The Coldstone (8 page)

“All you could make any sense out of,” said Nurse Collins decidedly. She had heard a ring at the bell.

Miss Arabel got up. She was very pale.

“Thank you,” she said gently. “I think I must go now.”

On the way downstairs Nurse Collins recollected another of those disjointed sentences. “She can have it now she's going,” she said to herself. The bell had just rung for the second time, and she believed in keeping gentlemen waiting. She kept Mr. Garry O'Connell waiting whilst she told Miss Arabel what she had just remembered.

CHAPTER TEN

Miss Arabel walked a little way up the street. It had been cloudy when she came, but the clouds had all slipped down into the east, where they lay in banks of a heavy grey, flecked with white and barred with indigo. All the rest of the sky was a bare dusty blue. The air between the houses shook in the heat.

Miss Arabel felt quite dazed with the light, and the glare, and the thing which Nurse O'Connell had just said to her. She walked with small, hesitating footsteps, and though her eyes were wide open, she did not really see where she was going until her shoulder struck hard against a lamppost and brought her up short with a gasp. As she stood there trying not to cry—it would be too dreadful if she were to cry in the open street—she looked very small and frail.

Anthony Colstone stopped the car and jumped out. He was most frightfully glad he had thought of coming back. He put a hand on her arm and said,

“Cousin Arabel—”

She looked up at him with swimming eyes.

“The heat—” she murmured. And then she was being helped into the car, and the fresh air began to blow in her face. She heard Anthony talking, as one hears some pleasant sound a long way off.

“I saw you go in, and I went on a bit. And then I thought I'd come back and find out if I couldn't drive you home, and then—”

Miss Arabel sat up with a cry. “Oh, the keys!” she said. “I forgot!”

“What is it? Do you want to go back?”

“Oh no—I couldn't ask you. So careless! But Agatha—Oh dear me, what will Agatha say?” She presented a little pale picture of dismay in her old lady's bonnet and black silk cape.

“Look here, we'll go back, and then there won't be anything for Cousin Agatha to say.”

Miss Arabel fluttered, protested, thanked him profusely, and kept up a persistent twitter of explanation as he turned the car and drove back.

“It was only—it was the keys—Lane has been so put out about them. But perhaps he didn't like to speak of it to you. And Agatha said—you see she was called away—Nurse Collins was called away immediately—the very day Papa died—and Agatha had let her have the keys—the front door key and the gate—Papa's own keys—so that she could go out and come back without ringing—because Lane had been up all night. And she went off suddenly like that and forgot to give them back. And when we wrote, she said she was sorry but she must have left them packed up in her box and she couldn't let the landlady open it, so I promised Agatha—”

The car stopped and Anthony jumped out.

“I'll get them. Sit still.”

He had to ring twice. Then the door opened, and Miss Collins got what she called a start.

“Blessed if I didn't think the old lady had come back to begin all over again! I could see her there in the car with her mouth open all ready—and Mr. Colstone.”

“What does he want?” said Garry O'Connell.

“Ssh! He'll hear you—he's at the door. Wanted to come up, but I wouldn't let him.” She came quite close to him and dropped her voice. “I say, he wants those keys—you know—what you borrowed. Have you got them? I was on thorns for fear the old lady'd ask for them while she was here.”

Mr. Garry O'Connell dived into his trouser pocket and fished up two large keys. She held out her hand, but he turned them over in a leisurely fashion, looking at them closely.

“Oh, hurry up! What are you doing?”

Mr. O'Connell was scraping a tiny ball of wax from between the wards of one of the keys. He took his time, scrutinized them again, and handed them over.

Mabel Collins ran downstairs with a heightened colour.

“They were right at the bottom of the box,” she explained. “Quite
safe,
Mr. Colstone.”

He put the keys into Miss Arabel's lap and started the engine.

“I say, it's hot!” he said, and looked up for a moment.

The sun swept all the windows on that side of the street. Mabel Collins was closing her front door. The lace curtains in the room above did not quite meet. From between them someone looked down at the car, at Miss Arabel and himself. Anthony saw dark hair brushed back from a pale high brow, black eyes in a smooth oval face. He had seen the face before, looking out of a hedge. This time the eyes didn't glare; they looked superior—they looked beastly superior. He thought he preferred the glare.

The whole thing passed in a moment. He drove on.

As he drove, he thought; and the more he thought, the more certain he felt that he would be a mug to waste Miss Arabel. There were a lot of things that he wanted to know very badly. If Miss Arabel couldn't tell him all these things, she could certainly tell him some of them; and here she was, dropped upon him from the skies, positively fluttering with gratitude and unhampered by Miss Agatha's presence.

He drove into a nice patch of shade and stopped the car.

“Cousin Arabel—” he said.

Miss Arabel looked into his pleasant sunburnt face. She thought how nice it was to be driven like this by a kind and attentive young man who behaved really as if she were his aunt instead of a distant cousin. She felt that she had it in her to become a very much attached aunt.

“Cousin Arabel—” said Anthony; then he smiled. “I do want to ask you some questions so badly.”

Miss Arabel thought what very white teeth he had. He was a very fine young man, and a credit to the family.

“Oh, yes—anything, my dear Anthony.”

For a fleeting moment the smile changed to a grin. “Anything” was a tall order.

“Well then—I want you to tell me about the Coldstone Ring.”

Her complacent expression instantly broke up. She looked away and said in a confused voice,

“Oh, I don't think I can.”

“Why can't you?” He turned in his seat so as to face her, and leaned forward, resting his hand and arm on the wheel. “Look here, Cousin Arabel—can't you see my point of view? Sir Jervis has been most awfully good to me leaving me this place, and I don't want to go against his wishes or hurt your feelings or Cousin Agatha's, but I do want to know where I am. Only this morning I had a letter from Lord Haverton, very polite, asking me to lunch. He left a card yesterday when West and I were out. Well, he's president of the County archæological society—”

“Oh yes—Papa quarrelled with him—oh
dear!
”

“Well, I want to know where I am. I'm not such an absolute fool as to suppose that Sir Jervis took up the position he did without having some reason for it, and I think I ought to know what the reason is. Don't you think so yourself? Honest injun now?”

“I don't know,” said Miss Arabel in a distressed voice. “It sounds as if—”

Anthony pursued his advantage.

“Cousin Agatha said something about village superstitions. Now that's one of the things I want to know about. If there are superstitions, what are they? There can't be any harm in telling me that.”

“No—oh no,” said Miss Arabel. She took a fine white linen handkerchief out of a shabby beaded reticule and dabbed her chin with it.

“What's the story about the Stones?” said Anthony quickly. “Why won't anyone go near them?”

“Oh”—the hand with the handkerchief in it shook—“Oh, I don't know. They're afraid.”

“What are they afraid of?”

Miss Arabel had also turned in her seat; she had her back to the road and the high bank which rose above it. There were trees on the bank, heavy with dusty summer green. The shade was dense; here and there it deepened into an olive dusk. She looked over her shoulder and whispered through the folds of the handkerchief:

“They're afraid—”

“Yes, but what are they afraid of?”

Miss Arabel leaned nearer. Her voice trembled on the verge of inaudibility.

She said, “The devil,” and sat aghast at her own words.

“
What?
” said Anthony.

The loudness of his voice shocked her very much.

“Oh, I don't think I ought.”

“Oh, but you must—you can't stop now.”

“We were never allowed to talk about it.”

Anthony laughed.

“Then you're bound to know all that there is to know. There's nothing makes you get to the bottom of a thing quicker than being told you're not to talk about it.”

“Of course it's only a superstition,” said Miss Arabel. She looked over her other shoulder and shivered.

“Well, tell me about it. What do they think?”

“They used to take the Stones. It is a very long time ago, of course—hundreds of years. They took them to build with because there isn't any stone round here. Oh, I don't know whether Agatha would think I ought to tell you this.”

Anthony put a hand on her knee.

“Oh, Cousin Arabel, do go on!”

She let her hand drop on his. Her fingers were cold. The handkerchief tickled him.

“Susan says there were two rings of Stones—old Susan Bowyer, you know. Her great-grandfather remembered them—or was it his father? All the Bowyers live to be very old. There were two rings, only they didn't quite meet. And there was a big stone in the middle lying flat, that they called the Coldstone.”

“Why?” said Anthony quickly.

“Because—oh, I don't know. Our name comes from it.”

Anthony patted her.

“Well, the people took the stones—and then what happened?”

“I don't quite know—something dreadful. It was a long, long time ago the first time it happened. They went to lift the Coldstone—and the devil came out!” She leaned right forward and said the last words with a gasp. The effort made her whole body tremble. Then she drew back, breathed quickly, and said, “Of course that's just what the village people believed.”

“Of course. And then what happened?”

“There was an old wise man, and he helped them, and the Stone was laid down again. And he put a mark on it—”

Anthony started. He drew back the hand he had laid on Miss Arabel's knee.

“What was the mark for?”

“To keep the devil down,” whispered Miss Arabel. “And after that no one moved the Stone for hundreds of years—but they went on taking the other stones. And at last they began to move the Coldstone again, and they say—”

“Yes—go on!”

“They say fire came out of the ground and burnt up all the grass round the Stone—and they dropped it quickly, or they would all have been burnt up. And they say no grass will grow round it even now—but I don't know if it is true.”

She looked timidly and yet curiously at Anthony.

“There isn't any grass round it,” he said.

He had a picture of the great grey Stone lying across a ring of bare stony earth; and beyond this ring, grass waist-high. He thought the story was a very odd one.

“And after that,” said Miss Arabel, “no one ever moved the Stone again. And Papa wouldn't allow us to talk of it or to go there.” She sat back and put the handkerchief to her lips. “Just village talk of course,” she said. Her eyes asked him what he thought. “Poor Papa had such a horror of gossip—and there is a game called Russian Scandal which we used to play when I was young—Papa considered it quite instructive. So perhaps I ought not to have repeated all this foolish talk—and I don't know what Agatha—”

Her anxious gaze was met by a friendly grin.

“We won't tell Cousin Agatha,” said Anthony cheerfully.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Anthony came back to Stonegate with a good deal of zest. In some curious way West's departure had given him a sense of possession; he really felt for the first time that Stonegate was his. He got Lane to go round with him and tell him about the portraits that hung here and there on the panelled walls. Jervis, Ambrose, Anthony, Ralph, Philip—the names came again and again. Philip, in a ruff, with a jewel on the stiff, pale hand that fingered it—“Fought against the Spanish Armada, so Sir Jervis said, sir.” Ralph, with a falling collar of lace over half armour—“Killed at Naseby.” Jervis, with long love-locks, a slender youth of seventeen, his hand on a greyhound's head and a blue ribbon looping the fair hair. Ambrose, in a scholar's gown. And then the names again. Ralph in a periwig. Ambrose in pearl-grey satin. A little Ralph of ten, holding by the hand an infant Anthony with apple cheeks and a stiff white frock. The names went on repeating themselves.

There were very few women. One, in the library, startled Anthony with the feeling that he knew her. She wore a flowered gown over a blue petticoat; a mob cap hid her hair. She looked down with just a demure blue glint under dark lashes. It was as if she had looked, and looked away. “Sir Jervis' grandmother,” said Lane. “Miss Patience Pleydell she was—done just before her marriage to Mr. Jervis Colstone, Sir Jervis' grandfather. Begging your pardon, sir, she was Mr. Ambrose's mother—your great grandfather, sir. Mr. James and Mr. Ambrose was her two sons. Mr. James was Sir Jervis' father, and Mr. Ambrose was your great-grandfather—so Sir Jervis said.”

Anthony walked over to call on Mrs. Bowyer between six and seven. He stepped round the lavender bush, knocked on the worn front door, and stood for a moment waiting. He heard someone laugh on the other side of the door. And then it opened, and he saw old Mrs. Bowyer sitting by the window in her rocking-chair with a piece of bright carpet under her feet and her hands folded on a clean white pocket-handkerchief. Neither her black silk cap, nor her dress, nor even her shiny alpaca apron were as bright and black as the eyes which looked up at him as he bent his head and stepped across the threshold.