Then one day, when Agatha was quietly sitting on the white seat at the end of the green walk, darning a black woollen stocking to wear, in church the next day, and for once more absorbed in darning than in dreaming—then, all of a sudden, Clarissa came and sat on the seat beside her. She was smaller even than Agatha had imagined her, and she looked young for her age, which must have been ten or eleven. Her hair was brushed off her face and tied back with a brown ribbon, a little darker than the hair, which was dappled, like the skin of a fawn. Her face was tiny, very pale, and her eyes were dappled brown, like her hair. She wore a short white dress of embroidered cambric, and on her feet were the little red shoes which Agatha knew she had always worn. Physically, she looked shadowy and pathetic, but a spirit peeped out of her eyes, with something of roguishness in it. Chastened, subdued roguishness, perhaps, but yet it was unmistakably there.
“I have been with the Bunyans,” said Clarissa, “ and now Mrs. Bunyan has gone to fetch the milk, so I came here.”
The Bunyans were the family of an imaginary gamekeeper, who had always been a part of the Clarissa Game.
Agatha felt as she used to do as a little child, when she was allowed to look at the inside of her father’s watch, and was told not to breathe in case she should stop the works.
“I wish you wouldn’t be so much with the Bunyans,” she answered. “Now you are such a big girl, you ought to be more with me. The Bunyans are not suitable companions.”
Clarissa shifted her seat to the arm of the bench.
“Don’t scold me,” she said, “or I shall go away.”
Agatha’s heart beat. She was agonized. But an instinct told her that she must not appear too concerned. Fervour would frighten Clarissa.
So she laughed with a duplicity at which she was both surprised and proud.
“You can’t really get away from me,” she said. “I’ve got you on a string.”
“Try!” said Clarissa. “Catch me if you can.”
It was a game after her own heart. She had always loved Touchwood, Tom Tiddler’s Ground, and Hide and Seek, and now she jumped off the seat, and stood for a moment just out of reach.
Agatha grabbed at her.
She danced off—only a yard or two, and stood, poised.
Throwing down the woollen stocking, Agatha was wholeheartedly in the game. She sprang at Clarissa—missed her—and then they ran, one behind the other, laughing, down the path towards the house. Clarissa was fleet of foot, but Agatha’s legs were the longer. She gained on her quarry and grabbed at the flying sash … she caught it … but … she could not hold it. It went through her fingers—vanished, and Agatha had, in reaching at it, taken her eyes for just that one second off the little girl herself.
Clarissa disappeared in that second.
She was gone.
Baffled and breathless, Agatha looked about from side to side. There was no one to be seen. The garden lay perfectly quiet around her. She was alone. Then she looked back at the stocking which she had left on the seat. She felt very foolish, and too much ashamed of herself to walk back the length of the path and take up her darning again.
She went into the house, hoping that neither of the servants had seen her racing madly about the garden, pursuing someone whom she realized had not been there at all. They would have thought her mad. And would they be right or wrong?
As usual Agatha did not follow up the train of thought. She was not in the habit of thinking things out.
But after this she often saw Clarissa in the garden. At first she came and went, very suddenly and fleetingly. She jumped in and out of the shrubs and flowers, in one moment beside Agatha, and in the next leaving only the swing of a great peony blossom to show where she had slipped into the herbaceous border. As the days went by, however, she became less shy, and was nearly always there, so that the sight of her was a daily part of the Clarissa Game.
And all the time she was seen by Agatha alone. To the rest of the world she was entirely invisible.
At first it was difficult to believe this; the appearance was so real. But Agatha discovered it one day when she suddenly saw the gardener watching her playing Touchwood with Clarissa, who was springing about from tree to tree, a most conspicuous figure in the white dress.
For a moment Agatha was aghast, feeling that both the play and the playmate were equally impossible to explain.
“Is it the kitten you be after, Miss?” Hunt asked, as she paused in her pursuit. “Here she be, just skipped up the apple tree right over them rhubarb pots.”
So he had not seen Clarissa, and Agatha knew that the little girl could be seen by her eyes alone.
By degrees Clarissa grew less elusive. It was not only in the garden that she appeared; she came into the house. She sat opposite to Agatha at the dining-room table, on the chair vacated by Mrs. Bodenham, looking ridiculously small and incongruous between its wide arms of dark green leather. She played with the contents of Agatha’s extremely tidy workbasket on the whatnot in the drawing-room, and made a terrible mess of the carefully arranged cottons and silks. And up in the bedroom she took from the hair tidy the “ combings” which were accumulating to make a “ switch” to be added to Agatha’s thinning locks, and threw them out of the window, when they drifted about the garden, and were collected by the birds as linings for nests.
And the servants never, saw Clarissa. She fearlessly ran in and out of the garden door, under the very nose of Sarah, the austere and elderly housemaid, who was dusting the hall table. She sat with Agatha behind the tea-tray while Helen carried in the kettle and set it on the stand. When Agatha was being given the cup of warm gruel which she always drank after she got into bed, Clarissa played with the trinkets on the dressing-table and made such a noise among the rings, that Helen looked sharply round to see what was happening and then walked gravely across the room, and closed the window to keep out the draught.
Chapter Three
Clarissa was very fond of raspberries. Agatha was picking for jam, and Clarissa, by way of helping her, hovered around, eating all the biggest fruit in the basket, and she picked a great many for herself and ate them before they ever reached the basket at all.
She was certainly greedy.
Agatha wondered why. She remembered with some embarrassment that food had once been her own secret delight; that cakes and puddings had been the great events of her days, until this degraded taste was slowly eradicated by years of good manners and bad cooking.
But in any case she could not be severe with Clarissa, not even when she crushed a big raspberry on to the front of her one white dress, and made an ugly stain right down it.
She looked less fragile and shadowy too when her face and hands were stained with crimson juice—in fact she was a real little ragamuffin that morning.
So normal had her presence become, that Agatha for some moments was vaguely listening to her chattering away with Reggie the garden boy before it dawned upon her what was happening.
Clarissa was becoming visible to other people. Agatha was shaken.
She heard Reggie pointing out a very large and ripe raspberry to Clarissa, and then she heard him quickly add:
“Here’s Miss Bodenham, I must hop it.”
Agatha looked stately. She could do this with a garden boy.
“Who are you speaking to?” she asked.
Reggie looked about him, completely puzzled.
“The young lady was here just now,” he said, “ but she’s gone again.”
As a matter of fact, Clarissa was standing quite conspicuously only a yard or two away from him, in the very act of putting into her mouth the very large raspberry he had pointed out. She looked triumphant and mischievous.
Agatha told Reggie to go and help the gardener mow the lawn. She was terribly agitated. The situation was growing beyond her control. If Clarissa appeared to the outer world she would have to be explained. This in itself was difficult enough; but if her appearances were to become disappearances while they were in the very
process of being explained, the situation was more than difficult, it was impossible.
Old Hunt saw her the next day. He asked Agatha to tell the young lady not to run about over the radish bed, where he had just put in the seed.
Agatha answered him faintly. Panic slowly mounted within her. She was almost beside herself. Clarissa was growing unmanageable. What was to be said to Helen or Sarah if the child were seen in the house, and she certainly would be, sooner or later. For she was here, there, and … nowhere, and there seemed to be no possible way of telling whether she was visible or not. Agatha felt she dared not appear before her own servants, not knowing whether to their eyes she would be alone or accompanied by a strange child.
She hurried away when she heard anyone coming. She walked in the shrubbery, out of sight of the house. She hid in a corner till she heard Helen shut the kitchen door after bringing the tea into the drawing-room, and then she went in, and hastily ate a furtive meal, with Clarissa curled up on the sofa beside her. After tea she hurried back to the shrubbery and wandered among the bushes. Frantic plans were forming in her mind. She knew that she must come to grips with the situation and immediately. With every hour that passed she realized that her odd behaviour was more and more likely to excite question. She could not spend the rest of her life hiding among the laurels in the garden.
She went to bed before dinner.
Firmly taking Clarissa by the scruff of the neck, she forced her into her own bed, pushed her under the sheets, and held her there while she rang the bell and parleyed with Helen, telling her that she did not feel well, and would dine in bed. And then she added:
“I think I want a change. I shall go to Brighton to-morrow.”
Agatha had never before in all her life made a sudden decision. She never left home. She knew that this move on her part would astonish the household, filling the kitchen with voluble surmise. This idea was distasteful, more than distasteful, it was alarming. But the possible discovery of Clarissa was still more alarming—the discovery of a Clarissa who could not be relied on from one moment to another, and of whom, more literally than of Shakespeare, it might be said:
“Others abide our question. Thou art free.”
Clarissa certainly could not be counted on to “abide”—either question or answer. She came and went, free as air.
Agatha left by the early train next day. The morning was a short one, but it held an eternity of torture.
The servants were in and out of her room every minute, helping to pack, asking for instructions on this detail and on that, arranging, disarranging, asking for money, for her address in Brighton (which she didn’t know), for the possible length of her stay (which she knew still less). And all the time Clarissa was in and out too, sending Agatha into a fever. Every now and then, she was sure that she caught the damp green eye of Sarah fixed on the child; and a minute or two later Helen’s alert ear appeared to hear the sound of her movements in the room. But no questions were asked, and there was no doubt that the sudden apparition of an unaccountable child in the room would not have passed without comment.
Another cause of anxiety was Clarissa’s white cambric dress. It was not suitable for a train journey, and if she became visible in the railway carriage the other passengers would certainly wonder at her being so unsuitably dressed. So Agatha decided to carry with her a plaid shawl which had belonged to Mrs. Bodenham, and this could be wrapped round Clarissa to cover her thin dress in the train.
The cab came at ten. The servants clustered round, with bags, hold-alls, parcels, and sandwiches. Agatha stepped in and sat down, with Clarissa beside her, demure and quiet for once. Agatha could hardly believe that no one could see the little girl, but she was undoubtedly invisible, for Helen brought out the dressing-case at the last moment, and placed it on the seat beside Agatha, exactly on to Clarissa’s lap. Agatha sprang forward instinctively, putting out her hand to save the child. Her alarm was quite unnecessary, for the dressing-case fell solidly through Clarissa on to the seat beneath her, and she was obviously none the worse.
But Agatha had come to the end of her nerves, and this last episode was too much for her. She burst into hysterical laughter.
Helen, Sarah, and the Cook were already very anxious over the sudden and unprecedented journey which their mistress was taking alone; and now this unexpected fit of laughter, so unlike her, and so uncalled for, showed that she must indeed be in a very unnatural state.
“Are you sure that you are up to the journey, Miss?” Helen asked, pausing before she got out of the cab, and laying an affectionate hand on Agatha’s gloved one. “We don’t like you going away by yourself like this. It doesn’t seem right. Won’t you wait till the next train, and let me get ready and come with you? I know you would find me useful, all by yourself in one of them great hotels.”
Agatha was touched. She disliked the thought of appearing unappreciative of the affection for herself which she felt existed in all her servants, but to take either of them with her was, of course, an impossibility. It was to escape them that she was going away.
“Thank you, Helen,” she said kindly. “It is very good of you to think of it, but I want you all to have a rest and a quiet time for a while. I shall perhaps send for you later on, but not yet.”
And she ordered the cabman to drive on.
Agatha travelled first class, and alone with Clarissa, who shivered and felt cold. She was ill at ease on the journey, as Agatha was herself. She was glad she had thought of bringing the plaid, and she pinned it rather awkwardly round Clarissa, who seemed grateful for it, and nestled into the corner of the carriage, holding it up to her chin. She looked a very funny little thing, and not a bit like herself, as she stepped wearily out of the train when at last they got to Brighton. The voluminous folds of the shawl were dragging all round her in the dust of the platform, and she almost looked a dull and dirty child.
But no sooner was she out of the carriage than she became herself again. She frisked away from Agatha, absolutely refusing to take her hand, gave a little kick, which released her from the plaid and its safety pins, and skipped off in her white dress to watch the luggage being taken out of the van.
Agatha picked up the shawl and followed, but she could not persuade Clarissa to let her pin it round her again. She said she was quite warm and didn’t want it.
They drove to a hotel, the name of which Agatha had remembered because she had once heard of somebody who had stayed there.
It looked very large and modern, and Agatha was rather overwhelmed by the reception given her by the maitre d’hôtel, manageress, page boys, and boots, who all seemed to be helping her out of the cab and into the hall.
She led Clarissa by the hand, trying to keep her own hand in a position which would look natural, whether a small girl were attached to it or not.
She watched the eyes of the hotel people. It was terribly embarrassing not to know whether they saw her as one person or as two.
Agatha engaged a bedroom and a private sitting-room, asking for a room with two beds, “As my little niece—will stay with me for part of my visit.”
It was with an almost piteous appeal in her eyes that, as she spoke, she watched the face of the most agreeable and courteous manageress, trying to judge from her expression whether the little niece was seen to be beside her or not.
She thought not, for though the woman looked as though she liked children, a kind motherly face, she never gave a glance in the direction of Clarissa, but led Agatha upstairs, and showed her into a most comfortable little suite on the first floor. Clarissa ran about the room, looking at everything, and was delighted when she found that the window opened on to a balcony, and looked out upon the sea.
Agatha cut short the conversation of the manageress, and rather hurried her out of the room. It was evident that Clarissa was as yet invisible, but she dreaded every moment that the child might suddenly be seen by the woman, without any possibility of her entrance upon the scene being naturally explained.
> When they were alone, she took Clarissa on to her knee, and together they looked out of the window.
It was a wonderful moment. Agatha had never felt so free in all her life. She and Clarissa were alone together at the seaside. Nobody knew them. No one would question them. In the crowded hotel, Clarissa could come and go as she pleased, and Agatha need explain nothing. She could live in each moment as it came.
She held Clarissa’s hand and rubbed it gently.
“I wish I could make your little hand feel warm,” she said. “ It is always cold.”
“It will soon be warm here,” said Clarissa, and she held it out towards the sun.
It was very transparent.
Chapter Four
Agatha marvelled at herself during those first weeks at Brighton. She was a completely new creature. It seemed to her that until now she had lived entirely without volition, everything which she did each day being the inevitable consequence of an exactly similar thing which she had done the day before. Such little stupid things, too. And yet she had thought that they must always be done; or rather, she hadn’t thought about them at all, but had submitted to them as they came up for doing as if they were the living agents and she merely their passive tool.
Now she came and, went just as her fancy took her. Not that Agatha’s fancy was likely to take her very far, but the mere fact that she and Clarissa could walk in and out of the hotel unquestioned gave her an unwonted sense of independence. She took care not to talk to Clarissa in the hall or public sitting-rooms, in case at the moment the child happened to be invisible except to her own eyes, as she did not wish to run the risk of getting the character of talking to herself; but except for that precaution she found that it didn’t matter a bit whether Clarissa could be seen or not. She could appear and disappear as abruptly as she liked. Nobody noticed. And in their own sitting-room alone, or on the crowded beach, Agatha and Clarissa grew every day more delightfully intimate.
One of the first things they did was to buy new clothes for the little girl. Agatha went to several different shops and ordered boxes of dresses and hats to be sent to the hotel for Clarissa to try on. She dared not risk doing this in a shop, for fear the child should vanish suddenly, either leaving an empty dress suspended in mid air with nobody inside it, or else possibly carrying off with her some garment which was in process of being put on.
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