Down a Dark Hall

  “Um, I—” Kit could not get an answer out. Instead she said, “Mom, how much longer are you going to stay over there? When are you coming home?”

  “The week before Christmas,” her mother said. “Don’t you remember the plan? We’ll coincide with your vacation.”

  “But that’s months away!” The words burst from her in a strangled cry. “I can’t stay here that long, Mom, I just can’t! You don’t understand!”

  Madame Duret moved in her chair. Kit felt the intense black eyes boring into her, and she clutched the receiver more tightly against her ear.

  “Oh, honey!” There was mild exasperation in her mother’s voice. “Are you still upset with us for coming to Europe without you? I thought you’d accepted the situation. You told me—”

  “It’s not that, really! I swear, that has nothing to do with it. I want to tell you—please, you have to listen—”

  There was so much to tell, all the things that she had poured out in her letters and assumed her mother knew, and now realized that she did not know at all. But where could she start? The beginning seemed so long ago, and there was so much—Lynda and her art, Sandy, the dreams, the music, the man in the hall, whom she was sure, really sure, she had not imagined, and yet what other explanation could there be for his disappearance? And her mother was so far away, just a thin, small voice on the other end of a transatlantic cable, with the costly minutes piling up.

  But most of all there was Madame Duret, seated here beside her, listening to every word that she spoke. Those eyes—those impossible eyes—rested upon her face, and she could not turn from them, could not focus her own gaze anywhere except into their depths. They held her still, impaled, like a bug on two sharp pins.

  “Mom,” she said, and she could not go on.

  “I think that this conversation must be costing your mother a great deal of money, Kathryn.” Madame spoke quietly, but her voice held a note of command. “Do you not think that you should give her your love and say good-bye?”

  “Mom!” Kit made one final desperate effort. “I want to stay at Tracy’s. Can I, please? I’ve written her, and it will be all right, I know it will. I could get the bus in Blackwood Village. Mr. Rosenblum could meet me and I could stay with them until Christmas, until you and Dan get home.”

  “Oh, Kit, really!” The lilting youthfulness was gone from her mother’s voice. In its place was a blend of disappointment, concern and weariness. “You’ll be seeing Tracy at Christmastime. No matter what you say, it really isn’t very far away. Enjoy your other friends now, the new ones you’ve made at Blackwood. In your one letter you mentioned a girl named Sandy. You seemed to like her. Don’t you still?”

  “Yes. Yes, sure, I like Sandy.” What should I do? Kit asked herself frantically. What can I do? She looked down into Madame Duret’s face, and no further words would come.

  “Do write, honey,” her mother was saying. “And aim your letters a little further ahead. You have our itinerary. Allow a few extra days for them to reach us. Dan sends his love. He’s a fine man, Kit—a good, kind person. I realize it more each day. I’m very lucky.”

  “Yes,” Kit said resignedly. “Yes, I know.”

  “I love you, honey.”

  “I love you too.” The time was up. There was no way, no possible way. “Tell Dan hello. Have a happy honeymoon.”

  “We will. You be happy too, honey. Good-bye for now.”

  “Good-bye.” There was a little click, followed by silence.

  Kit lowered the receiver from her ear and placed it carefully back on the hook. She closed her eyes so that she would not have to see the look of satisfaction on Madame’s face, but she could not keep them closed. One could not stand for very long with her eyes screwed shut.

  “That is right, chérie,” Madame Duret told her. “You want to leave your mother enough money to purchase some gifts to bring back with her. Are they having a pleasant trip?”

  “Yes,” Kit said dully. “A wonderful time.”

  “They seemed so nice, both of them. You would not wish to ruin their trip by having them concerned about you. All girls become a bit homesick on occasion. It is one of those things one must fight against.”

  “I guess,” Kit said.

  Miserably, she turned and started across the room to the door, but stopped short as her eyes fell upon a painting on the opposite wall over a filing cabinet. A mountain lake reflected light from the sky, and green woods, distant hills. The familiarity of the setting struck her like a well-known cry.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “That cabinet? It is where I keep my files on former students.”

  “I didn’t mean the cabinet,” Kit said. “I meant the picture. Who did it?”

  “Do you like the painting? It is a favorite of mine.” It was as though there had been no contest between them. “It is a landscape by Thomas Cole. A reproduction, of course.”

  “I’ve seen that lake,” Kit said.

  “Perhaps you have. The picture was painted in the Catskills.”

  “No, I mean I’ve seen it painted before. From another angle.” Kit continued to stare at the landscape. “There’s a footpath over there along the shore, but you can’t see it from this direction.”

  Then the realization struck her.

  “It’s the same lake that has been in some of Lynda’s paintings.”

  “Why, I do not think so, chérie,” Madame Duret said. “Lynda comes from California. I hardly think she would be painting New York scenery.”

  “But it is,” Kit insisted. “Who is this Thomas Cole, anyway? Does he live around here?”

  “He did at one time,” Madame Duret told her. “Of course, that was many years ago. He died in the middle of the nineteenth century.”

  “It’s true,” Ruth said. “Thomas Cole was a really famous artist. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him. He was the founder of the Hudson River School of landscape painters.”

  It was late afternoon of the following day, and they had left the house to walk around to the far side of the pond. It was gray and wintry outside, quite different from the bright autumn weather they had been having, and Kit felt it as an echo of her own spirits. She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans and stared across at the dead brown stalks that were all that was left of the summer garden.

  “And he’s dead?” she asked.

  “Oh, sure. Ages ago. He died comparatively young too. He was only in his forties. He was one of the American artists we studied in one of the enrichment classes at the last school I went to.”

  “You learned about him there?” Kit drew a breath of relief. “And Lynda too?”

  “No, not Lynda,” Ruth said. “She didn’t take the enrichment courses. Why is it you’re suddenly so hung up on Thomas Cole?”

  Kit’s head was aching. It seemed to her lately that her head was always throbbing with a dull pressure. Sometimes it was because of the music inside it, ringing and crashing and filling her ears with sounds that no one else could hear.

  Other times, like now, the pressure was a thing unto itself, an ache that seemed born of confusion and fatigue.

  “I’m so confused,” she said. “I hardly know where to begin. Nothing makes any sense.”

  “What happened?” Ruth asked. “It must be something important if you wanted to come all the way out here to talk about it.”

  “It was last night,” Kit said. “When I was in Madame’s office, talking on the phone with my mom. On the wall over a filing cabinet, there was a reproduction of a painting of a lake. Madame said it was by Thomas Cole.”

  “So?”

  “It was the same lake that Lynda paints, and more than that, it looked exactly like one of Lynda’s landscapes. The lighting, the colors, the sky—all of it. Lynda might have done it herself.”

  “That’s why you asked if she had studied Thomas Cole?”

  “If she had, it would at least have partially explained things. She might have been imitating his work,
don’t you think? Unconsciously, not even realizing what she was doing? But if she didn’t take the course with you, then that’s out. There has to be some other answer.”

  “T.C.,” Ruth said softly.

  “What?”

  “Those are the initials: T.C. It’s the way Lynda signs her paintings.”

  “T.C. for Thomas Cole?” Kit turned to her incredulously. “Then she must know who he is—she has to! She must have seen his work somewhere, perhaps on some television special. And she admires him. She’s trying so hard to imitate him that she’s using his initials to, well, to sort of bring herself luck.”

  “No,” Ruth said. “I don’t buy that. Sorry. I wish it was true, but I’m sure it’s not.”

  A breeze touched the surface of the pond, making little ripples, and the trees reflected in its surface shimmered and shifted like live creatures in the moving water. Across the pond, the roof of Blackwood rose sharp against the heavy overcast of the sky. The windows stared out at them like empty eyes.

  The kitchen door opened suddenly and Lucretia came out with a bag of trash for the incinerator. Her grayness seemed part of the day itself.

  “She’ll never quit, at least,” Ruth commented. “I once asked Madame about her. She used to work for her parents when Madame was a child. She may not be terribly bright, but she’s sort of a family heirloom.”

  “Natalie didn’t quit,” Kit said. “She was fired.”

  “Madame said she quit.”

  “I know, but I don’t believe it. Natalie needed her job, and if she had a boyfriend, she never bothered to mention him. I’m sure she would have if she had been serious enough to consider getting married.”

  “But why would Madame have let her go?” Ruth asked. “Lucretia can’t cook. That chicken last night was so greasy I could hardly swallow it. Natalie’s meals were the best part of the day.”

  “Natalie talked,” Kit said. “Remember how I was going to ask her about the background of Blackwood? Madame Duret walked in on us while she was telling me, and she was furious. I’m sure that’s why she fired Natalie.”

  “Then she did tell you about it?” Ruth was more interested in this fact than in the fate of Natalie. “What did you find out?”

  “Some terrible things. Mr. Brewer’s whole family was killed in a fire, and he went mental. He wouldn’t admit that they were gone. He lived the whole rest of his life here just as though they were still alive, talking about them and buying toys for the children and everything.”

  “Did Mr. Brewer die in the house too?”

  “Yes,” Kit said. “A long time later. Why do you ask that? Ruth—” She stopped at the look on the girl’s face.

  Something was flickering there, a glint of revelation.

  “Ruth, what is it? Do you know something that I don’t?”

  “I don’t know anything,” Ruth said. “Anything I came up with right now would just be a guess.”

  “But you have an idea?”

  “It’s really out there,” Ruth said. “So far out that I don’t think you’d believe it. I’m not sure that I can believe it myself.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Ruth said. “I want to think about it awhile first. Did you say the woman in Sandy’s dream is named Ellis and she comes from England?”

  “That’s what Sandy has decided. Either there or Scotland, someplace with moors.”

  “Did she ever mention the woman’s last name?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to check something out in the library,” Ruth said. “If it turns out my guess is right, then I’ll tell you about it. But you’d better prepare yourself. If I have found the answer, you’re going to get the shock of your life.”

  That night, as always, there was the music. Soft, this time, like a lullaby for a child. Moonlight on a pillow. Tree limbs rustling outside a window in the faint evening breeze. Fireflies on the lawn. Soft laughter from couples sitting on the porch steps.

  I am asleep, Kit told herself. I know that I am asleep, lying in the bed with the canopy over it, and the room is dark and still, and this music is not real. It is a dream, only a dream. When I wake, it will be morning with breakfast waiting in the dining room down below and classes to go to, and the music will be gone again as though it never has been.

  A voice spoke softly, breaking through the music. A man’s voice, gruff, but oddly gentle.

  “Gone, for a moment. But not really. Never really gone.”

  Because she knew it was a dream, Kit was not startled.

  “Who are you?” she asked. And then she recognized him, and her heart gave a lurch. “You were the one standing behind me in the hall, the one I saw in the mirror.”

  “Of course,” the dream man said. He seemed surprised that she should be surprised.

  “Why were you following me?” Kit asked. “Why are you here now? What is it you want?”

  “I am here to give.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “It’s the only answer,” the man said patiently. “You are one of the fortunate ones who are blessed with the ability to receive.”

  “To receive what?” Kit asked. And then the answer came to her and she began to understand. “The music? Are you the one who is sending me this music, the way Ellis is sending Sandy poetry? If you are, you must take it back. I don’t want it.”

  The sounds rose within her, louder now, changing pace and rhythm, beginning to leap and build as they did so often lately into a pressure that swelled her brain. This is a dream, she reminded herself frantically. Only a dream.

  “Of course it is,” the man said, and reached for her hand. His fingers closed around her wrist, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out at the icy touch as he drew her from the bed. She felt the carpet beneath her bare feet and saw him reach for the knob of the door.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “You must let it out,” the man said.

  “Let what out? What do you mean?”

  They were in the hall now, and he was leading her down it through the darkness with the assurance of one who knows each step, while the music grew louder and louder, pounding against the inside of her skull.

  “You must let it out, or your head will burst with it! You must let it go!”

  “How?” Kit sobbed. “How?” She could no longer keep track of where they were going. She knew they were on the stairs, she could feel cold floorboards against the soles of her feet, and doors opened and closed. There were other voices, a muted chorus of voices, but the music overwhelmed them.

  “Here she is,” the dream man said. “I’ve brought her down.”

  “It will be my turn now,” someone said. “I haven’t used her yet.”

  “No, mine! She must play for me!”

  “I want her tonight! She was yours last time! She did that concerto.”

  “You forget. I brought her down!”

  Kit felt a keyboard beneath her fingers. “But I don’t know how to play!”

  And even as she cried the words she was playing, and it was the old, old dream, with her hands leaping upon the ivory keys and the great thunderous chords rolling forth.

  I am dreaming, Kit told herself for one final time. I am and I have to wake up! I will wake myself up!

  “No,” cried the voice of the man in her dream. “You can’t! Don’t!”

  “I will!” She turned upon him with every bit of strength that she possessed, with all the temper and stubbornness that were the mark of Kathryn Gordy. “I will!”

  The music was gone.

  She was seated on a bench in front of a piano, and she was cold—achingly cold. Blinking, she glanced about her and realized that she was in the music room at Blackwood and that she was not alone.

  Across from her, seated next to the sound equipment, was Jules. The machine was blinking, and she realized incredulously that he was recording.

  “Jules?” She spoke his name sharply. With a star
tled movement he reached out and flicked a switch to halt the machine.

  “Jules,” Kit said shakily, “what am I doing here?”

  “You—you walked in your sleep,” Jules said haltingly.

  “And you were here to record me? You were recording me, weren’t you? It’s my playing that you have on that CD?”

  Wordlessly, Jules nodded. His face was pale, and he looked as though he did not know how to combat the question.

  “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” Kit asked. “Other nights . . . I’ve come down here and played for you. That’s what that music was I heard you playing. It was a recording of me.”

  “Yes,” Jules said. “Look, Kit, I know this must seem extremely strange to you, but believe me, it’s nothing to be upset about. Nothing bad has happened. You’ve always gotten back to your room safely. The only result is that we have the tapes.”

  “We? Who is ‘we’?”

  “We—all of us. The school.”

  “Your mother? Professor Farley?”

  “Don’t look that way, Kit. Nobody’s done anything to hurt you. Nothing but good has been happening here. We’re giving beautiful music to the world.”

  “It’s not my music,” Kit said. “I’m no composer. Where is it coming from? Whose is it?” She watched his face close in, and she could see him struggling to think of an answer. “Don’t make something up. I want to know the truth. You owe me that, Jules. Tell me, whose music have I been playing?”

  “I don’t know,” Jules stammered. “This time I—I just can’t tell.”

  “And other times?”

  “I think, I’m almost sure, that for a while at least, it was Franz Schubert.”

  “Schubert!” Kit exclaimed. “But he died over a century ago!”

  “He died in 1828,” Jules said. “He was thirty-one years old. He left so much undone, Kit, so many marvelous pieces of music unwritten. His death was a tragic waste of talent.”

  “And I’ve been playing his music? Me? I can’t even get through ‘Dancing Leaves’ without mistakes.” Kit’s voice was shaking. “And there’s Sandy and the poetry, Lynda—” The parts of the puzzle began to move into place, and the thing that was forming in her mind was too incredible to believe.