“Is that like Mr. Millicent?”
She nodded, with no surprise that he should know whose portrait it was. “Yes, and there was something about him very like you, sir. Not in appearance, but the other thing. He once told me that he began to hear and understand a little while he was a child. They commenced to talk before he left his first school. I’m glad, sir, that Miss Derrick does not understand.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she told me not to be lonely, as if one could. She thinks I’m a little mad, and that’s why I’m willing to stay here and not ask high wages.”
He did not answer, beginning now to perceive why he had been led to this isolated spot. Millicent stared down at him, and he was persuaded that from the picture proceeded a thin appeal for help—or was it for revenge?—Millicent whose life had been so suddenly snuffed out—Millicent who had been afraid before he died. Afraid of what?
“You’re not afraid too, sir, are you? It’s no use if you are.”
He shook his head, scanning thoughtfully the books, the prints, the dull paneling, and heavy oaken floor.
“You believe,” he said slowly, “that all this has sucked in year after year something from mortality, something that is never quite lost, till, in time, wood and stone and paper become something much more than this, and radiate back to us, if we can only catch it, the wisdom and courage and love and evil they have so long absorbed. You believe all this, Perkins?”
Her eyes opened wide, filling with a strange light. She was no longer an impassive, middle-aged woman, the servant of the house, but a creature vibrant with feeling, as one who has unleashed her soul. Her lips moved inaudibly, as at some mystic shrine.
“Wisdom and courage and love and evil,” she repeated in an awed whisper. “Yes, yes, that’s it, all of it. Last time it was evil in Beech Lodge. The evil had been here for months and years, growing stronger and stronger. It began when Mr. Millicent got back from the East, and it never stopped. I tried to silence it but failed, and then it silenced him. The evil was too strong.”