Jimbo: A Fantasy Part 6

She drew the boy to her and gave him a little hug, and he did not resist. For a long time she did not answer. He felt vaguely that something of dreadful importance hung about this revelation of her name.

He repeated his question, and at length she replied, speaking in a very low voice, and with her eyes fixed intently upon his face.

"My name," she said, "is Ethel Lake."

"Ethel Lake," he repeated after her. The words sounded somehow familiar to him; surely he had heard that name before. Were not the words a.s.sociated with something in his past that had been unpleasant? A curious sinking sensation came over him as he heard them.

His companion watched him intently while he repeated the words over to himself several times, as if to make sure he had got them right. There was a moment's hesitation as he slowly went over them once again. Then he turned to her, laughing.

"I like your name, Ethel Lake," he said. "It's a nice name--Miss--Miss----" Again he hesitated, while a little warning tremor ran through his mind, and he wondered for an instant why he said "Miss."

But it pa.s.sed as suddenly as it had come, and he finished the sentence--"Miss Lake, I shall call you." He stared into her eyes as he said it.

"Then you don't remember me at all?" she cried, with a sigh of intense relief. "You've quite forgotten?"

"I never saw you before, did I? How can I remember you? I don't remember any of the things I've forgotten. Are you one of them?"

For reply she caught him to her breast and kissed him. "You precious little boy!" she said. "I'm so glad, oh, so glad!"

"But do you remember _me_?" he asked, sorely puzzled. "Who am I? Haven't I been born yet, or something funny like that?"

"If you don't remember _me_," said the other, her face happy with smiles that had evidently come only just in time to prevent tears, "there's not much good telling you who _you_ are. But your name, if you really want to know, is----" She hesitated a moment.

"Be quick, Eth--Miss Lake, or you'll forget it again."

She laughed rather bitterly. "Oh, I never forget. I can't!" she said. "I wish I could. Your name is James Stone, and Jimbo is 'short' for James.

Now you know."

She might just as well have said Bill Sykes for all the boy knew or remembered.

"What a silly name!" he laughed. "But it can't be my real name, or I should know it. I never heard it before." After a moment he added, "Am I an old man? I feel just like one. I suppose I'm grown up--grown up so fast that I've forgotten what came before----"

"You're not grown up, dear, at least, not exactly----" She glanced down at his alpaca knickerbockers and brown stockings; and as he followed her eyes and saw the dirty b.u.t.toned-boots there came into his mind some dim memory of where he had last put them on, and of some one who had helped him. But it all pa.s.sed like a swift meteor across the dark night of his forgetfulness and was lost in mist.

"You mustn't judge by these silly clothes," he laughed. "I shall change them as soon as I get--as soon as I can find----" He stopped short. No words came. A feeling of utter loneliness and despair swept suddenly over him, drenching him from head to foot. He felt lost and friendless, naked, homeless, cold. He was ever on the brink of regaining a whole lot of knowledge and experience that he had known once long ago, ever so long ago, but it always kept just out of his reach. He glanced at Miss Lake, feeling that she was his only possible comfort in a terrible situation. She met his look and drew him tenderly towards her.

"Now, listen to me," she said gently, "I've something to tell you--about myself."

He was all attention in a minute.

"I am a discharged governess," she began, holding her breath when once the words were out.

"Discharged!" he repeated vaguely. "What's that? What for?"

"For frightening a child. I told a little boy awful stories that weren't true. They terrified him so much that I was sent away. That's why I'm here now. It's my punishment. I am a prisoner here until I can find him--and help him to escape----"

"Oh, I say!" he exclaimed quickly, as though remembering something. But it pa.s.sed, and he looked up at her half-bored, half-politely. "Escape from what?" he asked.

"From here. This is the Empty House I told the stories about; _and you are the little boy I frightened_. Now, at last, I've found you, and am going to save you." She paused, watching him with eyes that never left his face for an instant.

Jimbo was delighted to hear he was going to be rescued, but he felt no interest at all in her story of having frightened a little boy, who was himself. He thought it was very nice of her to take so much trouble, and he told her so, and when he went up and kissed her and thanked her, he saw to his surprise that she was crying. For the life of him he could not understand why a discharged governess whom he met, apparently, for the first time in the Empty House, should weep over him and show him so much affection. But he could think of nothing to say, so he just waited till she had finished.

"You see, if I can save you," she said between her sobs, "it will be all right again, and I shall be forgiven, and shall be able to escape with you. I want you to escape, so that you can get back to life again."

"Oh, then I'm dead, am I?"

"Not exactly dead," she said, drying her eyes with the corner of her black hood. "You've had a funny accident, you know. If your body gets all right, so that you can go back and live in it again, then you're not dead. But if it's so badly injured that you can't work in it any more, then you are dead, and will have to stay dead. You're still joined to the body in a fashion, you see."

He stared and listened, not understanding much. It all bored him. She talked without explaining, he thought. An immense sponge had pa.s.sed over the slate of the past and wiped it clean beyond recall. He was utterly perplexed.

"How funny you are!" he said vaguely, thinking more of her tears than her explanations.

"Water won't stay in a cracked bottle," she went on, "and you can't stay in a broken body. But they're trying to mend it now, and if we can escape in time you can be an ordinary, happy little boy in the world again."

"Then are you dead, too?" he asked, "or nearly dead?"

"I am out of my body, like you," she answered evasively, after a moment's pause.

He was still looking at her in a dazed sort of way, when she suddenly sprang to her feet and let the hood drop back over her face.

"Hush!" she whispered, "he's listening again."

At the same moment a sound came from beneath the floor on the other side of the room, and Jimbo saw the trap-door being slowly raised above the level of the floor.

"Your number is 102," said a voice that sounded like the rushing of a river.

Instantly the trap-door dropped again, and he heard heavy steps rumbling away into the interior of the house. He looked at his companion and saw her terrified face as she lifted her hood.

"He always blunders along like that," she whispered, bending her head on one side to listen. "He can't see properly in the daylight. He hates sunshine, and usually only goes out after dark." She was white and trembling.

"Is that the person who brought me in here this morning at such a frightful pace?" he asked, bewildered.

She nodded. "He wanted to get in before it was light, so that you couldn't see his face."

"Is he such a fright?" asked the boy, beginning to share her evident feeling of horror.

"He _is_ Fright!" she said in an awed whisper. "But never talk about him again unless you can't help it; he always knows when he's being talked about, and he likes it, because it gives him more power."

Jimbo only stared at her without comprehending. Then his mind jumped to something else he wanted badly to have explained, and he asked her about his number, and why he was called No. 102.

"Oh, that's easier," she said, "102 is your number among the Frightened Children; there are 101 of them, and you are the last arrival. Haven't you seen them yet? It is also the temperature of your broken little body lying on the bed in the night nursery at home," she added, though he hardly caught her words, so low were they spoken.

Jimbo then described how the children had sung and danced to him, and went on to ask a hundred questions about them. But Miss Lake would give him very little information, and said he would not have very much to do with them. Most of them had been in the House for years and years--so long that they could probably never escape at all.

"They are all frightened children," she said. "Little ones scared out of their wits by silly people who meant to amuse them with stories, or to frighten them into being well behaved--nursery-maids, elder sisters, and even governesses!"

"And they can never escape?"

"Not unless the people who frightened them come to their rescue and _run the risk of being caught themselves_."

As she spoke there rose from the depths of the house the sound of m.u.f.fled voices, children's voices singing faintly together; it rose and fell exactly like the wind, and with as little tune; it was weird and magical, but so utterly mournful that the boy felt the tears start to his eyes. It drifted away, too, just as the wind does over the tops of the trees, dying into the distance; and all became still again.