“Remember what?” enquired Lotus.
“I’ve been on a picnic with Geoffrey before. I enjoyed it.”
“Shall we go back to the lake?” suggested Florence being constructive.
“It’s true that you’re never actually lost so long as you can find the way back,” observed Kynaston, hoping, like many greater men, to preserve his leadership by retreat.
“Surely we shouldn’t admit defeat?” said Guillaume. He wished to keep Florence from the boats.
“Besides,” enquired Lena, “can you find the way back?”
“Naturally, I can find the way back.” The implication that he would rather they went forward contrasted so much with the attitude of his previous remark that it was obvious to Griselda that he could not find the way back, and had suddenly realized the fact. She wondered what he would do, thus totally trapped.
“For heaven’s sake, let’s go somewhere,” cried Peggy. Her outburst made Monica drop a stitch.
“Shall we toss for it?” suggested Florence, still patiently seeking to advance the general well-being. It struck Griselda that Florence would make a wonderful mother, though possibly her hips were too small for easy childbirth.
“Geoffrey!” said Lotus. “Tell us what to do and we’ll do it. You can be so self-confident.”
“This is the moment,” said Lena.
Suddenly Kynaston resumed the leadership. “Let’s have lunch. It’s just the place.”
Kynaston got very little. Peggy had at first said to Griselda that she had not walked far enough to acquire any appetite at all; but managed none the less to eat most of her share. Lotus, seated on a small mat, ate nothing but a little hothouse fruit (although it was summer) and some walnuts. Guillaume was on a diet which involved him in eating several times the normal amount of the few things he was permitted to eat at all. Barney almost surreptitiously unwrapped some unusual but not unappetising comestibles approved by his community. He insinuated himself alongside a tree which Peggy was occupying, somewhat in the background; and, glancing from time to time at Peggy’s bust, began to cheer up.
At the end of the meal, the situation had once more to be faced.
After various desultory and generally unrealistic suggestions from the others, Lotus said “Why move from here? Are we not quite comfortable as we are?” She sank her left hand into Kynaston’s hair as he lay on the ground beside her.
“Perfectly comfortable,” said Guillaume, yawning as his diet disagreed with him.
Monica began to knit at a different angle. Perhaps she was turning the heel. But the rapidly increasing product of her labours seemed without any such precise points of reference.
“There’s the difficulty that we don’t know the way back,” pointed out Florence.
“We’ll be all right when the time comes.” This was Barney.
“I,” said Lena, “want a walk. Anyone join me?”
“I’ll join you,” said Griselda, rising. “What about you, Peggy?”
“It’s too hot.” To her surprise, Griselda, now that she was on her feet, could see that Peggy’s ankles were tightly clasped in the crook of one of Barney’s arms.
“Anyone else?” enquired Griselda. She had not expected to have to walk alone with Lena.
“I’d love to some other time,” said Freddy regretfully. By this he meant that he would love to accompany Griselda, but he was frightened of Lena, whom he thought unsexed and a bluestocking.
“Florence?”
Florence looked lovingly at Guillaume, who was beginning to fall asleep. “I don’t think so, Griselda.” There was something charmingly tender about her; something unusual and precious which Griselda felt was going to waste.
“Come on, Florence. I’d like you to.”
Florence smiled and shook her head. Then she laid a handkerchief over Guillaume’s brow, and settled down to watch over him.
Lena meanwhile was slouching up and down impatiently. Griselda walked across to her through the recumbent group.
“Which way?”
“Not again!”
“This way then.” Griselda indicated the turn to the left.
“Thank God you know your own mind.”
They set off along the track. Griselda’s last recollection of the group was the look of agony in Kynaston’s eyes as she vanished from his sight and a lock of Lotus’s splendid red-gold hair touched his cheek.
CHAPTER XXIV
“Pity Florence wouldn’t come.”
“She’s better where she is.”
“Isn’t Guillaume rather selfish?”
“That’s why Florence loves him.”
They walked some way in silence. It was almost too hot to talk. Also Griselda divined that Lena, although a little alarming, was one of the favoured people with whom silence is possible even on short acquaintance. Soon the track turned into a sunken glade.
“What are your books called?”
“ ‘Inhumation’ is the one I like.”
“I should like to read it.”
“It’s not based on experience.”
“I’m sure that doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me. ‘Inhumation’ is based on frustration. I’ve never succeeded with men; although I’ve tried very hard from time to time. I’m too cerebral for the dear dolts. Not clinging and dependant. Florence is what they like. Or you.”
“I’m not clinging and dependant.”
“Aren’t you? Sorry. I don’t really know you, of course.”
Again they walked for some time in silence. The glade was full of dragonflies, with their quaint air of impossibility.
“The only proposal I ever received,” remarked Griselda after a while, “was on the grounds that I was not clinging and dependant. Proposal of marriage, that is to say.”
“Geoffrey Kynaston is unlike the ordinary male. I should accept him. You’ll be lost otherwise if you’re the type you say you are. I’d take him myself if he’d have me.”
Griselda had wondered why Lena had been so rude to Kynaston.
“How did you know?”
“Barney.”
“Is Barney a good painter?”
“He’s not a Rubens or George Goss. He can only paint Mothers. He has a fixation.”
“I knew he painted Mothers.”
“Udders, you know.”
Griselda nodded.
After another silence, Lena said “Is love important to you, Griselda?”
“Yes, Lena,” replied Griselda. “Love is very important to me.”
“We’re in a minority.”
“I suppose so.”
“I meant what I said in the train. I should like a man now.”
“It’s the main thing about beautiful places.”
Suddenly they turned a corner and came to a high wrought-iron gate. It was surmounted by a painted though discoloured coat of arms, consisting simply of a mailed fist. It was apparent that the track had been constructed as a subsidiary drive to a house; and that the glade was an artificial excavation designed to keep the drive on a level.
“We can’t go back,” said Lena. “We shall rejoin the others, and I’m not ready for that yet.”
“The gate’s open,” said Griselda.
Lena pushed it. It ground on its hinges, but opened wide at a touch. They passed through, and Griselda closed the gate behind them.
The drive stretched on among beeches which, though presumably in private ownership, were indistinguishable from the publicly owned beeches in the forest outside.
“Do you know who lives round here?” asked Griselda.
“I’m afraid not. I’m a stranger in these parts.” Lena’s tone had lost its previous habitual colouring of sarcasm. She had become entirely friendly. Griselda surmised that this might be a privilege, and that Lena might be a good friend to have.
“I suggest,” continued Lena, “that we find our way out the other side of the Park, cast round in a circle, and rejoin the others from the opposite direction.”<
br />
“Perhaps they will have gone?”
“Perhaps they will.”
A few minutes later, Griselda said “I suppose we may be stopped?”
“You must use your charm, Griselda. It’s there if you’ll bring it out.”
“What will you do?”
“I shall climb a tree.”
“Are you good at that?”
“Watch.”
She darted away from tree to tree.
“We must have a clean tree. I don’t want to dirty my trousers. Wish I hadn’t lent my blue ones to Florence.” Even though she was quite close, the Forest had begun to echo her clear voice.
Suddenly she was ascending: with unbelievable speed and agility; like a small grey and buff monkey. In a minute or two she was out of sight among the dense green summer foliage.
“Be careful,” called Griselda up the tree trunk.
“I’ll be careful,” cried Lena from the greenery; and the Forest shouted: “Careful, careful, careful.”
“Look out below.” Something was descending. It was a shoe. It was followed by another shoe. Then, a few yards away, at the perimeter of the tree, fell a pair of socks and Lena’s shirt and trousers. Griselda looked up and saw Lena brown and naked at the very end of a thick branch. She was sitting on the branch with her legs drawn up; leaning back upon the left arm and hand, which rested on the bark behind her.
“How brown you are!”
“The sun was my stepfather.” Now she was standing on the branch, her hands above her head and clinging to wisps of leafy twig hanging from the branch above. “I’m going to the top. Then down again. Wait for me, Griselda. I’ll be very quick.”
Griselda waved up to her and she had disappeared again among the leaves.
After a pause a fairly large whole branch crashed down from high above. It lay on the ground like the handiwork of a hooligan.
“Lena! Are you all right?”
There was no answer, but before Griselda felt alarm, Lena could be heard descending.
“Did you get to the top?”
Lena paused about twenty feet from the ground. In the hot streaks of sunshine she looked startlingly in keeping.
“We’re nearer the house than we thought.”
Griselda laughed. “Then you’d better dress quickly!”
“It’s not that.” Lena’s manner had changed a second time. Now she seemed almost subdued. “There’s something going on. There are tall trees near the house, but at the very top I could see over them. I think someone’s dead.”
“What did you see?”
“I’ll dress and we’ll go on. Then you can see for yourself.”
She stood on the ground shaking bits of the tree from her brown body. In a minute and a half she was dressed, and combing her hair.
“What do you call those things you see in churches?”
“Cockroaches,” said Griselda.
“Wooden things. To do with funerals.”
“Coffins,” said Griselda.
“You’re wise to wear your hair short.”
“Yours is too beautiful.”
“I know. That’s why I keep it. It’s my sole physical asset.”
“Not quite,” said Griselda smiling.
“Much good has it done me.” She was retying the khaki ribbon. “Now come and look.” She slouched ahead, her hands once more in her pockets.
After two or three hundred yards, the track became paved with kidney stones, sunk far into the earth with neglect. After another two or three hundred yards, it gave upon a well-kept lawn, round which it curved to the door of a big late seventeenth-century house, in dark red brick, with large windows at long intervals, and heavy pre-Georgian details. The front door (from which the main drive stretched away in the opposite direction) was concealed by a bulky columned porte-cochère; high above which, rising on its own against the sky above the front wall of the house, was a massive relief representation in stone of the emblem which Griselda and Lena had noticed on the gate, the simple mailed fist. About the lawn were enormous isolated cedars of Lebanon.
Before they left the shelter of the Forest, Lena caught Griselda by the arm. “Look! that’s a thing to see from the top of a tree.”
In the sunshine before the porte-cochère, a strange figure sat upon the stones of the drive working. It appeared to be a dwarf. It had very long arms (like a cuttlefish, Griselda thought), very long black hair (somewhat like horsehair), and a completely yellow face. Its ears were pointed, with strands of stiff black hair rising from the top of them. It wore black clothes. Very industriously, despite the great heat, the figure was polishing a large black piece of wood.
“You were right,” said Griselda, speaking unnecessarily softly; “that’s a hatchment.”
“Would that be the undertaker?”
“No. Undertakers must have charm.”
“Dare we go past?”
“I think so. Unless you’d prefer to go back.”
“Aren’t we trespassing?”
“This is the twentieth century.”
“Should we take advantage of that?”
“I’ll apologize and ask the quickest way out.”
They advanced from the safety of the trees. Instantly, against the ponderous grandeur of the house, they felt themselves misplaced and insignificant, wrongly dressed and intrusive.
The dwarf went on polishing until they were almost upon him, whereupon, without haste or appearance of surprise, he rose, bowed ceremonially, and extended his long left arm towards the door of the house.
“I’m afraid we’ve lost our way,” said Griselda. “Will it be all right if we go on down the drive?”
The dwarf, who had completely black eyes, bowed again, and continued to point to the front door.
“Let’s see for ourselves,” said Lena after a second’s silence. She tried to pass the dwarf on the other side, with a view to making for the drive.
The dwarf, still with his arm extended, stepped to the right and barred her way. Now by gestures with the right arm he seemed to reinforce the invitation already made with the left. Griselda saw that the big double front door stood wide open.
“Shall we go back?” said Lena.
The dwarf took a further step. He now stood facing the door and with the lawn behind him. Both his immense arms were fully extended, so that he looked like a queer tree. The hatchment lay face downward on the stones.
“What is there inside?” asked Griselda.
The dwarf bowed once more, this time stretching back his arms and upturning his hands. His hands were unusually large and white; and wiry black hair grew in the palms.
“Let’s go,” said Lena.
She looked about to run for it, but the dwarf, his arms still extended, leapt right off the ground like a goalkeeper, and descended in her course.
Griselda, anxious to prevent an unpleasant and undignified dodging contest, which, moreover, she feared the dwarf would, in at least one case, win, said “I think we’d better investigate. They may need help.” Most of the blinds in the house were drawn.
“If you say so.”
They entered the house, the dwarf one pace behind them.
When they were through the front door, he returned to his polishing in the sun.
The drawn blinds made the hall very dark, despite the strong light outside. At once, however, the two girls saw that a figure stood motionless at the bottom of the stairs which rose before them. It was an elderly woman, very tall, very upright, very grey, and wearing a grey dress reaching to the ground.
“So you’ve come. This way.”
She began to lead the way upstairs, then stopped.
“Only one of you.” She peered at them. “You.” She indicated Griselda. “You,” she said to Lena, “can go—or wait. Just as you choose. It won’t take more than five or ten minutes now.”
“There’s some mistake,” said Griselda. “We——”
“Hardly,” interrupted the woman, smiling a slight, hard, weary
smile through the gloom. “But you won’t have to stay long. Your friend can wait if she chooses. Come upstairs, please.”
“Why me?”
“I’m not sure your friend would serve. Please sit down,” she said to Lena. “And wait.”
“Why won’t I serve?” enquired Lena.
“There is a condition which must be complied with. You’ll be perfectly safe,” she added somewhat contemptuously. “Both of you. Now,” she said to Griselda, “follow me.”
Griselda followed her up the wide staircase and into a gallery on the first floor, which seemed to run the length of the house and was filled with tapestries, there being apparently no other furniture of any kind except a carpet, though it was difficult to be sure in the dim light. Beyond the gallery were several large dark rooms filled with dust-sheets. Then there was a high double door.
The woman opened one of the doors very softly, disclosing artificial light within; and with an authoritative gesture from the wrist, indicated that Griselda should pass by and enter. The light in the room within enabled Griselda for the first time clearly to see her face. She looked imperious but sad; like one leading a dedicated life.
The room Griselda now entered was hung with black, which kept out all daylight. It was illumined by several hundred candles assembled on a frame such as Griselda had seen set before images in Catholic cathedrals; but larger, and formed of fantastically twisting golden limbs. The light fell upon a single enormous picture standing out against the black hangings: in an elaborate rococo frame, it depicted an Emperor or conqueror at his hour of triumph, borne by a white horse up a hill into a city, apotheosed alike by the paeans of his followers weighed down with loot, and by the plaints of the mangled, dying, and dispossessed. Opposite the picture was an immense four-poster bed, hung like a catafalque with black velvet curtains which descended from a golden mailed fist mounted in the centre of the canopy high up under the extravagantly painted ceiling. The carpet was of deep black silk. In the air was faint music.
The writhing candelabrum stood near one of the posts at the foot of the bed. While leaving all but the bed and the picture shadowy, it lighted up the room’s occupant. Griselda at once recognized him. That look of a censorious Buddha, those clear yellow eyes, were, indeed, not to be forgotten. The man in the bed was Sir Travis Raunds. He looked older than ever, and horribly ill, but he was turning the pages of a black folio volume containing coats of arms exquisitely illuminated on vellum.
The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories Page 21
