The Coldstone (7 page)

“I don't know.”

“Your family name obviously derives from it.”

“I suppose so.”

“Suppose so? Of course it does! Have you asked about the origin of the name? Someone ought to be able to give you some information. Have you tried the parson? Parsons are very often a mine of information on this sort of subject. Have you tried your local man?”

“We haven't got a resident parson. We go shares with two other villages, and the present man is a retired Indian chaplain who has only been here a few months—at least so the Miss Colstones say.”

Mr. West pounced on the Miss Colstones.

“Ah! And what do they say about the Ring?”

“Nothing,” said Anthony. Somehow it gave him great pleasure to say “Nothing” like that to West. He grinned, and West frowned portentously.

“
Nothing?
Have you asked them?”

“They don't talk about the Ring. No one in Ford St. Mary talks about it—it's a great taboo.”

“Since when? There wasn't any taboo when they set these gates and built this wall. That garden opposite too—look at those flagstones. Look at them—look at them! And the doorstep! The house is Elizabethan. There wasn't any taboo in those days, whatever there may be now.” He darted across the street and hung over Mrs. Bowyer's gate, discoursing upon the stones that paved her garden.

He proceeded to discover fresh evidences of vandalism in the Smithers' well-head, and in the wall of the churchyard. At least a dozen of the oldest tombstones he declared to be portions of the Stones from the Coldstone Ring.

After a tour of the village he returned full of energy to the Ring itself. This time each Stone was minutely examined. He made copious notes as he talked. Then, at the prostrate Stone, he stiffened, knelt down, and began in great excitement to trace the worn markings which Anthony had already discovered.

“What's this? What's this?”

Anthony cheered up a little. He had begun to feel rather like one of those small tags which adorn the tail of a proud, erratic kite, and have perforce to follow its soarings and plungings. He found it a boring rôle. Now he cheered up a little. These marks, at any rate, he had discovered for himself. He said so:

“Oh, those triangles? I found them the other day. I suppose they are triangles?”

Mr. West threw a scornful glance over his shoulder.

“Triangles? It's a pentagram. That's very interesting—that's very interesting indeed. I don't remember any other instance—I don't believe there's any other instance.”

“Well,” said Anthony, “anyone might have put it there, any old time. And—er—isn't a pentagram a thing with five points? This has six.”

West was on his knees beside the Stone. He turned now and looked up with an arrested expression.

“Yes,” he said, “yes—put on afterwards—perhaps as a charm—to ward off evil. I can't see six points. I believe I'm right in saying that the pentagram, or pentacle, was freely used in mediæval magic. Magic's not my subject, but I seem to remember that.”

They went on to the standing Stones, but there were no more marks. West talked about the pentacle, about Solomon's temple, about freemasonry, about mediæval magic, about Friar Bacon, and about Michael Scott. Anthony wondered how much he really knew about any of them, and he thanked his stars for the walking tour that was going to absorb West the day after to-morrow—only the day after to-morrow was the deuce of a long way off. By the time it came, he never wanted to see West again. The fellow was possessed of a perfect demon of energy. He wanted to interview everyone in the village on the subject of the Stones. He cross-examined Lane and Mrs. Hutchins; and the gardeners, and the maid-servants and the boot-boy; and a cowman whom he caught in a field; and the postman, who came from Wrane and said he didn't know nothing about any of it; and the sexton, who grunted, spat on his hands, and went on digging; and three village boys, two of whom were inarticulate, and the third impudent.

No one told him about old Mrs. Bowyer, so he did not interview her. The people he did interview displayed that dense ignorance with which the peasant in every country in the world knows how to shield the knowledge which he does not intend to impart. No one knew anything about the Coldstone Ring. The Stones were “great old stones.” They had always been there. They hadn't been to see them themselves. Sir Jervis didn't hold with people going into his fields—and, to all the flood of voluble suggestion made by Mr. West: “You don't say so!” or “Like enough you're right, sir.”

Anthony did his best to keep him out of the Miss Colstone's way. He had a perfectly clear vision of West with a note-book in the white panelled room—West sitting on the edge of a gimcrack gilt chair, rattling off questions at Miss Agatha and Miss Arabel like a human maxim, whilst he himself perspired in the background. As far as the village was concerned, he hoped to live West down; but he felt it would be hard to live him down with the Miss Colstones.

It is fatal to try and keep people apart; anxiously placed obstacles seem merely to defeat their own ends. To Bernard West, earnestly copying the inscriptions on some of the older tombstones in the little churchyard, there appeared from the church, where she had been arranging flowers, Miss Arabel; and, as it so chanced, Miss Arabel was feeling faint, and accepted with gratitude the arm and the escort of Anthony's friend. She could do no less than ask him in, and as Miss Agatha was busy in the garden, they had what Mr. West considered a very pleasant conversation in the white panelled drawing-room, with the portrait of the Lady Arabella Stuart looking down on them with her unsmiling dignity. Miss Arabel no longer felt indisposed.

Bernard West found Anthony a little cold on the subject of his Cousin Arabel's charms. He did not want to talk about his cousins at all. He only hoped to goodness that West had kept his mania for asking questions within decent bounds. After a chance meeting with Miss Arabel he abandoned this hope. At the mention of West's name the little lady changed colour, fluttered, and began to talk about the weather. The man was really a most infernal nuisance.

He turned from Wrane station and drove away with this thought in his mind. He had seen West off with decently suppressed joy, and he was wondering why he had ever thought Stonegate lonely. It wasn't going to be lonely; it was going to be peaceful. He felt exactly as if he were going home for the holidays after a strenuous term.

He was passing through the outskirts of Wrane and thinking vaguely what hideous outskirts they were, when his eye was caught by a little lady who was about to enter one of the houses. He slowed down, and recognized Miss Arabel, her air of exquisite finish rather startlingly out of keeping with her surroundings. The street was narrow and mean. The dull little houses were all exactly alike; they had yellow brick walls and grey slate roofs, and their windows were entirely obscured by Nottingham lace.

As Anthony approached, the door in front of which Miss Arabel was standing opened and let her in. He drove on, and had just a glimpse of a young woman in nurse's dress—just an impression of fluffy hair, butcher's blue, and white starched linen. Then the door shut, and he made haste out of Wrane.

Miss Arabel sat on the edge of a horsehair sofa and talked to the fluffy-haired young woman, whose name was Mabel Collins, but whom she addressed as “Nurse.” She talked to her for about ten minutes about what a fine August it was, and how nice it was for the farmers to have it so warm and dry, but didn't Nurse find it just a little oppressive in a town like Wrane?

“What's she
want?
” said Miss Collins to herself. “You
bet
your life she didn't come out here seven miles—and they're as mean as misers—just to talk about the weather.” Aloud, she agreed with Miss Arabel in a tone of deferential sweetness.

Miss Arabel passed from the weather and began to talk about her father's illness—“As if I wasn't fed to the teeth with the whole thing,” Miss Collins commented inaudibly. “Oh, get on, you old fool! If you've come here to say anything, for goodness sake say it and get out!”

Miss Arabel sat a little more upright. Her feet, in their very small shoes, were pressed down hard upon the bright green Brussels carpet. All the while that she talked about “poor Papa” she saw, not the dreadful little room with the bright walnut furniture, but the room at Stonegate where Papa sat propped against pillows looking across the footrail of the bed at the field where two tall grey stones stood amongst the high grass.

She said how good Nurse Collins had been, and how grateful they felt, and how much she hoped Nurse had not found her next case as trying. And all the while she saw that room, and Papa looking past her, and talking, talking, talking in a low mutter that sometimes made words and sometimes lapsed into mere sound. Her little black-gloved hands held one another very tightly as she said,

“I would have come to see you before, because there was something that I wanted to ask you about. You know, you went off in such a hurry.”

“Baby cases won't wait,” said Miss Collins in a brisk, decided voice.

Miss Arabel fluttered a little. This girl—she seemed so young—it didn't seem quite nice. She returned to “dear Papa” with the sound of his muttering voice in her ears. She must ask—she must find out.

“What did you want to know, Miss Colstone?” said Miss Collins. “And for the Lord's sake hurry up!” she added to herself.

Miss Arabel hesitated, opened her little button mouth, half closed it again, and said suddenly,

“My father talked a good deal—”

“Yes, he did.” (“And so do you, you silly old maid.”)

Miss Arabel proceeded with difficulty:

“On the afternoon—the last afternoon—the afternoon before he died, the—the
Monday
—”

“Yes, Miss Colstone?”

“You may remember that I sat with him whilst you went to your tea.”

Miss Collins nodded. What a rigmarole!

Miss Arabel found it very hard to go on, because she could hear Papa's muttering voice so plainly—just a smudge of sound, and then her own name, “Arabel.” And then things, frightening things, forbidden things, that were not to be talked about, by Papa's own especial order. And yet here was Papa talking about them in that low terrifying mutter. It made her heart beat so hard that she missed the next words. And all of a sudden he was looking at her and saying the things that he had said fifty years ago. It was only for a minute. If it had lasted more than a minute, she was sure she would have fainted. But half way through a sentence he stopped; his hand lifted from the sheet and fell again; his voice changed. “Well—well—it's a long time ago—you can have them now—I kept them—” And then, whilst she leaned forward terrified, his eyes closed and he leaned back against his pillows, and an awful endless silence closed down upon the room. Neither of them moved until Nurse came back.

Miss Arabel felt as if that silence was weighing on her now. She made the greatest effort she could.

“My father was telling me something—and he stopped—I think he was tired. After you came back, did he—talk any more?”

“Oh yes—he talked.” Miss Collins tossed her fluffy head a little.

“Can you tell me what he said, please?”

The hard blue eyes stared.

“But, Miss Colstone, he talked all the time—you know he did. I couldn't tell you what he said.”

Miss Arabel squeezed her hands together very hard. What was she to say? She must find out. But how could she find out without saying things? Her voice became an agitated thread of sound.

“There was something he was talking about. If he mentioned any name—or anything about papers—letters—” The word hardly sounded.

“I don't think he did. Was it something you wanted to find?” There was frank curiosity in the tone.

“No,” said Miss Arabel quickly. “I'm afraid I'm not at liberty. If—if he said anything—afterwards—I should be very grateful—”

Miss Collins sat thinking. She wanted to get rid of Miss Arabel, because she was expecting a friend to tea. She was, in point of fact, expecting Mr. Garry O'Connell, and she wanted to change her nurse's uniform and put on the new rose-pink jumper which she had bought in the sales. She was quite unaware of the fact that when she took off her uniform most of her claims to prettiness went with it.

“Did he—say anything?” said Miss Arabel with a little gasp.

Miss Collins frowned. Mr. O'Connell would be here in half a shake.

“Well, he did say something.” Miss Arabel turned perfectly white. “He said something I thought queer—and I don't know if it's what you want or not, but he did say your name.” She looked sharply at Miss Arabel's little pinched face. “He said ‘Arabel' two or three times, and then he said ‘Never,' and stopped. And after a bit he said it again quite loud. And after a bit he said, ‘Nobody'll ever find it.' And he said, ‘Safe—safe—quite safe.' Now would that be likely to refer to what you wanted to know about?”

“Yes,” said Miss Arabel faintly, “it might.”

“Well, he said a lot of things like that.”

“If you could tell me—”

“But, Miss Colstone, he talked for hours, and it was that sort of thing on and off the whole time. He said one awfully odd thing though. Is there anyone called David in your family?”

“No—no.”

“Well, that's funny. He said it several times.”

“What did he say?”

Nurse Collins laughed.

“It sounds quite off it unless you've got anyone by that name in the family—but then he wasn't talking sense most of the time.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Under the shield of David.' He kept on saying it—but perhaps it was just a religious way of talking.”

“Yes—oh yes—and was that all?”