Because I remembered virtually nothing of the walking part of the dream what I knew of my nightwalking came from the observations of other people. Often I liked to nightwalk in the long gallery, a windowed corridor on the second floor that stretched along the central part of the front of the house. John told me how, when he first came to work at Blithe, he had been to the tavern in the village one Saturday night and was returning home up the drive somewhat the worse for wear when he looked up at the house and saw a pale figure, all in white, moving slowly along the long corridor, now visible through one window, then disappearing to reappear a moment later in the next. At the time he knew nothing of my nocturnal habits. ‘I don’t mind telling you, miss,’ he told me many a time, ‘I ain’t no Catholic but I crossed myself there and then. Knowing as I do the reputation Blithe has for ghosts, how it has always attracted and pulled them in, I convinced myself it was some evil spectre I was seeing. I was sure I’d come in and find the whole household murdered in their beds.’
Mrs Grouse told me that I always walked slowly, not as sleepwalkers are usually depicted in books, with their arms outstretched in front of them as if they were blind and feared a collision, but with my arms hanging limply at my sides. My posture was always very erect and I seemed to glide, with none of the jerkiness of normal walking, but smoothly, as if, as she put it, ‘you were on wheels.’
It was true what John said about Blithe and ghosts. Mrs Grouse reckoned it all stuff and nonsense but Meg once told me the local people thought it a place ghouls loved, a favourite haunt, as it were, to which any restless spirit was attracted like iron filings to a magnet. And now, even though it was only I, Florence, sleepwalking, I seemed somehow to have added to this superstition.
Meg told me that when I woke from my walks it uselessed to speak to me for several minutes, that I seemed not to hear. Often, before I was myself, at the moment when I seemed to have emerged from the dream but had not yet returned to real life, I began to weep and was quite distraught, and if any should try to comfort me I pushed them away and said, ‘No, no, don’t worry yourself about me! It’s Giles who needs help. We must find him, we must!’ Or something like.
After I had nightwalked three or four times and it began to be a pattern, they called in Dr Bradley, the local doctor, who came and gave me a good going-over, shining lights in my eyes and poking about in my ears and listening to my heart and so on. He pronounced me fit and well and told them it was likely the manifestation of some anxiety disorder, which was only natural considering my orphan status and the upheavals of my early life. This was confirmed, he said, by my fears focusing upon Giles, who was, after all, the only consistent presence in my life. I read all this in a report I found on Mrs Grouse’s desk one day, when she had gone into town on some errand. I curioused over the words ‘upheavals of my early life’. I could not remember anything of my parents – my mother died in childbirth and my father some four years later with my stepmother, Giles’s mother, in a boating accident. I recalled nothing of any of them, and as the servants were only engaged after they were all dead, they could tell me nothing either. As far as my early life went, it was all a blank, a white field of snow, without even the mark of a rook.
Before I set out to visit the Van Hoosiers next morning, John came back from town with a letter, a rare enough occurrence at Blithe, where Mrs Grouse received correspondence from my uncle maybe two or three times a year and little else. It was for me, and I reflected that from being completely unlettered but a few weeks ago I was now the most episto-latoried person for miles around. The letter was, of course, from Giles and I heart-in-mouthed as Mrs Grouse commenced to read it, after she had first sniffed and said, ‘Humpf, seems folks think I’ve nothing better to do all day than read letters to you.’
Dear Flo,
Thank you for your letter. I have read it ever so many times and it is tearing from so much folding and unfolding. I like the sound of your ice skating and cannot wait for the holidays. Do you think Theo Van Hoosier will be able to find any skates to fit me? Will the ice bear the weight of three of us? Or will we take turns? I am very slow at my lessons, but I don’t mind when the others laugh at me. It is better than being hit or pinched. But you are not to worry about it because it does not happen often. Not so very often, anyway. I hope you are well. I hope Mrs Grouse and John are well. I hope Meg and Mary are well.
Your loving brother
Giles
The letter from me Giles referred to was, of course, written by Mrs Grouse and so contained none of the things I would have liked to tell him, about the tower room, for instance (although I had not yet decided whether or no to let him in on that), and none of the anxious inquiries about himself I longed to make. His references to pinching and hitting shivered me quite, although it uncleared whether he had actually suffered physical abuse or if ‘you are not to worry about it because it does not happen often’ merely referred to the teasing, but I had no time to reflect upon it now. I was all done up ready to go visiting, so I took the letter from Mrs Grouse and slipped it into my overcoat pocket, where it heavied my spirit as if it had been a convict’s leg iron or a hunk of stolen bread down a schoolboy’s pants. I had wanted to walk to the Van Hoosier place but Mrs Grouse would have none of it. It was more than a mile and although the roads were clear of snow today, if it blizzarded again I might be stranded halfway, not to mention that even if that didn’t happen I would death-of-cold me. She neverminded that I had been out in the cold on the ice every afternoon anyway. So John was to horse-and-trap me there, which was fine by me, for once we out-of-sighted Blithe and Mrs Grouse’s prying eyes he handed me the reins and let me drive, as he often did when the housekeeper wasn’t around. The old horse we used on the trap, Bluebird, was so docile and knew all the local routes so well that in truth there was not much driving to be done, and even should it snow, it little dangered the horse leaving the road and wandering into a ditch.
I had never seen the Van Hoosier place; it was approached by a long driveway, and set in woodland so far back from the main road as to invisible all but its chimneys when we drove past. So I was surprised to find it smaller than Blithe, although in every other respect much grander. You could tell that from the moment you turned off the road and through the entrance gates, which were newly painted, in contrast to our own peeling and chipped portals. The edges of the drive were neatly manicured and the lawns either side trimmed to within an inch of their lives. The house itself sparkled and gleamed in the winter sun; it did not absorb the light like dull old Blithe. John dropped me at the front door. ‘I’ll drive the trap around the back and make myself comfortable in the servants’ kitchen, Miss Florence,’ he said as he handed me down. ‘Just have them send for me when you’re ready to leave.’
I anxioused as I reached for the bell pull. I was all best-frocked today and did not feel in my own skin. The door was opened (soundlessly, it did not creak like nearly all the doors at Blithe) by a uniformed footman. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, questioning an eyebrow.
‘I – I came to inquire after the health of Mr Van Hoosier,’ I mumbled. ‘That is, I mean, well, young Mr Van Hoosier.’
‘And you would be…?’
‘Florence, from Blithe House.’
He held open the door and bowed me in. I found myself in a grand hallway with a great sweeping staircase, chandeliered and crystalled to the nines, mirrors everywhere, so that I was surrounded by what seemed dozens of pale, gawky girls, staring at me from all directions.