The English Descendants

7

The carriage stops at the gate to the property. She requests that they go no further.

"We'll have to take down the manor house, of course. Do you know anything of its construction?"

"The mines are under the house. The elevator led from the cellars to the attic. And the walls ooze clay. So does the floor. The house looks as though it bleeds."

"That's morbid, ma'am."

"And to think, you don't know the stories and you never lived there."

"You're sure you don't want to clear it out?"

"Absolutely."

"Then let's retire to someplace warm to finish this deal."

From the library window, a black figure watches the carriage ride away from the house. She knows who is in it. She knows the house will soon end. She wonders how, as a place-bound ghost, she will continue to exist once there is no more place to be bound to. She wonders if the house has a ghost, too, and if she will simply inhabit the ghost-house for all eternity.

While Edith, Alan, Mr Ferguson, and the solicitor for The British Clay Mining Corporation discuss the final details of stocks and contracts, Charlotte pulls Eliot aside.

"Come on, let's sneak back to the creepy house."

"Lottie, come now, we'd be in terrible trouble when they found out."

"Oh, they'll be at this for hours, El! We'll be back before they even finish."

"It takes hours to ride out there!"

"It'll be fine. Come on- where's your sense of adventure, soldier boy?"

"Don't call me that."

"Soldier boy. Playing with your little tin men...you're not brave enough to explore the collapsing house, how are you going to go to war?"

"The hope is not to have to go to war."

"No, the hope is to be brave enough to go when you have to. Go with me. We'll build you some courage."

He throws up his hands, "Fine! Better I go with you than you end up falling through the floor and dying in the clay."

She claps without making noise and grabs his hand, tugging him out of the room. It only takes a few moments to hire horses and ride off the same direction as the carriage carried them. When Allerdale Hall grows out of the mist, she feels a thrill in her chest and looks over to Eliot.

"Feeling brave, dear brother?"

"Wary. There's something here I don't like. How is Mum connected to this place again?"

"She owns it."

"But how?"

"Oh El, always with the questions! I don't think that matters, really. She won't soon, anyhow."

"I think she lived here."

"Nonsense, Mum was born and raised in Buffalo. Papa, too. So how would she have lived in a rickety old house in England with no roof?"

"Maybe it had a roof then."

"Well it certainly doesn't now. Shall we go in?"

"I don't like this, Lottie."

She rides over to the rusting hulk on the front lawn and ties her horse to a piece of the machinery that seems stable, "I wonder what this thing was."

"It looks like some sort of steam shovel. Didn't Mum say there was a mine under the house? Maybe it's for pulling up the clay."

"Maybe. Don't fall in the hole. Let's go look in the house!"