# The Soft Side (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1900)/The Third Person/Chapter 2

II
At ten o clock that evening the pair separated, as usual, on the upper landing, outside their respective doors, for the night; but Miss Amy had hardly set down her candle on her ​dressing-table before she was startled by an extraordinary sound, which appeared to proceed not only from her companion's room, but from her companion's throat. It was something she would have described, had she ever described it, as between a gurgle and a shriek, and it brought Amy Frush, after an interval of stricken stillness that gave her just time to say to herself 'Some one under her bed!' breathlessly and bravely back to the landing. She had not reached it, however, before her neighbour, bursting in, met her and stayed her.
'There's some one in my room!'
They held each other. 'But who?'
'A man.'
'Under the bed?'
'No—just standing there.'
They continued to hold each other, but they rocked. 'Standing? Where? How?'
'Why, right in the middle—before my dressing-glass.'
Amy's blanched face by this time matched her mate's, but its terror was enhanced by speculation. 'To look at himself?'
'No—with his back to it. To look at me,' poor Susan just audibly breathed. 'To keep me off,' she quavered. 'In strange clothes—of another age; with his head on one side.'
Amy wondered. 'On one side?'
'Awfully!' the refugee declared while, clinging together, they sounded each other.
This, somehow, for Miss Amy, was the convincing touch; and on it, after a moment, she was capable of the effort of darting back to close her own door. 'You'll remain then with me.'
'Oh!' Miss Susan wailed with deep assent; quite, as if, had she been a slangy person, she would have ejaculated 'Rather!' So they spent the night together; with the assumption thus marked, from the first, both that it would have been vain to confront their visitor as they didn't even pretend to each other ​that they would have confronted a housebreaker; and that by leaving the place at his mercy nothing worse could happen than had already happened. It was Miss Amy's approaching the door again as with intent ear and after a hush that had represented between them a deep and extraordinary interchange—it was this that put them promptly face to face with the real character of the occurrence. 'Ah,' Miss Susan, still under her breath, portentously exclaimed, 'it isn't any one———!'
'No'—her partner was already able magnificently to take her up. 'It isn't any one———'
'Who can really hurt us'—Miss Susan completed her thought. And Miss Amy, as it proved, had been so indescribably prepared that this thought, before morning, had, in the strangest, finest way, made for itself an admirable place with them. The person the elder of our pair had seen in her room was not—well, just simply was not any one in from outside. He was a different thing altogether. Miss Amy had felt it as soon as she heard her friend's cry and become aware of her commotion; as soon, at all events, as she saw Miss Susan's face. That was all—and there it was. There had been something hitherto wanting, they felt, to their small state and importance; it was present now, and they were as handsomely conscious of it as if they had previously missed it. The element in question, then, was a third person in their association, a hovering presence for the dark hours, a figure that with its head very much—too much—on one side, could be trusted to look at them out of unnatural places; yet only, it doubtless might be assumed, to look at them. They had it at last—had what was to be had in an old house where many, too many, things had happened, where the very walls they touched and floors they trod could have told secrets and named names, where every surface was a blurred mirror of life and death, of the endured, the remembered, the forgotten. Yes; the place was h———, but they stopped at sounding the word. ​And by morning, wonderful to say, they were used to it—had quite lived into it.
Not only this indeed, but they had their prompt theory. There was a connection between the finding of the box in the vault and the appearance in Miss Susan's room. The heavy air of the past had been stirred by the bringing to light of what had so long been hidden. The communication of the papers to Mr. Patten had had its effect. They faced each other in the morning at breakfast over the certainty that their queer roused inmate was the sign of the violated secret of these relics. No matter; for the sake of the secret they would put up with his attention; and—this, in them, was most beautiful of all—they must, though he was such an addition to their grandeur, keep him quite to themselves. Other people might hear of what was in the letters, but they should never hear of him. They were not afraid that either of the maids should see him—he was not a matter for maids. The question indeed was whether—should he keep it up long—they themselves would find that they could really live with him. Yet perhaps his keeping it up would be just what would make them indifferent. They turned these things over, but spent the next nights together; and on the third day, in the course of their afternoon walk, descried at a distance the vicar, who, as soon as he saw them, waved his arms violently—either as a warning or as a joke—and came more than halfway to meet them. It was in the middle—or what passed for such—of the big, bleak, blank, melancholy square of Marr; a public place, as it were, of such an absurd capacity for a crowd; with the great ivy-mantled choir and stopped transept of the nobly planned church, telling of how many centuries ago it had, for its part, given up growing.
'Why, my dear ladies,' cried Mr. Patten as he approached, 'do you know what, of all things in the world, I seem to make out for you from your funny old letters?' Then as they waited, extremely on their guard now: 'Neither more nor less, ​if you please, than that one of your ancestors in the last century—Mr. Cuthbert Frush, it would seem, by name—was hanged.'
They never knew afterwards which of the two had first found composure—found even dignity—to respond. 'And pray, Mr. Patten, for what?'
'Ah, that's just what I don't yet get hold of. But if you don't mind my digging away'—and the vicar's bushy, jolly brows turned from one of the ladies to the other—'I think I can run it to earth. They hanged, in those days, you know,' he added as if he had seen something in their faces, 'for almost any trifle!'
'Oh, I hope it wasn't for a trifle!' Miss Susan strangely tittered.
'Yes, of course one would like that, while he was about it—well, it had been, as they say,' Mr. Patten laughed, 'rather for a sheep than for a lamb!'
'Did they hang at that time for a sheep?' Miss Amy wonderingly asked.
It made their friend laugh again. 'The question's whether he did! But we'll find out. Upon my word, you know, I quite want to myself. I'm awfully busy, but I think I can promise you that you shall hear. You don't mind?' he insisted.
'I think we could bear anything, said Miss Amy.
Miss Susan gazed at her, on this, as for reference and appeal. 'And what is he, after all, at this time of day, to us?'
Her kinswoman, meeting the eyeglass fixedly, spoke with gravity. 'Oh, an ancestor's always an ancestor.'
'Well said and well felt, dear lady!' the vicar declared. 'Whatever they may have done———'
'It isn't every one,' Miss Amy replied, 'that has them to be ashamed of.'
'And we're not ashamed yet! Miss Frush jerked out.
'Let me promise you then that you shan't be. Only, for I am busy,' said Mr. Patten, 'give me time.'
​'Ah, but we want the truth!' they cried with high emphasis as he quitted them. They were much excited now.
He answered by pulling up and turning round as short as if his professional character had been challenged. 'Isn't it just in the truth—and the truth only—that I deal?'
This they recognised as much as his love of a joke, and so they were left there together in the pleasant, if slightly overdone, void of the square, which wore at moments the air of a conscious demonstration, intended as an appeal, of the shrinkage of the population of Marr to a solitary cat. They walked on after a little, but they waited till the vicar was ever so far away before they spoke again; all the more that their doing so must bring them once more to a pause. Then they had a long look. 'Hanged!' said Miss Amy—yet almost exultantly.
This was, however, because it was not she who had seen. 'That's why his head———' but Miss Susan faltered.
Her companion took it in. 'Oh, has such a dreadful twist?'
'It is dreadful!' Miss Susan at last dropped, speaking as if she had been present at twenty executions.
There would have been no saying, at any rate, what it didn't evoke from Miss Amy. 'It breaks their neck,' she contributed after a moment.
Miss Susan looked away. 'That's why, I suppose, the head turns so fearfully awry. It's a most peculiar effect.'
So peculiar, it might have seemed, that it made them silent afresh. 'Well, then, I hope he killed some one!' Miss Amy broke out at last.
Her companion thought. 'Wouldn't it depend on whom———?'
'No!' she returned with her characteristic briskness—a briskness that set them again into motion.
That Mr. Patten was tremendously busy was evident indeed, as even by the end of the week he had nothing more to impart. The whole thing meanwhile came up again—on the Sunday afternoon; as the younger Miss Frush had been quite confident ​that, from one day to the other, it must. They went inveterately to evening church, to the close of which supper was postponed; and Miss Susan, on this occasion, ready the first, patiently awaited her mate at the foot of the stairs. Miss Amy at last came down, buttoning a glove, rustling the tail of a frock, and looking, as her kinswoman always thought, conspicuously young and smart. There was no one at Marr, she held, who dressed like her; and Miss Amy, it must be owned, had also settled to this view of Miss Susan, though taking it in a different spirit. Dusk had gathered, but our frugal pair were always tardy lighters, and the grey close of day, in which the elder lady, on a high-backed hall chair, sat with hands patiently folded, had for all cheer the subdued glow—always subdued—of the small fire in the drawing-room, visible through a door that stood open. Into the drawing-room Miss Amy passed in search of the prayer-book she had laid down there after morning church, and from it, after a minute, without this volume, she returned to her companion. There was something in her movement that spoke—spoke for a moment so largely that nothing more was said till, with a quick unanimity, they had got themselves straight out of the house. There, before the door, in the cold, still twilight of the winter's end, while the church bells rang and the windows of the great choir showed across the empty square faintly red, they had it out again. But it was Miss Susan herself, this time, who had to bring it.
'He's there?'
'Before the fire—with his back to it.'
'Well, now you see!' Miss Susan exclaimed with elation and as if her friend had hitherto doubted her.
'Yes, I see—and what you mean.' Miss Amy was deeply thoughtful.
'About his head?'
'It is on one side,' Miss Amy went on. 'It makes him———' she considered. But she faltered as if still in his presence.
​'It makes him awful!' Miss Susan murmured. 'The way,' she softly moaned, 'he looks at you!'
Miss Amy, with a glance, met this recognition. 'Yes—doesn't he?' Then her eyes attached themselves to the red windows of the church. 'But it means something.'
'The Lord knows what it means!' her associate gloomily sighed. Then, after an instant, 'Did he move?' Miss Susan asked.
'No—and I didn't.'
'Oh, I did!' Miss Susan declared, recalling her more precipitous retreat.
'I mean I took my time. I waited.'
'To see him fade?'
Miss Amy for a moment said nothing. 'He doesn't fade. That's it.'
'Oh, then you did move!' her relative rejoined.
Again for a little she was silent. 'One has to. But I don't know what really happened. Of course I came back to you. What I mean is that I took him thoroughly in. He's young,' she added.
'But he's bad!' said Miss Susan.
'He's handsome!' Miss Amy brought out after a moment. And she showed herself even prepared to continue: 'Splendidly.'
'"Splendidly"!—with his neck broken and with that terrible look?'
'It's just the look that makes him so. It's the wonderful eyes. They mean something,' Amy Frush brooded.
She spoke with a decision of which Susan presently betrayed the effect. 'And what do they mean?'
Her friend had stared again at the glimmering windows of St. Thomas of Canterbury. 'That it's time we should get to church.'