The House at the End of the Lane
831 words
The trap rattled over frozen ruts as Mira pressed her nose to the cracked leather of the seat and watched the last of the village disappear behind a curtain of bare elms. She was nine years old, and she had never in her life felt quite so small. The solicitor's clerk who sat opposite her — a thin man with ink-stained fingers and a habit of sniffing — had not spoken a word since they had left the railway station at Ashford Crossing, and Mira had decided she would not be the first to break the silence.
The lane narrowed until the hedgerows scraped the sides of the trap like impatient fingers, and above them the sky had turned the colour of pewter. Snow had been promised for days, and now Mira could see the first pale flakes drifting down, settling on the horse's dark mane as gently as though they were afraid to disturb him. She pulled her coat tighter and thought of Mrs Allbright's kitchen — warm, smelling of bread — which she would never see again. Mrs Allbright had been the matron at Stonefields, the orphanage where Mira had spent the last four years, and whatever her faults, she had at least been a known quantity.
The unknown quantity was now before her. The trap rounded a bend and the house appeared, and Mira, for all her resolution, could not quite prevent a small sound escaping her lips. Farroway Hall rose grey and enormous from its surrounding parkland, its dozens of windows dark except for two on the ground floor, which glowed a dim, uncertain amber. Towers at each corner gave it the look of something that had once expected an attack and had never quite recovered from the disappointment of not receiving one.
The clerk cleared his throat. 'That is Farroway Hall,' he announced, as though it might be any other building in any other lane.
'Yes,' said Mira. 'I see it.'
A woman was waiting at the top of the stone steps — tall, straight-backed, her grey dress the same colour as the stone itself, so that she seemed to have grown from the house rather than merely to be standing in front of it. This was Mrs Pendleton, the housekeeper, and as Mira climbed stiffly from the trap, she received the impression of being assessed and filed away like one of the ledgers that lined the shelves in the late Mr Cravens' study — a room she had glimpsed once, through a half-open door, during her single previous visit to the Hall.
Mrs Pendleton did not smile. 'You are later than I was led to expect,' she said.
'The roads,' the clerk muttered, already retreating toward the trap.
'Indeed.' Mrs Pendleton turned to Mira. 'You will find your room prepared. Supper has been kept. You are not, I trust, a girl who makes a fuss about things.'
It was not entirely clear whether this was a question or a statement. Mira decided to treat it as the former. 'No, ma'am,' she said, though she was quite unable to guarantee it.
Inside, the Hall was vast and cold and smelled of beeswax, old wood and something else Mira could not name — a deep, still scent, like the inside of a church when no service has been held for several Sundays. Gas lamps threw long, wavering shadows up the panelled walls, and a great staircase swept upward into darkness. On the newel post at the foot of the stairs sat a grey cat, watching Mira's arrival with the particular expression of one who has witnessed many arrivals and found them all equally unremarkable.
Mrs Pendleton led her up two flights, along a corridor where draughts crept under the skirting boards, and into a room that was small compared with the rest of the house and felt, in consequence, almost welcoming. A fire had been laid and lit; a single lamp burned on the washstand. On the narrow bed lay a folded nightgown that was not Mira's own but was clean and neatly pressed.
Mira set down her carpet bag and stood at the window. The snow was falling properly now, thickening the dark, softening the outlines of the park below until the oaks and beeches blurred into gentle grey shapes. It was, she thought, almost beautiful, and the thought surprised her — she had not expected beauty here. She pressed her fingertips to the cold glass and tried to remember her mother's face, but it came to her only in fragments: the smell of lavender, a low voice singing, warmth.
She let her hand drop. She did not cry. She had learnt, in four years at Stonefields, that tears were not especially useful, and she was, above all things, a practical girl. Whatever Farroway Hall held — sorrow or strangeness or perhaps, in some far corner she had not yet imagined, something that might one day feel like belonging — she would face it as she had faced everything else: one cold step at a time.