Lord of the Far Island, Victoria Holt [world of reading TXT] 📗

I saw the shutter come down.

" Tis something all marveled at," he agreed.

"Did you know she was going?"

He hesitated, then he said: "Yes, I knew she were going."

"Why didn't you try to stop her? You must have known the chances were against her reaching land safely."

" 'Tweren't no good trying to stop Miss Silva when she were set on doing something. Her were like a wild pony. There were no reasoning with her."

"Something must have happened to make her want to leave so hurriedly."

"Twere so."

"What, Slack? You must know."

He was silent for a moment.

"She was my sister," I went on. "Just think of that. We had the same father, though different mothers. We should have been brought up together."

"Her weren't like you, Miss Ellen. There couldn't have been two ladies who was so different."

"I certainly wouldn't have gone out to sea on a stormy night."

"Her came to me afore her left. She fed the pigeons with me just as you be doing now. Fluttering round us they were, making their lovely cooing noises, and she said to me: 'Slack, I be going away. I be going to some place where I'll be happy as I never could be here.'"

"Oh Slack, do you think that she was so unhappy that she deliberately went out like that?"

He was thoughtful. "Her gave me something, Miss Ellen. Her said: 'Keep these, Slack. Someone might want them someday. Perhaps I will myself if it don't all go according to plan.'"

"What did she give you?"

"I'll show 'ee."

He took me into the outhouse and in the cupboard there was a box. He took a key from his pocket and opened it. Inside were two notebooks—exercise books like the one I had found in the desk.

A great excitement seized me. Could it be that these exercise books held the clue to Silva's disappearance? I held out my hand but Slack was regarding me in a puzzled fashion.

"I were to hold 'em," he said.

"And not show them to anyone?"

"Her didn't quite say that."

"Have you read them?"

He shook his head. "They be too much for me, Miss Ellen. I can read only little words. Her was frightened . . . frightened of someone in the castle. I reckon it's in here."

"Slack," I begged, "let me read them."

"I been pondering," he said. "I have said: 'Show 'em to Miss Ellen.' And I'll tell 'ee this, I've been on the point of doing that time and time again. Then when you said about the sugar it was as though Miss Silva spoke to me. 'Let her read 'em, Slack. Might be they'll be of help to her.'"

He put the books into my hands.

"I shall go to my room and read them immediately," I said. "Thank you, Slack."

"I hope I be doing right," he said uneasily.

"I shall never forget what might have happened to me but for you," I told him earnestly.

"Master Jago were there, were he not? He just happened to be there. I be mighty glad I were there too."

I did not think about what he meant by that until later. I was so excited about the exercise books, and lost no time in going to my room and shutting myself in there.

It was still the same scrawly untidy handwriting though a little more mature than that in the first exercise book.

"I found that notebook I wrote in years ago and it made me laugh and cry a bit. It brought it all back so clearly and I thought it would have been interesting if I had written more of it and had a whole stack of such notes, recording my life, my miserable uneventful life. Those were good days in a way when my stepmother was here with Baby, and when they went I was terribly lonely. At first I thought my father might have liked me a little more if there was no competition. How wrong I was! Of course I was a difficult child. Governesses came and went. They always said the same. They despaired of me. What I do remember from those days was my father's sending for me.

"It was soon after my stepmother had gone. I must have been about fourteen. I remember how excited I had been when the summons came. I had let myself imagine that he was going to tell me he loved me after all and we were going to be friends from now on. It's amazing what pictures the imagination will conjure up without having any sound reason for doing so. I saw myself in his study, toasting muffins on winter evenings or sitting on a footstool at his feet while we talked. I could hear the servants whisper: 'There's nobody who can soothe him like Miss Silva. The moment he comes in you know he's going to shout: "Where's Miss Silva?"'

"What a silly little thing I was. As if my stepmother's going would have softened a nature like his. The reality was that I stood before him, my hopes blighted by his withering gaze. My best dress—crushed-strawberry color with a matching sash which I had thought so becoming—seemed to hang on me awkwardly. I was seeing myself through his eyes. All he wanted to tell me was that my latest governess had given notice and he didn't feel inclined to engage another, and if I wanted to be ignorant, which I obviously did and was, I could continue so. I was lazy, stupid, useless and he was going to wash his hands of me. He wondered why he had bothered to do as much as he had. But as he could not allow people to know that he had a little savage in his household he had decided, after long consideration, to engage a new governess, and if he had any complaints from her, she would be the last.

"I returned in abject misery, but I reminded myself: At least he had actually sent for me and talked to me. I didn't remember when