Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White (books for 5 year olds to read themselves .TXT) 📕

ALONE

Helen stared around her with startled eyes. The disorder of the room

pointed to a hurried departure. Drawers had been pulled out, while a

suitcase and umbrella lay upon the table.

“She’s not gone yet,” thought Helen.

But a moment’s reflection robbed her of that hope. Nurse Barker would

naturally leave her heavy luggage behind, to be forwarded to the Home.

An umbrella, too, would be useless in the gale.

Feeling sick with suspense, Helen opened the wardrobe. Nurse Barker’s

outdoor uniform no longer hung upon the peg. A hurried search through

the chest, showed all the drawers to be empty. All that remained was a

collection of cigarette ends and ash.

It was a planned desertion. With deliberate mental cruelty, Nurse Barker

had left the girl alone—reaching the landing through the Professor’s

room.

Helen felt almost overwhelmed by this last blow. Throughout the evening

she had noticed the steady march of events towards some inevitable

climax. While she dimly felt its objective was her own isolation, she

had played into the hands of destiny by goading on Nurse Barker to take

her revenge.

Yet, even so, she had been forced to make her moves, as if she were a

puppet controlled by another will.

“I’m all alone,” she thought fearfully.

It was true that others were still in the house; but hers was the only

active brain—hers, the only quick body. The others were shackled by

fetters of flesh.

With a desperate need of company, she opened the sec ond door, and

entered the Professor’s room.

But there was no comfort here—only an increase in loneliness. The

Professor—still holding his rigid posture, as though carven in

stone—was too much like a corpse awaiting burial…

She wanted to leave him, yet she dreaded returning to the blue room. The

old woman lacked the human quality, for which she hungered. At this

crisis she would have welcomed the harshest abuse from Nurse Barker,

could have drawn her back.

The longing to hear another voice grew so acute that she went out on the

landing and beat frantically upon Miss Warren’s door.

“Miss Warren,” she screamed. “Help.” But there was no response. She

might have been appealing to a sealed tomb. Only the wind shrieked, as

though a flock of witches sailed overhead, racing the moon,.which spun

through the torn clouds like a silver cannon-ball, shot into Space.

“She’s cruel,” whispered Helen, turning away.

But Miss Warren was too soundly asleep to hear her cries. Contact with

others always gave her the impression that her nerves were drawn through

her skin, and exposed to the open air. Tonight, after all the accidents

and alarms, she felt as though each fibre were actually bruised.

She had the natural cravingof a recluse for her own locked study.. But

she had been picked out of her shellmade to endure hours of enforced

companionship with an unpleasant old woman, in a lethal atmosphere.

The storm, too, had played havoc with her nervous system. The accident

to her door-handle, which had imprisoned her, therefore, came as a

welcome release from responsibility. She made no effort to free herself,

but slipped her bolt, and shut out the World.

With plugs of cotton-wool in her ears, and blankets piled over her head,

to deaden the noise of the gale, she was soon submerged in the

slumber-sea of utter exhaustion.

Although Helen felt perilously near to collapse, her will still

functioned—telling her that she must not yield to panic. She reminded

herself that all the wires were not cut. She was still linked up with

civilization. But, as she went downstairs, she realized how hopelessly

she had become entangled in the snare of fear. She could not ask anyone

to come to the house because she dared not draw the bolts.

The Professor had laid down the command that the door must not be

opened; and the order had been dictated by a cool brain, which prepared

for every contingency. His policy had been framed in the interest of the

general safety.

Since then, Nurse Barker had warned her against any disobedience; and

Helen had learned—through bitter experience—that, in the case af Lady

Warren, at leastshe had been right.

If she—herself—were the ultimate aim of same dark Desire, then this

steady withdrawal of defence was planned to plunge her into such panic,

that, if she heard a knock, she would rush to open the door.

Someone wanted to draw her outside the safety of the Summit.

“If I arranged a signal-knock,” she thought, “it wouldn’t be safe.

Someone might be listening-in. No. It’s hopeless.”

Yet she knew that the mere act of talking to another person would act as

a tonic to her flabby nerves. She did not know whether Dr. Parry had

returned; her mind was too confused to calculate time or distance. But,

if he were still absent, she could ring up someone else.

“The Nursing Home,” she decided. “I’ll tell them about Nurse Barker, and

ask them to send an another nurse.”

The fact of having a definite message to send steadied her. Once more,

she was Miss Capel, whose name was only to familiar to the Employment

Bureau and not a stranded nonentity. With a touch of her former

assurance, she took off the receiver.

To her dismay, there was no responsive tinkle; no humming along the wire

told her that she was linked up with the Exchange; no voice inquired her

Number.

The telephone was dead.

She looked around the hall with frightened eyes. She knew that there was

a natural explanation of the silence. The country lanes must be blocked

with poles and wires, wrecked by the fury of the gale. This was no human

plot—it was an Act of God.

But Helen would not admit it. This faithful accompaniment to the

thrill-drama—the cut telephone-wire—had arrived with too-perfect

timing.

“It’s not accident,” she told herself. “Things don’t happen all together,

like this.”

She did not know where to feel safe, so great was her fear of the house.

Yet she dared not rush into the storm, lest she should make the very

move which had been planned, by the anonymous player, at the beginning

of the game.

“I’d better go back to Lady Warren,” she thought. “After all, I took her

an. She cannot be left.”

She went through the Professor’s room, in a wild hope that he might

yet awaken from his drugged sleep. With his cool brain to take control,

she felt she would face any danger.