Elspeth stood with her shears still in her hand, and for a moment she could not move. The voice had come from the foot of the stair, low and kind, and it had said her name as though it had known her for years.
She had been in Dunmire House for four days. In four days she had received a letter written before she arrived, a letter copied from her own diary, and a letter in a hand she did not know. She had found a living bird in a jar, and she had watched the mistress of the house pull the stopper out with her own hands. She had told herself, only that morning, that the house was not haunted, only sad. Now a man's voice was calling her name from the hall, and she did not believe it any longer.
She put the shears down on the worktable, very carefully, as though a sudden movement might frighten something away. Then she went to the door of the workroom, and out into the passage, and to the top of the stair.
The hall below was dim. The rain had darkened the afternoon, and the one lamp by the front door burned low. A man stood at the foot of the stair, with his back to the door. He was tall, and young — no more than thirty — and his coat was wet through at the shoulders, and his dark hair was plastered to his forehead, and he held his hat in his hands, turning it round and round, the way a man does when he does not know what to do with himself.
"Miss Drummond," he said, and his voice was the voice she had heard, low and kind. "Forgive me. I did not mean to frighten you. The door was open, and the house was quiet, and I called out, and no one answered, and then I heard you working, upstairs, and — I am sorry. I should have waited outside."
"The door was not open," Elspeth said. She came down three steps, and then she stopped, because her legs would not carry her any further. "The door was shut. I heard it open."
"It was shut when I came to it," he said. "I knocked, and no one came, and then — it opened. I thought someone had opened it for me."
No one had. Elspeth knew that. Mrs. Bain was in the kitchen. Miss Verity was in the morning room. Mrs. Dunmire was in the drawing room, by the fire, where she always sat. And yet the door had opened, and this man had come in out of the rain, and he was standing at the foot of her stair, saying her name.
"Who are you?" she said.
"Hugh Dunmire," he said. "The late master's son. This is — this was my father's house."
Elspeth came down the rest of the stairs, holding to the rail. "Your mother said you had left," she said. "She said you left, and you had not come back."
"I did leave," he said. "Four years ago. I went to Glasgow, to work in a shipping office. I have not been back since. I have not written, either, and I am ashamed of that. But this morning —" He stopped, and looked down at his hat. "This morning a letter came for me. And I came home."
"A letter," Elspeth said. She had begun to feel that every trouble in this house arrived in the shape of a letter. "What did it say?"
He reached inside his wet coat, and he took out a folded sheet of paper, and he held it out to her. Elspeth took it. The paper was damp at the edges. The handwriting was firm and upright, a man's hand, and it was not a hand she knew. The letter was short. It said:
*Hugh — Come home at once. Do not write back. Do not tell anyone you are coming. Your mother needs you, and the house is keeping something that is not hers to keep. — Father.*
Elspeth read it twice. The second time, her hands began to shake, and she had to hold the paper with both hands to keep it still.
"Mr. Dunmire," she said, very quietly, "your father died a year ago. On the seventh of October, in the great storm."
"I know when my father died," Hugh said. "I was at the funeral. I stood beside his grave. I know."
"Then who wrote this letter?"
"I don't know," he said. "That is why I am here. That is why I came, through the rain, without writing back, without telling anyone. Because a letter came to me in my father's handwriting, and it told me to come home, and I could not stay away."
Before Elspeth could answer, Mrs. Bain came hurrying out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and stopped dead in the hall, staring at the young man at the foot of the stair, and her face went the colour of paper.
"Mr. Hugh," she whispered. "Mr. Hugh, is that you?"
"It is me, Mrs. Bain," he said. "I have come home."
Mrs. Bain turned and hurried back down the passage to the drawing room. A moment later, Mrs. Dunmire came out. She was in her black dress, and her hair was pinned up, and her face was white. She stopped in the doorway, and she looked at the young man standing at the foot of the stair, and her hands, which were folded in front of her, came apart, and fell to her sides.
"Hugh," she said.
"Mother," he said.
They stood looking at one another across the hall, the mother and the son, four years apart, and Elspeth, standing on the stair between them, felt that she was watching something she had no right to watch, and that she could not look away.
"You received my letter," Mrs. Dunmire said at last. Her voice was very steady, and very low. "You came."
"I received a letter," Hugh said. "But it was not from you, Mother. It was from Father. In his handwriting. It told me to come home, and not to write back, and not to tell anyone."
Mrs. Dunmire shook her head. "I did not write it," she said. "I write many letters in this house, and God forgive me, I have written them in your hand, and in Miss Drummond's hand, and in the hands of people who have never set foot in this house. But I have never — never — written in your father's hand. Not since he died. I could not. I would not."
"Then who did?" Hugh said.
"I don't know," Mrs. Dunmire said. "I don't know."
Miss Verity came down the passage then, quick and bright as a bird, and stopped when she saw Hugh, and her hands flew to her face.
"Hugh!" she cried. "Hugh, my boy, you have come home! Oh, thank God, you have come home at last!" And she went to him, and she took his wet hands in hers, and she looked him up and down, and she said, "You are too thin. You have not been eating. Mrs. Bain will feed you. Mrs. Bain! Mrs. Bain, fetch the boy something hot, at once!"
But Mrs. Bain did not move. She stood in the drawing-room doorway, looking at Hugh, and her face was still the colour of paper, and she said, very softly, "It is the same as before. It is happening the same as before."
"What is the same as before?" Elspeth said. She was tired of being the only person in the house who did not know what was happening. "Mrs. Bain, what do you mean?"
Mrs. Bain looked at her, and her river-water eyes were full of something Elspeth had never seen in them before. It was not fear. It was something older than fear. It was recognition.
"Four years ago," Mrs. Bain said, "a letter came to this house, in the master's handwriting, after the master was already dead. It was addressed to the mistress. It said, 'Do not let Hugh leave.' And Hugh left anyway, the next morning, and he did not come back. And now a letter has come to Hugh, in the master's handwriting, telling him to come home, and he has come. Do you see, Miss Drummond? The letters do not stop. They never stopped. They only waited."
The hall was silent. The rain beat against the windows. Hugh Dunmire stood at the foot of the stair, wet through, holding his hat, and looking from his mother to his aunt to Mrs. Bain, and Elspeth watched his face change, from hope to confusion to something very like fear.
"Mother," he said, slowly, "is Father dead?"
"Yes," Mrs. Dunmire said. "Your father is dead. I buried him myself, on the ninth of October, in the churchyard at Dunmire, and I have worn black for him ever since, and I will wear black for him until I die."
"Then who is writing his letters?"
No one answered. The rain beat against the windows.
Elspeth looked down at the letter in her hand. *Your mother needs you, and the house is keeping something that is not hers to keep.* She thought of the jars on the shelves, a hundred jars of weather, and of the bird that had lived for a year in the dark, and of the mirror, uncovered that morning in the drawing room, set back on the wall where it belonged. She thought of the letter on her breakfast tray, in a hand she did not know, that had said *Thank you for staying.*
And then she thought of something else — something she had not thought of until that moment, because she had been too frightened to think of it at all. The front door had opened, though everyone in the house was already inside. The door had opened for Hugh Dunmire. But Hugh had not opened it. He had said so himself. The door had opened by itself.
"Mr. Dunmire," she said, "when you knocked, and the door opened — did you see anyone? Did you see a hand on the door? Did you see anything at all?"
Hugh shook his head. "No. There was no one there. The door simply — opened."
Mrs. Dunmire put a hand to her throat. "The house opens its own doors," she whispered. "It has always done that. When it wants someone to come in."
"And when it wants someone to go out?" Elspeth said.
Mrs. Dunmire did not answer. She looked past Elspeth, toward the drawing room, toward the mirror that had been uncovered that morning, and her face changed, and Elspeth turned, and looked too.
The drawing-room door stood open. The fire burned low in the grate. And on the wall, where it had hung for a year with its face turned to the wall, the great mirror stood uncovered, and in it, clear as day, Elspeth could see the reflection of the hall, and the stair, and the five of them standing there — and behind them, in the glass, a sixth figure, standing quite still, in the doorway of the drawing room, watching them all.
It was a man. He was tall, and gray-haired, and dressed in black, and his face was the face in the portrait above the fire.
Elspeth opened her mouth to speak. But before she could make a sound, Hugh Dunmire, standing at the foot of the stair, took one step forward, and he said, in a voice that was barely a whisper, "Father?"
And the man in the mirror smiled, and raised one hand, and beckoned to them — to all of them — to come into the drawing room, where the fire was burning, and the mirror was uncovered, and the door, which had opened by itself, stood waiting.
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