Vanishing Point

“You mean she disappeared just like that?”

Je

“I told you it was rather frightening. And if I was writing it for a story I should stop there, because the end rather spoils it.”

“What was the end?”

“Oh, she wrote-twice. On a postcard to her mother, and to Miss Cu

“You say they don’t live here any more?”

“Oh, no. They’re dead. Maggie oughtn’t to have gone away and left them.”

Over Je

“Yes, that’s the sort of thing I mean. Only it needn’t always be tragedy, you know. Queer things happen in villages, just as they do everywhere-and nice things and interesting ones.” He even steeled himself to add, “Gloom is the hallmark of extreme youth.”

Je

She left him with Je

“And if any of us was slimming, we shouldn’t be able to, should we? So what a good thing it is that we’re not, because Mrs. Bolder does make the most heavenly biscuits. I expect it will be years, and years, and years before Rosamond and I have to think about that sort of thing. She runs about too much, and I can’t run about enough. And anyhow it must be perfectly ghastly to think about everything you eat and feel perhaps you oughtn’t to. Miss Cu

Rosamond walked down the passage with him when he had said goodbye. He wondered whether he was to be summoned to Miss Crewe’s presence again, but they passed her door in silence. As they came out upon a wide corridor which led directly to the hall, she said in a hesitating voice,

“Would you care to see the house?”

He made no attempt to soften the tone of his reply.

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Her lips quivered into a smile.

“People do come and see it. There are some good pictures.”

“No, thank you.”

“Two Leys and a Vandyck, and a pet of a Gainsborough- Miss Louisa Crewe, three years old, in a white muslin dress and a blue sash, with a puppy.”

“Then in heaven’s name, why doesn’t she sell them, and give you a human life?”

The smile went out like a blown candle flame.

“Aunt Lydia will never sell anything,” she said. “And you- you mustn’t say things like that.”

“Then you had better not ask me to bow down to the idol which is destroying you all. I suppose it started as a perfectly good house put up to serve the needs of real live flesh-and-blood people. The sort of life they lived is over. The kind of houses they lived in just aren’t wanted any more. They’ve either got to be put to new uses, or they’d be better pulled down. You know as well as I do that this house is nothing but a mausoleum, and that it’s draining the life out of you. If you’re going to ask what that has to do with me, I’ll tell you.”

“But I’m not asking you.”

“I’ll tell you all the same. First of all, it’s everyone’s duty to prevent an attempt at suicide.” He gri

“I think you are quite mad.”

“No-only metaphorical. But cheer up-it gets easier as it goes on. In the second place, you keep doing something to me. You make me angry, and you make me tired; If I’m not in a rage with Miss Crewe for making a slave of you, I’m in a rage with you for letting yourself be made a slave of. ‘A Sister’s Sacrifice’, that’s what you are-a living embodiment of one of those Gloria Gilmores that Je

She had been watching him in a way that came across to him as aloof. Not exactly the Blessed Damozel looking forth over the gold bars of heaven, but perhaps the medieval damsel watching a furious lance being broken for her sake. There was a suggestion that men would play these rough games, and that there wasn’t anything you could do about it. What she said was a plain inexpressive “Yes.” And then, “I would like to talk to you about Je

She took him into the hall and across it into the small pale room where they had talked last night. They sat in the same chairs, and talked about what Je

It was Rosamond who spoke about Maggie Bell.

“I don’t know what made Je

“I don’t suppose she found it so. There has been time for her to get used to it.”

“I hoped she had never heard very much about it.”

“In a village? What a hope! Besides children always know everything.”

“Nobody has even known what happened to Maggie. It really is frightening, you know. She was such a good daughter. She would never have gone away and left her father and mother like that if she hadn’t been obliged to.”

She was echoing Je

He said,

“I suppose it was the usual thing-some man, and she couldn’t face the talk.”

“But there wasn’t any man. She must have been forty, and she had never been about with anyone.”

“Axiomatic,” he said. “Girls who disappear or who get themselves murdered have never had any men friends-all their friends and relations say so. But that’s an old story. Let us now give our minds to Je