The Coldstone (25 page)

Susan laughed again.

“My dear child, one doesn't get married like that.”

“Why?”

“It isn't done.”

“But it's so frightfully respectable to get married.”

She shook her head.

“Not all in a hurry like that. Besides—” Her voice became quite serious. “Anthony, we don't really know each other—do we? Not well enough to get married, I mean.”

“How are we going to get to know each other if we can't meet without all our relations to chaperone us?”

“I expect Gran would let us go for walks occasionally.”

Anthony edged towards her and put his arm round her waist.

“Thursday's a ripping day to get married.”

“Gran would say, ‘Marry in haste and repent at leisure.' You see, you only know the nice side of me, and I only know the nice side of you. People ought to know each other's faults before they get married.”

“All right,” said Anthony, “you shall tell me yours, and I will tell you mine. Just in case you're too horrified to go on being engaged after you've heard the worst you'd better give me a sort of farewell kiss.”

There was more than one kiss.

Then Susan said, “I've got a temper.”

“I knew that.”

“You don't know the sort of temper it is. I can go on being angry a long time, in a sort of cold, hateful way, and there are some things I don't think I could ever forgive.”

“What sort of things?”

“Oh, I don't know—mean things—things that people do behind one's back—and—and being cruel to an animal or a child—or when people are rude to someone they don't think it matters about because they're poor, or old, or stupid. I—I hate that. And I'm fond of clothes—and if I've got any money I spend it—and I simply can't keep accounts. And once I stole something.”

“What did you steal?”

Susan did not look very guilty.

“It was a puppy belonging to the woman next door—when I lived with Camilla. The people used to go away for days and leave it without anything to eat. And at last I couldn't bear it, so I burgled their back yard at midnight. I was about twelve. And first Camilla scolded me like mad, and then she became an enthusiastic accessory after the fact, and we went out hand in hand with the puppy in a basket, and walked about four miles in the middle of the night, and knocked up some friends of hers who were all fast asleep in bed and made them accessories too. They were just moving into the country, so they were frightfully pleased, because they were meaning to get a dog, but they couldn't really afford to buy one.”

“After that,” said Anthony, “of course the whole thing's off. My heart is broken “—he clutched it—“but I can never, never,
never
marry a puppy-snatcher.”

“If you're not going to marry me, you oughtn't to kiss me,” said Susan. “Now tell me about your vices.”

“I haven't got any.”

“None?”

“No, no—not one.”

Susan held up her left hand and touched the forefinger.

“I can tell you three right away. Untruthfulness”—she moved to the next finger—“conceit—hypocrisy”—she arrived at her little finger—“brazenness. That's thrown in as an extra.”

“You've got rather pretty hands,” said Anthony.

“Yes, I know I have.”

“Go on telling me about my vices—there's something very soothing about it. But I'm just wondering whether we can't get married before Thursday, because if you go on finding me out at this rate, I shall be such a monster of iniquity in a week's time that Gran will interfere and forbid the banns.”

He rubbed his cheek against hers. Susan's voice became soft.

“Gran said to marry a lad who had a kindness for you.”

“Have I a kindness for you?”

“You know.”

“Don't
you?
” said Anthony very low.

Susan did not answer for a moment. Then she said,

“After we were engaged Gran talked to me a lot. She said kindness was what mattered most when you were married. She said that was what lasted—”

Her voice stopped, because she was hearing old Susan Bowyer's voice: “There's folks as goes through life same as a cat goes through a dairy—they'll take the cream and spoil the pan, and off to the next one. There's men like it, and women too—when the cream's gone they've no use for the skim. But proper married folk have got to take things like they come, and with the Lord's blessing they'll find enough cream to make 'em relish the skim.”

Anthony put his head down on her shoulder.

“Please God we'll be kind to each other.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Anthony made sure of the bolts before he went to bed that night. When he was come to his room he stood for a long time at the window looking up the hill with the room dark behind him. It was after eleven o'clock and there was no moon. He had put out his candle, and for a time he saw the shape of the flame wherever he turned his eyes. Then it was gone, and the shape of the hill began to emerge from the general blackness. The haze which had clung about the skyline all day had risen until it hid the stars. Very little light came through it, but when he had been looking out for some minutes the arch of the sky showed faintly luminous. Beneath it the tilted fields lay dark, and the hedges black. He could not really see the Stones, but he fancied that he could make out the two tall monoliths.

As he stood there, he went over in his mind all that he knew about the Stones. It was like handling half a dozen pieces from a puzzle which perhaps contained a hundred; none of his bits would fit, because he lacked the pieces to fit them to. He went on thinking, until at last he turned away from the window and lit his candle.

After he was in bed he tried to put the whole matter from his mind. He thought about Susan. They could be married quite soon; there was nothing for them to wait for. He began to make plans and build castles, and he began to get drowsy.

He was slipping down into sleep, and as he slipped, something he had kept at a distance began to push its way among his thoughts and to come so near that he could not help seeing and hearing what he had not meant to hear and see. He saw Susan leaning towards the man who had watched him. “He was going to break my leg with the poker.” And he heard Susan say, “I can't ever tell you.” And she said, “He isn't my brother,” and she said, “Perhaps he is.”—“Is he in love with you?”—“Perhaps he is.” And he saw Susan put up her hand and dash away two bright shining drops. And then she had put her face in her hands and he had had hard work to comfort her. He could feel her trembling now—trembling up against him—dumb. “I can't tell you—I can't ever tell you.”

All at once he was awake and the room was dark. He had been seeing the grassy slope with the sun on it. Susan was there, crying. Now all at once he was awake in the dark, remembering the other time that he had waked like this. He got up at once and went down, carrying a torch ready to switch on. When he came to where the stair ran down into the hall, he stood and listened for a while. There was no sound at all.

After a while he switched on his torch and turned the beam here and there. When it crossed the hall door, his hand tightened and his arm went rigid. The light touched the bolt at the top of the door, touched it and dropped with his sudden movement. He brought it back to the bolt and kept it there, staring incredulously at what it showed. The clock in the library was beginning to strike twelve. It was not an hour since he had looked to the bolts and gone up to bed. The beam fell now on a bolt drawn back.

Anthony came down the stair at a run. Both bolts were drawn, and as he turned the handle, the door opened easily, noiselessly. Whoever had drawn the bolts had also turned the key. Beyond the door the glazed passage lay empty. The bolts of the door into the street had been drawn back too. The key had been taken from the lock and lay on a little ledge to the right. The door was locked.

He shot the bolts and replaced the key. It was perfectly clear that the bolts had been drawn back for the convenience of somebody who had a key—the inner door had been unlocked to make things as easy as possible.

As Anthony pushed home the bolts of the inner door, he asked himself insistently whose concern it was to make things easy for a midnight visitor. Someone inside the house had come down to slip back the bolts and turn the key. Lane? Mrs. Hutchins? One of the maids? Lane had been here forty years, and Mrs. Hutchins thirty. The housemaid was the sexton's daughter, a worthy middle-aged woman. The between-maid, the youngest Smithers, Ellen by name, a fat rosy child with a giggle and a blush and an outrageous capacity for breaking china, honest stupidity stamped on every feature. Which of these four people was the least unlikely to have come down in the dark to admit a burglar?

As Anthony stood there without any answer to this question, he heard from behind him on his left the faintest sound which it is possible to hear at all. The silence of the sleeping house was just touched and no more. The sound that touched it came from the library.

In a moment Anthony was running down the passage, and as he flung open the library door and threw up his hand with the lighted torch in it, he heard footsteps and the rustle of a dress, and a moment later, as the beam of the torch came to rest, he saw the panel which carried Patience Pleydell's portrait swing round and slam. There was no one in the library. Whoever had been there had gone again. The panel was shut between them. A door had shut. Some doors can never be opened again.

Anthony stood stock still, and saw the light of his torch shake like a Jack o' Lanthorn. A full minute passed before he realized that it was shaking because the hand that held it—his own hand—was shaking. He steadied it with an effort, went forward to the panel, and opened it. If it was Susan who had come by the secret way, it was in his mind to ask her why she had come. Impossible that Susan could have come to draw back the bolts. Only this afternoon they had sat on a hill in the sunlight and he had told her that the doors were bolted at night. Quite, quite impossible that Susan should have come to draw back the bolts.

He hadn't seen her; he had seen the closing panel and a flutter of blue; the light had caught the blue before the panel shut. His fingers shook on the catch. Close, close to him here in the picture, his great-great-grandmother wore that bright, deep blue for a petticoat. The panel opened. It was only a minute really since he had seen it shut on the glimpse of blue. He sent the torchlight ahead of him and ran down the steps.

As he came to where the passage forked, he stood still, listening and throwing the beam to the right. If it wasn't Susan who had come down the passage, then it was someone who had come from the Ladies' House. He heard no sound and could see no sign. He thought he would follow the left-hand passage to the end. He felt a longing to be near Susan, to see her. The temptation to pass through the secret door into the kitchen and by some means have sight and speech of her was overwhelming. He would at any rate go as far as the door. Perhaps he would open it. Perhaps Susan would know how much he wanted to see her and come down. Only that afternoon, when they had been sitting silent for a while, he had put out his hand on a sudden impulse, and her hand had met his as if the one impulse had moved them both. Perhaps it would be like that now—she would know that he was there and come down.

His foot struck the bottom step with a little grating sound. The light was focussed low to show where the ascent began. With one foot on the step he checked, and heard above him the sound of a closing door. After a moment he flashed the light ahead. There was no one there. The door had shut upon someone passing out of the passage, and not upon someone entering it.

For a moment Anthony felt sick. All the thoughts which he had refused to entertain rushed in upon him. Susan saying “I can't tell you.” Susan with a knowledge of men whom she confessed to be desperate and dangerous—” I can't tell you. I can't ever tell you.” Susan in her blue petticoat playing at family ghosts. A scurry of frightened feet and a dazzle of light on a fold of blue as the panel slammed. Bolts drawn back as soon as he had gone to bed. And Susan knew that he shot the bolts at night. And Susan knew who it was who had come that way before. And when he had come before, she had been there. “I can't tell you. I can't ever tell you, Anthony.” He felt sick.

He did not know how long it was before the sickness passed; but all at once it did pass, and with it his acceptance of these thronging thoughts. It didn't really matter what things looked like. There were things that were possible, and there were things that were so starkly impossible that all the evidence in the world could not make them real enough to believe.

He walked slowly back along the passage. His mind, empty of thought, had become unusually sensitive to surface impressions. He found himself noting, as by instinct, the number of steps leading down into the passage, its height—an inch or two over six feet except in the middle, where the floor dipped and gave some extra inches. The width he put at four feet, but the passage that led to the Ladies' House was less, and both passages were lined with brick. That accounted for their being so dry.

He climbed the steps on the Stonegate side and came to the space behind the picture. Here the passage widened out, leaving room to stand on either side of the panel. He turned his light here and there, looking for the catch. He had his hand on it, when one of those surface impressions returned so vividly that it startled him. On the right the brick wall ran right up to the wooden panelling; but on the left the last foot of the wall was not brick but panelled wood.

Anthony turned the light to the left. There was a foot-wide panel just like the picture in his mind but it did not go quite up to the top nor reach to within a foot of the floor. It seemed impossible that it should be there without any reason, and as he shifted the light and came nearer, the reason disclosed itself. The panel was the front of a cupboard sunk in the wall. It formed a door, and this door stood ajar.