Road to Folly. Leslie Ford

the people who wore shirts made of it for their sins, that I got up. Then I sat down, abruptly—for my own sins or Phyllis Lattimer’s, I’m not quite sure which.

      A door under the stairs was opening, so quietly and so slowly, and without visible human agency, that a chilly prickle crept up and down my spine in spite of all sense or reason. Although perhaps not . . . I’m not nearly so sure now as I would once have been that reality is something one can always be so positive about. But that was later, and now, sitting there perfectly motionless, watching that slowly opening door, I saw, so dimly that it really did disturb me, a trembling black claw pressed against the dark cypress panel, and heard a dull thump-thump.

      A tiny bent creature, as black as ebony, with a clean white kerchief around her head, crept out into the hall. She had a flat reed basket, the kind they send camellias in, in one hand and in the other a knotty stick to steady her crumbling joints. She didn’t see me sitting there in the dim half-light. She tottered slowly across the hall and stopped, supporting herself against the carved frame of the door nearest the entrance. I waited, a sharp almost breathless excitement constricting my throat. I hadn’t realized till then how over-poweringly stimulated my even normally pretty offensive amount of curiosity had been by Phyllis Lattimer and Mrs. Atwell Reid and Jennifer . . . and by the three pieces of old furniture there in the hall.

      The old Negress moved her stick to the hand that held the basket, fumbled about in the folds of her skirt, and brought out a key. She put it in the lock and turned it, and turned the small polished brass knob. Then she switched the stick back to her right hand and pushed the door open.

      I half rose from my seat, stopped and sat down again, not abruptly but very slowly.

      Then I knew. But I’d known it already. It had nagged at the back of my mind the instant I’d walked across the threshold of Strawberry Hill, and again when Jennifer had crossed the hall to go up the stairs. Still I stared through the handsome carved door frame, with its broken pediment and carved little urn of strawberry leaves and blossoms and flowers, to the fireplace beyond. And I knew the secret of Strawberry Hill. I knew why Jennifer Reid had so desperately resisted my coming . . . and why the doors and windows were bolted and shuttered.

      Strawberry Hill was empty. There was no furniture in it. No Chippendale settee with a ribband back, and except for the one, no ribband-back chairs to match. There wasn’t even a mantel behind that door, or a cornice, or any of the old carved panelling. Even the woodwork was gone; and the walls and chimney breast were bare and maimed and covered with black cobwebs where the panelling, the cornice, and the mantel had been ripped out—ripped out and sold. There was nothing beyond those doors—nothing but a pile of Irish potatoes on an old cracker sack in the middle of the cypress floor. I sat perfectly still, a sick and dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach.

      The old colored woman bent painfully down and started putting potatoes in her basket tray. I kept thinking, over and over, Jennifer didn’t want me to come, and this is why . . . but her mother did want me to come—and why did she? The first was clear. The second was not only not clear; it was profoundly disturbing. Did she know . . . or did she only guess?

      Then suddenly I heard Jennifer’s quick step sounding and echoing in the empty house. The girl who was saving the treasures of Strawberry Hill for herself was coming back.