” What an annoyingly dense creature he was.

      “What’s in it?” he asked, still without turning.

      The man was not only dense, but impertinent as well. “In my luggage? Why, my clothes of course,” she answered, restraining herself with an effort.

      His answer was unintelligible to her, little more than a grunt, and he started off again toward the woods. She opened her mouth to insist and then closed it again. Alone, in the middle of the night and the middle of nowhere, she was not really in much of a position to argue with this strange man.

      In any event it would probably be better to let Aunt Christine handle the matter. She resolved again that Aunt Christine would be sure to learn all this as soon as they reached the house. She knew that if her mother were around, this would be quickly straightened out. Well, she would put the whole business in her aunt’s hands, just as if Aunt Christine were her mother.

      She followed the man into the woods. The darkness enveloped them. Jennifer found that she had almost to run to keep up with her guide. Once, when she stopped to free her skirt from an extending branch that had caught hold of it, he went on until she had lost sight of him altogether.

      “Wait,” she called after him, literally tearing the fabric loose from the branch that held it. To her greater annoyance, the man went on, and she had to run to catch up to him again. He did not seem to slow his pace at all. She was furious, and only years of keeping her emotions firmly in check enabled her to keep from speaking her mind.

      She could not say how far they had come through the woods. They seemed to hurry forever through the dark dampness. She was tired and unhappy, and the journey took on an unreal dreamlike quality. The trees they hurried past seemed to be moving, coming to life. She felt she had crossed from one world and time into another. Time moved at a different pace. Her watch, when she paused to glance at it, seemed to be moving faster and faster. She thought, this is what it feels like to die.

      The suddenness with which they left the woods and emerged onto the lawn of Kelsey House was startling. One moment they were surrounded by the dense growth and the awesome darkness. The next moment they were at the edge of a sweeping green and in the distance the house stood framed against the sky, its windows gleaming brightly. There was an eerie glow to the scene, which seemed to come not so much from the moon, now rising, but from things themselves, as if she were seeing the very essence of them.

      It was a shock to be there so suddenly, to see the house stark and singular before them. But there was more to the scene than that alone. Between where she stood and where the house stood, a group of ghostly figures danced what might have been a child’s game, or even a primitive rite of some sort. They twirled about in a circle, breaking free to spin wildly one at a time. There was the same eerie glow to the white, gauzelike gowns that they all wore; it made them look ghostlike.

      The most shocking thing of all, to Jennifer’s way of thinking, was that the gauzelike СКАЧАТЬ