The Coldstone

by Patricia Wentworth

  “I don’t know.” Susan spoke with a slow gravity. She was holding him away. Now she stepped back and dropped her hands. “No—please—I want you to listen.”

  “What am I to listen to? I give you fair warning—” He was flushed and eager.

  Susan smiled at him.

  “Yes, I know. But please listen. There are a great many things I can’t tell you. I may be able to tell you about them some day, but perhaps not—perhaps never.”

  “What does that matter?”

  “When you live with people,” said Susan, “it does matter. It makes things difficult. You’d have to trust me.

  “You can’t tell me?”

  “No.”

  “All right.” There was finality in his tone. He seemed to toss the whole thing away.

  “Don’t let’s waste any more time. Susan, I do love you. You haven’t said—you haven’t said anything about loving me.”

  What do lovers talk about? It can’t be set down in black and white, because it needs the laughing inflection, the glance that meets another glance, the shining rainbow light that sets every word, every look trembling with all the colours of joy hope, love. The words are nothing; it is the coloured light that charms.

  Susan and Anthony went hand in hand into the enchanted place where all the sand is gold and all the trees are green, where the bud and the flower and the fruit hang thick on the self-same bough, and the sun and the moon shine together in a sky which has all the freshness of the dawn and all the beauty of the day. In Merlin’s day the name of that place was called Avalon, No man may stay there, but some keep the key of it all their lives long.

  Susan and Anthony came back slowly to the sound of the tall clock striking twelve. Susan sighed and pulled her hand away.

  “I must go back. If Gran is awake, she’ll think I’ve eloped.”

  “I want to tell your grandmother—I want to tell everyone—I’d like to bang the big drum in the street and wake everybody up to tell them. Wouldn’t you?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.” She laughed a little. “What will Miss Arabel and Miss Agatha say?”

  “Oh, they’re old dears really. But—Susan—do they know who you are? They don’t—do they?”

  “Of course they do.”

  He frowned.

  “They don’t. They were talking about you this afternoon—at least someone was. They had a grim tea-party, and I was there, and an old lady said she’d seen you, and who were you? And Cousin Agatha looked fearfully repressive and said you were Mrs. Bowyer’s son Robert’s granddaughter.”

  Susan crinkled her nose.

  “That is the official explanation.” She laughed softly. “You see I fell on them like a bomb, poor old dears, because—Anthony, you’re to listen, because you don’t really know anything about me.”

  “I am listening.”

  “You can’t listen properly whilst you’re kissing my hand. You see, my mother died when I was a baby, and I don’t really remember my father, because I was only six when he went too—only fortunately for me he had married Camilla first.”

  “Who is Camilla?”

  “She’s my stepmother, and a heart of gold, but she has to be seen to be believed. And she brought me up and made me have a profession, thank goodness.”

  “What do you profess?”

  Susan drew herself up.

  “I’m secretary to a Member of Parliament—a perfect old lamb. Well, you see, I never knew anything at all about the romantic history of Susie and Philip until about six months ago when Camilla turned me over a boxful of old family letters; and then I thought next time I had a holiday I’d come and have a look at the ancestral village. So when Easter came I ran down here, and it was simply too thrilling to discover Gran. I’m having my proper holiday now. And of course I simply had to be explained, so Miss Arabel came to Gran and said of course I was Robert’s granddaughter, and Gran”—Susan gurgled—“Gran said she didn’t mind other people telling lies so long as she wasn’t asked to tell them herself. So, officially, I’m Robert’s granddaughter, but of course every single solitary soul in Ford St. Mary knows who I really am.” She sighed and got up. “I must go, my dear. And I don’t think we’ll tell anyone just yet, except Gran. I must tell Gran. Come along and I’ll show you the secret passage. The catch is awfully well hidden.”

  Anthony went into the passage with her. When they came to the place where it forked, he said,

  “Where does that go?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “To the Ladies’ House?”

  “Yes—but I don’t know where it comes out. Somewhere in the drawing-room, Gran says. I’ve never had the nerve to go and see. Ours comes out in the kitchen, which is much more suitable to our station in life.”

  She was kissed for that. After which they climbed the steps and she released the catch of the secret door. The section of the chimney wall with its stout oak backing swung round. A steady yellow light came through. Susan clutched Anthony and drew a shaky, laughing breath.

  A voice came from the lighted kitchen:

  “Susan—”

  Susan let go of Anthony and stepped out into the ingle. Mrs. Bowyer was sitting in her solid oak chair by the hearth with her patchwork quilt across her knees. She had about her shoulders the white woolly shawl which Susan had brought her as a present, and over her head a little grey cross-over with a faint pink border, all done in shell-pattern crochet which she had made herself. The light came from the wall-lamp on her right.

  She looked at Susan, sniffed slightly, and said, “Where ha’ you been?”

  Anthony came through the opening.

  Mrs. Bowyer sniffed again.

  “And what’s the meaning of this?”

  Susan broke into a laugh, and the black eyes under the grey cross-over fairly flared.

  “Eh—you may laugh, my maid—laugh first and cry after!”

  “Gran!”

  The eyes turned on Anthony.

  “What’s your purpose with my maid, Anthony Colstone? Is it marriage?”

  “Gran!”

  “Mrs. Bowyer, we’re engaged.”

  Mrs. Bowyer lifted her head.

  “Then let me tell you that I think very little of you for letting my maid risk her good name this way. What do you think folks ’ud say if they knew that she slipped down in the dark and went the old secret way to Stonegate?”

  Susan pulled her hand away with a jerk.

  “Gran! What an abominable thing to say!”

  “No,” said Anthony quickly—“she’s right. I’m sorry. You mustn’t come again.”

  “Folks’ll say worse than I’ve said,” said old Mrs. Bowyer, nodding. She looked kindly at Anthony, and found him a proper young man. She thought the better of him for blushing.

  Susan was pale and angry. Old Susan Bowyer felt a malicious satisfaction as she noted it.

  “Folks’ll say a sight worse than that,” she repeated.

  “They won’t know,” said Susan coldly.

  “Eh?” said Mrs. Bowyer. “Folks know everything. I’ve lived near on a hundred years, and ’tis astonishing what they’ll know. And what they don’t know they’ll make a pretty fair guess at—and it don’t lose in the overturn neither.” Her voice dropped and sobered. “Come here, Anthony Colstone, and give me your hand. Has she told you she’s a Colstone too? True born Bowyer and Colstone—and that’s the best gentry’s blood and the best yeoman’s blood of any in England. Right away back they go, both of ’em—true born and true bred, and whether ’twas Colstone or Bowyer, never a light woman as I heard tell about. That’s what I said to my Susie when Mr. Philip began to look her way. I said it to Philip too, right out to his face.” She stopped and looked straight in front of her with a strange, silent look. “Eh dear! They’d been married a month when I spoke, though I didn’t know it till long after. And folks talked light of Susie, but they’d no call to, for I saw her lines myself. There’s never anyone had any call to talk light about any of the Bowyer women.�
�� She paused and tossed her head a little. “And so I told Sir Jervis when we had words about it.”

  “About Susie?” said Susan. She had relaxed a little. She came nearer and took one of her grandmother’s hands, whilst Anthony took the other.

  Mrs. Bowyer nodded.

  “Bitter words we had, and I told him to his face that he could look to his own daughter. That was Miss Arabel, my dears—a year younger than Susie and as pretty as a picture, and Sir Jervis’ friend that we called the Jew courting her behind Sir Jervis’ back.”

  “Oh, Gran, tell me! What happened?”

  “He got sent about his business.”

  “Did she mind? Why wouldn’t Sir Jervis allow it?”

  “She must have been awfully pretty,” said Anthony.

  “Pretty as a picture, and mad about him—and mad to go off into foreign countries with him. That set on travelling Miss Arabel was, and after all she’s had to live out her life in the place where she was born.”

  “Wouldn’t they let her marry him because he was a Jew?”

  Mrs. Bowyer went off into her soundless laughter.

  “Mercy me, he wasn’t a Jew! If he’d been a proper Jew, he might have had some money. He was just some kind of an engineer, making his living in foreign parts out of telling folks about mines and such like.” She laughed again. “The Jew was just the name the young folks called him—Philip and Agatha and Arabel—because of his initials reading that way.”

  Anthony’s hand tightened on hers. Jew.… J-E-W.… He saw the initials, in Sir Jervis’ writing—J. E. W.

  “What was his name?” he said quickly.

  “Why, it’s getting on for fifty years since I heard it,” said Mrs. Bowyer. Her voice fell slow. “John—yes, ’twould be John for sure—John—Edwin—” She stopped, looking up at Anthony. “That’s a kind of a soft name, and I can’t abide a lad with a soft name. I never rightly took to him myself. John—Edwin.… Now what in the world was the rest of it? Something to do with the sky, for it puts me in mind of the red sky at night that oftener means a wet day than a fine one.”

  “What could it be, Gran? It’s got to begin with a W.”

  “North—south—east—west—” said Mrs. Bowyer. “Red sky at night in the west. That’s it! Bowyers never forget nothing. John Edwin West was his name, but the young folks called him Jew. And Miss Arabel broke her heart for him.” She looked up straight at Anthony. “You’ll not break my maid’s heart, Anthony Colstone?”

  “She’s much more likely to break mine,” said Anthony. And then he laughed, not very steadily, because he was remembering what it had felt like to see Susan leaning across the glass-topped medal case in deep, intimate talk with the man who had broken into his house. And she couldn’t explain it; she wasn’t ever going to be able to explain it. There was a secret running between them like a dark crack—

  Old Susan Bowyer’s face crinkled into hundreds of tiny lines, every one of them the shadow of a laugh.

  “Colstone’s hearts are none so easy broke,” she said. Then her eyes went black and solemn. “Do you love her true?”

  “Yes, Gran,” said Anthony.

  She nodded.

  “Eh—there’s queer things in life! I had a Colstone to my son, and now I have another to my great-grandson, and Susie’s granddaughter at Stonegate. Who’d ha’ thought it?” She lifted her chin at him with a jerk. “You’ll bring her to Stonegate?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Mrs. Bowyer turned to Susan.

  “And you, my maid—”

  “What, Gran?”

  “Is he your man?”

  “He seems to think so,” said Susan.

  “Is he your man?” said Mrs. Bowyer. “There’s none but you can say for sure.”

  Susan flushed scarlet. She wanted to pull away her hand, but Gran had it fast; she felt it drawn nearer to Anthony’s. Something in her fluttered. It was like being in church; it was like being married. The kitchen with its one oil lamp, and Gran in her white woolly shawl, had suddenly become part of a mystery. When Anthony took her hand and Mrs. Bowyer laid both of hers over the joined clasp, Susan felt as if something irrevocable had happened.

  The old lips moved without any sound of words. Then she released them and leaned back.

  “Kiss me first, and Susan after,” she said to Anthony.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “I must see you,” said Anthony. He stood with his back to the geraniums in Mrs. Bowyer’s front window. The morning sunshine poured down outside.

  “You are seeing me,” said Susan.

  Anthony groaned.

  “Gran will be back in a minute—you know she will.”

  Susan’s eyelashes flickered.

  “She’s very fond of you,” she said. “She says you can call every day and see her. She says you’re like my grandfather Philip—and she simply loved Philip.” She burst out laughing at his face of dismay. “No—what she really says is that we’ve got to give it out.”

  “I said so too.”

  Susan made a face.

  “It’s so stupid and public. But of course I do see that it’s going to be frightfully difficult for us to see each other unless we’re engaged. Gran’s the most frightful dragon really, but I’ve got her to promise not to do anything for a day or two and I thought if I went for a walk across the river and you came along in the car and picked me up, we might go out for the day.”

  They went out for the day. The sun shone—everything shone. Life had become a joyful adventure. They left the car presently and climbed a little hill. The country below them was all gold and green, with here and there a patch of woodland, and here and there the gleam of water. There was a beechwood at their backs, and in front of them the ground fell away sharply. There was no sting in the sun, only a mellow warmth.

  “Now we can talk,” said Anthony.

  “You’ve never stopped.”

  “Oh, that was about us. This is business.”

  “What sort of business?”

  “Well, I’d a letter this morning that made me sit up and think.”

  “What sort of letter?”

  “From old Leveridge, Sir Jervis’ solicitor. You remember that letter I found, from his father to Sir Jervis about an offer for the property?”

  Susan was leaning on her elbow picking at a little tuft of thyme. She looked up under her hat and saw Anthony’s face, puzzled and intent.

  “Yes, I know—the one with the note about J.E.W.”

  “Yes. Well, my letter—” He broke off. “Susan, it’s odd. Leveridge says he’s had an offer for Stonegate. He wrote to ask if I would consider it. It’s from the same people his father wrote about—Stent Rogerson and Twyford.

  Susan sat up. Her fingers crushed the thyme, and the sweet herby scent filled the sunny air between them.

  “How extraordinary!”

  “Too extraordinary,” said Anthony. “One odd thing’s nothing, but a whole lot of odd things must mean something. There’s something—something behind all these odd things, and we’ve got to find out what it is.”

  Susan dropped the little crushed pieces of thyme. She put her hands in her lap and looked at a yellow cornfield that was shining like gold in the sun.

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s something. Look here—you heard what Mrs. Bowyer said last night about my cousin Arabel and the man they called Jew?”

  Susan nodded.

  “Well, of course I thought at once about that letter and Sir Jervis’ note—you remember: ‘J.E.W.? Can’t believe it. No—’ And after I got Leveridge’s letter this morning I thought a lot more. J. E. W. was a friend of Sir Jervis. He was an engineer—a mining engineer. He came down to stay, and he made love to my Cousin Arabel and got sent about his business. And afterwards Sir Jervis was repeatedly offered a price for Stonegate which old Leveridge described as so much in excess of the estimated market value that he didn’t feel justified in accepting previous refusals as final
. And at the bottom of the letter Sir Jervis himself connects the offer with J. E. W. Do you see what it looks like?”

  Susan nodded again.

  “Gran doesn’t know any more. I asked her. She said Sir Jervis was mad with rage about Arabel. Fathers had awfully unrestrained tempers in those days—hadn’t they? I gather he simply foamed, and Arabel wilted and didn’t dare say ‘Bo’ to him. And she was ill for a long time, and then she just settled down into being an old maid. At nineteen, Anthony! Doesn’t it make you boil?” She paused, frowning. “Talking about odd things—Sir Jervis said one frightfully odd thing to Gran.”

  “What was it?” said Anthony.

  “Well, I thought it was odd when Gran told me; but you know how it is when you say a thing again—the oddness seems to evaporate.”

  “What is it?”

  “Gran was standing up to him about Arabel, and he was in a fearful temper, and all of a sudden he banged with his fist on the table. It was in her front room. And he said, ‘I’d sooner he ruined my daughter than my land, but as long as I live he won’t lay a finger on either.’ And Gran said he wasn’t a swearing man, but he swore so fearfully that she was afraid. And she said it was the only time in their lives that she’d ever been afraid of him. What do you suppose he meant?”

  Anthony was whistling some shred of an air between his teeth. He pursued it for a bar or two. Then he turned over on the short grass, leaning on his elbows with his chin in his cupped hands.

  “J. E. W. was John Edwin West, and he was a mining engineer. And Sir Jervis raises Cain about his spoiling his land, and feels suspicious when he gets an offer for it. Does that suggest anything to you?”

  Susan laughed.

  “Yes, of course it does. It suggests that John Edwin—Golly! What a name! I say, Anthony, it has just struck me all of a heap. If he’d married Miss Arabel, he’d have been our cousin John Edwin, and there might have been little Edwins and Edwinas.”

  Anthony grinned and frowned.

  “They’d have been middle-aged. Anyhow you’re not sticking to the point.

  “It was such a frightful thought,” said Susan. “All right, I’m coming to the point. John Edwin found out something that Sir Jervis didn’t like. I don’t know what he found; but he was a mining engineer, and Sir Jervis said he wouldn’t have his land ruined, and the price of Stonegate went right up. I wonder what he did find. But of course any sort of mine makes a nasty mess of things. I wonder if it was coal.”