Here Comes a Candle

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “I’m sure of it.” But she would not tell him of that first occasion—of Sarah hiding, obviously terrified, in the temple. “Why did you come back this morning if you were not afraid of something of the kind?”

  “Yes.” It was neither affirmation nor, quite, denial. “But what are we going to do now?” Tone and question alike were an implicit apology for his earlier anger.

  Now she was on her feet, eager to share the burden of anxiety with him. “Oh God, I wish I knew. Suppose I’m wrong? Suppose we ought to be shouting and searching? But I’ve the most dreadful feeling that it might push her into doing something...”

  “She wouldn’t otherwise? I see what you mean.” He did, completely. “How long has she been gone?”

  “All morning. I’m worried to death.” The admission increased her fear. “What shall we do?”

  “I’ll go and call her casually, as if I’d just come home by chance. No harm in that, surely?”

  “No ... no, of course not.” She seized on it. “Do, Mr. Penrose—quickly. Up along the river. She likes to sit on that big rock; where you can see over the wall. I’ll stay here.” No need to say that this bench commanded the widest view of the same river.

  She could hear him calling as he moved away upstream. Lightly, casually, “Sarah, my monkey, where’ve you got to?” And then, further off, “Sarah ... Sarah...”

  She must fight the temptation to run after him, to share his anxiety. Because—face it—this morning Sarah had run away from her, as well as from her mother. It must mean that somehow she had failed her...

  Here was Mrs. Peters, plodding heavily across the grass. “There you are, Miss Kate. It’s lunchtime. I made johnny-cake for Sarey. But—where is she?”

  “I don’t know. She’s been gone all morning. Mr. Penrose is looking for her.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Peters thought about it for a moment. “I reckon it weren’t your fault. You’ve been like a mother to her. We all know that.” She stopped, aware of how much she had said. “I’ll keep lunch hot. Don’t you worry, Miss Kate. Mr. Penrose’ll find her, you’ll see if he doesn’t. And, even if not, who’s to say it wouldn’t be all for the best...”

  “No!” Explosively. And then, more gently. “No, Mrs. Peters, you mustn’t ever even think like that. Sarah’s going to be all right. Quite all right.” Lunatic to speak with such confidence, today of all days, and yet, just having done so made her feel better.

  The older woman shrugged. “Just as you say, Miss Kate.” And moved off toward the house.

  How long had Jonathan been gone? She could not hear his voice any more. He must have gone clear up to the Boston road. This brought a new line of fear. The road ... a panic-stricken child rushing madly out under a horse’s hoofs. Or—why did the idea of a kidnaping leap to her mind? Who in the world would want to kidnap Sarah?

  She could not sit still any longer. After all, it would be perfectly reasonable to call Sarah to her lunch. She laid her sewing down on the bench, rose to her feet, and moved across to the shrubbery, calling low and casual, as Jonathan had, “Sarah! It’s lunchtime.” Once again she stopped to look well into the shadows of the little temple, but of course there was nothing there. She moved on along the path through the trees, calling at regular intervals, peering about her in all the shady corners where a child might hide.

  From time to time, almost despite herself, she moved over to lean against the low containing wall that ran beside the river, and peer down into its secret waters. Sarah had never, to her knowledge, tried to climb this wall. Could she, if she tried? Kate thought not; it was quite as high as a small girl and had been built carefully on Jonathan’s orders, its gray stones smoothly held together with mortar so as to provide no toehold.

  And yet—a desperate child, running out of the house as Sarah had wildly run? Kate could hear Jonathan Penrose calling again now—far off at the other side of the wood, toward the road. Reasonable or not, she would walk along by the wall.

  The ground had been cleared when the wall was built, but already a thick growth of barberry and wild rose and tangling grapevine was coming back, and at times she had hard work of it pushing far enough through the undergrowth to make sure the wall was still smooth and un-climbable. Mrs. Peters had taught her to avoid the brilliant green of the poison vine, and she had noticed that Sarah, too, was automatically careful of it. There was a good deal of it along the wall. Sarah would never have pushed through here. She was wasting time, vital time, as, it seemed to her, she had been all morning. She would turn back at the next bend of the river.

  But when she got there it was to find a complete change in the vegetation along the wall. Here was a stand of small, sturdy oaks and surely, running in among them, the faintest trace of a path. Was this, perhaps, one of Sarah’s secret places that she had never been shown? Certainly it was a path more suitable for a small girl than a woman. She had to bend almost double to push her way through the stubby little oaks. But the path led directly to the wall—and to a place where mortar had crumbled away among the rocks, leaving what looked almost like a flight of steps.

  No time now to blame herself bitterly for not having found this place sooner. The sense of urgency that had been driving her all morning was stronger than ever. She should have been here hours ago. Too late? The crickets were chanting it around her. No time to find Jonathan Penrose. Besides; if the truth was as bad as she feared, it was the least she could do to face it alone.

  Leaning over the wall, she could see nothing at first but scrubby bushes sloping away toward the river, which was quite far below her here, running smooth, deep, and deadly. Then she saw that the path continued on the far side of the wall, turning sharply downward into a tangle of small oaks and stunted firs. The rocks crumbled a little as she climbed the wall, and she thought with horror of Sarah doing this. But a broken ankle was the least, now, of her worries.

  Why did she not call? Not, she knew, because the nearby rush of the river might drown her voice. No, quite simply, she was afraid to. And in a moment she knew that in this, at least, she had been right. She was in among the oaks now, looking down the steep slope to the river, and halfway down, on a little ledge just the width of a child’s body, lay Sarah, quite still. A fall—a rattlesnake—a sudden illness ... The horrid possibilities flashed through her mind to be dismissed in favor of a certainty that was almost as bad. Sarah was fast asleep. If she turned over or woke suddenly, she would roll down into the river.

  No time even to think of fetching help. Kate was already working her way down the slope, grateful for the toughly rooted blueberry bushes, which, taken in painful, prickly handfuls, provided a chancy support in the climb. She left the path at last, to work her way straight down a little to the left of where Sarah lay, and then, very silently, very cautiously, along below her. There was just enough hand and foothold if she was lucky. If not, she must remember, at all costs, not to make a noise as she fell.

  But she would not fall. One foot on a firmly rooted little oak, and the other pushed deep into dry earth, she stood still at last, her head almost on a level with Sarah’s. Now, one arm firmly entwined in a prickly bush, the other ready to catch Sarah if she fell, she dared speak. “Sarah.” Very gently. “Time to get up.” It was the way she called her on the rare occasions when she woke first in the morning.

  And it worked. Sarah’s head merely lifted a little, her eyes opened, vague, puzzled...

  “Don’t move, lamby, or—carefully. I don’t want you falling on me. That’s it.” Sarah had stretched, stirred, and sat up all of a piece on the path. Now what? Don’t mention Arabella. So—“Guess what, Sarah,” she said. “Your father’s home for lunch. And Mrs. Peters has made johnnycake.” As she spoke, she felt the oak tree beginning to give under her weight. No panic: don’t even feel it; it’s the most catching thing in the world. “I’ll race you to the wall, Sarah. One, two, three: go!”

  Sarah took off with a little spurt of gravel which almost blinded Kate. At the same instant, the oak root und
er her gave way, and she threw herself upward with a push of the other foot that sent a shower of earth and little stones splashing into the river below. But she was up, lying on her face sideways across the path, just where Sarah had been a moment before. “You’ve certainly won!” She kept her voice steady as she rose first to her knees, then to her feet, and pushed her way upward along the little path.

  Sarah was sitting astride the wall looking down at her with that unfathomable wide-eyed stare of hers that seemed to take in at once everything and nothing. And Kate was shaking like a leaf. Better not pretend. “Do you know”—she was level with the child now—“I was afraid for a minute I was going to fall. Just look at me. Isn’t that ridiculous?” And she held out a shaking hand for Sarah’s inspection.

  The child’s reaction was as surprising as it was heartwarming. She leaned down from the wall and held out her own small brown hand to pull Kate up.

  “Thank you, lamby. I’ll be glad to get home for my lunch, won’t you?” As they set off together down the winding path, Kate wondered what to do about Jonathan. The less Sarah was aware of the fright they had had, the better. And yet, he must not be left in his anguish a moment longer than she could help.

  The problem was solved for her, as they neared the little temple, by the sight of Jonathan’s tall figure approaching down another path. No need to call to him: he had seen them. “Let’s wait for your father, shall we? He’s been looking for you too.” Now she had time to wish that she had warned Jonathan about alarming the child over this adventure. But Sarah had let go of her hand and darted off to meet her father, who swung her up on to his shoulder. “There’s my girl.” Kate need not have worried.

  He sounded as casual as if they had only parted five minutes before. And yet it seemed to her that the morning had left new lines in his tanned face.

  “You found her.” His tone made it the fullest possible speech of thanks. And then, at sight of Kate’s torn dress and scratched and bleeding face and hands, “But, good God, where in the world?” And to Sarah, giving her a reassuring jiggle on his shoulder: “Are you riding comfortably, love? Is your horse behaving?”

  He was rewarded by one of her delighted squeals, as she wound her arms more closely around his neck, but his eyes were for Kate. “Where?” he asked again.

  “She was over the wall, the naughty little thing.” Kate’s tone made it sound the mildest of misdemeanors. “And, would you believe it, fast asleep on a ledge above the river. I had to get below her before I dared wake her. I must be a mess.”

  “You are.” He kept his tone light to match hers. “And, I rather think, a heroine, Mrs. Croston. But there will be time for thanks. A lifetime—Sarah’s.” He gave the child a loving squeeze with his free hand. “Climbed the wall did you, minx? Well, I’m the father who’s going to see that’s never possible again, so we need say no more about it. But—how?”

  “The mortar’s gone, up there among the bushes. It was too easy. I think she had been there before—often. I’m ashamed not to have known.”

  “Don’t be.” Almost brusquely. “You can’t be with her all the time. It wouldn’t be good if you were. The wall shall be fixed today.”

  For the first time since they had arrived, Jonathan stayed home all that afternoon. “Sarah and I,” he announced after lunch, “are going for a walk. Sarah is going to show me her path over the wall. And you, Mrs. Croston, are going to sleep.”

  “To sleep? In the daytime?”

  “Does it seem so fantastic? Well—shame on me—I suppose it might well. You should have reminded me that you have been working twenty-four hours a day since you got here. I don’t know any other of my employees who would have stood it. You need lessons in American independence, Mrs. Croston. You should have complained.”

  “Complained?” It surprised her. “Why should I complain? I’ve been happy here, Mr. Penrose.”

  His answer was disconcertingly off point. “I think it’s about time you call me Jonathan,” he said.

  EIGHT

  “Do you think we could have the piano tuned?” Kate asked it over breakfast one dark November morning. When massed clouds threatened the first snow.

  “Arabella’s piano? Of course, if you wish it.” Jonathan had got back from Boston late the night before and was busy sorting through a pile of letters. “I should have thought of it myself. I’m afraid this place is dull for you.”

  “It’s not for me—or at least, not mainly, though it’s true I should like to be able to play. But I thought I might have a try at teaching Sarah.”

  “Sarah!” His surprised glance rested for a moment on the child who sat between them systematically eating the line of bread fingers Kate had arranged for her. “I know she’s wonderfully better, but if she can’t read?”

  “What has reading to do with it?” Kate found herself increasingly impatient with the household’s habit of taking Sarah’s condition for granted, as something immutable. “The piano is different. She can learn from watching me, if she doesn’t want to be bothered with the notes. Can’t you, Sarah?” One never knew whether the child was in fact listening or not, but she made it an absolute rule to behave always as if she were. Today, Sarah justified her, by looking up, smiling her vague, entrancing smile, and humming a snatch from her favorite tune, Greensleeves. “You see,” Kate said. “She has a natural aptitude for music, I think it might be a beginning ... Besides, the days are so short: we need something to do in the evenings, don’t we, lamb?” No answer of course, but Sarah went contentedly on with her breakfast. She was stuffing rather more bread into her mouth than it would comfortably hold, but Kate knew better than to interfere. The fact that she was feeding herself was triumph enough to be going on with.

  “I reckon you’re the world’s most confirmed optimist.” Jonathan helped himself to buckwheat cakes. “I’ll send Job for the timer today. I should have done it long since: I don’t know what Arabella would say if she got home and found it out of tune.”

  Sarah spilled her milk. “Oh dear!” Kate jumped up to fetch the cloth she kept handy for such emergencies. “Too bad, honey, but you’ve finished, haven’t you? Take your dishes out to Prue, would you? She’s in a hurry this morning. It’s her day off and she wants to get down to the village before it snows.” Would it work? This running of errands was a new thing in Sarah’s life, and a wonderfully encouraging one. But today, after the reference to Arabella?

  Sighing inwardly and mopping up milk, Kate asked herself whether she ought to force a discussion of the problem of Arabella. But how could she in face of Jonathan’s resolute silence? And, after all, Arabella had never come back since the day Sarah had disappeared. Kate had learned from Mrs. Peters that she had gone straight from Saratoga to the Boston house and apparently planned to spend the winter there. Since then, Jonathan had made a practice of spending one or two nights a week in Boston too. “He worships the ground she treads on,” Janet Mason had said.

  Sarah was still standing, swinging to and fro against the back of a chair, watching her with the straight, mutinous mouth she had come to know so well. Let it go? Make an issue of it? She had to make these decisions a dozen times a day, but remained passionately convinced of the importance of getting each one right. “Hurry up, lamb,” she said now. “Then we’d better go out too, before it snows. I’ll give you one hundred swings.” Surely this would work. The swing—her idea—had only been finished a few days ago, and Sarah loved to be swung in time to one of Kate’s counting rhymes. But she still hesitated, looking at once obstinate and pleading. “I’m sure your mother will let us know before she comes home,” Kate went on. “So we can get things ready for her. Won’t she, Jonathan?”

  “Of course.” And then, as Sarah flashed Kate a quick, almost conspiratorial smile and left the room: “You think it’s as bad as that?”

  “Yes, quite as bad.”

  “I see.” He put down the letter he had been reading. “That rather settles it then. We were talking about Christmas yesterday,” he e
xplained. “Arabella and I.”

  “Yes?” Kate, too, had thought about this.

  “Arabella was thinking of a party out here. Once the snow packs hard it’s an easy sledge ride. We used to have them every year. Before...”

  “Yes. Before.” What in the world could she say?

  “You don’t like the idea?”

  “It’s none of my business.” She could not help a little spurt of anger at the way he was leaving the burden of objection to her. And yet—Sarah was her responsibility. “You saw Sarah just now,” she went on. “And she’s been so much better.”

  “I know. But that’s just it, you see. I told Arabella she was better. Of course she would like to be home for Christmas, to have things as they used to be. It’s difficult...” Painful to see him fumbling for a way to put it. “But you’re sure?”

  “That it would do harm? Well—you saw.” She was not going to make his decision for him.

  “Yes. Right. We’ll have the party in Boston. It’s lucky I’ve got a man I can trust, now, to see to things at the factory. I’m afraid it will mean a quiet Christmas for you and Sarah, but we can make up for it in January, for her birthday. Yes, thank you”—he was glad to have it settled—“one more cup of coffee, and then I must be off to the factory. We’ve a huge new order—winter uniform cloth. Now! In November! And no doubt Wilkinson’s army up there in the north country in their summer ones. Not that anything can excuse what happened at Chrystler’s Farm. Two thousand Americans beaten by eight hundred English! I tell you, Kate, I’m almost ashamed to be an American. It’s no wonder the English won’t accept the Czar’s offer to mediate. Why should they? Gallatin and Adams and their ‘Peace Commission’ have about as much chance of success as that poltroon Wilkinson has of pulling out of his winter quarters and taking Montreal. Imagine giving him the command—a coward and bungler: maybe worse. Do you know, Kate, sometimes I wonder whether I should not—whether it’s not my duty to take a hand in politics?”