Here Comes a Candle

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  The ear of corn broke in her hands, and Sarah dropped her own to look at her in anxious surprise.

  “Goodness, look how clumsy I am! I shall let you finish, honey, while I watch.” She had come to her decision as her hands betrayed her. She and Sarah would go and live in Jonathan’s remote cottage, but he would never visit them.

  Never? It was a hard word. Something in her rebelled against it. It was all so unfair. Arabella had left her husband. What did she deserve? She picked up a long green corn leaf and began systematically, stripping it into sections. That was not the point. Jonathan was married to Arabella. She remembered—now, of all times must she remember?—her father’s voice, discussing an aristocratic divorce, pushed through the House of Lords. “Whom God hath joined,” he had quoted, “let no man put asunder.”

  It was all absurdity anyway. Massachusetts was Jonathan’s life, and—divorce in Massachusetts? But Sarah had finished. She picked up the shining, sweating ears. “Splendid. Now let’s go indoors and see how your mother is.”

  Wonderful How Sarah had lost her terror of her mother. Kate would never understand how it had happened, but it was the crowning mercy of the journey. When she told Jonathan—she pulled herself up short. She was going to tell Jonathan Penrose as little as possible. Perhaps, even, the question would never arise. At the time, she had discounted Manningham’s suggestion that Jonathan would have been enraged by her unexplained disappearance. She had taken it, she supposed, for granted that he would understand what had happened, would realize that inevitably she would put Sarah first. But—he had surprised her painfully enough before. Suppose he failed, too, in this. Suppose she were to find herself dismissed at once without discussion.

  No good pretending it was not possible. She understood Jonathan well enough now to recognize that his instinctive distrust of women (and could you blame him for it?) left him all too ready to believe the worst, even of her. Odd, but not entirely so, to find herself thinking about Othello. Had he had a mother, ever, or sisters? He had certainly, like Jonathan in his seafaring days, lived a life mainly free from female contact. A cold shiver ran down her spine. What was Jonathan thinking now? But at least—she was making now a conscious effort to pull herself together—I’m no Desdemona. If he tries to dismiss me, I’ll make him see that Sarah has to come first. And she needs me.

  Kate made, as best she could, a game of the rest of the morning. They cooked their corn early, and took up a tray to Arabella, who still proclaimed herself very ill indeed. Then, the kitchen tidied, Kate said, “Shall we rest outdoors, love?” And out they went to a patch of shade under a huge butternut tree, where she could lie and dream her unhappy dreams while Sarah “rested” by chasing the multicolored butterflies that played like wind-borne jewels in the sunshine.

  Their halcyon time was not disturbed till the shadows of the trees were lengthening and a cool breeze had blown up from the crevasse by which the house stood. The evening birds were beginning to sing and the crickets were in full chorus. Kate felt a batswing of anxiety brush her consciousness. What was keeping Manningham so long?

  She rose. “Time to go in, love, and think what it’s to be for supper. Ham and eggs, do you think? Or, maybe, eggs and ham?” Of course, Sarah never reacted to this kind of simple verbal joke in words, but, as always, a delighted smile showed that she had taken it. Really, speech was not all that important.

  Arabella was up at last. “Where in the world have you been?” And then, seeing their arms full of clean linen: “You might have told me you were washing!”

  “I’m sorry.” Kate made herself take it coolly.

  “And my bed needs making.”

  This was too much. Kate turned to look at her. “Does it?” she said.

  It was lucky that Manningham came in, just then, from the stable yard, but evident at once that he, too, was in the worst of tempers. “Of all the slugs, that horse is the worst.” He threw hat and riding gloves on the kitchen table. “And the only carriage I could get liable to fall to bits any moment. I thought I’d never get here. And then—to have to stable the brute myself. And, my God, the heat: it’s insupportable,”

  “But what’s the news?” Arabella wasted no time on sympathy.

  “Bad. The town’s in a panic. At last reports, the English were at Nottingham—it’s barely thirty miles from Washington. There are all kinds of rumors, of course, and not much organization that I can see ... General Ross might have a walkover if he quit fooling around and attacked.”

  “A walkover!” Arabella shuddered. “But what about us? Did you get the letter?”

  “Of course I did.” A furious glance reminded her of Kate’s presence. “I’ll tell you about it after supper. Thank God for the sight of food.”

  Kate, who had had everything ready, had been busy frying eggs as he talked, and now put lavish helpings onto four plates. They ate for the most part in silence, and then Arabella and Manningham withdrew to the front of the house, leaving Kate and Sarah to wash the dishes. Kate could hear their voices raised in furious argument. Whatever the letter Manningham had received might be, it had not been good news. What then? It must have been from Jonathan. Could he have refused to ransom Sarah? It seemed impossible. And yet, what else could those furious unintelligible voices mean?

  Idiot that she was; she had been so sure Jonathan would pay up, that Manningham’s return tonight would mean the end of the affair. She had let herself spend the day in dangerous relaxation, enjoying the improvement in Sarah, when she should have been planning ahead for just such a crisis as this.

  Quick, as always, to sense her mood, Sarah was looking at her anxiously. She put away the last plate. “Come, love, it’s not quite bedtime yet. Let’s go out into the garden. I’ve thought of a new game.” Not a very nice one. But if they went quietly out the back way, and crept around to the front of the house, they had a fair chance of overhearing what Manningham and Arabella were saying so angrily, in the big front drawing room.

  She had her hand on the latch of the back door when Manningham’s voice stopped her. “No, Mrs. Croston.” His tone was regretful. His hand held a pistol. “This is the end of the road, I’m afraid. No—don’t move. Remember: if I am compelled to kill you, I shall have to get rid of the witness.” A tiny jerk of the head indicated Sarah, who had got down from her chair and was watching, wide-eyed. Mercifully, Kate thought, the pistol itself almost certainly meant nothing to her.

  “That’s right.” He recognized her silence as that of defeat. “I don’t at all like violence,” he went on. “You can rely on me to avoid it at all costs—or almost. So—do as you are told and no harm will come to you. Or to the child. Sit down, Kate, and put your hands on the table. I have to talk to you.”

  “Talk!” But she kept her voice as calm as possible, for fear of alarming Sarah, and sat down obediently with her hands where he could see them on the table.

  “We don’t want trouble, you see.” He actually sounded apologetic. “Well, I don’t, anyway. I suppose you heard us arguing in there. Arabella wants an accident...” Fantastically, he was explaining to her. “Well—figure it for yourself—it could happen so easily in a strange house. The well ... that steep flight of stairs ... anything. But I won’t have that. Of course I won’t.” Was he trying to convince himself, or her? “I still hope it will all work out for the best. I’ll try to come back for you. When it’s all settled. I promise I will. I’ll do everything I can. Only, you see, I’ve got to have the money. I can’t go back to England otherwise. You’ve got to see; right now, it’s hopeless. It’s all Penrose’s fault, God damn him!”

  “Quietly!” She made herself say it coolly, for Sarah’s sake. The child had settled herself on a chair by the table and was sitting there, listening to everything he said, her hands busy with that old, strange habit of arranging a line of spoons and forks across the table. It was a bad sign. She had not done it since she had been ill. “Don’t forget the child.”

  “I’m not. I’m not forgetting anything, Kat
e. But what can I do? I must have money.” For him, it explained and excused everything.

  “Yes.” The longer he talks, she thought, the longer I have to plan. “I see,” she said, while her brain raced, searching for a thread of hope. She was consumed with rage—at herself. To have been caught like this...

  But she must keep him talking. “Do I gather,” she made it light, “that Mr. Penrose has not come through with the money?”

  “No, damn it.” Rage outran discretion. “Writes me as cool as you please, that we shall have it when Sarah is safe back with him. A likely story!”

  “He gave you his word?” Why had she never thought of this?

  “Naturally. And what’s that worth? The word of a Yankee? That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to that obstinate woman in there. Give him Sarah, and it’s good-by to everything. No, no; I’m too old a bird to be caught with that kind of chaff.”

  It was absurd: it was disaster. If Arabella could not convince him that Jonathan’s word was sound as the Bank of England, what hope had she? But she must try just the same. “You’re crazy,” she said. “You don’t understand...”

  “These cursed Americans? Thank you, Kate, I think I understand them a little too well. Fight us with one hand and feed us with the other! Float loans against us and then buy our own bills at discount as investments? What kind of honorable thinking is that? And then you expect me to trust the word of a twisting New Englander! You know as well as I do that the Yankees are famous for sharp practice, even here where the most flagrant cheat’s called the best bargain.”

  “But Jonathan’s not like that! You must believe me.” In her eagerness to convince him she hardly noticed that he was moving slowly nearer. “I promise you, if you have it in his writing, you might as well have the Bank of England notes in your pocket.”

  “Thank you,” dryly. “But that’s what I’d rather have.” And then, on a different note, “What’s that confounded child doing now?”

  Kate turned in a flash, to see Sarah still apparently absorbed in laying lines of forks across the table. “It’s too bad,” she heard, then the pistol crashed against her temple and she fell oceans down into blackness.

  SIXTEEN

  Her head was splitting. Where was she? Worse still, why could she not move? Hot sunshine on her face told her that dangerously much time must have passed since she plunged into unconsciousness. Calm now; don’t panic. She could move her head. She was lying flat on her back, hands and feet tied to a narrow bed. Yes, one of the beds in the room she had shared with Sarah.

  Sarah! Where was she now? The scurrying thoughts exacerbated the pain in her head as she worked frantically against the bonds that held her. But they were like iron against her wrists and ankles. She only hurt herself. An accident! She remembered Manningham’s apparent rejection of the idea. Idiot, ever to have believed a word he said. Instead of killing her outright, he had left her to a lingering, helpless death in this deserted house.

  Deserted? Why was she so horribly sure of this? Well, of course it stood to reason. They must have left as soon as they had tied her up. They would be safely settled in some Washington hideaway by now. Doubtless that was really what the argument had been about last night. Arabella would not have been pleased with the idea of moving nearer to the invading British Army. But Manningham! Was this his plan of escape? Perhaps he had already taken Arabella and Sarah across the lines. She could hear her own breathing, harsh and desperate in the stillness of the house, and made a conscious effort to calm it.

  This was no time for panic thinking. Manningham could not join the British Army until his exchange came through—So—if she could get to Washington, there was still a chance. For Sarah’s sake as much as her own, she must manage to get free. She made herself lie quiet for a few endless moments, resting, clearing her mind of everything but the immediate problem. Her hands were by her sides, tied to the frame of the cot bed. Her feet were tied together to its foot. Concentrate, then, on her hands. Put all the pressure she could bear first on one, then on the other. It hurt horribly. But slow death by starvation would not be pleasant either. And then there was Sarah.

  What kind of rope would they have found in this house? Nothing very splendid from what she had seen of the other household equipment. She strained harder and more painfully than ever, but still with no effect. She was sobbing now, at once with pain and with rage at herself. She had thought she was fooling Manningham so finely by pretending to fall in with his blandishments—and all the time he had been one jump ahead of her. To have spent yesterday so light-heartedly in the garden with Sarah ... folly! They should have escaped: might have been safe by now. But Jonathan had told her he intended to pay the ransom: how could she have foreseen the absurd, the tragi-comic misunderstanding between him and Manningham?

  But she should have. She should have realized that neither would trust the other. If she died here alone, it would be entirely her own fault. And—Sarah? Her fault too: all her fault She who had been so grandiloquently ready to sacrifice everything for Sarah! Hot color flooded her cheeks as she remembered just what she had meant by that “everything.” Oh, he had fooled her finely, had Charles Manningham. Her hands fought furiously against the rope that held them. No use: only intolerable pain that was somehow comforting. She bit her lip and tried still harder. And—that letter from Jonathan. Did it mean that he was in Washington? Surely it must. So—if she could only get loose, get there, find him. Absurd to plan like this, as she lay here helplessly fighting despair and pain.

  But better to plan than to despair. Besides, it took her mind off the agony of her hands. Five miles to Washington, Silas had said. She had worked out a rhythm now. Push, strain against the rope, count five as the pain got worse, count ten if she could make herself, then relax for the same count. And think of the clothesline where Sarah had helped her hang their washing. Old, surely, and frayed?

  But perhaps there had been a new one stored somewhere in the kitchen. Don’t think like that. Defeatist thinking. Five miles to Washington—and no money. Throughout the journey, this had been one of the difficulties of her position. When Manningham had fetched her, so unexpectedly, from the garden at Penrose, she had had none on her. But this was defeatism too. There must surely be money somewhere in this big house. Yes, wryly, she found herself smiling: and here you lie helpless, thinking about looking for it.

  It made her angry, and anger made her bear the pain to the count of fifteen, and then on up to twenty, and at twenty it happened. A tiny rending noise, the barest perceptible giving of the rope around her right hand. She gritted her teeth and went on pushing. It was easier to bear the pain now, with hope for company, but it took her an agonized half-hour or so of pushing and resting before she had her right hand free. And then it was so numb with pain and constriction that it was some time before she could use it to work fumblingly at freeing her other hand. After that, it was easy. Untying the rope that had bound her feet, she saw that it was in fact a brand-new piece and shivered at her good fortune that they had used, the older bit on her hands.

  Her feet, too, were numb, but she must lose no time. She managed to crawl to the two little chests of drawers that stood side by side under the window and sat by them as she went methodically through their contents. She disliked herself as she did it, but found, at last, a purse with two dollars in it. It might not be wealth, but it was a great deal better than nothing.

  She could stand now and walk, limping. The five miles to Washington were going to be a long way. She took time, just the same, to make herself eat some ham and stale bread and drink a mugful of yesterday’s sour milk. The poor cow ... she could only hope that some neighbor would think of it today.

  Her watch had stopped, but when she got outside she thought by the position of the sun that it must be pretty close to midday. The food had helped to ease her headache, but she was shivering all over and grateful for the heat of the sun. She shut the big front door carefully behind her and started to hobble down the driveway.


  The pain in her feet eased gradually with walking and she pushed herself forward steadily, trying to map out a plan of campaign as she went. The first thing, of course, was to find Jonathan. Surely he must be in Washington, and so new a town should not have too many hotels. Or—would it? Here an alarming memory assailed her. Someone, surely, had told her that many congressmen found it too expensive to bring their families to Washington with them, preferring to live in one of its many boardinghouses. Well, nothing for it but to make the round of them.

  The sun was very hot. She had stopped shivering and was sweating instead. Dust rose from the road and choked her. If she could only lie down in that patch of shade over there and rest, and rest, and rest ... She pushed on and heard, as she did so, the sound of a carriage behind her. She turned, a disheveled enough figure, she knew, to hold out a pleading hand.

  It was a small, shabby, one-horse chaise driven by an elderly man. For a moment she thought he was going right by, then, miraculously, he spoke to the horse and pulled it to a halt a little way past her.

  “Going into town?” he asked, as she limped up to him. “You don’t look just in the shape for walking.”

  “I’m not.” Now she had time to worry about her accent. “If you would be so good—”

  “Of course. Couldn’t leave a dog to walk in this heat, and with the damned redcoats about too. Up you get, ma’am,” he reached a bony hand down to help her up beside him. “You’re not from these parts, I reckon?” The question was both inevitable and, luckily, expected.