The Coldstone (3 page)

“H'm—I can't see any likeness.”

Then she sat down, fanned herself with the fork, and began to ask him all the questions that Miss Arabel had already asked. For the second time, he had had a pleasant journey, and a friend was coming to stay with him. Then, with relief, to new ground. The friend's name was West—about his own age—he hadn't seen him for four years because he had been in India—they used to be great pals—he was a junior master at Marfield.

Miss Agatha was a vigorous questioner. She elicited in a swift competent manner that Anthony was twenty-six, disengaged, a golfer, a fair shot, six foot in his socks, and of no particular brand of politics. This appeared to shock her a good deal. Sir Jervis had obviously ranked politics with religion—and the greater of these was politics.

Anthony hastened to change the subject. He wanted to talk about Stonegate. But Miss Agatha did not.

“Your father died—”

“When I was three. I hardly remember him or my mother. Her people brought me up—an aunt and her husband. He farmed his own land. I think I'd have gone in for farming if he'd lived; but he died when I was sixteen. My aunt wanted me to go into the army. She said farming was no good without capital.”

“Quite right.”

“I was wondering—” He broke off. He didn't want to embark on plans. The word sent him back to the question he had asked Miss Arabel. “I suppose there are plans somewhere—of the house and everything? I want to know my way about. And perhaps you can tell me what's my best way up to the field where the Stones are. I thought I'd walk up and have a look. Fancy—I asked Mrs. Hutchins about them, and she couldn't tell me how many there were. She said she'd never even been to have a look at them. Isn't it amazing?”

Miss Agatha had been fidgeting with the dusty fork, to the detriment of her black serge skirt. When Anthony said “Amazing,” she dropped the fork and stooped frowning to pick it up again. Miss Arabel said “Oh!” in a helpless, fluttered sort of way.

“She couldn't even tell me how many stones there were,” pursued Anthony cheerfully. “And by the way, of course you can tell me all about them. I'm fearfully interested. How many are there?”

There was one of those silences that follow the worst kind of
faux pas
. He had dropped a brick—most undoubtedly he had dropped a brick. He would have liked to drop a few more, noisily, with a crash; to heave, say, the plush photograph album through the left-hand casement window; or to catch Miss Arabel round the waist and swing her across the room to the latest tango.

He smiled charmingly at Miss Agatha's blank frown and repeated his question.

“How many are there?”

“I don't know,” said Miss Agatha. Her voice was deep and reluctant, heavy with things unsaid.

She got up, moved to the window, and pitched her weeding fork out on to the lawn. Then she came back, untying the strings of her hat. Miss Arabel sat quite still. She looked frightened. Her plump little hands clasped one another in her black cashmere lap.

Agatha Colstone removed her hat and began to fan herself with it—it certainly made a better fan than the fork. She sat on the edge of a solid mahogany chair with claw-and-ball feet. Her iron grey hair was drawn almost as tightly away from her face as that of the lady with the ruff. The back of her head was covered with flat rigid plaits. She looked angry and nervous. She said, in a loud voice that shook a little,

“We don't talk about the Stones.”

Anthony felt better. The brick had at least broken the awful hush.

“Why don't you talk about them?” He nerved himself and added, “Cousin Agatha?”

Miss Arabel made a little fluttered movement. She said, “Poor Papa—” and then stopped as if that explained everything.

“I don't understand,” said Anthony. He understood very well that the old ladies were trying to hush him up; but he felt very resolute about not being hushed. He looked at Miss Agatha with a sparkle in his eyes.

“What's the matter with the Stones? Don't you think I'd better know and have done with it? After all, if I'm going to live here—”

Miss Agatha let her hat fall on to the floor. She spoke in a slow, considering manner:

“I cannot tell you how many stones there are, because, like Mrs. Hutchins, I have never been to look at them. Everyone does not take the same interest in these things that you seem to. And if you wish for an additional reason, I can give it you very simply. The village people have some foolish superstitions connected with the Stones, and my father did not wish us to become associated with them in any way.” She shut her mouth firmly.

Miss Arabel said, “Dear Papa—” and then stopped again because Miss Agatha turned a forbidding eye upon her.

Anthony felt pleasantly stimulated. He had drawn her to the extent of admitting that there were superstitions in connection with the Stones. He wanted very badly to know what they were. He thought he would ask, and risk a snubbing.

“What sort of superstitions? It sounds awfully interesting.”

“I am afraid I can't tell you, Anthony.” She rose to her feet. “And now, I think, we will change the subject. Perhaps you would care to see the garden. I hope Mrs. Hutchins is making you comfortable. She is a valuable servant, and so is Lane.”

They passed out on to the sunny lawn.

When Anthony had taken his leave, Miss Agatha waited until she heard the front door shut. Then she turned to Miss Arabel and said,

“Well?”

“He is very agreeable, Agatha.”

Miss Agatha said “H'm!”

“And very good-looking.”

Miss Agatha said “H'm!” again.

There was a pause. Then Miss Agatha spoke in a forced, jerky voice:

“Susan Bowyer has got that girl here again.”

A faint colour came into Miss Arabel's face.

“That girl Susan?”

“Yes.”

“It is very awkward, Agatha,” said Miss Arabel. “What will people say?”

Miss Agatha drew herself up.

“What can they say? She's Robert's granddaughter—Robert Bowyer's grand-daughter—she's Susan Bowyer. There isn't anything that anyone can say. Why shouldn't Susan have her son Robert's grand-daughter to stay with her?”

“It is very awkward,” said Miss Arabel.

CHAPTER FOUR

Anthony went up the hill with the feeling of adventure strong in him. The Stones appeared to be the subject of some extraordinary taboo. Miss Agatha was round about seventy years of age; she had lived seventy odd years in this delightful, benighted, mediævally rustic spot—and she had never bothered to cross three fields and look at the Stones. Mrs. Hutchins had also lived here all her life—Miss Arabel had informed him that her father had been sexton for some vast number of years. The “Mrs.” was apparently in the nature of a brevet. She also had never troubled to climb these gently tilted fields. Going to see the Stones wasn't done in Ford St. Mary; you didn't go and see them, and you didn't talk about them. The villagers entertained vain superstitions about them. Now he wondered a good deal whether Sir Jervis had not entertained them too.

He crossed the last field and came to an apparently impenetrable hedge. There was no pathway, and there was no stile; there was nothing you could climb over or under.

Anthony began to break a way through the hedge with the oddest sense of guilt. He had to go on reminding himself that it was his own hedge and his own field. He felt exactly as if he were eight years old, breaking into an orchard to steal plums. In the end he pushed his way through a tangle of sloe and thorn, and got clear of the hedge with a jagged tear in his coat and a scratch on the cheek from a blackberry trail. There was going to be a jolly good crop of blackberries here if the weather held. He disentangled another trail from his left ankle and looked about him.

The field was almost waist-high in flowering grass, hemlock and sorrel, with a few late moon-daisies and patches of purple thistle. The other fields had been mown, and had their second crop of grass drying off in the sun. It was scarcely knee-high. But this field had not been touched. Its hedges closed it in like prison walls. There was no way into it except the way that he had broken for himself.

He looked about him and saw the Stones, two of them, separated by almost the whole width of the field, the nearer one not twenty feet away, a tall, misshapen monolith of roughened grey stone stained with orange fungus. He walked up to it, wondering whether it had been one of a pair like the great uprights of Stonehenge. There was no sign of anything but this one pillar. He judged it to be about fifteen feet high, narrower than the stones at Stonehenge.

He cut across the field diagonally towards the other monolith. It did not seem to be quite so tall, and it leaned sideways a little, like the leaning tower of Pisa. The grass and the sorrel were up to his waist as he walked. Everything smelt very sweet. There was red clover amongst the grass, and camomile. The sun was going slowly down the hazy slope of the sky. Everything was very still, and hot, and sweet. The only sound was the swishing of the ripened grass as he pushed through it.

And then all of a sudden the grass came to an end and he saw the third Stone. It lay flat in a bare space. First the long grass ceased, then the short, sparse, weedy straggle. The Stone lay flat, and for a yard all round it there was not so much as a green blade.

Anthony came out on to the open place and looked down at the Stone. It was not quite so big as the others. It was wider, flatter. It was sunk, so that only a hand's breadth of its worn grey sides showed above the earth. It looked as if it had been laid there. He wondered whether it had been laid there, or whether it had fallen hundreds of years ago. The place gave him a curious feeling.

He walked all round the Stone, and just as he came to the east side of it, he saw the marks upon its surface. The low sun caught a faint, worn tracery. Right in the middle of the Stone there was something that looked like interlaced triangles. It was very much rubbed and worn; two of the points were gone. But there it was. He wondered who had done it, and how long ago; and he wondered what it meant.

He looked up towards the other standing Stone, and saw a man's face watching him. The Stone was up in the left-hand corner of the field, not half a dozen yards from the hedge. The man's face looked out of the hedge. He must have forced his way into the middle of it and pushed his head between two branches of leafy elder, for only his head was visible—a head with smooth black hair, pale oval face, and black staring eyes. The eyes were fixed on Anthony, but the moment that Anthony's own eyes met them the head vanished. One minute it was there, and the next minute it wasn't there. It was all so very sudden that just for a moment Anthony wasn't sure whether his imagination had been playing him tricks.

He pelted off up the field, reached the hedge, and parted the elder branches. There was no one there. There was nothing to be seen in the field beyond except some placidly cropping sheep. The grass was short, thanks to the sheep, but there were four hedges. Anthony was blowed if he was going to scramble through another thickset hedge to search for the gentleman with the staring eyes. He had a look at the standing Stone, and then walked back across the field to the gap he had made in the lower hedge.

As he walked, he couldn't help thinking about the face. It was odd. Why was it odd? There wasn't anything odd about it. Someone was having a look through the hedge—and why not? On the other hand, why? It wasn't a village lad. Now how on earth could he be sure of that? He didn't know. But he
was
sure. He began to produce reasons. The fellow had a sort of high-brow look, well brushed, well shaved. He kept seeing the pale oval face with the smooth lip and chin and the black hair brushed away from the pale high forehead. Well, anyone can look through a hedge. So they can—but they needn't glare. This fellow had most undoubtedly glared. No, glared wasn't really strong enough. “He looked as if I was poison—rank bad poison.” Very surprising to be looked at like that. Anthony gave it up.

He reached the gap he had made in the hedge, and received a second surprise. A girl in a blue cotton dress was standing in the gap, looking past him up the field. She must have heard him coming, but she did not move until he was within a yard. Then she let go of the thorny trail which she had pushed on one side and sprang back. He followed her. His visit to the Stones seemed to be attracting quite a lot of attention.

As he emerged from the hedge, he was aware of her, quite close. She wore a blue sun-bonnet that matched her dress; her skirts were a good deal longer than the skirts of the girls he knew. She held her hands together in front of her, as if she was shy. She bobbed a little curtsey and said in a breathless, pretty voice with a marked country accent,

“I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir.”

Anthony supposed that she was one of the girls from the village—his village. He wasn't quite sure how he ought to talk to her. She was a pretty girl, and she looked fearfully shy, and as if she was afraid she had made a break of some kind. It was rather embarrassing.

He said, “Why should you beg my pardon?” and he smiled, because he always smiled when he felt shy.

The girl bent her head so that the wing of the blue sun-bonnet hid her face. He didn't know village girls ever wore sun-bonnets now. They were awfully becoming.

He said, “Do you live here?”

“No,” said the pretty voice. There was a pause. “I'm visiting my granny.” The head began to lift again. “I've heard tell of the Stones, and I wanted to see them.”

He found himself looking into a lovely pair of eyes. He had never seen any eyes quite like them. They were just the colour of sea water when it is rather green; they were blue, and yet not blue. They had a sparkle in them which he found hard to reconcile with her rustic shyness. The lashes were black, and fine, and soft.